It wouldn't take me long in looking at your life to find something you are not literate at. Being a Linux geek type, I'd look at cooking first, my guess would be you can't even put together a simple meal, much less bake yourself a loaf of bread, something that would be required to be considered "literate" at food preparation.
Perhaps, but I doubt the GP is planning on releasing a magazine called "Cooking-Pro".
God, in the sense that I was using it, is really a placeholder word for anything that might exist outside our perception (preferably breaking logic as we know it).
That's a pretty foggy description... So it isn't necessarily "the creator", as many would say? Is it omniscient? Omnipotent? None of the above?
Other less likely possibilities include the tea set formed on its own, or that a god placed the tea set there, but since we haven't observed any tea sets occurring in nature, or any divine tea sets handed down from any deities in odd places, we can conclude, with a reasonably strong degree of certainty that the tea set does not exist.
But wait, replacing "tea set" with god in the above quote, does your argument not still hold?
What if we replace the celestial teapot with the flying spaghetti monster -- does this still fall under the realm of "observably" unlikely situations?
Yes.
Huh? Originally, you said:
Well, we haven't seen him, and nobody we know has seen him, but given his scope, he could be literally anywhere, in (or even outside) an extremely expansive universe.
What evidence do we have against his existence? Well, about as much as we have for his existence. All we know is that, if he exists, he is thoroughly outside our sphere of perception.
Given that the FSM and his noodly will is outside our "realm of perception", we cannot in fact conclude that he is any less likely to exist than the god you speak of (by your definition). Actually, given the evidence, I would say it is much more likely that he exists than your amorphous blob. Oh, before you object, remember:
It is not valid to hold a belief, simply because no one has yet proven it false.
Why?
Your argument for the non-existence of the celestial teapot should be equally applicable to the non-existence of god. If you throw that one out the window, and feel it valid to hold a belief to be true simply because it hasn't been proven false, then you should remain equally agnostic to the idea of the FSM -- of course, you apparently aren't.
There are a few problems with your argument, mainly the result of ambiguity in words. Care to provide a definition (or at least some traits) for god? You cannot simply say "he is outside our realm of perception, and is therefor off limits to proof/disproof" -- doesn't this seem a bit childish? What if we replace the celestial teapot with the flying spaghetti monster -- does this still fall under the realm of "observably" unlikely situations? It is not valid to hold a belief, simply because no one has yet proven it false.
To all the people claiming that this violates this church's right to free speech, please inform me of how this is a government action. Because that is what is protected under the First Amendment. Hell, it's the first three words of the fucking amendment...
You misunderstand the point of the first amendment, and the founders' conception of rights. The first amendment does not GRANT rights; it merely acknowledges that the right to free speech exists, and constrains the federal government (and by the 14th amendment, state governments) from violating the right. Individuals, and corporations, can violate people's right to free speech without running afoul of the first amendment, because the rights are PRIOR to the constitution, and are inalienable.
And you appear to have misunderstood the GP's post, because that is exactly what he said. That is, this is not a government action in violation of the 1st amendment; this is the action of a private corp., which can therefor not be considered "running afoul of the 1st amendment".
When I have an empirical proof that god exists, I will believe.
Ironically, if you get empirical proof that God exists you will not be required to believe... Herein lies the problem.
I see the catch-22, but that's certainly not a reason to believe... So then where, exactly, is the problem? You seem to be implying that it is in his lack of faith.
The logic used in the beginning of their "proofs" is the best:
"Counterexamples to an Old Earth. As with any logical proposition, one contradiction disproves the proposed rule. If each of the 25 counterexamples provided here has merely a 10% chance of being valid, which is certainly an underestimate, then the probability that the Earth is billions of years old is only 7%. From another perspective, these counterexamples demonstrate that the Earth must be young with a likelihood of at least 93%."
Does it not make anyone else cringe when people talk of the PC and Mac as if one isn't a subset of the other? This is 10x more annoying then iEverything...
The passwords were stored as hashes (message-digest or otherwise) with randomized salt, right? I mean, they have a clue about security, surely.
Right?
From the article:
"The passwords were encrypted on the compromised servers (SHA-512 hash) but Apache said the risk to simple passwords based on dictionary words "is quite high" and urged users to immediately rotate their passwords."
Exactly what I was thinking. My parents have a facebook account, and they play Farmville all the time. It cracks me up every time I walk by the computer and see my dad talking in a chat room about his farm. I had to give him a lecture the other day about the security issues related to linking an account with that much of his personal information on it to an online game like Farmville. It's interesting how he originally saw nothing wrong with this, especially knowing how skeptical I know he would be if facebook weren't the intermediary. Anyway, the only reason I heard about it was because my mom complained that some random guy (who I guess my dad added through Farmville) was sending her messages.
There are already several barcode scanners on the Android marketplace. There are also apps that let you scan the cover of DVD's or other small items to retrieve pricing and other information in a hurry -- these work pretty well. At the very least, it would be cool to have the ability to take a picture of some blob of text and receive an OCR conversion on the phone. Though the 3.2MP camera on my G1 may struggle a bit with shooting some text clearly, I would think more powerful cameras (like the 5MP one equipped with the Motorola Droid) wouldn't have much of a problem.
/* I went on a vodka bender last night, and this was on my screen when I woke up. I don't know what it is, but it compiles, so let's ship the fucker. We'll call it Vista. */
Ahhh, I believe you're referring to the Ballmer Peak...
This reminded me of some of the more bizarre German aircraft's of the period (see the vertically launched Bachem Ba 349 Natter). Some of the proposed methods of aircraft/pilot recovery were pretty interesting (from using the plane as a suicide bomber, to breaking off the wings and opening a rear-mounted parachute when fuel runs out). It's also interesting to point out that many of the Japanese submarines were intended for suicide missions themselves.
Well the biggest "what the fuck" moment for me was on page 8/8:
"There is only one possible criticism of the UK plug and socket system, and that's that it doesn't really look like a happy, smiling face -- the Americans can hold that over us."
I was initially shocked at the possibility of nationalism reaching this point... But then again, I am an American... so whoosh!
Second, you would have to run it - it can't spread by itself.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this the difference between a virus and a worm? i.e. virus requires user interactions to spread, while worms do not as they exploit a weakness in the system.
In Brietech's defense, he did have a functioning internal speaker. His desktop environment of choice uses the mobo speaker to paint a picture of the desktop-- all you need is a keyboard;-)
Well, last time I checked, Wowsers has not been trying to pass laws or regulations on grammatical issues which he may or may not understand... So your point is kind of moot.
The cat and mouse game, between those who wish to control the flow of information and those who wish to attain it, has existed since the birth of civilization. It is unfortunate that the battle must persist, despite the the inevitable outcome-- from the printing industry to the Internet and its many applications (see Napster, and the evolution of P2P file sharing). Any attempt to control the flow and dispersion of "IP" has shown to indeed be futile as time (and with it, technology) progresses. In the modern world, it is especially damaging because of the effect it has on the underlying infrastructure (I won't go into details, and the real blame here is debatable).
Slashdot Mirror
There is no evidence that such a tea set does not exist.
Q.E.D. kthxbye :-*
It wouldn't take me long in looking at your life to find something you are not literate at. Being a Linux geek type, I'd look at cooking first, my guess would be you can't even put together a simple meal, much less bake yourself a loaf of bread, something that would be required to be considered "literate" at food preparation.
Perhaps, but I doubt the GP is planning on releasing a magazine called "Cooking-Pro".
Desktop Linux -- The Next Duke Nuke'em Forever.
So you're saying there's a chance? ;)
God, in the sense that I was using it, is really a placeholder word for anything that might exist outside our perception (preferably breaking logic as we know it).
That's a pretty foggy description... So it isn't necessarily "the creator", as many would say? Is it omniscient? Omnipotent? None of the above?
Other less likely possibilities include the tea set formed on its own, or that a god placed the tea set there, but since we haven't observed any tea sets occurring in nature, or any divine tea sets handed down from any deities in odd places, we can conclude, with a reasonably strong degree of certainty that the tea set does not exist.
But wait, replacing "tea set" with god in the above quote, does your argument not still hold?
Yes.
Huh? Originally, you said:
Well, we haven't seen him, and nobody we know has seen him, but given his scope, he could be literally anywhere, in (or even outside) an extremely expansive universe.
What evidence do we have against his existence? Well, about as much as we have for his existence. All we know is that, if he exists, he is thoroughly outside our sphere of perception.
Given that the FSM and his noodly will is outside our "realm of perception", we cannot in fact conclude that he is any less likely to exist than the god you speak of (by your definition). Actually, given the evidence, I would say it is much more likely that he exists than your amorphous blob. Oh, before you object, remember:
Why?
Your argument for the non-existence of the celestial teapot should be equally applicable to the non-existence of god. If you throw that one out the window, and feel it valid to hold a belief to be true simply because it hasn't been proven false, then you should remain equally agnostic to the idea of the FSM -- of course, you apparently aren't.
There are a few problems with your argument, mainly the result of ambiguity in words. Care to provide a definition (or at least some traits) for god? You cannot simply say "he is outside our realm of perception, and is therefor off limits to proof/disproof" -- doesn't this seem a bit childish? What if we replace the celestial teapot with the flying spaghetti monster -- does this still fall under the realm of "observably" unlikely situations? It is not valid to hold a belief, simply because no one has yet proven it false.
To all the people claiming that this violates this church's right to free speech, please inform me of how this is a government action. Because that is what is protected under the First Amendment. Hell, it's the first three words of the fucking amendment...
You misunderstand the point of the first amendment, and the founders' conception of rights. The first amendment does not GRANT rights; it merely acknowledges that the right to free speech exists, and constrains the federal government (and by the 14th amendment, state governments) from violating the right. Individuals, and corporations, can violate people's right to free speech without running afoul of the first amendment, because the rights are PRIOR to the constitution, and are inalienable.
And you appear to have misunderstood the GP's post, because that is exactly what he said. That is, this is not a government action in violation of the 1st amendment; this is the action of a private corp., which can therefor not be considered "running afoul of the 1st amendment".
When I have an empirical proof that god exists, I will believe.
Ironically, if you get empirical proof that God exists you will not be required to believe... Herein lies the problem.
I see the catch-22, but that's certainly not a reason to believe... So then where, exactly, is the problem? You seem to be implying that it is in his lack of faith.
The logic used in the beginning of their "proofs" is the best: "Counterexamples to an Old Earth. As with any logical proposition, one contradiction disproves the proposed rule. If each of the 25 counterexamples provided here has merely a 10% chance of being valid, which is certainly an underestimate, then the probability that the Earth is billions of years old is only 7%. From another perspective, these counterexamples demonstrate that the Earth must be young with a likelihood of at least 93%."
FacePalm.com? Would probably be your reaction when you get a letter in the mail from FB's legal team.
Does it not make anyone else cringe when people talk of the PC and Mac as if one isn't a subset of the other? This is 10x more annoying then iEverything...
The passwords were stored as hashes (message-digest or otherwise) with randomized salt, right? I mean, they have a clue about security, surely.
Right?
From the article: "The passwords were encrypted on the compromised servers (SHA-512 hash) but Apache said the risk to simple passwords based on dictionary words "is quite high" and urged users to immediately rotate their passwords."
I agree. The biggest problem I have with the default theme in the pictures, though, is the movement of the window-control buttons from right to left.
Grr... I reformatted my PS3 last night... I think the onion called it
Exactly what I was thinking. My parents have a facebook account, and they play Farmville all the time. It cracks me up every time I walk by the computer and see my dad talking in a chat room about his farm. I had to give him a lecture the other day about the security issues related to linking an account with that much of his personal information on it to an online game like Farmville. It's interesting how he originally saw nothing wrong with this, especially knowing how skeptical I know he would be if facebook weren't the intermediary. Anyway, the only reason I heard about it was because my mom complained that some random guy (who I guess my dad added through Farmville) was sending her messages.
There are already several barcode scanners on the Android marketplace. There are also apps that let you scan the cover of DVD's or other small items to retrieve pricing and other information in a hurry -- these work pretty well. At the very least, it would be cool to have the ability to take a picture of some blob of text and receive an OCR conversion on the phone. Though the 3.2MP camera on my G1 may struggle a bit with shooting some text clearly, I would think more powerful cameras (like the 5MP one equipped with the Motorola Droid) wouldn't have much of a problem.
Bah... Flamebait... I know... But I can't resist... You ordered a MS Excel video professor CD and you have a 6-digit slashdot ID?
Ahhh, I believe you're referring to the Ballmer Peak...
This reminded me of some of the more bizarre German aircraft's of the period (see the vertically launched Bachem Ba 349 Natter). Some of the proposed methods of aircraft/pilot recovery were pretty interesting (from using the plane as a suicide bomber, to breaking off the wings and opening a rear-mounted parachute when fuel runs out). It's also interesting to point out that many of the Japanese submarines were intended for suicide missions themselves.
Come on! It's not thaaat offtopic
Well the biggest "what the fuck" moment for me was on page 8/8: "There is only one possible criticism of the UK plug and socket system, and that's that it doesn't really look like a happy, smiling face -- the Americans can hold that over us." I was initially shocked at the possibility of nationalism reaching this point... But then again, I am an American... so whoosh!
Second, you would have to run it - it can't spread by itself.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this the difference between a virus and a worm? i.e. virus requires user interactions to spread, while worms do not as they exploit a weakness in the system.
In Brietech's defense, he did have a functioning internal speaker. His desktop environment of choice uses the mobo speaker to paint a picture of the desktop-- all you need is a keyboard ;-)
http://xkcd.com/652/
Well, last time I checked, Wowsers has not been trying to pass laws or regulations on grammatical issues which he may or may not understand... So your point is kind of moot.
The cat and mouse game, between those who wish to control the flow of information and those who wish to attain it, has existed since the birth of civilization. It is unfortunate that the battle must persist, despite the the inevitable outcome-- from the printing industry to the Internet and its many applications (see Napster, and the evolution of P2P file sharing). Any attempt to control the flow and dispersion of "IP" has shown to indeed be futile as time (and with it, technology) progresses. In the modern world, it is especially damaging because of the effect it has on the underlying infrastructure (I won't go into details, and the real blame here is debatable).