Fantastic, then I am ignostic too! Thanks for the nice article.
For clarity of speech I call myself atheist...
Regarding that: - Although it's totally true that god is meaningless etc... I think that people have a generic "god idea" related to their religion. In that context I am atheist. I don't believe in the old dude with the beard. - A meaningless, non falsifiable concept can simply be defined to be false, until properly defined (see Russell, for example). In this context I could call myself atheist too.
There is no proof that Extraterrestrials do not exist -- does this make them believable? Clearly not
If by this you mean UFOs, then they are not believeable. If by this you mean life outside of our planet, then there is no definite proof but good hints (like the fact that we are alive)...;-)
I totally agree with you... but faith is NOT rational. Faith is believing IN SPITE OF rationality. I do not have a Faith, therefore I am an atheist. Also, do you really think that an agnostic thinks that the answer is 50/50? I guess that is not true for the vast majority of people.
The truth is that nobody knows whether god exists. That said, the atheists think it's hogwash.
"Who knows, maybe the Law of Conservation of Mass Energy will be disproven in the future. In the meanwhile let's give the perpetual motion lunatics the benefit of doubt..."
1) An agnostic does not state that Santa exists. 2) An agnostic also does not state that Santa does not exist. Therefore: An agnostic does not "believe" either position.
Remark: we all know that Santa doesn't exist, even if it cannot be disproven. (sorry if it's a spoiler!)
Uhm, so many people believe, so clearly humans have the ability of making that call.
If you meant "rationally" then you are simply paraphrasing what I said and not give an answer. But the fact is, either you have faith or not. Either god makes a difference in your life or it does not. You can still say "I do not believe but I am not sure"... you can also say "I do believe but I am not sure" -- but it's still a yes/no question.
Look. Nothing can be proven with 100% certainty. Socrates discussed that 2000 years ago, and got over it =) Going down that route shows a lack of good arguments on your side. There is no proof that Santa Claus does not exist -- does this make him believable? Clearly not. Is that question even worth the attention? Nope.
As I was saying in another post: Atheists DO NOT believe in god. This does not require faith.
You incorrectly stated that "If you believe that god doesn't exist then you are an atheist". This is a straw man. I don't believe -- I never "started" believing. I had no reason to. I don't have a "faith" in the non-existence of god, exaclty in the same way that I don't have a "faith" in the non-existence of the great glaglaglagla of bbbbbdddz.
Agnostics that make points like yours are just nitty-picking on really feeble arguments. After all, knowing anything requires accepting a risk of being wrong. That said, calling one thing that has 99.9999999999999% probability of being false, "false" is perfectly normal and rational. Calling it "unknown" is ridiculous.
I don't get it. There is no way to prove that god exists. Only lunatics think otherwise. That said, either you *believe* in god or you *don't*. If you don't believe in god then you are atheist. If you do believe in god then you are religious. There is no middle ground. Saying "we cannot prove etc etc"... is just stating the obvious. The question is:
Given that god is undefinable and unknowable, and that its existence cannot be proven, do you believe in it?
An atheist does not believe that god exists true An atheist believes that god does not exist false
Thinking that a totally unsubstantiated claim is totally unbelievable does not require any faith. In fact, even religious people disbelieve all other religions. An atheist disbelieves all religions. It's not equivalent in any way to the religious position, and thinking otherwise is simply denoting naivete.
Atheists do not believe. Stop saying otherwise, please!!!
Of course C# !=.NET, but many applications currently make use of.NET APIs.
I agree with you. RMS doesn't -- he specifically targets C#, not the.net APIs.
Microsoft sues => Linux distros must stop using the.NET framework => Tomboy stops working. Of course C# !=.NET, but many applications currently make use of.NET APIs.
Actually, if that were to happen -- and it won't: Microsoft sues => Linux distros must stop using the.NET framework => Tomboy gets ported to unmanaged C++ via an automated tool => Tomboy keeps on working.
Java is as open as it gets. It's developed through the JSR (which is so "open" that it's held in stall by the Apache foundation), it has a full GPL reference implementation, its relevant standards are fully published in all details and are globally available free of charge.
C# is as open as it gets. It's developed through the ECMA (which is so "open" that it maintains the standards for Javascript), it has a full GPL reference implementation, its relevant standards are fully published in all details and are globally available free of charge.
Microsoft and the free software community have conflicting interests.
Not really, Microsoft and the free software community worked together succesfully a number of times. F/OSS zealots have a thing with Microsoft, but whatever you can say about Microsoft, you can say about IBM or Sun -- who I am sure they hold countless Java patents.
Besides this, if C# (or the BCL) were really dangerous, then why is the FSF doing the exact same thing as mono?
The real truth is that RMS wants Portable.NET to succeed over mono because of personal spite, and that's why he doesn't want it included in Debian. That place is reserved for his puppy implementation.
Uhm, and why is that relevant? Once it's compiled it could have been written in any language. Also, C# can be machine translated to unmanaged C++, so I really don't see what the problem is.
Any application which doesn't evolve is dead. Besides, no need for.NET or machine translation, since someone already did a human translation to plain C++: Gnote. Better to use just that instead.
Do you know the technology well at all? Any C# source code can be compiled and then decompiled into any other.NET language. If C# became a problem (which is impossible, but I am entertaining your hypothesis), one could port Tomboy or any other.NET app to any other.NET language with literally two clicks.
Of course you can, see for example the GTK# that implements an totally different layer to Windows.Forms. By the way, Tomboy is not a winforms application anyways.
Is GTK# an ECMA standard? No. So you are wrong. And when you are writing an application for.NET using an API that the vast majority of the people using the platform does not support, what does that mean for interoperability? Which was the point for creating.NET to begin with.
ECMA as a standards body does not demand that patents involving the current standards are provided on a royalty free basis. Why the heck do you think Red Hat avoids Mono like the plague? They know better than to tie corporate policy to a tainted technology by a convicted monopolist.
C# is patent free. The only possible patent issues are in the class library that is included. Usage of this class library is optional. GTK# is not an ECMA standard, but who cares? It's free, open source (by mono). There is no Microsoft implementation of it -- it's based on the Gnome GTK libraries. Red Hat avoids mono like the plague (do they?) only because it's by a competitor: SuSE. Oh, and Richard Stallman has a problem with Miguel De Icaza (creator of Gnome and mono) because he refused to refer to Linux as GNU/Linux. So he kick him out of the FSF. Great guy. https://twitter.com/migueldeicaza/status/2362214990
>C# is important to the discussion because Tomboy, the application Debian decided it must have, is written in C#.
Uhm, and why is that relevant? Once it's compiled it could have been written in any language. Also, C# can be machine translated to unmanaged C++, so I really don't see what the problem is.
>There are plenty of patent issues, and you cannot write desktop apps without using APIs outside the.NET ECMA specs.
Of course you can, see for example the GTK# that implements an totally different layer to Windows.Forms. By the way, Tomboy is not a winforms application anyways.
Can you name a single patent issue relative to C#? Nope, it's an open standard (whereas Java isn't IIRC). It's like Ecmascript, same licensing model.
You know what the real truth is? Is that since it is a standard coming from Microsoft it HAS to be evil, right?
>>It is dangerous to depend on C#, so we need to discourage its use.
Why should it be a danger? If there are any software patent issues, they are certainly not on C# which is an open standard, but on the.NET library (BCL). If RMS is worried about that, GNU should strive to provide an open and different alternative to the.NET library. But the BCL has got nothing to do with C# since it is used by all.net languages (VB.NET, J#, IronPython, IronRuby...)
"The Microsoft.NET Framework is the predominant implementation of.NET technologies. Other implementations for parts of the framework exist. Since the runtime engine is described by an ECMA/ISO specification, other implementations of it are unencumbered by patent issues. It is more difficult to develop alternatives to the base class library (BCL), which is not described by an open standard and may be subject to copyright restrictions." -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.NET_Framework#Alternative_implementations
>>any free implementation of C# would raise the same issue.
Again, nonsense
>>This is not to say that implementing C# is a bad thing. Free C# implementations permit users to run their C# programs on free platforms, which is good. (The GNU Project has an implementation of C# also, called Portable.NET.) Ideally we want to provide free implementations for all languages that programmers have used.
Talk about being coherent. If C# is bad, then why is GNU implementing it? You can't say one thing and the opposite two sentences later...
>>The problem is not in the C# implementations, but rather in Tomboy and other applications written in C#.
Ok, so now the problem is Tomboy? And again, what's the problem with C#? It's... an... open... standard... Oh, and by the way, Microsoft has a "shared source" implementation as well (free for non commercial use), called Rotor: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shared_Source_Common_Language_Infrastructure
I am a big, big fan of Open Source. I actually maintain an open source project, and it so happens that is written in C#. RMS is actually harming many F/OSS projects with these stupid comments. What a letdown.
First of all, it's not going to help. How long until P2P programs are tunnelled over HTTP or SSH? And what are they going to do, packet inspect all HTTP connections? You gotta be kidding me...
Second: the users want to trade music and videos, the artists want the users to do it. Only the distributors of music, ripe with the blood of the artists and the users whom the sucked the life from with their failing business model will be satisfied. Well, I for one, hope that they all fail, go bankrupt, and somehow end up in a PMITA prison for the rest of their miserable lives. If Art has ever seen a thief, he surely was working for a record label.
Hey, does anybody think that The Pirate Bay is so successful because it's actually doing what the media companies should be doing? That is, letting people watch a couple of shows almost in real time and not six months later, or listening to a CD before deciding whether to buy or not? Media companies have spent all their energies in actually NOT giving to consumers what they want that consumers are fighting back and having things their own way. This is good. This is democratic. Defending a company over their consumers is idiotic and short sighted.
> Let's see. He asks that the visit be canceled. The visit gets canceled. Then he complains about the visit having been canceled.
Not exactly. Here's a simple breakup of what happened.
- In 1990 Ratzinger went to the University and gave a speech basically saying that the inquisition was right and Galileo was wrong in the matter of the Earth revolving around the Sun. At the time Ratzinger was head of the inquisition, by the way. - Science teachers and students were obviously appalled. - This year the head of the University invited the Pope to open the academic year. Normally the academic year is opened with a speech by some distinguished scholar. - A scientist sends a letter to the head of the University complaining that the Pope is not a distinguished scholar and should not open the academic year, also because last time he gave a speech there he took an anti-science, pro-inquisition stance. - The letter became public - The pope decided to cancel, his cardinals and radio accused the scientist of having censored the pope - Mayhem ensued in Italian politics -- everyone defending the pope and repeating the "censorship" line - The scientist complained that the church is playing the victim.
Slashdot Mirror
Mock? I used the proper "great" ablative!
Well that's the definition of the Catholic church...
God - "the inexpressible, the incomprehensible, the invisible, the ungraspable"
http://www.vatican.va/archive/catechism/p1s1c1.htm#IV
I did not say that people made that call and were right... Just that they made the call.
Uhm, that is called an assumption based on evidence, but if you want to call it faith... ;-)
Fantastic, then I am ignostic too! Thanks for the nice article.
For clarity of speech I call myself atheist...
Regarding that:
- Although it's totally true that god is meaningless etc... I think that people have a generic "god idea" related to their religion. In that context I am atheist. I don't believe in the old dude with the beard.
- A meaningless, non falsifiable concept can simply be defined to be false, until properly defined (see Russell, for example). In this context I could call myself atheist too.
There is no proof that Extraterrestrials do not exist -- does this make them believable? Clearly not
If by this you mean UFOs, then they are not believeable. If by this you mean life outside of our planet, then there is no definite proof but good hints (like the fact that we are alive)... ;-)
I totally agree with you... but faith is NOT rational. Faith is believing IN SPITE OF rationality. I do not have a Faith, therefore I am an atheist. Also, do you really think that an agnostic thinks that the answer is 50/50? I guess that is not true for the vast majority of people.
The truth is that nobody knows whether god exists. That said, the atheists think it's hogwash.
"Who knows, maybe the Law of Conservation of Mass Energy will be disproven in the future. In the meanwhile let's give the perpetual motion lunatics the benefit of doubt..."
That doesn't work: s/God/Santa/
1) An agnostic does not state that Santa exists.
2) An agnostic also does not state that Santa does not exist.
Therefore: An agnostic does not "believe" either position.
Remark: we all know that Santa doesn't exist, even if it cannot be disproven. (sorry if it's a spoiler!)
Yep you are right.
Uhm, so many people believe, so clearly humans have the ability of making that call.
If you meant "rationally" then you are simply paraphrasing what I said and not give an answer. But the fact is, either you have faith or not. Either god makes a difference in your life or it does not. You can still say "I do not believe but I am not sure"... you can also say "I do believe but I am not sure" -- but it's still a yes/no question.
Look. Nothing can be proven with 100% certainty. Socrates discussed that 2000 years ago, and got over it =)
Going down that route shows a lack of good arguments on your side. There is no proof that Santa Claus does not exist -- does this make him believable? Clearly not. Is that question even worth the attention? Nope.
As I was saying in another post: Atheists DO NOT believe in god. This does not require faith.
You incorrectly stated that "If you believe that god doesn't exist then you are an atheist". This is a straw man. I don't believe -- I never "started" believing. I had no reason to. I don't have a "faith" in the non-existence of god, exaclty in the same way that I don't have a "faith" in the non-existence of the great glaglaglagla of bbbbbdddz.
Agnostics that make points like yours are just nitty-picking on really feeble arguments. After all, knowing anything requires accepting a risk of being wrong. That said, calling one thing that has 99.9999999999999% probability of being false, "false" is perfectly normal and rational. Calling it "unknown" is ridiculous.
Great troll :)
I don't get it. There is no way to prove that god exists. Only lunatics think otherwise.
That said, either you *believe* in god or you *don't*. If you don't believe in god then you are atheist. If you do believe in god then you are religious. There is no middle ground. Saying "we cannot prove etc etc"... is just stating the obvious. The question is:
Given that god is undefinable and unknowable, and that its existence cannot be proven, do you believe in it?
An atheist does not believe that god exists true
An atheist believes that god does not exist false
Thinking that a totally unsubstantiated claim is totally unbelievable does not require any faith. In fact, even religious people disbelieve all other religions. An atheist disbelieves all religions. It's not equivalent in any way to the religious position, and thinking otherwise is simply denoting naivete.
Atheists do not believe. Stop saying otherwise, please!!!
The difference is that God is a joke and people who get offended by blasphemy should get their heads checked by a shrink.
Of course C# != .NET, but many applications currently make use of .NET APIs.
I agree with you. RMS doesn't -- he specifically targets C#, not the .net APIs.
Microsoft sues => Linux distros must stop using the .NET framework => Tomboy stops working. .NET, but many applications currently make use of .NET APIs.
Of course C# !=
Actually, if that were to happen -- and it won't: .NET framework => Tomboy gets ported to unmanaged C++ via an automated tool => Tomboy keeps on working.
Microsoft sues => Linux distros must stop using the
Java is as open as it gets. It's developed through the JSR (which is so "open" that it's held in stall by the Apache foundation), it has a full GPL reference implementation, its relevant standards are fully published in all details and are globally available free of charge.
C# is as open as it gets. It's developed through the ECMA (which is so "open" that it maintains the standards for Javascript), it has a full GPL reference implementation, its relevant standards are fully published in all details and are globally available free of charge.
Microsoft and the free software community have conflicting interests.
Not really, Microsoft and the free software community worked together succesfully a number of times. F/OSS zealots have a thing with Microsoft, but whatever you can say about Microsoft, you can say about IBM or Sun -- who I am sure they hold countless Java patents.
Besides this, if C# (or the BCL) were really dangerous, then why is the FSF doing the exact same thing as mono?
The real truth is that RMS wants Portable.NET to succeed over mono because of personal spite, and that's why he doesn't want it included in Debian. That place is reserved for his puppy implementation.
I have read the article, and it's exactly what he said.
Uhm, and why is that relevant? Once it's compiled it could have been written in any language. Also, C# can be machine translated to unmanaged C++, so I really don't see what the problem is.
Any application which doesn't evolve is dead. Besides, no need for .NET or machine translation, since someone already did a human translation to plain C++: Gnote. Better to use just that instead.
Do you know the technology well at all? Any C# source code can be compiled and then decompiled into any other .NET language. If C# became a problem (which is impossible, but I am entertaining your hypothesis), one could port Tomboy or any other .NET app to any other .NET language with literally two clicks.
Of course you can, see for example the GTK# that implements an totally different layer to Windows.Forms. By the way, Tomboy is not a winforms application anyways.
Is GTK# an ECMA standard? No. So you are wrong. And when you are writing an application for .NET using an API that the vast majority of the people using the platform does not support, what does that mean for interoperability? Which was the point for creating .NET to begin with.
ECMA as a standards body does not demand that patents involving the current standards are provided on a royalty free basis. Why the heck do you think Red Hat avoids Mono like the plague? They know better than to tie corporate policy to a tainted technology by a convicted monopolist.
C# is patent free. The only possible patent issues are in the class library that is included. Usage of this class library is optional. GTK# is not an ECMA standard, but who cares? It's free, open source (by mono). There is no Microsoft implementation of it -- it's based on the Gnome GTK libraries.
Red Hat avoids mono like the plague (do they?) only because it's by a competitor: SuSE. Oh, and Richard Stallman has a problem with Miguel De Icaza (creator of Gnome and mono) because he refused to refer to Linux as GNU/Linux. So he kick him out of the FSF. Great guy.
https://twitter.com/migueldeicaza/status/2362214990
>C# is important to the discussion because Tomboy, the application Debian decided it must have, is written in C#.
Uhm, and why is that relevant? Once it's compiled it could have been written in any language. Also, C# can be machine translated to unmanaged C++, so I really don't see what the problem is.
>There are plenty of patent issues, and you cannot write desktop apps without using APIs outside the .NET ECMA specs.
Of course you can, see for example the GTK# that implements an totally different layer to Windows.Forms. By the way, Tomboy is not a winforms application anyways.
Can you name a single patent issue relative to C#? Nope, it's an open standard (whereas Java isn't IIRC). It's like Ecmascript, same licensing model.
You know what the real truth is? Is that since it is a standard coming from Microsoft it HAS to be evil, right?
Bonkers.
What an idiotic statement by RMS!
>>It is dangerous to depend on C#, so we need to discourage its use.
Why should it be a danger? If there are any software patent issues, they are certainly not on C# which is an open standard, but on the .NET library (BCL). If RMS is worried about that, GNU should strive to provide an open and different alternative to the .NET library. But the BCL has got nothing to do with C# since it is used by all .net languages (VB.NET, J#, IronPython, IronRuby...)
"The Microsoft .NET Framework is the predominant implementation of .NET technologies. Other implementations for parts of the framework exist. Since the runtime engine is described by an ECMA/ISO specification, other implementations of it are unencumbered by patent issues. It is more difficult to develop alternatives to the base class library (BCL), which is not described by an open standard and may be subject to copyright restrictions." -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.NET_Framework#Alternative_implementations
>>any free implementation of C# would raise the same issue.
Again, nonsense
>>This is not to say that implementing C# is a bad thing. Free C# implementations permit users to run their C# programs on free platforms, which is good. (The GNU Project has an implementation of C# also, called Portable.NET.) Ideally we want to provide free implementations for all languages that programmers have used.
Talk about being coherent. If C# is bad, then why is GNU implementing it? You can't say one thing and the opposite two sentences later...
>>The problem is not in the C# implementations, but rather in Tomboy and other applications written in C#.
Ok, so now the problem is Tomboy? And again, what's the problem with C#? It's... an... open... standard...
Oh, and by the way, Microsoft has a "shared source" implementation as well (free for non commercial use), called Rotor: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shared_Source_Common_Language_Infrastructure
I am a big, big fan of Open Source. I actually maintain an open source project, and it so happens that is written in C#. RMS is actually harming many F/OSS projects with these stupid comments. What a letdown.
First of all, it's not going to help. How long until P2P programs are tunnelled over HTTP or SSH? And what are they going to do, packet inspect all HTTP connections? You gotta be kidding me...
Second: the users want to trade music and videos, the artists want the users to do it. Only the distributors of music, ripe with the blood of the artists and the users whom the sucked the life from with their failing business model will be satisfied. Well, I for one, hope that they all fail, go bankrupt, and somehow end up in a PMITA prison for the rest of their miserable lives. If Art has ever seen a thief, he surely was working for a record label.
Hey, does anybody think that The Pirate Bay is so successful because it's actually doing what the media companies should be doing? That is, letting people watch a couple of shows almost in real time and not six months later, or listening to a CD before deciding whether to buy or not?
Media companies have spent all their energies in actually NOT giving to consumers what they want that consumers are fighting back and having things their own way.
This is good. This is democratic. Defending a company over their consumers is idiotic and short sighted.
It is needed because silverlight has a different implementation of the CLR, which supports dynamic languages such as javascript or python.
> Let's see. He asks that the visit be canceled. The visit gets canceled. Then he complains about the visit having been canceled.
Not exactly. Here's a simple breakup of what happened.
- In 1990 Ratzinger went to the University and gave a speech basically saying that the inquisition was right and Galileo was wrong in the matter of the Earth revolving around the Sun. At the time Ratzinger was head of the inquisition, by the way.
- Science teachers and students were obviously appalled.
- This year the head of the University invited the Pope to open the academic year. Normally the academic year is opened with a speech by some distinguished scholar.
- A scientist sends a letter to the head of the University complaining that the Pope is not a distinguished scholar and should not open the academic year, also because last time he gave a speech there he took an anti-science, pro-inquisition stance.
- The letter became public
- The pope decided to cancel, his cardinals and radio accused the scientist of having censored the pope
- Mayhem ensued in Italian politics -- everyone defending the pope and repeating the "censorship" line
- The scientist complained that the church is playing the victim.
I'm a web developer also and use the very same best practices.
Bravo!