Hey, I just did some checking and a large number of them have recent account IDs (600k+) and have never posted to Slashdot before. Do you reckon that there was a link to Slashdot on a fundie website and they have all come swarming here to defend their faith?
Does anyone else find it interesting that this argument has such a strong parallel to the argument evolutionsists use to try to refute the possibility of God?
Does anyone else find it interesting that Slashdot has been completely overrun by lunatic fundamentalist creationists lately? There have been more creationist nutbags trolling Slashdot then I've been seeing on t.o. It's quite scary.
Diversity is good even within the Free Software world. We don't all use sendmail and that is good. We don't all use Gnome and that is good. We don't all use Mozilla, and that is good. There should be three, four, five choices for every major category of software.
I agree and disagree.
In real life people have no problem with choosing between competing products. There are 100s of models of cars, 1000s of styles of clothes, and 10000s of tastes in music and movies. I don't think anybody could argue that having this kind of choice is bad.
But at the same time there are several aspects of products that are standardised. Electrical appliances use a common plug standard. Televisions use a common broadcast standard. Cars accept a standard blend of fuel. The cables between your amplifier and your DVD player use a standardised protocol. Interoperability is maintained despite there being a wide variety of choice.
Within computing it's the specifications (for protocols or otherwise) that try and achieve this interoperability. So your mail servers are all compatible because they speak SMTP. When people complain about a specific choice - eg, KDE and GNOME - and they claim this is "a bad thing" they are not complaining about the choice itself being bad. They are complaining that there is no interoperability. KDE and GNOME use different protocols and different specifications. Admittedly there are some shared aspects between their designs but on the whole they are not interoperable.
Diversity is good when it provides you with interoperable choices. Diversity is not a good thing when it creates incompatible choices.
This isn't to say that Linux doesn't have a place in the world; it does. It just isn't on the high end.
Not yet. 10 years ago Linux didn't have a place anywhere. 5 years ago it didn't have a place in small business. 2 years ago it didn't have a place in the enterprise. Today it doesn't have a place in the desktop or the data centre. But that's just today.
I agree with all your statements. There's no way Linux can compete - right now - with domain partitioning on a starfire. But give it time. I used to think Linux was a neato UNIX for my home PC. Now it's a serious contender for replacing every mid-range server in sight. I wouldn't have believed this if I hadn't seen it happen.
I asked you for 5,500+ rings in the same trunk since there are many problems with ring-matching across different trees.
Duh, didn't I say you were going to do this. I also said it was amusing the first time. Seeing as creationists have been calling the botanists stupid since 1970 I can assure you that this isn't the first time.
Actually, they do [answersingenesis.org]. For the article quoted above, you could always take this up with the people [usyd.edu.au] who awarded the author his Ph.D.
I counter your single PhD Warwick with 200 PhD Steves! I win!
Here's an easy way to blow my point out of the water completely !! -- just find a tree with more than 5500 tree-rings in its trunk.
Really that easy? Why do I get the sneaking suspicion you won't be convinced that easily. I suppose you'll claim that dendrochronology is wrong and that the only way you'll be convinced is if I can produce a single trunk with 5500+ rings. That's what the creationists normally say. It's amusing the first time.
Of course, if the botanists ever do find a tree with 5500+ rings in a single trunk then the creationists will just claim that multiple rings can occur in a single season! Never mind that the botanists can spot these freak occurences by looking at multiple trees. The creationists discount geology when it suits them. Why not discount botany too!
For other problems with Carbon dating and current evolutionary theory, consider visiting the Answers in Genesis site [answersingenesis.org].
Oh please, why not just quote the Bible at me. Do you really think those crackpots have any idea what they're talking about?
Firstly, a primary school and a detention centre are such mind-bogglingly different environments that I'm amazed you even tried to draw a comparison.
I wasn't comparing them. I was pointing out the logical flaw you made.
No, but I expect that anyone who wants their comments to be taken seriously have some idea of how to improve the thing they are criticising.
I did say what I thought should be improved. I repeated it four times in four posts. You specifically asked for a financially viable solution. Now you turn around and say you were just asking for "some ideas"? Which is it?
Actually, what I want is for the people whining and complaining to engage in constructive dialog.
If we could all aspire to be as wonderful as you then I'm sure all the world's problems would disappear. Let's see how constructive your dialog has been...
What I'm arguing for is a workable and fair solution.
For all your rhetoric all you've really done is call me an "armchair critic", an "aimless whinger" and a "chicken little". You say you're arguing for a workable solution? From what I can see you're just interested in name-calling and disputing the evidence; to summarise your argument so far it's "not really rape in a detention centre, because they were raped back home anyway". You don't even acknowledge there are problems and then you say you're trying to work out a fair solution? Bizarre. But that's fine by me. You're not going to make a difference anyway.
We have VNC, why does X need to go through TCP/IP to draw a window?
It doesn't. It goes through a UNIX socket. There is a significant difference.
This is why Apple dumped X and wrote their own system independently of X.
I somehow doubt there was a single reason.
Concentrating on the UNIX socket is a mistake anyway. You need some form of client/server separation; otherwise you could never run more than one client. You also need some form of synchronisation between the clients and the server; otherwise you would have two clients accessing the hardware at the same time and most video hardware would simply lockup.
The synchronisation method could be locks or mutexes or message passing or sockets; X11 chose a socket because that gives you UNIX sockets (local, high speed) and TCP/IP sockets (remote, flexible) without needing to code for special cases. Network transparency "for free".
Now the real question with X11 is "who should control the hardware". With X11 they decided a single process - the server - should control the hardware. This is perhaps the serious argument against X11. There are several reasons why this hurts performance but the serious problem - the one you inelegantly complain about - is that the client has to bundle all drawing requests up and send them to the server.
But stop. What's the real problem here. It's not that the bundling had to occur. No matter what model you chose there would have to be some data bundled up and sent between client and server. The real problem is the quantity of data. In Windows the quantity is a single message which is always quite small. In traditional X11 the "message" (aka request) grows without bound. If you're passing a huge bitmap then the request will be several kilobytes. Network transparency comes at a cost.
But stop again! Is this really a problem? The answer is no. X11 is extensible. All of the problem cases - bitmaps, video, 3D - can be special-cased with extensions. So on XFree86 we have Xvideo, MITSHM and DRI. In a traditional X11 model these guys would have stuffed the pipe to overflow and everything would have gone to shit. In modern XFree86 there is a second path that bypasses the pipe. You'll notice that DRI even allows the client to directly access the hardware! Network transparency is still there but can be bypassed on a needs basis. Perfect.
Now your argument shouldn't be "why do we need a client/server model" but "could we use something faster than sockets". The answer is no. There has already been work done by the XFree86 team where they tried a shm transport. It's no faster. Linux sockets are simply too quick. There's no reason to think that message passing would be any faster: effectively the X11 socket is a highly tuned message passing API. The platform independent nature of X11 means you'd need to use a platform independent message passing API. That probably means RPC or CORBA; X11 is going to be faster than either of those.
Anyway, my point from all of this is that the performance problems you complain about are being fixed. The developers are not idle and they are not stupid (far from it). If you wanted somebody to make your desktop faster then you could do no better than to put your trust in the current XFree86 developers team. They are a truly remarkable group of developers. They are not ignoring the performance problems. Give them some credit for understanding the depth of the issues rather than the superficial "why does XFree86 use TCP/IP?" misunderstanding that tries to pass for constructive criticism.
Spot on, dude. Why is it that the creationists always think they're the only ones that can spot these obvious flaws, yet the 1000s of scientists working full-time in a professional capacity are completely clueless. A little humility wouldn't be out of order for the creationists!
Individually it's psychological, collectively it's sociological; in both scopes there's a resistance to the idea of reconsidering or abandoning an supposed Knowledge, despite the pressure of anamolous observation, because the individual or collective ego is threatened with annihilation by such a change.
Max Planck said the same thing in his usual witty way.
"An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents. What does happen is that its opponents gradually die out, and that the growing generation is familiarized with the ideas from the beginning."
Ha ha, that's classic. I enjoyed your website, btw. The "find the error" questions are very well done. Perhaps you can write a series of "crank proofs" to accompany them? By this I mean some of the more interesting crank proofs and an explanation of the flaws in layman's terms.
I think that the poster's point is that you WON'T LET THEM have a good idea.
I don't see how I could stop them.
If you meant to say people who frequent Slashdot won't acknowledge when Microsoft has a good idea then you're wrong.
All in all, many people on here have double-standards when it comes to Microsoft and Linux because they are ignorant zealots.
Ok, so you won't have trouble pointing to a single person who has these double-standards? If there are "many" then it should be easy. Bear in mind that you can't point to two people with two differing opinions and claim a double-standard.
Agnostics are just atheists without a spine. They've been sitting on the fence so long that their balls have been crushed into oblivion and the sudden drop in testosterone makes them timid and weak. The agnostic's feeble attempts to defend their pathetic indecisiveness as "intellectual cautiousness" is proof enough that the agnostic doesn't grok the difference between proof and belief. It wouldn't be so bad if they weren't so smug about their lack of conviction. Blah to them all.
Oh, I know the simple solution to FLT isn't likely. It's like hoping that some garage mechanic is going to invent a 70% efficient combustion engine which involves 3 moving parts. It's ridiculous, and I know that, but it doesn't stop me from hoping.
You receive crank proofs of FLT? I'm simultaneously jealous and thankful that I'm not educated enough to receive the attention of cranks. I read a book by Carl Sagan where he copied some of the crank letters he receives. It was hilarious reading but I have to feel pity for him. It must waste a lot of his time. You have my deepest sympathy:-)
I'm not going to debate. I made that mistake last week. 7 years of lurking on t.o should have been all the education I needed but I was arrogant enough to think that I'd do a better job than the regulars on t.o. Silly me. I'll stick to ridiculing the dumber creationist claims. It's not productive but it's fun.
This is NOT to denigrate his acheivement. Picture a one-million-mile relay race. He is the person who took the baton and ran the last 100 miles by himself without a break. So CLAPCLAPCLAP at the amazing work he did to finish it all up. I understand only enough of his paper to be in awe of him. But he did NOT run the whole race by himself.
While I can appreciate he did something pretty brilliant (I've read the pulp book describing how he lived while writing his proof, including the last minute "oh my god I missed something" scare) I'm still disappointed. I'd hoped that the proof would be something unbelievably simple and elegant that even a non-mathematician like myself could understand. Unfortunately it turns out to be 400 pages of complex mathematics that I could never hope to understand. I still have hope that some lone genius will find a half-page proof for Fermat's Last Theorem using nothing more complicated than high-school algebra:-(
The oldest records of civilizations date back around 5000 years
The oldest records of my family tree date back to 1860. Therefore the world was divinely created 140 years ago?
The oldest living trees (determined by tree rings on the same tree - not radiocarbon dating) are around 5000 years as well. Though there is no reason trees can't live longer.
The oldest living dog I know of is 16 years old (determined by reading his showdog papers). So the world was divinely created 16 years ago?
Flood stories exist in many (most?) world cultures
Stories about demons, elves, pixies, ghosts, spirits, goblins, superhumans, giant mutated lizards that breathe fire and demolish largish cities, also exist in many (most?) world cultures.
To account for problems with evolutionary theory, a new theory, Punctuated Equilibrium [vub.ac.be] has gained prominence
Punctuated equilibrium accounts for problems seen with traditional natural selection, not for problems with evolutionary theory. It's important to realise there's a distinction between the theory and the mechanisms behind the theory. The mechanisms are constantly being changed as new evidence is discovered. The theory has withstood all serious attempts to be discredited.
SCO is claiming that Linux is derived from Minix (which is sort of true)... Of course, no Minix code is present in Linux, so they're not claiming actual piracy
It's not "sort of true". Though you know the truth (there is no Minix source code in Linux and never was) unfortunately there are people who honestly believe that Linux is a Minix derivative. They point to minix.c as proof! These people don't need encouragement in any form. I know that you meant Linus used Minix as the development environment and Linux orignally used the Minix filesystem, but there are plenty of people who don't understand this subtlety. So please say "not even remotely true" instead of "sort of true".
I'd expect conditions where children aren't abused [wsws.org] and women aren't raped [theage.com.au] and lives aren't put at risk by fire-starting vandals [news.com.au].
These things happen out in free society, so they're hardly a result of current detention techniques.
That does not follow and I'm sure you're well aware of that. If rape, abuse and fires were regularly happening inside primary schools would you also claim "these things happen out in free society" and therefore conclude there's nothing wrong with the schools?
You ask me to present my financially practical solution? Why do I need a solution before I can state the flaws I perceive in the current system?
Because just saying "it's bad" without offering reasonable alternatives, is a pointless exercise in mental masturbation.
Utter nonsense. I can say "cancer is bad" without having a cure for cancer. You don't have to be a mechanic to know when your car is broken.
No, but as with anyone else criticising, I'll only listen to them if they're prepared to offer constructive criticism with viable alternatives.
Then you expect too much. You demand every critic to have a better solution? Would you expect every coach to be a better athlete? Or every teacher to be a better student? Can't I critique a book until I've written one?
What I think you really want is to silence dissenting opinion by demanding the answers. The world isn't that simple. Often the answers are complicated and take lots of effort to find. But you have to recognise the problem exists before you can commit the effort to find the solutions. I'm claiming that the current "solutions" have problems. You're arguing that I can't state my dissent because I don't have a better solution? I reckon that's a cop-out on your part.
What you're really arguing for is maintaining the status quo. The status quo might be fine for you and me but (I think) it's not good enough for the illegal immigrants.
I'd like to see interested third parties (eg, salvos) onsite to help avoid future reoccurences of detainee abuse. I'd like the media to be invited into the grounds rather than this media blanket we
currently have.
You ask me to present my financially practical solution? Why do I need a solution before I can state the flaws I perceive in the current system? Are the only people allowed to speak out against the inhumane treatment - in your world - the same people who can prepare a balance sheet? Under which account do I put "raped child" when I'm creating this financially practical solution?
There's no "esentially" here. I flat outright said this. It's not something you deduced. I've said it twice already and now - in this post - I've said it a third time.
In other words, a completely unworkable
solution.
It's only unworkable if you don't want it to work. Australia managed to support immigration on far grander scales just a few decades ago. Now it's "completely unworkable"? I don't think so.
Tell me, are you so free with your own home ?
I'm not inviting them into my home. I'm inviting them into my country. Surely you can spot the difference.
Don't misunderstand me. I support detainment but I'm opposed to the current detainment conditions. I support processing but I'm disappointed that it takes so long to process. I think Ruddock honestly does try to do the right thing and the media has treated him unfairly, but I'm not going to sit back and say "everything's OK, business as usual, no need to change".
I also think illegal immigrants should not be deported. There's no reason why Australia should be closing its doors to people in need. It doesn't matter that they're not refugees; the refugees are obviously first priority but the non-refugees were desperate enough to risk their lives to get here. As far as I'm concerned, that makes them far more deserving of Australia's assistance than many citizens.
The AFP (Australian Federal Police) is the Australian Equivelant of the FBI. Also ASIO is the Australian Equivelant of the CIA.
By using the acronyms ASIO, CIA and FBI you have activated the Australian Echelon System. Unfortunately due to budget cutbacks we cannot record your call right now. Please ring again between the hours of 9am and 5pm weekdays and an Echelon Recording Specialist will eavesdrop on your conversation. We value your information and look forwards to eavesdropping on you in the near future.
The first is that the detainment conditions are poor.
Poor compared to what ? As I've said elsewhere, they're living better than the average homeless kid on the street.
Poor compared to the conditions I'd expect to provide for somebody who (if they are refugees) had escaped from a situation where they were in fear for their life. Yes, the detainment centres are probably better than the hell they've just escaped from. No, that doesn't excuse us for treating them as poorly as we do.
That the detainment centres provide better conditions than a homeless kid receives is not a valid defense for the detainment centres. It's just another damning example of how we (Australians) are failing to assist people who need help.
The second is that illegal immigrants are deported if their refugee claims are false.
I have to wonder why. This is precisely what should happen to illegal immigrants (and other people who are in the country illegally). No visa, no stay. Want a visa ? Go through the same process as everyone else.
I'm well aware that's the rationale behind why they're deported. I said so. You're repeating it back at me. I have to wonder why you'd bother. I also said that's something I personally don't agree with. Repeating back at me "but that's the way things are done!" isn't going to sway my opinion.
You are essentially advocating uncontrolled immigration - let anyone and everyone in, just give them a work visa until they become citizens (if they ever decide to).
There's no "esentially" here. I flat outright said this. It's not something you deduced. I've said it twice already and now - in this post - I've said it a third time.
Slashdot Mirror
Hey, I just did some checking and a large number of them have recent account IDs (600k+) and have never posted to Slashdot before. Do you reckon that there was a link to Slashdot on a fundie website and they have all come swarming here to defend their faith?
Does anyone else find it interesting that Slashdot has been completely overrun by lunatic fundamentalist creationists lately? There have been more creationist nutbags trolling Slashdot then I've been seeing on t.o. It's quite scary.
Nor is science ruled by appeals to authority, which is exactly what you did when you pointed out that your creationist priest has a PhD.
Of course, you missed the joke, which isn't a surprise because creationists often seem to have no sense of humor. You bore me.
I agree and disagree.
In real life people have no problem with choosing between competing products. There are 100s of models of cars, 1000s of styles of clothes, and 10000s of tastes in music and movies. I don't think anybody could argue that having this kind of choice is bad.
But at the same time there are several aspects of products that are standardised. Electrical appliances use a common plug standard. Televisions use a common broadcast standard. Cars accept a standard blend of fuel. The cables between your amplifier and your DVD player use a standardised protocol. Interoperability is maintained despite there being a wide variety of choice.
Within computing it's the specifications (for protocols or otherwise) that try and achieve this interoperability. So your mail servers are all compatible because they speak SMTP. When people complain about a specific choice - eg, KDE and GNOME - and they claim this is "a bad thing" they are not complaining about the choice itself being bad. They are complaining that there is no interoperability. KDE and GNOME use different protocols and different specifications. Admittedly there are some shared aspects between their designs but on the whole they are not interoperable.
Diversity is good when it provides you with interoperable choices. Diversity is not a good thing when it creates incompatible choices.
How the hell does stuff like this get moderated up as informative?
Not yet. 10 years ago Linux didn't have a place anywhere. 5 years ago it didn't have a place in small business. 2 years ago it didn't have a place in the enterprise. Today it doesn't have a place in the desktop or the data centre. But that's just today.
I agree with all your statements. There's no way Linux can compete - right now - with domain partitioning on a starfire. But give it time. I used to think Linux was a neato UNIX for my home PC. Now it's a serious contender for replacing every mid-range server in sight. I wouldn't have believed this if I hadn't seen it happen.
Duh, didn't I say you were going to do this. I also said it was amusing the first time. Seeing as creationists have been calling the botanists stupid since 1970 I can assure you that this isn't the first time.
I counter your single PhD Warwick with 200 PhD Steves! I win!
Really that easy? Why do I get the sneaking suspicion you won't be convinced that easily. I suppose you'll claim that dendrochronology is wrong and that the only way you'll be convinced is if I can produce a single trunk with 5500+ rings. That's what the creationists normally say. It's amusing the first time.
Of course, if the botanists ever do find a tree with 5500+ rings in a single trunk then the creationists will just claim that multiple rings can occur in a single season! Never mind that the botanists can spot these freak occurences by looking at multiple trees. The creationists discount geology when it suits them. Why not discount botany too!
Oh please, why not just quote the Bible at me. Do you really think those crackpots have any idea what they're talking about?
I wasn't comparing them. I was pointing out the logical flaw you made.
I did say what I thought should be improved. I repeated it four times in four posts. You specifically asked for a financially viable solution. Now you turn around and say you were just asking for "some ideas"? Which is it?
If we could all aspire to be as wonderful as you then I'm sure all the world's problems would disappear. Let's see how constructive your dialog has been...
For all your rhetoric all you've really done is call me an "armchair critic", an "aimless whinger" and a "chicken little". You say you're arguing for a workable solution? From what I can see you're just interested in name-calling and disputing the evidence; to summarise your argument so far it's "not really rape in a detention centre, because they were raped back home anyway". You don't even acknowledge there are problems and then you say you're trying to work out a fair solution? Bizarre. But that's fine by me. You're not going to make a difference anyway.
It doesn't. It goes through a UNIX socket. There is a significant difference.
I somehow doubt there was a single reason.
Concentrating on the UNIX socket is a mistake anyway. You need some form of client/server separation; otherwise you could never run more than one client. You also need some form of synchronisation between the clients and the server; otherwise you would have two clients accessing the hardware at the same time and most video hardware would simply lockup. The synchronisation method could be locks or mutexes or message passing or sockets; X11 chose a socket because that gives you UNIX sockets (local, high speed) and TCP/IP sockets (remote, flexible) without needing to code for special cases. Network transparency "for free".
Now the real question with X11 is "who should control the hardware". With X11 they decided a single process - the server - should control the hardware. This is perhaps the serious argument against X11. There are several reasons why this hurts performance but the serious problem - the one you inelegantly complain about - is that the client has to bundle all drawing requests up and send them to the server.
But stop. What's the real problem here. It's not that the bundling had to occur. No matter what model you chose there would have to be some data bundled up and sent between client and server. The real problem is the quantity of data. In Windows the quantity is a single message which is always quite small. In traditional X11 the "message" (aka request) grows without bound. If you're passing a huge bitmap then the request will be several kilobytes. Network transparency comes at a cost.
But stop again! Is this really a problem? The answer is no. X11 is extensible. All of the problem cases - bitmaps, video, 3D - can be special-cased with extensions. So on XFree86 we have Xvideo, MITSHM and DRI. In a traditional X11 model these guys would have stuffed the pipe to overflow and everything would have gone to shit. In modern XFree86 there is a second path that bypasses the pipe. You'll notice that DRI even allows the client to directly access the hardware! Network transparency is still there but can be bypassed on a needs basis. Perfect.
Now your argument shouldn't be "why do we need a client/server model" but "could we use something faster than sockets". The answer is no. There has already been work done by the XFree86 team where they tried a shm transport. It's no faster. Linux sockets are simply too quick. There's no reason to think that message passing would be any faster: effectively the X11 socket is a highly tuned message passing API. The platform independent nature of X11 means you'd need to use a platform independent message passing API. That probably means RPC or CORBA; X11 is going to be faster than either of those.
Anyway, my point from all of this is that the performance problems you complain about are being fixed. The developers are not idle and they are not stupid (far from it). If you wanted somebody to make your desktop faster then you could do no better than to put your trust in the current XFree86 developers team. They are a truly remarkable group of developers. They are not ignoring the performance problems. Give them some credit for understanding the depth of the issues rather than the superficial "why does XFree86 use TCP/IP?" misunderstanding that tries to pass for constructive criticism.
Spot on, dude. Why is it that the creationists always think they're the only ones that can spot these obvious flaws, yet the 1000s of scientists working full-time in a professional capacity are completely clueless. A little humility wouldn't be out of order for the creationists!
Max Planck said the same thing in his usual witty way.
At least, I think that's what you were saying.
Ha ha, that's classic. I enjoyed your website, btw. The "find the error" questions are very well done. Perhaps you can write a series of "crank proofs" to accompany them? By this I mean some of the more interesting crank proofs and an explanation of the flaws in layman's terms.
I don't see how I could stop them.
If you meant to say people who frequent Slashdot won't acknowledge when Microsoft has a good idea then you're wrong.
Ok, so you won't have trouble pointing to a single person who has these double-standards? If there are "many" then it should be easy. Bear in mind that you can't point to two people with two differing opinions and claim a double-standard.
Agnostics are just atheists without a spine. They've been sitting on the fence so long that their balls have been crushed into oblivion and the sudden drop in testosterone makes them timid and weak. The agnostic's feeble attempts to defend their pathetic indecisiveness as "intellectual cautiousness" is proof enough that the agnostic doesn't grok the difference between proof and belief. It wouldn't be so bad if they weren't so smug about their lack of conviction. Blah to them all.
Oh, I know the simple solution to FLT isn't likely. It's like hoping that some garage mechanic is going to invent a 70% efficient combustion engine which involves 3 moving parts. It's ridiculous, and I know that, but it doesn't stop me from hoping.
:-)
You receive crank proofs of FLT? I'm simultaneously jealous and thankful that I'm not educated enough to receive the attention of cranks. I read a book by Carl Sagan where he copied some of the crank letters he receives. It was hilarious reading but I have to feel pity for him. It must waste a lot of his time. You have my deepest sympathy
I'm not going to debate. I made that mistake last week. 7 years of lurking on t.o should have been all the education I needed but I was arrogant enough to think that I'd do a better job than the regulars on t.o. Silly me. I'll stick to ridiculing the dumber creationist claims. It's not productive but it's fun.
While I can appreciate he did something pretty brilliant (I've read the pulp book describing how he lived while writing his proof, including the last minute "oh my god I missed something" scare) I'm still disappointed. I'd hoped that the proof would be something unbelievably simple and elegant that even a non-mathematician like myself could understand. Unfortunately it turns out to be 400 pages of complex mathematics that I could never hope to understand. I still have hope that some lone genius will find a half-page proof for Fermat's Last Theorem using nothing more complicated than high-school algebra :-(
The oldest records of my family tree date back to 1860. Therefore the world was divinely created 140 years ago?
The oldest living dog I know of is 16 years old (determined by reading his showdog papers). So the world was divinely created 16 years ago?
Stories about demons, elves, pixies, ghosts, spirits, goblins, superhumans, giant mutated lizards that breathe fire and demolish largish cities, also exist in many (most?) world cultures.
Punctuated equilibrium accounts for problems seen with traditional natural selection, not for problems with evolutionary theory. It's important to realise there's a distinction between the theory and the mechanisms behind the theory. The mechanisms are constantly being changed as new evidence is discovered. The theory has withstood all serious attempts to be discredited.
How about Microsoft implements (1) a good idea and (2) doesn't steal? That would be an example of Microsoft doing something right.
It's not "sort of true". Though you know the truth (there is no Minix source code in Linux and never was) unfortunately there are people who honestly believe that Linux is a Minix derivative. They point to minix.c as proof! These people don't need encouragement in any form. I know that you meant Linus used Minix as the development environment and Linux orignally used the Minix filesystem, but there are plenty of people who don't understand this subtlety. So please say "not even remotely true" instead of "sort of true".
That does not follow and I'm sure you're well aware of that. If rape, abuse and fires were regularly happening inside primary schools would you also claim "these things happen out in free society" and therefore conclude there's nothing wrong with the schools?
Utter nonsense. I can say "cancer is bad" without having a cure for cancer. You don't have to be a mechanic to know when your car is broken.
Then you expect too much. You demand every critic to have a better solution? Would you expect every coach to be a better athlete? Or every teacher to be a better student? Can't I critique a book until I've written one?
What I think you really want is to silence dissenting opinion by demanding the answers. The world isn't that simple. Often the answers are complicated and take lots of effort to find. But you have to recognise the problem exists before you can commit the effort to find the solutions. I'm claiming that the current "solutions" have problems. You're arguing that I can't state my dissent because I don't have a better solution? I reckon that's a cop-out on your part.
What you're really arguing for is maintaining the status quo. The status quo might be fine for you and me but (I think) it's not good enough for the illegal immigrants.
I'd expect conditions where children aren't abused and women aren't raped and lives aren't put at risk by fire-starting vandals.
I'd like to see interested third parties (eg, salvos) onsite to help avoid future reoccurences of detainee abuse. I'd like the media to be invited into the grounds rather than this media blanket we currently have.
You ask me to present my financially practical solution? Why do I need a solution before I can state the flaws I perceive in the current system? Are the only people allowed to speak out against the inhumane treatment - in your world - the same people who can prepare a balance sheet? Under which account do I put "raped child" when I'm creating this financially practical solution?
It's only unworkable if you don't want it to work. Australia managed to support immigration on far grander scales just a few decades ago. Now it's "completely unworkable"? I don't think so.
I'm not inviting them into my home. I'm inviting them into my country. Surely you can spot the difference.
Don't misunderstand me. I support detainment but I'm opposed to the current detainment conditions. I support processing but I'm disappointed that it takes so long to process. I think Ruddock honestly does try to do the right thing and the media has treated him unfairly, but I'm not going to sit back and say "everything's OK, business as usual, no need to change".
I also think illegal immigrants should not be deported. There's no reason why Australia should be closing its doors to people in need. It doesn't matter that they're not refugees; the refugees are obviously first priority but the non-refugees were desperate enough to risk their lives to get here. As far as I'm concerned, that makes them far more deserving of Australia's assistance than many citizens.
By using the acronyms ASIO, CIA and FBI you have activated the Australian Echelon System. Unfortunately due to budget cutbacks we cannot record your call right now. Please ring again between the hours of 9am and 5pm weekdays and an Echelon Recording Specialist will eavesdrop on your conversation. We value your information and look forwards to eavesdropping on you in the near future.
Poor compared to the conditions I'd expect to provide for somebody who (if they are refugees) had escaped from a situation where they were in fear for their life. Yes, the detainment centres are probably better than the hell they've just escaped from. No, that doesn't excuse us for treating them as poorly as we do.
That the detainment centres provide better conditions than a homeless kid receives is not a valid defense for the detainment centres. It's just another damning example of how we (Australians) are failing to assist people who need help.
I'm well aware that's the rationale behind why they're deported. I said so. You're repeating it back at me. I have to wonder why you'd bother. I also said that's something I personally don't agree with. Repeating back at me "but that's the way things are done!" isn't going to sway my opinion.
There's no "esentially" here. I flat outright said this. It's not something you deduced. I've said it twice already and now - in this post - I've said it a third time.