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).
The theory of evolution has also provided a suitable crop of ideas. Imagine a computer which starts empty except for a single small program. The program, called the Ancestor, is 80 bytes long and can do one thing, make copies of itself. Soon the limited memory is full with Ancestors all producing more copies so, to free up space, the computer occasionally destroys older programs or those that cause errors. The operation of the computer is not perfect and sometimes copying goes wrong and a new program appears. This computer is not fiction, it is called Tierra. When it was first switched on the population grew and changed. The Ancestor program was soon ousted by a faster program with only 78 bytes. Later a program with 48 bytes appear which survived by parasiting the code of its neighbours. On a later occasion Tierra threw up an individual which could survive independently with an amazing 22 bytes. Built safely as a simulation inside another computer, there is fortunately no danger of an escape.
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.
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.
2. Two instances of essentially identical macroevoltion would have had to occur simultaniously (within a period shorter than the lifespan of a given species) for even one non-asexual species to have survived (create offspring). One would think macroevolution would be more common than it is for these simultanious events to happen the billions of times necessary for the diversity of life.
Why?
Why must these events be simultaneous? Could not have sexual reproduction have evolved by first evolving in asexual animals? And there are other strange combinations, such as earthworms.
It is not fair for you to state that microevolution can't lead to macroevolution simply because you can't seem to fathom the microevolutionary steps that could combine to lead to that.
If "God" is the god of the universe, and "God" made man in his own image, then wouldn't life on all planets on the universe also be made in "Gods" image?
What is "God's Image"? Is it humans? If so, man or woman? Or did he just free-stylethe whole penis and vagina thng?
Maybe God's image is DNA? Or maybe just amino acids which are found beyond just earth? Or maybe just atoms?
But if you "relaxed your morals" and did whatever you felt like, you would be considered amoral. Amoral is mostly easy to define as "what's bad for society." That is, behaviors, which, if left uncheck, would decimate the population of a society.
Take murder, for example. Show me a society who lets people get murder people over trivial angers, and I'll show you a society who doesn't exist. A society that kills its people off readily will implode.
Hence, we have laws that support our moral values. And if you decide you don't have to be responsible for your actions, then you'll be removed from society (jail, death penalty, whatever).
But that doens't mean you had to have free will to execute your amoral actions. Consider a network of computers. Suppose one computer started sending out voltage spikes on the network bringing it down. Well, it would be better for the network to have that computer removed. The computer didn't use free will to decide to send power spikes. It has a fault that causes it to do so. Where that fault came from is irrelevant.
Likewise, we don't have to know why someone committed murder, it's still amoral. And, by "why", I don't mean self-defense vs. lack of respect for life, but the actual cumulative inputs throughout their life that led ot the deicsion to commit murder. That is far too complex. Hence, it will always be useful to talk in abstractions, whether or not they're based in spirit or science.
Text files in/etc/ can be understood by context even if they are not commented (most every distro has them nicely commented). The registry does not have that. Even if the data value is a '1' it might need tobe a '2' or '0' or even '3'.
I just don't understand your reasoning. The same "context" available to you in that text file is also available to you in the registry. You have the whole registry path, consisting of human-readable information (i.e. HMLK\CurrentControlSet\Software\MIcrosoft\Windows\ Explorer), you have the value name, and then you have the value data. And just as you see the "1" in the/etc/ files, you can see it in the registry. What the registry CAN prevent you from doing is sticking the word "abc" into a number file. A/etc/ text file CAN'T do that.
While the majority of things can be configured in the Control Panel, there are still some items that can only be changed in the registry...
Now, this is true. Although, I've found virtually anything worth changing in the registry eventually has a third party utility to change it instead of having to edit the registry. Still, those are not a standard part of Windows, so I can't claim those.
My text editer (Joe) saves the previous text file when I save changes.
The best Windows has to offer there is the System Restore Points (which are quite handy), or manual registry backups. Of course, if MIcrosoft would recognize that people DO edit the registry, they could make regedit smarter by auto-saving the previous values either to another part of the registry or a file.
Still, after everything you've debated here -- and maybe I'm just stubborn -- I actually prefer the registry to editing files. Believe me, as a Java programmer, everybody seems to think XML is the shinizil, so there is plenty of text-file-editing to be had in my day-to-day workings, but definitely prefer the application itself to expose the settings ina contextual way rather than having to fall back to a text file OR a registry.
Open DRM is an opportunity to create DRM that truly manages ALL rights, digitally. The java.net writeup on this had some very nice anecdotes about "buying" (i.e. "licensing") the same music multiple times simply because your copy got destroyed.
The fact is, the **AA wants to have their cake, and eat it too. They want to say you don't OWN the music, you just have a license to it. But if that were true, then I shoudl be able to ask them to send me on CD, the same labum I bought on tape, for only media and shipping costs. Of course, this would require them to maintain a centralized database of who has a license to what, and that would just be too much for them to deal with! Besides, then they couldn't profit from selling you the exact same thing, over and over again!
There is one Linux "Control Panel", it is not a GUI, it is called/etc/. All configuration can be done there. It is easier than registry hacking in Windows.
Most "well bevahed" linux programs put their config there, but not all. Just as not all Windows programs store there configuration in the registry.
But I would not say it's "easier" to hack. It depends on what you mean by easy. Its easy in that any text editor can edit one of those text file. But it also gives you no protection in editing it. You may very well put "false" when it expected "no". If you're lucky, there's comments in the file to read, guiding you to correct values, but nothing forcing you to follow them
The registry is only slightly better. It has rudimentary data types. But you may still enter a decimal integer type and be out of the range the program that wants to use that number intends. And you cans till export to and import from files if you prefer using a text editor
The thing about the Control Panel is that it provides a contextual UI, and since its an application, it can validate data meaningfully. Such UIs exist for other configurations, too, and not necessarily even a GUI (may be a console based interactive UI -- that's what the James Mail Server does for user management by default).
So, I'm not sure what your point was. If its that files are easier, then that depends on what ease you're talking about. The Control Panel (and even the registry) are abstractions on top of raw data that provide some level of protection, but at the same time, take away your liberty of manipulating that data as you see fit. It's a double-edged sword.
Actually, configuration aside, learning Linux tends to be easier... the Control Panel can be dangerous.
Yes, it is a double-edged sword. But as you said, configuration on Linux may be more difficult precisely because it doesn't have a centralized configuration mechanism. But if you do have to venture into those.xyz and.conf files on Linux, that is MORE dangerous than Control Panel because you don't have a UI to protect you from deleting files, entries, entering invalid data, etc. In Linux, a configuration file is just a file, but in Windows configuration is abstracted into... configuration. Granted, modern Linux distros have UIs on top of their configuration, but there is no ONE Linux "control panel", but there is for windows.
burning CDs (easier with Gnome than Windows)
The operating system makes it easier? First of all, I'd have to say Windows makes it pretty darned easy: you drag'n'drop your files to the CD, then say "Write these files to the CD". Perhaps the default way of doing it with Gnome is easier, I don't know, but I've never really thought it could be easier without implementing mind reading.
emailing digital pictures (again, easier with Gnome than Windows' shoddy digital camera support).
I'll just leave the details of this subject to the other replies and say that you hast have found a rare exception to the norm with your digitasl camera.
I'm not a Linux user, so I can't chiem in on that aspect, but I have to agree with the grandparent post that I've had MANY people plug their camera into my Windows XP computer and have it autodetect it. I think you must have experienced the excpetion, rather than the rule, with your camera.
Of course if free will doesn't exist, then you don't have it either, and everythign you've just posted is driven by the cumulative stimuli in your brain, including recent discussions about free will, my post, everthing you've learned before, and the tempoerature in the room at the time you wrote your post.
The mind (by definition) cannot be explained by science...
You claim the mind, by definition, can't be expolained by science. Mind is in quotations. What is this definition you're referring to? I"m not familiar with it.
I've learned a bit about neural networks and have been impressed with what neural networks with very few neurons (i.e. tens) can do. The human brain has 10's of billions of neurons. That is a huge difference in magnitude! I am not so arogant as to suggest we can presently know what a neural network of that size can or cannot accomplish. Instead, I have faith that it is sufficiently complex to explain everything we attribute to "mind" and "spirit".
Hopefully, someday, we'll be able to buld neural networks (artificial or bilogical) on the scale of the human mind and submerge it an an emersive environment as our own mind is, and we may finally begin to realize more about our own reality.
P.S. Please do NOT start to use transistor count in processors as a corralary because they are not at all similar to a neural network... each human neuron has, on average, a connection to 1,000 other neurons -- those connections critical and the human brain has trillions of them!
XHTML is still better than HTML. XHTML is logically parseable. HTML has all these silly rules about closing certain tags implicitly when another is opened, and what not. m I find writing an XHTML page MUCH lessa nnoying than writing in old HTML.
I've been doing a lot of experimentation with JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) instead of XML. You do everything youw ould do the AJAX way, but the data sent back to the browser is directly interpretable by JavaScript. Thta takes an ENORMOUS load off the client.
My sister must have been in the beta area. She lives in Hyde hpark (an area of Cincinnati) and has had Cingery's BPL for about a year now. However, her (rental) house was so old with poor wiring that they ran an extension cord from close to her breaker to her computer rather than relying on the existing wiring. She's also, I think she said (she's not technical), only getting 1M, not 3M.
Then why can my brother, who lives almost 8 hours north of the US border, 1.5 hours away from the nearest "city" (city of 5,000 people) in a farming/logging town of less than 1,000 people can get broadband access, and how all these centres in the US cannot? Hell, the largest city in our province is about 200,000 people, and that's about 3.5 hours away!
You tell us. Why can you brother, in such a seemingly remote, small market, get broadband? Is he using satellite where no local infrastructure is necessary? Is id subsidized by the government? Perhaps the local logging company does it as a way to appease the locals in exchange for destroying the trees?
Perhaps if we identify that, we can see if there's a reason that same tactic doesn't work in remote U.S. areas. Or, we midn find it does, but that its a rare case.
2) unless you want picture of your daughter ending up on the internet, and possible not in a positive way, back them up before taking your PC to a technician.
Often times, when people take their computer to a technician, its because it was in an inoperable state which would preclude backing up.
I'm not saying WMDs were made up. I believe that Iraq had them. I believe they were used on the Kurds.
I'm suggesting that Bush presented only one side of ambigous evidence, purposefully used false evidence when it was plausible to deny knowing it was false, and in general used scare tactics.
Now I don't have to subscribe to some conspiracy theory that Bush is a warmongerer. I actually think he's quite simple minded. And in that mindset, I can understand someone thinking feeling that there's a threat, and bending the truth to bring about the end you felt was justified, but couldn't prove otherwise.
But even if the case were driven by such a simple motive, it's still a dangerous one. Yes, Saddam as evil, but so are a lot of other countries. What was so evil about Iraq that we had to invade? Was there evidence that it could've been a threat? Sure, and but there was also evidence that it wasn't. And there was evidence that other countries were a threat too, but we didn't invade those (yet).
P.S. You're right, I used pink elephants incorrectly.
After one year of unfettered access and crawling all over the place
And this is the key to the whole thing. Basically, there were amounts of WMDs in Iraq being destroyed that couldn't be verified. Since the U.S. couldn't be sure that Iraq had destroyed them all, we assumed they were guilty.
Basically, if there was the tiniest chance that Iraq was lying, we assumed they were guilty. Many others felt Iraq was just posturing to its neighbors, its citizens adn the world media.
What irritates so many people is that Bush seems to have use contrived evidence to drum up support when the only tangible fact was that we weren't sure. And Bush basically claims that WMDs were nothing to leave uncertainty about, so he had to invade. But he convinced his congress, his country, and enough of the world by mixing in these other pseudo-facts.
So, I ask you, where are all of your pink elephants? Can you prove to me you destroyed all of your pink elephants? IF no, I must invade you!
They way to combat this is to censor it themselves. They need to string a giant blue tarp, or alternatively, several smaller tarps, over the area. This will block all future areial/satellite photographs, revealing only a giant blue area.
Tell that to Senator Rick Santorum. I heard an interview the other day with him talking about, while he respects those people who believe evolution, he thinks ID is a viable view as well... all the time speaking about them as if they are mutually exclusive!
You're arguing that something 20 years old shouldn't be under copyright. According to copyright law, 20 years *is* recent. I agree that 20 years is more than enough time for a copyright. But copyright terms is not the point of my whole argument.
Again, the origin of this thread was that a poster said that he didn't see a 23 year old journal as commercially valuable despite the fact that his professor was using it in a way I believed to be a commercial purposes, and thus commercially valuable.
It's as if someone was saying "I don't see how you could eat an animal!" as they are chowing down on a steak.
Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
2. Two instances of essentially identical macroevoltion would have had to occur simultaniously (within a period shorter than the lifespan of a given species) for even one non-asexual species to have survived (create offspring). One would think macroevolution would be more common than it is for these simultanious events to happen the billions of times necessary for the diversity of life.
Why?
Why must these events be simultaneous? Could not have sexual reproduction have evolved by first evolving in asexual animals? And there are other strange combinations, such as earthworms.
It is not fair for you to state that microevolution can't lead to macroevolution simply because you can't seem to fathom the microevolutionary steps that could combine to lead to that.
If "God" is the god of the universe, and "God" made man in his own image, then wouldn't life on all planets on the universe also be made in "Gods" image?
What is "God's Image"? Is it humans? If so, man or woman? Or did he just free-stylethe whole penis and vagina thng?
Maybe God's image is DNA? Or maybe just amino acids which are found beyond just earth? Or maybe just atoms?
But if you "relaxed your morals" and did whatever you felt like, you would be considered amoral. Amoral is mostly easy to define as "what's bad for society." That is, behaviors, which, if left uncheck, would decimate the population of a society.
Take murder, for example. Show me a society who lets people get murder people over trivial angers, and I'll show you a society who doesn't exist. A society that kills its people off readily will implode.
Hence, we have laws that support our moral values. And if you decide you don't have to be responsible for your actions, then you'll be removed from society (jail, death penalty, whatever).
But that doens't mean you had to have free will to execute your amoral actions. Consider a network of computers. Suppose one computer started sending out voltage spikes on the network bringing it down. Well, it would be better for the network to have that computer removed. The computer didn't use free will to decide to send power spikes. It has a fault that causes it to do so. Where that fault came from is irrelevant.
Likewise, we don't have to know why someone committed murder, it's still amoral. And, by "why", I don't mean self-defense vs. lack of respect for life, but the actual cumulative inputs throughout their life that led ot the deicsion to commit murder. That is far too complex. Hence, it will always be useful to talk in abstractions, whether or not they're based in spirit or science.
Text files in /etc/ can be understood by context even if they are not commented (most every distro has them nicely commented). The registry does not have that. Even if the data value is a '1' it might need tobe a '2' or '0' or even '3'.
I just don't understand your reasoning. The same "context" available to you in that text file is also available to you in the registry. You have the whole registry path, consisting of human-readable information (i.e. HMLK\CurrentControlSet\Software\MIcrosoft\Windows\ Explorer), you have the value name, and then you have the value data. And just as you see the "1" in the /etc/ files, you can see it in the registry. What the registry CAN prevent you from doing is sticking the word "abc" into a number file. A /etc/ text file CAN'T do that.
While the majority of things can be configured in the Control Panel, there are still some items that can only be changed in the registry...
Now, this is true. Although, I've found virtually anything worth changing in the registry eventually has a third party utility to change it instead of having to edit the registry. Still, those are not a standard part of Windows, so I can't claim those.
My text editer (Joe) saves the previous text file when I save changes.
The best Windows has to offer there is the System Restore Points (which are quite handy), or manual registry backups. Of course, if MIcrosoft would recognize that people DO edit the registry, they could make regedit smarter by auto-saving the previous values either to another part of the registry or a file.
Still, after everything you've debated here -- and maybe I'm just stubborn -- I actually prefer the registry to editing files. Believe me, as a Java programmer, everybody seems to think XML is the shinizil, so there is plenty of text-file-editing to be had in my day-to-day workings, but definitely prefer the application itself to expose the settings ina contextual way rather than having to fall back to a text file OR a registry.
Yes, mod the parent up!
Open DRM is an opportunity to create DRM that truly manages ALL rights, digitally. The java.net writeup on this had some very nice anecdotes about "buying" (i.e. "licensing") the same music multiple times simply because your copy got destroyed.
The fact is, the **AA wants to have their cake, and eat it too. They want to say you don't OWN the music, you just have a license to it. But if that were true, then I shoudl be able to ask them to send me on CD, the same labum I bought on tape, for only media and shipping costs. Of course, this would require them to maintain a centralized database of who has a license to what, and that would just be too much for them to deal with! Besides, then they couldn't profit from selling you the exact same thing, over and over again!
But isn't that what would be fair?
There is one Linux "Control Panel", it is not a GUI, it is called /etc/. All configuration can be done there. It is easier than registry hacking in Windows.
Most "well bevahed" linux programs put their config there, but not all. Just as not all Windows programs store there configuration in the registry.
But I would not say it's "easier" to hack. It depends on what you mean by easy. Its easy in that any text editor can edit one of those text file. But it also gives you no protection in editing it. You may very well put "false" when it expected "no". If you're lucky, there's comments in the file to read, guiding you to correct values, but nothing forcing you to follow them
The registry is only slightly better. It has rudimentary data types. But you may still enter a decimal integer type and be out of the range the program that wants to use that number intends. And you cans till export to and import from files if you prefer using a text editor
The thing about the Control Panel is that it provides a contextual UI, and since its an application, it can validate data meaningfully. Such UIs exist for other configurations, too, and not necessarily even a GUI (may be a console based interactive UI -- that's what the James Mail Server does for user management by default).
So, I'm not sure what your point was. If its that files are easier, then that depends on what ease you're talking about. The Control Panel (and even the registry) are abstractions on top of raw data that provide some level of protection, but at the same time, take away your liberty of manipulating that data as you see fit. It's a double-edged sword.
Actually, configuration aside, learning Linux tends to be easier... the Control Panel can be dangerous.
Yes, it is a double-edged sword. But as you said, configuration on Linux may be more difficult precisely because it doesn't have a centralized configuration mechanism. But if you do have to venture into those .xyz and .conf files on Linux, that is MORE dangerous than Control Panel because you don't have a UI to protect you from deleting files, entries, entering invalid data, etc. In Linux, a configuration file is just a file, but in Windows configuration is abstracted into... configuration. Granted, modern Linux distros have UIs on top of their configuration, but there is no ONE Linux "control panel", but there is for windows.
burning CDs (easier with Gnome than Windows)
The operating system makes it easier? First of all, I'd have to say Windows makes it pretty darned easy: you drag'n'drop your files to the CD, then say "Write these files to the CD". Perhaps the default way of doing it with Gnome is easier, I don't know, but I've never really thought it could be easier without implementing mind reading.
emailing digital pictures (again, easier with Gnome than Windows' shoddy digital camera support).
I'll just leave the details of this subject to the other replies and say that you hast have found a rare exception to the norm with your digitasl camera.
I'm not a Linux user, so I can't chiem in on that aspect, but I have to agree with the grandparent post that I've had MANY people plug their camera into my Windows XP computer and have it autodetect it. I think you must have experienced the excpetion, rather than the rule, with your camera.
OK fair enough.
Of course if free will doesn't exist, then you don't have it either, and everythign you've just posted is driven by the cumulative stimuli in your brain, including recent discussions about free will, my post, everthing you've learned before, and the tempoerature in the room at the time you wrote your post.
It seems its an unprovable argument either way?
The mind (by definition) cannot be explained by science...
You claim the mind, by definition, can't be expolained by science. Mind is in quotations. What is this definition you're referring to? I"m not familiar with it.
I've learned a bit about neural networks and have been impressed with what neural networks with very few neurons (i.e. tens) can do. The human brain has 10's of billions of neurons. That is a huge difference in magnitude! I am not so arogant as to suggest we can presently know what a neural network of that size can or cannot accomplish. Instead, I have faith that it is sufficiently complex to explain everything we attribute to "mind" and "spirit".
Hopefully, someday, we'll be able to buld neural networks (artificial or bilogical) on the scale of the human mind and submerge it an an emersive environment as our own mind is, and we may finally begin to realize more about our own reality.
P.S. Please do NOT start to use transistor count in processors as a corralary because they are not at all similar to a neural network... each human neuron has, on average, a connection to 1,000 other neurons -- those connections critical and the human brain has trillions of them!
XHTML? Give me a break.
XHTML is still better than HTML. XHTML is logically parseable. HTML has all these silly rules about closing certain tags implicitly when another is opened, and what not. m I find writing an XHTML page MUCH lessa nnoying than writing in old HTML.
I've been doing a lot of experimentation with JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) instead of XML. You do everything youw ould do the AJAX way, but the data sent back to the browser is directly interpretable by JavaScript. Thta takes an ENORMOUS load off the client.
JSON-RPC is an extension for doing RPOC via JSON.
My sister must have been in the beta area. She lives in Hyde hpark (an area of Cincinnati) and has had Cingery's BPL for about a year now. However, her (rental) house was so old with poor wiring that they ran an extension cord from close to her breaker to her computer rather than relying on the existing wiring. She's also, I think she said (she's not technical), only getting 1M, not 3M.
Then why can my brother, who lives almost 8 hours north of the US border, 1.5 hours away from the nearest "city" (city of 5,000 people) in a farming/logging town of less than 1,000 people can get broadband access, and how all these centres in the US cannot? Hell, the largest city in our province is about 200,000 people, and that's about 3.5 hours away!
You tell us. Why can you brother, in such a seemingly remote, small market, get broadband? Is he using satellite where no local infrastructure is necessary? Is id subsidized by the government? Perhaps the local logging company does it as a way to appease the locals in exchange for destroying the trees?
Perhaps if we identify that, we can see if there's a reason that same tactic doesn't work in remote U.S. areas. Or, we midn find it does, but that its a rare case.
2) unless you want picture of your daughter ending up on the internet, and possible not in a positive way, back them up before taking your PC to a technician.
Often times, when people take their computer to a technician, its because it was in an inoperable state which would preclude backing up.
Thus, birds have four visual pigments. Three are like ours; the fourth has peak sensitivity around the violet end of human vision.
Interestingly, some humans are tetrachromats which have four color vision instead of three (but alls till in the visible spectrum).
I'm not saying WMDs were made up. I believe that Iraq had them. I believe they were used on the Kurds.
I'm suggesting that Bush presented only one side of ambigous evidence, purposefully used false evidence when it was plausible to deny knowing it was false, and in general used scare tactics.
Now I don't have to subscribe to some conspiracy theory that Bush is a warmongerer. I actually think he's quite simple minded. And in that mindset, I can understand someone thinking feeling that there's a threat, and bending the truth to bring about the end you felt was justified, but couldn't prove otherwise.
But even if the case were driven by such a simple motive, it's still a dangerous one. Yes, Saddam as evil, but so are a lot of other countries. What was so evil about Iraq that we had to invade? Was there evidence that it could've been a threat? Sure, and but there was also evidence that it wasn't. And there was evidence that other countries were a threat too, but we didn't invade those (yet).
P.S. You're right, I used pink elephants incorrectly.
After one year of unfettered access and crawling all over the place
And this is the key to the whole thing. Basically, there were amounts of WMDs in Iraq being destroyed that couldn't be verified. Since the U.S. couldn't be sure that Iraq had destroyed them all, we assumed they were guilty.
Basically, if there was the tiniest chance that Iraq was lying, we assumed they were guilty. Many others felt Iraq was just posturing to its neighbors, its citizens adn the world media.
What irritates so many people is that Bush seems to have use contrived evidence to drum up support when the only tangible fact was that we weren't sure. And Bush basically claims that WMDs were nothing to leave uncertainty about, so he had to invade. But he convinced his congress, his country, and enough of the world by mixing in these other pseudo-facts.
So, I ask you, where are all of your pink elephants? Can you prove to me you destroyed all of your pink elephants? IF no, I must invade you!
They way to combat this is to censor it themselves. They need to string a giant blue tarp, or alternatively, several smaller tarps, over the area. This will block all future areial/satellite photographs, revealing only a giant blue area.
I can't imagine what use anything they blurred out could have been, unless Bush's daughter was nude sunbathing at the time or something.
If it was Clinton's daughter doing the sunbathing, it would be a national service to blur it!
Tell that to Senator Rick Santorum. I heard an interview the other day with him talking about, while he respects those people who believe evolution, he thinks ID is a viable view as well... all the time speaking about them as if they are mutually exclusive!
I concur!
You're arguing that something 20 years old shouldn't be under copyright. According to copyright law, 20 years *is* recent. I agree that 20 years is more than enough time for a copyright. But copyright terms is not the point of my whole argument.
Again, the origin of this thread was that a poster said that he didn't see a 23 year old journal as commercially valuable despite the fact that his professor was using it in a way I believed to be a commercial purposes, and thus commercially valuable.
It's as if someone was saying "I don't see how you could eat an animal!" as they are chowing down on a steak.