Some scientists seem desperate to find some theory - any theory will do - that might possibly explain the existence of life without the need to postulate a God. For a while, it was macro evolution - an extension of the micro evolution we all know, love and observe. That theory having been found wanting, they switch to a quantum sleight of hand - all mutations happen and, in some hand-wavy multi-dimensional way, the most beneficial (by whose judgement?) are chosen and the rest are discarded.
In this way, you can try and get around the mind-bogglingly massive unlikelihood of life ever coming into existence by chance (as the article recognises).
Forgive me if I don't jump in the air and scream "At last! Non-belief in God is intellectually credible! I can stop this Christianity lark and go out into the evil, bad world as an atheist with my intellectual pride intact..."
No, this is exactly what a Slashdot story _shouldn't_ look like.
Irrelevant to what the site is about, and not giving enough info to stop lots of people spouting off in a knee-jerk sort of way on a subject they know nothing about.
OK, I'll grant you the links and lack of editorialising are both good, but the entire story shouldn't be here in the first place.
Funny that, to get your internet "freedom" using Freedom.net, you have to be using the products and OSes of the software company in the world most opposed to freedom:-)
... is the author. Jon Ungoed-Thomas has managed to embarrass himself several times in the past, once by e-mailing Earth First! pretending to be an anti-corporation activist called "Jo", trying to provoke them into letting him in on something illegal. He sent the e-mail from the address jonathan.ungoed-thomas@sunday-times.co.uk!
Re:The Church: protector of freedom and progress :
on
Cybernauts Awake!
·
· Score: 2
"What do they want? How do they want to use the medium (internet) to their advantage? What do they see as a threat and how does all of this influence their views?"
As a Christian, when I read things written by libertarians arguing for no gun control or whatever, I apply exactly the same criteria.;-)
This of course doesn't only apply to religion and politics but to just about anything else as well.
So why bother making the point at all?
Gerv
Religion is the cause of bloodshed and cruelty?
on
Planet Gattaca
·
· Score: 2
And why put this discussion in the hands of scientists and members of organized religion -- the latter probably responsible for more hatred, bloodshed and cruelty than any other single force in human history?
It's interesting that JK is keen to lay the blame for the deaths of many people killed in the name of religion at its door, yet (as implied by his comment above) he is unwilling to lay at the door of atheism the far greater number of deaths for which it is responsible.
How is atheism responsible for deaths? If you do not accept God, you can make no claim that one moral framework is any better than another. Therefore,you are perfectly within your rights to develop philosophies such as those of Stalin, Mao and Hitler, because any moral philosophy is as good as anyother. Their killing was a natural progression from their Godlessness - a far stronger link than that between Christianity and those who distort its message to one of murder.
So let's have no more of this "religion is responsible for more bloodshed and cruelty..." nonsense, please.
Come on, guys - compared to the amount of rubbish that's written on this subject by mainstream journalists, this is pretty good. OK, so if you can't find any really major problems with it, you can always look closer to find smaller and smaller ones, but I think they deserve congratulating on producing what seems to be a pretty good summary of the current situation.
When it comes down to it, small things like the fact that Wargames wasn't, in fact, based on what Kevin Mitnick did is not important. The important thing is that they seem to have got most of their facts right.
I would say Slashdot's input has managed to create the most sensible and accurate piece of journalism on crackers and their activities written by a mainstream journalist that I have ever read.
...what with all the problems they've had this year - the fiasco over Camino, then the Processor Serial Number thing (the E.U. is considering banning serialed P3's altogether, of course) and serious shortages of its high end processors.
AMD, on the other hand, has the fastest Mhz processor (good for PR, even if the speed increase is only a few percent) and is selling its lower end processors as fast as it can crank them out.
Could it be that we finally have competition in the processor industry? (faint)
There's a good review of Intel's year at The Register.
At the UK, at some Universities, we have a thing called the "Milkround", where large companies come and give presentations to persuade you that you want for them. Several Milkround presentations by Nestle have been disrupted by activists protesting about the whole baby milk fiasco.
Is it possible that, by analogy, in the next few years we'll see geeks staging similar protests at Microsoft presentations to complain about their use of closed standards?:-)
How much of an impact would a successful conviction of Microsoft have outside the US?
Obviously if the company was sanctioned, it would affect its operations worldwide, but I'm thinking more in terms of compensation for customers (what in the US would be a class action suit).
We know the Findings of Fact are just one stage on the road, but what are the panel's personal opinions on the sanctions that should be applied to Microsoft if they lose this case completely?
Have you considered cutting a deal with Hushmail (http://www.hushmail.com)?
They are a web-based e-mail system which uses 1024-bit encryption which, because it uses a Java encryption applet at the client end, is end-to-end secure (even Hushmail can't read your mail). This would perhaps avoid you having to use the "paging" style kluge whereby doctors are sent insecure e-mail to inform them that secure e-mail is waiting for them, and you'd get a lot of the security/maintenance stuff for free.
If you were a big organisation, you could even license the technology and run your own version of it.
Note that Hushmail accounts are protected by a username and passphrase. They seem to think that's sufficient.
because the RBL becomes more effective the more systems implement it. If an ISP suddenly finds it has been RBLed, and therefore it's customers can't reach half the e-mail addresses on the planet, it'll shut down its spammers or secure their mailserver pretty sharpish;-)
It says: "credit card or digital signature". Tell me if I'm wrong, but surely there's a problem of who verifies these digital signatures to set up a trust chain between the ABA, the site and you?
Is it not the case that I can just go out and generate a "digital signature" (at least in the PGP sense of using my private key to encrypt something) corresponding to any identity I choose to assume?
Seconded (but for Netscape Messenger for Windows; although I have used Outlook and I like that too). BTW, I don't use Messenger for Unix because NS broke it by removing Offline mode.
Question: Which would you rather have? A mail client that does everything you want easily, but which you can't add more features to, or one which doesn't do everything you want, but you're welcome to implement stuff yourself?;-)
There are few people in the world with the time and the coding skills to choose the second option.
The Philips Velo, American model, is still IMO the best palmtop PC around, and it was released in 1997. Why? It has a softmodem - 4 hours of e-mail/IE 2.0 level net surfing at 19.2k. I was travelling around the US for a month and it was ideal for keeping in touch with people. AFAIK no other palmtop has this feature, even now (but I haven't been paying too much attention...)
Stupidly, they made the European version with a mobile phone interface - slower and far more expensive to set up and use. I count myself very lucky I have an American model. But with marketing decisions like that, no wonder it got discontinued as quickly as the article says.
On the downside, of course, it's my fifth one, due to them never getting the hinges designed right - but you can't fault their nice returns department:-)
For many people, maybe even most, the faddishness of Linux just isn't worth it. You've been plugging away at it for a year now, but what do you really have to show for all that time spent, other than feeling like "[your] own particular geek now"?
Exactly how I felt. After a while I realised there was no point in spending unproductive time fighting to get a desktop system which worked as well as my previous one, and being frustrated many times when the promised "configurability" didn't appear (as far as I could see, KDE 1.1 has no key redefinition ability, nor the ability to bind hotkeys to apps - amazing) I just went back to my previous one (Windows).
This is not necessarily a problem with Linux; but what I'd love is the MS GUI look 'n' feel on top of a stable underneath, with all the facilities and key bindings therein. MS may make crap OSs, but (for people used to it) their GUI is good - why should we force people all over the world to relearn their GUI conventions, and put up with worse functionality? Are we that arrogant?
Slashdot Mirror
I will believe in God when you can give me a repeatable, well designed and defined experiement for testing God's existence.
:-)
I will believe that love exists when you can give me a repeatable, well designed and defined experiment for testing love's existence.
You can't test for everything.
Gerv
Some scientists seem desperate to find some theory - any theory will do - that might possibly explain the existence of life without the need to postulate a God. For a while, it was macro evolution - an extension of the micro evolution we all know, love and observe. That theory having been found wanting, they switch to a quantum sleight of hand - all mutations happen and, in some hand-wavy multi-dimensional way, the most beneficial (by whose judgement?) are chosen and the rest are discarded.
In this way, you can try and get around the mind-bogglingly massive unlikelihood of life ever coming into existence by chance (as the article recognises).
Forgive me if I don't jump in the air and scream "At last! Non-belief in God is intellectually credible! I can stop this Christianity lark and go out into the evil, bad world as an atheist with my intellectual pride intact..."
Gerv
Your father was also arrested when you were.
Did he know that you put DeCSS on his server, and what that software did?
Does he agree with your stance on DVD encryption, and the need for software players for Linux?
Gerv
No, this is exactly what a Slashdot story _shouldn't_ look like.
;-)
Irrelevant to what the site is about, and not giving enough info to stop lots of people spouting off in a knee-jerk sort of way on a subject they know nothing about.
OK, I'll grant you the links and lack of editorialising are both good, but the entire story shouldn't be here in the first place.
Just my £0.02
Gerv
Funny that, to get your internet "freedom" using Freedom.net, you have to be using the products and OSes of the software company in the world most opposed to freedom :-)
Gerv
... is the author. Jon Ungoed-Thomas has managed to embarrass himself several times in the past, once by e-mailing Earth First! pretending to be an anti-corporation activist called "Jo", trying to provoke them into letting him in on something illegal. He sent the e-mail from the address jonathan.ungoed-thomas@sunday-times.co.uk!
More details at NTK - search for "Ungoed".
Gerv
Following your example, then? ;-)
Gerv
"What do they want? How do they want to use the medium (internet) to their advantage? What do they see as a threat and how does all of this influence their views?"
;-)
As a Christian, when I read things written by libertarians arguing for no gun control or whatever, I apply exactly the same criteria.
This of course doesn't only apply to religion and politics but to just about anything else as well.
So why bother making the point at all?
Gerv
And why put this discussion in the hands of scientists and members of organized religion -- the latter probably responsible for more hatred, bloodshed and cruelty than any other single force in human history?
It's interesting that JK is keen to lay the blame for the deaths of many people killed in the name of religion at its door, yet (as implied by his comment above) he is unwilling to lay at the door of atheism the far greater number of deaths for which it is responsible.
How is atheism responsible for deaths? If you do not accept God, you can make no claim that one moral framework is any better than another. Therefore,you are perfectly within your rights to develop philosophies such as those of Stalin, Mao and Hitler, because any moral philosophy is as good as anyother. Their killing was a natural progression from their Godlessness - a far stronger link than that between Christianity and those who distort its message to one of murder.
So let's have no more of this "religion is responsible for more bloodshed and cruelty..." nonsense, please.
Gerv
Come on, guys - compared to the amount of rubbish that's written on this subject by mainstream journalists, this is pretty good. OK, so if you can't find any really major problems with it, you can always look closer to find smaller and smaller ones, but I think they deserve congratulating on producing what seems to be a pretty good summary of the current situation.
When it comes down to it, small things like the fact that Wargames wasn't, in fact, based on what Kevin Mitnick did is not important. The important thing is that they seem to have got most of their facts right.
I would say Slashdot's input has managed to create the most sensible and accurate piece of journalism on crackers and their activities written by a mainstream journalist that I have ever read.
Gerv
...what with all the problems they've had this year - the fiasco over Camino, then the Processor Serial Number thing (the E.U. is considering banning serialed P3's altogether, of course) and serious shortages of its high end processors.
AMD, on the other hand, has the fastest Mhz processor (good for PR, even if the speed increase is only a few percent) and is selling its lower end processors as fast as it can crank them out.
Could it be that we finally have competition in the processor industry? (faint)
There's a good review of Intel's year at The Register.
Gerv
At the UK, at some Universities, we have a thing called the "Milkround", where large companies come and give presentations to persuade you that you want for them. Several Milkround presentations by Nestle have been disrupted by activists protesting about the whole baby milk fiasco.
:-)
Is it possible that, by analogy, in the next few years we'll see geeks staging similar protests at Microsoft presentations to complain about their use of closed standards?
Gerv
How much of an impact would a successful conviction of Microsoft have outside the US?
Obviously if the company was sanctioned, it would affect its operations worldwide, but I'm thinking more in terms of compensation for customers (what in the US would be a class action suit).
Gerv
We know the Findings of Fact are just one stage on the road, but what are the panel's personal opinions on the sanctions that should be applied to Microsoft if they lose this case completely?
Gerv
Have you considered cutting a deal with Hushmail (http://www.hushmail.com)?
They are a web-based e-mail system which uses 1024-bit encryption which, because it uses a Java encryption applet at the client end, is end-to-end secure (even Hushmail can't read your mail). This would perhaps avoid you having to use the "paging" style kluge whereby doctors are sent insecure e-mail to inform them that secure e-mail is waiting for them, and you'd get a lot of the security/maintenance stuff for free.
If you were a big organisation, you could even license the technology and run your own version of it.
Note that Hushmail accounts are protected by a username and passphrase. They seem to think that's sufficient.
Gerv
because the RBL becomes more effective the more systems implement it. If an ISP suddenly finds it has been RBLed, and therefore it's customers can't reach half the e-mail addresses on the planet, it'll shut down its spammers or secure their mailserver pretty sharpish ;-)
Gerv
It says: "credit card or digital signature". Tell me if I'm wrong, but surely there's a problem of who verifies these digital signatures to set up a trust chain between the ABA, the site and you?
Is it not the case that I can just go out and generate a "digital signature" (at least in the PGP sense of using my private key to encrypt something) corresponding to any identity I choose to assume?
Or do I not understand digital signatures?
Gerv
Why does open.gov.uk carry advertising? What's the official policy, and how do you avoid it being seen as an endorsement of particular retailers?
Do you think it's right that a government-run, public service website, paid for by the taxpayer, should carry ads (think BBC)?
Gerv
This option ain't on my Netscape (4.7) ;-)
What I have is: "Accept only cookies that get sent back to the originating server"
This is a very different thing... and doesn't exclude Doubleclick's ad cookies.
Gerv
Seconded (but for Netscape Messenger for Windows; although I have used Outlook and I like that too). BTW, I don't use Messenger for Unix because NS broke it by removing Offline mode.
;-)
Question: Which would you rather have? A mail client that does everything you want easily, but which you can't add more features to, or one which doesn't do everything you want, but you're welcome to implement stuff yourself?
There are few people in the world with the time and the coding skills to choose the second option.
Gerv
It's a Qube with Moo in it! :-)
Never mind... it wasn't very funny anyway.
Gerv
Surely it'll be a Moobe? :-)
Gerv
The Philips Velo, American model, is still IMO the best palmtop PC around, and it was released in 1997. Why? It has a softmodem - 4 hours of e-mail/IE 2.0 level net surfing at 19.2k. I was travelling around the US for a month and it was ideal for keeping in touch with people. AFAIK no other palmtop has this feature, even now (but I haven't been paying too much attention...)
:-)
Stupidly, they made the European version with a mobile phone interface - slower and far more expensive to set up and use. I count myself very lucky I have an American model. But with marketing decisions like that, no wonder it got discontinued as quickly as the article says.
On the downside, of course, it's my fifth one, due to them never getting the hinges designed right - but you can't fault their nice returns department
Gerv
Is this worth buying if you have V2 at all?
Gerv
For many people, maybe even most, the faddishness of Linux just isn't worth it. You've been plugging away at it for a year now, but what do you really have to show for all that time spent, other than feeling like "[your] own particular geek now"?
Exactly how I felt. After a while I realised there was no point in spending unproductive time fighting to get a desktop system which worked as well as my previous one, and being frustrated many times when the promised "configurability" didn't appear (as far as I could see, KDE 1.1 has no key redefinition ability, nor the ability to bind hotkeys to apps - amazing) I just went back to my previous one (Windows).
This is not necessarily a problem with Linux; but what I'd love is the MS GUI look 'n' feel on top of a stable underneath, with all the facilities and key bindings therein. MS may make crap OSs, but (for people used to it) their GUI is good - why should we force people all over the world to relearn their GUI conventions, and put up with worse functionality? Are we that arrogant?
Gerv