Do you mean flat-no-ridges, flat-not-a-sphere, or "effectively flat?" 'cause no one ever believed the first one, and the third is still in effect.
"The Sky is green."
Been smoking pot again?
"Earth is the center of the universe."
Considering the universe is expanding in every direction at FTL speeds, Earth is as good third-place choice for the center, and is a practical center if you're not doing space travel.
So, let me get this straight, Windows will become more secure if Microsoft stops issuing patches?:-)
No. If MS stops issuing patches, people will stop writing (as many) exploits.
Huh? The fact that something is made of something unhealthy that becomes downright carcinogenic when cooked and is full of diseases when not means that we are meant to eat it? This seems similar to asking "if god didn't want us to smoke cigarettes, why did he make them out of tobacco?".
How about "if God didn't want us to eat animals, then why did he make us so we can?"
Will Apple use a bit of additional money to pay back the money Microsoft invested in them back... oh, was it 5, 6, 7 years ago?
MS cashed out awhile ago. And, from what I've heard, they only bought the money because Apple forced them into a deal / settlement that gave them cash and Office for five years.
Why not? Because in the US, we don't have to prove our innocence to anyone. We're presumed innocent, until proven guilty.
And when we're accused of crimes, we then prove that we're innocent, and all is well and good.
There's a world of difference between "innocent until proven guilty" and "never have to prove anything." One is the absense of legal harm until you are proven wrong. The other is the total absence of responsibility.
If your best answer to a police officer asking you "where were you last night?" is "I don't have to prove anything to you!", then you should wind up, at the least, with obstruction of justice.
I shouldn't have to prove anything to any investigator.
Why not?
The law of the land is that we pay part of our income for our government. If you're being a jerk and hiding your money so it has no paper trail, why shouldn't you have to prove that you're not simply not paying your taxes?
Even if you keep money under your matress, you should keep a record of how MUCH you have--if nothing else, then for sound fiscal responsiblity, notwithstanding the government and insurance.
That would save me some bucks this Valentine's Day...
It shouldn't.
Let's say that, each year, you spend about 3% of your income between Valentine's Day, her birthday, and your anniversary. With a $50,000 income, that's 'just' about $500 each.
If you can get cheaper gifts, you should simply get more gifts. Instead of an apparant $500 diamond ring that you bought for $250, you could get her an apparant $1000 ring for $500.
Or, in the case of the Good Ones, instead of making the choice between a ring and an ipod, you could get her both.:)
I'm stoked that I understand that lightning is a result of static, and not God striking down his wrath...
Maybe you would be even more stoked if you understood that lightning is a result of differential charges between clouds and the surface, not the clouds and the surface rubbing up against each other.
Oh, and the lightning bolt itself isn't God's wrath. God's wrath is when a bolt 'randomly' hits YOU.
They have to keep the performance in low-end vehicles low, so that they can sell the high-end vehicles -- with the same engine -- for more.
Almost, but not quite.
While it is true that, for example, GM doesn't let any car be better than the Corvette, they don't purposefully use a different chip to turn what could be a 'vette into, say, a Tracker or a Cavalier.
There are things like how complex the engine control system is (how many points of data, how complex the hardwired software), what suspension they use, the aerodynamics of the frame itself, the weight of the car, etc, etc, that go into differentiating one car from another.
In any case, the REAL difference in price isn't about performance--it's about name. Even if they're built at the same plant, a Cadillac will have a higher price tag--and better options--than a Chevrolet.
OTOH, you're right. By sticking a different chip in my Astro's engine, and shortening the cabin, and changing the suspension, and tweaking the air/fuel systems to use a higher volume / effeciency, I COULD turn my minivan into a sports car.
But if I just stick a chip in, say, my brother's Oldsmobile, it won't suddenly perform nearly half as well as our Mom's Monte Carlo. In fact, the difference in performance will be about what you'd see if you took a timid driver out and put an agressive driver in.
Actually hardened conservative capitalists like myself see Linux as the ultimate level playing field for software development - a playing field where the best applications win, not where one company has access to underlying OS features and can freeze out competitors using predatory behavior...
Sorry, you need to turn in your "hardened conservative capitalist" card.
Greed is good, bending or breaking the rules is fine for enough profit, and all that matters is the bottom line.
Of course, I do have a nice, shiney "intelligent, reasonable capitalist" card here for you.
I still don't understand why NASA will be flying to the space station, but will not service Hubble which has done, and has the potential to do hundreds of times more science than the space station ever will.
Because we don't have a space program for scientfic achievement. We have a space program for human and national accomplishment.
Or else they don't believe, and they're just inflating the attendance rolls. It's like going to a political party and NEVER voting for their candidates.
If someone calls themselves a creed--be it Christian, Democrat, et al--then they should stand up for what that creed says, and beleive that their creed is more correct than the others. If they don't, then they're nothing more than an unabashed, misrepresenting liar.
setting aside that the omnipotent creator chooses not to just comminucate with us all in a non-ambivalent easy understood way
Actually, some schools of theological thought hold that He does, it's just that we don't pay attention to it.
Think of it this way: Divine Knowledge travels in the path of least resistance. It's easier to have a thought spontaneously appear in a mortal's head than to have sound spontaneously appear near the mortal, and so for His own reason, God uses the right-to-the-mind method.
I find it so much more believable that living a good life with good moral direction and learning all that there is to know is the right way (if there is one) than ignoring the logic that I was endowed with and blindly following the life that somebody else has picked out.
You're totally spot-on, IMO. I don't buy that whole evangelical "you must accept jesus" crap. Christ is all-knowing, likes people, and will reward or punish us for being good or bad, as such things really are, rather than the kind of brutal code that was required to keep pre-Modern societies together.
Plus, in reference to what I said earlier, most theologies allow that there are non-God spiritual entities, and there's no easy, objective, simple way to tell if a message is from one and not the other.
Why believe that the Bible is true?
Actually, I don't think that the bible is 100%, infallibly correct. I believe that it contains a self-complete guide to salvation (i.e., a ticket to the universe's ultimate kegger), but I think that it says what God wants it to say, not what is literally true. And I also believe that it's not the ONLY way through the pearly gates.
That's the biggest problem with revealed religions, you're not just having faith in God, you've got to have a lot of faith in a lot of people. I find that revolting, and I think that a God wouldn't ask that of me.
Did you mean to say "blind faith in a lot of people?" If so, I agree with you.
If not, then I shudder at the thought of NOT having faith in a bunch of people. I have faith that the police officer next to me won't try and attack me for a bribe, I have faith than the church my wife goes to is not a cult, I have faith that my job will still be there when I go in to work tomorrow, and I have faith that the vast number of people in my government won't let the President fuck up the country too much.
Oh, one more thing:
You're just as well off finding God your own way than trusting all of those generations of people.
A very, very good reason to follow one religion's tenets, even if you're not a believer in that religion, is that they constitute a social strucutre that has endured for centuries. A lot of failed American towns were founded because some nutball "found God on his own", and tried some half-baked scheme.
I agree that you should find God in your own way, and not blindly follow anyone or the tenets of any religion. But by the same token, you shouldn't dismiss the established religions out of hand; even if they're lies, they're lies that were stable enough and close enough to the Truth to endure centures and centures.
From the "believe my dogma or go to hell" perspective - which is the context of Pascal's Wager and thus of this discussion - they're different.
Only if you assume that they are, in an attempt to discredit Pascal. If you assume, as Pascal did, that there is only One God and He allows for confusion about HOW to worship him, then the wager makes sense.
Heck, Pascal's wager makes sense even if you toss out the infinite punishment bit--just so long as you can narrow mortal choice down to a binary state.
Except that atheists and agnostics don't seem to be any worse than those who follow a religious dogma. And many people have done a lot of very very bad things in the name of religious dogma.
Like subject their kids to a lengthy court battle so they won't have to pray in school? (Sorry, off-topic.)
The seeming lack of a difference between atheists and agnostics is, truthfully, made an unresearchable point by the politically and socially limited forms of data collection avaliable. The government doesn't even collection religious data--and we certainly don't have a good sample size of long-term behavior corresponding to theological beliefs.;)
If you enjoy your religion, great. (I enjoy my Zen Pagan Taoist Atheist Discordianism immensely.) But don't think it makes you more correct or in any way better than those who don't share it.
Ah, here we come to the root of the matter.
While I agree with you on the last part, I cannot agree with the former part of your statement. If one is to have a religion, they one MUST believe that their religion is more-correct than those that do not believe. Otherwise, they aren't having a religion at all--just a mere social function.
Religion has three major functions in society. The first, that of being a unifiying factor, has largely twindled in modern times as it has been replaced with other items. (It may spark up again, and depending on where you look it is alive and well.) The second is to provide an indivudal path to spiritual enlightenment, and pretty much all religions are equal in this regard.
The third part, though, is why we still have a half-dozen odd major religions. There are some very basic questions about the nature of reality that religion differs on--What is the nature of God, Is God part of Creation, Is Creation ideal or imperfect, Does God like us, etc--and when you choose a religion, you also choose how it answers those basic questions. (Feel free to substite "Allah", "Brahmain", "The Great Mother", or "the Divine" for "God" as you please.)
It is in this third part where Correctness matters, and because of it that the act of choosing a religion is fundamentally the act of saying "this religion is more correct than all the others."
There was a spot on 60 minutes last week about evangelical chritianity which accounts for about 70 million americans, Bush Jr included. They hold that everyone who has not taked Jesus (and only Jesus) as their personal savior is headed for the lake of fire.
And there are at least that many Muslims who believe that if you don't follow Mohammad and obey the five rules of Islam, you will do the same thing, Christ or no Christ.
In both cases, they're minorities--and in both cases, they're wrong.
(Do some math on that 70 million Americans number, btw. There are about 250 million Americans, 90% of which believe in God. So, out of 225 million, 70 million think that you'll go to hell if you don't personally and formally accept Christ, and 155 million don't.)
Somehow that just amuses me, that I should pay attention to anyone that arrogant and full of himself.
Amuses me, too.
I'll pay attention to the intermediary when they walk up and can conquer all of Arabia--
I mean, I'll pay attention when they can walk on water--
I mean, I'll pay attention when they can bring a plauge down from heaven and part a sea to let enslaved bretheren escape.
If you look into the mythologies of most relgions, you'll find that they DO deal with the "why should we believe that putz" line. Quite a bit, actually. (And, off the top of my head, most of the time God appealed to heads of state because people listened to them anyway.)
Slashdot Mirror
The grandparent was partly mistaken... and slightly confused
Ok, I was mistaken about the speed--but was I right about the "center"?
Microsoft thinks you are less intelligent than a nematode worm.
No. MS thinks that their program is so complex, the average office user could use a mini-AI to help them figure it out.
And they're right. Most folk who use office don't care about the program's features--they just want to get whatever they're doing done.
"The Earth is flat."
:-)
Do you mean flat-no-ridges, flat-not-a-sphere, or "effectively flat?" 'cause no one ever believed the first one, and the third is still in effect.
"The Sky is green."
Been smoking pot again?
"Earth is the center of the universe."
Considering the universe is expanding in every direction at FTL speeds, Earth is as good third-place choice for the center, and is a practical center if you're not doing space travel.
So, let me get this straight, Windows will become more secure if Microsoft stops issuing patches?
No. If MS stops issuing patches, people will stop writing (as many) exploits.
Huh? The fact that something is made of something unhealthy that becomes downright carcinogenic when cooked and is full of diseases when not means that we are meant to eat it? This seems similar to asking "if god didn't want us to smoke cigarettes, why did he make them out of tobacco?".
How about "if God didn't want us to eat animals, then why did he make us so we can?"
He said, it is something new and not yet defined, but it is not 'piracy'
It's hardly new. It's massive, anonymous, wholesale copyright infringement.
The only real question is if it is Fair Use or not--AKA "Justifiable Infringement."
Will Apple use a bit of additional money to pay back the money Microsoft invested in them back... oh, was it 5, 6, 7 years ago?
MS cashed out awhile ago. And, from what I've heard, they only bought the money because Apple forced them into a deal / settlement that gave them cash and Office for five years.
Why not? Because in the US, we don't have to prove our innocence to anyone. We're presumed innocent, until proven guilty.
And when we're accused of crimes, we then prove that we're innocent, and all is well and good.
There's a world of difference between "innocent until proven guilty" and "never have to prove anything." One is the absense of legal harm until you are proven wrong. The other is the total absence of responsibility.
If your best answer to a police officer asking you "where were you last night?" is "I don't have to prove anything to you!", then you should wind up, at the least, with obstruction of justice.
I shouldn't have to prove anything to any investigator.
Why not?
The law of the land is that we pay part of our income for our government. If you're being a jerk and hiding your money so it has no paper trail, why shouldn't you have to prove that you're not simply not paying your taxes?
Even if you keep money under your matress, you should keep a record of how MUCH you have--if nothing else, then for sound fiscal responsiblity, notwithstanding the government and insurance.
That would save me some bucks this Valentine's Day...
:)
It shouldn't.
Let's say that, each year, you spend about 3% of your income between Valentine's Day, her birthday, and your anniversary. With a $50,000 income, that's 'just' about $500 each.
If you can get cheaper gifts, you should simply get more gifts. Instead of an apparant $500 diamond ring that you bought for $250, you could get her an apparant $1000 ring for $500.
Or, in the case of the Good Ones, instead of making the choice between a ring and an ipod, you could get her both.
I'm stoked that I understand that lightning is a result of static, and not God striking down his wrath...
Maybe you would be even more stoked if you understood that lightning is a result of differential charges between clouds and the surface, not the clouds and the surface rubbing up against each other.
Oh, and the lightning bolt itself isn't God's wrath. God's wrath is when a bolt 'randomly' hits YOU.
Yes, exactly. This is probably about the only time GM does this--to make the 'vette look better.
Also remember that the Camario was a new model, and the 'vette was just an iteneration of an old model.
They have to keep the performance in low-end vehicles low, so that they can sell the high-end vehicles -- with the same engine -- for more.
Almost, but not quite.
While it is true that, for example, GM doesn't let any car be better than the Corvette, they don't purposefully use a different chip to turn what could be a 'vette into, say, a Tracker or a Cavalier.
There are things like how complex the engine control system is (how many points of data, how complex the hardwired software), what suspension they use, the aerodynamics of the frame itself, the weight of the car, etc, etc, that go into differentiating one car from another.
In any case, the REAL difference in price isn't about performance--it's about name. Even if they're built at the same plant, a Cadillac will have a higher price tag--and better options--than a Chevrolet.
OTOH, you're right. By sticking a different chip in my Astro's engine, and shortening the cabin, and changing the suspension, and tweaking the air/fuel systems to use a higher volume / effeciency, I COULD turn my minivan into a sports car.
But if I just stick a chip in, say, my brother's Oldsmobile, it won't suddenly perform nearly half as well as our Mom's Monte Carlo. In fact, the difference in performance will be about what you'd see if you took a timid driver out and put an agressive driver in.
No, they don't want you to hack your own car so that they can sell you an expensive replacement "turbo chip" to do exactly the same thing as this.
.. ... ...?
REALLY?
You mean I can buy a GM-made chip to turbocharge by Astro Minivan? Sweet!
Where was that, again?
WHAT? You mean that you don't know where I can get it? Hmm... odd, that.
Are there really?
Yes. Y'see, once you buy the books, you can game forever--it's like a chess set.
Comic books, OTOH, are a monthy investment for a small page count, and generally poor quality in art and story with little reusability.
WotC did a survey on gaming habits about four years back, and the numbers were fairly impressive then.
you open the project up to allegations of copyright infringement.
Correct, in a way. But all that means is that if MS wants to argue and scream, it takes a little bit longer to have the court shut them up.
Copyright ISN'T absolute. There's a reason why, for example, so many movies follow the same formula.
Actually hardened conservative capitalists like myself see Linux as the ultimate level playing field for software development - a playing field where the best applications win, not where one company has access to underlying OS features and can freeze out competitors using predatory behavior...
Sorry, you need to turn in your "hardened conservative capitalist" card.
Greed is good, bending or breaking the rules is fine for enough profit, and all that matters is the bottom line.
Of course, I do have a nice, shiney "intelligent, reasonable capitalist" card here for you.
The female population in North America and Europe represents a HUGE untapped market
What are you, single?
My wife uses the game consoles we have almost as much--maybe more--than me.
She isn't as GOOD at the games as I am--but that's probably because she didn't have games as much as I did when we were living at our parents' houses.
Their answer? "I forgot it was there!" And continue to curse at IE pop-ups...
;)
You left it there?
You should delegate it to at least one submenu on the start menu, and make Firefox/Mozilla the default browser.
Oddly enough, this words BETTER in XP than any previous version.
I still don't understand why NASA will be flying to the space station, but will not service Hubble which has done, and has the potential to do hundreds of times more science than the space station ever will.
Because we don't have a space program for scientfic achievement. We have a space program for human and national accomplishment.
They one MUST believe that? Or else what?
Or else they don't believe, and they're just inflating the attendance rolls. It's like going to a political party and NEVER voting for their candidates.
If someone calls themselves a creed--be it Christian, Democrat, et al--then they should stand up for what that creed says, and beleive that their creed is more correct than the others. If they don't, then they're nothing more than an unabashed, misrepresenting liar.
setting aside that the omnipotent creator chooses not to just comminucate with us all in a non-ambivalent easy understood way
Actually, some schools of theological thought hold that He does, it's just that we don't pay attention to it.
Think of it this way: Divine Knowledge travels in the path of least resistance. It's easier to have a thought spontaneously appear in a mortal's head than to have sound spontaneously appear near the mortal, and so for His own reason, God uses the right-to-the-mind method.
I find it so much more believable that living a good life with good moral direction and learning all that there is to know is the right way (if there is one) than ignoring the logic that I was endowed with and blindly following the life that somebody else has picked out.
You're totally spot-on, IMO. I don't buy that whole evangelical "you must accept jesus" crap. Christ is all-knowing, likes people, and will reward or punish us for being good or bad, as such things really are, rather than the kind of brutal code that was required to keep pre-Modern societies together.
Plus, in reference to what I said earlier, most theologies allow that there are non-God spiritual entities, and there's no easy, objective, simple way to tell if a message is from one and not the other.
Why believe that the Bible is true?
Actually, I don't think that the bible is 100%, infallibly correct. I believe that it contains a self-complete guide to salvation (i.e., a ticket to the universe's ultimate kegger), but I think that it says what God wants it to say, not what is literally true. And I also believe that it's not the ONLY way through the pearly gates.
That's the biggest problem with revealed religions, you're not just having faith in God, you've got to have a lot of faith in a lot of people. I find that revolting, and I think that a God wouldn't ask that of me.
Did you mean to say "blind faith in a lot of people?" If so, I agree with you.
If not, then I shudder at the thought of NOT having faith in a bunch of people. I have faith that the police officer next to me won't try and attack me for a bribe, I have faith than the church my wife goes to is not a cult, I have faith that my job will still be there when I go in to work tomorrow, and I have faith that the vast number of people in my government won't let the President fuck up the country too much.
Oh, one more thing:
You're just as well off finding God your own way than trusting all of those generations of people.
A very, very good reason to follow one religion's tenets, even if you're not a believer in that religion, is that they constitute a social strucutre that has endured for centuries. A lot of failed American towns were founded because some nutball "found God on his own", and tried some half-baked scheme.
I agree that you should find God in your own way, and not blindly follow anyone or the tenets of any religion. But by the same token, you shouldn't dismiss the established religions out of hand; even if they're lies, they're lies that were stable enough and close enough to the Truth to endure centures and centures.
From the "believe my dogma or go to hell" perspective - which is the context of Pascal's Wager and thus of this discussion - they're different.
;)
Only if you assume that they are, in an attempt to discredit Pascal. If you assume, as Pascal did, that there is only One God and He allows for confusion about HOW to worship him, then the wager makes sense.
Heck, Pascal's wager makes sense even if you toss out the infinite punishment bit--just so long as you can narrow mortal choice down to a binary state.
Except that atheists and agnostics don't seem to be any worse than those who follow a religious dogma. And many people have done a lot of very very bad things in the name of religious dogma.
Like subject their kids to a lengthy court battle so they won't have to pray in school? (Sorry, off-topic.)
The seeming lack of a difference between atheists and agnostics is, truthfully, made an unresearchable point by the politically and socially limited forms of data collection avaliable. The government doesn't even collection religious data--and we certainly don't have a good sample size of long-term behavior corresponding to theological beliefs.
If you enjoy your religion, great. (I enjoy my Zen Pagan Taoist Atheist Discordianism immensely.) But don't think it makes you more correct or in any way better than those who don't share it.
Ah, here we come to the root of the matter.
While I agree with you on the last part, I cannot agree with the former part of your statement. If one is to have a religion, they one MUST believe that their religion is more-correct than those that do not believe. Otherwise, they aren't having a religion at all--just a mere social function.
Religion has three major functions in society. The first, that of being a unifiying factor, has largely twindled in modern times as it has been replaced with other items. (It may spark up again, and depending on where you look it is alive and well.) The second is to provide an indivudal path to spiritual enlightenment, and pretty much all religions are equal in this regard.
The third part, though, is why we still have a half-dozen odd major religions. There are some very basic questions about the nature of reality that religion differs on--What is the nature of God, Is God part of Creation, Is Creation ideal or imperfect, Does God like us, etc--and when you choose a religion, you also choose how it answers those basic questions. (Feel free to substite "Allah", "Brahmain", "The Great Mother", or "the Divine" for "God" as you please.)
It is in this third part where Correctness matters, and because of it that the act of choosing a religion is fundamentally the act of saying "this religion is more correct than all the others."
There was a spot on 60 minutes last week about evangelical chritianity which accounts for about 70 million americans, Bush Jr included. They hold that everyone who has not taked Jesus (and only Jesus) as their personal savior is headed for the lake of fire.
And there are at least that many Muslims who believe that if you don't follow Mohammad and obey the five rules of Islam, you will do the same thing, Christ or no Christ.
In both cases, they're minorities--and in both cases, they're wrong.
(Do some math on that 70 million Americans number, btw. There are about 250 million Americans, 90% of which believe in God. So, out of 225 million, 70 million think that you'll go to hell if you don't personally and formally accept Christ, and 155 million don't.)
Somehow that just amuses me, that I should pay attention to anyone that arrogant and full of himself.
Amuses me, too.
I'll pay attention to the intermediary when they walk up and can conquer all of Arabia--
I mean, I'll pay attention when they can walk on water--
I mean, I'll pay attention when they can bring a plauge down from heaven and part a sea to let enslaved bretheren escape.
If you look into the mythologies of most relgions, you'll find that they DO deal with the "why should we believe that putz" line. Quite a bit, actually. (And, off the top of my head, most of the time God appealed to heads of state because people listened to them anyway.)
They are all made-up, most likely by someone with Schizotypal syndrome.
Sheesh. You might as well link to the Mormon church if you're looking for a balanced view.