It's technically correct, but it's not good style.
Ik wens u geluk met uw overwinning in Australie. (formal, as if you had won the Nobel prize).
Ik wens jullie geluk met jullie overwinning in Australie. (informal)
While I agree that food definitely (obviously) has an impact when eaten, fast food cravings/effects are not even in the same ballpark as the cravings/effects caused by a drug addiction. I can't believe that you would even suggest this.
This isn't my idea or suggestion, it's what the scientists say. There are psychoactive substances called exorphins in some kinds of food, and the body produces endorphins during digestion. Meaning basically everyone likes eating because our bodies produce dope that makes us feel good when we eat, not because we're hungry. Real feelings of hunger only occur after 2 or 3 days without food in normal circumstances, the craving you feel around dinner time in a craving for endorphins. If there is something wrong with the production of these endorphins, or if you have a low tolerance to exorphins, you run the risk of becoming a food addict.
As well, last time I checked fast food was not an illegal substance.
Around where I live, some drugs you call illegal are not quite illegal. This argument is totally besides the point. Do you think it is possible to become an alcoholic? If people are showing real signs of addiction (their habit has a profound negative impact on the rest of their lives, and they show mental or physical withdrawal symptoms when stopping the habit) they're addicted, no matter if their habit is legal or illegal.
If dealing drugs was legal then you might have a point about people blaming drug dealers instead of taking responsibility for their own lives. Until then you are just talking out of your ass.
Duh. I was being sarcastic. Just as well as drug dealers know most of their customers get addicted to the stuff they sell them, fast food dealers know some of their customers become addicted to the stuff they sell them.
I have difficulty understanding your rationale for presenting this argument... Do you or someone you care for have a weight problem that you feel is not your/their responsibility?
I just wanted to point out that food addiction is a real addiction, just like drug addiction. Of course every grown person has to take responsability for his own actions, but how for instance would someone fresh out of drug rehab react to TV commercials praising the joyful good life you live while using drug X. That's what happens to alcoholics, sex addicts, food addicts, nicotine addicts, eg. all the people addicted to legal substances or activities.
You should read up about food addiction. Some food has psychoactive ingredients (called exorphins). Almost all food triggers the production of gastrointestinal peptides during digestion; dificiencies in this production (lots of endorphines) result in addictive behaviour. Addictive foods:
Ingestion of normal food may result in information-molecules streaming into our bloodstream from stomach or small intestine with all the impact of narcotic drugs! A "Gluten Stimulatory Peptide" is also described with narcotic (opiate) antagonist properties. It has been suggested that gluten hydrolysates, digests of wheat protein, have mixed opiate agonist-antagonist activity and, like two drugs with mixed narcotic activating and blocking actions (nalorphine and cyclazocine), produce dysphoria and even psychotic symptoms. Loukas and colleagues have derived the structure of cow's milk-derived exorphins: Opioid activities and structures of casein-derived exorphins. These two peptides carry information by finding and binding to brain receptors which ordinarily respond to endorphins. The message is go to sleep, feel bad, but go back for more.
Terrorists are usually a (zealous) member of a religion which regards the rest of us as infidels, barely higher than pigs, if that. To them, the infidels, and ALL infidels, must die.
Terrorism is only vaguely connected to religion. Most terrorism has political/ideologist motivations; religion is dragged in by the hairs later on. Most terrorism starts as a struggle for land or against conceived opression. It's advantagous for terrorists to play the religious card because they can mobilize much broader support this way than by just advertizing their radical political ideas.
By the way, Bush is doing a great job of making terrorism into a religious issue right now by dissing Muslim fundamentalists abroad, while keeping quiet about Christian fundamentalist generals saying stupid and dangerous things back home.
So tell me, how is this any different from dope dealers?
Hell, the drug (ab)users have to take responsibility for their own lives, not shift the blame to innocent dealers who just try to make a living. After all, everyone knows drugs aren't healthy, it's not the dealers' responsibility to safeguard your health.
So where does this mindset leave you? People get addicted to fastfood just as they get addicted to drugs. Once you're an addict, it's very hard to get clean all by yourself; the addiction rules you and your feeling of control and responsibility are illusions.
Solaris/Intel is just a toy that grabs a few extra customers that Sun would have lost otherwise. Boy, you should see it when linux noobs get their hands on it. They get really angry when you tell them "your hardware must be listed on the Hardware Compatibility List".
So basically, what you're saying is: Sun is trying to grab a few extra customers, but doesn't support them very well (no drivers for boxes you can actually buy in stores today, very late security patches, crappy toolset, the list goes on), so anyone foolish enough to buy a Solaris licence that previously ran a free OS with better support shouldn't whine or get angry if he gets what he deserves.
Solaris on Intel should convince people to make a switch to "real" Solaris on "proper" hardware, because a lot of people are going to try and test Solaris on boxes they already own (meaning mostly Intel boxes). If you piss of a real customer long enough by telling him he's not considered important enough to be offered support, you'll make an enemy for life; he's never going to buy Sun products again, no matter good they may be.
Hmm, so you're argueing that having access to the source code of applications your organisation depends on is not an advantage until you make it an issue? If acces to the source code is an advantage or added quality, why shouldn't a government require it? Sounds like some people are trying to downplay a real advantage to me.
Is the concept of a level playing field really that nuts?
That is where the open standards come in, they assure there is a level playing field because if documents are saved in open formats, changing software that processes/creates these documents becomes much easier. Right now we have no level playing field because large parts of the world are locked in to proprietary Microsoft formats and standards.
Re:What about those of us
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The way I interpret this is they're going to index the files in the underlying filesystem not only on name but also on a lot of metadata like content-type, author, creation and access dates, userrights, application group, user-defined properties (like favorites and bookmarks), you name it. If this is the case, it doesn't make sense to remove a file from the metadata indexes but not from the name index; that would defeat the whole concept too, you would end up with one large directory in the name index. (You would be able to remove files from user-defined indexes though.)
Re:What about those of us
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Unix filesystems don't provide a way to find all links to a file, which is, as you say, what you would need if you wanted to be able to delete a file entirely instead of just unlinking it from its current location. That would cost overhead.
I know about unix hard links, but we're using the indexing to speed up the file searches, and because we're doing away with hierarchical directory structure there is no more need for a tool like hard links to break the hierarchy; so it would be logical (from a MS point of view) to remove the file from all indexes and move it to the "recycled" index when you delete it.
Re:What about those of us
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CNet on WinFS
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· Score: 2, Informative
In order to display the contents of C:\Foo\ the system has to search the entire File Allocation Table to look for files that reside in C:\Foo\.
Nope. You'll have to search the FAT for the clusters in which the directory information is stored. This is similar to walking a single-linked list, if you get cluster numbers that don't belong to the directory (list), your filesystem is corrupt.
The basic idea here to replace the simple FAT, or even NTFS, with a database that has a lot of indexes, so that any time you make a request of the file system, the answer is either already ready or very close to being so. So yes, even you should see a speed improvement.
What is the difference between a directory as-stored-on-disk and a file index? So what happens if you build big indexes that enumerate all files on a disk for quick searching? You have created what comes down to one big directory, containing all files. If you create multiple indexes, that comes down to having files in different directories at the same time; keeping multiple indexes consistent (when files are deleted) will cost overhead, and only speeds up access times if you know in what index to search, if you don't know it will be slower as searching a hierachical file system (because there will be more duplicates, meaning bigger indexes to search).
Buran, as well as Shuttle, would be mostly useless as a weapon. It is too visible, carries very little weight compared to regular rockets, and has to be launched ahead of time in case of war. That alone makes it a very poor weapon platform.
You don't understand. Yes it must be launched ahead of time, but that is part of the the strategic threat; in a cold-war situation, one would have to monitor the shuttles constantly.
During 1970s and 1980s, the USSR developed a winged spacecraft known as Buran (Snowstorm) designed to serve as a "parallel" response to the perceived military threat from the US Space Shuttle.
It was a cold war, and every threat, how ever inconceivable, had to be answered.
Yang unveiled a Chinese and United Nations flag while in orbit in what the Chinese media said was intended to highlight pursuit of a peaceful exploration of space.
The russians started their boran project to copy the space shuttle because they thought it could/would be used as a strategic nuclear arms platform (almost zero detection time because there would be no missile launches), and the chinese aren't happy either with permanent space stations orbiting earth if they can't reach (and later produce) them independent of foreign powers.
Sure there is a lot of propaganda and China has it's science projects too, but there is also the very real signal that China is now almost capable of placing very nasty stuff in space if it wants to.
Agnosticism, in fact, is not a creed, but a method, the essence of which lies in the rigorous application of a single principle. That principle is of great antiquity; it is as old as Socrates; as old as the writer who said, 'Try all things, hold fast by that which is good'; it is the foundation of the Reformation, which simply illustrated the axiom that every man should be able to give a reason for the faith that is in him, it is the great principle of Descartes;
it is the fundamental axiom of modern science. Positively the principle may be expressed: In matters of the intellect, follow your reason as far as it will take you, without regard to any other consideration. And negatively: In matters of the intellect, do not pretend that conclusions are certain which are not demonstrated or demonstrable. That I take to be the agnostic faith, which if a man keep whole and undefiled, he shall not be ashamed to look the universe in the face, whatever the future may have in store for him.
-- T.H.Huxley, "Agnosticism", 1889
(Emphasis mine).
From this definition we can draw both soft and hard agnosticism, but in my opinion Huxley was much more a hard agnostic, he claims he takes the same position as Kant and Hume(!):
When I reached intellectual maturity, and began to ask myself whether I was an atheist, a theist, or a pantheist; a materialist or an idealist; a Christian or a freethinker, I found that the more I learned and reflected, the less ready was the answer; until at last I came to the conclusion that I had neither art nor part with any of these denominations, except the last. The one thing in which most of these good people were agreed was the one thing in which I differed from them. They were quite sure that they had attained a certain "gnosis" -- had more or less successfully solved the problem of existence; while
I was quite sure I had not, and had a pretty strong conviction that the problem was insoluble. And, with Hume and Kant on my side, I could not think myself presumptuous in holding fast by that opinion.
Would you agree the teachings of the non-theist religion of Buddhism are not in conflict with the atheist position, and would you also agree that atheism is a denial of certain religious beliefs?
I'm not claiming that every atheist is a Buddhist or should agree to Buddhist teachings, I'm just saying you can't object to Buddhism because of your atheist position (but you can because of your hard agnostic position).
An athesist does not believe God exists; an agnostic does not believe in God but at the same time he/she does not rule out God because they cannot prove it. This characterization has nothing to do with what one "allows".
There are several kinds of agnosticism. What you describe is soft (or weak) agnosticism, the most common form. Hard agnosticism is very different, it takes the position that no one can ever know about the existence of gods or if there is truth to any other religious claim of metaphysical existence, because the claims are meaningless to the human mind (iow. if we discuss the definition "God" before we start discussing his existence, we find we cannot define what "God" is, so discussing his existence becomes meaningless).
I think you are really comparing religions vs spirituality (if one can even seperate the two).
I'm comparing theist to non-theist religions, really. Spiritality is a personal thing, it stems from personal experiences, not from what you're tought (religion).
In your example, I think an atheist would be against both on principle.
An atheist is someone who doesn't believe in the existence of gods, period. He might believe in the existence of spirits and/or souls (be an animist) and still be an atheist, for instance. Strictly spreaking, an atheist only doesn't believe in the existence of theist gods (personal gods who watch over you and listen when you pray), he doesn't have a meaning about deist gods (impersonal gods that did things way back in the past but are nowhere to be found today).
If I'm not mistaken, buddists have an explanation for the creation of earth that is based on some supernatural element, which clearly is different from science. That will necessarily mean that an atheist would oppose buddism too.
If you reject the supernatural alltogether you're a hard agnostic (like a lot of scientists), believe me. To a hard agnostic, even an atheist looks silly, because he's just the no-sayer in a meaningless argument.
Since I'm an atheist, I'm against having the concept of a fake entity, namely God as part of anything.
Hmm, a lot of people I know who say things like this turn out to be hard agnostics and not atheists at all. Since many forms Buddhism don't have a concept of godliness, and the Buddha (Siddharta Guatama) was a real person; would you object to references of the Buddha? If you don't you're an atheist (because you think God doesn't exist, so religions without gods are fine), if you do (because you think all religions are pretending to know the unknowable) you're a hard agnostic.
Not quite, because of course it was a civilian airliner that was being used as a weapon. But if the attackers had, say, fired a missile at the Pentagon, or even crashed a military plane into it... yes, I would call that an act of war, and not terrorism.
And you still maintain that your definition of terrorism doesn't put you on a very slippery slope? Is it terrorism when the military bombs bridges, harbors or oil refineries during war, because those are civilian targets? By your definition one would have to agree, no matter if the targets are of vital strategic importance.
The attack on the USS Cole was, IMO, wrongly described as a terrorist attack.
Attacking the Cole had no strategic or tactical importance whatsoever, it was a symbolic act that intended to say "Yankee go home, or perhaps you'll be next." The attackers and the navy both knew these kind of suicide attacks are not a viable way of defeating the enemy in combat, but it still scares the heck out of everyone and it demonstrates the US is not untouchable.
Please do mind that I'm trying to steer well away of discussing the ethics and morality behind both terrorism and waging war. I personally think violence should always be the last option, but that goes for war as well as for terrorism.
All I'm saying is that you can't depict terrorists as inhuman because they only attack civilian targets, that's pure propaganda. A terrorist will pick his targets to have the biggest psychological impact, whether its the Pentagon, the World Trade Center, or both in one strike.
You remove the psychological element from war entirely; you are attempting to sanitize it.
I didn't mean to. I do realize war is horrible, that clean war is an oximoron, and that armies often engage in terrorist activities. I'm just trying to point out that terrorism is a particular kind of violent strategy to reach your goals. It's different from military strategy and guerilla warfare in that it doesn't aim the violence at disabling the enemy's military, governmental and industrial capabilities.
Instead, terrorist targets are selected to have a maximium impact on public opinion; the targets in question have a symbolical meaning rather than a strategical one (bombing ordinary civilians at random is symbolic in the sense of "it could be you next"). A terrorist wants the public to do the real disruptive work and the authorities to panic so they're more likely to make mistakes or give in to demands.
What defines an action as terrorism is simply who is in power... Doublespeak serves its' masters well.
I very much agree that the term terrorism is misused more often than not, but it once had a distinct meaning that had noting to do with who was in power or whether its targets where civilian or not. That's what this discussion is about.
Well, by that definition, any military action is terrorism.
No it's not; normally, spreading fear is not the main purpose of military action (occupying or defending territory is).
we can usefully draw a distinction between legitimate and illegitimate targets
Don't mix up war and terrorism, in terrorism there are no illegitimate targets. Your puropse is to spread as much fear as possible, remember?
If you're attacking your enemy's military, or his political leadership, it's war;
Absolutely untrue. Israel was founded after terrorist actions against the occupying british armed forces, various terrorist attacks have been aimed at military installations, warships and ambassies recently.
It's terrorism when you use violence with the purpose of inciting fear to reach your political, ideological or religious goals; whether the party you're terrorizing is "innocent" or not has got nothing to do with it. That's just the kind of moralistic propaganda that makes these words useless.
No. For this proof to be complete, something must be observed that directly violates a well-known law of physics within the range of well-tested numbers for that law.
Ah, so what you say is that because you have observed 10000 cointosses resulting in 5000 heads and 5000 tails, it's a miracle if a coin lands on its side when you do 1 million experiments.
Science produces theories, not laws of nature. If something unexpected happens in nature, it's not nature but theory that's wrong, so we humans make up a better theory about nature, but we keep our premise that everything that happens in nature is natural (and has natural causes).
You can't scientifically prove a miracle, because to science there are no miracles, just phenomena that can't be explained yet.
You can if your personal faith just happens to be right.
Yes, but the point is that faith involves the supernatural; you can't prove that the supernatural exists with natural sciences, and if you assume the supernatural has measurable effects on nature, you're violating the basic assumptions that govern the natural sciences (so you can't use any theory built on these basic assumptions).
That is not actually true. If science did not use inductive reasoning, than astrophysics could not be studied at all.
Read my other posts. I know some induction is needed in theory building, but not in the way creationists use it. There is no point in using scientific methods if you don't postulate but premise the theory you're working on.
To prove that God exists, it is only necessary to prove that some thing happened that is impossible in the realm of science.
Ah, the excluded middle argument. What you're saying is that if science can't explain something yet, it must be God's doing. In the same way one could argue that everything that is not black must be white.
Also, the natural sciences premise that everything in nature is natural, not supernatural. If some observable effect in nature cannot be explained by scientific theory, this only proves that the theory is incomplete or wrong, not that the observed effect is supernatural.
Ah, the good old Hume vs. Bacon (vs. Aristotle) discussion is coming up. I agree that some induction is nescessary in the hermeneutic cycle, but I share Humes opinion about the dangers of induction (in creating tautologies and unsupportable generalizations).
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You should use the informal construct if you address them as "jongens", meaning "boys" or "lads".
Ik wens u geluk met uw overwinning in Australie. (formal, as if you had won the Nobel prize).
Ik wens jullie geluk met jullie overwinning in Australie. (informal)
This isn't my idea or suggestion, it's what the scientists say. There are psychoactive substances called exorphins in some kinds of food, and the body produces endorphins during digestion. Meaning basically everyone likes eating because our bodies produce dope that makes us feel good when we eat, not because we're hungry. Real feelings of hunger only occur after 2 or 3 days without food in normal circumstances, the craving you feel around dinner time in a craving for endorphins. If there is something wrong with the production of these endorphins, or if you have a low tolerance to exorphins, you run the risk of becoming a food addict.
As well, last time I checked fast food was not an illegal substance.
Around where I live, some drugs you call illegal are not quite illegal. This argument is totally besides the point. Do you think it is possible to become an alcoholic? If people are showing real signs of addiction (their habit has a profound negative impact on the rest of their lives, and they show mental or physical withdrawal symptoms when stopping the habit) they're addicted, no matter if their habit is legal or illegal.
If dealing drugs was legal then you might have a point about people blaming drug dealers instead of taking responsibility for their own lives. Until then you are just talking out of your ass.
Duh. I was being sarcastic. Just as well as drug dealers know most of their customers get addicted to the stuff they sell them, fast food dealers know some of their customers become addicted to the stuff they sell them.
I have difficulty understanding your rationale for presenting this argument... Do you or someone you care for have a weight problem that you feel is not your/their responsibility?
I just wanted to point out that food addiction is a real addiction, just like drug addiction. Of course every grown person has to take responsability for his own actions, but how for instance would someone fresh out of drug rehab react to TV commercials praising the joyful good life you live while using drug X. That's what happens to alcoholics, sex addicts, food addicts, nicotine addicts, eg. all the people addicted to legal substances or activities.
(And no, it's not personal.)
Terrorism is only vaguely connected to religion. Most terrorism has political/ideologist motivations; religion is dragged in by the hairs later on. Most terrorism starts as a struggle for land or against conceived opression. It's advantagous for terrorists to play the religious card because they can mobilize much broader support this way than by just advertizing their radical political ideas.
By the way, Bush is doing a great job of making terrorism into a religious issue right now by dissing Muslim fundamentalists abroad, while keeping quiet about Christian fundamentalist generals saying stupid and dangerous things back home.
Hell, the drug (ab)users have to take responsibility for their own lives, not shift the blame to innocent dealers who just try to make a living. After all, everyone knows drugs aren't healthy, it's not the dealers' responsibility to safeguard your health.
So where does this mindset leave you? People get addicted to fastfood just as they get addicted to drugs. Once you're an addict, it's very hard to get clean all by yourself; the addiction rules you and your feeling of control and responsibility are illusions.
So basically, what you're saying is: Sun is trying to grab a few extra customers, but doesn't support them very well (no drivers for boxes you can actually buy in stores today, very late security patches, crappy toolset, the list goes on), so anyone foolish enough to buy a Solaris licence that previously ran a free OS with better support shouldn't whine or get angry if he gets what he deserves.
Solaris on Intel should convince people to make a switch to "real" Solaris on "proper" hardware, because a lot of people are going to try and test Solaris on boxes they already own (meaning mostly Intel boxes). If you piss of a real customer long enough by telling him he's not considered important enough to be offered support, you'll make an enemy for life; he's never going to buy Sun products again, no matter good they may be.
Hmm, so you're argueing that having access to the source code of applications your organisation depends on is not an advantage until you make it an issue? If acces to the source code is an advantage or added quality, why shouldn't a government require it? Sounds like some people are trying to downplay a real advantage to me.
Is the concept of a level playing field really that nuts?
That is where the open standards come in, they assure there is a level playing field because if documents are saved in open formats, changing software that processes/creates these documents becomes much easier. Right now we have no level playing field because large parts of the world are locked in to proprietary Microsoft formats and standards.
The way I interpret this is they're going to index the files in the underlying filesystem not only on name but also on a lot of metadata like content-type, author, creation and access dates, userrights, application group, user-defined properties (like favorites and bookmarks), you name it. If this is the case, it doesn't make sense to remove a file from the metadata indexes but not from the name index; that would defeat the whole concept too, you would end up with one large directory in the name index. (You would be able to remove files from user-defined indexes though.)
I know about unix hard links, but we're using the indexing to speed up the file searches, and because we're doing away with hierarchical directory structure there is no more need for a tool like hard links to break the hierarchy; so it would be logical (from a MS point of view) to remove the file from all indexes and move it to the "recycled" index when you delete it.
Nope. You'll have to search the FAT for the clusters in which the directory information is stored. This is similar to walking a single-linked list, if you get cluster numbers that don't belong to the directory (list), your filesystem is corrupt.
The basic idea here to replace the simple FAT, or even NTFS, with a database that has a lot of indexes, so that any time you make a request of the file system, the answer is either already ready or very close to being so. So yes, even you should see a speed improvement.
What is the difference between a directory as-stored-on-disk and a file index? So what happens if you build big indexes that enumerate all files on a disk for quick searching? You have created what comes down to one big directory, containing all files. If you create multiple indexes, that comes down to having files in different directories at the same time; keeping multiple indexes consistent (when files are deleted) will cost overhead, and only speeds up access times if you know in what index to search, if you don't know it will be slower as searching a hierachical file system (because there will be more duplicates, meaning bigger indexes to search).
You don't understand. Yes it must be launched ahead of time, but that is part of the the strategic threat; in a cold-war situation, one would have to monitor the shuttles constantly.
Russian space web:
It was a cold war, and every threat, how ever inconceivable, had to be answered.Sure there is a lot of propaganda and China has it's science projects too, but there is also the very real signal that China is now almost capable of placing very nasty stuff in space if it wants to.
From this definition we can draw both soft and hard agnosticism, but in my opinion Huxley was much more a hard agnostic, he claims he takes the same position as Kant and Hume(!):
I'm not claiming that every atheist is a Buddhist or should agree to Buddhist teachings, I'm just saying you can't object to Buddhism because of your atheist position (but you can because of your hard agnostic position).
There are several kinds of agnosticism. What you describe is soft (or weak) agnosticism, the most common form. Hard agnosticism is very different, it takes the position that no one can ever know about the existence of gods or if there is truth to any other religious claim of metaphysical existence, because the claims are meaningless to the human mind (iow. if we discuss the definition "God" before we start discussing his existence, we find we cannot define what "God" is, so discussing his existence becomes meaningless).
I think you are really comparing religions vs spirituality (if one can even seperate the two).
I'm comparing theist to non-theist religions, really. Spiritality is a personal thing, it stems from personal experiences, not from what you're tought (religion).
In your example, I think an atheist would be against both on principle.
An atheist is someone who doesn't believe in the existence of gods, period. He might believe in the existence of spirits and/or souls (be an animist) and still be an atheist, for instance. Strictly spreaking, an atheist only doesn't believe in the existence of theist gods (personal gods who watch over you and listen when you pray), he doesn't have a meaning about deist gods (impersonal gods that did things way back in the past but are nowhere to be found today).
If I'm not mistaken, buddists have an explanation for the creation of earth that is based on some supernatural element, which clearly is different from science. That will necessarily mean that an atheist would oppose buddism too.
If you reject the supernatural alltogether you're a hard agnostic (like a lot of scientists), believe me. To a hard agnostic, even an atheist looks silly, because he's just the no-sayer in a meaningless argument.
Hmm, a lot of people I know who say things like this turn out to be hard agnostics and not atheists at all. Since many forms Buddhism don't have a concept of godliness, and the Buddha (Siddharta Guatama) was a real person; would you object to references of the Buddha? If you don't you're an atheist (because you think God doesn't exist, so religions without gods are fine), if you do (because you think all religions are pretending to know the unknowable) you're a hard agnostic.
And you still maintain that your definition of terrorism doesn't put you on a very slippery slope? Is it terrorism when the military bombs bridges, harbors or oil refineries during war, because those are civilian targets? By your definition one would have to agree, no matter if the targets are of vital strategic importance.
The attack on the USS Cole was, IMO, wrongly described as a terrorist attack.
Attacking the Cole had no strategic or tactical importance whatsoever, it was a symbolic act that intended to say "Yankee go home, or perhaps you'll be next." The attackers and the navy both knew these kind of suicide attacks are not a viable way of defeating the enemy in combat, but it still scares the heck out of everyone and it demonstrates the US is not untouchable.
Please do mind that I'm trying to steer well away of discussing the ethics and morality behind both terrorism and waging war. I personally think violence should always be the last option, but that goes for war as well as for terrorism.
All I'm saying is that you can't depict terrorists as inhuman because they only attack civilian targets, that's pure propaganda. A terrorist will pick his targets to have the biggest psychological impact, whether its the Pentagon, the World Trade Center, or both in one strike.
I didn't mean to. I do realize war is horrible, that clean war is an oximoron, and that armies often engage in terrorist activities. I'm just trying to point out that terrorism is a particular kind of violent strategy to reach your goals. It's different from military strategy and guerilla warfare in that it doesn't aim the violence at disabling the enemy's military, governmental and industrial capabilities.
Instead, terrorist targets are selected to have a maximium impact on public opinion; the targets in question have a symbolical meaning rather than a strategical one (bombing ordinary civilians at random is symbolic in the sense of "it could be you next"). A terrorist wants the public to do the real disruptive work and the authorities to panic so they're more likely to make mistakes or give in to demands.
What defines an action as terrorism is simply who is in power... Doublespeak serves its' masters well.
I very much agree that the term terrorism is misused more often than not, but it once had a distinct meaning that had noting to do with who was in power or whether its targets where civilian or not. That's what this discussion is about.
No it's not; normally, spreading fear is not the main purpose of military action (occupying or defending territory is).
we can usefully draw a distinction between legitimate and illegitimate targets
Don't mix up war and terrorism, in terrorism there are no illegitimate targets. Your puropse is to spread as much fear as possible, remember?
If you're attacking your enemy's military, or his political leadership, it's war;
Absolutely untrue. Israel was founded after terrorist actions against the occupying british armed forces, various terrorist attacks have been aimed at military installations, warships and ambassies recently.
It's terrorism when you use violence with the purpose of inciting fear to reach your political, ideological or religious goals; whether the party you're terrorizing is "innocent" or not has got nothing to do with it. That's just the kind of moralistic propaganda that makes these words useless.
Ah, so what you say is that because you have observed 10000 cointosses resulting in 5000 heads and 5000 tails, it's a miracle if a coin lands on its side when you do 1 million experiments.
Science produces theories, not laws of nature. If something unexpected happens in nature, it's not nature but theory that's wrong, so we humans make up a better theory about nature, but we keep our premise that everything that happens in nature is natural (and has natural causes).
You can't scientifically prove a miracle, because to science there are no miracles, just phenomena that can't be explained yet.
Yes, but the point is that faith involves the supernatural; you can't prove that the supernatural exists with natural sciences, and if you assume the supernatural has measurable effects on nature, you're violating the basic assumptions that govern the natural sciences (so you can't use any theory built on these basic assumptions).
Read my other posts. I know some induction is needed in theory building, but not in the way creationists use it. There is no point in using scientific methods if you don't postulate but premise the theory you're working on.
To prove that God exists, it is only necessary to prove that some thing happened that is impossible in the realm of science.
Ah, the excluded middle argument. What you're saying is that if science can't explain something yet, it must be God's doing. In the same way one could argue that everything that is not black must be white.
Also, the natural sciences premise that everything in nature is natural, not supernatural. If some observable effect in nature cannot be explained by scientific theory, this only proves that the theory is incomplete or wrong, not that the observed effect is supernatural.
Ah, the good old Hume vs. Bacon (vs. Aristotle) discussion is coming up. I agree that some induction is nescessary in the hermeneutic cycle, but I share Humes opinion about the dangers of induction (in creating tautologies and unsupportable generalizations).