Except that evolution is science, not philosophy, and atheism is disbelief, not philosophy. There is nothing in atheism that "commands" anything, and there is nothing in evolution that "commands" anything.
"Evolutionary command theory of ethics" is different from biological (man from monkeys) evolution. GP is refering to the argument that Hitler, for example, thought that what he was doing would make the world a better place. The eugenics movement is strongly linked with the ideas of social Darwinism, which, again, bears only a passing similarity to Darwinian biological evolution. GP's argument isn't really that if Hitler had Christian morals he wouldn't have committed genocide. It's that that argument is stupid, but it doesn't make any more sense applied to religion.
Democrats controlled the Senate at the time, and weren't a meaningless voice in the House either. Also keep in mind that the DMCA is just the enabling legislation for a treaty that the US is a signatory to. The (Democrat controlled at the time) Senate has to "approve" all treaties, but who actually negotiates them? The State Department, whose boss answers to the President. Clinton could have stopped the law, or he could have stopped the US from signing the treaty in the first place.
By the way, as far as Senate Democrats who voted to pass the bill, all of them did. (All Senate Republicans did too; the bill passed unanimously.) The GP's post is that this isn't expansion of government isn't a problem of one political party. As far as the DMCA goes, it isn't.
Theoretical nefarious hackers who discovered the flaw before Travis and Julien would have been trying to hide it. Just because something isn't known doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
Security through obscurity does mean the thought that that as long as no one knows about it, it's not an issue. Being open source doesn't make you immune to this. What would make you immune to this would be formal testing and security audits of every component, like is done on things like the space shuttle. This is generally prohibitively expensive for situations where actual life and limb danger isn't a factor, which is why no commonly used operating system implements this strict security level. Sure, having a lot of eyes looking at the Linux kernel helps (and it eventually worked in this case) but just being open source doesn't mean it's secure.
American bills made today come in denominations of $1, $5, $10, $20, $50, $100. The two dollar bill was a one time promotional thing in the seventies, and most people born since, oh, say 1985 have never seen one.
Also, American coins come in values of 0.01, 0.05, 0.10, and 0.25; 0.50 and 1.00 occur rarely.
The problem with a two cent coin is that you'd never be able to use it for anything, just like the penny today. I'd bet most people would rather only have one useless coin in our monetary system rather than two.
As for the hypothetical 0.20 cent coin, it would take 5 of those to make a dollar, which is the smallest reasonable amount you have to pay anything. It takes four quarters to do the same. What are the advantages of a 0.20 cent coin?
If done properly this will be a good idea.
In this idea's simplest form, it can be a tar file which has to follow certain rules about what goes into it and its location. Think about how on a Unix system,/bin can be relied on to contain only certain executables, so if you need one of those things done, check there. If it's a system binary, check in/sbin. If it's other programs that aren't managed by the package manager, check/opt.
A properly done CMX would have top level directories like/art,/lyrics,/low-quality-music, and/lossless-music or something. Multiple pictures in the/art directory could give a slideshow to display where music players currently just have the album art. (You could even do things like require/art/cover to be the album art if you want.) And music players could go into/lyrics if the user asked for a karaoke mode or something. Then if you only distribute the CMX version on CD (and sell the album as packs of MP3s through iTunes and Amazon and everybody else) the RIAA is giving you an incentive to buy CDs from them again. This could be a win for everyone.
Of course, this is the RIAA we're talking, so it won't be.
Allow me to make it a little more complete for you:
- Kill adulterers.
- Kill homosexuals.
- Kill people who work on the Sabbath.
The list I gave you is called the 10 commandments. I probably should have cited where it came from, but you can look it up yourself in Exodus chapter 34, verses 11 through 27. Where are the quotes about killing adulterers, Sabbath workers, and homosexuals? (Before looking those up, keep in mind the Son of God specifically prevents an adulterer from being killed in John 8, verses 3-11. He heals a man on the Sabbath (thereby working, His enemies call Him out on it) in Luke 14 verses 1-6.)
(I don't know the format of the Five Pillars of Islam in the Koran, nor where to find them, so I can't give good examples from there.)
As to the Hitler and Stalin arguments, you must provide evidence that they did what they did because they were atheists.
Being atheists allowed them to commit their atrocities. Were they good Christians, they wouldn't have violated the 5th commandment and murdered 31 million people in their death camps. To be honest, the worst criticism of atheism you can mount using these two is that they misapplied it. (That's why I said that it's not a very good criticism of atheism in my original post.) Has religion been misapplied? Sure. Modern examples include terrorists and the Westboro "Baptist" Church. But the fact that it can be misapplied isn't a good argument against religion any more than it's a good argument against atheism.
If you look at what religions actually say to do (the "specific will of God"), there's plenty of good stuff that normal religious people do every day.
Right here is a paraphrased list of things that are commonly accepted by religious people (including myself) as things God wants them to do/not do:
1. I am the LORD your God... you shall have no other gods besides me.
2. You shall not take the name of the LORD in vain.
3. Keep holy the Sabbath day. [i.e. Attend religious services (and possibly do a few other religious things) at least one day a week.]
4. Honor your father and mother.
5. You shall not murder.
6. You shall not commit adultery.
7. You shall not steal.
8. You shall not bear false witness [i.e. lie.]
9. You shall not covet your neighbor's wife.
10. You shall not covet thy neighbor's material posessions.
That's one commonly held list. Here's another:
1. You must accept that there is no god except for God, and that Mohammed, a guy who wrote a book about him, is a prophet.
2. You have to say a prayer five times a day, and you have to do so while facing a specific temple.
3. You have to give alms to the poor.
4. There's a certain month during the year during which you're supposed to be especially mindful of God. During this month, most people are expected to fast.
5. Once in your lifetime, if you can afford it, you have to go to a specific temple and pray.
(Note that I paraphrased this list from Wikipedia. If an actual Muslim wants to correct something that I misinterpreted, be my guest.)
There's nothing awful on either of these lists of "things that God wants you to do." The argument that the world would be better off without atheism because atheism allows for atrocities can be made just as easily as the one against religion. (For specific examples, think of two European regimes that killed 32 million people combined (not counting soldiers at war) between 1939 and whenever Stalin died.) It's not a particularly good argument against atheism, but neither is it a good argument against religion.
Look at COBOL. It's essentially a dead language, but look at how much live COBOL code is still out there. There's a hell of a lot more C out there than COBOL. If you wanted to replace all the C code that's out there, it would be many more billions than the total caused by bugs in C. And nobody is going to want to make that investment.
This is most likely heresy, but my HTPC runs the Vista version of Windows Media Center just fine. I've got cable running directly into my capture card. With an "unofficial extension" (3rd party patch) it plays the (admittedly common) videos I watch. (No AVI support out of the box was a stupid idea, but that's fixed with the patch.) There's an official Netflix plugin for watch instantly. A one time wizard sets up the tuner and program guide. The interface works over HDMI, so long as I have external speakers plugged into the machine. (I don't, so I use a combination of stereo input and VGA, but that works on my TV.) I use the remote that comes with my case, which has a joystick for mouse navigation, but WMC translates that into keystrokes.
I built this from scratch for about 700 bucks. (I got Windows at a discount though.) Add 70 bucks for video game controllers for emulators. And it's also a gaming quality PC. The only advice I can give is that you shouldn't skimp on the keyboard and mouse if you want to game on it.
The problem with those figures is that they award bonus points for already being a socialized health care system. That's how the US is highest in responsiveness (and highest in survival rates for those cancers) but 37th and 19th out of 19 in "overall performance." If you're rating health systems based on number of lives saved, the US health care system is best. If you're using some other metric, that's the kind of thing that you need to point out.
Isn't the whole point of the GPL that you can release derivative works based on the original software? Like, maybe, a specific version of the software that works well with a specific hardware configuration. The big netbook makers DO all distribute their custom distros, right? I know Acer didn't try to stop me from putting Ubuntu Netbook Remix on my netbook.
BTW, I've never liked Ubuntu on "real" computers, but Ubuntu Netbook remix works really well on my AAO.
Slashdot Mirror
Hey, look! The guy in charge of DRM for the MPAA posts on slashdot!
Unlike the Daily Show, American Idol is bipartisan. A bipartisan problem, but still bipartisan.
Except that evolution is science, not philosophy, and atheism is disbelief, not philosophy. There is nothing in atheism that "commands" anything, and there is nothing in evolution that "commands" anything.
"Evolutionary command theory of ethics" is different from biological (man from monkeys) evolution. GP is refering to the argument that Hitler, for example, thought that what he was doing would make the world a better place. The eugenics movement is strongly linked with the ideas of social Darwinism, which, again, bears only a passing similarity to Darwinian biological evolution. GP's argument isn't really that if Hitler had Christian morals he wouldn't have committed genocide. It's that that argument is stupid, but it doesn't make any more sense applied to religion.
---
I am scientifically inaccurate.
Good call.
---
Hopefully people realize when I'm being sarcastic.
By the way, as far as Senate Democrats who voted to pass the bill, all of them did. (All Senate Republicans did too; the bill passed unanimously.) The GP's post is that this isn't expansion of government isn't a problem of one political party. As far as the DMCA goes, it isn't.
Yeah, but it will take Slashdot less than eight years to fix that problem.
Security through obscurity does mean the thought that that as long as no one knows about it, it's not an issue. Being open source doesn't make you immune to this. What would make you immune to this would be formal testing and security audits of every component, like is done on things like the space shuttle. This is generally prohibitively expensive for situations where actual life and limb danger isn't a factor, which is why no commonly used operating system implements this strict security level. Sure, having a lot of eyes looking at the Linux kernel helps (and it eventually worked in this case) but just being open source doesn't mean it's secure.
Aren't they Eastasia?
If you don't have an encyclopedic knowledge of these rules(even though many are selectively enforced) you really have no control over the article.
Maybe somebody should start a website listing those rules. And then make it so it's collaborative, so that anyone can edit it.
Also, American coins come in values of 0.01, 0.05, 0.10, and 0.25; 0.50 and 1.00 occur rarely.
The problem with a two cent coin is that you'd never be able to use it for anything, just like the penny today. I'd bet most people would rather only have one useless coin in our monetary system rather than two.
As for the hypothetical 0.20 cent coin, it would take 5 of those to make a dollar, which is the smallest reasonable amount you have to pay anything. It takes four quarters to do the same. What are the advantages of a 0.20 cent coin?
Good thing that this is the Social Security Administration, and not a private company.
This is the same group that changed the definition of planet to exclude Pluto. A bunch of them seem unhappy with how they went about it so will they fix it?
Leave the doom and gloom predictions for the experts (bums on the sidewalk) and deal with issues that matter, please.
If done properly this will be a good idea. /bin can be relied on to contain only certain executables, so if you need one of those things done, check there. If it's a system binary, check in /sbin. If it's other programs that aren't managed by the package manager, check /opt.
/art, /lyrics, /low-quality-music, and /lossless-music or something. Multiple pictures in the /art directory could give a slideshow to display where music players currently just have the album art. (You could even do things like require /art/cover to be the album art if you want.) And music players could go into /lyrics if the user asked for a karaoke mode or something. Then if you only distribute the CMX version on CD (and sell the album as packs of MP3s through iTunes and Amazon and everybody else) the RIAA is giving you an incentive to buy CDs from them again. This could be a win for everyone.
In this idea's simplest form, it can be a tar file which has to follow certain rules about what goes into it and its location. Think about how on a Unix system,
A properly done CMX would have top level directories like
Of course, this is the RIAA we're talking, so it won't be.
Allow me to make it a little more complete for you:
- Kill adulterers. - Kill homosexuals. - Kill people who work on the Sabbath.
The list I gave you is called the 10 commandments. I probably should have cited where it came from, but you can look it up yourself in Exodus chapter 34, verses 11 through 27. Where are the quotes about killing adulterers, Sabbath workers, and homosexuals? (Before looking those up, keep in mind the Son of God specifically prevents an adulterer from being killed in John 8, verses 3-11. He heals a man on the Sabbath (thereby working, His enemies call Him out on it) in Luke 14 verses 1-6.)
(I don't know the format of the Five Pillars of Islam in the Koran, nor where to find them, so I can't give good examples from there.)
As to the Hitler and Stalin arguments, you must provide evidence that they did what they did because they were atheists.
Being atheists allowed them to commit their atrocities. Were they good Christians, they wouldn't have violated the 5th commandment and murdered 31 million people in their death camps. To be honest, the worst criticism of atheism you can mount using these two is that they misapplied it. (That's why I said that it's not a very good criticism of atheism in my original post.) Has religion been misapplied? Sure. Modern examples include terrorists and the Westboro "Baptist" Church. But the fact that it can be misapplied isn't a good argument against religion any more than it's a good argument against atheism.
If you look at what religions actually say to do (the "specific will of God"), there's plenty of good stuff that normal religious people do every day.
Right here is a paraphrased list of things that are commonly accepted by religious people (including myself) as things God wants them to do/not do:
1. I am the LORD your God... you shall have no other gods besides me. 2. You shall not take the name of the LORD in vain.
3. Keep holy the Sabbath day. [i.e. Attend religious services (and possibly do a few other religious things) at least one day a week.]
4. Honor your father and mother.
5. You shall not murder.
6. You shall not commit adultery.
7. You shall not steal.
8. You shall not bear false witness [i.e. lie.]
9. You shall not covet your neighbor's wife.
10. You shall not covet thy neighbor's material posessions.
That's one commonly held list. Here's another:
1. You must accept that there is no god except for God, and that Mohammed, a guy who wrote a book about him, is a prophet.
2. You have to say a prayer five times a day, and you have to do so while facing a specific temple.
3. You have to give alms to the poor.
4. There's a certain month during the year during which you're supposed to be especially mindful of God. During this month, most people are expected to fast.
5. Once in your lifetime, if you can afford it, you have to go to a specific temple and pray.
(Note that I paraphrased this list from Wikipedia. If an actual Muslim wants to correct something that I misinterpreted, be my guest.)
There's nothing awful on either of these lists of "things that God wants you to do." The argument that the world would be better off without atheism because atheism allows for atrocities can be made just as easily as the one against religion. (For specific examples, think of two European regimes that killed 32 million people combined (not counting soldiers at war) between 1939 and whenever Stalin died.) It's not a particularly good argument against atheism, but neither is it a good argument against religion.
Look at COBOL. It's essentially a dead language, but look at how much live COBOL code is still out there. There's a hell of a lot more C out there than COBOL. If you wanted to replace all the C code that's out there, it would be many more billions than the total caused by bugs in C. And nobody is going to want to make that investment.
This is most likely heresy, but my HTPC runs the Vista version of Windows Media Center just fine. I've got cable running directly into my capture card. With an "unofficial extension" (3rd party patch) it plays the (admittedly common) videos I watch. (No AVI support out of the box was a stupid idea, but that's fixed with the patch.) There's an official Netflix plugin for watch instantly. A one time wizard sets up the tuner and program guide. The interface works over HDMI, so long as I have external speakers plugged into the machine. (I don't, so I use a combination of stereo input and VGA, but that works on my TV.) I use the remote that comes with my case, which has a joystick for mouse navigation, but WMC translates that into keystrokes. I built this from scratch for about 700 bucks. (I got Windows at a discount though.) Add 70 bucks for video game controllers for emulators. And it's also a gaming quality PC. The only advice I can give is that you shouldn't skimp on the keyboard and mouse if you want to game on it.
The problem with those figures is that they award bonus points for already being a socialized health care system. That's how the US is highest in responsiveness (and highest in survival rates for those cancers) but 37th and 19th out of 19 in "overall performance." If you're rating health systems based on number of lives saved, the US health care system is best. If you're using some other metric, that's the kind of thing that you need to point out.
Maybe it's a hard hack because diamonds are the hardest material on earth. Just a thought.
Isn't the whole point of the GPL that you can release derivative works based on the original software? Like, maybe, a specific version of the software that works well with a specific hardware configuration. The big netbook makers DO all distribute their custom distros, right? I know Acer didn't try to stop me from putting Ubuntu Netbook Remix on my netbook. BTW, I've never liked Ubuntu on "real" computers, but Ubuntu Netbook remix works really well on my AAO.