I'm quite sick of the American assertion that "we have more free speech than the others combined", which is just a product of the American propaganda machine. Take for example the EU. Why don't you come and see how we have it here and start to see that neither has a monopoly and how there's flaws in both the American and the EU model (though positions within EU do vary). It's just blind to assert that you Americans have no restrictions on free spech. Yet when one raises the issue, it's always "but the First Amendment blah blah". Wake up idiots.
This isn't about free speech or anything else you seem to suggest. What shows the American propaganda domination on Slashdot is that I've seen very little about the real reason: There was a deal about US releasing the control, and now the US government wants to unilaterally back up. This is about nothing if not battling the American arrogance. Which is the Right Thing To Do.
I'm more than happy that my bank requires me to enter a one-time password every time I make a transaction. I probably would refuse to use one that relies on a single password. There really is no excuse for having that bad security, not even stupidity.
While I definitely agree with you about the parent being a bit... senseless (somehow I doubt he has put his life in risk for any freedom ever), I think the military situation in the Taiwan strait is not that straightforward, unless China wants to flatten Taiwan with missiles. I think even they see that's not the productive way.
Simply put, China lacks the air force to secure superiority that is required for a successful invasion over the strait. The outcome with the current equipment would be quite uncertain, or at least there would be massive Chinese casualties and a prolonged war if no outsider reacted in any way. Of course major powers would react quite heavily in the case of a Chinese all-out invasion, which would not be exactly good for China.
However China has begun the process of modernising their air force, if I remember correctly, several years ago. Probably by 2015 they will be more than well equipped for a fairly quick military solution to the matter.
I don't claim to be an expert, but the way I predict it will go barring a total regime change in China is that once China starts to have the necessary equipment it will play tough and give an ultimatum a few years in advance like "either you will submit and recognize Chinese rule by 31 December 2019 or we will launch a military strike at any time we choose after that". After that it's quite much up to politics in all sides of the dispute (we must recognize that not only China and Taiwan have interests in it), all sides bluffing and betting over the opponent's willingness to escalate the conflict into a full war between superpowers.
I had an interesting conversation with a (mainland) Chinese exchange student about the situation in Taiwan. I only had the chance to exchange a few words with him in sauna, however the absoluteness of the Chinese attitude in this matter startled me. I can't tell if he was really as absolute himself as we were talking about how Taiwan is seen in the mainland China in general.
Basically he claimed that it would be a political impossibility for the Chinese government to accept an independent Taiwan. There's a very big nationalistic sentiment in China (perhaps even bigger than the totally ridiculous amount you have in the US? Who knows), and he asserted that any attempt by the government to recognize Taiwan would be met with riots and possibly a revolution.
I didn't fully understand the Chinese stance on the issue, but it seemed to revolve around Taiwan having been "part of China" for hundreds of years.
I don't know if this tells anything or not, but in an effort to understand the situation better I asked him if it's important that the people who live in Taiwan come under Chinese rule or if it's just the land that they are after. He told me that they probably don't care about the people, it would be OK if they relocate somewhere, only the land simply must eventually come under Chinese rule. Any other line of thinking would lead nowhere.
Honestly, I think one of the issues is cleanness of code. The uglier your code, the more holes it is sure to have.
I wouldn't like to see the IE code, but I have seen Gecko (the Mozilla/FF rendering engine) and must say it's horrible spaghetti compared to the other engine whose code I've read, KHTML of the Konqueror/Safari fame.
But then again I think KHTML has had exploits too (I'm not sure), and surely it's even less criticized/attacked than Gecko, if just because it's even more marginal.
I should resist replying to trolls, but there's one thing I want to comment on in case you are just that ignorant:
And then, I want you to tell me who else on this planet guarantees such freedoms in their government.
Basically all modern democracies, some of them *way* better than the US, unless you try to use "the things granted in the US" as the metric, which somewhat defeats the point (for example, in some places the right to bear arms is not recognized as a human right; however for things like that I can point out five other fundamental rights that are not recognized as such in the US). It's true that there's less and less freedom in western countries, but it's not like anybody but you Americans really think you have a monopoly in freedom (and then you wonder why others view you as "a bit" naive;)
Maybe it's because they set up a society and culture which has (sorry, had) become the envy of the world. Importantly, the Founding Fathers' legacy has already endured wars, cultural upheaval and technological innovation the like of which they could never have even dreamed of.
Maybe. Of course it might also be a sum of a number of fairly random factors, including relative isolation from other countries, the cultural heritage of the British empire and complex international politics that just might have favored United States, perhaps because of a common friend or enemy or resources that someone needed.
I'm a bit wary about giving all credit to Founding Fathers, "superior" culture (really I think you should admit there isn't very much such a thing as the American culture, because you are a very young people in a worldwide scale, what you have is still mostly British culture).
Having said that, I actually must admit I have learned many things from what your Founding Fathers wrote (and I believe that puts me in a position that few of those that swear by the FF's name have, having actually read a lot about them:-), or at least they have made me think about some things, like democracy (and why it's not a panacea).
My point is that just because Franklin said something doesn't make it the gospel truth. The moment I saw the original post on the Slashdot front page, I knew somebody would whip out the old Franklin quote. This time around, though, I hope people really think about the implications rather than just use it as a bludgeoning instrument for proving their point.
Thanks for being about the only voice among the masses that seems to be thinking rationally about this! I've been wondering for a long time about the obsession people have with the Constitution and the Founding Fathers.
I agree that there's no justification for moving more towards a police state world.
But how about trying to justify your points, preferably by means other than 1) quoting your beloved Constitution as if it were god-given 2) quoting Founding Fathers as if they were gods.
"What a complete idiot" is just quite a rough thing to say about anyone without justifying your point of view.
The grandparent's sentence "And those rights are granted you by the state -- and, as such, can be taken away, but only with good reason" actually can be interpreted in two ways:
1. It is possible for the state, given good reason, to take those rights away; 2. #1, but with possible replaced by permissible.
Only #2 is wrong, and #1 is already happening. Claiming otherwise is just absurd denial of truth and ultrapatriotism.
Pocket Constitution? WTF is wrong with you Americans? Stop treating your 1) Constitution 2) Founding Fathers as gods. They are man-made, erodable, and not so superior to everything and everyone else if you just care to take a look.
Coverage, hmm. An interesting idea would be distributed code coverage testing.
But it has two downsides:
1) At least a code line based coverage system slows the system down considerably 2) The amount of data to send per computer would probably be quite big.
Still I think it's an interesting idea. Maybe if it could be manually turned on for code that has got less coverage from other people, or for some non-speed-critical drivers etc...
Though I forgot to mention that the other explanation I've heard to this verse is that Lord said it 120 years before the Great Flood. However, judging from how things have gone, I'd think it's at least about human lifespan, perhaps about the time until Flood too.
Genesis 6:3 "And the LORD said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years."
Really after this we can see lifespans falling (it doesn't immediately fall to 120 or so).
Quite a prediction from a book written thousands of years ago, huh? The oldest of people have lived quite exactly 120 years, which also happens to be considered a nice limit by lots of secular scientists thriving for prolonged life. And now, a 50% increase in human lifespan, where would that land us?:)
(no, 20% efficiency/speed lost is NOT an acceptable loss)
I've been wondering about this. In a huge number of cases I would gladly swap 20% or even 50% of the speed for absolute guaranteed security. And in my opinion in lots of cases it would be the obviously correct choice (if there was such a choice, that is). What makes people value their security so little?
So, the ID people are criticising the scientific community... because they're being scientific?! Look, the whole point of science is to restrict theories to that which can be directly observed. Nobody's saying that humans absolutely couldn't have existed at the beginning of the Earth, they're just saying that they can't see how that could happen based on the observable facts, or in other words, within the domain of science.
I really do wish this would be as you say. However it not being so is really what I'm attacking. In practice it is very often found that there is such a presumption against complex life existing "in the beginning". What for example the baramin theory says (it doesn't say anything about God or about the way complex life originally came to be) is that first there was complex life that gradually devolved (note the different direction) into the current plethora of species. The proponents of this theory have specifically made the claim that this fits the evidence better than the evolution theory; however the science community at large seems unable to discuss this theory seriously, "because it implicitly asserts a Supreme Being" and thus is not science. In doing this the science community has in effect endorsed the assumption that there was no such complex life in the beginning.
So yes, if we take science the way it's usually taken, it's exactly being scientific that the scientific community deserves to be criticized.:-) You almost make it sound like the community doesn't claim it explores truth but "only science".
I think we really agree about much more than you think, just we're "from the opposing sides" (which of course is a loaded statement, I'm not here to oppose anyone but to spread and work for the truth as I see it).
Yes, exactly! I don't understand why you have a problem with this. Science deliberately restricts itself to this assumption because that's what enables it to make useful predictions. Saying "this skyscraper will stay up because God wills it so" just isn't useful in everyday life, while saying "this skyscraper will stay up because the arrangement of materials used is strong enough to withstand the forces affecting the structure" is.
Of course. And in that sense, those assumptions are useful. However it also makes those results conclusive only subject to those assumptions. If God exists, he surely can make the skyscraper fall if it's his will. Of course it is the normal case that He doesn't influence in such a way, and this is why science really is useful.
I see no logical fallacy; however, I don't believe science would be useless without these assumptions (on the contrary, the assumption is what makes it useful!)
Um, the assumptions are what makes it useful (I agree), hence without the assumptions it would be useless (as I said in the post you replied to), right? I don't see where we disagree here.:) The logical fallacy however I by mistake left a bit unexplained, sorry about that. I think the fallacy is that, while science proves "if A then B", some religion claims "!A and !B", and people see here a contradiction and claim that the religion is wrong because "science has proved so". Substitute the "hidden" scientific assumption for A and evolution for B here.
and I know better than to assume that "I Know!" The people that think these things are just as deluded as the people who think ID belongs in the domain of science.
That's nice to hear. However I do see that kind of pride in most people, even if they don't themselves recognize it as pride.
Well, no wonder you don't get it -- the difference between athieism and agnosticism is the most important difference in the world!
[...]
In case you haven't figured it out by now, yes, I am agnostic. Maybe there's a God, maybe there isn't; I don't know. Either way, it doesn't actually make a difference in my life, aside from the fact that I don't waste time p
Of course, if God made the world yesterday (I don't argue He did) to look like it was made much earlier, your science would be utterly wrong.
The scientific theories are only as valid as the assumptions behind them. And yes, there are assumptions behind science.
Given some assumptions, yes, I find evolution theory the best guess for how human life came to be. The problem with science is that these assumptions are so built-in into scientific theory that scientists don't even call them assumptions, because the talk about them is no longer science.
I repeat: Science is only as correct as the assumptions behind it.
One of the assumptions in scientific theory really is that things need to be explainable without a Supreme Being. The theories that rely on this assumption are only conclusive as far as this assumption is correct.
For example, some of the ID people criticise the scientific community, in my opinion rightly so, for refusing to even consider the possibility - in fact, having the assumption that there is no such possibility - that in the beginning of the period that their theory is concerned about there was complex life with humans and animals of some kind. (See eg. the baramin theory for more about this).
This really is one of the things that makes evolution theory a "best current guess" for most people. No matter how hole-ridden it is, it is the one scientific theory, the one theory with the (very real) assumptions of science that has the least holes in it.
I do see a nice logical fallacy here though, that is usually disregarded because people fail to recognize that science indeed has some assumptions. Partly this is probably because people want to believe in science would be next to useless without these assumptions, and partly because people are proud and really want to boast that We Know.
Being a believer (and a former atheist/agnostic (whatever, I fail to see the important difference and why some people are so picky about it)) myself, I think that this pride is one of the major things keeping people separated from the Creator of this universe. And I don't mean because of the Evolution/Creationism dispute - I couldn't really care much less about that, it's the people's attitude and pride that matters.
Indeed. It's funny how people go about lecturing others about IP issues here on slashdot and then they seem to use the words "patent", "trademark" and "copyright" (or even worse "copywrite") interchangeably.
True. However no directive is arguably a lot better than a bad directive, which really was (and still is) a close call. This way the doors are still open for anti-swpat lobbyists too.
The pro-swpat people actually claim this is only for "harmonisation" of the current system. In a sense they have a point: I think one of the positive outcomes of no directive could be that even between two regimes that allow software patents enforcing them might be somewhat difficult.
Of course a good directive would still be much better than this. But we'll wait and see the result tomorrow.
First of all, as the direct object, it would be "auton" (accusative form) in all of the examples. Additionally we need the -ko/-kö ending to implicate the question, which is generally stuck to the first word in the sentence.
The sentences would become:
Autonko hän otti? (emphasis on the car)
Ottiko hän auton? (This is pretty much without emphasis, this would be the "normal" word order)
Hänkö otti auton? This is more like "Oh, did he take a/the car?". Perhaps a slight emphasis on "he".
If you want to emphasize that he, and not someone else, took the car, you could say Hänkö auton otti?
Demonstrating the effect of the mere word order can be done by turning this into a non-question sentence, as in:
Auton Pekka otti. (Emphasis on the car: "It's the car that Pekka took.")
Otti Pekka auton. (Emphasis on "took", like in assuring that "Yes, Pekka did take the car.")
Pekka otti auton. (This is the normal form, without much emphasis on anything. Modifying the word order from here will change the emphasis.)
Pekka auton otti. (Emphasis on Pekka: "It was Pekka who took the car" (and nobody else). This might be used when someone claimed it was someone else.)
Then there's
Auton otti Pekka. (I'd say the emphasis is slightly on Pekka here too; the meaning is closer to "The car was taken by Pekka", i.e. the most important thing is probably that the car was taken, but that might already be known to the listener and they just didn't know who (possibly of a certain group) took it.)
One of the few? I don't think it's nearly as rare as you seem to imply. Of languages that I more or less speak, I believe that can be done, apart from German, at least in Finnish, Swedish, Esperanto and to some extent Russian. And that's quite a big portion of the languages I speak.
I for one am happy that this topic was raised here on Slashdot, where I see perhaps most of the examples of poor English.
I've said it before, but it's not the diction that matters, but the message.
I speak Finnish as my native language. Still I have noticed the poor spelling of English by a large number of geeks. The same seems to hold, perhaps to a smaller degree, in Finnish.
What you said in the sentence that I quoted is really wisdom, and I hope I could have such an attitude myself (but I wouldn't sacrifice my diction for it). Still I have noticed that whenever I read poorly written (grammar/spelling) text, I always have a negative presupposition against it. I just can't help it, it's something so deep in me. And I am sure I'm not the only one among those to whom grammar and spelling has never been a problem who thinks that way. What I seem to think subconsciously is something along the lines, "the writer doesn't even want to put the effort into making their text easily readable, so they cannot be very serious". Really reading poorly written text can be a slight annoyance, which you might not know (or maybe you do) if you aren't so fluent yourself.
While I'm trying to get rid of this, I'm sure a very large number of people aren't. So really I believe you would do well to yourself if you put some effort in trying to learn proper grammar and spelling if you want to be taken seriously.
Of course if you have some real, diagnosed disabilities, this might not be a possibility. That's one of the reasons why I'm trying really hard to get rid of that attitude of mine. But believe me, it's not easy (and I don't consider myself snotty or superior in any other sense).
Please note that what I originally said is different from the halftroll that replied.
Yes, I realize that and didn't mean that you are a troll.
I believe Trolltech still uses GPL as their license, and I believe any other advice on terms of distribution should be considered either a) nonbinding (unless they explicitly state otherwise, perhaps even if they are obviously and blatantly against the GPL and it is obvious they do not stem from a misunderstanding or a simplification) or b) adding to the rights granted under the GPL (ie. granting an alternate license; this doesn't obviously hold in this case).
I believe they say "put a note saying such-and-such" only because a lot of people are somewhat afraid of the legalities and don't know what they have to do; I believe that advice is for those people.
Still the GPL grants you the right (admittedly it's not obvious unless you're familiar with the legalities) to distribute your modifications under any license whose restrictions are a subset of the restrictions placed by the GPL, as long as the entire work is distributed under the GPL (which does not mean you can not have components in it that are distributed under the BSD license; in such a distribution, those components are just effectively dual-licensed under the GPL and under the BSDL, a right which the BSDL grants to anybody anyway). Note that there's nothing wrong with dual-licensing your own work, or relicensing any work released under the BSDL as long as you comply with the requirements in the BSDL.
Slashdot Mirror
The US is breaking walls by unilaterally backing up on the deal to release control of DNS. Funny how you Americans always fail to remember that deal.
I'm quite sick of the American assertion that "we have more free speech than the others combined", which is just a product of the American propaganda machine. Take for example the EU. Why don't you come and see how we have it here and start to see that neither has a monopoly and how there's flaws in both the American and the EU model (though positions within EU do vary). It's just blind to assert that you Americans have no restrictions on free spech. Yet when one raises the issue, it's always "but the First Amendment blah blah". Wake up idiots.
This isn't about free speech or anything else you seem to suggest. What shows the American propaganda domination on Slashdot is that I've seen very little about the real reason: There was a deal about US releasing the control, and now the US government wants to unilaterally back up. This is about nothing if not battling the American arrogance. Which is the Right Thing To Do.
I'm more than happy that my bank requires me to enter a one-time password every time I make a transaction. I probably would refuse to use one that relies on a single password. There really is no excuse for having that bad security, not even stupidity.
While I definitely agree with you about the parent being a bit... senseless (somehow I doubt he has put his life in risk for any freedom ever), I think the military situation in the Taiwan strait is not that straightforward, unless China wants to flatten Taiwan with missiles. I think even they see that's not the productive way.
Simply put, China lacks the air force to secure superiority that is required for a successful invasion over the strait. The outcome with the current equipment would be quite uncertain, or at least there would be massive Chinese casualties and a prolonged war if no outsider reacted in any way. Of course major powers would react quite heavily in the case of a Chinese all-out invasion, which would not be exactly good for China.
However China has begun the process of modernising their air force, if I remember correctly, several years ago. Probably by 2015 they will be more than well equipped for a fairly quick military solution to the matter.
I don't claim to be an expert, but the way I predict it will go barring a total regime change in China is that once China starts to have the necessary equipment it will play tough and give an ultimatum a few years in advance like "either you will submit and recognize Chinese rule by 31 December 2019 or we will launch a military strike at any time we choose after that". After that it's quite much up to politics in all sides of the dispute (we must recognize that not only China and Taiwan have interests in it), all sides bluffing and betting over the opponent's willingness to escalate the conflict into a full war between superpowers.
I had an interesting conversation with a (mainland) Chinese exchange student about the situation in Taiwan. I only had the chance to exchange a few words with him in sauna, however the absoluteness of the Chinese attitude in this matter startled me. I can't tell if he was really as absolute himself as we were talking about how Taiwan is seen in the mainland China in general.
Basically he claimed that it would be a political impossibility for the Chinese government to accept an independent Taiwan. There's a very big nationalistic sentiment in China (perhaps even bigger than the totally ridiculous amount you have in the US? Who knows), and he asserted that any attempt by the government to recognize Taiwan would be met with riots and possibly a revolution.
I didn't fully understand the Chinese stance on the issue, but it seemed to revolve around Taiwan having been "part of China" for hundreds of years.
I don't know if this tells anything or not, but in an effort to understand the situation better I asked him if it's important that the people who live in Taiwan come under Chinese rule or if it's just the land that they are after. He told me that they probably don't care about the people, it would be OK if they relocate somewhere, only the land simply must eventually come under Chinese rule. Any other line of thinking would lead nowhere.
Honestly, I think one of the issues is cleanness of code. The uglier your code, the more holes it is sure to have.
I wouldn't like to see the IE code, but I have seen Gecko (the Mozilla/FF rendering engine) and must say it's horrible spaghetti compared to the other engine whose code I've read, KHTML of the Konqueror/Safari fame.
But then again I think KHTML has had exploits too (I'm not sure), and surely it's even less criticized/attacked than Gecko, if just because it's even more marginal.
I should resist replying to trolls, but there's one thing I want to comment on in case you are just that ignorant:
;)
And then, I want you to tell me who else on this planet guarantees such freedoms in their government.
Basically all modern democracies, some of them *way* better than the US, unless you try to use "the things granted in the US" as the metric, which somewhat defeats the point (for example, in some places the right to bear arms is not recognized as a human right; however for things like that I can point out five other fundamental rights that are not recognized as such in the US). It's true that there's less and less freedom in western countries, but it's not like anybody but you Americans really think you have a monopoly in freedom (and then you wonder why others view you as "a bit" naive
God bless!
Maybe it's because they set up a society and culture which has (sorry, had) become the envy of the world. Importantly, the Founding Fathers' legacy has already endured wars, cultural upheaval and technological innovation the like of which they could never have even dreamed of.
:-), or at least they have made me think about some things, like democracy (and why it's not a panacea).
Maybe. Of course it might also be a sum of a number of fairly random factors, including relative isolation from other countries, the cultural heritage of the British empire and complex international politics that just might have favored United States, perhaps because of a common friend or enemy or resources that someone needed.
I'm a bit wary about giving all credit to Founding Fathers, "superior" culture (really I think you should admit there isn't very much such a thing as the American culture, because you are a very young people in a worldwide scale, what you have is still mostly British culture).
Having said that, I actually must admit I have learned many things from what your Founding Fathers wrote (and I believe that puts me in a position that few of those that swear by the FF's name have, having actually read a lot about them
My point is that just because Franklin said something doesn't make it the gospel truth. The moment I saw the original post on the Slashdot front page, I knew somebody would whip out the old Franklin quote. This time around, though, I hope people really think about the implications rather than just use it as a bludgeoning instrument for proving their point.
Thanks for being about the only voice among the masses that seems to be thinking rationally about this! I've been wondering for a long time about the obsession people have with the Constitution and the Founding Fathers.
Hitler card, you lose.
:P
No but seriously, it's not like they talk about the state but the human life being the highest priority.
While I myself agree that any move towards a police state is a bad thing, please try to be even correct.
I agree that there's no justification for moving more towards a police state world.
But how about trying to justify your points, preferably by means other than 1) quoting your beloved Constitution as if it were god-given 2) quoting Founding Fathers as if they were gods.
"What a complete idiot" is just quite a rough thing to say about anyone without justifying your point of view.
The grandparent's sentence "And those rights are granted you by the state -- and, as such, can be taken away, but only with good reason" actually can be interpreted in two ways:
1. It is possible for the state, given good reason, to take those rights away;
2. #1, but with possible replaced by permissible.
Only #2 is wrong, and #1 is already happening. Claiming otherwise is just absurd denial of truth and ultrapatriotism.
Pocket Constitution? WTF is wrong with you Americans? Stop treating your 1) Constitution 2) Founding Fathers as gods. They are man-made, erodable, and not so superior to everything and everyone else if you just care to take a look.
Coverage, hmm. An interesting idea would be distributed code coverage testing.
But it has two downsides:
1) At least a code line based coverage system slows the system down considerably
2) The amount of data to send per computer would probably be quite big.
Still I think it's an interesting idea. Maybe if it could be manually turned on for code that has got less coverage from other people, or for some non-speed-critical drivers etc...
Though I forgot to mention that the other explanation I've heard to this verse is that Lord said it 120 years before the Great Flood. However, judging from how things have gone, I'd think it's at least about human lifespan, perhaps about the time until Flood too.
Not only that, but
:)
Genesis 6:3 "And the LORD said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years."
Really after this we can see lifespans falling (it doesn't immediately fall to 120 or so).
Quite a prediction from a book written thousands of years ago, huh? The oldest of people have lived quite exactly 120 years, which also happens to be considered a nice limit by lots of secular scientists thriving for prolonged life. And now, a 50% increase in human lifespan, where would that land us?
(no, 20% efficiency/speed lost is NOT an acceptable loss)
I've been wondering about this. In a huge number of cases I would gladly swap 20% or even 50% of the speed for absolute guaranteed security. And in my opinion in lots of cases it would be the obviously correct choice (if there was such a choice, that is). What makes people value their security so little?
So, the ID people are criticising the scientific community... because they're being scientific?! Look, the whole point of science is to restrict theories to that which can be directly observed. Nobody's saying that humans absolutely couldn't have existed at the beginning of the Earth, they're just saying that they can't see how that could happen based on the observable facts, or in other words, within the domain of science.
:-) You almost make it sound like the community doesn't claim it explores truth but "only science".
:) The logical fallacy however I by mistake left a bit unexplained, sorry about that. I think the fallacy is that, while science proves "if A then B", some religion claims "!A and !B", and people see here a contradiction and claim that the religion is wrong because "science has proved so". Substitute the "hidden" scientific assumption for A and evolution for B here.
I really do wish this would be as you say. However it not being so is really what I'm attacking. In practice it is very often found that there is such a presumption against complex life existing "in the beginning". What for example the baramin theory says (it doesn't say anything about God or about the way complex life originally came to be) is that first there was complex life that gradually devolved (note the different direction) into the current plethora of species. The proponents of this theory have specifically made the claim that this fits the evidence better than the evolution theory; however the science community at large seems unable to discuss this theory seriously, "because it implicitly asserts a Supreme Being" and thus is not science. In doing this the science community has in effect endorsed the assumption that there was no such complex life in the beginning.
So yes, if we take science the way it's usually taken, it's exactly being scientific that the scientific community deserves to be criticized.
I think we really agree about much more than you think, just we're "from the opposing sides" (which of course is a loaded statement, I'm not here to oppose anyone but to spread and work for the truth as I see it).
Yes, exactly! I don't understand why you have a problem with this. Science deliberately restricts itself to this assumption because that's what enables it to make useful predictions. Saying "this skyscraper will stay up because God wills it so" just isn't useful in everyday life, while saying "this skyscraper will stay up because the arrangement of materials used is strong enough to withstand the forces affecting the structure" is.
Of course. And in that sense, those assumptions are useful. However it also makes those results conclusive only subject to those assumptions. If God exists, he surely can make the skyscraper fall if it's his will. Of course it is the normal case that He doesn't influence in such a way, and this is why science really is useful.
I see no logical fallacy; however, I don't believe science would be useless without these assumptions (on the contrary, the assumption is what makes it useful!)
Um, the assumptions are what makes it useful (I agree), hence without the assumptions it would be useless (as I said in the post you replied to), right? I don't see where we disagree here.
and I know better than to assume that "I Know!" The people that think these things are just as deluded as the people who think ID belongs in the domain of science.
That's nice to hear. However I do see that kind of pride in most people, even if they don't themselves recognize it as pride.
Well, no wonder you don't get it -- the difference between athieism and agnosticism is the most important difference in the world!
[...]
In case you haven't figured it out by now, yes, I am agnostic. Maybe there's a God, maybe there isn't; I don't know. Either way, it doesn't actually make a difference in my life, aside from the fact that I don't waste time p
Of course, if God made the world yesterday (I don't argue He did) to look like it was made much earlier, your science would be utterly wrong.
The scientific theories are only as valid as the assumptions behind them. And yes, there are assumptions behind science.
Given some assumptions, yes, I find evolution theory the best guess for how human life came to be. The problem with science is that these assumptions are so built-in into scientific theory that scientists don't even call them assumptions, because the talk about them is no longer science.
I repeat: Science is only as correct as the assumptions behind it.
One of the assumptions in scientific theory really is that things need to be explainable without a Supreme Being. The theories that rely on this assumption are only conclusive as far as this assumption is correct.
For example, some of the ID people criticise the scientific community, in my opinion rightly so, for refusing to even consider the possibility - in fact, having the assumption that there is no such possibility - that in the beginning of the period that their theory is concerned about there was complex life with humans and animals of some kind. (See eg. the baramin theory for more about this).
This really is one of the things that makes evolution theory a "best current guess" for most people. No matter how hole-ridden it is, it is the one scientific theory, the one theory with the (very real) assumptions of science that has the least holes in it.
I do see a nice logical fallacy here though, that is usually disregarded because people fail to recognize that science indeed has some assumptions. Partly this is probably because people want to believe in science would be next to useless without these assumptions, and partly because people are proud and really want to boast that We Know.
Being a believer (and a former atheist/agnostic (whatever, I fail to see the important difference and why some people are so picky about it)) myself, I think that this pride is one of the major things keeping people separated from the Creator of this universe. And I don't mean because of the Evolution/Creationism dispute - I couldn't really care much less about that, it's the people's attitude and pride that matters.
Indeed. It's funny how people go about lecturing others about IP issues here on slashdot and then they seem to use the words "patent", "trademark" and "copyright" (or even worse "copywrite") interchangeably.
True. However no directive is arguably a lot better than a bad directive, which really was (and still is) a close call. This way the doors are still open for anti-swpat lobbyists too.
The pro-swpat people actually claim this is only for "harmonisation" of the current system. In a sense they have a point: I think one of the positive outcomes of no directive could be that even between two regimes that allow software patents enforcing them might be somewhat difficult.
Of course a good directive would still be much better than this. But we'll wait and see the result tomorrow.
Well, not quite. Apart from the word order :)
First of all, as the direct object, it would be "auton" (accusative form) in all of the examples. Additionally we need the -ko/-kö ending to implicate the question, which is generally stuck to the first word in the sentence.
The sentences would become:
Autonko hän otti?
(emphasis on the car)
Ottiko hän auton?
(This is pretty much without emphasis, this would be the "normal" word order)
Hänkö otti auton?
This is more like "Oh, did he take a/the car?". Perhaps a slight emphasis on "he".
If you want to emphasize that he, and not someone else, took the car, you could say
Hänkö auton otti?
Demonstrating the effect of the mere word order can be done by turning this into a non-question sentence, as in:
Auton Pekka otti.
(Emphasis on the car: "It's the car that Pekka took.")
Otti Pekka auton.
(Emphasis on "took", like in assuring that "Yes, Pekka did take the car.")
Pekka otti auton.
(This is the normal form, without much emphasis on anything. Modifying the word order from here will change the emphasis.)
Pekka auton otti.
(Emphasis on Pekka: "It was Pekka who took the car" (and nobody else). This might be used when someone claimed it was someone else.)
Then there's
Auton otti Pekka.
(I'd say the emphasis is slightly on Pekka here too; the meaning is closer to "The car was taken by Pekka", i.e. the most important thing is probably that the car was taken, but that might already be known to the listener and they just didn't know who (possibly of a certain group) took it.)
One of the few? I don't think it's nearly as rare as you seem to imply. Of languages that I more or less speak, I believe that can be done, apart from German, at least in Finnish, Swedish, Esperanto and to some extent Russian. And that's quite a big portion of the languages I speak.
I for one am happy that this topic was raised here on Slashdot, where I see perhaps most of the examples of poor English.
I've said it before, but it's not the diction that matters, but the message.
I speak Finnish as my native language. Still I have noticed the poor spelling of English by a large number of geeks. The same seems to hold, perhaps to a smaller degree, in Finnish.
What you said in the sentence that I quoted is really wisdom, and I hope I could have such an attitude myself (but I wouldn't sacrifice my diction for it). Still I have noticed that whenever I read poorly written (grammar/spelling) text, I always have a negative presupposition against it. I just can't help it, it's something so deep in me. And I am sure I'm not the only one among those to whom grammar and spelling has never been a problem who thinks that way. What I seem to think subconsciously is something along the lines, "the writer doesn't even want to put the effort into making their text easily readable, so they cannot be very serious". Really reading poorly written text can be a slight annoyance, which you might not know (or maybe you do) if you aren't so fluent yourself.
While I'm trying to get rid of this, I'm sure a very large number of people aren't. So really I believe you would do well to yourself if you put some effort in trying to learn proper grammar and spelling if you want to be taken seriously.
Of course if you have some real, diagnosed disabilities, this might not be a possibility. That's one of the reasons why I'm trying really hard to get rid of that attitude of mine. But believe me, it's not easy (and I don't consider myself snotty or superior in any other sense).
Please note that what I originally said is different from the halftroll that replied.
Yes, I realize that and didn't mean that you are a troll.
I believe Trolltech still uses GPL as their license, and I believe any other advice on terms of distribution should be considered either a) nonbinding (unless they explicitly state otherwise, perhaps even if they are obviously and blatantly against the GPL and it is obvious they do not stem from a misunderstanding or a simplification) or b) adding to the rights granted under the GPL (ie. granting an alternate license; this doesn't obviously hold in this case).
I believe they say "put a note saying such-and-such" only because a lot of people are somewhat afraid of the legalities and don't know what they have to do; I believe that advice is for those people.
Still the GPL grants you the right (admittedly it's not obvious unless you're familiar with the legalities) to distribute your modifications under any license whose restrictions are a subset of the restrictions placed by the GPL, as long as the entire work is distributed under the GPL (which does not mean you can not have components in it that are distributed under the BSD license; in such a distribution, those components are just effectively dual-licensed under the GPL and under the BSDL, a right which the BSDL grants to anybody anyway). Note that there's nothing wrong with dual-licensing your own work, or relicensing any work released under the BSDL as long as you comply with the requirements in the BSDL.