Except we don't have an out of control government.
A content-free statement if there ever was one. Under any regime, no matter how oppressive, there will always be someone who will claim it's not "out of control" (yet), or that the electoral process still has the power to reform the system.
Your entire post could be replaced by two words: People forget.
More Libertarian nonsense. When I'm out of town and don't know the area, and my car nearly dies running out of gas, I really don't have a choice about what the next gas station is.
What Google should be doing is improving the speed and stability of the entire Android OS, most critically the Dalvik virtual machine. For crying out loud they just enabled JIT on 2.2.
I wouldn't hold my breath. It's 2010, and they just now figured out that memset() is supposed to be able to write values other than zero.
Is it reasonable for every climate change denier on the planet to expect a council of scientists to sit down and walk them through the evidence and entertain a debate on its merits?
Yes, absolutely, considering that we all have to participate in whatever solutions are arrived at. Fortunately, scientists can, and have, walked us through the evidence in newspapers, magazines, books, TV, and Internet media. I can even email a climatologist at the local university and ask for clarification on anything I don't understand. If he tells me to STFU and accept what he's saying on faith, nobody would blame me for ignoring him, criticizing him, or laughing at him.
Your whole attempt at comparing scientific uncertainty to religious faith is a non-starter. You wouldn't be very accepting of global warming theories, either, if the only way you'd heard about them was from your neighbor Bob who heard it in a lecture last Sunday by some guy who knows nothing about climatology.
Science and religion are two different philosophies that do not generally follow each other's rules...:)
The problem is, people hold priests to one standard of evidence and science teachers to another. All of civilization suffers when we indulge in superstition.
In any case my personal christian belief almost exactly matches what he said about science
Really? Are you saying that practically every other page in the Bible, from the Covenant of the Rainbow to the prophecies of Revelation, doesn't contain a specific promise?
Theistic religions are nothing but collections of specific promises and threats that no visible entity can be held accountable for.
The problem is, people can and have made up pretty much anything. Someone who believes what someone else says about a God who hasn't been heard from for 2,000 years is arguably foolish, if not outright mentally ill.
Well, the problem with your argument is that most religions maintain that God did come down and explain himself, or something along those lines. He just doesn't do it every other Tuesday.
How is that a problem with my argument? Nobody knows anything about God that they didn't hear from other people. Because God gave us a brain that's prone to delusions, hallucinations, and deception of the self and others, it's reasonable for us to demand that he appear personally to each and every one of us he'd like to address.
How will they feel when their offspring on a newly minted planet dismiss them as the man-in-the sky?
Assuming that, like God, I refused to show up in person to explain myself, I'd be downright disappointed if my creatures worshiped me and made up all kinds of wild stories about what I did, when I did it, and what I expect of them.
It would mean I didn't get all the bugs out of my creatures' AI routines before I released them.
Religion, and the idea of God in general, springs from the basic notion that the universe owes you something. Eternal life, accountability, a reason to live, the "answers."
Science, on the other hand, starts from the premise that whatever secrets Mother Nature holds will have to be earned through hard work. There are no promises of results and no guarantees that understanding will ever be reached.
So is it any wonder that so many people take the easy way out and choose faith instead?
So, as a Christian, I am supposed to take responsibility for everyone who calls themselves a Christian (or even was ever associated with a Christian Church), but you as an atheist only have to take responsibility for those who share your particular take on atheism (as defined by you)?
When you try to tar-and-feather all atheists with the brush of Stalin and Mao, yes, you do have to take that responsibility.
You can avoid having to take that responsibility by not making absurd generalizations against a vast group of people who have absolutely nothing in common except for a lack of belief in god(s).
While the behavior during the Crusades and the Inquisition was horrific, it doesn't hold a candle to the immoral actions of 20th Century atheists
Hitler was, at least nominally, a Catholic. He couldn't possibly have accomplished what he did without the implicit (and sometimes explicit) support of the Church.
Communism is just another exploit for the same mental security flaw that enables organized religion. The usual Communist suspects like Stalin, Mao, and the Kim family were not atheists, but personality cultists. They didn't want to banish the idea of God, they wanted to take over the job.
Go try to sell atheism in North Korean, and see how well it goes over.
What is the basis for morality without a Higher Power? Why should I follow your morals if the physical is all there is?
Why doesn't your dog kill and eat your family the moment your back is turned?
Answer: What religious people call "morality" is nothing in the world but social instinct. Your dog doesn't need an invisible sky fairy to get along in the world, and neither do you.
It gets old hearing people repeat the bridge to nowhere myths born of political agendas and ignorance.
Translation: "Waaah. I thought it was a good idea to move to Bumfuck, Alaska and buy a house 30 miles from my place of employment, and now you ignorant libruls in New York City won't give me a share of your tax money so I can spend less time sitting in traffic. Waaah"
However, they are about the only thing I think deserves patents in the field of computing. Everything else is just a rehash of ideas first implemented in the 1960s.
And compression algorithms are different from pure mathematics, how...?
In a lot of companies, if you aren't directly involved on the project, you probably wouldn't even know of its existence
It's worse than that at Apple. For all but the top-level engineers, working on an iPhone project is like doing a senior-year EE project at the University of Pyongyang. The engineers aren't given assignments like "Implement Bluetooth support for the iPhone HD." They're told "Interface a Bluetooth transceiver chip with this logic bus, this power bus, and this antenna T/R switch, and never mind what it's for."
The idea that a tier-1 support line in Bangalore would know anything about a missing prototype is laughable.
If you abolish software patents, it makes it very difficult for companies to realistically spend millions on development of new concepts and ideas when someone can then just take the ground breaking UI or process etc
And yet almost all of the software on your PC was written by people who didn't either rely on patent protection for their ideas, or pay others for the use of theirs.
but as of now, buying apple kit indicates that you don't care about openness, freedom and everything that is good about computing. it is a device to mindlessly and expensively consume big media. revolting, just like the people who buy it.
Do you also stand outside Best Buy, haranguing anyone who walks out with a new TV? If not, you're being inconsistent.
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Where exactly does BP's unlimited supply of dollars come from?
Several thousand feet underground, mostly.
Except we don't have an out of control government.
A content-free statement if there ever was one. Under any regime, no matter how oppressive, there will always be someone who will claim it's not "out of control" (yet), or that the electoral process still has the power to reform the system.
Your entire post could be replaced by two words: People forget.
Of course, "poor" people would pay exactly $0 worth of tax under any flat-tax plan I'm familiar with. But don't let that stop you; rant on.
More Libertarian nonsense. When I'm out of town and don't know the area, and my car nearly dies running out of gas, I really don't have a choice about what the next gas station is.
Um...
Never mind, I just don't know what to say.
What Google should be doing is improving the speed and stability of the entire Android OS, most critically the Dalvik virtual machine. For crying out loud they just enabled JIT on 2.2.
I wouldn't hold my breath. It's 2010, and they just now figured out that memset() is supposed to be able to write values other than zero.
Is it reasonable for every climate change denier on the planet to expect a council of scientists to sit down and walk them through the evidence and entertain a debate on its merits?
Yes, absolutely, considering that we all have to participate in whatever solutions are arrived at. Fortunately, scientists can, and have, walked us through the evidence in newspapers, magazines, books, TV, and Internet media. I can even email a climatologist at the local university and ask for clarification on anything I don't understand. If he tells me to STFU and accept what he's saying on faith, nobody would blame me for ignoring him, criticizing him, or laughing at him.
Your whole attempt at comparing scientific uncertainty to religious faith is a non-starter. You wouldn't be very accepting of global warming theories, either, if the only way you'd heard about them was from your neighbor Bob who heard it in a lecture last Sunday by some guy who knows nothing about climatology.
Science and religion are two different philosophies that do not generally follow each other's rules... :)
The problem is, people hold priests to one standard of evidence and science teachers to another. All of civilization suffers when we indulge in superstition.
In any case my personal christian belief almost exactly matches what he said about science
Really? Are you saying that practically every other page in the Bible, from the Covenant of the Rainbow to the prophecies of Revelation, doesn't contain a specific promise?
Theistic religions are nothing but collections of specific promises and threats that no visible entity can be held accountable for.
The problem is, people can and have made up pretty much anything. Someone who believes what someone else says about a God who hasn't been heard from for 2,000 years is arguably foolish, if not outright mentally ill.
Well, the problem with your argument is that most religions maintain that God did come down and explain himself, or something along those lines. He just doesn't do it every other Tuesday.
How is that a problem with my argument? Nobody knows anything about God that they didn't hear from other people. Because God gave us a brain that's prone to delusions, hallucinations, and deception of the self and others, it's reasonable for us to demand that he appear personally to each and every one of us he'd like to address.
How will they feel when their offspring on a newly minted planet dismiss them as the man-in-the sky?
Assuming that, like God, I refused to show up in person to explain myself, I'd be downright disappointed if my creatures worshiped me and made up all kinds of wild stories about what I did, when I did it, and what I expect of them.
It would mean I didn't get all the bugs out of my creatures' AI routines before I released them.
... more like an entitlement mindset.
Religion, and the idea of God in general, springs from the basic notion that the universe owes you something. Eternal life, accountability, a reason to live, the "answers."
Science, on the other hand, starts from the premise that whatever secrets Mother Nature holds will have to be earned through hard work. There are no promises of results and no guarantees that understanding will ever be reached.
So is it any wonder that so many people take the easy way out and choose faith instead?
Haven't you seen Flash of Genius about the invention of windshield wipers?
Yes. You should not get $20 million dollars for being the first person to think "Gee, I wish my windshield wipers had more speeds."
With a 4 out of 5 success result, though I really do wonder what happened when it didn't work.
My understanding is that this question will be answered in a 2 1/2-hour special report on ABC tonight.
...when Hitler's (and many other Nazi's) writings were very contemptuous of Christianity.
Would that include the writing on every Wehrmacht soldier's belt buckle ("Gott Mit Uns")?
So, as a Christian, I am supposed to take responsibility for everyone who calls themselves a Christian (or even was ever associated with a Christian Church), but you as an atheist only have to take responsibility for those who share your particular take on atheism (as defined by you)?
When you try to tar-and-feather all atheists with the brush of Stalin and Mao, yes, you do have to take that responsibility.
You can avoid having to take that responsibility by not making absurd generalizations against a vast group of people who have absolutely nothing in common except for a lack of belief in god(s).
While the behavior during the Crusades and the Inquisition was horrific, it doesn't hold a candle to the immoral actions of 20th Century atheists
Hitler was, at least nominally, a Catholic. He couldn't possibly have accomplished what he did without the implicit (and sometimes explicit) support of the Church.
Communism is just another exploit for the same mental security flaw that enables organized religion. The usual Communist suspects like Stalin, Mao, and the Kim family were not atheists, but personality cultists. They didn't want to banish the idea of God, they wanted to take over the job.
Go try to sell atheism in North Korean, and see how well it goes over.
Why should the Columbine killers not have done what they did?
Gee, I dunno. Maybe because their actions were guaranteed to end in death or imprisonment?
What is the basis for morality without a Higher Power? Why should I follow your morals if the physical is all there is?
Why doesn't your dog kill and eat your family the moment your back is turned?
Answer: What religious people call "morality" is nothing in the world but social instinct. Your dog doesn't need an invisible sky fairy to get along in the world, and neither do you.
It gets old hearing people repeat the bridge to nowhere myths born of political agendas and ignorance.
Translation: "Waaah. I thought it was a good idea to move to Bumfuck, Alaska and buy a house 30 miles from my place of employment, and now you ignorant libruls in New York City won't give me a share of your tax money so I can spend less time sitting in traffic. Waaah"
However, they are about the only thing I think deserves patents in the field of computing. Everything else is just a rehash of ideas first implemented in the 1960s.
And compression algorithms are different from pure mathematics, how...?
In a lot of companies, if you aren't directly involved on the project, you probably wouldn't even know of its existence
It's worse than that at Apple. For all but the top-level engineers, working on an iPhone project is like doing a senior-year EE project at the University of Pyongyang. The engineers aren't given assignments like "Implement Bluetooth support for the iPhone HD." They're told "Interface a Bluetooth transceiver chip with this logic bus, this power bus, and this antenna T/R switch, and never mind what it's for."
The idea that a tier-1 support line in Bangalore would know anything about a missing prototype is laughable.
If you abolish software patents, it makes it very difficult for companies to realistically spend millions on development of new concepts and ideas when someone can then just take the ground breaking UI or process etc
And yet almost all of the software on your PC was written by people who didn't either rely on patent protection for their ideas, or pay others for the use of theirs.
OK, I'll read The Jungle if you'll read The Gulag Archipelago.
Gee. That really proved a lot, didn't it?
As a content creator, for me, the Ipad just doesn't cut it.
As a plumber, I can tell you that the iPad's not very useful for that, either.
Did you have a point?
but as of now, buying apple kit indicates that you don't care about openness, freedom and everything that is good about computing. it is a device to mindlessly and expensively consume big media. revolting, just like the people who buy it.
Do you also stand outside Best Buy, haranguing anyone who walks out with a new TV? If not, you're being inconsistent.