I'm not at all certain that most religions believe that their god acts according to rules. If it did, why all the prayers for physically observable results. They may officially *CLAIM* that (though I can't recall any doing so), but that's not the belief of the practitioners.
As a side note, I seem to recall a characterization of angels as "god's robots", with the note that they did not have free will. So "natural law" was seen as the automatic actions of the angels. This was describing medieval Jewish theology. so apparently at least in THAT theology only god and humans had free will. And free will was the prime characteristic dividing god from the angels.
You are aware that the basic meaning of prove is "test" aren't you?
It's true that colloquial speech uses prove as a synonym for "prove true", but that's not it's actual meaning. A proof can also show that an assumption is wrong. This is the basic approach of "Reductio ad absurdum". (Or some such. It means reduce to an absurdity.)
It is common that once one has achieve the result, one recasts things to make the statement proved true rather than false, but this is merely syntactic manipulation, and has nothing to do with the basic proof. People generally like it better when you prove something true, so you restate that which is to be proved so that it becomes the thing which was proved true. But if you don't know ahead of time which answer is going to be true, then you have a 50% chance of needing to rephrase your initial statement after you have achieved your result.
In "proof firings" you don't find the certainty that you get in mathematics, so you generally need several proof firings to be able to say what the reliability of the thing being tested is.
There are other contexts, but to prove means to test. Different kinds of proof have different levels of reliability. Mathematical proofs tend to approach 100% reliability...but one is never certain that a long proof may not contain an error.
You might want to post your exact definition of "move", so that we can tell whether you are being stupid, or just expecting something that the evidence doesn't say you should expect.
There are problems with Einstein's Relativity, and especially with his gravity. These don't have to do with the word play you are considering, however, but rather with how it can be reconciled with quantum theory. Einstein always had trouble with quantum theory. He kept trying to knock it down, and the most unbelievable predictions kept showing up. Check into Bell's Theorem. Nobody has yet solved the problem, and when they do significant changes in the metaphysic behind physics can be expected. But this doesn't have much to do with the problems that you are positing. (Or maybe it does. See the Many-Worlds hypothesis.)
But you seem to be assuming that just because someone encounters a problem that they can't understand how to solve, that this proves that everything is wrong. Sorry. Reality doesn't work that way. (Neither does math. It's been recently shown that it would require an infinite number of axioms to be able to prove all statements that are inherently true given the basic postulates of number theory. I.e., there's lots of true things that we'll never be able to prove are true. That's a much more plausible place to attach your arguments.)
Sigh. It's supposed to and it tries to. However it often takes a generation or two to wash away those determined to cling to outdated theories. And this is among people theoretically dedicated to objective reasoning.
Now consider who advocates "intelligent design". Were I to present evidence that we are the descendants of carefully designed and planted spores from an eons old civilization from another star would this satisfy the "intelligent design" proponents? If not, then they have falsely labeled their "field of study".
What if I proved beyond the shadow of a doubt (somehow) that we were characters in a video game. That clearly meets the criteria of "Intelligent Design", right?
The proponents of "Intelligent Design" are shameless liars, one and all. They will only accept an answer that fits in with what they interpret the Bible as telling them. They work to impose their fantasies on the rest of us, and they have no qualms about lying to do so. Many of them believe that their God has told them to do so, and fequently they believe that if they don't do it, and thus win absolution of whatever they believe is sinful about themselves, they will be tortured without limit. So they are determined to make YOU afraid that YOU will be tortured without limit. (There are some with less selfish motivations, but even most of them have this threat in the background of their minds.)
Well, it's a field of *something*. I'm not sure study is the correct term, however.
Bible studies I can accept. They say what they are doing, and they (try) to do it. (I notice, however, that they tend to ignore the Benjamanites and the Moabites. Esp. their relation to Lot.) And the question of who did Cain and Able marry. Etc. Still, they're relatively honest.
"Intelligent Design", however, is a lie ab initio. They wouldn't consider the Arcturian civilization that disseminated spores designed to evolve into life throughout the galaxy as a suitable answer. It fits all their avowed criteria, but it doesn't fit their hidden agenda. They wouldn't consider the idea that we are a simulation being run by some post-singularity civilization. It fits all their avowed criteria, but it doesn't fit their hidden agenda. They intentionally eliminate every solution that's incompatible with (Baptist?) theology. I said (Baptist?) because different "ID" folk have slightly differing agendas, and only some of them are Baptist. But they happen to be the ones I know.
FWIW I consider the Flying Spaghetti Monster to be more reasonable than whatever the particular "ID" practitioner would find acceptable. Largely because the FSM doesn't have as many characteristics that I need to disbelieve in.
OTOH, I have a very firmly theistic view of human thought. It's just at such variance with all traditional forms that it's more closely allied to Jungian psychology than to ordinary religion. But I'm already way off the track of the story, so that should be saved for when it's more appropriate.
Good. My wife is a teacher, and she can easily tell which children have a parent at home caring for the kids during the day. And, yes, it's usually the mother. Those kids are much more intelligent, much more civilized, and do much better at hearing instruction.
N.B.: Not all mothers, and relatively few fathers, are naturally adept at dealing with kids. It's something that one develops through practice. If you have any much younger siblings, you may already have a head start.
The first five years are the most important for parenting. It's important to always be supportive, but to still be fair. At times this can be difficult. Parents have a tendency to say "My child, may he always be right, but my child right or wrong." This is as big a mistake for a parent as it is for a patriot. You need to let your child know that you love it, but you must also adhere to fairness. These are orthogonal, so don't conflate them.
I've heard rumors that the real reason for the Iraq invasion was that the Iraqi were planning to start selling oil for Euros. Don't know of any validity to this, but I also don't have any reason to disbelieve it. Have you heard of *ANY* other plausible reason?
So there might be a bit of danger involved in trading commodities in a different currency. (And this could also be totally off the wall. But would you bet your country on it?)
Unh... if the code changes were made at random, then I have a hard time thinking of this as "program them to be deceptive" rather than as evolution.
It's true that this isn't a full evolution scenario. That requires a much more sophisticated set-up, is generally only done purely in software, and still tends to be bogged down by the accumulation of garbage code (the last time I evaluated the field). Still, those are matters of scale, not of essence. This appears to be another part of "the evolution of programs as a technique". As with all tests so far it's an incomplete example, but it's a significant part in that it has replicated behavior also observed in biologically evolved entities.
You make a good argument about why it might be technically illegal. (IANAL, so don't take that evaluation too seriously.) Unfortunately, it doesn't apply.
Flickr took it down because they wanted to. I haven't heard of any legal action that was even proposed. Flickr took it down because they could. Their terms of service allow them to take down anything they choose.
Maybe Flickr should have left it up. It was their (apparently uncoerced) choice.
Well, you could use a moon-based laser system to deliver the power for a mid-course correction. And laser power while also falling off as the square of the distance, can still fall off a lot more slowly. You'd need a hefty laser beyond appreciable atmosphere, which is why I said moon based (to allow for cooling). Asteroid based might be even better, but harder to build.
Besides, if you build it on the far side of the moon no rogue faction can use it to threaten it's home country. But it could still shoot down incoming asteroids. (Shoot down is a bit imprecise. Ablate is better. Possibly changing the orbit so even if it isn't rendered too small to be dangerous, it's still no longer a threat.)
I'm relatively certain that there's more to the story than we've been told. Most of what we were told appears to be unwitnessed actions reported by the victim. Even if he reported exactly what he remembers experiencing, it's guaranteed not to be what the accused experienced. And since many of the actions were unwitnessed, we don't know what happened where the stories differ. And we haven't even been TOLD the story reported by the accused.
So there's definitely more to the story. If may be a bit doubtful that the "more to this story" would excuse the actions observed by a witness.
How about: Reformat the entire disk with different partition types, and a different file system. Possibly a different OS. If it's been Linux with ext3, install BSD with it's default file system, etc. Then create a few users on the system. And copy a few live-CDs to folders in the users systems.
1) it's usable. 2) it appears to not have been reformatted (though not heavily used). 3) most of the stuff you want to hide has been overwritten with something plausible.
ALTERNATIVE: a) Take a system that's been heavily used, but doesn't have anything you want to hide, and dd it's drive onto a mountable hard drive. b) Using a liveCD, dd the contents of the mountable hard drive onto the systems that you wish to overwrite.
1) it's usable. 2) it appears to not have been reformatted. 3) most of the stuff you want to hide has been overwritten with something plausible. Problem: If the size of the new drive doesn't match the size of the old drive, something may not be hidden, or it may be obvious that something has been hidden.
Actually, sports contests can and have been fixed. The prevalence of that was one of the reasons betting on sports was originally made illegal.
Mr. Kaplan probably couldn't have fixed sports. He was too small time an operation. But the Nevada casinos... well, it may be just as well that they AREN'T allowed to have on-line betting on sports.
Actually, there are ways to make internet gambling stop. The easiest is to allow credit card companies to keep any money bet using the card on a gambling site.
Well, I don't know anything about Bill Maher... I've never noticed the name before. But you've convinced me that his arguments might be worth looking at.
O, and you've also convinced me that you know absolutely nothing a climate science and very little about statistics.
They supply the table, the cards, the room, the dealer... Why do you think they shouldn't be entitled to a profit? One might argue about the SIZE of the profit, but please be reasonable.
That's not what the summary claimed he was guilty of. They said "racketeering". You know, like offering businesses "Fire Insurance" in a threatening manner.
It *is* extortion. But the government has given itself a monopoly on that, so that's fair...well, sort of fair.
However it isn't clear that he was charged with evading taxes. What, exactly, is this "racketeering" that he was charged with? This operation doesn't sound like it falls within that spectrum. (Yeah, I only read the Slashdot summary.)
I could see charging him with running an illegal gambling, but it sounds as if he may not have been doing so. (Illegal to do in the US doesn't mean illegal to do in Costa Rica.) And last I heard it wasn't illegal to have a phone line.
I think they're probably using the provision of the RICO laws that says, approx. "If we say you're guilty, then we get to confiscate all your money and other valuables so you can't hire a good lawyer."
You can make that same kind of argument about ANY activity.
I'm not saying there isn't some validity to the position WRT gambling, I'm saying that you need to justify it a LOT better. And I've never encountered such a justification that couldn't be applied to many other activities, from eating donuts to buying a fast car...or even to jogging.
Sorry, but I think that this is a more reasonable than average use of the patent system.
Software patents are bad medicine. AKA poison. Anyone who supports them in anything approximating their current form is asking for courts to make stupid decisions, because that's what the laws require.
P.S.: Business method patents are nearly as bad. Other patents are also candidates for the junk heap. It's not that patents are, inherently, a bad idea. It's that the implementation, and the creation of monopolies is abusive.
It should be easy to do. Just make a new run of MSWord 2000. It didn't use XML, so it definitely didn't violate the patent.
Of course, that means that you won't be able to open docx files. Opening those files, though, would require using the patented technology. So you can't do it. (Or can you? OpenOffice can, I believe, open those files...but I'll admit I've never tried.)
Maybe MS could just start distributing OpenOffice? Of course, once OpenOffice got sued it would be forced to remove the ability to read/write docx files, but that's no problem. They've got their own file format which doesn't use the patented process. So just send you documents to Canada or Mexico and have them converted into *.odf formats.
You say that's not practical? But you can't open the files without violating the patent. So tell me again just *why* you supported software patents.
This patent is certainly a lot more valid than many that MS has been threatening people with.
That's the current theory. This result may cast questions upon the current theory. Or perhaps it won't. We'd need more details to tell. But in any case if there's a conflict, experiment trumps theory.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not at all certain that most religions believe that their god acts according to rules. If it did, why all the prayers for physically observable results. They may officially *CLAIM* that (though I can't recall any doing so), but that's not the belief of the practitioners.
As a side note, I seem to recall a characterization of angels as "god's robots", with the note that they did not have free will. So "natural law" was seen as the automatic actions of the angels. This was describing medieval Jewish theology. so apparently at least in THAT theology only god and humans had free will. And free will was the prime characteristic dividing god from the angels.
You are aware that the basic meaning of prove is "test" aren't you?
It's true that colloquial speech uses prove as a synonym for "prove true", but that's not it's actual meaning. A proof can also show that an assumption is wrong. This is the basic approach of "Reductio ad absurdum". (Or some such. It means reduce to an absurdity.)
It is common that once one has achieve the result, one recasts things to make the statement proved true rather than false, but this is merely syntactic manipulation, and has nothing to do with the basic proof. People generally like it better when you prove something true, so you restate that which is to be proved so that it becomes the thing which was proved true. But if you don't know ahead of time which answer is going to be true, then you have a 50% chance of needing to rephrase your initial statement after you have achieved your result.
In "proof firings" you don't find the certainty that you get in mathematics, so you generally need several proof firings to be able to say what the reliability of the thing being tested is.
There are other contexts, but to prove means to test. Different kinds of proof have different levels of reliability. Mathematical proofs tend to approach 100% reliability...but one is never certain that a long proof may not contain an error.
You might want to post your exact definition of "move", so that we can tell whether you are being stupid, or just expecting something that the evidence doesn't say you should expect.
There are problems with Einstein's Relativity, and especially with his gravity. These don't have to do with the word play you are considering, however, but rather with how it can be reconciled with quantum theory. Einstein always had trouble with quantum theory. He kept trying to knock it down, and the most unbelievable predictions kept showing up. Check into Bell's Theorem. Nobody has yet solved the problem, and when they do significant changes in the metaphysic behind physics can be expected. But this doesn't have much to do with the problems that you are positing. (Or maybe it does. See the Many-Worlds hypothesis.)
But you seem to be assuming that just because someone encounters a problem that they can't understand how to solve, that this proves that everything is wrong. Sorry. Reality doesn't work that way. (Neither does math. It's been recently shown that it would require an infinite number of axioms to be able to prove all statements that are inherently true given the basic postulates of number theory. I.e., there's lots of true things that we'll never be able to prove are true. That's a much more plausible place to attach your arguments.)
Sigh. It's supposed to and it tries to. However it often takes a generation or two to wash away those determined to cling to outdated theories. And this is among people theoretically dedicated to objective reasoning.
Now consider who advocates "intelligent design". Were I to present evidence that we are the descendants of carefully designed and planted spores from an eons old civilization from another star would this satisfy the "intelligent design" proponents? If not, then they have falsely labeled their "field of study".
What if I proved beyond the shadow of a doubt (somehow) that we were characters in a video game. That clearly meets the criteria of "Intelligent Design", right?
The proponents of "Intelligent Design" are shameless liars, one and all. They will only accept an answer that fits in with what they interpret the Bible as telling them. They work to impose their fantasies on the rest of us, and they have no qualms about lying to do so. Many of them believe that their God has told them to do so, and fequently they believe that if they don't do it, and thus win absolution of whatever they believe is sinful about themselves, they will be tortured without limit. So they are determined to make YOU afraid that YOU will be tortured without limit. (There are some with less selfish motivations, but even most of them have this threat in the background of their minds.)
Well, it's a field of *something*. I'm not sure study is the correct term, however.
Bible studies I can accept. They say what they are doing, and they (try) to do it. (I notice, however, that they tend to ignore the Benjamanites and the Moabites. Esp. their relation to Lot.) And the question of who did Cain and Able marry. Etc. Still, they're relatively honest.
"Intelligent Design", however, is a lie ab initio. They wouldn't consider the Arcturian civilization that disseminated spores designed to evolve into life throughout the galaxy as a suitable answer. It fits all their avowed criteria, but it doesn't fit their hidden agenda. They wouldn't consider the idea that we are a simulation being run by some post-singularity civilization. It fits all their avowed criteria, but it doesn't fit their hidden agenda. They intentionally eliminate every solution that's incompatible with (Baptist?) theology. I said (Baptist?) because different "ID" folk have slightly differing agendas, and only some of them are Baptist. But they happen to be the ones I know.
FWIW I consider the Flying Spaghetti Monster to be more reasonable than whatever the particular "ID" practitioner would find acceptable. Largely because the FSM doesn't have as many characteristics that I need to disbelieve in.
OTOH, I have a very firmly theistic view of human thought. It's just at such variance with all traditional forms that it's more closely allied to Jungian psychology than to ordinary religion. But I'm already way off the track of the story, so that should be saved for when it's more appropriate.
Good. My wife is a teacher, and she can easily tell which children have a parent at home caring for the kids during the day. And, yes, it's usually the mother. Those kids are much more intelligent, much more civilized, and do much better at hearing instruction.
N.B.: Not all mothers, and relatively few fathers, are naturally adept at dealing with kids. It's something that one develops through practice. If you have any much younger siblings, you may already have a head start.
The first five years are the most important for parenting. It's important to always be supportive, but to still be fair. At times this can be difficult. Parents have a tendency to say "My child, may he always be right, but my child right or wrong." This is as big a mistake for a parent as it is for a patriot. You need to let your child know that you love it, but you must also adhere to fairness. These are orthogonal, so don't conflate them.
I've heard rumors that the real reason for the Iraq invasion was that the Iraqi were planning to start selling oil for Euros. Don't know of any validity to this, but I also don't have any reason to disbelieve it. Have you heard of *ANY* other plausible reason?
So there might be a bit of danger involved in trading commodities in a different currency. (And this could also be totally off the wall. But would you bet your country on it?)
Unh... if the code changes were made at random, then I have a hard time thinking of this as "program them to be deceptive" rather than as evolution.
It's true that this isn't a full evolution scenario. That requires a much more sophisticated set-up, is generally only done purely in software, and still tends to be bogged down by the accumulation of garbage code (the last time I evaluated the field). Still, those are matters of scale, not of essence. This appears to be another part of "the evolution of programs as a technique". As with all tests so far it's an incomplete example, but it's a significant part in that it has replicated behavior also observed in biologically evolved entities.
Sorry, but no.
You make a good argument about why it might be technically illegal. (IANAL, so don't take that evaluation too seriously.) Unfortunately, it doesn't apply.
Flickr took it down because they wanted to. I haven't heard of any legal action that was even proposed. Flickr took it down because they could. Their terms of service allow them to take down anything they choose.
Maybe Flickr should have left it up. It was their (apparently uncoerced) choice.
Well, you could use a moon-based laser system to deliver the power for a mid-course correction. And laser power while also falling off as the square of the distance, can still fall off a lot more slowly. You'd need a hefty laser beyond appreciable atmosphere, which is why I said moon based (to allow for cooling). Asteroid based might be even better, but harder to build.
Besides, if you build it on the far side of the moon no rogue faction can use it to threaten it's home country. But it could still shoot down incoming asteroids. (Shoot down is a bit imprecise. Ablate is better. Possibly changing the orbit so even if it isn't rendered too small to be dangerous, it's still no longer a threat.)
I'm relatively certain that there's more to the story than we've been told. Most of what we were told appears to be unwitnessed actions reported by the victim. Even if he reported exactly what he remembers experiencing, it's guaranteed not to be what the accused experienced. And since many of the actions were unwitnessed, we don't know what happened where the stories differ. And we haven't even been TOLD the story reported by the accused.
So there's definitely more to the story. If may be a bit doubtful that the "more to this story" would excuse the actions observed by a witness.
How about:
Reformat the entire disk with different partition types, and a different file system. Possibly a different OS. If it's been Linux with ext3, install BSD with it's default file system, etc. Then create a few users on the system. And copy a few live-CDs to folders in the users systems.
1) it's usable.
2) it appears to not have been reformatted (though not heavily used).
3) most of the stuff you want to hide has been overwritten with something plausible.
ALTERNATIVE:
a) Take a system that's been heavily used, but doesn't have anything you want to hide, and dd it's drive onto a mountable hard drive.
b) Using a liveCD, dd the contents of the mountable hard drive onto the systems that you wish to overwrite.
1) it's usable.
2) it appears to not have been reformatted.
3) most of the stuff you want to hide has been overwritten with something plausible.
Problem:
If the size of the new drive doesn't match the size of the old drive, something may not be hidden, or it may be obvious that something has been hidden.
Were the people who took the bets in Costa Rica? If so then the action didn't take place in the US.
Actually, sports contests can and have been fixed. The prevalence of that was one of the reasons betting on sports was originally made illegal.
Mr. Kaplan probably couldn't have fixed sports. He was too small time an operation. But the Nevada casinos... well, it may be just as well that they AREN'T allowed to have on-line betting on sports.
Actually, there are ways to make internet gambling stop. The easiest is to allow credit card companies to keep any money bet using the card on a gambling site.
Think about it.
Well, I don't know anything about Bill Maher ... I've never noticed the name before. But you've convinced me that his arguments might be worth looking at.
O, and you've also convinced me that you know absolutely nothing a climate science and very little about statistics.
They supply the table, the cards, the room, the dealer... Why do you think they shouldn't be entitled to a profit? One might argue about the SIZE of the profit, but please be reasonable.
That's not what the summary claimed he was guilty of. They said "racketeering". You know, like offering businesses "Fire Insurance" in a threatening manner.
It *is* extortion. But the government has given itself a monopoly on that, so that's fair...well, sort of fair.
However it isn't clear that he was charged with evading taxes. What, exactly, is this "racketeering" that he was charged with? This operation doesn't sound like it falls within that spectrum. (Yeah, I only read the Slashdot summary.)
I could see charging him with running an illegal gambling, but it sounds as if he may not have been doing so. (Illegal to do in the US doesn't mean illegal to do in Costa Rica.) And last I heard it wasn't illegal to have a phone line.
I think they're probably using the provision of the RICO laws that says, approx. "If we say you're guilty, then we get to confiscate all your money and other valuables so you can't hire a good lawyer."
You can make that same kind of argument about ANY activity.
I'm not saying there isn't some validity to the position WRT gambling, I'm saying that you need to justify it a LOT better. And I've never encountered such a justification that couldn't be applied to many other activities, from eating donuts to buying a fast car...or even to jogging.
Sorry, but I think that this is a more reasonable than average use of the patent system.
Software patents are bad medicine. AKA poison. Anyone who supports them in anything approximating their current form is asking for courts to make stupid decisions, because that's what the laws require.
P.S.: Business method patents are nearly as bad. Other patents are also candidates for the junk heap. It's not that patents are, inherently, a bad idea. It's that the implementation, and the creation of monopolies is abusive.
It should be easy to do. Just make a new run of MSWord 2000. It didn't use XML, so it definitely didn't violate the patent.
Of course, that means that you won't be able to open docx files. Opening those files, though, would require using the patented technology. So you can't do it. (Or can you? OpenOffice can, I believe, open those files...but I'll admit I've never tried.)
Maybe MS could just start distributing OpenOffice? Of course, once OpenOffice got sued it would be forced to remove the ability to read/write docx files, but that's no problem. They've got their own file format which doesn't use the patented process. So just send you documents to Canada or Mexico and have them converted into *.odf formats.
You say that's not practical? But you can't open the files without violating the patent. So tell me again just *why* you supported software patents.
This patent is certainly a lot more valid than many that MS has been threatening people with.
What if they don't want to sign?
(Well, of course there's the suggestion in the sibling post. But MS wouldn't do anything illegal, would they?)
According to GrokLaw's informal analysis, OpenOffice doesn't use this patent. This is a patent on custom extensions to the standard.
Caution: IANAL. I may well have misunderstood the argument. But the conclusion was that OpenOffice isn't affected by this particular patent.
That's the current theory. This result may cast questions upon the current theory. Or perhaps it won't. We'd need more details to tell. But in any case if there's a conflict, experiment trumps theory.