Education is an ongoing process. You don't become "educated" and then stop.
it takes Just as much faith to believe in God Creating the Earth as it does to believe that humans "evolved" from apes
Evolution does not claim that we evolved from apes. It claims that humans and apes both evolved from a common ancestor. There is plenty of strong evidence to support this claim.
Faith is not required to believe this. Just comprehension of the science.
So do I, but this is what the creationists claim. Did you even read the ICR page I linked to? It's written on the creationist website in black and white. They believe the Bible is inerrant. Don't tell me you disagree, tell them.
But religion comes in many forms and there are people to whom science is their religion, because I believe that Evolution is a form of Naturalism.
There are people to whom football is a religion, but football itself is a sport not a religion.
Evolution has been observed in nature
the same could be said of Creation
James Randi is offering a large cash sum to anybody who provides any natural observations (aka proof) of Creationism. Nobody has collected.
It is as scientific as the laws of physics.
as many of Evolution's theories don't even follow the laws of Thermodynamics.
This simply proves you know nothing about either evolution or thermodynamics. There is nothing in evolution that is disproven by thermodynamics. This tired old chestnut is repeated by the fundamentalist faithful and debunked so often it has frequenty flyer points. Use google and educate yourself.
There is no science in creationism; it is religious belief.
Actually, if you think of it from the viewpoint that our universe is finite (meaning constrained by time) and that it MUST have had a beginning because of this, then you begin to approach a point where you must admit that the universe was created (don't worry with "created by who", just think if it is possible for our universe to exist without some kind of creation event). Even Stephen Hawking admits this, with the ironic remark "this makes most of my colleagues very uncomfortable". It's been quite a while since I read that, but if I can turn it up, I'll send you the link.
With a degree in genetics I would have thought you'd have understood that evolution says nothing about the creation of the universe.
In point of fact, if you're not a rabid supporter of either viewpoint, then you can come to a different, non-conventional understanding. Kind of like Galileo and the solar system.
I think it's misleading of you to imply that creationism is simply a "non-conventional understanding" and then equate it with Galileo's heliocentric model. Creationism is a fundamentalist religious belief. The tenets of creationism are well defined. The second tenet is "the Bible is inerrant". Creationism isn't science; their own tenets prove this. By comparing it against Galileo's model you falsely imply a scientific basis for creationism.
However, there might just be a way to reconcile both of these viewpoints. If I can convince the evolutionist that there is at lest some amount of support for creationism, then they might be willing to admit the necessity for a creation event.
Evolution doesn't deal with creation of the universe nor with the creation of life. Evolution deals with a very specific problem: the origin of species. Where the "first species" came from is pure conjecture. Some people support abiogenesis which is unproven though still a science. Some people support creationism which is unprovable and therefore not a science. You are fooling yourself and misleading others by conflating the two.
I believe that God created the universe that we live in. My current (nonscientific) theory on how he did this is through evolution and a "fast foward time", up until about 8,000 years ago when he made a man from scratch that just happened to be genetically compatbile with the super-apes that were walking around. Of course, God having created everything else 8,500 years ago is also a possibility, but unlikely given the extra effort needed.
How the heck could you know how much effort is involved? Is there a book "How To Create Worlds For Dummies" that I failed to notice last time I was at the bookstore?
The only conclusion I ever came to is that neither side (Creation and Evolution) is able to objectively study this issue because when it boils down to the bare bottom, both Evolution and Creation are a belief systems.
Then you concluded incorrectly. Evolution has been observed in nature and is an established fact. It is as scientific as the laws of physics. The details can still be argued but that's all.
As a simulation engineer I know that there are times when multiple models fit the system and that sometimes taking the best of several models is the correct solution.
Sure, I'll agree with that, both creationism and evolution are models. The problem is that creationism is a religious belief and evolution is a science. All the outrage in the world cannot change that.
As a creationist who also has a degree in genetics and did research under an evolutionary geneticist, I've seen both sides of the spectrum. both sides extremes have their intellectual/theological bigots who aren't willing to budge simply for spites sake. However, those that are willing to at least listen generally can have very unique viewpoints.
The fault in your statement here is that you're giving equal value to evolution and creationism. You imply that there are only two sides and that both sides are "extremist viewpoints". This is so far removed from reality that it's not funny. There is no science in creationism; it is a religious belief. No amount of hand-waving can change that. And while there may be rabid supporters of evolution - you could reasonably argue that these people are religious about their convictions - that doesn't change the fact that evolution is a science and it can be falsified.
You are welcome to your shortsighted opinion of the stupidity of creationists, but you yourself seem to completely ignore the fact that evolution is a theory, one disputed by a lot of scientific evidence. The laws of thermodynamics for instance.
Your troll was going quite well up to ths point, then you gave the game away.
Rest of the gaming industry? From my viewpoint it was Carmack alone.
Then your viewpoint is myopic. Carmack had a petition going at the time with dozens of signatures from professional game developers. Direct3D really sucked back then and game developers were not amused that Microsoft was pushing an inferior technology. There is good information here:
http://www.exaflop.org/docs/d3dogl/ind.html
The signatures are on an open letter to Microsoft demanding better support for OpenGL. An interesting signature - once you get past Sweeney and Carmack - is Seamus Blackley himself. Even Mr Xbox didn't like Direct3D back then. That really says a lot.
Windows Server 2003 hit 99.995 percent availability at the Release Candidate 1 (RC1) stage last summer
Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't this mean that they must have had something running a year before that? 4.5 9's of availability is what, a day of down-time per year?
Well, if you assume it takes 2 minutes to reboot then 4.5 9s just means Windows spontaneously reboots every 3 hours and 20 minutes. Badoom tish.
Yes but if they admit that then they're admitting to running an illegal software monopoly.
The console market is dominated by Sony, not Microsoft. Microsoft has monopoly in personal computers market
The parent poster said "software monopoly". They were referring to Microsoft's control over who does and doesn't publish titles for the Xbox. This has happened before; Atari sued Nintendo over claims that their "anti-piracy chip" was in reality a way for Nintendo to restrict licensing to approved developers.
The courts ruled in Nintendo's favour but for a non-obvious reason: Atari was found guilty of copyright infringement! The antitrust violations claimed by Atari were mostly ignored.
Anyway, my point is that you could reasonably argue that Microsoft is engaging in antitrust violations iff they refuse to license Linux for the Xbox.
I'm not surprised. Dijkstra's "Goto Considered Harmful" paper isn't gospel. Lots of programmers disagree with it, including core developers of Linux. In fact, I only ever find first year uni students quoting the paper and that includes myself back when I first read it:-/
So have you decided yet whether web developers are (a) stupid or (b) the only people who know anything about how the web works?
What a dichotomy! Are those the only two choices I get? Oh dear, whatever shall I do. I know, I choose door number 3 which is what I've always said: "there are some web developers who are intelligent and motivated and educated. They're simply hard to find because of all the self-proclaimed "web developers" who couldn't tell the difference between CSS and a pile of gopher shit."
Oh wait, what I've said doesn't fit into your false dichotomy!
You keep ignoring the fact that I've run my own tests -- which were MUCH more extensive than the Opera gang's.
But that's entirely my point! We have in the blue corner, you, an admitted non-web-developer who has performed their own UNPUBLISHED tests. In the red corner we have, Opera development team, a group of people who write a fucking web browser, who have published the results of their test that prove - beyond a shadow of a doubt - that there's something sneaky going on here.
So the only people who dispute the "Opera gang's" claims are people who admit they don't do web development!
And you're the one who started flinging insults...
Aww diddums. You do realise that you've just said the "grownup" equivalent of "he started it"?
Statistics. I strongly wish I had a deeper grasp of statistics in almost everything I do. Finite state automata and directed acyclic graphs may be all the rage in compsci, but if I compreheneded confidence intervals and probability distributions I'd do much better work than I currently do.
I have a point. I'd like to point out that you've already admitted you aren't a web developer, you have no experience in web development, and that you have worked as a.Net framework developer which probably means you worked for Microsoft. Rather unsurprising then that you're defending Microsoft against all the evidence. If I was unkind - and believe me, I'm very unkind - I'd say you're a Microsoft apologist.
You've also made rather strong statements about this topic; a web development topic. You've been told by an admitted web developer (not myself) that you're wrong. You've ignored this person. You've been told by me that no organisation of Microsoft's size would run a website in such an untidy manner. You've ignored me. I think I'm fairly safe to claim that you're an arrogant prick, based on this evidence alone.
Care to return the volley? Or would you rather concede the game early?
The insult would have been better if it hadn't been the exact same insult I'd just used on you. Imagination scores points. Repetition makes you look stupid.
I think the majority of Slashdotters are "web developers". People speak more about things they think they are knowledgeable about, whether that knowledge is justified or not. For example, I prattle on far too much whenever there's an XFree86 article. I suspect the high proportion of idiots responding to this article just proves how many ill-justified jobs were created by the dot-COM boom.
This is a real shame too, because there are some web developers who are intelligent and motivated and educated. They're simply hard to find because of all the self-proclaimed "web developers" who couldn't tell the difference between CSS and a pile of gopher shit.
So to answer your question, I think there is simply a greater number of uninformed people than usual responding to this article. The other example I have of this was the recent FTP vs HTTP article. Not only was the premise of the question incredibly stupid, but some of the posts were beyond laughable and into stomach-churning. One idiot even made an eloquent argument based on the belief that passive FTP uses UDP!
Don't be a hypocrite. My argument was that it's naive to think that a site as large as MSN.com doesn't have testing and review and that the testing and review wouldn't have caught this "bug". You ignore that argument entirely to focus on a triviality?! That although somebody said "typo" it wasn't you?! Lame. Lame. Lame. If you're going to be condescending AND arrogant AND get righteous when people don't "read what you write" then you should at least have the common sense to read what other people write.
You're naively assuming that the authors of MSN.COM with several 10s of millions of hits per day don't bother to look at their webpage in several browsers before and after every change.
Even the most amateur designers I've met keep at least 4 browsers open on the desktop. They also check the sites out on their staging areas before publishing to the production areas.
It's ridiculous to think this was a typo: that would imply a level of incompetence that nobody - not even the most rabid anti-Microsoft fanatic - could possibly believe. This is an international website with millions of customers. If it runs without staging and review and browser tests at least against the latest browsers then I'm a monkey's uncle.
The site even has explicit code testing for the presence of Opera; obviously the Opera browser was "important enough" to warrant its own stylesheet, but not important enough to warrant a 60 second check before deployment of a CSS that might make-or-break 1000s of pages delivered to 1000000s of customers? Bullshit.
Slashdot Mirror
The Vera Sans Mono Roman is gorgeous. I'm making it my default terminal window font. Thank you, Jim and Jim!
Education is an ongoing process. You don't become "educated" and then stop.
Evolution does not claim that we evolved from apes. It claims that humans and apes both evolved from a common ancestor. There is plenty of strong evidence to support this claim.
Faith is not required to believe this. Just comprehension of the science.
The creationists.
So do I, but this is what the creationists claim. Did you even read the ICR page I linked to? It's written on the creationist website in black and white. They believe the Bible is inerrant. Don't tell me you disagree, tell them.
There are people to whom football is a religion, but football itself is a sport not a religion.
James Randi is offering a large cash sum to anybody who provides any natural observations (aka proof) of Creationism. Nobody has collected.
This simply proves you know nothing about either evolution or thermodynamics. There is nothing in evolution that is disproven by thermodynamics. This tired old chestnut is repeated by the fundamentalist faithful and debunked so often it has frequenty flyer points. Use google and educate yourself.
With a degree in genetics I would have thought you'd have understood that evolution says nothing about the creation of the universe.
I think it's misleading of you to imply that creationism is simply a "non-conventional understanding" and then equate it with Galileo's heliocentric model. Creationism is a fundamentalist religious belief. The tenets of creationism are well defined. The second tenet is "the Bible is inerrant". Creationism isn't science; their own tenets prove this. By comparing it against Galileo's model you falsely imply a scientific basis for creationism.
Evolution doesn't deal with creation of the universe nor with the creation of life. Evolution deals with a very specific problem: the origin of species. Where the "first species" came from is pure conjecture. Some people support abiogenesis which is unproven though still a science. Some people support creationism which is unprovable and therefore not a science. You are fooling yourself and misleading others by conflating the two.
How the heck could you know how much effort is involved? Is there a book "How To Create Worlds For Dummies" that I failed to notice last time I was at the bookstore?
Then you concluded incorrectly. Evolution has been observed in nature and is an established fact. It is as scientific as the laws of physics. The details can still be argued but that's all.
Sure, I'll agree with that, both creationism and evolution are models. The problem is that creationism is a religious belief and evolution is a science. All the outrage in the world cannot change that.
The fault in your statement here is that you're giving equal value to evolution and creationism. You imply that there are only two sides and that both sides are "extremist viewpoints". This is so far removed from reality that it's not funny. There is no science in creationism; it is a religious belief. No amount of hand-waving can change that. And while there may be rabid supporters of evolution - you could reasonably argue that these people are religious about their convictions - that doesn't change the fact that evolution is a science and it can be falsified.
Your troll was going quite well up to ths point, then you gave the game away.
#ERR192#: Malfunction in "HUMOR CHIP" model "YA888-21-X".
Then your viewpoint is myopic. Carmack had a petition going at the time with dozens of signatures from professional game developers. Direct3D really sucked back then and game developers were not amused that Microsoft was pushing an inferior technology. There is good information here:
The signatures are on an open letter to Microsoft demanding better support for OpenGL. An interesting signature - once you get past Sweeney and Carmack - is Seamus Blackley himself. Even Mr Xbox didn't like Direct3D back then. That really says a lot.
Well, if you assume it takes 2 minutes to reboot then 4.5 9s just means Windows spontaneously reboots every 3 hours and 20 minutes. Badoom tish.
The parent poster said "software monopoly". They were referring to Microsoft's control over who does and doesn't publish titles for the Xbox. This has happened before; Atari sued Nintendo over claims that their "anti-piracy chip" was in reality a way for Nintendo to restrict licensing to approved developers.
There's a brief writeup here:
And the court's decision here:
The courts ruled in Nintendo's favour but for a non-obvious reason: Atari was found guilty of copyright infringement! The antitrust violations claimed by Atari were mostly ignored.
Anyway, my point is that you could reasonably argue that Microsoft is engaging in antitrust violations iff they refuse to license Linux for the Xbox.
I'm not surprised. Dijkstra's "Goto Considered Harmful" paper isn't gospel. Lots of programmers disagree with it, including core developers of Linux. In fact, I only ever find first year uni students quoting the paper and that includes myself back when I first read it :-/
Replace the last field in /etc/vfstab with "logging" and you've got a journalled filesystem. Works on Solaris 8 and Solaris 9.
What a dichotomy! Are those the only two choices I get? Oh dear, whatever shall I do. I know, I choose door number 3 which is what I've always said: "there are some web developers who are intelligent and motivated and educated. They're simply hard to find because of all the self-proclaimed "web developers" who couldn't tell the difference between CSS and a pile of gopher shit."
Oh wait, what I've said doesn't fit into your false dichotomy!
But that's entirely my point! We have in the blue corner, you, an admitted non-web-developer who has performed their own UNPUBLISHED tests. In the red corner we have, Opera development team, a group of people who write a fucking web browser, who have published the results of their test that prove - beyond a shadow of a doubt - that there's something sneaky going on here.
So the only people who dispute the "Opera gang's" claims are people who admit they don't do web development!
Aww diddums. You do realise that you've just said the "grownup" equivalent of "he started it"?
Statistics. I strongly wish I had a deeper grasp of statistics in almost everything I do. Finite state automata and directed acyclic graphs may be all the rage in compsci, but if I compreheneded confidence intervals and probability distributions I'd do much better work than I currently do.
So are you. Did you have a point?
.Net framework developer which probably means you worked for Microsoft. Rather unsurprising then that you're defending Microsoft against all the evidence. If I was unkind - and believe me, I'm very unkind - I'd say you're a Microsoft apologist.
I have a point. I'd like to point out that you've already admitted you aren't a web developer, you have no experience in web development, and that you have worked as a
You've also made rather strong statements about this topic; a web development topic. You've been told by an admitted web developer (not myself) that you're wrong. You've ignored this person. You've been told by me that no organisation of Microsoft's size would run a website in such an untidy manner. You've ignored me. I think I'm fairly safe to claim that you're an arrogant prick, based on this evidence alone.
Care to return the volley? Or would you rather concede the game early?
Though ewethenasia is illegal so Dolly had to commit seweicide.
If the effect you're trying to achieve is "idiot who can't think up their own insults", sure.
Summary: [boast boast boast] scientific [boast boast boast] genealogy [boast boast boast] condescending twat.
The insult would have been better if it hadn't been the exact same insult I'd just used on you. Imagination scores points. Repetition makes you look stupid.
I think the majority of Slashdotters are "web developers". People speak more about things they think they are knowledgeable about, whether that knowledge is justified or not. For example, I prattle on far too much whenever there's an XFree86 article. I suspect the high proportion of idiots responding to this article just proves how many ill-justified jobs were created by the dot-COM boom.
This is a real shame too, because there are some web developers who are intelligent and motivated and educated. They're simply hard to find because of all the self-proclaimed "web developers" who couldn't tell the difference between CSS and a pile of gopher shit.
So to answer your question, I think there is simply a greater number of uninformed people than usual responding to this article. The other example I have of this was the recent FTP vs HTTP article. Not only was the premise of the question incredibly stupid, but some of the posts were beyond laughable and into stomach-churning. One idiot even made an eloquent argument based on the belief that passive FTP uses UDP!
Don't be a hypocrite. My argument was that it's naive to think that a site as large as MSN.com doesn't have testing and review and that the testing and review wouldn't have caught this "bug". You ignore that argument entirely to focus on a triviality?! That although somebody said "typo" it wasn't you?! Lame. Lame. Lame. If you're going to be condescending AND arrogant AND get righteous when people don't "read what you write" then you should at least have the common sense to read what other people write.
You're wrong, but that's no surprise, because your entire post was condescending nonsense.
You're naively assuming that the authors of MSN.COM with several 10s of millions of hits per day don't bother to look at their webpage in several browsers before and after every change.
Even the most amateur designers I've met keep at least 4 browsers open on the desktop. They also check the sites out on their staging areas before publishing to the production areas.
It's ridiculous to think this was a typo: that would imply a level of incompetence that nobody - not even the most rabid anti-Microsoft fanatic - could possibly believe. This is an international website with millions of customers. If it runs without staging and review and browser tests at least against the latest browsers then I'm a monkey's uncle.
The site even has explicit code testing for the presence of Opera; obviously the Opera browser was "important enough" to warrant its own stylesheet, but not important enough to warrant a 60 second check before deployment of a CSS that might make-or-break 1000s of pages delivered to 1000000s of customers? Bullshit.