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Jonathan Zdziarski Answers
Wednesday we requested questions for Jonathan Zdziarski, an open source contributor and author of the recently reviewed book "Ending Spam." Jonathan seems to have taken great care in answering your questions, which you will find published below. We have also invited Jonathan to take part in the discussion if he has time so if your question didn't make the cut perhaps there is still hope.
Winkydink asks:
How do you pronounce your name?
Jonathan Responds:
Hi. Well first off, I'm sticking to the pronunciation 'Jarsky', however many of my relatives still pronounce it 'Zarsky' or "Za-Jarsky". As far as I can tell, my last name was originally 'Dziarstac' when the first generation of my family came over, which would have been pronounced with a 'J'. It's of polish decent, but I'm afraid I'm not very in tune with my ancestors on this side of the family. The other side of my family is mostly Italian, and they drink a lot, organize crime, and generally have more fun - so they are much more interesting to hang out with. For the past 29 years of my life, giving my last name to anyone has included the obligatory explanation of its pronunciation, history, and snickering at puns they think I'm hearing for the first time (-1, Redundant), so don't feel too bad for asking.
As far as who I am and why you should care - I guess that depends on what kind of geek you are. I've never appeared in a Star Trek series or anything (I've been too busy coding and being a real geek), so I guess that eliminates me as a candidate for public worship in some circles. I guess if you're into coding, open source, hacking all kinds of Verizon gear, or eradicating spam, then some of my recent projects may be of interest. If you at least hate me by the end of the interview, I'll have accomplished something.
An Anonymous Coward asks:
What do you think about the proposed change to the GPL with the upcoming GPL 3? Is it a welcomed breath of fresh air to the Open Source Community, or will it just be a reiteration of the previous GPL? What are your thoughts and comments on the GPL 3?
Jonathan Responds:
Based on the scattered information I've read about some potentially targeted areas in GPLv3 and the religious fervor with which some of these discussions have been reported, all I can say is I hope common sense prevails. Actually there's much more I can, and will, say about the subject below, but I think it's probably a good idea to summarize in advance as you may not make it through the list of details in one sitting. So in summary of all my points to come: I hope common sense prevails.
One of the things I've heard, which doesn't make much sense to me, is the idea of changing the GPL to deal with 'use' rather than 'distribution', which would affect companies like Google and Amazon. The argument seems to be that some people feel building your infrastructure on open source should demand a company release all of their proprietary source code which links to or builds on existing GPL projects. They argue that the open source community hasn't benefited from companies like Google and Amazon. Well, from a source code perspective that might be somewhat true - but if you take into consideration the fact that we all have a good quality, freely accessible search engine, cheap books, and employment for many local developers (many of whom write open source applications), the benefits seem to balance out the deficiency. Does anybody remember what the world was like before Google? None of us do, primarily because we couldn't find it - we couldn't find much of anything we were looking for on the Internet as a matter of fact, including other people's open source projects. You might not be getting "free as in beer" or "free as in freedom", but you are getting "free as in searches" and "free as in heavily discounted but not quite free books" in exchange. That's a pretty good trade. It's certainly better than having to look at pages of advertising before completing your order, or subscribing to a Google search membership. On top of this, you probably wouldn't want to see half of the source code that's out there being integrated (internally) into these projects. While I haven't seen Google or Amazon's mods specifically, I do heavily suspect that, if they are like any other large corporate environment, there are many disgusting and miserable hacks that should under all circumstances remain hidden from sight forever - many of which are probably helping ensure job security for the developers that performed the ugly hacks in the first place. Just how useful would they be to your project anyway? Probably little. And if you really believe in free software ("free as in freedom"), then the idea that someone should be required to contribute back to your project in order to use it is contradictory to that belief - you might just as well be developing under an EULA instead of the GPL.
With that said, there's a difference between freedom and stealing. I've heard that GPLv3 will attempt to address the mixing of GPL and non-GPL software. I think this clarification might be a good thing. For one, because I've seen far too many pseudo-open source tin cans and CDs being resold commercially out there, distributing many different F/OSS tools with painfully obvious closed commercial code, and finding ways to easily loophole around this part of the GPL, and secondly because it's based around implementation guidelines that really aren't any of the GPL's business. At the moment, mixing uses a very archaic guideline, which is - in its simplest terms -based on whether or not your code shares the same execution space as the GPL code. I think this needs to be reworked to give authors the flexibility to define "public" and "private" interfaces in a project manifest. We're already defining these anyway if we believe in secure coding practices. Closed source projects may then use whatever public interfaces the author has declared public (such as command line execution, protocols, etcetera) but private interfaces are off limits. One particular area where this would come in handy is in GPL kernel drivers, which need this ability to avoid tainted-kernel situations. If the author wants, they can declare dynamic linking to a library as a public interface and even make their code more widely useful without having to switch to the GPL's red-headed stepchild, the LGPL. It would also be nice to be able to restrict proprietary protocols (such as one between a client piece and a server piece, which may have originally been designed to function together) to only other GPL projects, which would essentially create GPL-bonded protocol interfaces. This won't restrict use in any way - only what closed-source projects are limited to interfacing with when redistributed.
I would also like to see the GPL's integration clause tightened down quite a bit. There are some companies out there abusing the GPL with "dual licensing". I've considered dual licensing myself in some commercial products, and I just don't believe it's being done in the right spirit much, if at all. Doing away with the possibility of integrating the GPL into a dual license could help strengthen the GPL.
Finally, I'd say mentioning a few words in the GPLv3 about submission practices to help stave off problems like this whole Sco and Linux® fiasco from ever happening again would be a good thing. People generally don't want to limit usage, but if you're going to submit code, there should be at least some submission guidelines. I suspect much of this can (and should) be done outside of the GPL, but at least covering the basics might be appropriate. It should be understood that if you're going to contribute code to the GPL, it had better be unencumbered. It's definitely something every project should already be considering already.
An Anonymous Coward asks:
Do you have any suggestions for the enthusiastic yet inexperienced? Perhaps a listing of projects in need of developers, with some indication of the level of experience suggested (as well as languages required).
Jonathan Responds:
The best projects I've seen were those started from someone with a passion for what it is they're coding. Open source development is the internship of the 21st century, and working on projects is tedious, frustrating, and likely to make you want burn out if you haven't developed perseverance. I usually suggest to people to come up with ideas for some projects they feel passionately about and make those their first couple of goals. Even if it's completely useless to anyone else, you're still likely to benefit from it yourself. Just look at my Australian C programming macros. Who would have thought that people wouldn't want to use "int gday(int argc, char *argv[])" in their code. I'm sure I learned something from that project, though I still can't remember what.
Instead of spending idle time looking for other projects to jump on, I'd spend as much time as I could in man pages, books, and coding up my own little concoctions. Even if they're stupid ones, you're likely to learn something, or even better - come up with another neat little idea you can spin off of it. Necessity is the mother of invention, so I try and figure out what it is I need, and then do it myself. That usually works. If you still can't think of anything, see if you can catch a vision for something someone else needs. I wouldn't touch anything that you're not 100% bought into and excited about for your first projects.
RealisticCanadian asks:
I myself have had numerous interactions with less-than-technically-savvy management-types. Any time I bring up solutions that are quite obviously a better technical and financial choice over software-giant-type solutions; conversation seems to hit a brick wall. The ignorance of these people on such topics is astounding, and I find many approaches I have tried seem to yield no results in the short term. "Well, yes, your example proves that we would save $500,000 per year using that Open Source solution. But We've decided to go the Microsoft (or what-have-you) route." With your track record, I can only assume you have found some ways to overcome this closed-mindedness.
Jonathan Responds:
I'm not so sure that I have convinced anyone open source was better inasmuch as I've convinced people that other people's projects were better than what Microsoft had to offer, and that's not hard for anyone to accomplish. I can strongly justify some open source projects to people because they are already superior to their commercial counterparts, but there are also a lot of crummy projects out there that should be shot and put out of my misery. I'm not one to advocate a terribly written project, even if it is open source. The good projects can usually speak for themselves with only a little bit of yelling and biting from me. So if you want to become a respected open source advocate at your place of business, I'd say the first rule of thumb is not to try and advocate crap projects for the mere reason that they're open source. Advocating the good ones will help you build a reputation. It also helps if you read a lot of Dilbert so you'll understand the intellectual challenges you'll be facing.
Some other things that I've found can help include what managers love to call a "decision matrix" which is a spreadsheet designed to make difficult decisions for them. For your benefit, this should consist of a series of features and considerations that the competitor doesn't have, with a big stream of checkboxes down the row corresponding to your favorite open source project. Nobody's interested in knowing what the projects have in common anyway, so tell them (with visual cues) what features your open source solution has over the competitor. And if you really want to get your point across clearly to your manager, do the spreadsheet in OpenOffice so they'll have to download and install an open source project to read it.
Once you've done that, and if you're still employed by now, the next thing to put together is an ROI (return on investment) comparison, which not only addresses the costs of the different solutions, but costs to support both solutions in the long run, cost of inaccuracy (if this is a spam solution for example), cost of training, customizations, and resources to manage each product. This is a great opportunity to size machines and manpower and include that in a budget forecast. Many managers are sensitive to knowing just how much extra dough it's going to cost to implement the commercial solution. At the very least, you ought to be able to prove many commercial solutions don't actually make the company much money in the long run. If speaking of cash isn't enough to convince your manager then a full analysis of low-level technical aspects will be necessary. This is simply a dreadful process, and where most open source attempts fail - because a lot of people are just too lazy to learn about the technical details of both projects and complete their due diligence. If you take the time, though, you're likely to either convince your boss or utterly confuse him - either one is very satisfying.
The biggest challenge in justifying many open source projects I've run into is finding solid support channels that your boss can rely on if you get hit by a bus (or in his mind, fired). Support is, in many cases, a requirement but not all good open source projects see the benefit in offering support. A lot of companies are willing to pay just to have someone they can call when they have a problem. So if you can find a project that's got a pool of support you can draw out of, you can not only use that to justify the project to your manager, but kick a few bucks back into the open source community. I started offering support contracts for dspam primarily because people needed them in order to get the filter approved as a solution. I think I do a good job supporting my clients that do need help, but at least half of them just pay for a contract and never use it. I certainly don't have a problem with that, and it supports the project as well as the people investing time in it.
Goo.cc asks a two parter:
1. In your new book, you basically state that Bogofilter is not a bayesian filter, which was news to some of the Bogofilter people I have spoken to. Can you explain why you feel that Bogofilter is not a bayesian filter?
Jonathan Responds:
Bogofilter uses an alternative algorithm known as Fisher-Robinson's Chi-Square. Gary Robinson (Transpose) basically built upon Fisher's Inverse Chi-Square algorithm for spam filtering, which provided some competition for the previously widely accepted Bayesian approach to this. Therefore, Bogofilter is not technically a Bayesian filter. The term, "Bayesian", however is commonly a buzzword known to most people to describe statistical content filtering in general (even if it isn't Bayesian), and so Bogofilter often gets thrown into the same bucket. CRM114 is another good example of this - many people throw it in the same bucket as a Bayesian filter, but it is configured (by default, at least) to be a Markovian-based filter which is "almost entirely nothing like Bayesian filtering". Technically, CRM114 isn't a filter at all, but a filtering-language JIT compiler (it can be any filter). I cover all of these mathematical approaches in Ending Spam, so grab a copy if you're interested in learning about their specific differences.
2. Bayesian filters have been around for some time now but there still seems to be no standardized testing methods for determining how well filters work in comparison to one another. Do you think that comparative testing would be useful and if so, how should it be performed?
Jonathan Responds:
Part of the reason there's no standardized testing methodology is because there's no standardized filter interface. A few individuals have attempted to build spam "jigs" for testing filters, but the bigger problem is really lack of an interface. About a year ago, the ASRG was reportedly working on developing such a standard - but as things usually turn out, it's an extremely long and painful process to get anything done when you've got a committee building it (take the mule, for instance, which was a horse built by a committee). This is probably why filter authors have also been hesitant to try and accommodate their filters to a particular testing jig. Incidentally, this is how I surmise that SPF could not have possibly made it through the ASRG - the fact that it made it out at all suggests that it never went in.
I think it's of some interest to compare the different filters out there, but it's also somewhat of a pointless process too. Since these systems learn, and learn based on the environment around them, only a simulation and not a test, will really identify the true accuracy of these filters - and even if you can build a rock solid simulation, it will only tell you how well each filter compared for the test subject's email. If we are to have a bake-off of sorts, it definitely ought to include ten or more different corpora from different individuals, from different walks of life. Even the best test out there can't predict how a filter might react to your specific mail, and for all we know the test subjects may have been secretly into ASCII donkey porn (which will, in fact, complicate your filtering).
This is why some people misunderstand my explanations of dspam's accuracy. All I've said in the past is "this is the accuracy I get", and "this is the accuracy this dude got". Which is the equivalent of "our lab mice ate this and grew breasts". There's no guarantee anybody else is going to get those results, though I'm sure many would try (with the mice, that is). In general, though, I try to publish what I think are good "average" levels for users on my own system, and they are usually around 99.5% - 99.8%. In other words: your mileage may vary. So try it anyway. Incidentally, I've been working with Gordon Cormack to try and figure out what the heck went wrong with his first set of dspam tests. So far, we've made progress and ran a successful test with an overall accuracy of 99.23% (not bad for a simulation).
What would be far more interesting to me would be a well-put together bakeoff between commercial solutions and open source solutions. The open source community around spam filtering really has got the upper hand in this area of technology, and I'm quite confident F/OSS solutions can blow away most commercial solutions in terms of accuracy (and efficacy).
Mxmasster asks:
Most antispam software seems to be fairly reactionary - wither it is based on keyword patters, urls, sender, ip, or the checksum of the message a certain amount of spam has to first be sent and identified before additional messages will be tagged and blocked. Spf, domainkeys, etc... requires a certain percentage of the Internet to adopt before they will be truely effective. What do you see on the horizon as the next big technique to battle spam? How will this affect legitimate users on the Internet?
Jonathan Responds:
That's the problem with most spam solutions, and why I wrote Ending Spam. Bayesian content filtering, commonly thrown into this mix, has the unique ability to grow out of your typical reactive state and become a proactive tool in fighting spam. I get about one spam per month now at the most, and DSPAM is learning many new variants of spam as it catches them; I'd call that pretty proactive. Spam, phishing, viruses, and even intrusion detection are all areas that can benefit greatly from this approach to machine learning. They will likely never become perfect, but these filters have the ability to not only adapt to new kinds of spam, but to also learn them proactively before it makes it into your inbox. Some of this is done through what is called "unsupervised learning" and not traditional training, while other tools, such as message inoculation and honey pots, can help automate the sharing of new spam and virus strains before anyone has to worry about seeing them. We haven't thoroughly explored statistical analysis enough yet for there to be a "next big technique" beyond this. The next big techniques seem to be trying to change email permanently, and I don't quite feel excited about that. Statistical tools are where I think the technology is at and it needs to become commonplace and easier to setup and run.
The problem seems to be in the myth that statistical filtering is ineffective or incomplete. Many commercial solutions pass themselves off as statistical(ish) and it seem to be contributing to this myth by failing to do justice to the levels of accuracy many of the true (and open source) statistical filters are reflecting. Any commercial solution that claims to be an adaptive, content-based solution (like Bayesian filters are) really ought to deliver better than 95% or 99% accuracy. Part of the problem is just bad marketing - most of these tools are not true "Bayesian" devices; they just threw a Bayesian filter in there somewhere so they could use the buzzword. Another problem is design philosophy and the idea that you need an arsenal of other, less accurate tests, to be bolted in front of the statistical piece. If you're going to train a Bayesian filter with something other than a human being, whatever it is that's training it ought to be at least as smart as a human being. Blacklist-trained Bayesian filters are being fed with about 60% accurate data, (whereas a human is about 99.8% accurate). So it's no surprise to me that Blacklist-trained filters are severely crippled - what a dumb combination. If you really want to combine a bunch of tools for identifying spam, build a reputation system instead. They do a very good job of cutting spam off at the border, are generally more scalable than content-based filtering, and most large networks can justify their accuracy by their precision.
Not all commercial content-based filters are junk. Death2Spam is one exception to this, and delivers around 99.9% accuracy, which is in the right neighborhood for a statistical filter. Not all reputation systems are junk either. CipherTrust's TrustedSource is one example of what I call a well-thought out system. If you must have a commercial solution, either of these I suspect will make you quite happy. As for (most of) the rest, quit screwing around and build something original that actually works.
Jnaujok asks:
The SMTP standard that we use for mail transfer was developed in the late 70's - early 80's and has, for the most part, never been updated. In that time period, the idea of hordes of spam flowing through the net wasn't even considered. It has always been the most obvious solution to me that what we really need is SMTP 2.0. Isn't it about time we updated the SMTP standard?
Jonathan Responds:
You're talking about an authenticated approach to email, and there have been many different standards proposed to do this. First let me say that, even though SMTP was drafted a few decades ago, it's still successful in performing its function, which is a public message delivery system - key word being public. There exist many private message delivery systems already, which you could opt to use, including bonded sender and even rolling your own using PGP signatures and mailbox rules. I have reservations about forcing such a solution on everybody and breaking down anonymity for the sake of preventing junk mail. Until you can sell a company like Microsoft on absolute anonymity in bonded sender and sell ISPs into putting up initial bonds for their customers (so that a ten-year old gradeschool student can still use email), I see a very large threat (especially by the government) in globalizing this as a replacement for the 'public' system. With services like gmail, where you can store an entire life's worth of email, the idea that everything you've ever said could be sufficiently traced back to you and used against you, I would rather deal with the spam. Why? Let me pull out my tinfoil hat...
It's been advertised plenty of times on Slashdot that Google stores everything about all of its queries. It wouldn't surprise me if they already have government contracts in place to perform data mining on specific individuals. How would you like, in the future, all of your email to be mined and correlated with other personal data to determine whether or not you should be allowed to fly? Buy a firearm? Rent a car? We're not very far off from that, and even less so once this correlation is made possible.
So abstract some level of anonymity at the ISP-level you say? That's just not going to happen. For one, that makes it just as simple for a spammer to abuse somebody's network and then we've gone and redesigned SMTP for no good reason. Remember, business has to be able to set up shop online fairly easily and spammers are a type of shop. So we are always going to balance between free enterprise and letting spammers roam on the network. Should we employ a CA, how much would it cost to run your own email server? More importantly - does this perhaps open the door for per-email taxes? I'd much rather just deal with spam the way we are now. For another thing, abstracted identity architectures would only give you a level of anonymity parallel to the level of anonymity you have when you purchase a firearm (where the forms are stored by your dealer, rather than filed to a central government agency). See how long it takes for the feds to trace your handgun back to you if you leave it at the scene of a crime.
You can't leave it in the ISP's control anyway. The sad truth is that most ISPs still don't care about managing outgoing spam on their network; so new spammers are being given a nurturing environment to break into this new and exciting business. I had a recent bout with XO Communications about one such new spammer who had run a full-blown business on their network since 1997 and recently decided he'd like to start spamming under the "CAN-SPAM" act (which he was convinced defended his right to spam). He included his phone number, address, and web address in the spam - I called him up and verified he was who he said he was (the owner of this business, and spamming). Provided all of this information (over a phone call) to the XO abuse rep (let's call him "Ted"), even filed a police report, and XO still to this day has done nothing. His site is even still there, selling the same crap he spams for. This happens every day at ISPs out there.
The consequences outweigh the benefits. The people who drafted the SMTP protocol probably thought of most of these issues too. A public system can't exist without the freedom to remain anonymous, ambiguous, and the right to change your virtual identity whenever the heck you like.
Sheetrock asks a two parter:
1. In the past, I've heard it suggested that anti-spam techniques often go too far, culling good e-mail with the bad and perhaps even curtailing 1st Amendment rights. Clearly this depends on what end of the spectrum you're on, but recent developments have given me pause for thought on the matter. For example, certain spam blacklists would censor more than was strictly necessary (a subjective opinion, I realize) to block a spammer -- sometimes blocking a whole Class C to get one individual. This would cause other innocent users in that net space to have their e-mail to hosts using the blacklists silently dropped without any option of fixing the problem besides switching ISPs.
Jonathan Responds:
A lot of blacklists have started taking on a vigilante agenda, or at the very least rather questionable ethical practices. Spamhaus' recent blacklisting of all Yahoo! Store URLs (and Paul Graham's website) is a prime example of this. As long as you're subscribed to human-operated blacklists, you're going to suffer from someone's politics. That's one of the reasons I coded up the RABL, which is a machine-automated blacklist. There is also another called the WPBL (weighted private block list). As the politics of the organizations running human-maintained lists get worse, I think more of these automated lists will start to pop up. Machine-automated blacklists don't have an agenda - they have a sensitivity threshold. It's much easier to find the right list with the right threshold than it is to find the right politics (and then keep tabs on them to make sure they don't change). The RABL, for example, measures network spread rather than number of complaints. If a spammer has affected more than X networks, they are automatically added to the system, and removed after being clear for six hours (no messy cleanup). Another nice thing about machine-automated blacklists is that they are really real-time blacklists, and capable of catching zombies and other such evils with great precision.
NOTE: I haven't had time yet to bring the RABL into full production, but am interested in finding more participants to bring us out of testing.
2. This is an extreme example, but most anti-spam approaches have the following characteristics: They are implemented on a mail server without fully informing the users of the ramifications (or really informing them at all). They block messages without notification to the sender, causing things to be silently dropped. Even if the recipient becomes aware of the problem, few or no options are given for the recipient to alter this "service".
Jonathan Responds:
I've run into issues like this with my ISP (Alltel), and I agree with a lot of what you're saying. In the case of Alltel, not only are they filtering inbound messages using blacklisting techniques and other approaches they don't care to tell me about, but they are filtering outbound messages as well. I had to eventually give up using their mail server because I could not adequately train my own spam filter (Alltel would block messages I forwarded to it). To make matters worse, there is no way to opt out of this type of filtering on their network, even though I offered to give them the IP address of my remote mail server. This clearly does affect their customers, and I feel there are censorship, violation of privacy and denial of service issues all going on here. (Somebody please sue them by the way).
Fortunately, I don't think this issue is as wide spread as you might think. Many of the ISPs and Colleges I've worked with are, unlike Alltel, very dedicated to ensuring that their tools only provide a way for their users to censor themselves. I think this ought to be a requirement for any publicly used system. Specifically...
1.The user must be able to opt in or out of all aspects of filtering
2.All filtering components and their general function must be fully disclosed
3.The user must be able to review and recover messages the system filtered
Opting out of RBLs is as easy as having two separate mail servers and homing on the box you want. I would strongly advise to ensure that your solution is capable of receiving instruction from a user to improve its results, but it is still very difficult to scale this to millions users. At the very least should be fully disclosed, recoverable, and removable.
An Anonymous Coward asks:
Without going into the truths of the beliefs in question, which I'm sure will be debated enough in the Slashdot thread anyway (and I hope you'll join in), what do you think the reason is that so many scientists, nerds and people otherwise rather similar to you think your beliefs are obviously incorrect? Do you think they are all deluded? Do you agree that there might be a possibility that your beliefs are not rational?
Jonathan Responds:
The beliefs I hold as a Christian aren't always the popular ones, but they're certainly valid arguments for anyone who cares to ask about them (not that that has happened). When you read about someone's beliefs, you have the option to engage in discussion, or to filter his or her beliefs through your own belief system. The former option involves cognitive thought, however the latter is how most people today respond to anything that even smells religious. And I say this coming from the position of someone who hasn't tried to shove my beliefs down anyone's throat - I merely documented them on my personal website. That tells me that some people don't believe I have the right to my own beliefs - how asinine is that?
But to address the question, my beliefs aren't based on some religious intellectual suicide. In fact, the Bible teaches that you should know what you believe and why, and that you should even be prepared to give a defense for your faith - so the Bible encourages sound thinking and not some pontificated ideal structure as many quickly dismiss it as. I didn't dumb down when I became a Christian. In fact, it felt more like I began to think more clearly. I was raised in the same public school system as everyone else and didn't even know who Jesus Christ was until around my junior or senior year of high school. I've read from my early days in Kindergarten how "billions of years ago, when dinosaurs roamed the earth" and I've been taught the theory of evolution like everyone else. The problem, though, is that no matter how credible or not a particular area of science is, much of what is out there is taught based on authority. I find it very ironic to be flamed by anyone who thinks I'm an idiot for not believing in a theory that's never been proven by scientific process. It's recently become a "religious act" to question science in any capacity, but isn't questioning science the only way we can tell the good science from the bad science? And there is a lot of great science out there - even in public schools. But there's no longer a way for students to evaluate the credibility of what they're being taught. That seems to be degrading the quality of the subject. Science should be a quest for the truth, with no presuppositions, and appropriate understanding between hypotheses vs. theories vs. laws. When a theory is presented in the classroom as law and it's not held accountable to method, it's degenerated into mere conditioning.
I've spent a considerable amount of time studying topics such as the age of the earth and the theory of evolution, and I could probably argue it quite well if so inclined to engage in a discussion. That's important if you're going to believe anything really - including whatever the mainstreamed secular agenda happens to be.
Just as an example, I've recently looked into Carbon-14 dating and found that in cross-referencing it to Egyptian history (which dates back as far as 3500 B.C. and is held to be in very high regard by archaeologists and scientists alike), there is evidence that Carbon dating may be inaccurate beyond around 1800 B.C. For someone not to consider that would be ignoring science. My point here is that my beliefs aren't merely unfounded, eccentric ideas. Just because microevolution is feasable, that doesn't mean I'm going to sweep macroevolution under the rug and not test it - the two are actually worlds apart, just cleverly bundled. The Bible has given me a perspective that seems to offer a reasonable and sensible way to put the different pieces of good science together. No matter what you believe, I strongly feel that you should have some factual foundation to support whatever it is, and if you don't, then be man enough to admit you only have a theory put together.
No matter what side of the camp you are on, your beliefs require a certain amount of faith, as neither side is at present proven scientifically. I don't have all the answers, but I don't think science in its present state does either. At the end of the day, you can't prove the existence of God factually, and so whatever you believe is still based on faith. But at least the Christians can admit that - I just wish the evolutionists would too.
How do you pronounce your name?
Jonathan Responds:
Hi. Well first off, I'm sticking to the pronunciation 'Jarsky', however many of my relatives still pronounce it 'Zarsky' or "Za-Jarsky". As far as I can tell, my last name was originally 'Dziarstac' when the first generation of my family came over, which would have been pronounced with a 'J'. It's of polish decent, but I'm afraid I'm not very in tune with my ancestors on this side of the family. The other side of my family is mostly Italian, and they drink a lot, organize crime, and generally have more fun - so they are much more interesting to hang out with. For the past 29 years of my life, giving my last name to anyone has included the obligatory explanation of its pronunciation, history, and snickering at puns they think I'm hearing for the first time (-1, Redundant), so don't feel too bad for asking.
As far as who I am and why you should care - I guess that depends on what kind of geek you are. I've never appeared in a Star Trek series or anything (I've been too busy coding and being a real geek), so I guess that eliminates me as a candidate for public worship in some circles. I guess if you're into coding, open source, hacking all kinds of Verizon gear, or eradicating spam, then some of my recent projects may be of interest. If you at least hate me by the end of the interview, I'll have accomplished something.
An Anonymous Coward asks:
What do you think about the proposed change to the GPL with the upcoming GPL 3? Is it a welcomed breath of fresh air to the Open Source Community, or will it just be a reiteration of the previous GPL? What are your thoughts and comments on the GPL 3?
Jonathan Responds:
Based on the scattered information I've read about some potentially targeted areas in GPLv3 and the religious fervor with which some of these discussions have been reported, all I can say is I hope common sense prevails. Actually there's much more I can, and will, say about the subject below, but I think it's probably a good idea to summarize in advance as you may not make it through the list of details in one sitting. So in summary of all my points to come: I hope common sense prevails.
One of the things I've heard, which doesn't make much sense to me, is the idea of changing the GPL to deal with 'use' rather than 'distribution', which would affect companies like Google and Amazon. The argument seems to be that some people feel building your infrastructure on open source should demand a company release all of their proprietary source code which links to or builds on existing GPL projects. They argue that the open source community hasn't benefited from companies like Google and Amazon. Well, from a source code perspective that might be somewhat true - but if you take into consideration the fact that we all have a good quality, freely accessible search engine, cheap books, and employment for many local developers (many of whom write open source applications), the benefits seem to balance out the deficiency. Does anybody remember what the world was like before Google? None of us do, primarily because we couldn't find it - we couldn't find much of anything we were looking for on the Internet as a matter of fact, including other people's open source projects. You might not be getting "free as in beer" or "free as in freedom", but you are getting "free as in searches" and "free as in heavily discounted but not quite free books" in exchange. That's a pretty good trade. It's certainly better than having to look at pages of advertising before completing your order, or subscribing to a Google search membership. On top of this, you probably wouldn't want to see half of the source code that's out there being integrated (internally) into these projects. While I haven't seen Google or Amazon's mods specifically, I do heavily suspect that, if they are like any other large corporate environment, there are many disgusting and miserable hacks that should under all circumstances remain hidden from sight forever - many of which are probably helping ensure job security for the developers that performed the ugly hacks in the first place. Just how useful would they be to your project anyway? Probably little. And if you really believe in free software ("free as in freedom"), then the idea that someone should be required to contribute back to your project in order to use it is contradictory to that belief - you might just as well be developing under an EULA instead of the GPL.
With that said, there's a difference between freedom and stealing. I've heard that GPLv3 will attempt to address the mixing of GPL and non-GPL software. I think this clarification might be a good thing. For one, because I've seen far too many pseudo-open source tin cans and CDs being resold commercially out there, distributing many different F/OSS tools with painfully obvious closed commercial code, and finding ways to easily loophole around this part of the GPL, and secondly because it's based around implementation guidelines that really aren't any of the GPL's business. At the moment, mixing uses a very archaic guideline, which is - in its simplest terms -based on whether or not your code shares the same execution space as the GPL code. I think this needs to be reworked to give authors the flexibility to define "public" and "private" interfaces in a project manifest. We're already defining these anyway if we believe in secure coding practices. Closed source projects may then use whatever public interfaces the author has declared public (such as command line execution, protocols, etcetera) but private interfaces are off limits. One particular area where this would come in handy is in GPL kernel drivers, which need this ability to avoid tainted-kernel situations. If the author wants, they can declare dynamic linking to a library as a public interface and even make their code more widely useful without having to switch to the GPL's red-headed stepchild, the LGPL. It would also be nice to be able to restrict proprietary protocols (such as one between a client piece and a server piece, which may have originally been designed to function together) to only other GPL projects, which would essentially create GPL-bonded protocol interfaces. This won't restrict use in any way - only what closed-source projects are limited to interfacing with when redistributed.
I would also like to see the GPL's integration clause tightened down quite a bit. There are some companies out there abusing the GPL with "dual licensing". I've considered dual licensing myself in some commercial products, and I just don't believe it's being done in the right spirit much, if at all. Doing away with the possibility of integrating the GPL into a dual license could help strengthen the GPL.
Finally, I'd say mentioning a few words in the GPLv3 about submission practices to help stave off problems like this whole Sco and Linux® fiasco from ever happening again would be a good thing. People generally don't want to limit usage, but if you're going to submit code, there should be at least some submission guidelines. I suspect much of this can (and should) be done outside of the GPL, but at least covering the basics might be appropriate. It should be understood that if you're going to contribute code to the GPL, it had better be unencumbered. It's definitely something every project should already be considering already.
An Anonymous Coward asks:
Do you have any suggestions for the enthusiastic yet inexperienced? Perhaps a listing of projects in need of developers, with some indication of the level of experience suggested (as well as languages required).
Jonathan Responds:
The best projects I've seen were those started from someone with a passion for what it is they're coding. Open source development is the internship of the 21st century, and working on projects is tedious, frustrating, and likely to make you want burn out if you haven't developed perseverance. I usually suggest to people to come up with ideas for some projects they feel passionately about and make those their first couple of goals. Even if it's completely useless to anyone else, you're still likely to benefit from it yourself. Just look at my Australian C programming macros. Who would have thought that people wouldn't want to use "int gday(int argc, char *argv[])" in their code. I'm sure I learned something from that project, though I still can't remember what.
Instead of spending idle time looking for other projects to jump on, I'd spend as much time as I could in man pages, books, and coding up my own little concoctions. Even if they're stupid ones, you're likely to learn something, or even better - come up with another neat little idea you can spin off of it. Necessity is the mother of invention, so I try and figure out what it is I need, and then do it myself. That usually works. If you still can't think of anything, see if you can catch a vision for something someone else needs. I wouldn't touch anything that you're not 100% bought into and excited about for your first projects.
RealisticCanadian asks:
I myself have had numerous interactions with less-than-technically-savvy management-types. Any time I bring up solutions that are quite obviously a better technical and financial choice over software-giant-type solutions; conversation seems to hit a brick wall. The ignorance of these people on such topics is astounding, and I find many approaches I have tried seem to yield no results in the short term. "Well, yes, your example proves that we would save $500,000 per year using that Open Source solution. But We've decided to go the Microsoft (or what-have-you) route." With your track record, I can only assume you have found some ways to overcome this closed-mindedness.
Jonathan Responds:
I'm not so sure that I have convinced anyone open source was better inasmuch as I've convinced people that other people's projects were better than what Microsoft had to offer, and that's not hard for anyone to accomplish. I can strongly justify some open source projects to people because they are already superior to their commercial counterparts, but there are also a lot of crummy projects out there that should be shot and put out of my misery. I'm not one to advocate a terribly written project, even if it is open source. The good projects can usually speak for themselves with only a little bit of yelling and biting from me. So if you want to become a respected open source advocate at your place of business, I'd say the first rule of thumb is not to try and advocate crap projects for the mere reason that they're open source. Advocating the good ones will help you build a reputation. It also helps if you read a lot of Dilbert so you'll understand the intellectual challenges you'll be facing.
Some other things that I've found can help include what managers love to call a "decision matrix" which is a spreadsheet designed to make difficult decisions for them. For your benefit, this should consist of a series of features and considerations that the competitor doesn't have, with a big stream of checkboxes down the row corresponding to your favorite open source project. Nobody's interested in knowing what the projects have in common anyway, so tell them (with visual cues) what features your open source solution has over the competitor. And if you really want to get your point across clearly to your manager, do the spreadsheet in OpenOffice so they'll have to download and install an open source project to read it.
Once you've done that, and if you're still employed by now, the next thing to put together is an ROI (return on investment) comparison, which not only addresses the costs of the different solutions, but costs to support both solutions in the long run, cost of inaccuracy (if this is a spam solution for example), cost of training, customizations, and resources to manage each product. This is a great opportunity to size machines and manpower and include that in a budget forecast. Many managers are sensitive to knowing just how much extra dough it's going to cost to implement the commercial solution. At the very least, you ought to be able to prove many commercial solutions don't actually make the company much money in the long run. If speaking of cash isn't enough to convince your manager then a full analysis of low-level technical aspects will be necessary. This is simply a dreadful process, and where most open source attempts fail - because a lot of people are just too lazy to learn about the technical details of both projects and complete their due diligence. If you take the time, though, you're likely to either convince your boss or utterly confuse him - either one is very satisfying.
The biggest challenge in justifying many open source projects I've run into is finding solid support channels that your boss can rely on if you get hit by a bus (or in his mind, fired). Support is, in many cases, a requirement but not all good open source projects see the benefit in offering support. A lot of companies are willing to pay just to have someone they can call when they have a problem. So if you can find a project that's got a pool of support you can draw out of, you can not only use that to justify the project to your manager, but kick a few bucks back into the open source community. I started offering support contracts for dspam primarily because people needed them in order to get the filter approved as a solution. I think I do a good job supporting my clients that do need help, but at least half of them just pay for a contract and never use it. I certainly don't have a problem with that, and it supports the project as well as the people investing time in it.
Goo.cc asks a two parter:
1. In your new book, you basically state that Bogofilter is not a bayesian filter, which was news to some of the Bogofilter people I have spoken to. Can you explain why you feel that Bogofilter is not a bayesian filter?
Jonathan Responds:
Bogofilter uses an alternative algorithm known as Fisher-Robinson's Chi-Square. Gary Robinson (Transpose) basically built upon Fisher's Inverse Chi-Square algorithm for spam filtering, which provided some competition for the previously widely accepted Bayesian approach to this. Therefore, Bogofilter is not technically a Bayesian filter. The term, "Bayesian", however is commonly a buzzword known to most people to describe statistical content filtering in general (even if it isn't Bayesian), and so Bogofilter often gets thrown into the same bucket. CRM114 is another good example of this - many people throw it in the same bucket as a Bayesian filter, but it is configured (by default, at least) to be a Markovian-based filter which is "almost entirely nothing like Bayesian filtering". Technically, CRM114 isn't a filter at all, but a filtering-language JIT compiler (it can be any filter). I cover all of these mathematical approaches in Ending Spam, so grab a copy if you're interested in learning about their specific differences.
2. Bayesian filters have been around for some time now but there still seems to be no standardized testing methods for determining how well filters work in comparison to one another. Do you think that comparative testing would be useful and if so, how should it be performed?
Jonathan Responds:
Part of the reason there's no standardized testing methodology is because there's no standardized filter interface. A few individuals have attempted to build spam "jigs" for testing filters, but the bigger problem is really lack of an interface. About a year ago, the ASRG was reportedly working on developing such a standard - but as things usually turn out, it's an extremely long and painful process to get anything done when you've got a committee building it (take the mule, for instance, which was a horse built by a committee). This is probably why filter authors have also been hesitant to try and accommodate their filters to a particular testing jig. Incidentally, this is how I surmise that SPF could not have possibly made it through the ASRG - the fact that it made it out at all suggests that it never went in.
I think it's of some interest to compare the different filters out there, but it's also somewhat of a pointless process too. Since these systems learn, and learn based on the environment around them, only a simulation and not a test, will really identify the true accuracy of these filters - and even if you can build a rock solid simulation, it will only tell you how well each filter compared for the test subject's email. If we are to have a bake-off of sorts, it definitely ought to include ten or more different corpora from different individuals, from different walks of life. Even the best test out there can't predict how a filter might react to your specific mail, and for all we know the test subjects may have been secretly into ASCII donkey porn (which will, in fact, complicate your filtering).
This is why some people misunderstand my explanations of dspam's accuracy. All I've said in the past is "this is the accuracy I get", and "this is the accuracy this dude got". Which is the equivalent of "our lab mice ate this and grew breasts". There's no guarantee anybody else is going to get those results, though I'm sure many would try (with the mice, that is). In general, though, I try to publish what I think are good "average" levels for users on my own system, and they are usually around 99.5% - 99.8%. In other words: your mileage may vary. So try it anyway. Incidentally, I've been working with Gordon Cormack to try and figure out what the heck went wrong with his first set of dspam tests. So far, we've made progress and ran a successful test with an overall accuracy of 99.23% (not bad for a simulation).
What would be far more interesting to me would be a well-put together bakeoff between commercial solutions and open source solutions. The open source community around spam filtering really has got the upper hand in this area of technology, and I'm quite confident F/OSS solutions can blow away most commercial solutions in terms of accuracy (and efficacy).
Mxmasster asks:
Most antispam software seems to be fairly reactionary - wither it is based on keyword patters, urls, sender, ip, or the checksum of the message a certain amount of spam has to first be sent and identified before additional messages will be tagged and blocked. Spf, domainkeys, etc... requires a certain percentage of the Internet to adopt before they will be truely effective. What do you see on the horizon as the next big technique to battle spam? How will this affect legitimate users on the Internet?
Jonathan Responds:
That's the problem with most spam solutions, and why I wrote Ending Spam. Bayesian content filtering, commonly thrown into this mix, has the unique ability to grow out of your typical reactive state and become a proactive tool in fighting spam. I get about one spam per month now at the most, and DSPAM is learning many new variants of spam as it catches them; I'd call that pretty proactive. Spam, phishing, viruses, and even intrusion detection are all areas that can benefit greatly from this approach to machine learning. They will likely never become perfect, but these filters have the ability to not only adapt to new kinds of spam, but to also learn them proactively before it makes it into your inbox. Some of this is done through what is called "unsupervised learning" and not traditional training, while other tools, such as message inoculation and honey pots, can help automate the sharing of new spam and virus strains before anyone has to worry about seeing them. We haven't thoroughly explored statistical analysis enough yet for there to be a "next big technique" beyond this. The next big techniques seem to be trying to change email permanently, and I don't quite feel excited about that. Statistical tools are where I think the technology is at and it needs to become commonplace and easier to setup and run.
The problem seems to be in the myth that statistical filtering is ineffective or incomplete. Many commercial solutions pass themselves off as statistical(ish) and it seem to be contributing to this myth by failing to do justice to the levels of accuracy many of the true (and open source) statistical filters are reflecting. Any commercial solution that claims to be an adaptive, content-based solution (like Bayesian filters are) really ought to deliver better than 95% or 99% accuracy. Part of the problem is just bad marketing - most of these tools are not true "Bayesian" devices; they just threw a Bayesian filter in there somewhere so they could use the buzzword. Another problem is design philosophy and the idea that you need an arsenal of other, less accurate tests, to be bolted in front of the statistical piece. If you're going to train a Bayesian filter with something other than a human being, whatever it is that's training it ought to be at least as smart as a human being. Blacklist-trained Bayesian filters are being fed with about 60% accurate data, (whereas a human is about 99.8% accurate). So it's no surprise to me that Blacklist-trained filters are severely crippled - what a dumb combination. If you really want to combine a bunch of tools for identifying spam, build a reputation system instead. They do a very good job of cutting spam off at the border, are generally more scalable than content-based filtering, and most large networks can justify their accuracy by their precision.
Not all commercial content-based filters are junk. Death2Spam is one exception to this, and delivers around 99.9% accuracy, which is in the right neighborhood for a statistical filter. Not all reputation systems are junk either. CipherTrust's TrustedSource is one example of what I call a well-thought out system. If you must have a commercial solution, either of these I suspect will make you quite happy. As for (most of) the rest, quit screwing around and build something original that actually works.
Jnaujok asks:
The SMTP standard that we use for mail transfer was developed in the late 70's - early 80's and has, for the most part, never been updated. In that time period, the idea of hordes of spam flowing through the net wasn't even considered. It has always been the most obvious solution to me that what we really need is SMTP 2.0. Isn't it about time we updated the SMTP standard?
Jonathan Responds:
You're talking about an authenticated approach to email, and there have been many different standards proposed to do this. First let me say that, even though SMTP was drafted a few decades ago, it's still successful in performing its function, which is a public message delivery system - key word being public. There exist many private message delivery systems already, which you could opt to use, including bonded sender and even rolling your own using PGP signatures and mailbox rules. I have reservations about forcing such a solution on everybody and breaking down anonymity for the sake of preventing junk mail. Until you can sell a company like Microsoft on absolute anonymity in bonded sender and sell ISPs into putting up initial bonds for their customers (so that a ten-year old gradeschool student can still use email), I see a very large threat (especially by the government) in globalizing this as a replacement for the 'public' system. With services like gmail, where you can store an entire life's worth of email, the idea that everything you've ever said could be sufficiently traced back to you and used against you, I would rather deal with the spam. Why? Let me pull out my tinfoil hat...
It's been advertised plenty of times on Slashdot that Google stores everything about all of its queries. It wouldn't surprise me if they already have government contracts in place to perform data mining on specific individuals. How would you like, in the future, all of your email to be mined and correlated with other personal data to determine whether or not you should be allowed to fly? Buy a firearm? Rent a car? We're not very far off from that, and even less so once this correlation is made possible.
So abstract some level of anonymity at the ISP-level you say? That's just not going to happen. For one, that makes it just as simple for a spammer to abuse somebody's network and then we've gone and redesigned SMTP for no good reason. Remember, business has to be able to set up shop online fairly easily and spammers are a type of shop. So we are always going to balance between free enterprise and letting spammers roam on the network. Should we employ a CA, how much would it cost to run your own email server? More importantly - does this perhaps open the door for per-email taxes? I'd much rather just deal with spam the way we are now. For another thing, abstracted identity architectures would only give you a level of anonymity parallel to the level of anonymity you have when you purchase a firearm (where the forms are stored by your dealer, rather than filed to a central government agency). See how long it takes for the feds to trace your handgun back to you if you leave it at the scene of a crime.
You can't leave it in the ISP's control anyway. The sad truth is that most ISPs still don't care about managing outgoing spam on their network; so new spammers are being given a nurturing environment to break into this new and exciting business. I had a recent bout with XO Communications about one such new spammer who had run a full-blown business on their network since 1997 and recently decided he'd like to start spamming under the "CAN-SPAM" act (which he was convinced defended his right to spam). He included his phone number, address, and web address in the spam - I called him up and verified he was who he said he was (the owner of this business, and spamming). Provided all of this information (over a phone call) to the XO abuse rep (let's call him "Ted"), even filed a police report, and XO still to this day has done nothing. His site is even still there, selling the same crap he spams for. This happens every day at ISPs out there.
The consequences outweigh the benefits. The people who drafted the SMTP protocol probably thought of most of these issues too. A public system can't exist without the freedom to remain anonymous, ambiguous, and the right to change your virtual identity whenever the heck you like.
Sheetrock asks a two parter:
1. In the past, I've heard it suggested that anti-spam techniques often go too far, culling good e-mail with the bad and perhaps even curtailing 1st Amendment rights. Clearly this depends on what end of the spectrum you're on, but recent developments have given me pause for thought on the matter. For example, certain spam blacklists would censor more than was strictly necessary (a subjective opinion, I realize) to block a spammer -- sometimes blocking a whole Class C to get one individual. This would cause other innocent users in that net space to have their e-mail to hosts using the blacklists silently dropped without any option of fixing the problem besides switching ISPs.
Jonathan Responds:
A lot of blacklists have started taking on a vigilante agenda, or at the very least rather questionable ethical practices. Spamhaus' recent blacklisting of all Yahoo! Store URLs (and Paul Graham's website) is a prime example of this. As long as you're subscribed to human-operated blacklists, you're going to suffer from someone's politics. That's one of the reasons I coded up the RABL, which is a machine-automated blacklist. There is also another called the WPBL (weighted private block list). As the politics of the organizations running human-maintained lists get worse, I think more of these automated lists will start to pop up. Machine-automated blacklists don't have an agenda - they have a sensitivity threshold. It's much easier to find the right list with the right threshold than it is to find the right politics (and then keep tabs on them to make sure they don't change). The RABL, for example, measures network spread rather than number of complaints. If a spammer has affected more than X networks, they are automatically added to the system, and removed after being clear for six hours (no messy cleanup). Another nice thing about machine-automated blacklists is that they are really real-time blacklists, and capable of catching zombies and other such evils with great precision.
NOTE: I haven't had time yet to bring the RABL into full production, but am interested in finding more participants to bring us out of testing.
2. This is an extreme example, but most anti-spam approaches have the following characteristics: They are implemented on a mail server without fully informing the users of the ramifications (or really informing them at all). They block messages without notification to the sender, causing things to be silently dropped. Even if the recipient becomes aware of the problem, few or no options are given for the recipient to alter this "service".
Jonathan Responds:
I've run into issues like this with my ISP (Alltel), and I agree with a lot of what you're saying. In the case of Alltel, not only are they filtering inbound messages using blacklisting techniques and other approaches they don't care to tell me about, but they are filtering outbound messages as well. I had to eventually give up using their mail server because I could not adequately train my own spam filter (Alltel would block messages I forwarded to it). To make matters worse, there is no way to opt out of this type of filtering on their network, even though I offered to give them the IP address of my remote mail server. This clearly does affect their customers, and I feel there are censorship, violation of privacy and denial of service issues all going on here. (Somebody please sue them by the way).
Fortunately, I don't think this issue is as wide spread as you might think. Many of the ISPs and Colleges I've worked with are, unlike Alltel, very dedicated to ensuring that their tools only provide a way for their users to censor themselves. I think this ought to be a requirement for any publicly used system. Specifically...
1.The user must be able to opt in or out of all aspects of filtering
2.All filtering components and their general function must be fully disclosed
3.The user must be able to review and recover messages the system filtered
Opting out of RBLs is as easy as having two separate mail servers and homing on the box you want. I would strongly advise to ensure that your solution is capable of receiving instruction from a user to improve its results, but it is still very difficult to scale this to millions users. At the very least should be fully disclosed, recoverable, and removable.
An Anonymous Coward asks:
Without going into the truths of the beliefs in question, which I'm sure will be debated enough in the Slashdot thread anyway (and I hope you'll join in), what do you think the reason is that so many scientists, nerds and people otherwise rather similar to you think your beliefs are obviously incorrect? Do you think they are all deluded? Do you agree that there might be a possibility that your beliefs are not rational?
Jonathan Responds:
The beliefs I hold as a Christian aren't always the popular ones, but they're certainly valid arguments for anyone who cares to ask about them (not that that has happened). When you read about someone's beliefs, you have the option to engage in discussion, or to filter his or her beliefs through your own belief system. The former option involves cognitive thought, however the latter is how most people today respond to anything that even smells religious. And I say this coming from the position of someone who hasn't tried to shove my beliefs down anyone's throat - I merely documented them on my personal website. That tells me that some people don't believe I have the right to my own beliefs - how asinine is that?
But to address the question, my beliefs aren't based on some religious intellectual suicide. In fact, the Bible teaches that you should know what you believe and why, and that you should even be prepared to give a defense for your faith - so the Bible encourages sound thinking and not some pontificated ideal structure as many quickly dismiss it as. I didn't dumb down when I became a Christian. In fact, it felt more like I began to think more clearly. I was raised in the same public school system as everyone else and didn't even know who Jesus Christ was until around my junior or senior year of high school. I've read from my early days in Kindergarten how "billions of years ago, when dinosaurs roamed the earth" and I've been taught the theory of evolution like everyone else. The problem, though, is that no matter how credible or not a particular area of science is, much of what is out there is taught based on authority. I find it very ironic to be flamed by anyone who thinks I'm an idiot for not believing in a theory that's never been proven by scientific process. It's recently become a "religious act" to question science in any capacity, but isn't questioning science the only way we can tell the good science from the bad science? And there is a lot of great science out there - even in public schools. But there's no longer a way for students to evaluate the credibility of what they're being taught. That seems to be degrading the quality of the subject. Science should be a quest for the truth, with no presuppositions, and appropriate understanding between hypotheses vs. theories vs. laws. When a theory is presented in the classroom as law and it's not held accountable to method, it's degenerated into mere conditioning.
I've spent a considerable amount of time studying topics such as the age of the earth and the theory of evolution, and I could probably argue it quite well if so inclined to engage in a discussion. That's important if you're going to believe anything really - including whatever the mainstreamed secular agenda happens to be.
Just as an example, I've recently looked into Carbon-14 dating and found that in cross-referencing it to Egyptian history (which dates back as far as 3500 B.C. and is held to be in very high regard by archaeologists and scientists alike), there is evidence that Carbon dating may be inaccurate beyond around 1800 B.C. For someone not to consider that would be ignoring science. My point here is that my beliefs aren't merely unfounded, eccentric ideas. Just because microevolution is feasable, that doesn't mean I'm going to sweep macroevolution under the rug and not test it - the two are actually worlds apart, just cleverly bundled. The Bible has given me a perspective that seems to offer a reasonable and sensible way to put the different pieces of good science together. No matter what you believe, I strongly feel that you should have some factual foundation to support whatever it is, and if you don't, then be man enough to admit you only have a theory put together.
No matter what side of the camp you are on, your beliefs require a certain amount of faith, as neither side is at present proven scientifically. I don't have all the answers, but I don't think science in its present state does either. At the end of the day, you can't prove the existence of God factually, and so whatever you believe is still based on faith. But at least the Christians can admit that - I just wish the evolutionists would too.
...end email.
First Question: How do you pronounce your name?
Linux Video Tutorial Project, Tutoring the masses.
The one fucking question I really wanted him to answer he wasn't even asked.
Instead something completely worthless like Winkydink asks: How do you pronounce your name? shows up instead.
Thanks Slashdot.
Sorry, which question?
Jesus Christ how old are you? 5? Grow up. The world doesn't revolve around satisfying you.
404 File Not Found The requested URL (ahref=) was not found. If you feel like it, mail the url, and where ya came from to pater@slashdot.org. ------------ Yes, yes.. a question we would all like answered..
Linux Video Tutorial Project, Tutoring the masses.
Very, VERY interesting. I have to say thank you to him, for the fact that he made a good statement about faith. Very brave, and very good man.
Yay, I have a sig.
Does anybody remember what the world was like before Google? None of us do, primarily because we couldn't find iy
YESI do remember you noob.
Google is nothing new, before them there were a few engines that did the job fine. There was even an web based FTP search engine Where is that google, where is that.
Jesus Christ how old are you? 5? Grow up. The world doesn't revolve around satisfying you.
Well, we aren't interviewing me, but I'll answer even though this won't be the top 10 moderated questions.
1. 26.
2. No, I might end up without a sense of humor like you.
3. No, it doesn't revolve around that. It revolves around humor. It isn't my fault that some of the moderators chose "+1 Insightful" "+1 Interesting" instead of "+1 Funny" like I had intended.
If i write some code and I licence it under the GPL and something else what is the problem?
You can take the GPL code and do what you like with it under the GPL, but I choose to licence what i have written under BSD (say) as well then what is the problem? It is going way OTT to take that away from me if I am gifting my work back to the community with the GPL. This is why I always stipulate that my code is licenced under GPL v2 and not any subsequent version - no self-appointed guardian has the right to take away my freedom to dual licence code.
At least his first name isn't Jathan. He's be stuck explaining his name for another five minutes to people as well.
Me: My name is Jathan.
Response: Woah. Were your parents stoned when they named you?
Me: haha, yeah that's funny. It's kind of like saying Jason with a lisp.
Response: Thats great caus I half a lithsp
Me: Oh, sorry, it's like Nathan with a J then.
I feel your pain Mr.Zdziarski....
// no
So, do you really think Google will be selling our info out to the government?
I do think that our rights have been sold out by our elected officials ("All hail the all ighty ollar!"). I guess I just wanted to believe that Google was different. P.T. Barnum was right... a sucker every minute.
Now, where is my hat?
I'm glad to see someone discuss all these various spam issues with some degree of authority. It is nice to see someone differentiate between the different types of statistical filtering out there, and talk about the interactions between different levels of spam filtering.
How sad that most of the next 300 replies are likely to be attacks on his personal faith.
-theGreater.Typically what is done is to select a range of filters/learners that you want to evaluate. A test dataset is also selected (in this case, it would be an archive of spam and nonspam messages, correctly classified). An M-way N-fold cross validation is performed. What this means is that the data set is split into N parts, and N runs are conducted for each classifier, training using N-1 of the parts. The remaining part is used to test the learner. This is repeated, each time holding out a different part of the test set.
This ENTIRE procedure is repeated M times. This gives, ultimately, M*N results. Each column pair of results from a specific pair of learners has a T-test applied to it. This tells the statistical significance of variations in performance. Usually, a 5% or 1% threshold of significance is used.
Once that is completed, something called a WLT table is computed. Each time a learner defeats another learner on a given test, its W ("Win") counter is incremented. Likewise, when a learner loses, the L ("Loss") counter is incremented. When two learners tie (i.e., when the variation is not statistically significant), the T ("Tie") counter is incremented.
The overall "winner" of the comparison is the learner with the maximum value of W-L.
This sounds complicated and bloated, but it is, in fact, how machine learners are tested in academia. The cross validation method, along with checks for statistical significance, is critical to achieving a valid comparison. Simply running the tests once and saying "This filter got 98% correct, and this other filter got 95% correct -- therefore the first filter is better" is NOT sufficient.
Jesus Christ how old are you?
He was about 33 when he died.
Web Design Tips
I use SpamAssassin (server) and SpamPal (client). They're both quite accurate and I'm very happy with them.
However, I've had unacceptably high false-positive rates. Saying that you only get one spam a day is fine--I can deal with that. Are you sure that no legitimate e-mail is being tagged though? I have the subject lines prefixed with [SPAM] and so I just go through and look for anything that looks like it might not be spam. This process takes about 10 minutes a day, which is 10 minutes more than I would care to spend.
I give the anti-spam developers credit for their hard work, but I believe that the best solution would not be filter-based, for mere fact that if 1 spam gets through a day, and the volume of spam increases 100x in the next 2 years, then you're back up to ~100 spams a day. It's a temporary solution to a permanent problem.
Just my $0.02.
Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. --Nietzsche
has time wound back? all the stories and comments seem to be showing AM instead of PM. Editors: correct the error please, I dont want to go to work again!
Well, it wasn't worthless to me, and it looks like the editors thought that my question was a bit more coherent than a improperly written href.
If there's something that you really want to know, have you considered contacting him using this newfangled technoloigy called email?
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
And it was +5 Interesting. Anyone want to take a crack at it?
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=160001&cid=133 92902
Dada Mail - Program, Art Project or Absurdity?
Bingo. One of my managers said it very well at my former employment: nobody ever got fired for choosing IBM- and he's 100% right. I know a few companies spending millions to have services offered by Dell, IBM, Microsoft, etc who could get their services for thousands from clone computer makers, and Linux- but who would they?
Choose IBM and loose a few million, and you 'missed the market'. Choose open source and loose a few million and 'your solution wasn't up to par'. Choose open source and succeed and you make millions...
Is it worth the risk for the second situation? Most managers who want to leave with a hefty bonus and a good referral woulds say no.
PS: Agree 100% with almost everything he said. Smart man.
-M
when you see the word 'Linux', drink!
not when it the words can be properly interpreted even when improperly spelled.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Sorry, I can't believe any 6 digit UID Slashbotter. Especially one that says that whatever the Slashdot editors choose is ok! :)
But the other issues present in the interview are really way more interesting than SPAM (Religion and pronunciation os bizarre names :) ).
I Agree with Zdziarski in that both science and religion need a bit of faith from their believers. The difference, is that science logically analizes our environment, and bases it's conclusion on that analisis. Religion, on the other hand, is arbitrary, it just states that certain things are so 'just because'; so, reading different theorys, and then i see which seems more plausible, is better documented, etc, and, off course, depending on my personality, i will find some of them more credible, and so i will put a little faith in them. Religious persons acts differently, they beleive in a certain religion because their parents did. I Don't beleive the same things that my parents did about science, i read my own books, make my own conclussions, etc. Also, science is more unified than religion, that is, for a certain topic, there might be a few scientific explanations, that may vary slightly, but they all have a common base, share certain ideas, etc., and usually there is a reasonable number of different theorys (two?, three?), but, in religion, there are hundreds of different religions and they all state things that are VERY different from what other religions explain, absolutely contradicting each other.
Also, religion doesn't evolve, science does. The catholic church once stated how man was created, and that explanation is still the same than it was 1.7k years ago, science changes daily, improving, finding new ways and explanations, because the human being is constantly evolving, and so, we prove ourselves wrong constantly (may be not plain wrong, we just elaborate on what we thought previously), religion doesn't change, and doesn't add new knowledge.
One of the weaker points of religions, is that they base all their facts in one initial fact: God exists, and so, from that all the other knowledge is generated. We don't know if god exists, it's just a theory, so all the theorys in religion are based on one single theory, that is impossible to prove, and that is the single more discussed and opossed theory in history, with lots of proves that it's false, being it's only argument to be true, faith. Science, on the other hand, bases all it's theorys on a fact: Man can learn, so, many specific theorys might be wrong, but they can't be all wrong, and they won't be all proved wrong in a day, in change, if i could prove you that god doesn't exists, i would be proving all your other theorys wrong at the same time.
Obviously, you have the right to beleive, and i respect that.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
This guy is a creationist? And he expects us to trust his faith-based spam filtering?
He's making mistake #1 that creationists make: assuming that any problems in the evidence for one theory of evolution are evidence for creationism.
They argue that the open source community hasn't benefited from companies like Google and Amazon.
I never really understood this thinking. At amazon, kernel and oracle patches (made by the amazon kernel team) were upstreamed to Redhat and Oracle. While their name does not appear in the credits. They certainly did contribute.
BBH
What's up with that?
Does it mean we should all stop trusting them?
My spam problem is the reverse of most people's. Using grey listing I get basically no actual spam. It's wonderful - works very well. But that's not my problem. My problem is that some a$$hole spammer has decided to start using my domain as a from address in his spams. So I'm currently getting deluged by bounce messages for mails I never sent. I've published SPF records and that's helped a bit, but not a lot.
Anyone got any good suggestions?
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
so, no one can know where are you pointing at.
unless this is an attempt of humour (in which case, it didn't work at all).
HTH,
Massa
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
Sure looks like he didn't take his good time on researching carbon-14 and find out that to date dino-bones we aren't using carbon-14 that much.
http://science.howstuffworks.com/carbon-142.htm
Hard-core Christians complain that we aren't researching their opinions, but I see way too much that it is the same the other way around. If you believe in Carbon-14 then you have to agree that the other science behind the chemistry also works. And in that case that argument for the age of dinosaurs so fall apart for those Christians.
(Disclaimer: I believe in God, Jesus, and Science - The Bible has good things but it is too man made and narrow minded towards the real world, IMHO)
I welcome our new Flying Spaghetti Monster overlord.
Seriously, you can believe whatever you want. It's when you start dissing evolution that we've got a problem: now the burden of proof is yours.
And you're going to have to do a hell of a lot better than challenging the accuracy of carbon dating. Ideally, you'd have an alternative explanation that wasn't half-baked.
Information: "I want to be anthropomorphized"
My point here is that my beliefs aren't merely unfounded, eccentric ideas.
Err... come again?
All our theories about the Universe, fundamental physical forces and biology are wrong - that is not eccentric? Well, I suppose not, plain bonkers is more like it.
The claim that these things have not been proved scientifically can only be answered in the way first made famous by Dr Johnson - I refute it thus.
Pardon, what was the question though? I haven't seen a re-post, and the link is broken.
I do like his section on his beliefs, he raises some very good points. I used to be cynical and thought all relgious people were idiots, but lately I've come to realize that this was just my own sense of inflated ego fucking with me. Some of the smartest people have been religious believers. There have even been really smart fanatics, Mohamed Atta had a masters degree, and pretty much all the attackers in the sarin gas attack on Tokyo had degrees in engineering, many of them at least masters.
One minor gripe though, he discredits macro-evolution by calling into question the accuracy of carbon dating. This may be true, but Carbon-14 dating is just one tool in the arsenal of the macro-evolution scientist. For instance, even if carbon-14 dating isn't accurate, there is still the fossil record. Wordlwide dinosaur fossils and human fossils have been seperated by layers and layers of earth. Even without carbon 14 dating, geologists can study those layers and give a (very rough) estimate about how much time transpired between the most recent known dinosaur fossils and the oldest known human ones.
Monstar L
Now, what if I said I was a scientist, but I believed in magic? Wouldn't you find it just a little tempting to say that I wasn't a "true scientist"? Now, I don't agree with the GP on what makes a true Christian (most agree that the only pre-requisite is accepting Christ as your savior - of course, this usually does imply some natural consequences, but I don't believe that rejecting evolution is one of them). Similarly, if I told you I am a Scotsman, born to parents who are both nth generational U.S. citizens (with the usual, very mixed heritage of such citizens) while they were living in Germany - and I've never even been to Scotland (that I remember, anyway), you'd have a right to question whether or not I was a "true Scotsman", wouldn't you?
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
http://psg.com/~brian/software/authbounce/configur e-authbounce.txt
i always find it laughable when 'intelligent' people counter the 'theory of evolution' by rolilng over with a statement like:
"I find it very ironic to be flamed by anyone who thinks I'm an idiot for not believing in a theory that's never been proven by scientific process."
since 'the theory of evolution' falls under the Scientific definition of theory...
a plausible or scientifically acceptable general principle or body of principles offered to explain phenomena
here is a good one Jonathan, explain the 'flounder' w/o using evolution as a base...
PEOPLE!! STOP. Stop using "theory" in regards to science as a theory in the common definition. A scientific theory is very well backed up by facts.
"In layman's terms, if something is said to be "just a theory," it usually means that it is a mere guess, or is unproved. It might even lack credibility. But in scientific terms, a theory implies that something has been proven and is generally accepted as being true."
I will personally stangle the next person who does this. Pisses me off.
Scientific Theory = Scientific Fact. Bitches.
http://wilstar.com/theories.htm
I am truely sick of people who call themselves Christians but are really practising some whacky supersitious religion that has no place for critical thought.
To quote Mr Zdziarski's homepage:
"to teach and to defend what I have come to find is a scientifically beautiful piece of logical harmony - the Bible"
Ah so science is a book that is thousands of years old and most of it is not corroborated in secondary sources? A book that is known to have been selectively edited through out its history for political reasons? So Jesus violating the laws of physics in his numerous miracles is science?
It certainly has great bits of logic and moral teaching in it (Do unto others, as you would have them do unto you), but it is not science. For someone to call it science shows that they have no understanding of science at all and it is no surprise that he thinks creationism and evolution should be taught in science class. I was taught creationism at school but in thelogy class.
I spent my entire education in christian schools. I have spent the last three weeks going to church to reconnect with God. Science does not preclude God. Just because God didn't have to make Adam from mud, after he made the world in six days, doesn't mean there is no God. No matter who much scientific knowledge we get there will always be room for God (What came before the Big Bang? And how did matter get the properties it has?).
For me God is the ultimate programmer. No sense doing all the work by hand when you can write some perl scripts to do it for you.
Science tells us what we can do and how. Religion tells us if we should.
========
CINC, 4th Penguin Legion
I don't know what's funnier. Being extremely humorous and being modded "Troll", being humorous and being modded "Insightful/Interesting", or watching a bunch of dumbasses think I'm being serious post about it.
The last part of this ask slashdot infuriated me.
You know what? He's good with dealing with spam. That's great & wonderful, but please end it there. Here at slashdot, we don't believe in such things as god or religion, it's just the twisting of words & IT related stories in a bitterly geekish way for us.
These people are all over the place. They're christians, and they pose as scientists to get you to listen to them, but once they start talking.. guess where it leads to? How great & wonderful god is for creating the heavens and earth, and blah blah blah. They're trying to delude you in to thinking they are not preaching the gospel, when in fact, they are. It's pure evil at it's finest.
I'm not trolling, but this is really starting to bother me, and i'm seeing it more & more in the news. It makes me sick to believe that these beliefs are actually taken seriously in social circles, and even more scary, in the educational field.
Just because I cant prove that a Giant Spaghetti Monster actually created the universe, does that mean it should be taught to children as an alternative view of how we got on this planet? No, it shouldn't. I take my science with a dose of reality. So should you.
but you can't prove that ;-P
A person's beliefs should be questioned, as should evolution. Why should people be allowed to believe whatever they want without others questioning it?
Grumble, Grumble
I got spam today from eWeek.
What was it selling? An eSeminar on "Winning the War on Spam"
How ironic.
Nice fucking link jackass. Use HTML much?
Nice fucking language too
Now shut the fuck up and get back down in your parents' basement you retarded loser
The beliefs I hold as a Christian aren't always the popular ones, but they're certainly valid arguments for anyone who cares to ask about them (not that that has happened).
Yes, but as anybody with a clue would point out, a perfectly valid argument can still be completely wrong. The problem scientific-types have with Christianity isn't that it's not a valid argument - it's that the axioms are wrong.
Point out a scientist who claims that, assuming the Bible is the incorruptible word of God, Christianity is not a valid argument. I don't think that's a common attitude. What I do think is a common attitude is disagreeing that we should use that as an axiom in the first place.
When you read about someone's beliefs, you have the option to engage in discussion, or to filter his or her beliefs through your own belief system. The former option involves cognitive thought, however the latter is how most people today respond to anything that even smells religious. And I say this coming from the position of someone who hasn't tried to shove my beliefs down anyone's throat - I merely documented them on my personal website. That tells me that some people don't believe I have the right to my own beliefs - how asinine is that?
That's completely asinine. It's also a straw man argument. So people filter what you say through their own beliefs system before responding - how does that in any way whatsoever tell you that they don't think you have a right to your own beliefs?
the Bible encourages sound thinking
Correct me if I'm wrong (really). The Bible claims that it is the incorruptible word of God, and that you should believe this because the Bible says so. The Bible also says that if you don't believe, you go to hell.
I consider these two things to be antithetical to sound thinking. If, however, I am wrong, and the Bible doesn't claim these things, then you have to explain how vast numbers of Christians say that it does. The only explanation I can see is that they have misinterpreted it. In which case, you are left with the unenviable position of claiming that you are interpreting it right and they aren't - so much for the incorruptible word of God.
The problem, though, is that no matter how credible or not a particular area of science is, much of what is out there is taught based on authority.
Everything that is taught is done so based on authority. But the practice of science is based upon the rejection of authority. You can't practice science if you blindly accept things as the truth. That's not how science works.
It's recently become a "religious act" to question science in any capacity
Bullshit. Scientists question science all the time. That's their job. You can't do science without it.
Just because microevolution is feasable, that doesn't mean I'm going to sweep macroevolution under the rug and not test it - the two are actually worlds apart, just cleverly bundled.
Speciation has been observed a number of times. If you aren't referring to speciation, then I suggest you use proper terminology instead of the terms cooked up by creationists.
No matter what side of the camp you are on, your beliefs require a certain amount of faith
I agree. I have faith in the relative fidelity of my memory. I have faith that my senses are not being tampered with. I have faith that the laws of nature don't change behind my back every few minutes. I have faith that the rest of human society isn't engaged in a giant conspiracy to deceive me. I consider that to be the minimum you must have faith in to make any sense of the world. If I suspect that any particular piece of science is wrong, those faiths above are all I need to check one way or the other.
You, on the other hand, have faith that a magical
The article Evidence of evolution has really good break down of all of the evidence for evolution.
That way we're all on the same page for the ensuing creation v. evolution flame war.
I don't know why more people don't use greylisting. It really works wonders. Its reduced our spam by about 99%.. and if there is a false positive, its because the sending server is not rfc compliant. Ok so it delays mail initially for 5 minutes... big deal, its a small price to pay for virtually no spam AND no administration of a spam filter.
s/shown to be correct/shown to be only partially correct/
I find it very ironic to be flamed by anyone who thinks I'm an idiot for not believing in a theory that's never been proven by scientific process.
In actuality, I believe you're an idiot because you don't understand that the theory of evolution does not attempt to be a proof. That's just more propaganda from the radical right.
Science attempts to explain why things are and, by extrapolation and interpolation, why they might change. Evolution does this very well. It does not require you to "believe". It simply states what is. You are still free to believe in God in any form you care to, just don't expect to be able to predict what will come next with any accuracy.
It's simple: I demand prosecution for torture.
I had written a pretty wordy response (about halfway through a point-by-point rebuttal) to the article you wrote and linked to in your site's bio regarding your stance towards evolution, but I decided to delete it all make it more succinct.
Your beliefs on evolution are stupid.
You seem smart, so I hope you see the light at some point. I have no illusions that I will be able to convince you otherwise, as I'm sure you have heard this many times before.
A: None. The Universe spins the bulb, and the Zen master merely stays out of the way.
Often most old/young arguments require assumptions such as constant value of decay rates, layering rates, hyper-catastrophic processes not found today, etc. But there are many geological formations you can walk up to and observe directly that provide strong evidence for an old earth and tortured earth.
The best formation suggesting a very old earth are angular unconformities which require at a minimum the follow processes:
- deposition
- cementation and sometime metamorphosis
- uplift and tilting
- erosion
- deposition (again)
- cementation (of new layer)
As an example this image i took on vacation of unconformity mount Everts in Yellowstone show a huge unconformity. Notice the tilted Jurassic sedimentation at the base and then a basalt layer above. Do a image search on google and you will find many more examples and even one at the bottom of the grand canyon.Another good example of is basalt layering. Here you have sedimentation a basalt flow, sedimentation again, basalt flow and sedimentation again. I ask YEC which one of these layers is the Noah flood.
There are many more geological formations, such as limestone deposits, chalk, diatoms deposition which are all microorganism remains or secreations.
huh huh
Exactly. And that's why one might wish to licence things under (only GPL2) and (GLP2 or any future version) and (only GPL3, i mean when it becomes available). I mean, the same code under each license, seperately. But if you don't really care about the freedom of the code, you could just release it all into the public domain, this way anyone could take the code and use it with no obligations, and, if you are lucky, some of it may end up being used in GPL'ed programs.
Lynam and I said that DSPAM 2.8.3, in its default configuration, achieved 98.15% accuracy on the same corpus to which Zdziarski refers above. The report also argued that accuracy was a very poor measure of filter performance and that a false positive rate such as the 1.28% demonstrated by DSPAM would likely be unacceptable to an email user.
In recent correspondence, Zdziarski suggested three configurations of DSPAM (available here on the web) that achieved the following results:
dspam(tum) fpr 1.81% fnr 0.80% accuracy 99.20%
dspam(toe) fpr 1.94% fnr 0.59% accuracy 99.16%
dspam(teft) frp 1.85% fnr 0.53% accuracy 99.32%
More detailed results and comparisons will be made available when our current study is complete. Don't take my word (or Jonathan's) for anything; run this filter and others on your own email. But please take great care in constructing your gold standard.
Gordon Cormack
You can say, "here is a theory." Yes, but do you believe the theory is correct?
Another interesting point is that ID is falsifiable. Successful experiments could falsify the claims of irreducible complexity. Evolution seems unfalsifiable, on the other hand.
Celebrate the finer things in life
Spoken like a "True Believer". It seems to me that many (most?) True Believers can't understand that science isn't about believing in anything, and that science never, ever claims to prove anything. Shame, too, on the non-Believers who say that it does.Again, a clear misunderstanding of science. Science is all about questioning everything. I.e. why are we here? How did we get here? Where are we going? What is thunder? It's only a "religious act" when the questioner is an avowed (or covert) Believer who is offering zero actual evidence supporting any alternate theory.
Religion, generally, and Chistianity specifically, appears to be all about answers. I.e., to answer the questions above, because god made us. God put us here. To heaven if you're good, hell if your not. God is angry. See the difference?
Does this mean I think less of his thoughts on email? No, I don't dismiss someone because of their beliefs (think Stallman
People need to learn to use BCC instead. Web clients like gmail should make this the default for emails with more than say 4 recipients.
Test 1 2 3 4
Science follows the scientific method and any hypothesis or theory must be falsifiable. Since there is no way to show a Deity not creating life on Earth, Creationism fails.I thought you said you were reading Michael Behe's book on the topic. Yeah, right. Whatever.
The only problem I see is when religious people try to get their religious beliefs enshrined as "science" or taught as "alternative scientific explanations".
Believe whatever you want to believe, but don't claim your beliefs are anything more than your religion (and you won't know if you're wrong or right on that until you die).
Wow. I guess if you only define christians as the fundamentalist/born again type I guess you're right. All other christians aren't "real" christians. Perhaps you should expand beyond your narrow view of christianity and realize that there's a LOT of diversity out their beyond the fundamentalists that currently think they're the ONLY christians.
AccountKiller
People who don't believe in religion do not usually bother looking for a "good reason for existence". Of course, we can research into the nature to answer many questions that we, as humans, can ask ourselfs. Nobody denies the fact that curiosity is part of human nature and science has proven to be, nowadays, the best way to proceed in our search.
On the other hand, to look for "good reasons" or "bad reasons" is a sign of mental weakness that people use to patch with religion.
There is lots of verifiable evidence to support the theory of evolution. Its not proven, but there is evidence that supports it. If you want to say its wrong, and claim that there's lots of evidence proving its wrong, then yes, you really do have to step up and show this evidence. People aren't telling you that you have to accept or believe evolution, just that if you are going to claim its wrong, you put your money where you mouth is and show us your proof.
People who aren't blindly following an irrational belief tend to step up and show some evidence, and point out the flaws in a theory they don't believe. Then we develop and test new theories. This has been a huge factor in furthering human knowledge and understanding. Please be constructive and participate in this process instead of saying everything that isn't 100% provable (which is everything, period) is wrong.
Hey, at least he doesn't have a silent "3" in his name.
Real Old Men used WAIS to search. During the Reagan Administration!
The only way to show that ID is false is to show that such complexities arise WITHOUT the Intelligence being involved.
Which requires that you demonstrate a way to keep God (or whomever) from touching your stuff.
How do you demonstrate that you've managed to keep an omnipotent, omniscient, invisible, intangible being from influencing your experiment?
Therefore, not falsifiable.Simple, find a dino with a partially digested human inside him.
Find a grave with a human and his pet dino buried together.
And the last, but best way, God appears and creates a brand new intelligent life form.
Jesus Christ how old are you? 5?
You can't accurately measure how old he is. You see, while his birth certificate says he is 5, nobody here actually witnessed his birth to testify to the fact that the birth certificate is accurate. We take birth certificates on higher authority, and don't subject them to real scientific standards. Why, I read an article recently that indicated that clocks weren't accurate back before 2002!
In all seriousness now, lets just clear up his misconceptions really quickly here:
The beliefs I hold as a Christian aren't always the popular ones, but they're certainly valid arguments for anyone who cares to ask about them
Many creationists, strangely, think that "Christian" viewpoints equals "Creationist" viewpoints. Heck, even the Vatican accepts evolution.
That tells me that some people don't believe I have the right to my own beliefs - how asinine is that?
If someone told you the world was flat, you'd question their better judgement, now wouldn't you? Nobody is telling you what you can or cannot believe, and don't pretend that they are. But you can't tell people that you believe in something contrary to all available evidence and expect them not to care.
It doesn't get into your knowledge of spam filtering, by the way, so don't take this as an insult.
In fact, the Bible teaches that you should know what you believe and why, and that you should even be prepared to give a defense for your faith
What are you referring to? Paul regularly launches diatribes against the learned, tells followers not to listen them, and to believe in faith alone. For example, read Corinthians sometimes. It's one long diatribe against the educated after another.
Take the old testament, too. It, too, says not to even listen to unbelievers, lest they make you doubt your faith. So, I'd like to see where you draw these "intellectual debate-encouraging" lines from.
I've read from my early days in Kindergarten how "billions of years ago, when dinosaurs roamed the earth"
Then you had the worst Kindergarten class on Earth. "Dinosaurs" roughly range from the Triassic to the Cretaceous, i.e. 248 to 65 mya. "Billions of years ago" was Precambrian, where single cellular and simple multicellular organisms roamed the earth.
The problem, though, is that no matter how credible or not a particular area of science is, much of what is out there is taught based on authority.
It doesn't matter what it's "taught" by. What matters is how the evidence was derived. By the way, did you not find the irony of the fact that your belief is based on an "ultimate authority source"?
I find it very ironic to be flamed by anyone who thinks I'm an idiot for not believing in a theory that's never been proven by scientific process.
Quite to the contrary. First, a bit of background for you. When the study of geology began in earnest, almost all mainstream scientists were biblical literalists. The "flood theory" of strata layers was essentially unquestioned; finding fossils in layers only furthered their belief in the flood theory. That was, until they hit a brick wall: Sorting.
The fossils that they kept finding were extremely confined. You never find trilobytes in the same layer as clams, or grasses in the same layer as Alethopteris, etc: *ever*, the world over, despite how incredibly common and distributed these species were.
The scientists who discovered this were at a loss to explain it. Gradually, a new theory rose to explain it. Evolution, right?
Nope! The "multiple creation, multiple flood" theory. They were so convinced that the bible had to be literally accurate, that they simply adapted it. This theory was dominant in European scientific thought for several hundred years. However, as time progressed, it kept falling apart. They kept having to add in more creations and more floods; by the time of Darwin, there were widely viewed beliefs of hal
Rock Us, Dukakis.
GPL 3.0 should address the now common practice of offering services of GPL'd software by "wrapping" it in new code, which connects to the GPL'd code via a public API in the GPL'd code. That kind of interface is more like linking to a GPL'd library than like revising the actual code of the GPL'd source. It's not even as tight an integration. So requiring that new code that's "API linked" to GPL'd code also be governed by GPL terms (eg. publishing all the new code's source, and virally transmitting the GPL with the new code as its own license) is an unfair requirement. For example, we don't require a user, interfacing with the UI of a GPL'd word processor, to publish every document they produce with it. An "AGPL" for APIs shared by programming an application interface to GPL'd code would be fair for both parties.
A fair requirement of that increasingly common scenario would be to require that the new code's APIs be accessible, just as the GPL'd code's APIs are accessible. The new code doesn't actually touch the GPL'd code, but it does touch the APIs. So the new code's APIs must be documented: their calling signature, return types, the results of calling them, and the symbolic meaning of their return value. In essence, requiring the new code to offer access to its APIs as open as the GPL'd code offers. Perhaps even with a viral clause that requires any other code that calls the new code by API to also be governed by the AGPL.
That way programmers will continue to use GPL'd code as often as possible, and leverage the same benefit from their code as they're getting from the GPL'd code they use merely by connecting to its API. And we'll contribute to the developer environment by forcing documentation, therefore useability, of APIs not even otherwise governed by GPL. If we make a new GPL more demanding than that, more programmers will avoid the GPL'd code, rewriting their own. Which is worse for everyone. GPL'd code doesn't have the leverage to force all uses of it to convert all that new code to GPL. If we force those kinds of terms, we'll weaken respect for the GPL (and therefore compliance), alienate programmers from it, and drive more code into even less useable condition.
--
make install -not war
Intelligent Design is easily falsifiable [...] All you have to do is show once through an experiment that you can produce something that is supposedly of "irreducible complexity" from simpler parts.
And then? I'm 100% sure that as soon as I come up with an example, you would find a way to diagree and jump to your next argument. That's at least my experience, first it was the eye, now a flagella, etc.
Actually I never heard of this irreducible complexity thing before but a quick search showed me it is a logic trap.
Please read about what's known on DNA, RNA, the whole logic in the development from single cells to 'higher organisms'. Then come back.
Evolution, on the other hand, doesn't seem to be falsifiable. How can you design an experiment to falsify the theory of Evolution?
Pretty easy if you try.
* find fossils that are structurally impossible, like a way too advanced species in (undisturbed) ancient layers ('alas! God wants to test our faith and that's why He put the bones there')
* find the reuse of a tract in species that are, according to biologists, totally different, e.g. show that your Creative Designer has used the same construction for the human eye as for the octopus (they are actually pretty similar but the construction is totally different). Like find a centaur.
* prove that there ain't enough time for the evolution (without using the bible or your personal contact with God), like, the earth is only 6000 years old
There are more ways.
How come Darwin came with his ideas before DNA was discovered? How come it all fits so well?
Jonathan Zdziarski makes many claims with nothing to back them up, then draws incorrect conclusions based on those claims.
Where did he hear this? The FSF understands that setting conditions for running software is not allowed under US copyright law:
Zdziarski continues:
First off, the GNU GPL was written by the Free Software Foundation with an eye toward software freedom, and it was written well before there was such a thing as the "open source" movement. Eben Moglen and Richard Stallman made it very clear that software freedom, not mere "open"ness, would be the measuring stick by which the GPL3 would be judged a success. Hence, the GPL is properly credited as a free software license. This is important not only to tell the truth about who wrote the GPL and why, but to understand what it says and why. Software freedom is the very thing the open source movement was build to not discuss. To this day, the Open Source Initiative (which coined the term "open source", defined it, and determines which licenses comply with its terms) belittles the FSF in their FAQ as "ideological tub-thumping". Which movement you side with (if either) is your business. But it should be important to be fair to the differences that exist between the movements. One practical difference between the two movements is that free software licenses guarantee private derivatives ("You should also have the freedom to make modifications and use them privately in your own work or play, without even mentioning that they exist. If you do publish your changes, you should not be required to notify anyone in particular, or in any particular way."), OSI-approved licenses do not guarantee private derivatives, hence the FSF's unwillingness to give their imprimateur to the early revisions of the Apple Public Source License.
Second, no American company can legally distribute proprietary derivatives of GPL'd software. If they don't like this, they should write their own software or find something under a license which they can build on and distribute without also distributing their changes.
Digital Citizen
Ah, I can't wait until I can start looking down on those n00b 7 digit UID Slashdotters!
a,e,i,o,u and sometimes w and y (at be if of up cwm by)
Hey kids, now's time to start acting ten years plus your age.
Why is it when an expert contradicts their religious beliefs, suddenly the expert don't know what they are talking about? Millions of biologists, geologists, physicists, chemists etc., both Christian and not, have studied evolution and believe it to be true. And yet Christians dismiss these experts out of hand. Why?
Sure, authority alone is not sufficient for rock-solid belief--one should check out things for oneself. But I wish a Christian would explain to me why millions of experts are conspiring to promulgate evolution if it is so obviously false.
And while I'm at it, I wish a Christian would explain to me the difference, in technical terms, between "micro-evolution" and "macro-evolution". It seems to me that Christians have created these artificial categories because they can't argue that evolution hasn't been observed.
Coppit
P.S. To the interviewee: move on to radiometric dating rather than Carbon-14 dating. C-14 is more error-prone than radiometric, and something of a strawman.
P.P.S. We could also ask all the world's religious experts about the nature of god. Unlike evolution, we'll get much disagreement.
The part where tons of evidence that supports evolution has been found. When there's tons of evidence to support a theory, then it becomes accepted. Once something has been accepted, the burden of proof is now on you to show its not correct, or that some other theory better explains what we can observe. Saying everyone is wrong doesn't do anything besides make you look dumb. If you want to be taken seriously, then you need to say why you think its wrong (which you now did I guess).
As to your "evidence", I can't say I am suprised that few people are convinced by it. First of all, its not evidence, its simply complaining that you think there isn't enough evidence for evolution. I didn't say there was enough evidence to prove evolution, just that of all the theories available right now, it has the most proof and best explains what is observed around us. In fact, there is no other theory with any proof at all that I am aware of. Saying there's not enough proof to satisfy your requirements is not proof of anything, except that you are a hypocrite.
Second, you are only talking about macroevolution, does this mean you accept that microevolution has been proven? Its certainly observed all around us all the time. If so, you might want to be more specific that you only don't believe in macroevolution in the future, since not believing in things that are observed constantly all around us can make people ignore and/or dismiss you as a nutjob.
Third, you are ignoring the fact that there are two macroevolutionary theories, which are not mutually exlusive. Macroevolution has not been observed naturally in the very recent past when we would have record of it, but it has been observed through macromutation in labs simply from radiation mutations. And fossil records show it happening in the past, possibly without any radical mutation, but simply as an accelerated or more focused microevolutionary process. Its not like we've been studying evolution for thousands of years to get a good chance to observe it occuring naturally.
Your second point is just you misunderstanding the theory. You do not need two instances of an identical macromutation to occur simultaniosly. You only need one to occur that can still breed with the species it mutated from. So it is technically still the same species, but mutated. Some of its offspring will be mutated as well obviously. If this mutation allows them to survive and/or reproduce better, then their population will grow. Microevolution takes over and gradually these mutants become less and less similar to their original species, eventually being unable to reproduce with them, making them their own distinct species.
And finally, there doesn't need to be billions of fossils, since as I mentioned it doesn't need to happen nearly as often as you think. In order to get two identical mutations at the same time then sure, we'd need to be seeing such mutations constantly, but we don't need two identical mutations, and thus shouldn't expect to observe it constantly occuring. Keep in mind also, fossilization is an incredibly rare event, that only happens in particular circumstances. Not everything that dies becomes a fossil, we don't have billions of fossils of anything, much less of rare mutations. What are the odds of a rare mutation happening, then the rare event of it being fossilized, then the rare event of people finding it, all happening? Pretty damn slim.
However, most public schools do, and they teach a theory as if it were a law
But why stop there? We also indoctrinate our children with the pledge of allegiance. And through that, profess ours to be a nation under God. And do we really think these children understand what they are saying? I didn't for a very long time. And as I look back on it, the forced recital of the pledge is soemthing that makes me ashamed of our society, and therefore have less desire to pledge allegiance to it.
Of course, we also indoctrinate our kids in America to wear clothes, not soley for warmth. We don't explain why, and I doubt most people could. For the most part, we just do it.
it poses a biochemical challenge to evolution by a professor of biochemistry
Macroevolution has been observed, just not in biology. A recent Discover magazine article covered some research being carried out by some MIT (maybe?) people using virtual systems. Prior to that, Tierra deomnstrated simple macroevolution at the genome scale. Granted, none of these are bilogical. But these are just proving one piece of the puzzle that macroevolution is possible given the right conditions (i.e. their virtual world).
From some site
Thus, very different "organisms" evolved from the same ancestor through minor defects -- even though some defects caused profound impacts. Now you can argue whether or not the same sort of situation exists in biolgy. But, you can't argue whether or not macroevolution exists.
Macro evolution, on the other hand, attempts to explain hot how things change, but how they DID change in the PAST
Where did you get this definition. As another poster said, macroevolution is an artificial term used to describe, generally speciation. Not only PAST speciation, but future and present speciation.
If you so badly want to observe "macroevolution", go observe a single species of an animal for say... 100,000, no, better make it 1,000,000 years.
The problem is that people too impatient to observe it. They want to find nicely laid out examples in a sparse fossil record. What about the genetic record. I'm an amateur at genetics but can understand in DNA the evidence of (a) evolution or (b) a God who likes using copy & paste in DNA. And I've seen programs like Tierra, and more impressive modern variants, that demonstrate how genetic evolution can occur. Its not a huge leap to piece this altogether.
You know, I had a friend the other day respond to me unexpectedly when I mentioned them trying to teach ID in schools, "well, I don't understand why if we evolved from monkies, why there are still monkies around." With misunderstanding about evolution like that abounding, I'm not surprised people want to shoot what they understand to be evolution down. Heck, I would too!
Look at that print, then take your shoes off and go step in some mud a couple of inches deep.
See the difference?
Look closely at the toes. See the high ridges between them and the foot? Anyone leaving a print like that would have to have arching toes, not human feet.
A normal human flexes his feet when he walks. Go ahead and take a few steps. See how one of your feet is hitting on the heel and the other is up on the toes and front pad. You only leave footprints like the one shown if you're walking on a clean, hard surface with dirty feet.
Unless you believe that God switched our knees around (think chicken-walker) since that print was made.
Yea, tempt us not with the bananas of the wicked.
you can have my violent video games when you pry them from my cold, dead hands.
Prime UID Club
I was raised in the same public school system as everyone else and didn't even know who Jesus Christ was until around my junior or senior year of high school.
I don't feel it's unreasonable to call this a lie.
The questions were:
what do you think the reason is that so many scientists, nerds and people otherwise rather similar to you think your beliefs are obviously incorrect? Do you think they are all deluded? Do you agree that there might be a possibility that your beliefs are not rational?
He only obliquely answers the first question by implying conventional scientific theory is spoon-fed to grade school students. Not surprisingly, he offers no support for his young-earth baloney, only an indictment of the "mainstram secular agenda" via carbon dating.
The only reason Zdziarski believes the earth revolves around the sun is that he was born a few centuries too late. While the rest of us take "proof" to mean, variously, mathematical proof, empirical proof, and statistical "proof," depending on whether we're discussing algebra, electricity, or sociology, Zdziarski wants to blur the contextual distinction.
We're asked to lose presupposition--this is impossible--and emphasize "theory vs. fact vs. law." Screw that. Science is modeling. Evolution is a successful model. Semantics doesn't change that. When "Jesus is Lord" provides a model to explain gargantuan reptile skeletons, you can get him into the classroom alongside all that other faith-based mythology we call biology, chemistry and physics. The ID argument, here as always, is cowardly, half-baked, and desperately seeking its own justification.
Zdziarski claims he could argue his position if so inclined. It's another familiar religious tack [pardon the Hubbardism] for dodging criticism. Feynmann once defined science as the process of "bending over backwards" to answer critics. I don't know Feynmann's definition of marketing, but it's easy to see which is which.
you can have my violent video games when you pry them from my cold, dead hands.
Prime UID Club
In your reply to the question on GPL 3 you bring up the issue of client server software and the protocols they use:
What about the flip side? Such a position would put several open source projects in the position of violating their own license - ie Gaim, Samba, etc. AOL and/or Microsoft claim that the protocols used by their software are proprietary, and therefore legally protected and unavailable to open source projects without a license. GPL 3, if it included such a passage, would put the FSF and GNU in the interesting position of having to defend Microsoft or AOL's position against Samba or Gaim. Furthermore, it would put the develpers of open source alternatives in a mighty hypocritical position - ie we're using your protocols without your permission and no, you can't use ours. Is that really a can of worms we want to open?
-- "Never underestimate the power of human stupidity." - R.A.H.
There has been a lot of talk about giving the GPL v3 provisions similar to the Affero General Public License, which some see as limiting your freedom to run the software.
The AGPL requires that if the program interacts with users through a network, and is capable of distributing its own source code, this ability must be retained in modified versions. (The clause very specifically applies to networks and requires that HTTP be used as the transfer protocol, which seems to me to be a bit too narrow-minded to be used in a license that will still be applicable 50 years from now, but anyway...)
It's not clear to me whether the AGPL actually limits your ability to modify and use a program "in-house." But consider the two possibilities.
(A) If it does, then clearly this violates freedom zero. It's also worth mentioning that the GPL, and thus the AGPL, explicitly state that the act of running the program is outside their scope. Moreover, it could only work if the user were forced to sign it (i.e., make it into a EULA) since it limits freedoms that were never covered by copyright law. This is in direct contradiction to the spirit of section 5.
(B) But if it doesn't, then the license is completely worthless, and you've just broken GPL compatiblity and added all sorts of ugly legal issues for no reason at all!
Why do I say this? Well, clearly you can distribute the AGPLed program in unmodified form; that's section 1. You can also distribute patches against it which remove its source-code-distribution function; if you write those patches yourself, you can distribute them under any terms you want. Finally, you can distribute a script to patch, compile, and install the modified program. The resulting binary, of course, is illegal to distribute, but the components aren't.
IANAL, so I can't say which of the two interpretations is correct, but neither one sounds very appealing.
Just because there are poor reasons to claim that somebody is not a "true whatever" doesn't mean that there aren't good reasons.
First of all, I imagine what is throwing you off is that people might distinguish between a "Slashdot poster" (for example) and a "true Slashdot poster". What these distinctions really amount to, however, are a "self-proclaimed Slashdot poster" and an "actual Slashdot poster". If I claim to be a Slashdot poster (making me a self-proclaimed Slashdot poster), but have never actually posted anything on Slashdot, than I am not an "actual Slashdot poster".
Do you agree with that last sentence? If not, then there's probably no point in continuing this discussion.
From there, it makes sense to extend this argument to "true [actual] whatevere". If you claim to be a Christian (self-proclaimed Christian), but don't really accept Christ as your savior, then I think it is very reasonable to say that you are not actually a Christian. I.e., you are not a "true Christian.
Naturally, there are people who have some fairly specious arguments about what makes somebody a "true whatever". Again, that doesn't mean that there are no good arguments.
One problem is that there are social pressures for people to claim to be Christian even though they aren't. There are also social pressures for the reverse - as St. Peter himself no doubt could attest to! One possible outcome of this is that people who claim to be Christians do very un-Christian things. It is my belief that people who actually are Christians also do very un-Christian things, but that's a whole other discussion!
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Whoops, didn't mean to say proof. Meant to say reproduction.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
Thank you, Rei, for reminding me why I friended you.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
IF you are willing to accept that, why do you think it is such a big leap to think that he could a) build the earth or b) reveal a new idea about SCIENCE to someone?
So isn't this same God that did all that also powerful and clever engouh to put evolution into motion to ultimately "create man in his image", rather than having to do it directly? As another poster said, GOd could be the ultimate perl scripter who wrote a script (evolution, DNA, etc.) to create life as we know it, rather than wiriting it out by hand.
I just don't understand why this possibility doesn't occur to regular people, or people in a place of high public visibility, like Rick Santorum, who also thinks God and evolution are mutually exclusive.
I did hear once creationist once remark, 'Of course all living things have similar DNA. God invented something once, and it worked so well, he used it everywhere!'
Why is it possible to believe that God has always been there, and one day, dcided to create space, time the universe and you. Yet it's not possible to say simply that the universe has always been there?
It's not that scientists consider pre-big-bang to be taboo. It's just that there's no generally accepted theory. Some think whatever happened before is unkowable and therefore pointless to dicuss(but not forbidden). Others think there was another universe before this one that underwent a big crunch. Others believe there were lots of little bangs going on for eternity. Others think the universe didn't start with any bangs at all but has always been here, swimming around for eternity.
But why does some other eternal thing have to be conjured up to create something else instead of saying the something else existed for eternity? Or, on the other hand, if everything must have a creator, then who created God?
Evolution is based on natural selection, and the basic premise of that is survival of the fittest. But the key there is "survival."
You state: "That irreducibly complex things can't be evolved from simpler components in singled steps, because no single step constitutes an improvement."
Why must it constitute an improvement? I could very well have passed on a harmless gene to my children. Suppose the gene causes me to have a mole, but having the mole does not consitute an improvement. But so long as it doesn't kill me before I reproduce, or hinder my offspring before a subsequent event (see below), then it can continue existing.
So my first point is that it is not necessary for any one mutation to be an improvement for that mutation to live on through generations -- it just can't be detrimental to the point that it extinguishes itself too soon.
Now, suppose that I'm carrying this first mutation, the mole. Now all of a sudden another mutation happens in myself causes this particular kind of mole to start boosting my immune system. *Now* I have an advantage. The mole before was useless, or minorly harmful, but I've now had a second change that builds upon the first, combining to make something extremely useful.
So if you can accept that these so called "irreducibly complex" things are built of simpler parts, you're half way there. You just have to discard your statement that each part must be worthy in its own right. I see no reason for that whatsoever.
The only requiremnt is that the coinciding pieces must exist long engough for them to coincide to have their combined properties fully realized and passed on, advantagously.
Fuck.
;-)
Now *this* was a *really* good post.
You're not doing bad, Rei, I remember other posts of you that imprseed me (though, granted, I usually only recognise they are/were from you by your '99 dead dualists sigpic', which isn't there, on this post).
Let's hope no one else uses such a sig.
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
The past (unless/until we can time travel) cannot be observed,...
What is it you would hope to observe in the past with your hypothetical time machine that would be proof of evolution. Do you expect to see a monkey giving birth to a human? If so, you won't see it because that's not how evolution works
Instead, what you'd be better off doing is using your time machien to take time lapse photography of the diversification of populations, and following them as those populations spread out .
But we already have *some* evidence of just that in the fossil record. Unfortunately, its mostly skeletal which is only the tip of the iceberg.
My point is, yuo can continue to observe evolution today if you want, and you don't even need a time machine, because you're already moving through time. But what you shoudl do now, is do what nature is already doing, but on a more thorough scale. Take a detailed picture of every animal on earth from now through the end of time. Do this for say, a million years, and you'll start to see some differences between some animals now and their counterparts in the future.
Its not that "macroevolution" can't be observed, its just that it occurs on such a vast and lengthy scale, no one is patient enough to watch it.
Well, as far as I know in most of the USA it's against the law not to wear clothes in public, and indoctrinating kids to obey laws makes a fair bit of sense to me.
And why do we have the law?
Focusing on your second paragraph, and making sure that "whatver" does not necessarily equal "Christian" makes your argument difficult (for me, at least) to understand. For example, if I say that a good reason for saying someone is not a "true Slashdot poster" is that they have never posted to Slashdot (even though they are a "self-proclaimed Slashdot poster"), then I will agree that there are people who I accept as a "true Slashdot poster" who might have bad reasons for claiming that I'm not a "true Slashdot poster", but I do not see (to answer your question) that there "is also a good reason for someone [I] accept as a 'true [Slashdot Poster]' to deny that [I am] a 'true [Slashdot Poster]'". Please explain how you see this.
The key word, of course, is "good" (as in "good reason"). Note, that I am not denying that there are several bad reasons to say that someone is not a "true Christian" (since I suspect that when "whatever" = "Christian" is the main contention here, and not my actual logic!). However, it seems clear to me that "not accepting Christ as his/her savior" is a good reason to say someone is not a "true Christian". Well, OK, maybe not. But only because it's arguably not our responsibility to say who is and who is not a "true Christian". Nevertheless, I don't see that the more general concept of someone actually being a "true Christian" is philosophically bankrupt, even if it is a bit "overdrawn" (if you'll pardon the banking analogy), by millions of people using bad reasons for making such a distinction.
You'll note that I've also said that "true Christians" do in fact commit "un-Christian acts", such as Peter denying Christ 3 times before the rooster crowed.
P.S. Some people saying other people aren't Christians doesn't work for me, either, in case I hadn't already made that clear.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
This is such a great idea on how to stop spam on the internet. Thought the interview was great and his ideas right on.
Have a look at A Statistical Approach to the Spam Problem which as far as I can tell describes the Bogofilter approach. Which seems to be
A lot of the debate seem to on precisely what we mean by Bayesian. It true to say that Bogofilter is not a Naive Bayes classifier, but it does use techniques of Bayesian inference.
There are four sorts of people in the world: fools, lunatics, idiots and morons. - Umberto Eco, Foucaut's pendulum.
Thank you, you're very kind. I'll stop by in #GNU on freenode.
Digital Citizen
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't it be impossible for the GPLv3 to prevent dual-licencing? All that's happening, after all, is the copyright holder granting additional rights above and beyond what the GPL gives, to selected parties, for a fee. No licence can work against the wishes of the copyright holder like that.
believing in an untestable book about a mythical Carpenter and his dad "The Wizard" makes so much more sence..
... what ever floats your boat.
but hey
It's hardly convincing to speculate on what a license will say and then contemplate the outcome of scenarios from one's own speculation. I prefer to review the GPLs we have available to us here and now and then give the new GPL the same consideration. This requires waiting for the new GPL to be published.
Digital Citizen