I just hate the GNU zealots.... But when Qt is using GPL, suddenly the GNU zealots turn around and say, hey that's bad, you can't write proprietary software with it!
I hate people who make sweeping generalizations (zing). I'm a GNU zealot and I think Trolltech rocks for using the GPL for QT. I have no patience for proprietary software and I look forward to a time when software like QT is the norm rather than the exception.
Also I think that the majority of GNU zealots would feel the same way about QT and it is merely your self-professed and entirely illogical hatred of GNU zealots that leads you to believe otherwise.
This is all just another reason that the free market should be left to do its job without politicians mucking in it.
Yeah, damn politicians, always mucking with the free market. They should leave it alone and it would work just like Adam Smith describes here:
Classical free market economic theory originated with Adam Smith and David Ricardo in the early days of the Industrial Revolution (late 1700s, early 1800s). It was intended to apply under certain conditions and certain conditions only, namely:
Wait a minute. Did Adam Smith's free market only work for non-corporate business? So what happens when society is infested with corporations, some of them being multi-national corporations? I wonder what else Adam Smith had to say:
(2) The free market was defined as a market of potentially unlimited numbers of these small/medium sized businesses, competing on a more or less equal footing, in a market which newcomers could freely enter, and in which none could control prices.
Hrm, but how could you stop a corporation with monopoly power from controlling prices? You'd almost need to have a larger and more powerful organisation that represented the will of the people. An organisation that had the power to punish corporations for attempting to control prices. I wonder what you might call a large powerful organisation that represented the will of the people? What other fascinating insights did Adam Smith have with regards to the free market:
(3) The economy was national; capital must not flow freely across national borders or the theory did not hold (Ricardo)(5).
Wow, that's a mighty big limitation on the allegedly "free" market. It's almost as if the free market doesn't work when considered in a global scale. I suppose you'd say that Adam Smith's theory didn't work in the event of globalization of the free market. Fortunately that large powerful organisation that represented the will of the people would surely stop capital from flowing freely across national borders. What more can Adam Smith teach us about the free market!
(4) The market had to be supervised by a sovereign government which (a) protected the public interest (b) made sure all businesses played by the rules (c) provided a stable currency, and (d) ran public utilities, which were regarded as not profitable for private enterprise.
Well fuck me dead with a barbed wire back scratcher. It seems Adam Smith supported the idea of a sovereign government - that was the word I was searching for to describe that large powerful organisation that represented the will of the people - to ensure that the free market ran smoothly.
But what the hell would Adam Smith know about a free market. I am intrigued by your ideas that politicians should stop "mucking" with the free market and I would like to subscribe to your (non-union child labour produced) newsletter.
So much for the idea of presenting our young minds with a number of schools of thought, and giving them the ability to examine the evidence and choose between them responsibly.
And you say you actually have young children? Yet you think they are capable of choosing between wildly conflicting evidence in a responsible way?
In my experience, children believe whatever you tell them. Why else would children overwhelmingly choose the religion of their parents. Why else would children believe in Santa Claus (and I mean believe in Santa Claus). It's been described that children have minds like a sponge; they absorb everything you tell them. I disagree with that analogy. I think their minds are more like clay; you can shape them however you like and the kiln of time will harden their opinion.
Choice seems like such a good thing. Give everybody all the evidence and let them choose. But it's not in their best interests to be told bullshit, at the expense of the school system, because children are far too gullible to distinguish between reality and fiction. That's why the Creationists want ID taught to children. They want to manipulate the child's mind when the manipulation will have the greatest effect.
In fact I'll go one step further and say that most people never stop being children, because most people will believe any old bullshit they read or hear or see just so long as it's dressed up in a veil of authority. Take a funny example I read on Slashdot recently: a global warming denier who quoted Frederick Seitz as evidence that scientists are largely divided on global warming. I laughed and laughed and laughed. It really doesn't take much to convince people that up is down, right is wrong, false is true.
It's a waste of time in Philosophy as well, especially at the introductory level that a high school would teach. There is plenty of real work to get on with - logical fallacies, logical construction, logical proofs - without wasting time on a half-baked thinly veiled piece of religion.
I would say it's not even worthy for the Mythology class. There are too many other myths with history and prior analysis worth discussing. The Creationist myth might have a place due to its venerability, but the ID myth does not, despite their obvious similarities.
Greenland was green within the last few hundred years.
Greenland is still green on the southern coast and that hasn't changed since the times of Erik the Red (985 AD). Greenland has for the most part been an icy wasteland for millenia. The name Greenland was an exercise in marketing. Erik the Red had been banished from Iceland (for murder) and wanted to attract settlers to an otherwise inhospitable land.
Anthropogenic climate change is not conclusive fact,
Yes, it is. The scientists who study this stuff, who know this stuff, and who are highly educated about this stuff, have pretty much unanimously concluded that the current spate of climate change is primarily due to human activity. This has been the result of decades of research and tens of millenia worth of data. Your rebuttal to this mountain of evidence is...
The observation [ed: that would be your observation] is miles from conclusive, but I'll always find a single, common explanation more plausable than numerous and varied ones when looking for the cause of several similar events.... When there's so much relevant data -- and funcitonality -- missing from even our best climate models, and so much that the flavor-of-the-month hysteria that is global warming fails to explain, "the simplest explanation is the most likely" has added heft in my mind.
In other words, you believe in the intellectual equivalent of the God of the Gaps argument. You don't like the complex answer that is supported by the facts so you prefer the simple answer that the facts disagree with. Even worse, you use as support for your simpleton conjecture that the Real Science has too little "funcitonality", meaning too many holes, aka TOO MANY GAPS. You have so much more in common with a creationist than you do with a scientist.
But what really boils my blood is this incredible assumption you've made that the scientists haven't considered the "fiery orb" called the Sun. As if somehow they've spent the past couple of decades ignorant of the contribution of the Sun and it takes some random Slashdotter to point out the fatal flaw in their reasoning. What sort of hubris must you have to be so arrogant.
If you want to know why I showed contempt for your "intellectual capacity" it is because you're a damn idiot.
It doesn't matter how much money he gives away, he still has billions of ill-gotten dollars. If he has $50 billion and he gives away $35 billion, he's still got $15 billion in spare cash, and that $15 billion was gained at the expense of the software industry.
Microsoft's destruction of the PC software industry is well documented. They have repeatedly destroyed tech startups and stolen their technology. Companies that try to compete will find Microsoft announces vapourware to cut sales, then Microsoft will release competing software for "free" (actually subsidised by Microsoft's other businesses) to cut the financial legs out from the competitor. Microsoft has repeatedly modified their OS for no purpose other than to cause problems for competitors' software (and although I've read the revisionist historians claims to the contrary, I have done the reverse assembly myself). Microsoft has been convicted of illegal activity on multiple occasions - including patent abuse, antitrust violations, and threats against OEMs and hardware manufacturers.
What was particularly disgusting was the blatant and unashamed theft of the Macintosh OS - even to the extent of having a Microsoft employee work with the Mac team to "write applications" when that same developer would later become the architect for Windows. I'm not a supporter of the myth that the Mac was revolutionary - I know it was an incremental improvement on dozens of research designs and commercial products that existed in that era - nor do I support the myth that Apple "stole" the GUI from Xerox, but without a doubt I know that Microsoft stole the GUI from Apple. Microsoft didn't even attempt to obscure the theft; they maintained similar function names and internal data structures throughout Windows!
Even ignoring the legal and technical evils that Microsoft has used to destroy competition you need look no further than their original big-win with MS-DOS. They were handed a golden goose by IBM; supply an OS and you will be richer beyond your wildest dreams. Rather than write it in-house they bought the OS for a mere $50,000 however the estimated value of that single sale was retrospectively worth billions. Now although that was legal it was without a doubt unethical to have gypped the original author without so much as a per-sale royalty. Perhaps in a world without ethics that was shrewd business but in my world it was opportunism at its most vile and anybody who defends such behaviour is vile as well.
And at the helm of this evil monstrosity of a company, an entity that has done more to harm and hinder the software industry than any other company except perhaps for IBM, is the despicable Bill Gates. The son of a wealthy man who (ab)used his family's influence to accumulate wealth beyond what any single person is worth. A person who moreso than any other single person has held back the PC software industry so as to expand his own power. Now he donates a fraction of his wealth - still leaving billions for his own personal gratification - and he expects forgiveness? Not a chance. Mr Gates can't buy repentance.
It may be frightening to you, but that doesn't mean it isn't natural. Am I a right-wing neo-con nut? Maybe. So lets check out what Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution has to say.
"Most of the studies and debates on potential climate change have focused on the ongoing buildup of industrial greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and a gradual increase in global temperatures. But recent and rapidly advancing evidence demonstrates that Earth's climate repeatedly has shifted dramatically and in time spans as short as a decade."
The following quote is also from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution website.
Q. Have humans contributed to the warming?
A. Yes, but there is debate over how much. Natural variability - such as that arising from changes in the sun's energy input to Earth, volcanic activity, and regional climate phenomena like El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) - does play a role in adjusting the global thermometer. But the observed temperature record cannot be wholly accounted for by natural causes. -- http://www.whoi.edu/institutes/occi/currenttopics/ abruptclimate_15misconceptions.html
Hrm, but wait, your quote makes it seem like abrupt global changes in a few decades are natural. You even explicitly quote the WHOI in apparent support for your statement that the rapid climate change over the past 100 years "doesn't mean it isn't natural". Yet the two quotes I just gave say quite clearly that the recent changes cannot be wholly accounted for by natural causes. How can this be? How can there be two clearly contradictory claims from the same organisation? Could it be... no, certainly it's not possible that you cherry picked a quote to support your self-claimed right-wing neo-con agenda, without realising that the WHOI actually agrees that the current spate of global warming is primarily caused by human activity and that abrupt climate change is significantly affected by global warming?
It is important to clarify that we are not contemplating a situation of either abrupt cooling or global warming. Rather, abrupt regional cooling and gradual global warming can unfold simultaneously. Indeed, greenhouse warming is a destabilizing factor that makes abrupt climate change more probable.
But records of past climates--from a variety of sources such as deep-sea sediments and ice-sheet cores--show that the Conveyor has slowed and shut down several times in the past. This shutdown curtailed heat delivery to the North Atlantic and caused substantial cooling throughout the region.
New ocean-based instruments also offer the potential to reveal the ocean's essential, but poorly understood, role in the hydrological cycle--which establishes global rainfall and snowfall patterns. Global warming affects the hydrological cycle because a warmer atmosphere carries more water. This, in turn, has implications for greenhouse warming, since water vapor itself is the most abundant, and often overlooked, greenhouse gas. -- http://www.whoi.edu/institutes/occi/currenttopics/ climatechange_wef.html
Oh dear, it seems that's exactly what happened. The WHOI is saying that global warming in combinatio
A major volcanic eruption would cause far more climate disruption than human activity ever has.
Do you just make this stuff up to justify your wasteful lifestyle?
INFLUENCE ON THE GREENHOUSE EFFECT:
Volcanic eruptions can enhance global warming by adding CO2 to the atmosphere. However, a far greater amount of CO2 is contributed to the atmosphere by human activities each year than by volcanic eruptions. Volcanoes contribute about 110 million tons/year, whereas other sources contribute about 10 billion tons/year. The small amount of global warming caused by eruption-generated greenhouse gases is offset by the far greater amount of global cooling caused by eruption-generated particles in the stratosphere (the haze effect). Greenhouse warming of the earth has been particularly evident since 1980. Without the cooling influence of such eruptions as El Chichon (1982) and Mt. Pinatubo (1991), described below, greenhouse warming would have been more pronounced. -- http://www.geology.sdsu.edu/how_volcanoes_work/cli mate_effects.html
Notice how I link to an educational site, written by scientists. What possible source of information do you have for your claim that volcanic activity is a greater contributor than mankind? The Rush Limbaugh Fan Club? The SUV Enthusiast Blog? The Oil Funded Think Tank of the Month? Take your head out of the sand.
Explanations for our planet's warming seem more credible when they can account for the concurrent warming on other planets in our solar system, where there are drastically fewer SUV's
You have fallen for Anti-Global Warming Myth #81.
Can the observed changes be explained by natural variability, including changes in solar output?
Since our entire climate system is fundamentally driven by energy from the sun, it stands to reason that if the sun's energy output were to change, then so would the climate. Since the advent of space-borne measurements in the late 1970s, solar output has indeed been shown to vary.... There is though, a great deal of uncertainty in estimates of solar irradiance beyond what can be measured by satellites, and still the contribution of direct solar irradiance forcing is small compared to the greenhouse gas component. -- http://lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/globalwarming. html
Wake up to reality. Stop listening to Rush Limbaugh.
It astonishes me the blind naiviety of these Republicans who insist they aren't convinced that Global warming is happening. Every year we get another story or two like this and they still have their hands over their ears going "LA LA LA - I CAN'T HEAR YOU." Even more naive is the notion that it can't affect us or that we can buy our way out of any issues it causes.
What astonishes me more are the idiots who insist on turning it into a Republicans vs Democrats debate. The world doesn't revolve around American partisan politics and we wish you'd stop reducing all discussions to this petty bickering over whose political logo is the prettiest (because, let's be honest, the parties are otherwise identical). Pretending that the only people who deny Global Warming are Republicans is ignorance to the nth degree. The reality is that some Republicans think Global Warming happens and there are some Democrats who don't. Don't bring your personal politics into this; it's divisive and destructive.
You should be more like Australians. We hate all our political parties equally. When something goes wrong it's not the Liberal party's fault or the Labor party's fault. It's just the politicians fault. All you merkins could learn something from that.
Actually, it's part of a natural cycle of glacial / interglacial periods [noaa.gov]. Pollution is just uh...speeding things up.:) Even if pollution is stopped overnight, the climate will continue to change. Hot, cold, hot, cold, it's recorded in geological records.
Right, but the natural cycle is approximately 100,000 years (as says the NOAA link). It seems that with pollution we've managed to compress that down to just a few 100 years. Over 100,000 years there is time for flora and fauna to adapt to the changing conditions - through evolution, or migration, or whatever. In the space of a few 100 years there's no opportunity for adaption; the flora and fauna simply die.
Consider an analogy. A human life is on average 70 years and if you stab them to death that's just uh... speeding things up. But stabbing someone to death is considered criminal. Speeding up the natural glacial cycle by several orders of magnitude causes more death than a single stabbing yet for some reason it's not considered criminal. Why isn't mass extinction a criminal act?
And it's even worse than that. The real danger is that rainfall distribution will change. Unfortunately rainfall in the Sahara won't suddenly make the desert a fertile ground for crops. The desert simply lacks the nutrients and the surrounding ecosystem of insects and animals to sustain a high volume of life. However a reduction of rainfall in farming regions will lead to failed crops and widespread starvation. You can't just move the farm to where the rainfall occurs; the non-fertile ground can't support the crops, and the fertile ground lacks the necessary rainfall. Over 100,000 years there is time for the non-fertile ground to become fertile. But over a few 100 years? There simply isn't enough time to adapt.
So don't you dare say that this is all fine because it's natural. About 100,000 years is natural. A few 100 years is frightening.
An average CD album will not contain more than two or three good tracks while the rest will be useless.
Perhaps the problem is that you keep buying average albums instead of above-average albums. I am constantly amazed when people on Slashdot point out how little they appreciate their music. I look at my own collection and I don't have a single album with a hit-rate that low. If I disliked the artist that much I wouldn't have bought the album or the single in the first place. I'll reserve my money for artists that I actually like.
2) Always ask the dumb questions: is it switched on?
Never ask dumb questions like that. It embarrasses the user for no good reason. Find a subtle way of getting them to check the power without forcing them to reveal their mistake. Such as:
Can you turn the computer off using the power button and then turn it back on. Let me know when the green light next to the power button turns on.
They'll still learn the lesson - check the power before calling tech support - but now they won't feel so uncomfortable that you were mocking them with your questions.
Does this E-thing (Slashdotted) gSave KMe of KThese gStupid KNaming Konventions KGnome and gKDE are using or have inspired for apps? It's gSimply KNOT gAmusing or Klever. Or eWill eThis eBring eMe eJust enother ennoying eConvention?
Being a Christian myself, I had no problems with that. But the typical more secular slashdotter might not enjoy the movie if they don't ignore the religious parallels.
Why wouldn't a secular person enjoy a fantasy movie? Are you saying that secular people shriek in pain when confronted with religion, as if they were the Wicked Witch of the West being splashed with water? Don't be silly. Do you cower from movies that express Buddhist beliefs? Does a movie involving Catholics make you uncomfortable? You don't believe in thousands of different religions. Secular people are the same except they don't believe in your religion either.
OO is Open Source because it's Open Source licensed. The OpenOffice project falls somewhat short of achieving all of the benefits of an Open Source project due to a lack of community
I don't disagree with the statement but I think you might like to find another term to replace "Open Source Project". You're drawing a fine line between Open Source software and an Open Source project; where the first refers to the licensing and the second refers to the development model. It's too semantic and will lead to unnecessary confusion.
Having an opinion that you can't express cogently and professionally is not useful for a college professor.
Not useful but entirely common. I don't know which fancy pants school you went to, but at the university I attended the professors couldn't express themselves cogently even on a good day.
You seem to have confused atheism with agnosticism.
No, he hasn't. An agnostic asserts that the answer to the question of existence is unknowable and states nothing about their actual belief or lack thereof in gods. Many Christians are agnostic. Many atheists are agnostic. Most (traditional) Buddhists are atheists. Most Christians are not atheist (I'm not saying all because I'm sure there is some nutter who claims to be Christian but doesn't believe in the existence of any god).
The Americanised versions of atheist and agnostic have basically made agnosticism a watered down version of atheism (ie, doesn't believe but isn't sure) which is stupid, because the term agnostic was specifically invented by Huxley to define his lack of gnosis (knowledge), not his uncertainty. I'll leave you with the words of Huxley.
When I reached intellectual maturity, and began to ask myself whether I was an atheist, a theist, or a pantheist; a materialist or an idealist; a Christian or a freethinker, I found that the more I learned and reflected, the less ready was the answer; until at last I came to the conclusion that I had neither art nor part with any of these denominations, except the last. The one thing in which most of these good people were agreed was the one thing in which I differed from them. They were quite sure that they had attained a certain "gnosis" -- had more or less successfully solved the problem of existence; while I was quite sure I had not, and had a pretty strong conviction that the problem was insoluble. And, with Hume and Kant on my side, I could not think myself presumptuous in holding fast by that opinion. [...]
So I took thought, and invented what I conceived to be the appropriate title of "agnostic". It came into my head as suggestively antithetic to the "gnostic" of Church history, who professed to know so much about the very things of which I was ignorant; and I took the earliest opportunity of parading it at our Society, to show that I, too, had a tail, like the other foxes. [Quoted in "Encylopaedia of Religion and Ethics", 1908, edited by James Hastings MA DD]
You deserve the insightful moderation. I was a StarOffice user (even paid for it) and I have found OpenOffice to be significantly more stable and less buggy. If anything, OpenOffice proves that the open source model works and the closed source model (that produced StarOffice) does not.
Apple's software comes from small groups of very talented individuals.
You didn't read what I wrote. If you had, you would have addressed my statement that the larger an organisation the greater the likelihood of diluting the talent with mediocrity. Instead you blithered on about how brilliant you think Adobe Photoshop is compared to the alternatives.
When you have something worth discussing, let me know.
I can tell you that in my experience, the best software by far comes from Apple,
The best software (IMO) comes from small groups or individuals with exceptional talent, never from a gigantic corporation. The problem with a large corporation is that quality tends to dilute as mediocre people are hired, rot sets in, projects atrophy, clueless managers cut funding, stupid ideas are pushed, brilliant ideas are ignored, problems are neglected and faults are left unfixed for years.
I can reel off dozens of examples. People seem to forget that back when Microsoft was small they made some absolutely spectacular software. The Altair BASIC written by Gates and Allen (more credit goes to Allen IMO) was astoundingly good. Even when Microsoft grew to a dozen people they still produced some of the best BASIC interpreters around. But now that Microsoft is a multi-billion dollar company with 1000s of employees they seem to produce nothing but embarrassing crap.
Same for Solaris; it was way better back when there were just four guys and one of them was Bill Joy. Same for the Mac; it was way better back when there were just four technical guys and Steve Jobs was an over-bearing perfectionist. It's the same reason why Linux (the kernel) still rocks but Debian (the distro) is starting to bite (it doesn't suck yet but IMO the writing is on the wall). Small groups of extremely talented individiuals lead to exceptional software. The larger the team the more likelihood of there being medicore contributors and the overall quality goes DOWN.
One of the things I find most interesting about open-source software is not the cost and not even the licensing, but the promise it holds of building large software projects of higher quality. Companies have tried all sorts of engineering techniques though honestly they seem to get it wrong more often than they get it right. OSS uses a technique more akin to natural selection; the quality varies wildly and some of the mutations are totally crap but overall the quality is continually improving. Whether it will ever produce software that in all respects is better than the "genetically engineered" software from Microsoft, Apple and Sun, I don't know, but I'm keen to find out.
I personally know when I've gone to the store, I've had to choose between a few different CDs, knowing I'd be reasonably happy with any of them. The point is they are substitutes, though not exact.
The line of reasoning is false because it tries to claim a recording monopoly doesn't exist when there are substitutes. However it's beyond dispute that copyright creates a time-limited monopoly. Jefferson was clearly aware of the monopoly nature of copyright.
"I like the declaration of rights as far as it goes, but I should have been for going further. For instance, the following alterations and additons would have pleased me . . . Article 9. Monopolies may be allowed to persons for their own productions in literature, and their own inventions in the arts, for a term not exceeding ___ years, but for no longer term, and for no other purpose." -- Jefferson
Your argument really is that there is competition between musicians, which I do not dispute and I even gave the examples of competing musicians and competing record labels in my first post, but my claim is that there is no competition in recordings because of exclusive recording deals. You are arguing against something different.
Now, it's certainly possible that there's no competition in the popular music industry for other reasons--such as collusion--but your claims are totally bogus.
The claim is not bogus. The claim is that you can't buy the same Britney Spears song from your choice of record label. That's true. It's 100% undeniable. You can't buy the Virgin Records version of "hit me baby one more time" because Britney Spears is a Sony/BMG exclusive. The conclusion is that record labels have a monopoly market. I appreciate your reasoning that Nike can have an exclusive on Air Jordans but there's a thriving market for knockoff shoes and as long as they stay within certain boundaries they are legal. The local Paddys Markets sells Nike knockoffs at a fraction of the price of the real Nikes. You can't do that for music though.
You also claim that's not a monopoly because you think pop-bands are interchangeable. You think that if you want Britney Spears you'd be just as happy with Back Street Boys. I disagree strongly with your counterclaim and I think it says more about your bias against the example I gave than the claim itself.
They would have to replace executables (to access textures from the hard drive instead of the DVD - at the minimum)
A softmodded Xbox accesses everything from the hard drive instead of the DVD, including textures, and game executables don't need to be replaced or patched. I think your reasoning is Basil.
Slashdot Mirror
I hate people who make sweeping generalizations (zing). I'm a GNU zealot and I think Trolltech rocks for using the GPL for QT. I have no patience for proprietary software and I look forward to a time when software like QT is the norm rather than the exception.
Also I think that the majority of GNU zealots would feel the same way about QT and it is merely your self-professed and entirely illogical hatred of GNU zealots that leads you to believe otherwise.
Yeah, damn politicians, always mucking with the free market. They should leave it alone and it would work just like Adam Smith describes here:
Wait a minute. Did Adam Smith's free market only work for non-corporate business? So what happens when society is infested with corporations, some of them being multi-national corporations? I wonder what else Adam Smith had to say:
Hrm, but how could you stop a corporation with monopoly power from controlling prices? You'd almost need to have a larger and more powerful organisation that represented the will of the people. An organisation that had the power to punish corporations for attempting to control prices. I wonder what you might call a large powerful organisation that represented the will of the people? What other fascinating insights did Adam Smith have with regards to the free market:
Wow, that's a mighty big limitation on the allegedly "free" market. It's almost as if the free market doesn't work when considered in a global scale. I suppose you'd say that Adam Smith's theory didn't work in the event of globalization of the free market. Fortunately that large powerful organisation that represented the will of the people would surely stop capital from flowing freely across national borders. What more can Adam Smith teach us about the free market!
Well fuck me dead with a barbed wire back scratcher. It seems Adam Smith supported the idea of a sovereign government - that was the word I was searching for to describe that large powerful organisation that represented the will of the people - to ensure that the free market ran smoothly.
But what the hell would Adam Smith know about a free market. I am intrigued by your ideas that politicians should stop "mucking" with the free market and I would like to subscribe to your (non-union child labour produced) newsletter.
And you say you actually have young children? Yet you think they are capable of choosing between wildly conflicting evidence in a responsible way?
In my experience, children believe whatever you tell them. Why else would children overwhelmingly choose the religion of their parents. Why else would children believe in Santa Claus (and I mean believe in Santa Claus). It's been described that children have minds like a sponge; they absorb everything you tell them. I disagree with that analogy. I think their minds are more like clay; you can shape them however you like and the kiln of time will harden their opinion.
Choice seems like such a good thing. Give everybody all the evidence and let them choose. But it's not in their best interests to be told bullshit, at the expense of the school system, because children are far too gullible to distinguish between reality and fiction. That's why the Creationists want ID taught to children. They want to manipulate the child's mind when the manipulation will have the greatest effect.
In fact I'll go one step further and say that most people never stop being children, because most people will believe any old bullshit they read or hear or see just so long as it's dressed up in a veil of authority. Take a funny example I read on Slashdot recently: a global warming denier who quoted Frederick Seitz as evidence that scientists are largely divided on global warming. I laughed and laughed and laughed. It really doesn't take much to convince people that up is down, right is wrong, false is true.
It's a waste of time in Philosophy as well, especially at the introductory level that a high school would teach. There is plenty of real work to get on with - logical fallacies, logical construction, logical proofs - without wasting time on a half-baked thinly veiled piece of religion.
I would say it's not even worthy for the Mythology class. There are too many other myths with history and prior analysis worth discussing. The Creationist myth might have a place due to its venerability, but the ID myth does not, despite their obvious similarities.
Mars.. Is... Leaving... Winter... And... Solar... Irradiance... Is... In... DECLINE.
Greenland is still green on the southern coast and that hasn't changed since the times of Erik the Red (985 AD). Greenland has for the most part been an icy wasteland for millenia. The name Greenland was an exercise in marketing. Erik the Red had been banished from Iceland (for murder) and wanted to attract settlers to an otherwise inhospitable land.
Yes, it is. The scientists who study this stuff, who know this stuff, and who are highly educated about this stuff, have pretty much unanimously concluded that the current spate of climate change is primarily due to human activity. This has been the result of decades of research and tens of millenia worth of data. Your rebuttal to this mountain of evidence is...
In other words, you believe in the intellectual equivalent of the God of the Gaps argument. You don't like the complex answer that is supported by the facts so you prefer the simple answer that the facts disagree with. Even worse, you use as support for your simpleton conjecture that the Real Science has too little "funcitonality", meaning too many holes, aka TOO MANY GAPS. You have so much more in common with a creationist than you do with a scientist.
But what really boils my blood is this incredible assumption you've made that the scientists haven't considered the "fiery orb" called the Sun. As if somehow they've spent the past couple of decades ignorant of the contribution of the Sun and it takes some random Slashdotter to point out the fatal flaw in their reasoning. What sort of hubris must you have to be so arrogant.
If you want to know why I showed contempt for your "intellectual capacity" it is because you're a damn idiot.
It doesn't matter how much money he gives away, he still has billions of ill-gotten dollars. If he has $50 billion and he gives away $35 billion, he's still got $15 billion in spare cash, and that $15 billion was gained at the expense of the software industry.
Microsoft's destruction of the PC software industry is well documented. They have repeatedly destroyed tech startups and stolen their technology. Companies that try to compete will find Microsoft announces vapourware to cut sales, then Microsoft will release competing software for "free" (actually subsidised by Microsoft's other businesses) to cut the financial legs out from the competitor. Microsoft has repeatedly modified their OS for no purpose other than to cause problems for competitors' software (and although I've read the revisionist historians claims to the contrary, I have done the reverse assembly myself). Microsoft has been convicted of illegal activity on multiple occasions - including patent abuse, antitrust violations, and threats against OEMs and hardware manufacturers.
What was particularly disgusting was the blatant and unashamed theft of the Macintosh OS - even to the extent of having a Microsoft employee work with the Mac team to "write applications" when that same developer would later become the architect for Windows. I'm not a supporter of the myth that the Mac was revolutionary - I know it was an incremental improvement on dozens of research designs and commercial products that existed in that era - nor do I support the myth that Apple "stole" the GUI from Xerox, but without a doubt I know that Microsoft stole the GUI from Apple. Microsoft didn't even attempt to obscure the theft; they maintained similar function names and internal data structures throughout Windows!
Even ignoring the legal and technical evils that Microsoft has used to destroy competition you need look no further than their original big-win with MS-DOS. They were handed a golden goose by IBM; supply an OS and you will be richer beyond your wildest dreams. Rather than write it in-house they bought the OS for a mere $50,000 however the estimated value of that single sale was retrospectively worth billions. Now although that was legal it was without a doubt unethical to have gypped the original author without so much as a per-sale royalty. Perhaps in a world without ethics that was shrewd business but in my world it was opportunism at its most vile and anybody who defends such behaviour is vile as well.
And at the helm of this evil monstrosity of a company, an entity that has done more to harm and hinder the software industry than any other company except perhaps for IBM, is the despicable Bill Gates. The son of a wealthy man who (ab)used his family's influence to accumulate wealth beyond what any single person is worth. A person who moreso than any other single person has held back the PC software industry so as to expand his own power. Now he donates a fraction of his wealth - still leaving billions for his own personal gratification - and he expects forgiveness? Not a chance. Mr Gates can't buy repentance.
The following quote is also from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution website.
And further down on that same page.
Hrm, but wait, your quote makes it seem like abrupt global changes in a few decades are natural. You even explicitly quote the WHOI in apparent support for your statement that the rapid climate change over the past 100 years "doesn't mean it isn't natural". Yet the two quotes I just gave say quite clearly that the recent changes cannot be wholly accounted for by natural causes. How can this be? How can there be two clearly contradictory claims from the same organisation? Could it be... no, certainly it's not possible that you cherry picked a quote to support your self-claimed right-wing neo-con agenda, without realising that the WHOI actually agrees that the current spate of global warming is primarily caused by human activity and that abrupt climate change is significantly affected by global warming?
Oh dear, it seems that's exactly what happened. The WHOI is saying that global warming in combinatio
Do you just make this stuff up to justify your wasteful lifestyle?
Notice how I link to an educational site, written by scientists. What possible source of information do you have for your claim that volcanic activity is a greater contributor than mankind? The Rush Limbaugh Fan Club? The SUV Enthusiast Blog? The Oil Funded Think Tank of the Month? Take your head out of the sand.
You have fallen for Anti-Global Warming Myth #81.
Wake up to reality. Stop listening to Rush Limbaugh.What astonishes me more are the idiots who insist on turning it into a Republicans vs Democrats debate. The world doesn't revolve around American partisan politics and we wish you'd stop reducing all discussions to this petty bickering over whose political logo is the prettiest (because, let's be honest, the parties are otherwise identical). Pretending that the only people who deny Global Warming are Republicans is ignorance to the nth degree. The reality is that some Republicans think Global Warming happens and there are some Democrats who don't. Don't bring your personal politics into this; it's divisive and destructive.
You should be more like Australians. We hate all our political parties equally. When something goes wrong it's not the Liberal party's fault or the Labor party's fault. It's just the politicians fault. All you merkins could learn something from that.
Right, but the natural cycle is approximately 100,000 years (as says the NOAA link). It seems that with pollution we've managed to compress that down to just a few 100 years. Over 100,000 years there is time for flora and fauna to adapt to the changing conditions - through evolution, or migration, or whatever. In the space of a few 100 years there's no opportunity for adaption; the flora and fauna simply die.
Consider an analogy. A human life is on average 70 years and if you stab them to death that's just uh... speeding things up. But stabbing someone to death is considered criminal. Speeding up the natural glacial cycle by several orders of magnitude causes more death than a single stabbing yet for some reason it's not considered criminal. Why isn't mass extinction a criminal act?
And it's even worse than that. The real danger is that rainfall distribution will change. Unfortunately rainfall in the Sahara won't suddenly make the desert a fertile ground for crops. The desert simply lacks the nutrients and the surrounding ecosystem of insects and animals to sustain a high volume of life. However a reduction of rainfall in farming regions will lead to failed crops and widespread starvation. You can't just move the farm to where the rainfall occurs; the non-fertile ground can't support the crops, and the fertile ground lacks the necessary rainfall. Over 100,000 years there is time for the non-fertile ground to become fertile. But over a few 100 years? There simply isn't enough time to adapt.
So don't you dare say that this is all fine because it's natural. About 100,000 years is natural. A few 100 years is frightening.
Perhaps the problem is that you keep buying average albums instead of above-average albums. I am constantly amazed when people on Slashdot point out how little they appreciate their music. I look at my own collection and I don't have a single album with a hit-rate that low. If I disliked the artist that much I wouldn't have bought the album or the single in the first place. I'll reserve my money for artists that I actually like.
Never ask dumb questions like that. It embarrasses the user for no good reason. Find a subtle way of getting them to check the power without forcing them to reveal their mistake. Such as:
They'll still learn the lesson - check the power before calling tech support - but now they won't feel so uncomfortable that you were mocking them with your questions.
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Why wouldn't a secular person enjoy a fantasy movie? Are you saying that secular people shriek in pain when confronted with religion, as if they were the Wicked Witch of the West being splashed with water? Don't be silly. Do you cower from movies that express Buddhist beliefs? Does a movie involving Catholics make you uncomfortable? You don't believe in thousands of different religions. Secular people are the same except they don't believe in your religion either.
I don't disagree with the statement but I think you might like to find another term to replace "Open Source Project". You're drawing a fine line between Open Source software and an Open Source project; where the first refers to the licensing and the second refers to the development model. It's too semantic and will lead to unnecessary confusion.
Not useful but entirely common. I don't know which fancy pants school you went to, but at the university I attended the professors couldn't express themselves cogently even on a good day.
No, he hasn't. An agnostic asserts that the answer to the question of existence is unknowable and states nothing about their actual belief or lack thereof in gods. Many Christians are agnostic. Many atheists are agnostic. Most (traditional) Buddhists are atheists. Most Christians are not atheist (I'm not saying all because I'm sure there is some nutter who claims to be Christian but doesn't believe in the existence of any god).
The Americanised versions of atheist and agnostic have basically made agnosticism a watered down version of atheism (ie, doesn't believe but isn't sure) which is stupid, because the term agnostic was specifically invented by Huxley to define his lack of gnosis (knowledge), not his uncertainty. I'll leave you with the words of Huxley.
Brilliant guy. Total nutcase, but brilliant.
You deserve the insightful moderation. I was a StarOffice user (even paid for it) and I have found OpenOffice to be significantly more stable and less buggy. If anything, OpenOffice proves that the open source model works and the closed source model (that produced StarOffice) does not.
You didn't read what I wrote. If you had, you would have addressed my statement that the larger an organisation the greater the likelihood of diluting the talent with mediocrity. Instead you blithered on about how brilliant you think Adobe Photoshop is compared to the alternatives.
When you have something worth discussing, let me know.
This just proves that so-called "global warming" is simply a natural phenomenon caused by the migration of the magnetic poles.
Go ahead, mod me funny now, but you just wait until the intellectual elites on radio talk shows start claiming exactly that.
The best software (IMO) comes from small groups or individuals with exceptional talent, never from a gigantic corporation. The problem with a large corporation is that quality tends to dilute as mediocre people are hired, rot sets in, projects atrophy, clueless managers cut funding, stupid ideas are pushed, brilliant ideas are ignored, problems are neglected and faults are left unfixed for years.
I can reel off dozens of examples. People seem to forget that back when Microsoft was small they made some absolutely spectacular software. The Altair BASIC written by Gates and Allen (more credit goes to Allen IMO) was astoundingly good. Even when Microsoft grew to a dozen people they still produced some of the best BASIC interpreters around. But now that Microsoft is a multi-billion dollar company with 1000s of employees they seem to produce nothing but embarrassing crap.
Same for Solaris; it was way better back when there were just four guys and one of them was Bill Joy. Same for the Mac; it was way better back when there were just four technical guys and Steve Jobs was an over-bearing perfectionist. It's the same reason why Linux (the kernel) still rocks but Debian (the distro) is starting to bite (it doesn't suck yet but IMO the writing is on the wall). Small groups of extremely talented individiuals lead to exceptional software. The larger the team the more likelihood of there being medicore contributors and the overall quality goes DOWN.
One of the things I find most interesting about open-source software is not the cost and not even the licensing, but the promise it holds of building large software projects of higher quality. Companies have tried all sorts of engineering techniques though honestly they seem to get it wrong more often than they get it right. OSS uses a technique more akin to natural selection; the quality varies wildly and some of the mutations are totally crap but overall the quality is continually improving. Whether it will ever produce software that in all respects is better than the "genetically engineered" software from Microsoft, Apple and Sun, I don't know, but I'm keen to find out.
The line of reasoning is false because it tries to claim a recording monopoly doesn't exist when there are substitutes. However it's beyond dispute that copyright creates a time-limited monopoly. Jefferson was clearly aware of the monopoly nature of copyright.
And a definition of copyright.
Your argument really is that there is competition between musicians, which I do not dispute and I even gave the examples of competing musicians and competing record labels in my first post, but my claim is that there is no competition in recordings because of exclusive recording deals. You are arguing against something different.
The claim is not bogus. The claim is that you can't buy the same Britney Spears song from your choice of record label. That's true. It's 100% undeniable. You can't buy the Virgin Records version of "hit me baby one more time" because Britney Spears is a Sony/BMG exclusive. The conclusion is that record labels have a monopoly market. I appreciate your reasoning that Nike can have an exclusive on Air Jordans but there's a thriving market for knockoff shoes and as long as they stay within certain boundaries they are legal. The local Paddys Markets sells Nike knockoffs at a fraction of the price of the real Nikes. You can't do that for music though.
You also claim that's not a monopoly because you think pop-bands are interchangeable. You think that if you want Britney Spears you'd be just as happy with Back Street Boys. I disagree strongly with your counterclaim and I think it says more about your bias against the example I gave than the claim itself.
A softmodded Xbox accesses everything from the hard drive instead of the DVD, including textures, and game executables don't need to be replaced or patched. I think your reasoning is Basil.