The difference is that science tries to explain more complex phenomena in terms of less complex components. An omnipotent eternal intelligent creator capable of designing and manifesting our entire universe strikes me as a phenomenon more complex than the phenomenon it is trying to explain.
I promise to give Intelligent Design my full attention when one of its supporters can explain to me where the purported designer came from. If it was created by a meta-designer, where did *that* come from?
Show me how you can call ID an "explanation" rather than an exercise in infinite logical regression, and I'll consider it.
Actually it might provide just the opposite. Robots are a lot less likely to contaminate Mars with Terran microbes. It's effectively impossible to keep a manned mission from dropping a few microbes onto the surface. And once that happens, you'll forever after be wondering whether any further evidence of life is just some Terran bug making a go of it. Not likely, but also not a good thing for biologists to have to worry about.
Alas, my burner is unreliable on reused disks. And with disks so cheap, it's going to be a long time before consumables costs equal the cost of upgrading.:)
I'd love an emulator, though. It rather amazes me that there aren't several out there.
First, it's ten bucks a month. For radio. That you need your computer to listen to. I'd get XM or Sirius first.
Not just radio (though there are lots of good radio feeds). You can also listen on demand to specific songs, or build playlists and listen to those. When it's 3am and I will die unless I hear "Planet Claire" by the B-52s in the next 30 seconds, Rhapsody is there for me.:)
Second, the deal-killer for me :
Windows XP, Me, 2000, 98 SE or NT 4.0 Service Pack 6
Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0 or later
Seriously, they can't do it without IE5 ?
It's a shame they're Windows-only, I agree. I'm not sure why they have an IE dependency; the client app runs standalone.
You know what I find amusing? The "burn to CD" feature. Why do record companies have no problem with a "burn to CD" feature, but don't want you to "burn to HD" ? What's the difference between one unencumbered AIFF file and another ? Putting it on a CD makes it less likely to be copied ? What's the thinking there? And hey, how many of those can you really 'burn to CD' ?
Tell me about it! I alternately laugh and fume as I burn songs to CD, then rip them, then throw away the CD. It's an annoying waste of time, but blank CDs are dirt cheap. I'm just hoping that whatever twist of lawyerly logic allows burning of unencumbered CD tracks doesn't change.
I don't use any online music service, but it seems like the music industry needs to face facts- the vast majority of consumers have said they don't want to 'rent' music. The industry needs to deal with that. We don't mind our music being files, but we want to own those files, and take them with us when we leave our computers.
Amen, with the proviso that I am happy to also rent access to a large on-demand library.
I don't know about this. I am a blissful user of the Listen Rhapsody service, and have been for a couple of years. I get all-you-can-stream on-demand access to a huge music library for a small flat fee; most tracks can also be burned to CD for 80 cents each. Since getting on Rhapsody, I haven't acquired digital music from any illegal source.
I often wonder why Rhapsody seems to be effectively invisible in the great online music debate; it seems to solve so many problems so well.
I once came upon a stuffed tiger at an outdoor show, and my first reaction was "Oh, crap that's huge, run away". Before I even fully registered what I was seeing my brain was already looking for an exit.
The creatures without that reflex died out quite a long time ago. The two things you can say without much doubt about all of your ancestors is that they had good survival reflexes and enjoyed f-, ahem, reproduction.
The best protection for ISPs is their common carrier status. They are not liable for content passing through them, just like the phone company or the postal service are not liable if you plan a murder by phone or mail; they carry everything blindly, and hence are not presumed to be responsible for any of it.
When you dent the common-carrier status of ISPs, they become more legally vulnerable, not less.
I agree it's not an ideal system. I agree it's not perfect. I agree some non-porn sites will mistakenly end up on the list. I agree there are better alternatives out there (though, as many parents evidently don't know of them, "better" is obviously a relative term).
So we're supposed to compensate for parental ignorance by imposing new controls on the middlemen? Why not compensate for ignorance with education instead?
Anything that tries to regulate content flow on intermediate nodes of the net (and any requirements imposed on ISPs qualify) makes me profoundly nervous. All the regulation you want is available at the client; don't push all of society onto a slippery slope because some parents can't be bothered to do their jobs properly.
I agree that only seeing the sites you want to see is a good thing, but why in the world involve the ISPs? This is like requiring taxi companies to refuse to take you to a list of restaurants you don't like. If you don't want to go there, don't go there! If you don't want your kids to go there, don't let them! If you want help not letting them, install one of the many parental control packages!
Doesn't anybody take personal responsibility for anything anymore?
I'm as big a fan of space exploration as anyone, but I'm not willing to fund it by threatening people with violence if they won't cough up the dough. If you're wondering where the "violence" comes in, just ponder the nature of taxation for a minute.
Dead on. My own metric for whether I think the government should spend money on something is whether I personally would be willing to strap on a gun and go to each of my neighbors, demanding that they pay their share of the cost of that something or be shot right there. If I'm willing to authorize my government to do it on my behalf, that's ethically the same as being willing to do it myself.
That being said, for me, space exploration passes that test. In my view space exploration is essential to our long-term survival as a species. Therefore it is a legitimate interest of our government, and worth coercing resources to implement.
Damn. All this time I've been crowing about running Win2k, the best OS ever to ooze out of Redmond. But the stupid thing is missing Reversi! I knew there had to be a catch.
Exactly. I once read a cost analysis that showed that if lead could be magically turned into gold on the space station, it wouldn't be worth the shipping costs to send lead up and bring gold back.
Which kind of sums up why we don't have much of a presence in space.
The discoverers accidentally found a vulnerability. That sort of thing happens routinely. My point regards the wisdom of not widely advertising that vulnerability, on the theory that others are unlikely to encounter it on their own.
If you discover that I've left my car unlocked, I would much prefer that you not festoon it with a large orange banner saying "THIS CAR IS UNLOCKED".
People are always saying that, but it just isn't true. Relying only on obscurity for security is probably a bad idea, but as part of a complete security solution, it can be very helpful.
People will not successfully exploit a vulnerability they do not know about, or attack a system they do not know is there. Even if some fraction of people are in the know, you've reduced your potential attacker count by the fraction of them who are not in the know.
This is known as the "God of the Gaps" approach; God is assigned responsibility for whatever science can't currently explain. As you point out, the problem with this approach is that God keep shrinking as the gaps get filled in.
This is a highly classified military system. "Unknown anomaly" is secret-engineering-ese for "We could tell you, but then we'd have to kill you." Seriously, how much sense would it make to advertise the recipes for system-crippling failure modes? The more you know about the guts of a complex weapon system, the easier it is to sabotage or counter it.
The Earth's rotation causes a 20-kilometre bulge at the equator, making Chimborazo volcano in Ecuador the highest mountain above sea level.
That bulge happens to the oceans as well. The definition of "height above sea level" is with reference to sea level at the given latitude. So Everest is still the winner for tallest mountain if you measure height above sea level, at just over 29,000 feet.
However, there are two other reasonable ways to measure the height of a mountain. You can measure the radial distance from the center of the Earth to the summit. This is the one that makes Chimborazo a winner, since the equatorial bulge counts for this measurement.
You can also measure from the height of the surrounding terrain. This is obviously trickier, since the surrounding terrain is seldom entirely flat. But it happens that there is an unambiguous winner in this category, too: Mauna Kea, the tallest peak on the big island of Hawaii. All of that island is in fact a large volcano rising from the depths of the Pacific Ocean; the overall height from base to peak (including the submerged part) is over 33,000 feet.
This site provides a nice summary of the data, with references.
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The difference is that science tries to explain more complex phenomena in terms of less complex components. An omnipotent eternal intelligent creator capable of designing and manifesting our entire universe strikes me as a phenomenon more complex than the phenomenon it is trying to explain.
I promise to give Intelligent Design my full attention when one of its supporters can explain to me where the purported designer came from. If it was created by a meta-designer, where did *that* come from?
Show me how you can call ID an "explanation" rather than an exercise in infinite logical regression, and I'll consider it.
Actually it might provide just the opposite. Robots are a lot less likely to contaminate Mars with Terran microbes. It's effectively impossible to keep a manned mission from dropping a few microbes onto the surface. And once that happens, you'll forever after be wondering whether any further evidence of life is just some Terran bug making a go of it. Not likely, but also not a good thing for biologists to have to worry about.
Alas, my burner is unreliable on reused disks. And with disks so cheap, it's going to be a long time before consumables costs equal the cost of upgrading. :)
I'd love an emulator, though. It rather amazes me that there aren't several out there.
I don't know about this. I am a blissful user of the Listen Rhapsody service, and have been for a couple of years. I get all-you-can-stream on-demand access to a huge music library for a small flat fee; most tracks can also be burned to CD for 80 cents each. Since getting on Rhapsody, I haven't acquired digital music from any illegal source.
I often wonder why Rhapsody seems to be effectively invisible in the great online music debate; it seems to solve so many problems so well.
Point taken. I hope all of mine enjoyed it as much as I do, though. Doing it without enjoying it seems so wasteful. :)
I once came upon a stuffed tiger at an outdoor show, and my first reaction was "Oh, crap that's huge, run away". Before I even fully registered what I was seeing my brain was already looking for an exit.
The creatures without that reflex died out quite a long time ago. The two things you can say without much doubt about all of your ancestors is that they had good survival reflexes and enjoyed f-, ahem, reproduction.
I picked just absolutely the worst possible week to re-read Lovecraft's "At the Mountains of Madness", didn't I?
The best protection for ISPs is their common carrier status. They are not liable for content passing through them, just like the phone company or the postal service are not liable if you plan a murder by phone or mail; they carry everything blindly, and hence are not presumed to be responsible for any of it.
When you dent the common-carrier status of ISPs, they become more legally vulnerable, not less.
I agree it's not an ideal system. I agree it's not perfect. I agree some non-porn sites will mistakenly end up on the list. I agree there are better alternatives out there (though, as many parents evidently don't know of them, "better" is obviously a relative term).
So we're supposed to compensate for parental ignorance by imposing new controls on the middlemen? Why not compensate for ignorance with education instead?
Anything that tries to regulate content flow on intermediate nodes of the net (and any requirements imposed on ISPs qualify) makes me profoundly nervous. All the regulation you want is available at the client; don't push all of society onto a slippery slope because some parents can't be bothered to do their jobs properly.
I agree that only seeing the sites you want to see is a good thing, but why in the world involve the ISPs? This is like requiring taxi companies to refuse to take you to a list of restaurants you don't like. If you don't want to go there, don't go there! If you don't want your kids to go there, don't let them! If you want help not letting them, install one of the many parental control packages!
Doesn't anybody take personal responsibility for anything anymore?
That being said, for me, space exploration passes that test. In my view space exploration is essential to our long-term survival as a species. Therefore it is a legitimate interest of our government, and worth coercing resources to implement.
No, even though both remaining WebTV boxes were infected.
I responded to this in my journal.
Damn. All this time I've been crowing about running Win2k, the best OS ever to ooze out of Redmond. But the stupid thing is missing Reversi! I knew there had to be a catch.
Exactly. I once read a cost analysis that showed that if lead could be magically turned into gold on the space station, it wouldn't be worth the shipping costs to send lead up and bring gold back.
Which kind of sums up why we don't have much of a presence in space.
That would be a "duolith", then.
The discoverers accidentally found a vulnerability. That sort of thing happens routinely. My point regards the wisdom of not widely advertising that vulnerability, on the theory that others are unlikely to encounter it on their own.
If you discover that I've left my car unlocked, I would much prefer that you not festoon it with a large orange banner saying "THIS CAR IS UNLOCKED".
People are always saying that, but it just isn't true. Relying only on obscurity for security is probably a bad idea, but as part of a complete security solution, it can be very helpful.
People will not successfully exploit a vulnerability they do not know about, or attack a system they do not know is there. Even if some fraction of people are in the know, you've reduced your potential attacker count by the fraction of them who are not in the know.
It's a standard metric potato-size. Unfortunately, NASA's contractors inadvertantly prepared for Imperial potato-sized rocks, hence the wheel jam.
This is known as the "God of the Gaps" approach; God is assigned responsibility for whatever science can't currently explain. As you point out, the problem with this approach is that God keep shrinking as the gaps get filled in.
I am begining to believe Asimov's 'The Marching Morons' is, in fact nonfiction...
Not Asimov, but rather C. M. Kornbluth. Quite a scary story.
This is a highly classified military system. "Unknown anomaly" is secret-engineering-ese for "We could tell you, but then we'd have to kill you." Seriously, how much sense would it make to advertise the recipes for system-crippling failure modes? The more you know about the guts of a complex weapon system, the easier it is to sabotage or counter it.
However, there are two other reasonable ways to measure the height of a mountain. You can measure the radial distance from the center of the Earth to the summit. This is the one that makes Chimborazo a winner, since the equatorial bulge counts for this measurement.
You can also measure from the height of the surrounding terrain. This is obviously trickier, since the surrounding terrain is seldom entirely flat. But it happens that there is an unambiguous winner in this category, too: Mauna Kea, the tallest peak on the big island of Hawaii. All of that island is in fact a large volcano rising from the depths of the Pacific Ocean; the overall height from base to peak (including the submerged part) is over 33,000 feet.
This site provides a nice summary of the data, with references.