What is simpler: The first has fewer terms than the second. Ergo the first is simpler. (In B->C vs A->B->C it is clear that the former is simpler, since it is a subset of the latter.)
Regarding rape: Humans as a whole _do_ accept rape. If you think humans as a whole despise rape then you have not looked at your history. Laws against rape were only introduced in the last few hundred years in most places (and only in the last decades in some!).
Also, it should be noted that humans are actually working against evolution in many respects. For example intelligent educated humans as a whole use contraception more than stupid educated humans, thus making stupid humans breed more than intelligent humans.
If one is easier to believe than the other: Neither is easier to "believe" for me as I don't "believe" (have "faith") in anything. Why would I need to? There are hypotheses that fit the observable evidence more than others, and one can work on the assumption they are true, but if they are contradicted then you just move on to the ones that fit the universe better. (Or, if no explanation for something can be found, then you just say you don't know at the moment.)
As for what you might lose from Pascal's wager: What if there is a God, but he hates everyone who believes he exists, and will only let non-believers into heaven? Then surely I'm doing better by not believing in him. Or what if there is no God, and by believing there is one, I make a fundamental mistake in judgement at some point (for example killing someone because I believe God would want me to)? Then I have killed someone, and that is a more serious loss than any potential loss of "eternal life" you might delude yourself into thinking you are going to have.
At the end of the day, if you don't know whether there is a God or not, then there is no point claiming otherwise. If you don't know, then you don't know, no amount of faith is going to change that.
(And so far, the simplest and most likely hypotheses that fit the available evidence definitely don't involve a sentient and omniscent being of unknown origin.)
The difference being that if the two possible theories are 1. Universe spontaneously came to be, and 2. God spontaneously came to be, then created the Universe, then it's a lot more likely that the first one was true, since it is simpler.
You wrote: "I'd rather put my faith in the evidence we do have in a Creator, than putting my faith in a still mysterious _something_ that caused the universe to do the whole big *foom* thing."
So what you're saying is given that you don't know how the universe was created, you'd rather pretend to know, than acknowledge you don't know?
Personally I find that ridiculous. If you don't know the answer to a question (e.g. "how did the universe come to be") then you just say that: "I don't know". You don't make up some random nonsense and claim it to be the truth.
I'm gonna be real pedantic here and point out that actually there are two versions of XML, 1.0 and 1.1, with subtle differences (something that is well-formed in one is not necessarily well-formed in the other).
Correct me if I'm wrong, but can't these odds _only_ go up until they drop to 0? So that reporting the fact that the odds have gone up is just reporting on the fact that we have slightly more data, which is blatently obvious as we're recording it continuously?
Can't speak for the US, but in the UK I found Channel 4 News was pretty fair and balanced. At least, it was about 18 months ago, I assume it's no worse now.
> Mitchell Baker (yes! a girl!:) - president of mozilla foundation europe
Mitchell Baker is president of the Mozilla Foundation full stop (as in the one based in the Silicon Valley which is mostly staffed by ex-Netscape employees), not Mozilla Europe.
That's actually a pretty good example of why the term "open source" is harmful -- the key imho has nothing to do with "openness", it's got to do with "freedom". There's no reason why we should be free to listen in and participate in other people's discussions.
Actually, as far as WHATWG goes, Microsoft is very welcome to join, as is everyone else. It's an open-subscription mailing list. Indeed, we've already had some input from Microsoft and several changes were made for them (the paragraph that says that scripting support is optional was added on their request, for example).
Dunno about the plugins stuff, but given that Microsoft abandoned the Netscape Plugin API (the API that the plugins work is using as a base) in favour of ActiveX, I would guess they don't care much.
I meant on the client side. Like I said in other posts, yes, Java on the server has been quite successful. But on the server side interoperability is irrelevant. The server side is also already very well covered.
The scope of the WHATWG work is developing specifications for client-side, Web-based technologies so that they can be interoperably implemented in multiple hosts.
And yes, Intranet stuff doesn't really classify as "Web-based" for me, personally (other people in the WHATWG group might think differently on this matter, of course). I understand it is important but in practice it's an area where interoperability is again of a low priority since the clients can pretty much all be guarenteed to be what the IS department what them to be, so it could be IE, or Flash, or Java, or the Adobe SVG Plugin, or even a Windows executable and it wouldn't matter.
For example many companies have told Mozilla that it doesn't matter what standards they support, they will keep using IE internally.
Sure, but as a Web browser manufacturer, that's the one I care about.
*In the context of Web Applications*, Java isn't successful. It's a different matter on the server side, and in applications that are deployed and installed on specific machines as opposed to used over the Web. But that wasn't the topic at hand.
It's not successful in the sense that I don't regularly go to a Web page which spawns a Java-based application instead of an HTML-based one. For example, Slashdot is written in HTML, not Java.
Well it's technically not an error. It's a messy situation. Authors are allowed to send XHTML1.0 as text/html if they follow appendix C of XHTML 1.0 specification. However, user agents must treat anything sent as text/html as if it was tag soup.
So really there is very little point in sending XHTML as text/html.
Slashdot Mirror
Not at all! The violence is occasionally interrupted by non-violent sex.
My point exactly.
Well, it has prolonged scenes of intense violence...
Yeah. Working on that.
What is simpler: The first has fewer terms than the second. Ergo the first is simpler. (In B->C vs A->B->C it is clear that the former is simpler, since it is a subset of the latter.)
Regarding rape: Humans as a whole _do_ accept rape. If you think humans as a whole despise rape then you have not looked at your history. Laws against rape were only introduced in the last few hundred years in most places (and only in the last decades in some!).
Also, it should be noted that humans are actually working against evolution in many respects. For example intelligent educated humans as a whole use contraception more than stupid educated humans, thus making stupid humans breed more than intelligent humans.
If one is easier to believe than the other: Neither is easier to "believe" for me as I don't "believe" (have "faith") in anything. Why would I need to? There are hypotheses that fit the observable evidence more than others, and one can work on the assumption they are true, but if they are contradicted then you just move on to the ones that fit the universe better. (Or, if no explanation for something can be found, then you just say you don't know at the moment.)
As for what you might lose from Pascal's wager: What if there is a God, but he hates everyone who believes he exists, and will only let non-believers into heaven? Then surely I'm doing better by not believing in him. Or what if there is no God, and by believing there is one, I make a fundamental mistake in judgement at some point (for example killing someone because I believe God would want me to)? Then I have killed someone, and that is a more serious loss than any potential loss of "eternal life" you might delude yourself into thinking you are going to have.
At the end of the day, if you don't know whether there is a God or not, then there is no point claiming otherwise. If you don't know, then you don't know, no amount of faith is going to change that.
(And so far, the simplest and most likely hypotheses that fit the available evidence definitely don't involve a sentient and omniscent being of unknown origin.)
The difference being that if the two possible theories are 1. Universe spontaneously came to be, and 2. God spontaneously came to be, then created the Universe, then it's a lot more likely that the first one was true, since it is simpler.
(Occam's razor.)
You wrote: "I'd rather put my faith in the evidence we do have in a Creator, than putting my faith in a still mysterious _something_ that caused the universe to do the whole big *foom* thing."
So what you're saying is given that you don't know how the universe was created, you'd rather pretend to know, than acknowledge you don't know?
Personally I find that ridiculous. If you don't know the answer to a question (e.g. "how did the universe come to be") then you just say that: "I don't know". You don't make up some random nonsense and claim it to be the truth.
I'm gonna be real pedantic here and point out that actually there are two versions of XML, 1.0 and 1.1, with subtle differences (something that is well-formed in one is not necessarily well-formed in the other).
Not that that has any bearing on anything here...
How could the odds go down if they don't go down to zero?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but can't these odds _only_ go up until they drop to 0? So that reporting the fact that the odds have gone up is just reporting on the fact that we have slightly more data, which is blatently obvious as we're recording it continuously?
Can't speak for the US, but in the UK I found Channel 4 News was pretty fair and balanced. At least, it was about 18 months ago, I assume it's no worse now.
> Mitchell Baker (yes! a girl! :) - president of mozilla foundation europe
Mitchell Baker is president of the Mozilla Foundation full stop (as in the one based in the Silicon Valley which is mostly staffed by ex-Netscape employees), not Mozilla Europe.
That's actually a pretty good example of why the term "open source" is harmful -- the key imho has nothing to do with "openness", it's got to do with "freedom". There's no reason why we should be free to listen in and participate in other people's discussions.
Actually, as far as WHATWG goes, Microsoft is very welcome to join, as is everyone else. It's an open-subscription mailing list. Indeed, we've already had some input from Microsoft and several changes were made for them (the paragraph that says that scripting support is optional was added on their request, for example).
Dunno about the plugins stuff, but given that Microsoft abandoned the Netscape Plugin API (the API that the plugins work is using as a base) in favour of ActiveX, I would guess they don't care much.
Doesn't matter; file a bug anyway, and cc me (ian@hixie.ch) and say that this is the bug you mentioned in the Slashdot posting.
Have you filed a bug?
Interesting definition of "vacation".
I meant on the client side. Like I said in other posts, yes, Java on the server has been quite successful. But on the server side interoperability is irrelevant. The server side is also already very well covered.
The scope of the WHATWG work is developing specifications for client-side, Web-based technologies so that they can be interoperably implemented in multiple hosts.
And yes, Intranet stuff doesn't really classify as "Web-based" for me, personally (other people in the WHATWG group might think differently on this matter, of course). I understand it is important but in practice it's an area where interoperability is again of a low priority since the clients can pretty much all be guarenteed to be what the IS department what them to be, so it could be IE, or Flash, or Java, or the Adobe SVG Plugin, or even a Windows executable and it wouldn't matter.
For example many companies have told Mozilla that it doesn't matter what standards they support, they will keep using IE internally.
Yeah Opera 6 didn't support the element in XHTML. It should be fine in recent Opera releases.
Well the advantage would be the ability to mix XHTML and MathML (or other XML vocabularies).
Which UAs treat application/xhtml+xml as tag soup?
Yeah, I've often wondered why HTML forums were more popular these days than Usenet.
Sure, but as a Web browser manufacturer, that's the one I care about.
*In the context of Web Applications*, Java isn't successful. It's a different matter on the server side, and in applications that are deployed and installed on specific machines as opposed to used over the Web. But that wasn't the topic at hand.
Good stuff, I've noted this post down and will be checking that the things you list are looked at. Thanks!
It's not successful in the sense that I don't regularly go to a Web page which spawns a Java-based application instead of an HTML-based one. For example, Slashdot is written in HTML, not Java.
Well it's technically not an error. It's a messy situation. Authors are allowed to send XHTML1.0 as text/html if they follow appendix C of XHTML 1.0 specification. However, user agents must treat anything sent as text/html as if it was tag soup.
So really there is very little point in sending XHTML as text/html.
I go on at length about this in http://www.hixie.ch/advocacy/xhtml