they have a fundamental right to the use of "their" host.
So is it illegal to kill a tapeworm?
More seriously, why do they have a fundamental right to use of "their" host? You say that they do, but you don't explain why this is a fundamental right.
I won't disagree with you about Bush. Would you really not vote for Gore based solely on his stance on the Middle East? I think that we can agree that in the general case (not looking at any particular examples like the Middle East where you might disagree with him) that Gore is going to be by far the best choice as far as foreign relations go.
Ahh - and the two maincanidates fit your discription? Oh, wait, I geuss not...well, shucks, looks like Nader is still the best choice...:-)
Soooo.... Let me see. War in the Middle East. You want Ralph Nader going in and trying to talk to Arafat and Barak? What if there were a real foreign crisis involving the US (say that problems with Russia flare up)? Would you want Nader in there trying to keep the peace and calm down a bad situation?
Bush
seems like the kind of person who can listen to other people.
While the ability and willingness to listen to people are very important, so is the ability to make properly informed decisions after listening. The president can listen to suggestions from his advisors all day, but at the end of the day, he has to have the aptitude to digest all of the information and make the correct decision. Do you think Bush is capable of that? Or is he just going to do what his advisors say without fully understanding the issues?
Looking at these interview responses, I'm not so sure that he has the capability to listen to people. In at least 2 of the questions (minority religions, IP), he was clearly not aware of the tone of the posts. That is, he didn't comprehend enough of the question to understand how he should tone his response. I'm not suggesting that he should have changed his answers, but his IP response was given with a tone that assumed that we all agree with him.
Um... MS hasn't changed their file formats for their various apps for several versions now. Educate thyself before spouting off
Well, they have. Approximately 2 years ago, the company that I was working for was upgrading to the latest version of Word (don't remember which version it was, whatever was new 2 years ago) from the previous version. It was a large company, so departments were upgraded at different times. People from another department got their new version before I did, and I was unable to open their documents with the previous version of word. That is incompatibility. Maybe you should educate thyself before you spout off.
Grrrr. But this is only because microsoft changes the file formats that it uses around so that other office suites can't use the same file format as it does. If they were interested in making it more useful, they'd stick with one file format, and try to make people use ms Office because of it's functionality, not because they have to....
Why do you think that when somebody says, for instance, "Don't watch 'Psycho Porn Stars from Hell,'" that they're limiting your choices? The word "don't" doesn't
limit anything unless you still live with your parents, and then it has the same connotation whether you're athiest or religious.
Well, in the US, (and elsewhere, too, but I live in the US so I can more easily speak about how it works here), conservative politicians (influenced by religion) tend to try to make these "Don't"s into law. Like trying to legislate filters on computers in public schools and libraries (and the whole abortion thing, but I don't want to get into that here).
When "Atheists" suggest that someone not do something, it is more likely to be a suggestion, less likely to be an order.
Actually, Atheism often tries to tell me what movies to see, what to wear, what books to read, how to raise my children, what
to think about others, etc. It simply uses a different standard than the one I choose.
I'd like to hear you explain this one. I don't agree. Where "Christians" might say that I shouldn't watch "Psycho Porn Stars from Hell", "Atheists" won't necessarily tell me that I should watch it, they'll most likely say that I have the option to watch it should I choose.
Study the Godel Incompleteness Theorem. In any sufficiently expressive formal system, if the system is consistant (i.e. no false statements have proofs) then there
exists statements which are true and which have no proof. See _Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Briad_ by Douglas Hofstadter.
I'm vaguely aware of Godel, yes. I haven't read GEB, though. I have trouble tying such mathematical concepts with reality. Like, why does this argument mean that I should believe that there is a god? It's not so much that I have a hard time believing in (a) god(s) (from your post previous to this), it's that there is absolutely no evidence that there is one. Yes, that doesn't mean that there isn't, but do you believe in the boogie man? Well, why not? There doesn't have to be proof that he exists for him to exist!
I guess what I'm trying to say with all of my rambling is that you're trying to put the burden on me to prove that god doesn't exist (that seems to be the only way to deter you!), but rather than believing everything that hasn't been disproven, I tend to believe things for which I see evidence.
The only thing that can probably be changed reasonable
without causing too much problem would be to allow each district in each state to cast the majority vote based on that district's popular winner,....
The problem with this is that elections could then be "rigged" by (I know I'm going to spell this wrong) gerrymandering. That's where people draw up district lines so that they ensure that the district will vote one particular way. Currently, with the aggregation being done on the state level, that can't be done because one political party can't redraw state lines because they feel it's in their favor.
Suffice it to say, that E*Trade did some
jiggery-pokery with... the IPO's inital cost....
It doesn't sound like E*Trade did anything out of the ordinary with the IPO price. It's always adjusted over and over again, and if interest in the stock appears to be high enough, then it often does end up a bit above the range that had been publicized. Those people that didn't put enough in the account to cover a little bit extra should have done a bit of research, it's not E*Trade's fault that they didn't.
because alternate OS
advocates (i.e. 99% of Slashdot readers) are hoping to use that same courtroom to even out the marketplace for operating systems.
This just isn't true. "Alternate OS advocates" are trying to beat Microsoft in the marketplace. That's what Linux is about. While most Slashdot readers dislike Microsoft and would probably like to see them broken up, that's not what people here are banking on.
Over 60 books by a couple dozen different authors over hundreds of years, and yet there is a consistent theme through it all.
Each book wasn't written in a vacuum, either. The authors of many of the books had access to many other of the books, allowing for easy duplication of themes. And I'm sure you'll acknowledge that certainly for the New Testament (and probably the old) there was some religious authority setting the themes for the books. There's also plenty of inconsistency in the books.
I suppose "Judaism" didn't start at least until the time of God's covenant with Abraham, but God has frowned on
murder since at least the time of Cain and Abel, the 2nd generation of human beings.
Well, here you're just blindly believing the bible word for word. You seem to believe the bible literally. I'm talking about real history, like where the earth is 10-15 billion years old, and humans have been around for, I dunno, tens or hundreds of thousands of years. I can't argue this point with you if you won't concede that there were people before Christianity.
If Christian morals changed with society, they wouldn't be Christian morals any more. The standard of morality is the same now as it was thousands of
years ago, because God doesn't change.
Let me ask you this. Is what the Pope says the "Word of God"? You are inconsistent. The bible is completely correct, because it's the word of god (passed through man, of course), but the clergy might be wrong because that's the word of god (passed through man). How do you know what to believe?
Okay. Trying to keep this at least somewhere near on topic. How do we know what God's will and God's moral standards are? It's really only through humans. There's the bible (or whatever particular holy book you use), which I'm sure you'll acknowledge was written by people, and (if you're Catholic, and probably some other flavors of Christianity) through the clergy. So you're taking somebody's word that what you are hearing is God's word. So as far as I can tell, we have no way of actually knowing what God's will (and morality) is (there are these imperfect people in between).
While you think that the "standard" you've created from yourself is a result of human creation, it almost certainly derives most of its pertinent aspects from the
Judeo-Christian ethic (at least I assume you're posting from a western cultural setting). Society has not always been as secular as it is now.
Now this I disagree with. To say that my moral standards are the result of Christianity and Judaism (yes, I'm from a western cultural setting) implies that before Christianity and Judaism, the moral standards that I hold didn't exist. I assure you that the "Thou shalt not murder" idea has been around for much longer than these particular religions. I would counter that the Judeo-Christian ethic is based on standards that were common in the people from which they sprung - Christians didn't invent morals. Christian morals are more of a reflection of the society than vice versa. So my morals are more a reflection of society than of any particular religion. (I support this argument by pointing out that most/all of the "major" cultures have approximately the same moral standards, despite having different religions).
Close. Radio waves are photons, just at different energies. This is just a telescope that is designed to collect electromagnetic waves at a low frequency, where our eyes don't detect them.
It's not going to be used for any one thing in particular. With a telescope like this, groups will apply to use the telescope, then use for a short period of time, and then go and analyze their data. So there is no large set of data needing analysis like SETI@Home, only small sets of data for each experiment using it. So there's no need for a distributed computing environment to process the data.
Sorry about the comment about a troll. I realized that you probably weren't, but....
You obviously have absolutely no conception that people think differently than you. You believe that there's one god who is "the only God", but why do you assume that others in this forum agree with you? The point I was making is one that belongs in a different and much larger discussion, but it is basically "how can a god (or anything else for that matter) that does (or might) not exist legislate morality?"
I'd prefer a holy and righteous God as my ruler as opposed to men who are neither
Why do you need a ruler? I feel that I can control myself well enough so that I don't need a "ruler" telling me how to act. I have my own morality, probably very similar to yours, that I've come to through my interaction with my parents, friends, community, and even a little bit of church, rather than one handed to me in a large black book by a church. You have given no evidence that there is a god to legislate morality, the morality you received from church is , imho, one that was made up by church leaders over the past several centuries.
I'm rambling now, so I'll stop. As I mentioned, this is a much larger discussion, but what I was getting at is that people have different beliefs from you. Thus "because I believe it" isn't the correct answer for why something is true.
Why am I responding to an obvious troll? I don't know....
God sets the standard.
Talk about relative morality. What God? Odin? So pillaging and killing is good and I'll end up in Valhalla with all of the other mighty warriors? Or Zeus? Or your god? Give me a break. The "God sets the standard" argument is what people have used for millennia to control other people. Come up with an argument that you can back without pointing to a 1500 year-old work of historical fiction.
IMHO, good coding practice negates all of these problems in C/Java/etc. For example:
In your first example, you suggest that adding a second line of code in an "if" clause. I always use braces, even if it's just for one line, that way I can add a second and never forget the braces.
As far as the whole wrong number of braces thing, that's why I use emacs. It indents for me, I can easily tell by how it indents my code whether I've forgotten anything.
I've never used Python, but having non-significate whitespace (and therefore requiring braces and whatnot) really shouldn't bother somebody who is a careful coder.
In my opinion I would never sign a contract to provide a web app that would work with any AOL browser. [...] It's not reasonable to specify neat multimedia and glitz that will view on, in my opinion, a substandard product.
That's fine. Then you don't sign a contract saying that you'll deliver exactly that.
Interesting how folks like you always comment on that.... I've been at my current job for about 8 months (where I have a windoze machine), and have never used the floppy drive. Maybe Apple made a good choice by not making me pay for including one in my own G3? You assume that a radical decision is automatically a bad one.
If the average mac user had to do that, there would be a lot of unhappy campers.
Interesting comment. It's amazing how micro$oft has lowered our expectations. I would say that you shouldn't have to reformat your hard drive, get any new software, or any of that whenever you upgrade an OS. microsoft has many people believing that you really do need to reinstall the OS whenever something gets corrupted, but that need not be the case....
Slashdot Mirror
they have a fundamental right to the use of "their" host.
So is it illegal to kill a tapeworm?
More seriously, why do they have a fundamental right to use of "their" host? You say that they do, but you don't explain why this is a fundamental right.
I won't disagree with you about Bush. Would you really not vote for Gore based solely on his stance on the Middle East? I think that we can agree that in the general case (not looking at any particular examples like the Middle East where you might disagree with him) that Gore is going to be by far the best choice as far as foreign relations go.
Ahh - and the two maincanidates fit your discription? Oh, wait, I geuss not...well, shucks, looks like Nader is still the best choice... :-)
Soooo.... Let me see. War in the Middle East. You want Ralph Nader going in and trying to talk to Arafat and Barak? What if there were a real foreign crisis involving the US (say that problems with Russia flare up)? Would you want Nader in there trying to keep the peace and calm down a bad situation?
Bush seems like the kind of person who can listen to other people.
While the ability and willingness to listen to people are very important, so is the ability to make properly informed decisions after listening. The president can listen to suggestions from his advisors all day, but at the end of the day, he has to have the aptitude to digest all of the information and make the correct decision. Do you think Bush is capable of that? Or is he just going to do what his advisors say without fully understanding the issues?
Looking at these interview responses, I'm not so sure that he has the capability to listen to people. In at least 2 of the questions (minority religions, IP), he was clearly not aware of the tone of the posts. That is, he didn't comprehend enough of the question to understand how he should tone his response. I'm not suggesting that he should have changed his answers, but his IP response was given with a tone that assumed that we all agree with him.
Maybe, but what's that got to do with Bill Gates? He didn't write DOS
Laugh with us. That's a joke, too.
Um... MS hasn't changed their file formats for their various apps for several versions now. Educate thyself before spouting off
Well, they have. Approximately 2 years ago, the company that I was working for was upgrading to the latest version of Word (don't remember which version it was, whatever was new 2 years ago) from the previous version. It was a large company, so departments were upgraded at different times. People from another department got their new version before I did, and I was unable to open their documents with the previous version of word. That is incompatibility. Maybe you should educate thyself before you spout off.
Grrrr. But this is only because microsoft changes the file formats that it uses around so that other office suites can't use the same file format as it does. If they were interested in making it more useful, they'd stick with one file format, and try to make people use ms Office because of it's functionality, not because they have to....
Why do you think that when somebody says, for instance, "Don't watch 'Psycho Porn Stars from Hell,'" that they're limiting your choices? The word "don't" doesn't limit anything unless you still live with your parents, and then it has the same connotation whether you're athiest or religious.
Well, in the US, (and elsewhere, too, but I live in the US so I can more easily speak about how it works here), conservative politicians (influenced by religion) tend to try to make these "Don't"s into law. Like trying to legislate filters on computers in public schools and libraries (and the whole abortion thing, but I don't want to get into that here).
When "Atheists" suggest that someone not do something, it is more likely to be a suggestion, less likely to be an order.
Actually, Atheism often tries to tell me what movies to see, what to wear, what books to read, how to raise my children, what to think about others, etc. It simply uses a different standard than the one I choose.
I'd like to hear you explain this one. I don't agree. Where "Christians" might say that I shouldn't watch "Psycho Porn Stars from Hell", "Atheists" won't necessarily tell me that I should watch it, they'll most likely say that I have the option to watch it should I choose.
Study the Godel Incompleteness Theorem. In any sufficiently expressive formal system, if the system is consistant (i.e. no false statements have proofs) then there exists statements which are true and which have no proof. See _Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Briad_ by Douglas Hofstadter.
I'm vaguely aware of Godel, yes. I haven't read GEB, though. I have trouble tying such mathematical concepts with reality. Like, why does this argument mean that I should believe that there is a god? It's not so much that I have a hard time believing in (a) god(s) (from your post previous to this), it's that there is absolutely no evidence that there is one. Yes, that doesn't mean that there isn't, but do you believe in the boogie man? Well, why not? There doesn't have to be proof that he exists for him to exist!
I guess what I'm trying to say with all of my rambling is that you're trying to put the burden on me to prove that god doesn't exist (that seems to be the only way to deter you!), but rather than believing everything that hasn't been disproven, I tend to believe things for which I see evidence.
Just because *you* have trouble believing it dosn't make it a lie. That's why they call it "faith" and not "proof".
But why should I believe in something for which nobody has every shown me any evidence?
There are some things which are true and yet have no proof.
Uh, like what? I'll assume that you mean 'evidence' when you say 'proof'.
The only thing that can probably be changed reasonable without causing too much problem would be to allow each district in each state to cast the majority vote based on that district's popular winner,....
The problem with this is that elections could then be "rigged" by (I know I'm going to spell this wrong) gerrymandering. That's where people draw up district lines so that they ensure that the district will vote one particular way. Currently, with the aggregation being done on the state level, that can't be done because one political party can't redraw state lines because they feel it's in their favor.
Suffice it to say, that E*Trade did some jiggery-pokery with ... the IPO's inital cost....
It doesn't sound like E*Trade did anything out of the ordinary with the IPO price. It's always adjusted over and over again, and if interest in the stock appears to be high enough, then it often does end up a bit above the range that had been publicized. Those people that didn't put enough in the account to cover a little bit extra should have done a bit of research, it's not E*Trade's fault that they didn't.
because alternate OS advocates (i.e. 99% of Slashdot readers) are hoping to use that same courtroom to even out the marketplace for operating systems.
This just isn't true. "Alternate OS advocates" are trying to beat Microsoft in the marketplace. That's what Linux is about. While most Slashdot readers dislike Microsoft and would probably like to see them broken up, that's not what people here are banking on.
Over 60 books by a couple dozen different authors over hundreds of years, and yet there is a consistent theme through it all.
Each book wasn't written in a vacuum, either. The authors of many of the books had access to many other of the books, allowing for easy duplication of themes. And I'm sure you'll acknowledge that certainly for the New Testament (and probably the old) there was some religious authority setting the themes for the books. There's also plenty of inconsistency in the books.
I suppose "Judaism" didn't start at least until the time of God's covenant with Abraham, but God has frowned on murder since at least the time of Cain and Abel, the 2nd generation of human beings.
Well, here you're just blindly believing the bible word for word. You seem to believe the bible literally. I'm talking about real history, like where the earth is 10-15 billion years old, and humans have been around for, I dunno, tens or hundreds of thousands of years. I can't argue this point with you if you won't concede that there were people before Christianity.
If Christian morals changed with society, they wouldn't be Christian morals any more. The standard of morality is the same now as it was thousands of years ago, because God doesn't change.
Let me ask you this. Is what the Pope says the "Word of God"? You are inconsistent. The bible is completely correct, because it's the word of god (passed through man, of course), but the clergy might be wrong because that's the word of god (passed through man). How do you know what to believe?
Okay. Trying to keep this at least somewhere near on topic. How do we know what God's will and God's moral standards are? It's really only through humans. There's the bible (or whatever particular holy book you use), which I'm sure you'll acknowledge was written by people, and (if you're Catholic, and probably some other flavors of Christianity) through the clergy. So you're taking somebody's word that what you are hearing is God's word. So as far as I can tell, we have no way of actually knowing what God's will (and morality) is (there are these imperfect people in between).
While you think that the "standard" you've created from yourself is a result of human creation, it almost certainly derives most of its pertinent aspects from the Judeo-Christian ethic (at least I assume you're posting from a western cultural setting). Society has not always been as secular as it is now.
Now this I disagree with. To say that my moral standards are the result of Christianity and Judaism (yes, I'm from a western cultural setting) implies that before Christianity and Judaism, the moral standards that I hold didn't exist. I assure you that the "Thou shalt not murder" idea has been around for much longer than these particular religions. I would counter that the Judeo-Christian ethic is based on standards that were common in the people from which they sprung - Christians didn't invent morals. Christian morals are more of a reflection of the society than vice versa. So my morals are more a reflection of society than of any particular religion. (I support this argument by pointing out that most/all of the "major" cultures have approximately the same moral standards, despite having different religions).
Close. Radio waves are photons, just at different energies. This is just a telescope that is designed to collect electromagnetic waves at a low frequency, where our eyes don't detect them.
It's not going to be used for any one thing in particular. With a telescope like this, groups will apply to use the telescope, then use for a short period of time, and then go and analyze their data. So there is no large set of data needing analysis like SETI@Home, only small sets of data for each experiment using it. So there's no need for a distributed computing environment to process the data.
Sorry about the comment about a troll. I realized that you probably weren't, but....
You obviously have absolutely no conception that people think differently than you. You believe that there's one god who is "the only God", but why do you assume that others in this forum agree with you? The point I was making is one that belongs in a different and much larger discussion, but it is basically "how can a god (or anything else for that matter) that does (or might) not exist legislate morality?"
I'd prefer a holy and righteous God as my ruler as opposed to men who are neither
Why do you need a ruler? I feel that I can control myself well enough so that I don't need a "ruler" telling me how to act. I have my own morality, probably very similar to yours, that I've come to through my interaction with my parents, friends, community, and even a little bit of church, rather than one handed to me in a large black book by a church. You have given no evidence that there is a god to legislate morality, the morality you received from church is , imho, one that was made up by church leaders over the past several centuries.
I'm rambling now, so I'll stop. As I mentioned, this is a much larger discussion, but what I was getting at is that people have different beliefs from you. Thus "because I believe it" isn't the correct answer for why something is true.
God sets the standard.
Talk about relative morality. What God? Odin? So pillaging and killing is good and I'll end up in Valhalla with all of the other mighty warriors? Or Zeus? Or your god? Give me a break. The "God sets the standard" argument is what people have used for millennia to control other people. Come up with an argument that you can back without pointing to a 1500 year-old work of historical fiction.
IMHO, good coding practice negates all of these problems in C/Java/etc. For example:
In your first example, you suggest that adding a second line of code in an "if" clause. I always use braces, even if it's just for one line, that way I can add a second and never forget the braces.
As far as the whole wrong number of braces thing, that's why I use emacs. It indents for me, I can easily tell by how it indents my code whether I've forgotten anything.
I've never used Python, but having non-significate whitespace (and therefore requiring braces and whatnot) really shouldn't bother somebody who is a careful coder.
and for the G3 I estimated it would take much longer
Now that's a scientific experiment you did! You ran it on a PIII, but guessed on the G3. What genius.
In my opinion I would never sign a contract to provide a web app that would work with any AOL browser. [...] It's not reasonable to specify neat multimedia and glitz that will view on, in my opinion, a substandard product.
That's fine. Then you don't sign a contract saying that you'll deliver exactly that.
Interesting how folks like you always comment on that.... I've been at my current job for about 8 months (where I have a windoze machine), and have never used the floppy drive. Maybe Apple made a good choice by not making me pay for including one in my own G3? You assume that a radical decision is automatically a bad one.
If the average mac user had to do that, there would be a lot of unhappy campers.
Interesting comment. It's amazing how micro$oft has lowered our expectations. I would say that you shouldn't have to reformat your hard drive, get any new software, or any of that whenever you upgrade an OS. microsoft has many people believing that you really do need to reinstall the OS whenever something gets corrupted, but that need not be the case....