It's probably well worth the risk and the likely consquences of ignoring the oddball possibility like this to ensure that the system in general isn't tragically broken. What "oddball possibility" are you referring to? The possibility that someone other than a multinational corporation might have a good idea? The possibility that a corporation would screw someone over and take their unpatented idea? What exactly are you saying?
If the poor guy can't bring the idea to market, he shouldn't be in a position to prevent others. If he comes up with the idea, he should still be able to patent it, and then he could sell it to someone that can implement it. Pricing him out of being able to patent it just ensure that he won't bother even publishing the idea in the first place, or even telling anyone about it since they'll probably just screw him over on it. Now I do think that if you own a patent, then you should have to bring a working implementation to market within a reasonable amount of time in order to keep that patent. If not, you're just obstructing progress.
That many people believe in creationism and ID is a FACT; that merely mentioning that FACT gets so many people's undies in a bind is the exact reason people like Stein should continue pushing the issue and FIRE should continue prosecuting cases against people who stifle free speech. That FACT has absolutely nothing to do with science, and therefore doesn't belong in scientific discussion. You can discuss it all day long in a philosophical or religious forum and it's perfectly fine. Why do ID proponents keep pushing for it to be treated as science?
The fact that people get all bent out of shape merely by hearing the words "intelligent design" is exactly the problem. I think that many people would like to see ID kept completely out because their afraid that if they open the door to it, it will make it easier for some school board to decide to insert a little more and a little more. I can understand that concern. I don't think that inserting any statement about ID is really necessary. It is something that really is a religious belief and should be explained in a forum that is concerned with religion. If we insert that bit about ID, then should we insert information about the beliefs of other religions concerning creation as well?
We commonly depict the Earth as moving around Sol, but that's merely a frame of reference -- Sol could be just as accurately described as orbiting Earth. Except that it really can't be accurately described that way. I'll grant that there was more to the persecution of Galileo than just his scientific theories. I think the point stands though that it wasn't that his theories were considered to be kookdom, but that his writings were critical, possibly even mocking, of the church. That's what made the church bring the hammer down on him.
The simple truth is unless India and China start cutting it really doesn't matter what the US and the EU does at this point. Sure it matters. It's just that it won't happen unless everyone commits to it because it is economically disadvantageous for those countries that commit to it unless all others commit to it as well. That's just the simplest initial issue. The other problems that start coming up after getting past that just make my head hurt to think about.
Actaully, one of the top scientists at NASA made a public statement that he didn't believe that the current climate changes were caused by human activity. First, he wasn't a scientist. He was an engineer turned administrator. Second, the quote that got him all the criticism was this:
"I guess I would ask which human beings - where and when - are to be accorded the privilege of deciding that this particular climate that we have right here today, right now is the best climate for all other human beings. I think that's a rather arrogant position for people to take." Right before that, he said this, which seems to contradict what you're claiming he said:
"I'm also aware of recent findings that appear to have nailed down -- pretty well nailed down the conclusion that much of that is manmade. Whether that is a long term concern or not, I can't say."
As the previous poster pointed out, you could believe many things until you're proven wrong. If abiogenesis is eventually proven to be possible, I wonder what new belief you will grab onto in order to maintain your belief in God. Not that I think it's really necessary to do so. Many Christians feel that they must defend their belief in God against science. I don't find spirituality and science to be compatible or mutually exclusive. You can believe in God (or any other supernatural entity) and simply attribute science to him without any problem. The problem comes with dogmatic religion that is sometimes contradicted by science and has to either be explained another way, or the science must be rejected in order to maintain faith. Sad.
In any event there is no evidence for abiogeneis, and yet it is peddled as science. It is science, and continues to be the subject of research. It is not peddled as fact, but is a theory that some scientists are working to prove or disprove. You'll have to forgive the scientific community for not throwing their hands up and declaring that God must exist because evidence of the possibility of abiogenesis hasn't fallen into our laps yet.
Its really a choice isn't it: Do you believe Christ is who he claimed to be or do you believe he was a liar? You say that as if there aren't many other choices available besides those. People have attributed things they didn't understand to all sorts of deities or other supernatural causes throughout human history, even up to today. Yet we're supposed to believe that the writers of that particular story 2000 years ago were completely accurate. Yeah. That's just so much more believable than a scientific theory. At least the theory can be changed as needed and doesn't require me to commit myself to its proliferation and defense.
Er, no. Michael Behe, the leading proponent of Intelligent Design, is an evolutionist who is on record as believing that the earth is four billion years old. Not exactly a literal interpretation is it? Then the theological debate may be more complicated than I thought it was, but then I haven't had any desire to get into that debate. It doesn't change the fact that ID is not a scientific theory, and should not be treated as such.
And please stop with the Moore-bashing, it's getting tiresome. So are his movies, but he doesn't seem to be stopping. That said, I agree with the rest of your post:)
But what Stein points out is that debate gets stifled instead of debated. I think he picked a poor subject as an example, but that sort of behavior in academia certainly isn't limited to ID, as a perusal of FIRE's website [thefire.org] should show. We're talking about scientific debate, and there is no scientific debate about ID. It's not a scientific theory, therefore there can be no scientific debate. It doesn't belong in the classroom, it belongs in the church. It's a theological debate between people who take the Genesis story literally and those who take it as a metaphor.
Heliocentrism (comparable to ID not in a religious sense, but in the sense that it was outside the mainstream in the time of Copernicus, Galileo, et al, and therefore languished in "kookdom") vs. geocentrism. And with that sentence you basically explained why your example is not a good one. That was an example of science being suppressed in favor of religion, not an example of one scientific theory being consigned to "kookdom" by scientists and later being proven valid. There probably are examples of that, but I haven't seen one here yet.
If organizations like the BBC and CNN aren't willing to support their reporters, then they don't deserve to be called news agencies. I wonder if these cases were just the reporters getting cold feet, or if they actually went up the chain to see if they would be supported. After all, these aren't scientists that are calling them out, they're activists. Activists are often misguided and spend so much time trying to drill a certain set of beliefs into people that they are unable to see past their own propaganda and adapt to changing information and understanding of that information.
on why & how they changed the vote can be found at their website: Which was just a very long-winded way of saying that the decision had been made long ago and they just had to come up with some weasely way to push it through regardless of all the comments that weren't addressed satisfactorily, the problems with the proposed standard, and what the experts said about it.
What if I sell coffee out of my kitchen window ? Could I then claim to be an Internet Cafe, and not liable for my customer's actions ? Or is this yet another right which only companies over a certain size rather than real human beings have ? It's not that easy. Do you have a business license? Are you in an area zoned for commercial restaurant businesses? Has the health inspector come by? etc..
Hmm. So you're saying that me sharing my wifi with my neighbors is irresponsible? I thought it was called "being nice". Technically, it's probably called "violating your TOS", but the penalty for that is a lot less steep than copyright infringement.
Granted, I don't think that any ISP should ever offer unlimited service, as it is impossible for them to provide. But saying that just because they don't specifically say you have a limit, doesn't mean you can do whatever you want with their network. Actually, that's pretty much exactly what it means. If they can't provide unlimited bandwidth, then they shouldn't say they can. It's not up to the customer to guess at what they are actually capable of providing. If they want to provide me with some specific level of service or bandwidth cap, then they should put that in big bold letters on their ads instead of "UNLIMITED". Makes sense don't it? Quit trying to blame the customers for using as much bandwidth as they like when that is what they were offered.
that is the lamest car analogy EVER Not by a long shot. Actually, a speed governor on a car that is capable of much higher speeds is a very apt analogy in this case. Better than most other analogies I've seen.
If I purchase an "unlimited" plan at 10mb's, I expect unlimited usage of that 10 mb like because well shit thats what I'm paying for isn't it? That's the issue isn't it? The question is did you actually purchase an "unlimited" plan, or did you purchased an "unlimited*" plan? There is a difference.
Why are these companies so scared to just be upfront with people who want to download this much??? Because then they can't advertise their basic service plans as "UNLIMITED INTARWEBZ!!11!!1 YOU CAN'T HANDLE OUR EXTREEEMMM SPEEEEDZ!!!!!!". Not that any of that really matters to my grandma who just checks her email and the weather, and maybe gets a little crazy once in a while and emails a picture...
I blame AOL and all the overage charges people got back in the day for making people averse to subscribing to any ISP that isn't unlimited.
Actually, it wouldn't be legal. Have you heard of the Berne Convention? Well, they're signatories to that, and technically a treaty signed into law by a government is the same as a local law. Violating the Berne Convention would wreak absolute havoc on their economic relations. They wouldn't necessarily be violating the convention by revoking a copyright. IIRC, the convention just requires them to apply their own copyright laws to foreign copyrights as well. If British copyright law allows for the revocation then it should still be legal. There may be other ways it could be legally done as well, but I'd have to do some research to find out.
First of all, copyright, like any other form of property right, is a moral right upheld by legislation. It's hardly a moral right. It's simply a compromise between the public and those who create new works in an effort to encourage such creations. They get a temporary right to exclusively duplicate and distribute those works in exchange for them being added to the public domain at the end of that period. That the copyright industry has grossly perverted that compromise is the real breach of morality.
You say:
Of course the open source community will reject that and refuse to add it! Thereby making their non-corrupted form of ODF non-ISO standard and thereby unusable by governments and schools that require a standard!:) and then...
Meanwhile those schools and governments will adopt the next version of MS Office because it will be the only thing to support "OOXML" which is being pushed upon them by marketing as an ISO standard - even if it isn't since it's just a -version- of it that isn't actually compatible with the real ISO-OOXML. So, Microsoft will basically do the same thing that the open source community is doing, namely refusing to implement the standard. Yet they will somehow be acceptable? If that's the case, the the ISO is completely pointless. I almost hope it comes to that, as I would like to see them face some serious consequences for this debacle.
Besides, even if they have access to it, they surely didn't get the right to open-source it. Not legally nor morally, even for open-source advocates. Given that copyright is a legal right granted by legislation, it could certainly be revoked by legislation as well, which would be both legal and moral if the corporation was violating the law, which they have determined that MS has been doing, repeatedly.
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possibility like this to ensure that the system in general isn't tragically broken. What "oddball possibility" are you referring to? The possibility that someone other than a multinational corporation might have a good idea? The possibility that a corporation would screw someone over and take their unpatented idea? What exactly are you saying?
As the previous poster pointed out, you could believe many things until you're proven wrong. If abiogenesis is eventually proven to be possible, I wonder what new belief you will grab onto in order to maintain your belief in God. Not that I think it's really necessary to do so. Many Christians feel that they must defend their belief in God against science. I don't find spirituality and science to be compatible or mutually exclusive. You can believe in God (or any other supernatural entity) and simply attribute science to him without any problem. The problem comes with dogmatic religion that is sometimes contradicted by science and has to either be explained another way, or the science must be rejected in order to maintain faith. Sad.
If organizations like the BBC and CNN aren't willing to support their reporters, then they don't deserve to be called news agencies. I wonder if these cases were just the reporters getting cold feet, or if they actually went up the chain to see if they would be supported. After all, these aren't scientists that are calling them out, they're activists. Activists are often misguided and spend so much time trying to drill a certain set of beliefs into people that they are unable to see past their own propaganda and adapt to changing information and understanding of that information.
that is the lamest car analogy EVER Not by a long shot. Actually, a speed governor on a car that is capable of much higher speeds is a very apt analogy in this case. Better than most other analogies I've seen.
I blame AOL and all the overage charges people got back in the day for making people averse to subscribing to any ISP that isn't unlimited.