>I can imagine how it would start out: > >::Lights are dimmed.:: > > (Booming voice) "In the beginning, >there was darkness..."
How about: There's a theory called evolution which most scientists today accept . . . (explanation of evolution). It still has some flaws however such as (list flaws), and not everyone believes in it."
I was responding to his attitude that it should be kept private. I didn't mean to insinuate that he thought religion should be wiped out. I was trying to make the point that we allow practicing it in public for a reason, forbidding that tends to be a sign of autocratic governments.
My point was that the distinction between law and theory is blury. Most teachers if hard pressed will tell you that gravitation is in fact just another theory.
Why not educate yourself a little? I've already visited this site, as well as many others like it. I wasn't satisfied.
During high school I had a science class where (because we were stuck with a long term sub most of the semester) we basically ended up being told to go pick a topic and write a paper on it. And that was what we did for most of the semester. I went into that paper a Christian who believed in evolution, and was mildly interested in the idea of creationism. It was a difficult paper because 99.9% of the "research" in support of creationism isn't. Again and again I read papers where Christians made themselves out to be idiots. And the books I read on evolution didn't seem to add up. There were too many holes. But the arguements by creationists that I found were all crap. And then I talked to a friend. And watched in amazement as he produced evidence against any arguement I could make for evolution (keep in mind that at that point I'd been through a pile of books on evolution, as well as several on creationism). At that point I began to believe in creationism.
What do you mean by "Science does NOT think. Science uses a method to determine truths under that method."? That sounds more like a description of logic than science to me. Except logic has problems in the real world. You have to start somewhere, you can't prove everything.
On the other hand Revelation is presented as a vision. Genesis as history. In addition the entire tone of Revelation is symbolic, whereas Genesis obviously intends to record history.
I wish you wouldn't shout, I'm not attempting to insult you. This is just my personal experience. I've been in groups that were told they couldn't meet on school grounds because they were Christian, although according to our school system any group of students that wants to meet must be allowed to. This was because administrators were afraid of being accused of supporting religion. I never heard of any non-religious groups having this problem in our school system.
Again, all I want from schools is equal treatment. I want them to respect my right to my beliefs. Likewise I expect them to encourage me to respect other's beliefs.
Personally I'm a creationist, and all I want is to not be insulted by teachers. I have no problem with evolution being taught in schools. I don't care if creationism is taught in schools. I object when stereotyping of any sort is taught in schools. Calling all creationists fools is stereotyping. Particularly as you haven't met a majority of creationists, and it's an area where a small group gives the rest a bad name.
All I want is for people to respect my right to my own beliefs, just as I respect theirs.
I'm tempted to reply to this comment with a random anecdote about a stupid athiest. It would be just as relevant. The fact that there are stupid Christians does not make all Christians stupid.
It is true that no theory can ever be proven, but I'd humbly submit that there's a lot more evidence in favor of gravity than evolution. In particular no one ever argues that there are inconsistencies with the theory of gravity.
This doesn't necessarily mean that evolution is wrong, simply that it's something which is a lot harder to back up.
What bothers me is that in the name of not promoting any religion all too often schools end up promoting atheism. Unfortunately I can't think of any fair way around this.
It's a difficult problem, that I wish I were smart enough to solve.
I find this comment rather offensive. Personally I'm a sophomore in college, strongly considering majoring in physics, and a creationist. I do not find these two to be incompatible. Yes, there are a lot of really stupid arguements for creationism, and a lot of overused ones. There are also many compelling ones for it.
I do not attempt to convince other people of creationism, I consider it their right to believe whatever they choose, just as I consider it my right to believe whatever I choose.
I don't care if creationism isn't taught in schools. I do object when the attitude you just exhibited is taught. I consider it perfectly possible to be a rational being and a creationist.
Personally I'm a creationist, but I have no problem whatsoever with evolution being taught in school. I only object when teachers make comments like "No one seriously believes in creationism anymore." As far as I'm concerned as long as they don't actively bash creationism teaching evolution is probably a good idea. It is the currently accepted theory according to most biologists. I have many problems with it scientifically, but as it is widely accepted I think that students should be exposed to it. Not exposing them to it is not preparing them for college or careers in the sciences.
Questioning should never be legislated against. It's impossible to really believe something without first questioning it.
It's that the major chipmakers stand to loose a lot of money. Currently they are set up to produce traditional chips. They have a tremendous advantage over anyone entering the market, since they already have equipment, expertise, etc. If the way chips are made changes dramatically, what's to stop a little upstart, that realizes the coming change early on, from becoming serious competition for them?
And it would do us all a lot of good to recognize that. We keep talking about them as though they don't really exist, and our words can't hurt them. That's not true, they read and comment on these postings too. And even if you feel that someone is egotistical, you probably wouldn't say it to their face, in public, in front of 50 people. Which is exactly what's happening here.
You'd think that subject is self-obvious, but it doesn't seem to be.
Currently there is a very diverse group of people leading the (I have no good way to lump these without offending somebody) open source/free software movement. That's a good thing. It means they balance out each others opinions. No one knows precisely why open source/free software succeeds. Any one leader is probably at least partially wrong.
On the other hand the constant fighting is a real problem. It doesn't come across well to the mainstream world when our leaders keep acting like children. It's particularly sad to me since I like (I suspect) many people respect them all, and hate to see them make fools of themselves.
I disagree with many of ESR's comments about RMS because I symathize with RMS's position. He's devoted himself completely to a movement that as it came to fruitation (in his eyes) abandoned him. When he tried to remind people of what he had contributed (don't try to villanize this - everyone wants credit, particularly when they've worked hard) he was rejected more and more. Now he gets to read comments like "The Free Software Foundation has been a millstone around our necks." I consider that unbelievably cruel. Do I entirely agree with RMS? No. But I think he should be respected for his contributions, and instead I often see my friends mock him.
In contrast, I also understand ESR's problems with RMS. Alienating companies is a bad idea. At least for now while the movement is still growing things like Mozilla need to be encouraged. And while KDE is not perfect it's a very nice desktop, particularly for newbies, and QT's license will not destroy the free software movement. It may not help it tremendously, but when windows users who are afraid of UNIX see KDE their eyes light up. That advances open source/free software tremendously. If GNOME turns into as good a desktop, with better licesing that's great too, and all the better for being entirely free, but the KDE developers should certainly not be condemed.
I hesitate to even mention Bruce and ESR. I will anyway because I think it's very important, but I'll ask you both not to respond if all you plan to say is "he started it" or "I'm not going to forgive him" or "he's not cooperating". Again, criticism is fine, but insults don't help anything. I think open criticism of events in the open source/free software community is very important, but it needs to be done with consideration for everyone else invovled, and the recognition that no one is intentionally trying to harm the movement. And it needs to be accepted gracefully. Which is never easy to do. But a responce that says I disagree, here's why, without also coming across as trying to discredit the author is the only thing likely to lead to intelligent discussion, rather than flame wars. The thing that really bothers me about the entire incident with the Apple licence is that it has to have left Apple with a bad taste in their mouth. A calmer responce from Bruce, then answered without anger by Eric would probably not have lead to this.
Basically this (now ridiculously long) ramble amounts to: if you're going to lead make sure you recognize that the open source/free software movement is a diverse group (heck, I can't even think of a name for it that doesn't offend somebody) with diverse leaders. Who are all trying to do what is best. And who are all human. And who all have tempers. If everyone involved would respect these facts, and each other, we'd make a lot better impression on the outside world.
P.S.: And the words "I'm sorry", while never pleasant, haven't been known to kill anyone, and usually lead to a similar responce.
The idea of giving back to the community this way was great, it's really to bad it backfired like it did. Let's hope that VA is also willing to try, and that it goes better for them.
If by RT/Linux you're refering to the same thing that I am either you've gotten lucky, or I've been unlucky. I had the thing fall apart when I tried out the first sample app. (This may have had to do with the fact that it was a dual-processor machine, but still). It worked fine, but when I tried to stop it one processor stopped working right until I rebooted. It's always exciting getting 30 second text lag sitting at the console. I know that this is horribly off topic, but I was curious what luck other people had had with RT/Linux.
I think this very much depends on the project. With open BSD tight control is important. An awful lot of people go "oh look I found a cool new way to make foo more secure" and actually end up making things worse instead. This happens frequently with patches on bugtraq. Linux is trying to grow rapidly, and support a lot of options and platforms. This requires a more open development model. More people are needed to make it work. In addition it's accepted in linux to include drivers that may or may not be stable. When you want to supprt cutting edge hardware this is a good idea. You might as well take drivers from anybody with functional drivers. If you're worried about security you probably don't want to do that. You want to make sure they're safe before their ever included.
Netscape probably needs tight control at least until version 1 of mozilla is released. It was suffering from bloat, and flakiness, and too many features. With no tight control everyone and their brother would have started adding little bits to it and only made things worse. Once the netscape code is better planned out and stable the development model may become more open.
I don't think that there's a magic formula for software development. What model works best depends very much on the project. Some software will probably never be developed in an open source environment (who's going to volunteer to help write statistical software for insurance companies for instance?)
Slashdot Mirror
What does that have to do with anything? Does your english book foretell micro-processors? Does that make it invalid?
>I can imagine how it would start out: ::Lights are dimmed.::
>
>
>
> (Booming voice) "In the beginning, >there was darkness..."
How about:
There's a theory called evolution which most scientists today accept . . . (explanation of evolution). It still has some flaws however such as (list flaws), and not everyone believes in it."
Was that so intolerable?
I was responding to his attitude that it should be kept private. I didn't mean to insinuate that he thought religion should be wiped out. I was trying to make the point that we allow practicing it in public for a reason, forbidding that tends to be a sign of autocratic governments.
My point was that the distinction between law and theory is blury. Most teachers if hard pressed will tell you that gravitation is in fact just another theory.
Faith is "being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see." Belief on the other hand has intelectual basises.
I have faith in God, I believe in creationism.
Why not educate yourself a little?
I've already visited this site, as well as many others like it. I wasn't satisfied.
During high school I had a science class where (because we were stuck with a long term sub most of the semester) we basically ended up being told to go pick a topic and write a paper on it. And that was what we did for most of the semester.
I went into that paper a Christian who believed in evolution, and was mildly interested in the idea of creationism. It was a difficult paper because 99.9% of the "research" in support of creationism isn't. Again and again I read papers where Christians made themselves out to be idiots. And the books I read on evolution didn't seem to add up. There were too many holes. But the arguements by creationists that I found were all crap. And then I talked to a friend. And watched in amazement as he produced evidence against any arguement I could make for evolution (keep in mind that at that point I'd been through a pile of books on evolution, as well as several on creationism). At that point I began to believe in creationism.
What do you mean by "Science does NOT think. Science uses a method to determine truths under that method."? That sounds more like a description of logic than science to me. Except logic has problems in the real world. You have to start somewhere, you can't prove everything.
I've seen textbooks refer to the law of evolution as well. The distinction between a theory and a law in science is fuzzy.
On the other hand Revelation is presented as a vision. Genesis as history. In addition the entire tone of Revelation is symbolic, whereas Genesis obviously intends to record history.
That was the view the USSR took when trying to wipe out all organized religion. People could be arrested for sharing their beliefs with others.
In this country we have something called freedom of expression.
I wish you wouldn't shout, I'm not attempting to insult you. This is just my personal experience. I've been in groups that were told they couldn't meet on school grounds because they were Christian, although according to our school system any group of students that wants to meet must be allowed to. This was because administrators were afraid of being accused of supporting religion. I never heard of any non-religious groups having this problem in our school system.
Again, all I want from schools is equal treatment. I want them to respect my right to my beliefs. Likewise I expect them to encourage me to respect other's beliefs.
Personally I'm a creationist, and all I want is to not be insulted by teachers. I have no problem with evolution being taught in schools. I don't care if creationism is taught in schools. I object when stereotyping of any sort is taught in schools. Calling all creationists fools is stereotyping. Particularly as you haven't met a majority of creationists, and it's an area where a small group gives the rest a bad name.
All I want is for people to respect my right to my own beliefs, just as I respect theirs.
I'm tempted to reply to this comment with a random anecdote about a stupid athiest. It would be just as relevant.
The fact that there are stupid Christians does not make all Christians stupid.
It is true that no theory can ever be proven, but I'd humbly submit that there's a lot more evidence in favor of gravity than evolution. In particular no one ever argues that there are inconsistencies with the theory of gravity.
This doesn't necessarily mean that evolution is wrong, simply that it's something which is a lot harder to back up.
Just my $.02
What bothers me is that in the name of not promoting any religion all too often schools end up promoting atheism. Unfortunately I can't think of any fair way around this.
It's a difficult problem, that I wish I were smart enough to solve.
I find this comment rather offensive. Personally I'm a sophomore in college, strongly considering majoring in physics, and a creationist. I do not find these two to be incompatible. Yes, there are a lot of really stupid arguements for creationism, and a lot of overused ones. There are also many compelling ones for it.
I do not attempt to convince other people of creationism, I consider it their right to believe whatever they choose, just as I consider it my right to believe whatever I choose.
I don't care if creationism isn't taught in schools. I do object when the attitude you just exhibited is taught. I consider it perfectly possible to be a rational being and a creationist.
Personally I'm a creationist, but I have no problem whatsoever with evolution being taught in school. I only object when teachers make comments like "No one seriously believes in creationism anymore." As far as I'm concerned as long as they don't actively bash creationism teaching evolution is probably a good idea. It is the currently accepted theory according to most biologists. I have many problems with it scientifically, but as it is widely accepted I think that students should be exposed to it. Not exposing them to it is not preparing them for college or careers in the sciences.
Questioning should never be legislated against. It's impossible to really believe something without first questioning it.
It's that the major chipmakers stand to loose a lot of money. Currently they are set up to produce traditional chips. They have a tremendous advantage over anyone entering the market, since they already have equipment, expertise, etc. If the way chips are made changes dramatically, what's to stop a little upstart, that realizes the coming change early on, from becoming serious competition for them?
70% of these seem to be Tux with a brand name plastered on his stomach.
We ought to try for more unique logos than that.
Also, they seem to be missing the alpha penguin. Not that I ever cared for him myself - I think he looks like daffy duck peronally.
And it would do us all a lot of good to recognize that. We keep talking about them as though they don't really exist, and our words can't hurt them. That's not true, they read and comment on these postings too. And even if you feel that someone is egotistical, you probably wouldn't say it to their face, in public, in front of 50 people. Which is exactly what's happening here.
Just an observation.
You'd think that subject is self-obvious, but it doesn't seem to be.
Currently there is a very diverse group of people leading the (I have no good way to lump these without offending somebody) open source/free software movement. That's a good thing. It means they balance out each others opinions. No one knows precisely why open source/free software succeeds. Any one leader is probably at least partially wrong.
On the other hand the constant fighting is a real problem. It doesn't come across well to the mainstream world when our leaders keep acting like children. It's particularly sad to me since I like (I suspect) many people respect them all, and hate to see them make fools of themselves.
I disagree with many of ESR's comments about RMS because I symathize with RMS's position. He's devoted himself completely to a movement that as it came to fruitation (in his eyes) abandoned him. When he tried to remind people of what he had contributed (don't try to villanize this - everyone wants credit, particularly when they've worked hard) he was rejected more and more. Now he gets to read comments like "The Free Software Foundation has been a millstone around our necks." I consider that unbelievably cruel. Do I entirely agree with RMS? No. But I think he should be respected for his contributions, and instead I often see my friends mock him.
In contrast, I also understand ESR's problems with RMS. Alienating companies is a bad idea. At least for now while the movement is still growing things like Mozilla need to be encouraged. And while KDE is not perfect it's a very nice desktop, particularly for newbies, and QT's license will not destroy the free software movement. It may not help it tremendously, but when windows users who are afraid of UNIX see KDE their eyes light up. That advances open source/free software tremendously. If GNOME turns into as good a desktop, with better licesing that's great too, and all the better for being entirely free, but the KDE developers should certainly not be condemed.
I hesitate to even mention Bruce and ESR. I will anyway because I think it's very important, but I'll ask you both not to respond if all you plan to say is "he started it" or "I'm not going to forgive him" or "he's not cooperating". Again, criticism is fine, but insults don't help anything. I think open criticism of events in the open source/free software community is very important, but it needs to be done with consideration for everyone else invovled, and the recognition that no one is intentionally trying to harm the movement. And it needs to be accepted gracefully. Which is never easy to do. But a responce that says I disagree, here's why, without also coming across as trying to discredit the author is the only thing likely to lead to intelligent discussion, rather than flame wars. The thing that really bothers me about the entire incident with the Apple licence is that it has to have left Apple with a bad taste in their mouth. A calmer responce from Bruce, then answered without anger by Eric would probably not have lead to this.
Basically this (now ridiculously long) ramble amounts to: if you're going to lead make sure you recognize that the open source/free software movement is a diverse group (heck, I can't even think of a name for it that doesn't offend somebody) with diverse leaders. Who are all trying to do what is best. And who are all human. And who all have tempers. If everyone involved would respect these facts, and each other, we'd make a lot better impression on the outside world.
P.S.: And the words "I'm sorry", while never pleasant, haven't been known to kill anyone, and usually lead to a similar responce.
The idea of giving back to the community this way was great, it's really to bad it backfired like it did.
Let's hope that VA is also willing to try, and that it goes better for them.
Read The Cuckoo's Egg. Same story. Except the attackers were located in Germany. But I believe that they were being payed by the Soviet government.
If by RT/Linux you're refering to the same thing that I am either you've gotten lucky, or I've been unlucky. I had the thing fall apart when I tried out the first sample app. (This may have had to do with the fact that it was a dual-processor machine, but still). It worked fine, but when I tried to stop it one processor stopped working right until I rebooted. It's always exciting getting 30 second text lag sitting at the console.
I know that this is horribly off topic, but I was curious what luck other people had had with RT/Linux.
I think this very much depends on the project. With open BSD tight control is important. An awful lot of people go "oh look I found a cool new way to make foo more secure" and actually end up making things worse instead. This happens frequently with patches on bugtraq. Linux is trying to grow rapidly, and support a lot of options and platforms. This requires a more open development model. More people are needed to make it work. In addition it's accepted in linux to include drivers that may or may not be stable. When you want to supprt cutting edge hardware this is a good idea. You might as well take drivers from anybody with functional drivers. If you're worried about security you probably don't want to do that. You want to make sure they're safe before their ever included.
Netscape probably needs tight control at least until version 1 of mozilla is released. It was suffering from bloat, and flakiness, and too many features. With no tight control everyone and their brother would have started adding little bits to it and only made things worse. Once the netscape code is better planned out and stable the development model may become more open.
I don't think that there's a magic formula for software development. What model works best depends very much on the project. Some software will probably never be developed in an open source environment (who's going to volunteer to help write statistical software for insurance companies for instance?)