Furthermore, I would graciously request that the Creator (or spokespeople thereof) explain to me what my tailbone and appendix are for.
And why squids have very similar eyes to ours, but "designed" correctly (with nerves behind the retina instead of in front, so they don't have a blind spot).
Don't viruses depend on life to reproduce? Seems like viruses must have been a side effect of celled organisms.
That's been the consensus up until now. The article is about some scientists rethinking that interpretation based on new evidence. I could summarize, but you'd probably get more out of just reading the article.
More precisely, evolution and intelligent design are mutually exclusive*, but evolution and a divine creation are not.
As you said, a key point of ID is that certain structures cannot have evolved naturally. However, since evolution explains how life changes, not how it began, it does not contradict the possibility that a divine being linked some chemicals together a few billion years ago and got the ball rolling.
And since evolution doesn't say anything about the origin of the world or universe (aside from requiring a long time to work, but the time it needs is consistent with geological and astronomical evidence), it doesn't contradict the possibility of a divine being creating the universe. Heck, even the big bang theory doesn't contradict this possibility, which makes it awfully strange that so many people reject it on the basis of religion.
Evolution does, however, contradict a literal reading of the book of Genesis and "young-Earth" creationism. But then, so does intelligent design!
*As I understand it, ID allows for natural selection, but rejects the idea that it can fully explain the variety of life as we know it today, relegating it from the primary mechanism of speciation to an also-ran.
A more interesting question is the general copyright-ability of 'fictional' worlds. Can I write novels that take place in Asimov's, Niven's, Heinlein's, [etc] worlds?
Well, seeing as how that would make it a derivative work... no.
Copyright gives you the rights not only to control who publishes or distributes the work you wrote, but it gives you the rights to control who publishes works derived from that work. If you're using the Federation, or the Foundation, or Known Space, you have to either wait for the copyright to run out or ask permission from teh copyright holder.
You could, of course, write it as fan fiction, avoid selling it, and hope it stays under the radar -- or you could write something in a *similar* world. That sort of thing happens all the time. Not just Middle Earth vs. D&D, but people will pitch a Star Wars novel or Star Trek script, get turned down, and come up with their own characters and setting.
Look at just about* every "killer app" generated by the internet, and they all have the same characteristic: Nobody found a way to make killer money off of it...
*(one exception - porn)
Sounds like Avenue Q got it right: "In volatile market, only stable investment... is porn!"
Clone Wars was the best Star Wars of the decade, tons better than any of the three prequels.
Of course, that's from watching them all at once on the DVD. I imagine if I'd seen them in 3-minute chunks (what idiot came up with that idea?) it would've been considerably less interesting.
Since when did the principle of universal readership and the realization of decades' dreams of a participatory universal information database become a bad thing?
Simple answer. Blogging tools have brought regular web page authoring -- something once reserved for 1337 h@x0rz -- to the masses. Therefore, it threatens their status.
Never mind that HTML and FTP skills (and time to mess with the tedium of copying templates, updating links, etc.) are not a prerequisite of writing skill -- or of having something interesting to say. They can simply point at the blogs that are vapid and pointless and generalize those characteristics to the entire medium, and dismiss it as a vast cultural wasteland.
It's all about audience. Some people use blogs to keep their friends updated, and don't mind if someone wanders in and sees some of what they write. These people aren't writing for a global audience, and aren't trying to get that audience.
So it's not interesting to the vast majority of people out there. What about the 10 people to whom it *is* interesting? The web isn't like TV where you have a finite amount of air time, and every show that makes it on the air does so at the expense of another. The Internet in general has done wonders for niche markets, and when you come down to it, that's just what most blogs target: niche markets. Not a niche market, but a bunch of them.
If I had mod points, you'd get 'em. I've been skimming these comments, and it seems like one curmudgeon after another.
You'd think Slashdot would be full of people interested in innovation, not the other way around, but it's all stuff like:
"We had usenet, and we liked it! What's this RSS crap!
"We could write personal diaries! Of course we had to hand-code the HTML, including all the links, and we couldn't do it from anywhere in the world just by loggin in from a web browser, we had to telnet onto the server and type it in vimacs, but it was good enough for me, I don't see what the big deal is with all this blogging nonsense.
"Interactive HTML? Hah! The only thing that should interact is the Submit button! You hear that, Web 2.0? Submit to me like a good little program! Hyah! Hyah! Hya-- *cough* *hack* *wheeze*"
I'd hazard to guess that the judge made his statement before the patent office issued its ruling... or at least before the information made it to the courtroom.
At least, I hope that's what happened. I know our legal system is messed up, particularly where patents, copyrights and trademarks are concerned, I'd like to think we're not so messed up that you can enforce an invalid patent.
Funny, I've seen that attitude (time invested > skill/talent) from people most of my life -- long before WoW existed.
Consider two people, let's call them Alice and Bob. Alice picks things up quickly, and is able to get an A in a certain class with a minimum of studying. Bob has to go to more effort, and while he can pull off an A in the same class, he has to do several hours of studying each night to get there.
Which is more valuable? Alice's facility with the subject, or Bob's ability to invest time? Both got to the same place -- mastering the subject to the extent needed for the exam. As far as the school is concerned, both are commendable.
But I've never heard someone like Alice disparage Bob's achievement as being worthless because all he did was study, while I certainly remember hearing people like Bob disparage Alice as being lazy, because "I worked for that A, and what did she do?"
And IIRC, the word "slave" comes from the term Slav, as various powers in Eastern Europe kept Slavs as slaves. Armies would march in, take over the area, take prisoners as slaves, then someone else's army would march in, take over, take the prisoners as slaves, etc.
I remember a case during the Gulf War when some guy tried to get a vanity license plate with his name on it. The trouble is, his name was "Jihad." The DMV was not impressed.
If you don't want to see the cartoons it's quite simple. DONT BUY OR READ WESTERN PAPERS.
As I understand it, most of the people complaining didn't actually see the cartons in the western newspapers. They were reprinted by ringleaders who wanted to whip up anti-western sentiment.
This also meant that the people doing the reprinting could slip in even more offensive stuff and claim it was those damn dirty Danish, how dare they! Not to mention throwing in rumors of (non-existant) anti-Muslim laws that Denmark was supposedly going to pass. Classic propaganda: take something that's offensive, and make it seem even worse so you can get more people upset and get them to go along with your plan.
It's not uncommon over here, either. Often people who protest a movie, or a TV show, or a book, haven't actually seen or read what they're complaining about. They just know that someone they trust said it was offensive, blasphemous, would lead their kids to satanism, whatever.
If they were reading the western papers -- well, the ones that actually printed the cartoons, anyway -- they probably would have gotten a less inflammatory view of what was going on.
the Christian idea of God involves three distinct beings, Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit known as the Triune God--God in three persons, Blessed Trinity.
I think that Antitrinitarians might object to that. The Unitarians are brobably the biggest group of this type today, but there are sizeable Christian sects whose followers don't believe in the Trinity.
This just goes to show the difference between the real world and the virtual world.
In the real world, it would be impossible to be stricken by a hole. A hole is the absence of substance. You could strike something with the edge of a hole, I suppose. Or maybe a donut hole.
Hmm, there's an idea. You could throw donut holes at computers and see what sticks.
(Hmm, the fact that I'm writing this suggests that I either haven't had enough coffee, or I've had too much.)
Since we've gone through the whole "download safe files" business...
I think the lesson to be learned is that there is no such thing as a "safe" file type. Zip files can be auto-executed, image files can be run through scripting interpreters, malformed images can create buffer overflows in parsers...
We've seen security updates on Windows, Mac and Linux for GIF, PNG, JPEG and TIFF libraries.
Shell scripts are nothing but executable text files.
The solution, I suspect, is to simply not auto-open *anything* that isn't handled by the downloading app itself. Process whatever transfer encoding, but if the file is a disk image, wait for the user to open it. If it's a StuffIt or Zip archive, wait for the user to open it. If it's a video clip, and it's not playing in the browser, wait for the user to open it.
Sure, it removes a little convenience, but in the long run Apple might be better off disabling and then removing this option entirely.
Nah, the English language isn't limited at all in its capability to insult. It's just modern American society that has given up creativity in favor of playing-mix-and-match with a few dirty words.
Slashdot Mirror
Furthermore, I would graciously request that the Creator (or spokespeople thereof) explain to me what my tailbone and appendix are for.
And why squids have very similar eyes to ours, but "designed" correctly (with nerves behind the retina instead of in front, so they don't have a blind spot).
Otherwise, the inteligent discussion we enjoy on Slashdot will decompose into the same juvenille, knee-jerk flamewars you find on the rest of the web.
I hate to say it, but I think you're about 5 years too late for this site...
Don't viruses depend on life to reproduce? Seems like viruses must have been a side effect of celled organisms.
That's been the consensus up until now. The article is about some scientists rethinking that interpretation based on new evidence. I could summarize, but you'd probably get more out of just reading the article.
More precisely, evolution and intelligent design are mutually exclusive*, but evolution and a divine creation are not.
As you said, a key point of ID is that certain structures cannot have evolved naturally. However, since evolution explains how life changes, not how it began, it does not contradict the possibility that a divine being linked some chemicals together a few billion years ago and got the ball rolling.
And since evolution doesn't say anything about the origin of the world or universe (aside from requiring a long time to work, but the time it needs is consistent with geological and astronomical evidence), it doesn't contradict the possibility of a divine being creating the universe. Heck, even the big bang theory doesn't contradict this possibility, which makes it awfully strange that so many people reject it on the basis of religion.
Evolution does, however, contradict a literal reading of the book of Genesis and "young-Earth" creationism. But then, so does intelligent design!
*As I understand it, ID allows for natural selection, but rejects the idea that it can fully explain the variety of life as we know it today, relegating it from the primary mechanism of speciation to an also-ran.
A more interesting question is the general copyright-ability of 'fictional' worlds. Can I write novels that take place in Asimov's, Niven's, Heinlein's, [etc] worlds?
Well, seeing as how that would make it a derivative work... no.
Copyright gives you the rights not only to control who publishes or distributes the work you wrote, but it gives you the rights to control who publishes works derived from that work. If you're using the Federation, or the Foundation, or Known Space, you have to either wait for the copyright to run out or ask permission from teh copyright holder.
You could, of course, write it as fan fiction, avoid selling it, and hope it stays under the radar -- or you could write something in a *similar* world. That sort of thing happens all the time. Not just Middle Earth vs. D&D, but people will pitch a Star Wars novel or Star Trek script, get turned down, and come up with their own characters and setting.
Oh, you said stakes. I though you said steaks! My fault!
Don't feel bad. Muffin the Vampire Baker made the same mistake.
Sounds like Avenue Q got it right: "In volatile market, only stable investment... is porn!"
I think I might be more excited for a prequel, detailing the original fall of the crystal.
IIRC there are plans to do just that, in the form or either a manga-style comic book or an anime-style cartoon series. I don't remember which.
Clone Wars sucked ASS.
Are you serious?
Clone Wars was the best Star Wars of the decade, tons better than any of the three prequels.
Of course, that's from watching them all at once on the DVD. I imagine if I'd seen them in 3-minute chunks (what idiot came up with that idea?) it would've been considerably less interesting.
that's what unicode is for, silly.
Here's a degree symbol in Unicode: [] Oh, wait, Slashdot won't display it. It shows up fine in the text area...
Next suggestion?
Since when did the principle of universal readership and the realization of decades' dreams of a participatory universal information database become a bad thing?
Simple answer. Blogging tools have brought regular web page authoring -- something once reserved for 1337 h@x0rz -- to the masses. Therefore, it threatens their status.
Never mind that HTML and FTP skills (and time to mess with the tedium of copying templates, updating links, etc.) are not a prerequisite of writing skill -- or of having something interesting to say. They can simply point at the blogs that are vapid and pointless and generalize those characteristics to the entire medium, and dismiss it as a vast cultural wasteland.
It's elitism, plain and simple.
It's all about audience. Some people use blogs to keep their friends updated, and don't mind if someone wanders in and sees some of what they write. These people aren't writing for a global audience, and aren't trying to get that audience.
So it's not interesting to the vast majority of people out there. What about the 10 people to whom it *is* interesting? The web isn't like TV where you have a finite amount of air time, and every show that makes it on the air does so at the expense of another. The Internet in general has done wonders for niche markets, and when you come down to it, that's just what most blogs target: niche markets. Not a niche market, but a bunch of them.
If I had mod points, you'd get 'em. I've been skimming these comments, and it seems like one curmudgeon after another.
You'd think Slashdot would be full of people interested in innovation, not the other way around, but it's all stuff like:
"We had usenet, and we liked it! What's this RSS crap!
"We could write personal diaries! Of course we had to hand-code the HTML, including all the links, and we couldn't do it from anywhere in the world just by loggin in from a web browser, we had to telnet onto the server and type it in vimacs, but it was good enough for me, I don't see what the big deal is with all this blogging nonsense.
"Interactive HTML? Hah! The only thing that should interact is the Submit button! You hear that, Web 2.0? Submit to me like a good little program! Hyah! Hyah! Hya-- *cough* *hack* *wheeze*"
Who wants to take bets on how many morons miss the knee deep sarcasim of the above post and think it is the real thing?
Sad to say, there's no idea so dumb that some folks haven't tried it.
I'd hazard to guess that the judge made his statement before the patent office issued its ruling... or at least before the information made it to the courtroom.
At least, I hope that's what happened. I know our legal system is messed up, particularly where patents, copyrights and trademarks are concerned, I'd like to think we're not so messed up that you can enforce an invalid patent.
Funny, I've seen that attitude (time invested > skill/talent) from people most of my life -- long before WoW existed.
Consider two people, let's call them Alice and Bob. Alice picks things up quickly, and is able to get an A in a certain class with a minimum of studying. Bob has to go to more effort, and while he can pull off an A in the same class, he has to do several hours of studying each night to get there.
Which is more valuable? Alice's facility with the subject, or Bob's ability to invest time? Both got to the same place -- mastering the subject to the extent needed for the exam. As far as the school is concerned, both are commendable.
But I've never heard someone like Alice disparage Bob's achievement as being worthless because all he did was study, while I certainly remember hearing people like Bob disparage Alice as being lazy, because "I worked for that A, and what did she do?"
The attitude is out there, and it's hardly new.
And IIRC, the word "slave" comes from the term Slav, as various powers in Eastern Europe kept Slavs as slaves. Armies would march in, take over the area, take prisoners as slaves, then someone else's army would march in, take over, take the prisoners as slaves, etc.
I remember a case during the Gulf War when some guy tried to get a vanity license plate with his name on it. The trouble is, his name was "Jihad." The DMV was not impressed.
they're no longer calling that flaky pastry a "danish." Instead they're gonna start calling it a Rose of the Prophet Mohammed.
Yeah, I read about that and thought, it looks like we're exporting *part* of our culture to the middle east. Just not the useful part.
Remember when French's Mustard had to issue a press release explaining that they weren't owned by the French?
If you don't want to see the cartoons it's quite simple. DONT BUY OR READ WESTERN PAPERS.
As I understand it, most of the people complaining didn't actually see the cartons in the western newspapers. They were reprinted by ringleaders who wanted to whip up anti-western sentiment.
This also meant that the people doing the reprinting could slip in even more offensive stuff and claim it was those damn dirty Danish, how dare they! Not to mention throwing in rumors of (non-existant) anti-Muslim laws that Denmark was supposedly going to pass. Classic propaganda: take something that's offensive, and make it seem even worse so you can get more people upset and get them to go along with your plan.
It's not uncommon over here, either. Often people who protest a movie, or a TV show, or a book, haven't actually seen or read what they're complaining about. They just know that someone they trust said it was offensive, blasphemous, would lead their kids to satanism, whatever.
If they were reading the western papers -- well, the ones that actually printed the cartoons, anyway -- they probably would have gotten a less inflammatory view of what was going on.
I've seen it also spelled out as 'IXOYE' in greek or something i think.
Actually, that just means "fish." Ichthus, spelled in capital Greek letters, is IX[theta]Y[sigma]. (Darn Slashdot and its lack of Unicode support).
It's a reference to the Christian fish symbol.
the Christian idea of God involves three distinct beings, Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit known as the Triune God--God in three persons, Blessed Trinity.
I think that Antitrinitarians might object to that. The Unitarians are brobably the biggest group of this type today, but there are sizeable Christian sects whose followers don't believe in the Trinity.
This just goes to show the difference between the real world and the virtual world.
In the real world, it would be impossible to be stricken by a hole. A hole is the absence of substance. You could strike something with the edge of a hole, I suppose. Or maybe a donut hole.
Hmm, there's an idea. You could throw donut holes at computers and see what sticks.
(Hmm, the fact that I'm writing this suggests that I either haven't had enough coffee, or I've had too much.)
Since we've gone through the whole "download safe files" business...
I think the lesson to be learned is that there is no such thing as a "safe" file type. Zip files can be auto-executed, image files can be run through scripting interpreters, malformed images can create buffer overflows in parsers...
We've seen security updates on Windows, Mac and Linux for GIF, PNG, JPEG and TIFF libraries.
Shell scripts are nothing but executable text files.
The solution, I suspect, is to simply not auto-open *anything* that isn't handled by the downloading app itself. Process whatever transfer encoding, but if the file is a disk image, wait for the user to open it. If it's a StuffIt or Zip archive, wait for the user to open it. If it's a video clip, and it's not playing in the browser, wait for the user to open it.
Sure, it removes a little convenience, but in the long run Apple might be better off disabling and then removing this option entirely.
Nah, the English language isn't limited at all in its capability to insult. It's just modern American society that has given up creativity in favor of playing-mix-and-match with a few dirty words.