I am curious as to why the claims of a known liar should be considered.
I have no feelings for this Hovind fellow one way or another, but whoever put together that Geocities page doesn't understand what a "lie" is. Stating an opinion, whether or not it's at odds with common thought, is not a lie. Not only that, but the author makes quite a few unsourced statements about Hovind on subjects that it's doubtful that he knows about, and personal attacks litter the entire piece. Not exactly something that inspires confidence.
The problem is common among point-by-point rebuttals -- the author was so desperate to find "lies" that he ended up misrepresenting the argument that he is trying to attack. There are some good points buried in there, but they're in the middle of so much crap that nobody except people that have already made up their minds on the subject are going to actually read through to find them.
From what I read, there's no information there that isn't covered in more depth and accuracy elsewhere. It would probably make more sense to point to a more professional page, if you feel the need to point people to a source on the arguments against creationism.
How long will we see these ignorant arguments about this subject?
Instead of yelling TROLL TROLL TROLL whenever you see a comment you don't like, how about you back up your opinion? Nigeria, for instance, has a per-capita income of somewhere in the range of $300-$400 per year -- a OLPC is going to be worth a third to a half of that. The other countries on the list are in better shape, but not by all that much.
Do you seriously think that governments can distribute millions of these things for free, and that we won't see cases of people trading them for money that they need? Get real. Even if they were being distributed in the US, we would see people selling them to get money for drugs, lots of theft, systematic fraud, and everything else that goes along with government handout programs. In poor countries where the laptop will be worth much more, proportionally, we will see even more of this behavior.
Those who believe that every single one of these laptops will be used for education and appreciated to their full value are living in a fantasy world.
Freedom of religion should not be extended to religions that are clearly made up.
Yes, it should. Who gets to decide what is a real religion and what isn't? What happens when a large enough group declares that Islam is made up? Or how about Mormonism?
It's a subversive organization that needs to be monitored by the state because it has been known to use force and criminal behavior to advance its agenda
The government should investigate and put a stop to criminal behavior whether or not the people are members of a "legitimate religion" or not.
Despite the prevailing slashdot point of view that rights should only apply to "our kind of people," they're wrong. People should be free to follow any set of religious beliefs and practices that do not violate the law.
While I agree with regularly logging in to and confirming the state of email accounts, I can't help but notice a slight flaw.
That's not a flaw; that's a feature. Free e-mail services generally make their money either from advertisements, or by using it to convince customers to pay for more or better service. (It sounds like Lycos does both.) A free account user that never logs in is using up resources, but is not bringing in any money at all. Deleting the files makes good sense.
What browser are you using? Because when I type 'yahoo' into my address bar in firefox, it goes and gets me www.yahoo.com without going through another page.
The interesting thing is what firefox does when you type 'yahoo' into the address bar. It (surprise, surprise) does a google search for 'yahoo' and takes you to the first result. Watch the status bar some time when you're typing a word into the address box sometime.
In fact, I wonder if that's one of the primary factors at work here. If there are lots of people doing that, then google will be getting huge numbers of hits for things like yahoo, even if people aren't going to the Google web page to search for it.
This came from, as far as I can tell, a Slashdot story around a month ago in which the submitter claimed that all audio and video would be degraded by Vista's DRM (without evidence). Since then, it's become accepted as gospel truth here.
Ten primary sources. Ten holes in a school's journal subscriptions. Any questions?
What school do you go to, and what is this topic, where a topic with lots of journal articles and a good Wikipedia article is somehow completely missing from the library? If that's really happening with any frequency, then the school has more pressing problems than students citing Wikipedia when they write papers.
What problem-solving skills would aardvarkjoe use?
In this case, the solution is the one that everyone seems to ignore -- Communicate. Talk to the librarians and see if there's anything they can do; they may well be able to help you track down a copy. Pick up the phone and call people you know elsewhere who might have access to it. Talk to the professor for the class this is for -- he may know where to get a copy, or maybe even suggest alternate sources to use.
Journal articles are meant to be read, after all. It's not like they're completely unavailable to anyone who isn't a member of some elite club.
But if a student wants to read and cite a primary source that the institution's library doesn't have an annual subscription to, what should the student do?
Um... find another primary source? Use his problem-solving skills to obtain a copy of the source in question? "Cite Wikipedia instead" isn't a very good solution.
What's really amusing is the poster (and the headline) calling them "Germany's RIAA" -- or, written out, "Germany's Recording Industry Association of America." If you want to call them similar, that's one thing, but calling them Germany's RIAA just sounds stupid.
When I first saw the headline, I guessed that it would be about special sections in video game stores geared towards games that aren't either cartoon-spinoff games for 8-year-olds, or same-shooter-game-but-with-more-entrails games that appeal to teenagers. I'd love to have a store where they seperate the interesting games from the kiddie or flashy ones.
Instead, I find that it's really about seperating all of the blood and guts games out. Lame.
Yeah, sure. It's a study. That's nice. What does it say?
That's easy to figure out. Slashdot wouldn't have referred to it as "real facts" unless it said that free software was much better than proprietary software from an economic standpoint.
I'm not sure if you're jesting or not, but what about Mormons and Muslims?... And both religions allow for multiple wives in a marriage.
It should be pointed out that members of the mainstream Mormon church (the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) do not currently practice polygamy in any way, and it's rather doubtful that they would start again even if sanctioned by government and society.
Yes, but that's due to a bad law (the anticircumvention part of the DMCA.) The GPLv3 will do nothing about that one way or the other. The GPLv3 is concerned with the technical measures of preventing copying, not the legal ones.
Not having anything smaller than an inch when everything is miniaturized in todays world is not something fit for "normal use".
Guess what? Most "normal people" don't care about the size of their computer chips, and if you're designing them, you can afford to learn the metric system.
And then how many feet are in a mile? I have no idea.. How many cups in a quart? No idea either...
The ease of unit conversion is generally given as the primary reason for moving to metric system. The primary reason why nobody cares is because people don't do unit conversions that often. In fact, the only unit conversion I can remember doing in the last couple weeks was seconds to hours, and of course metric doesn't help there anyway. (Keep in mind that I'm actually trained as a scientist. If I don't have reason to do unit conversions, guess how often the average American does?) Converting yards to miles is simply something that very few people will bother doing.
Having children learn some science in school instead of wasting years trying to teach them just how to make sense of the imperial system then waste some more time teaching the metric system then teaching how to convert between the two is another positive thing.
From what I remember of school, our instruction about metric involved a day to introduce the units and the various prefixes, and then another day about conversions. Then, in math and science classes, we used metric. It didn't take years, even for the slow students. If you're capable of taking a math-heavy science course, you're also capable of learning the metric system... and if not, you don't really care.
It might be better if we were using the metric system today, but there's simply no particularly compelling reason to expend the effort and money. Unless it becomes worthwhile for the average person to use metric, that's not going to change.
Somehow, you made five points and yet didn't address the point of the original poster about why, as a scientist, he needs the government to force everyone to use metric before he'll do so himself.
Vista will degrade audio that is "unsigned", meaning, created or put in place by software that hasn't got some kind of deal going with Microsoft.
It's kind of interesting how this assertion, which as far as I can tell is based on an unsourced Slashdot journal rumor from only a couple weeks ago, is now quoted as if it's gospel truth. (Here; notice that the link in that entry is to another slashdot story that says nothing of this sort, but apparently kdawson didn't bother to read it first.)
They wanted to be involved a whole lot more than just skimming some money off the top.
This is presumably true, but if Apple wanted to avoid that, they should have come up with a different name. As they were talking with Cisco as early as 2001 about using the iPhone name, it's not like they didn't have time to figure out their own name for their phone.
I can understand why Apple doesn't want their phone associated with the Linksys phone, so quite frankly I don't see how this can come as a surprise to Cisco.
If they don't want them associated with each other, then why would they have chosen to give it the same name? This seems like a really stupid move on Apple's part. Even if they eventually get the rights to call theirs the iPhone, Cisco can call their products the same thing to ride on Apple's success anyway.
Although amusing, HARM is not an acronym for "Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording." Looks like Zonk didn't even read the summary again, much less the article...
...the Times notes that such dual-format devices are bound to cost more than existing players...
Right now, yes, but only until they become common -- assuming that there's no clear winner to the format war soon. Quick, what can you get cheaper -- a DVD drive that also reads CDs, or one that reads both?
Slashdot Mirror
I have no feelings for this Hovind fellow one way or another, but whoever put together that Geocities page doesn't understand what a "lie" is. Stating an opinion, whether or not it's at odds with common thought, is not a lie. Not only that, but the author makes quite a few unsourced statements about Hovind on subjects that it's doubtful that he knows about, and personal attacks litter the entire piece. Not exactly something that inspires confidence.
The problem is common among point-by-point rebuttals -- the author was so desperate to find "lies" that he ended up misrepresenting the argument that he is trying to attack. There are some good points buried in there, but they're in the middle of so much crap that nobody except people that have already made up their minds on the subject are going to actually read through to find them.
From what I read, there's no information there that isn't covered in more depth and accuracy elsewhere. It would probably make more sense to point to a more professional page, if you feel the need to point people to a source on the arguments against creationism.
Instead of yelling TROLL TROLL TROLL whenever you see a comment you don't like, how about you back up your opinion? Nigeria, for instance, has a per-capita income of somewhere in the range of $300-$400 per year -- a OLPC is going to be worth a third to a half of that. The other countries on the list are in better shape, but not by all that much.
Do you seriously think that governments can distribute millions of these things for free, and that we won't see cases of people trading them for money that they need? Get real. Even if they were being distributed in the US, we would see people selling them to get money for drugs, lots of theft, systematic fraud, and everything else that goes along with government handout programs. In poor countries where the laptop will be worth much more, proportionally, we will see even more of this behavior.
Those who believe that every single one of these laptops will be used for education and appreciated to their full value are living in a fantasy world.
Yes, it should. Who gets to decide what is a real religion and what isn't? What happens when a large enough group declares that Islam is made up? Or how about Mormonism?
The government should investigate and put a stop to criminal behavior whether or not the people are members of a "legitimate religion" or not.
Despite the prevailing slashdot point of view that rights should only apply to "our kind of people," they're wrong. People should be free to follow any set of religious beliefs and practices that do not violate the law.
The interesting thing is what firefox does when you type 'yahoo' into the address bar. It (surprise, surprise) does a google search for 'yahoo' and takes you to the first result. Watch the status bar some time when you're typing a word into the address box sometime.
In fact, I wonder if that's one of the primary factors at work here. If there are lots of people doing that, then google will be getting huge numbers of hits for things like yahoo, even if people aren't going to the Google web page to search for it.
What school do you go to, and what is this topic, where a topic with lots of journal articles and a good Wikipedia article is somehow completely missing from the library? If that's really happening with any frequency, then the school has more pressing problems than students citing Wikipedia when they write papers.
In this case, the solution is the one that everyone seems to ignore -- Communicate. Talk to the librarians and see if there's anything they can do; they may well be able to help you track down a copy. Pick up the phone and call people you know elsewhere who might have access to it. Talk to the professor for the class this is for -- he may know where to get a copy, or maybe even suggest alternate sources to use.
Journal articles are meant to be read, after all. It's not like they're completely unavailable to anyone who isn't a member of some elite club.
What's really amusing is the poster (and the headline) calling them "Germany's RIAA" -- or, written out, "Germany's Recording Industry Association of America." If you want to call them similar, that's one thing, but calling them Germany's RIAA just sounds stupid.
It uses very sophisticated materials that can be read using a device that emits electromagnetic radiation in the 400-700nm range.
When I first saw the headline, I guessed that it would be about special sections in video game stores geared towards games that aren't either cartoon-spinoff games for 8-year-olds, or same-shooter-game-but-with-more-entrails games that appeal to teenagers. I'd love to have a store where they seperate the interesting games from the kiddie or flashy ones.
Instead, I find that it's really about seperating all of the blood and guts games out. Lame.
Yes, but that's due to a bad law (the anticircumvention part of the DMCA.) The GPLv3 will do nothing about that one way or the other. The GPLv3 is concerned with the technical measures of preventing copying, not the legal ones.
It might be better if we were using the metric system today, but there's simply no particularly compelling reason to expend the effort and money. Unless it becomes worthwhile for the average person to use metric, that's not going to change.
Somehow, you made five points and yet didn't address the point of the original poster about why, as a scientist, he needs the government to force everyone to use metric before he'll do so himself.
Although amusing, HARM is not an acronym for "Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording." Looks like Zonk didn't even read the summary again, much less the article...
What does the RIAA have to do with Blu-Ray or HD-DVD?