I thought all the massive discounted purchases a few weeks before the suit was first announced were more interesting... and more likely to get someone sent to the slammer.
> PS: SCO is going down, and everybody know it (including SCO). The question is: will they drag Linux too....
It's a kamakazi attack. Remember that these people don't have any interest in SCO as a software firm. They're ambulance chasers, jackals who bought a moribund enterprise in hopes of squeezing some cash out of it and discarding the husk. If they can get the most cash by hurling it at other companies as a bomb, then that's exactly what they'll do with it.
And it appears that that is the course they decided on.
> Linux users who are interested in additional information or purchasing an IP License for Linux should contact their local SCO sales representative or call SCO at 1-800-726-8649 or visit our web site
> Why do you believe that documents obtained via discovery are unencumbered by some form of NDA?..Just because RH will get the docs doesn't mean they'll be free to publish them.
Even the U$ court $ystem isn't so fucked up that it would set up a situation where you were incapable of removing a copyright infringement.
> Darwin stated that the fossil record, incomplete and meager as it was at the time, would eventually substantiate his theory by showing the gradual progression of creatures and intermediate forms. It is now evident due to the overwhelming preponderance of fossil evidence that has been found and cataloged, that the fossil record is a dismal failure in this role of corroborating evidence.
Funny, the people who actually study it think it is an overwhelming success. Look at the historical record of the bones in your middle ear. Look at the history of whale legs. You don't have to be a guru to grok this stuff; you just need to get your information from sources other than creationist propaganda sites.
BTW, the theory of evolution neither predicts nor requires that specimens of every species will be fossilized, let alone that they will be found and catalogued by a scientist. Creationists like to point out the gaps in the fossil record as if that were a problem for science, but completely ignore the masses of fossils that we do have, for which creation can give no better explanation than "God wanted it to look like stuff evolved".
Notice in passing that "God wanted it that way" is compatible with any conceivable observation. It's a completely useless way of trying to understand the universe.
At any rate, when you've got a better explanation than evolution for all the fossils we do have, let us hear about it. The fossils we don't have are a nuissance for reconstructing all the details of biological history, but they're not a problem for the theory of evolution.
> In fact, punctuated equilibrium is a theorist's patch designed specifically to cover this gaping hole in Darwin's evidence trail.
Punk-eek, like every other scientific theory, is an attempt to explain what we do see. Patterns in the fossil record demand an explanation, and punk-eek is a reasonable attempt to explain them.
And BTW, were you aware that people who work with genetic algorithms sometimes observe punk-eek in their non-biological work? It's an unsurprising and readily comprehensible phenomenon; no conspiracy theory required. Unless of course you're a creationist who has to fall back on slinging mud at scientific theories, to distract observers from the fact that you don't have any theory of your own at all.
> I believe a soul exists. Follow the logical spiritual conclusions from there.
The only logical spiritual conclusion is that if God exists and has the powers commonly attributed to him he doesn't give a flip one way or the other whether people know about it, since he would surely have the ability to make himself known, but hasn't.
You are free to live your life without fear, whether you believe you have a soul or not.
d00d! It's gods all the way up, just like with elephants on the trip down.
> Meanwhile, 500 billion light years away, another universe is big banging its way in our own universe but past the edge of our own big bang. Aliens from that universe will never see us and we will never see them, even though we are arranged in a convenient diagnonal, if viewed 20 trillion light years from above.
d00d! I've never heard the diagonalization argument invoked in cosmology before.
> Here's how I look at the whole thing: There are too many finely-balanced things happening in the universe that coincide to allow complex systems to exist. In my opinion, saying that these phenomena are all just coincidences is too much of a stretch.
How can you possibly say that without knowing what caused them to fall out the way they did? Do you have the faintest idea what the odds are, or even what the range of possibilities was?
> I believe that someone had a direct role in their inception.
That's a major non sequitur, even if you're right about your probability guess. How come it couldn't be some boring mechanism rather than "someone"?
> This idea, while hard to comprehend
No, it's not at all hard to comprehend. Rather, it's one of Mencken's famouse "simple, neat, and wrong" answers to the problem.
> is a lot more believable to me than the idea that mankind simply "happened" over time
Curiosly enough, scientists don't believe that's what happened either.
> I defy anyone to explain to me how one species ever evolves into a completely different species.
Where's the mystery? A population of some species splits into two populations that no longer interbreed, say as a result of migration and geographic isolation, and then changes accumulate until they're different enough to be reckoned separate species. No one seems to have a problem with that simple notion unless it conflicts with their religious beliefs.
> Assuming that I'm right, and some intelligent entity did create the universe, it's pretty obvious that this entity is far beyond us in every way. "God" would be a pretty good name for this entity.
Even if it were a mindless entity, or an evil one?
> A bunch of scientists digging up monkey skulls and saying stuff like "I don't know how much ID has going for it these days" seem, to me, relatively transient and irrelevant.
It may surprise you that scientists don't reject ID for the same facile reasons that creationists reject scientists. Scientists reject ID because it's an armchair argument that incorporates lots of non sequiturs and other logical fallacies. End of story, so far as science is concerned.
Of course, ID is welcome to get their act together and try again. Unfortunately they're more interested in lobbying school boards than they are in researching ID.
> Suppose I'm wrong. I shuffle off this mortal coil someday, go to the "afterlife" (whatever that is), and find a bronze plaque hanging on a post that says "This is the end of the road. Man sprang from toads, and it was all just a big accident. Thank you, drive through." Does it really matter?
> Now, suppose I'm right... The Bible talks about a time when everyone answers to God for what they've done. If that's true, and you're standing there then saying , "Well, em, I, uh, was one of those that said you didn't exist, and that the whole universe was just an accident. Sorry about that" and I'm over on the other side of the ditch saying "Sucks to be you!"(in so many words, I probably won't actually say "sucks") Does that matter?
There's Pascal's Wager again. Did you miss our trashing of it a couple of days ago?
> I say that man uses science to invent things to try and explain God away.
That's a really bizarre conclusion, given how many scientists believe in God.
Though I don't know why I should be surprised by bizarre claims from creationists.
> This allows some the temporary comfort of thinking they don't ultimately have to answer to someone for the things they do.
Just like Christianity allows some the temporary comfort of thinking they won't ultimately have to answer to Baal for their lives, right?
> > Plenty of evidence suggests that organized religion was intentionally created as a form of mass control of the populace.
> Just for my edification, care to deliver any such evidence or summaries of such evidence? That's a very bold statement and while I am disinclined to disagree, I want to know what this is based on.
Don't know about originally, but it apparently continues to this day. Leo Strauss, godfather of the neocon movement, reportedly advocated religion as a means of controlling the masses, with only an insider clique knowing that it was all bunkum. (Some people think this is what the leading advocates of intelligent design are up to, since the Discovery Institute is apparently a branch of the neocon Center for Renewal of Science and Culture, or whatever they call it now.)
IIRC, Plato said exactly the same thing. Napoleon supposedly took approximately the same position; the PBS series about him paraphrased him as saying "Religion is great stuff for controlling the masses."
When added to the modern $SUEMEIFINAMEIT scam masquerading as religion, it's hard to avoid a conclusion that religions have been tools for manipulation throughout history. That's not to say that no one ever took religion seriously, but rather that lots have seen it as a tool for exploitation.
> > The entire science of genetics has been over a century of continuous tests of the theory of evolution. Remember that when Darwin published, Mendel still hadn't. The entire history of biological science since 1859 has been a history of validating the theory of evolution.
> That's hand-waving in the extreme. If it were true then one would be hard pressed to explain why the 100 year anniversary meeting in Denver, CO., in 1958, of Biologists had has its theme the question of the absence of proof
I wonder if you could provide some more information about this meeting; I can't seem to find anything about it on Google.
Was it a regular scientific conference? If so, which conference was it and what are the title and publisher of the proceedings, in case we want to see what the conference was about without having it filtered through a creationist mind.
Or if it wasn't a regular scientific conference, what was it, who organized it, who underwrote it, and what kind of people attended? And what exactly did the conference announcement say about its theme?
> I'm sorry, but IBM (the company that has made billions in revenue off GNU/Linux) should be floating the bill.
I agree to an extent, but from another POV it's Red Hat rather than IBM that has most to lose. A goofball ruling might have IBM handing over a few Bills, but Red Hat would go out of business altogether.
As of now, Yahoo! is showing SCOX at 11.50. It was well over 13 when I checked 4-6 hours ago. I don't recall seeing it below 12.50 since their lastest FUD manoevre a couple of weeks ago.
> This is the exact phrase that Thomas Kuhn used in his book "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions," to describe the phenomena of shifts in scientific theory. So, I am sorry if it bugs ya, but in this case it's the right phrase to use.
Actually it doesn't bug me at all... I just thought it would make a good joke because I know it does annoy a lot of other people.
Slashdot Mirror
> When they blew up the Budda statues is when I knew that their days were numbered. Karma anyone?
So let that be a lesson to those who are tempted to troll away their karma on Slashdot! The universe has a way of evening out the score.
> Why, then, didn't they give up bin Laden when we asked?
Because we didn't show them the evidence against him, just as we would have demanded of them if they wanted us to hand over one of our citizens.
OK, that was probably just an excuse on their part, but there's no reason we couldn't have observed the norms.
> Everyone knew that Taliban and Al Qaeda were in bed. That's why everyone looked at Afghanistan on September 12.
Actually, lots of people looked at Iraq first. I still remember McCain's "nuke Baghdad" comment.
And of course, certain people looked at Iraq again, even after we knew they weren't behind it.
> They send suicide bombers into Pakistan to try to murder Musharraf. They are terrorists.
So what about the CIA's assassinations? Does that mean the political parties ruling the USA when it happened were terrorist organizations too?
> Yeah, yeah spare me the "I knowed that he was guilty, he got a beard" rant. It proves nothing.
Could be worse; he might be a UNIX guru.
> Is this significant? http://biz.yahoo.com/t/s/scox.html
I thought all the massive discounted purchases a few weeks before the suit was first announced were more interesting... and more likely to get someone sent to the slammer.
> Linux code should be de-SCOed to prevent this sort of problem from continuing to flair up
Or we could just start calling it GNU/SCO, and everyone would be happy.
> Everybody should call SCO now and demand
Actually, we should all start mailing them Monopoly money, to pay for their equally fake IP.
> > Don't worry, now that the US gov's on our side
> Uhm, FYI: the US Government is _never_ on your side, no matter what side you're on.
You reckon they're saying that at Haliburton these days?
>
> I mean really, come one, what's next? Are they going to ally with the mafia and start extorting the money personally?
No, next week they'll try to shake down the Mafia for licensing fees, and then you won't have to hear any more FUD out of them.
Unless maybe you go snorkling around the Chicago docks.
> Trying to piss EVERYONE off, are we, SCO?
I heard they sent shake-down e-mail to Superman, Batman, and Darth Vader just before quitting time today.
Glad I don't live in that neck of the woods.
A regular dose of Viagra will take the bend out of your fiber.
> PS: SCO is going down, and everybody know it (including SCO). The question is: will they drag Linux too....
It's a kamakazi attack. Remember that these people don't have any interest in SCO as a software firm. They're ambulance chasers, jackals who bought a moribund enterprise in hopes of squeezing some cash out of it and discarding the husk. If they can get the most cash by hurling it at other companies as a bomb, then that's exactly what they'll do with it.
And it appears that that is the course they decided on.
> Linux users who are interested in additional information or purchasing an IP License for Linux should contact their local SCO sales representative or call SCO at 1-800-726-8649 or visit our web site
I call them "455-4013".
I think "347-5417" might be relevant as well.
> Why do you believe that documents obtained via discovery are unencumbered by some form of NDA?..Just because RH will get the docs doesn't mean they'll be free to publish them.
Even the U$ court $ystem isn't so fucked up that it would set up a situation where you were incapable of removing a copyright infringement.
> Darwin stated that the fossil record, incomplete and meager as it was at the time, would eventually substantiate his theory by showing the gradual progression of creatures and intermediate forms. It is now evident due to the overwhelming preponderance of fossil evidence that has been found and cataloged, that the fossil record is a dismal failure in this role of corroborating evidence.
Funny, the people who actually study it think it is an overwhelming success. Look at the historical record of the bones in your middle ear. Look at the history of whale legs. You don't have to be a guru to grok this stuff; you just need to get your information from sources other than creationist propaganda sites.
BTW, the theory of evolution neither predicts nor requires that specimens of every species will be fossilized, let alone that they will be found and catalogued by a scientist. Creationists like to point out the gaps in the fossil record as if that were a problem for science, but completely ignore the masses of fossils that we do have, for which creation can give no better explanation than "God wanted it to look like stuff evolved".
Notice in passing that "God wanted it that way" is compatible with any conceivable observation. It's a completely useless way of trying to understand the universe.
At any rate, when you've got a better explanation than evolution for all the fossils we do have, let us hear about it. The fossils we don't have are a nuissance for reconstructing all the details of biological history, but they're not a problem for the theory of evolution.
> In fact, punctuated equilibrium is a theorist's patch designed specifically to cover this gaping hole in Darwin's evidence trail.
Punk-eek, like every other scientific theory, is an attempt to explain what we do see. Patterns in the fossil record demand an explanation, and punk-eek is a reasonable attempt to explain them.
And BTW, were you aware that people who work with genetic algorithms sometimes observe punk-eek in their non-biological work? It's an unsurprising and readily comprehensible phenomenon; no conspiracy theory required. Unless of course you're a creationist who has to fall back on slinging mud at scientific theories, to distract observers from the fact that you don't have any theory of your own at all.
> I believe a soul exists. Follow the logical spiritual conclusions from there.
The only logical spiritual conclusion is that if God exists and has the powers commonly attributed to him he doesn't give a flip one way or the other whether people know about it, since he would surely have the ability to make himself known, but hasn't.
You are free to live your life without fear, whether you believe you have a soul or not.
> Who made SuperDuperGod?
d00d! It's gods all the way up, just like with elephants on the trip down.
> Meanwhile, 500 billion light years away, another universe is big banging its way in our own universe but past the edge of our own big bang. Aliens from that universe will never see us and we will never see them, even though we are arranged in a convenient diagnonal, if viewed 20 trillion light years from above.
d00d! I've never heard the diagonalization argument invoked in cosmology before.
> Here's how I look at the whole thing: There are too many finely-balanced things happening in the universe that coincide to allow complex systems to exist. In my opinion, saying that these phenomena are all just coincidences is too much of a stretch.
How can you possibly say that without knowing what caused them to fall out the way they did? Do you have the faintest idea what the odds are, or even what the range of possibilities was?
> I believe that someone had a direct role in their inception.
That's a major non sequitur, even if you're right about your probability guess. How come it couldn't be some boring mechanism rather than "someone"?
> This idea, while hard to comprehend
No, it's not at all hard to comprehend. Rather, it's one of Mencken's famouse "simple, neat, and wrong" answers to the problem.
> is a lot more believable to me than the idea that mankind simply "happened" over time
Curiosly enough, scientists don't believe that's what happened either.
> I defy anyone to explain to me how one species ever evolves into a completely different species.
Where's the mystery? A population of some species splits into two populations that no longer interbreed, say as a result of migration and geographic isolation, and then changes accumulate until they're different enough to be reckoned separate species. No one seems to have a problem with that simple notion unless it conflicts with their religious beliefs.
> Assuming that I'm right, and some intelligent entity did create the universe, it's pretty obvious that this entity is far beyond us in every way. "God" would be a pretty good name for this entity.
Even if it were a mindless entity, or an evil one?
> A bunch of scientists digging up monkey skulls and saying stuff like "I don't know how much ID has going for it these days" seem, to me, relatively transient and irrelevant.
It may surprise you that scientists don't reject ID for the same facile reasons that creationists reject scientists. Scientists reject ID because it's an armchair argument that incorporates lots of non sequiturs and other logical fallacies. End of story, so far as science is concerned.
Of course, ID is welcome to get their act together and try again. Unfortunately they're more interested in lobbying school boards than they are in researching ID.
> Suppose I'm wrong. I shuffle off this mortal coil someday, go to the "afterlife" (whatever that is), and find a bronze plaque hanging on a post that says "This is the end of the road. Man sprang from toads, and it was all just a big accident. Thank you, drive through." Does it really matter?
> Now, suppose I'm right... The Bible talks about a time when everyone answers to God for what they've done. If that's true, and you're standing there then saying , "Well, em, I, uh, was one of those that said you didn't exist, and that the whole universe was just an accident. Sorry about that" and I'm over on the other side of the ditch saying "Sucks to be you!"(in so many words, I probably won't actually say "sucks") Does that matter?
There's Pascal's Wager again. Did you miss our trashing of it a couple of days ago?
> I say that man uses science to invent things to try and explain God away.
That's a really bizarre conclusion, given how many scientists believe in God.
Though I don't know why I should be surprised by bizarre claims from creationists.
> This allows some the temporary comfort of thinking they don't ultimately have to answer to someone for the things they do.
Just like Christianity allows some the temporary comfort of thinking they won't ultimately have to answer to Baal for their lives, right?
> > Plenty of evidence suggests that organized religion was intentionally created as a form of mass control of the populace.
> Just for my edification, care to deliver any such evidence or summaries of such evidence? That's a very bold statement and while I am disinclined to disagree, I want to know what this is based on.
Don't know about originally, but it apparently continues to this day. Leo Strauss, godfather of the neocon movement, reportedly advocated religion as a means of controlling the masses, with only an insider clique knowing that it was all bunkum. (Some people think this is what the leading advocates of intelligent design are up to, since the Discovery Institute is apparently a branch of the neocon Center for Renewal of Science and Culture, or whatever they call it now.)
IIRC, Plato said exactly the same thing. Napoleon supposedly took approximately the same position; the PBS series about him paraphrased him as saying "Religion is great stuff for controlling the masses."
When added to the modern $SUEMEIFINAMEIT scam masquerading as religion, it's hard to avoid a conclusion that religions have been tools for manipulation throughout history. That's not to say that no one ever took religion seriously, but rather that lots have seen it as a tool for exploitation.
> > The entire science of genetics has been over a century of continuous tests of the theory of evolution. Remember that when Darwin published, Mendel still hadn't. The entire history of biological science since 1859 has been a history of validating the theory of evolution.
> That's hand-waving in the extreme. If it were true then one would be hard pressed to explain why the 100 year anniversary meeting in Denver, CO., in 1958, of Biologists had has its theme the question of the absence of proof
I wonder if you could provide some more information about this meeting; I can't seem to find anything about it on Google.
Was it a regular scientific conference? If so, which conference was it and what are the title and publisher of the proceedings, in case we want to see what the conference was about without having it filtered through a creationist mind.
Or if it wasn't a regular scientific conference, what was it, who organized it, who underwrote it, and what kind of people attended? And what exactly did the conference announcement say about its theme?
Thanks.
> I'm sorry, but IBM (the company that has made billions in revenue off GNU/Linux) should be floating the bill.
I agree to an extent, but from another POV it's Red Hat rather than IBM that has most to lose. A goofball ruling might have IBM handing over a few Bills, but Red Hat would go out of business altogether.
As of now, Yahoo! is showing SCOX at 11.50. It was well over 13 when I checked 4-6 hours ago. I don't recall seeing it below 12.50 since their lastest FUD manoevre a couple of weeks ago.
> > The next paradigm shift is that we'll stop using the phrase "paradigm shift"
> pfft, that's like never hearing "think outside the box" again.
If people would think outside the box they could avoid using those jaded prases.
> This is the exact phrase that Thomas Kuhn used in his book "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions," to describe the phenomena of shifts in scientific theory. So, I am sorry if it bugs ya, but in this case it's the right phrase to use.
Actually it doesn't bug me at all... I just thought it would make a good joke because I know it does annoy a lot of other people.