Their tendency to fitness caused them to abuse substances, and that caused them to attempt online games, and the subsequent grind cause them to become depressed. Ummm. The crowds they met online pressured them to start drug use, and they had to start running from the law. Ummm. Their drug abuse caused them to meet people who were into online games, and that caused... Darn. This correlation / causality stuff is hard.
One of the security managers for American Airlines come to one of our monthly safety meetings. He told the story of how a man attempted to hijack a flight and the passengers attacked and killed him. Whenever I hear the phrase "we live in a post-9/11 world" that's what I think of.
Actually, there is no shadow analysis. This is just one of dozens of counter-intelligence announcements meant to cause a response by the terrorists. DHS figures if terrorists are out taking dancing lessons, learning the bagpipes, practicing synchronized swimming, and growing herbs then they'll have far less time to make bombs and blow stuff up.
It relies on you knowing the answer. The answer is, "Hitler."
p.s. It occurs to me that my.sig is particularly apropos. Also, in six months when I change my.sig, if anyone should read this they'll have no idea what I'm talking about.
The chosen candidate will be bound by contract to vote in Congress only as do his or her constituents online.
You can't sue a congressman for the performance of his duties. Well...you could sue him, but it would be thrown out of court so fast it would make your head swim.
I read a book about that years ago. I wish I could provide you the name of the book, but I can't remember it any longer. It had five principles of which I still remember only two. They were stated "module strength should be as great as possible" and "module coupling should be as low as possible." Great module strength is achieved when a module only does one thing. For example, you shouldn't have a flag where the module extracts the square root for one value of the flag and returns the absolute value for another. Low module coupling is achieved when all the variables that the module references and all variables that the module modifies are passed through the argument list. Sorry about losing the other three.
Ad hom refers specifically to an attack on ones character which is used to discredit an argument. Simply questioning a persons motives and biases is not necessarily an ad hominem attack.
You started to get it right, but then you fell by the wayside. The entire phrase is argumentum ad hominem which means "argument to the man." It includes any attempt to discredit an argument based on characteristics of the person advancing the argument. In the instant case, the argument goes something like--OOXML should be rejected if it's a bad standard. OOXML is a bad standard because it has many shortcomings that haven't been addressed. Therefore OOXML should be rejected. Mongoose Disciple chose not to dispute any of the premisses of the argument or the inference, but rather to claim that Rob Weir stands to gain if the conclusion is accepted. Thus Mongoose Disciple presented us with an excellent example of an argumentum ad hominem.
Also, attacks on ones character may not be considered "ad hominem" unless it is being use to refute an argument. This is probably the most common misuse of the term. For example, I can call someone an asshole and it wouldn't necessarily be an "ad hominem" attack.
Completely correct. However, it's irrelevant to the instant argument.
You have a two party system because the system is built in a way to favor a two party system, smaller parties have huge barriers of entry and they cannot gain traction.
True. Specifically, it's the tendency of most states to have a winner-takes-all-electoral-votes law that promotes the formation of a two-party system. Other democratic governments having WTAEV laws also tend to develop two party systems. Democratic governments having proportional electoral allocations tend to develop multi-party systems.
you need to change the way your system works
Ummm...I don't want to appear especially dense, but...why?
Let me first say that my joy with your actions is boundless. If all people only had open hearts like yours then faith would pile on faith and God would call His creation "good."
That having been said, I do have some criticism of what you've done. Please don't allow my criticism to crush your spirit. I only offer this in brotherly love, and the hope that your faith will be strengthened from it.
First, I have comments regarding your scientific corner. From wikipedia I found the scientific method to be: 1. Define the question 2. Gather information and resources 3. Form hypothesis 4. Perform experiment and collect data 5. Analyze data 6. Interpret data and draw conclusions that serve as a starting point for new hypotheses 7. Publish results
I cannot see where you've defined the question. If your question is, "does water have the ability to discern between witches and Christians," then I find no evidence of that question in what you've written. Perhaps your question was, "can I experience a vision by denying myself drinking water for three days." Your question was totally absent. Further, you say, "I wanted to separate water...into...[h]ydrogen and [o]xygen." "Want" has no place in the scientific corner. "Want" is irrelevant. "Want" is in the realm of faith and religion.
On "gather information and resources" and "form hypothesis," I find these steps to be deficient. I am able to infer that they must have been present from your discussion, but you really should make these explicit. You can not have said some of the things you should without first having gathered information. Take heart. You did excellently on "perform experiment." There is no doubt in my mind, that if I were to visit you I would find the electrolysis machine and the test tubes, although the hydrogen and oxygen may have escaped by now. I don't think you would lie about performing that experiment between the time you read my post and the time that you wrote yours. Sadly, "collect data" is not as good. You did say that there was twice the volume of hydrogen as oxygen, but you failed to mention how much hydrogen there was. Similarly lacking is how much oxygen there was, how much water there was before and after electrolysis, and so on. I have some suggestions regarding analyze data. You need to have some evidence that the stuff in the tube was hydrogen. I mean, one colorless gas looks much like another. And speaking of colorless gasses, what evidence do you have that the stuff in the other tube was oxygen? "Interpret data" and "draw conclusions" is similarly lacking, although perhaps that's understandable given the lack of a question.
Finally, I find your efforts in "publish results" mixed. First the good: you did perfectly publishing on Slashdot. It's well known that there is no greater forum of human investigation than Slashdot. The supply of knowledgeable people here is unlimited. All of the world's best scientists congregate here. On the other hand, what you've published is inadequate for me to duplicate your experiment. What brand of electrolysis machine did you use? How much current was supplied? How were the test tubes arranged in relation to the wires? Did you even have any wires? There is no way I can follow in your footsteps and confirm your experiment.
Second, I have some comments regarding your faith experiment. There is no such thing as a faith experiment. That's like saying, "I want to conduct a nuclear séance," or "I want to weigh a soul." It's as though you're trying to use the scientific method in order to test faith. If that, in fact, is what you're trying to do, then for completeness you should also attempt to use faith to test science. For example, you could look for the scientific method in the Koran, look for experimental science in the Torah, or find a prophet who will tell you that you should become a scientist.
I would like to add that I don't understand what you had to say about faith. Are you sayi
Well, you can call it that if it makes you feel better, but the rest of us just call that "wishful thinking".
How very strange! Here I've been going around thinking that what scientists were doing was wishful thinking. For example, "I sure hope the Scientific Method is a valid technique to verify what the universe really is, or all our work will come tumbling down around our ears" or "I sure hope modus ponens ponens never yields a contradiction," or "I sure hope the next study doesn't suggest that eating eggs is good for you." I've seen several attempts by scientists to verify the Scientific Method, but all of them use the Scientific method, which only stands for the unremarkable proposition that the Scientific Method is valid provided that the Scientific Method is valid. Now don't let me be one to deny your faith. I'm perfectly willing to allow you to use the Scientific Method to verify the Scientific method, but, in fairness, I think I should require you to allow me to use the Bible to verify the Bible.
I have little doubt your faith makes you feel good inside, but then again, so does a hit to a heroin addict.
That analogy doesn't help me much as I've never hit any heroin. Would it be anything like the feeling Friedrich August Kekulé von Stradonitz got when he woke from his dream about the snake biting its tail giving him the chemical structure of benzene? Or the feeling Archimedes got upon leaving his bath?
Of course, assuming TFA is valid, my denying the entire notion of your "faith" will probably re-enforce it. So you're welcome. Enjoy it in good health.
Why, thank you! Perhaps I can do a similar service for you some day. Oh, wait! I already have.
I'm going to come down on the side of allowing gold farming. For the longest time I looked to see what I wanted, then looked to see what the materials were, then went and farmed for the materials. The problem became apparent to me when I decided I wanted to buy some fire resistance gear. To make it I need to farm motes of fire. The problem is that I'm not well equipped to farm motes of fire. I'm equipped to farm herbs--mana thistle, netherbloom, nightmare vine, etc. That means that it takes me a lot less time to farm the herbs, sell them on the auction house, and then buy the materials, than it would take me to farm the materials directly. Now I go buy the materials, and only go farm them when I get tired picking the thousandth felweed. Buying gold seems to me to be the same thing, but with a real-world component. If I'm going to do what I'm good at and buy stuff from people who are doing what they are good at, then why shouldn't I let others--even when what they are good at is making money in the real world and using that to buy from someone who is good at farming gold.
Your computer has been determined to be infected by a malicious program that gives control to another person. Please double-click on the link to find out how to get your computer disinfected.
I would say more, but without controlling access to this paragraph with MRT's products, I fear I have already risked too much..."
It won't work. Even if you don't say anything, you're "failing to include measures to control access" and thus "constitut[ing] a circumvention of a copy protection system."
-Loyal
The first time I ever saw anything on climate change was about ten years ago. At that time the claims were:
1) That the average temperature world-wide was increasing. 2) That the cause of the temperature increase was human in origin. 3) That the damages from temperature increase would be colossal. 4) That the benefits from temperature increase were negligible or non-existant. 5) That humans could do something to alleviate the temperature increase. 6) That the only way humans could do something required huge new government powers. 7) That once the government aquired the new powers, our evidence of success would be that nothing happened.
Please note that, at the time, evidence suggested 1) perhaps might possibly be true. There was no evidence to support 2) through 7). Frankly, I think the process has become so politicised that I don't believe it's possible for me to become convinced. Ask me again in sixty years.
There was an early move to make BS&F get paid in shares and a percentage of an SCO buyout.
No, that's not right. The buyout part is correct, but not the shares. There was an early claim made by both TSCOG and BS&F that BS&F were taking the case on contingency. That was true as far as it went, but I didn't go very far. The reality was that BS&F were taking the case on contingency or flat rate, whichever was greater. However, both groups publicly touted the contingency and were completely silent about the flat rate. The reason was plain to see; it was a conspiracy by TSCOG and BS&F to make the case appear stronger than it was, and, after all, that's what this case has been about since the beginning--appearance. As yourself, why would a legal firm take a case on contingency? They only would if they expected to make more than it cost them.
You might want to reconsider Canada. I went there once, only to receive a difficult time from the customs agents. Upon discussing it with the locals, I was told not to worry. Customs treats the locals just as badly.
I don't know; I think stupidity is a much more powerful force. Is there some way we could draw on the stupidity of crowds? In warfare, for example, you could draw on the stupidity of crowds, and when you "bomb somebody back into the stone age" you might do it without loss of life or property.
Seriously, someone explain to me why time MUST have a beginning? Can't we just accept some things as being infinite?
That comes from observing the universe, and, particularly, from the observed fact that stars are moving away from each other in a "uniform" manner. "Uniform" is in quotes because some stars tend to clump together, e.g. in globular clusters, and galaxies. Now, there are movements that wouldn't imply a beginning. Asymptotic ones don't. However, the movements of the stars aren't any of these. At some time in the past, barring a colossal misunderstanding of physics, everything was in the same place. When that happened the gravitational field was intense. Really, really intense. One of the things Einstein found was that time moves slower the more intense the gravitational field. At the point in time in the past when everything was in the same place, time didn't progress at all. That was the beginning.
Slashdot Mirror
Their tendency to fitness caused them to abuse substances, and that caused them to attempt online games, and the subsequent grind cause them to become depressed. Ummm. The crowds they met online pressured them to start drug use, and they had to start running from the law. Ummm. Their drug abuse caused them to meet people who were into online games, and that caused... Darn. This correlation / causality stuff is hard.
-Loyal
One of the security managers for American Airlines come to one of our monthly safety meetings. He told the story of how a man attempted to hijack a flight and the passengers attacked and killed him. Whenever I hear the phrase "we live in a post-9/11 world" that's what I think of.
-Loyal
Actually, there is no shadow analysis. This is just one of dozens of counter-intelligence announcements meant to cause a response by the terrorists. DHS figures if terrorists are out taking dancing lessons, learning the bagpipes, practicing synchronized swimming, and growing herbs then they'll have far less time to make bombs and blow stuff up.
-Loyal
It relies on you knowing the answer. The answer is, "Hitler."
p.s. It occurs to me that my .sig is particularly apropos. Also, in six months when I change my .sig, if anyone should read this they'll have no idea what I'm talking about.
-Loyal
The chosen candidate will be bound by contract to vote in Congress only as do his or her constituents online.
You can't sue a congressman for the performance of his duties. Well...you could sue him, but it would be thrown out of court so fast it would make your head swim.
-Loyal
What happens if the pigeons eat the snails?
-Loyal
Ummm...I know how we can find out...
-Loyal
I read a book about that years ago. I wish I could provide you the name of the book, but I can't remember it any longer. It had five principles of which I still remember only two. They were stated "module strength should be as great as possible" and "module coupling should be as low as possible." Great module strength is achieved when a module only does one thing. For example, you shouldn't have a flag where the module extracts the square root for one value of the flag and returns the absolute value for another. Low module coupling is achieved when all the variables that the module references and all variables that the module modifies are passed through the argument list. Sorry about losing the other three.
-Loyal
Never mind that crap. Does he say what athletic shoes I should buy?
-Loyal
You started to get it right, but then you fell by the wayside. The entire phrase is argumentum ad hominem which means "argument to the man." It includes any attempt to discredit an argument based on characteristics of the person advancing the argument. In the instant case, the argument goes something like--OOXML should be rejected if it's a bad standard. OOXML is a bad standard because it has many shortcomings that haven't been addressed. Therefore OOXML should be rejected. Mongoose Disciple chose not to dispute any of the premisses of the argument or the inference, but rather to claim that Rob Weir stands to gain if the conclusion is accepted. Thus Mongoose Disciple presented us with an excellent example of an argumentum ad hominem.
Also, attacks on ones character may not be considered "ad hominem" unless it is being use to refute an argument. This is probably the most common misuse of the term. For example, I can call someone an asshole and it wouldn't necessarily be an "ad hominem" attack.
Completely correct. However, it's irrelevant to the instant argument.
-Loyal
True. Specifically, it's the tendency of most states to have a winner-takes-all-electoral-votes law that promotes the formation of a two-party system. Other democratic governments having WTAEV laws also tend to develop two party systems. Democratic governments having proportional electoral allocations tend to develop multi-party systems.
you need to change the way your system works
Ummm...I don't want to appear especially dense, but...why?
-Loyal
I believe it was Knuth who said that.
Let me first say that my joy with your actions is boundless. If all people only had open hearts like yours then faith would pile on faith and God would call His creation "good."
That having been said, I do have some criticism of what you've done. Please don't allow my criticism to crush your spirit. I only offer this in brotherly love, and the hope that your faith will be strengthened from it.
First, I have comments regarding your scientific corner. From wikipedia I found the scientific method to be:
1. Define the question
2. Gather information and resources
3. Form hypothesis
4. Perform experiment and collect data
5. Analyze data
6. Interpret data and draw conclusions that serve as a starting point for new hypotheses
7. Publish results
I cannot see where you've defined the question. If your question is, "does water have the ability to discern between witches and Christians," then I find no evidence of that question in what you've written. Perhaps your question was, "can I experience a vision by denying myself drinking water for three days." Your question was totally absent. Further, you say, "I wanted to separate water...into...[h]ydrogen and [o]xygen." "Want" has no place in the scientific corner. "Want" is irrelevant. "Want" is in the realm of faith and religion.
On "gather information and resources" and "form hypothesis," I find these steps to be deficient. I am able to infer that they must have been present from your discussion, but you really should make these explicit. You can not have said some of the things you should without first having gathered information.
Take heart. You did excellently on "perform experiment." There is no doubt in my mind, that if I were to visit you I would find the electrolysis machine and the test tubes, although the hydrogen and oxygen may have escaped by now. I don't think you would lie about performing that experiment between the time you read my post and the time that you wrote yours. Sadly, "collect data" is not as good. You did say that there was twice the volume of hydrogen as oxygen, but you failed to mention how much hydrogen there was. Similarly lacking is how much oxygen there was, how much water there was before and after electrolysis, and so on.
I have some suggestions regarding analyze data. You need to have some evidence that the stuff in the tube was hydrogen. I mean, one colorless gas looks much like another. And speaking of colorless gasses, what evidence do you have that the stuff in the other tube was oxygen?
"Interpret data" and "draw conclusions" is similarly lacking, although perhaps that's understandable given the lack of a question.
Finally, I find your efforts in "publish results" mixed. First the good: you did perfectly publishing on Slashdot. It's well known that there is no greater forum of human investigation than Slashdot. The supply of knowledgeable people here is unlimited. All of the world's best scientists congregate here. On the other hand, what you've published is inadequate for me to duplicate your experiment. What brand of electrolysis machine did you use? How much current was supplied? How were the test tubes arranged in relation to the wires? Did you even have any wires? There is no way I can follow in your footsteps and confirm your experiment.
Second, I have some comments regarding your faith experiment. There is no such thing as a faith experiment. That's like saying, "I want to conduct a nuclear séance," or "I want to weigh a soul." It's as though you're trying to use the scientific method in order to test faith. If that, in fact, is what you're trying to do, then for completeness you should also attempt to use faith to test science. For example, you could look for the scientific method in the Koran, look for experimental science in the Torah, or find a prophet who will tell you that you should become a scientist.
I would like to add that I don't understand what you had to say about faith. Are you sayi
How very strange! Here I've been going around thinking that what scientists were doing was wishful thinking. For example, "I sure hope the Scientific Method is a valid technique to verify what the universe really is, or all our work will come tumbling down around our ears" or "I sure hope modus ponens ponens never yields a contradiction," or "I sure hope the next study doesn't suggest that eating eggs is good for you." I've seen several attempts by scientists to verify the Scientific Method, but all of them use the Scientific method, which only stands for the unremarkable proposition that the Scientific Method is valid provided that the Scientific Method is valid. Now don't let me be one to deny your faith. I'm perfectly willing to allow you to use the Scientific Method to verify the Scientific method, but, in fairness, I think I should require you to allow me to use the Bible to verify the Bible.
I have little doubt your faith makes you feel good inside, but then again, so does a hit to a heroin addict.
That analogy doesn't help me much as I've never hit any heroin. Would it be anything like the feeling Friedrich August Kekulé von Stradonitz got when he woke from his dream about the snake biting its tail giving him the chemical structure of benzene? Or the feeling Archimedes got upon leaving his bath?
Of course, assuming TFA is valid, my denying the entire notion of your "faith" will probably re-enforce it. So you're welcome. Enjoy it in good health.
Why, thank you! Perhaps I can do a similar service for you some day. Oh, wait! I already have.
Yaz.
-Loyal
I'm going to come down on the side of allowing gold farming. For the longest time I looked to see what I wanted, then looked to see what the materials were, then went and farmed for the materials. The problem became apparent to me when I decided I wanted to buy some fire resistance gear. To make it I need to farm motes of fire. The problem is that I'm not well equipped to farm motes of fire. I'm equipped to farm herbs--mana thistle, netherbloom, nightmare vine, etc. That means that it takes me a lot less time to farm the herbs, sell them on the auction house, and then buy the materials, than it would take me to farm the materials directly. Now I go buy the materials, and only go farm them when I get tired picking the thousandth felweed. Buying gold seems to me to be the same thing, but with a real-world component. If I'm going to do what I'm good at and buy stuff from people who are doing what they are good at, then why shouldn't I let others--even when what they are good at is making money in the real world and using that to buy from someone who is good at farming gold.
-Loyal
Dear Computer Owner,
Your computer has been determined to be infected by a malicious program that gives control to another person. Please double-click on the link to find out how to get your computer disinfected.
FBI
No. Really.
It won't work. Even if you don't say anything, you're "failing to include measures to control access" and thus "constitut[ing] a circumvention of a copy protection system." -Loyal
So that would mean you're...disparaging rights not enumerated in the constitution?
Wow! So when the politicians tell the doctors they can't release their medical records, they are violating the doctors' free speech rights?
-Loyal
The first time I ever saw anything on climate change was about ten years ago. At that time the claims were:
1) That the average temperature world-wide was increasing.
2) That the cause of the temperature increase was human in origin.
3) That the damages from temperature increase would be colossal.
4) That the benefits from temperature increase were negligible or non-existant.
5) That humans could do something to alleviate the temperature increase.
6) That the only way humans could do something required huge new government powers.
7) That once the government aquired the new powers, our evidence of success would be that nothing happened.
Please note that, at the time, evidence suggested 1) perhaps might possibly be true. There was no evidence to support 2) through 7). Frankly, I think the process has become so politicised that I don't believe it's possible for me to become convinced. Ask me again in sixty years.
-Loyal
No, that's not right. The buyout part is correct, but not the shares. There was an early claim made by both TSCOG and BS&F that BS&F were taking the case on contingency. That was true as far as it went, but I didn't go very far. The reality was that BS&F were taking the case on contingency or flat rate, whichever was greater. However, both groups publicly touted the contingency and were completely silent about the flat rate. The reason was plain to see; it was a conspiracy by TSCOG and BS&F to make the case appear stronger than it was, and, after all, that's what this case has been about since the beginning--appearance. As yourself, why would a legal firm take a case on contingency? They only would if they expected to make more than it cost them.
-Loyal
You might want to reconsider Canada. I went there once, only to receive a difficult time from the customs agents. Upon discussing it with the locals, I was told not to worry. Customs treats the locals just as badly.
-Loyal
He had just been called a liar. What was he supposed to do? Say, "thank you, sir, may I have another?"
-Loyal
I don't know; I think stupidity is a much more powerful force. Is there some way we could draw on the stupidity of crowds? In warfare, for example, you could draw on the stupidity of crowds, and when you "bomb somebody back into the stone age" you might do it without loss of life or property.
-Loyal
That comes from observing the universe, and, particularly, from the observed fact that stars are moving away from each other in a "uniform" manner. "Uniform" is in quotes because some stars tend to clump together, e.g. in globular clusters, and galaxies. Now, there are movements that wouldn't imply a beginning. Asymptotic ones don't. However, the movements of the stars aren't any of these. At some time in the past, barring a colossal misunderstanding of physics, everything was in the same place. When that happened the gravitational field was intense. Really, really intense. One of the things Einstein found was that time moves slower the more intense the gravitational field. At the point in time in the past when everything was in the same place, time didn't progress at all. That was the beginning.
-Loyal