Better yet, how about a low-quality video stream of the movie you are watching at a theater, so when you have to go to the bathroom during that 3 hour feature you don't miss anything?
I'd expect a contrail shadow to exibit some kind of perspective effect, changing width with distance. The lower end down by the horizon just doesnt' look like something that could be a shadow on the clouds.
I think its a simple hoax thats received far too much attention.
w.shaunmanning.com/) Yep, hard drive-based recorders pretty much put the nail in the coffin.
Sort of. The thing is, when I'm starting to run out of space I can't drop 5 bucks at walmart and get another 25 hours of capacity. DVR's are nice, but it sucks to have an episode of something recorded when SciFi decided to a run two week Farscape marathon and it ends up wiping out everthing else on the DVR.
It is still my opinion that cable providers should have a wall of these things somewhere recording every show on every channel, which they then provide to me using video-on-demand (Cox in my area already has this for movies, Cinemax on demand, etc). Now I don't need a big harddrive and multiple tuners, and I can channel surf and still rewind to the start of whatever I find to watch.
Last time I checked around here, the places that were all nude weren't allowed to serve alcohol.
Yes, best idea ever. Now I get to bring my own, reasonably priced alcohol (pre-chilled of course, since a glass of ice costs $2). Hell, one night I was there two guys had brough with them an iced keg in a trashcan. For $50 worth of beer they had people buying them lap dances all night.
"Buried inside the massive $388 billion spending bill Congress approved last weekend is a program that creates a federal copyright enforcement czar. "
Yeah, better not let this one see too much of the light of day. Just bury it in the spending bill that has to pass.
This is why I think we need more computer technology in our government, so we can handle issues at a more granular level. Too much effort is spent in political manipulation to get unpopular stuff attached to bills that are sure to pass.
I don't see that it matters much. If the goal is to prevent the open source community from using technology X, why would microsoft care who owns the patent? As long as it is licensed to them, and well defended (via microsoft money, routed in various and sundry ways), they get the benefit anyway.
Sell them exclusinve use, but don't enforce for whatever you belive in.
The point was that someone working FOR Microsoft would hold the patent, and would license it only to Microsoft. Of course Microsoft would have them well paid and over some kind of barrel to prevent them licensing the patent to anyone else.
The point is that Microsoft does not need to own a patent to control it. As long as they control whomever holds the patent, and if they get to choose the patent holder, choosing a controllable entity would be trivial.
I suppose, but that brings up all kinds of complications. There would have to be some kind of rule for determining what the license fees are, else the patent holder could choose to license the technology to microsoft for one dollar, and to anyone else for a trillion dollars. But then you are setting the govenrnment up to control who sells what to whom for what price, which is just dumb.
Science is supposed to be the search for the truth
Not really. Science is the process of forming predictive theories from empirical evidence. Truth is a slippery thing, scientific knowledge is generally regarded to be a simply be an approximation of the 'truth'.
when so-called scientists put forward theories that are unsupportable by evidence and insist that the theories are true anyway, that is hardly science
Well, not all theories are strongly supported, and what one person calls strong support, someone else may call weak support. Science is much like religion in that there is no one single accepted version of anything, and its certainly possible that those who hold a particular view may be irrationally attached to it (few people like to have something into which they've invested much time show to be wrong (although there are many researchers who know that mistakes will be made, and don't form those kinds of attachments to a theory).
Every dating method we have has been shown to be questionable. But do they examine the questions and see if a better method can be found, or do they attack those who dare to point out the the methods are flawed?
All knowledge is questionable. It is more productive to attempt to advance on a foundation that is known to be incomplete than to attempt the impossible task of building a perfect foundation.
The dating methods used, when used properly, are reliable within their accepted margins of error. If you have strong evidence that shows that a particular dating technique is invalid, I'd suggest you publish it. I suspect that you, like most people, know very little about how hard many other people have worked to make sure that the dating techniques used are as accurate as possible.
Faith is God in never against science.
True enough. The principles of rationality that many who practice scientific methods hold may lead them away from beliefs of faith, but the two are certainly not incompatible. Many religious scientists find creation all the more humbling the more they learn about its details.
But false science (Evolution) is against God
You'll be hard pressed to demonstrate that the theory of evolution is false science. Many people have done much sound research that supports the theory, that makes it good science. That doesn't make it right, it just means it isn't false science. False science is what the hucksters like Joseph Newman push. A theory can be wrong even if sound scientific methods went into its generation.
False science done with the intention of defrauding others may certainly be against God's wishes, but I don't see how good science that leads one to the wrong conclusion could be. Unless of course it is now a sin to be mistaken.
Yes, some supporters of evolution have falsified data and lied, actions that are decitful and wrong. That does not invalidate the entire theory, which has many interlocking strong lines of evidence.
You can stop right there and have a true statement. God is pretty much unprovable by definition. Most athiest and thiest I know agree on this point.
Science cannot remove a possible theory [...]
Science is not an actor, it doesn't do anything and has no agenda.
Those who understand scientific practices know this, and wouldn't try. Science is the process of finding explainations that fit what has been observed, and that have predictive power. Thats it, there isn't anything more than that.
I have not seen any evidence that does not fit in the 6000 year old earth model.
Nor will you, because such evidence is impossible. You will also not see any evidence that the world is not 5 minutes old. However, these theories provide no predictive powers, and so are uninteresting to people who want to learn more about how the world works through observation, prediciton and empirical results(we usually call these people 'scientists').
Religious theories are uninteresting to these people because the are generally not predictive, and not replicable.
[...]I could probably show you a number of assumptions that have no basis in observation that would cast sufficient doubt on the "facts" of the evidence.
All knowledge rests on some set of assumptions. This is well known and is not in dispute. Most scientists are well aware of the fact that our theories are just approximations of the 'Truth' of how things actually work. But most also know that this knowledge is the best we have, and that there is no other known way to actually find the 'Truth'.
The practice of scientific methods of gaining knowledge and religious beliefs are not, and never have been, at odds. From your comments, it seems that you know this.
Personally, I choose to not believe in those things for which I cannot have, at least in principle, empirical evidence. There are too many things that are possible, but for which I cannot have evidence, and many of them conflict. Thats not to say I deny their existence, I don't claim that gods cannot exist, just that I have no evidence that they do, so until such time that I can have a rational test for their existance, that fits within my current body of knowledge, I will assume that they do not.
The intelligent design argument is beautiful. For the thiest, everything was designed by his god (or by man, depending on the thiest), so there are no undesigned things against which to compair. Its an argument he cannot lose.
Re:Hack that computer and kill someone
on
Internet Hunting
·
· Score: 1
You obviously have no concept of gun saftey. No one with any sense would wander downrange of the gun without first at least removing the magazine and clearing the chamber.
Well, it probably wouldn't be any worse that taking someone who is sight-impared hunting. There will be an attendent with a trigger override present at all times making sure the range is clear, and I'd imagine they have someone standing by to hunt down anything that is wounded and not killed.
Re:And when the shot does not kill, but only maim?
on
Internet Hunting
·
· Score: 1
What happens when a wounded animal runs off? With normal hunters, you would continue to hunt it to put it out of its pain.
Don't be silly. They sell the oppertunity to hunt the wounded animals to guys on crutches.
If exotic big game hunting is of interest to you, contact us at...
I'm hoping it's not real animals, but I think I'm probably wrong.
Yup, you are wrong. Exotic game is a thriving business in Texas. Large ranches raise private exotic stock specificly for hunting. They are generally well cared-for and live in open range conditions. Hunters pay to hunt the exotic species.
I have fewer ethical concerns with this than with commercial livestock practices. The animals live well and die quickly in their natural (if non-native) environment.
My brother is a vegan and animal rights activist, and has a philosophy degree, so needless to say I've heard most of the arguments for and against hunting and animals for food. I'd have to say taking up a battle against recreational hunting is like fighting to save the rainforests by picking up litter by your doorstep. At least hunters are aware of what they are doing. Sometimes I think that Soccer Mom thinks hamburger grows on trees.
If you want to have an impact, don't worry about the hunters, become a researcher and figure out how to grow healthy, organic meat in a factory without the rest of an animal attached to it. No brain, no suffering, no ethical issues.
Re:This is interesting...
on
Internet Hunting
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I don't understand why people are against this. They guy is/will_be running a business on his own land, with his own equipment, killing commonly hunted species (iirc the non-native Axis deer is a very common game animal there, and they tend to become a problem if not hunted (most of the large preditors, mountain lions or whatever, have already been killed off)).
I personally don't like to hunt, but I don't see why we should prohibit others from doing it, even in novel ways. As long as the hunters aren't causing serious shifts in the natural ecological landscape, destroying biodiversity of natural species, I dont' really have a problem with it.
Slashdot Mirror
Why is it that simple-minded people always want to appeal to "faith" instead of taking the time to learn how things really work?
I was going to look into that once, but I decided it was easier to just believe that they are all simple-minded.
The price would be tolerable if it included an ethernet port and TCP stack.
The CPU is an FBGA package which is connected to some memory and other support components, all packaged on a 32 pin DIP.
Better yet, how about a low-quality video stream of the movie you are watching at a theater, so when you have to go to the bathroom during that 3 hour feature you don't miss anything?
Na, thats just a regular old cheese sandwich.
I'd expect a contrail shadow to exibit some kind of perspective effect, changing width with distance. The lower end down by the horizon just doesnt' look like something that could be a shadow on the clouds.
I think its a simple hoax thats received far too much attention.
Not only is it not the first time, there are even homebrew, opensource versions.
:)
Try the OpenEEG Project. You can even partial or complete hardware from Olimex, a circuit board manufacturer.
I'm waiting for someone to write a Winamp or WMP plugin that takes input from an OpenEEG feed
Wow, 1/3rd? Thats pretty good, I run about 5-10% keepers. But then I take a lot of 'just in case' pictures.
I think Geodesic domes are extremely ugly.
You're not alone, I think they are quite unattractive. They look to me like something from the 50's trying to look modern.
My favorite design so far is Formworks NestEgg dome designs. Domes and half-pipes, with traditional or non-traditional facades if you so desire.
I thought the 1800 included the tubing?
I think you have to supply the dirt yourself though. I sure rather do that then have them FedEx it.
w.shaunmanning.com/)
Yep, hard drive-based recorders pretty much put the nail in the coffin.
Sort of. The thing is, when I'm starting to run out of space I can't drop 5 bucks at walmart and get another 25 hours of capacity. DVR's are nice, but it sucks to have an episode of something recorded when SciFi decided to a run two week Farscape marathon and it ends up wiping out everthing else on the DVR.
It is still my opinion that cable providers should have a wall of these things somewhere recording every show on every channel, which they then provide to me using video-on-demand (Cox in my area already has this for movies, Cinemax on demand, etc). Now I don't need a big harddrive and multiple tuners, and I can channel surf and still rewind to the start of whatever I find to watch.
Last time I checked around here, the places that were all nude weren't allowed to serve alcohol.
Yes, best idea ever. Now I get to bring my own, reasonably priced alcohol (pre-chilled of course, since a glass of ice costs $2). Hell, one night I was there two guys had brough with them an iced keg in a trashcan. For $50 worth of beer they had people buying them lap dances all night.
"Buried inside the massive $388 billion spending bill Congress approved last weekend is a program that creates a federal copyright enforcement czar. "
Yeah, better not let this one see too much of the light of day. Just bury it in the spending bill that has to pass.
This is why I think we need more computer technology in our government, so we can handle issues at a more granular level. Too much effort is spent in political manipulation to get unpopular stuff attached to bills that are sure to pass.
I vote for Wayne Pygram.
I don't see that it matters much. If the goal is to prevent the open source community from using technology X, why would microsoft care who owns the patent? As long as it is licensed to them, and well defended (via microsoft money, routed in various and sundry ways), they get the benefit anyway.
Sell them exclusinve use, but don't enforce for whatever you belive in.
The point was that someone working FOR Microsoft would hold the patent, and would license it only to Microsoft. Of course Microsoft would have them well paid and over some kind of barrel to prevent them licensing the patent to anyone else.
The point is that Microsoft does not need to own a patent to control it. As long as they control whomever holds the patent, and if they get to choose the patent holder, choosing a controllable entity would be trivial.
You could forbid exclusive licensing
I suppose, but that brings up all kinds of complications. There would have to be some kind of rule for determining what the license fees are, else the patent holder could choose to license the technology to microsoft for one dollar, and to anyone else for a trillion dollars. But then you are setting the govenrnment up to control who sells what to whom for what price, which is just dumb.
Would it matter? Microsoft could pay any random employee to own the patent and license it to them on an exclusive basis.
Laws could be made to to try to avoid that, but realisticly it doesn't seem like it could be prevented.
Science is supposed to be the search for the truth
Not really. Science is the process of forming predictive theories from empirical evidence. Truth is a slippery thing, scientific knowledge is generally regarded to be a simply be an approximation of the 'truth'.
when so-called scientists put forward theories that are unsupportable by evidence and insist that the theories are true anyway, that is hardly science
Well, not all theories are strongly supported, and what one person calls strong support, someone else may call weak support. Science is much like religion in that there is no one single accepted version of anything, and its certainly possible that those who hold a particular view may be irrationally attached to it (few people like to have something into which they've invested much time show to be wrong (although there are many researchers who know that mistakes will be made, and don't form those kinds of attachments to a theory).
Every dating method we have has been shown to be questionable. But do they examine the questions and see if a better method can be found, or do they attack those who dare to point out the the methods are flawed?
All knowledge is questionable. It is more productive to attempt to advance on a foundation that is known to be incomplete than to attempt the impossible task of building a perfect foundation.
The dating methods used, when used properly, are reliable within their accepted margins of error. If you have strong evidence that shows that a particular dating technique is invalid, I'd suggest you publish it. I suspect that you, like most people, know very little about how hard many other people have worked to make sure that the dating techniques used are as accurate as possible.
Faith is God in never against science.
True enough. The principles of rationality that many who practice scientific methods hold may lead them away from beliefs of faith, but the two are certainly not incompatible. Many religious scientists find creation all the more humbling the more they learn about its details.
But false science (Evolution) is against God
You'll be hard pressed to demonstrate that the theory of evolution is false science. Many people have done much sound research that supports the theory, that makes it good science. That doesn't make it right, it just means it isn't false science. False science is what the hucksters like Joseph Newman push. A theory can be wrong even if sound scientific methods went into its generation.
False science done with the intention of defrauding others may certainly be against God's wishes, but I don't see how good science that leads one to the wrong conclusion could be. Unless of course it is now a sin to be mistaken.
Yes, some supporters of evolution have falsified data and lied, actions that are decitful and wrong. That does not invalidate the entire theory, which has many interlocking strong lines of evidence.
The existance of god cannot be argued
You can stop right there and have a true statement. God is pretty much unprovable by definition. Most athiest and thiest I know agree on this point.
Science cannot remove a possible theory [...]
Science is not an actor, it doesn't do anything and has no agenda.
Those who understand scientific practices know this, and wouldn't try. Science is the process of finding explainations that fit what has been observed, and that have predictive power. Thats it, there isn't anything more than that.
I have not seen any evidence that does not fit in the 6000 year old earth model.
Nor will you, because such evidence is impossible. You will also not see any evidence that the world is not 5 minutes old. However, these theories provide no predictive powers, and so are uninteresting to people who want to learn more about how the world works through observation, prediciton and empirical results(we usually call these people 'scientists').
Religious theories are uninteresting to these people because the are generally not predictive, and not replicable.
[...]I could probably show you a number of assumptions that have no basis in observation that would cast sufficient doubt on the "facts" of the evidence.
All knowledge rests on some set of assumptions. This is well known and is not in dispute. Most scientists are well aware of the fact that our theories are just approximations of the 'Truth' of how things actually work. But most also know that this knowledge is the best we have, and that there is no other known way to actually find the 'Truth'.
The practice of scientific methods of gaining knowledge and religious beliefs are not, and never have been, at odds. From your comments, it seems that you know this.
Personally, I choose to not believe in those things for which I cannot have, at least in principle, empirical evidence. There are too many things that are possible, but for which I cannot have evidence, and many of them conflict. Thats not to say I deny their existence, I don't claim that gods cannot exist, just that I have no evidence that they do, so until such time that I can have a rational test for their existance, that fits within my current body of knowledge, I will assume that they do not.
The intelligent design argument is beautiful. For the thiest, everything was designed by his god (or by man, depending on the thiest), so there are no undesigned things against which to compair. Its an argument he cannot lose.
You obviously have no concept of gun saftey. No one with any sense would wander downrange of the gun without first at least removing the magazine and clearing the chamber.
Well, it probably wouldn't be any worse that taking someone who is sight-impared hunting. There will be an attendent with a trigger override present at all times making sure the range is clear, and I'd imagine they have someone standing by to hunt down anything that is wounded and not killed.
What happens when a wounded animal runs off? With normal hunters, you would continue to hunt it to put it out of its pain.
Don't be silly. They sell the oppertunity to hunt the wounded animals to guys on crutches.
If exotic big game hunting is of interest to you, contact us at...
I'm hoping it's not real animals, but I think I'm probably wrong.
Yup, you are wrong. Exotic game is a thriving business in Texas. Large ranches raise private exotic stock specificly for hunting. They are generally well cared-for and live in open range conditions. Hunters pay to hunt the exotic species.
I have fewer ethical concerns with this than with commercial livestock practices. The animals live well and die quickly in their natural (if non-native) environment.
My brother is a vegan and animal rights activist, and has a philosophy degree, so needless to say I've heard most of the arguments for and against hunting and animals for food. I'd have to say taking up a battle against recreational hunting is like fighting to save the rainforests by picking up litter by your doorstep. At least hunters are aware of what they are doing. Sometimes I think that Soccer Mom thinks hamburger grows on trees.
If you want to have an impact, don't worry about the hunters, become a researcher and figure out how to grow healthy, organic meat in a factory without the rest of an animal attached to it. No brain, no suffering, no ethical issues.
I don't understand why people are against this. They guy is/will_be running a business on his own land, with his own equipment, killing commonly hunted species (iirc the non-native Axis deer is a very common game animal there, and they tend to become a problem if not hunted (most of the large preditors, mountain lions or whatever, have already been killed off)).
I personally don't like to hunt, but I don't see why we should prohibit others from doing it, even in novel ways. As long as the hunters aren't causing serious shifts in the natural ecological landscape, destroying biodiversity of natural species, I dont' really have a problem with it.