Do you really think you're the prime market Microsoft is shooting for? You're an early adopter and you love your iPod. Maybe they'll be content to go after the 90+ percent of the population that doesn't already own an iPod. They could have an enormously popular and profitable product without making a single convert.
I did back up my claim. I gave two clear, unambiguous reasons why I have concluded that intelligent design is anti-scientific ideology. These are the basis for my claim.
You said that if I "make any sort of assertion" that I should "be ready to back it up." I have.
Now the ball is in the court of the IDers. Present the proof that your assertions are even worthy of the term "scientific," let alone proof of the "theory" itself and I will be forced to reconsider my assertion that ID is anti-scientific ideology.
I have no burden to prove intelligent design is wrong. If I say that your grandmother assassinated President Kennedy neither you nor your grandmother have the burden of proving me wrong. I have the burden of proving that I'm right.
Likewise, nobody has any burden to prove any theory wrong. A theory's proponents have the burden of proving it correct. I don't believe that studying whether we were put here by aliens is anti-scientific ideology and your conclusion that I would is unjustified. If you have evidence that leads you to believe that aliens put us here, by all means please let me and the rest of the world see it. If it is is credible it could lead to one of the most exciting and profound scientific breakthroughs in history.
I have good reasons to assert that intelligent design is an anti-scientific ideology. Here are just two of them.
In order for a theory to be scientific, it must falsifiable.
In all of my readings on intelligent design I have never seen any of its proponents say how it could be proven false.
In order for a theory to be scientific, it must make predictions that can be tested.
I've never seen any testable predictions made by ID proponents. (Despite ID proponents' assertions to the contrary, the theory of evolution makes numerous predictions, they've been tested, and have so far been been proven.)
So you see, I didn't call ID an anti-scientific ideology because it doesn't fit into some preconceived notion of mine. I did so because I have never seen these two simple, universally accepted, prerequisites of a scientific theory addressed by intelligent design advocates.
If you can point out to me where these two key points have been adequately addressed I will have to reconsider my judgment that intelligent design is an anti-scientific ideology.
Congratulations. You've managed to get reality exactly wrong. The assumption that the laws of physics will stay the same is the result of years of observing, theorizing, studying and testing. The interlocking evidence that has been observed repeatedly across different disciplines and over centuries leads sober, reasonable and intelligent people to conclude that certain phenonomena are governed by "laws" that appear to be unchanging.
If, on the other hand, you're a theist who believes that the laws of physics are set by an ominipotent god, then you believe he can suspend the laws of physics at will. There's no reason to believe he hasn't in the past and will do so in the future at any time. Indeed, the Bible asserts that god has indeed suspended the laws of the universe on numerous occasions.
Is this not written in the Book of the Just? The sun stood still in the middle of the sky and delayed its setting for almost a whole day (making one day into almost two). There was never a day like that before or since, when God obeyed the voice of a man, for God was fighting for Israel." (Joshua 10:12-14)
Rational people have every reason to believe the sun will rise and set on schedule tomorrow. Christians and Jews can't be so sure.
Elect scientists and engineers? No thanks. Of course there will always be exceptions but scientists and especially engineers are among the dumbest smart people I have ever encountered. In my experience engineers have a greater tendency than people in many other fields to be arrogant and overconfident in their ability in matters outside their areas of expertise. The ranks of intelligent design advocates are filled with aerospace engineers who think they are qualified to render scientifically valid critiques on genetics and geology. One of the reasons computers are so hard to use is that programmers think they can design user interfaces. Remember the Engineer's Code:
Rule #1: Whatever I don't understand is unimportant. Rule #2: I understand everything so rule #1 never applies.
"Since intelligent design is an ideology, then opposition to ID is also an ideology"
Incorrect.
Intelligent design is an anti-scientific ideology. The opposite of anti-science is science. The only "ideology" of science, if you want to call it that, is to go where the evidence leads you, no matter how unsettling, disruptive or embarrasing the truth may turn out to be.
If you owned a gun and somebody stole it, killed someone with it, and then returned it to your house all before you realized it was missing, you'd still be innocent of the murder. And if the prosecution connected your gun to the crime the burden of proof would still be on themn to prove that you had committed or aided in the committing of the crime.
But if I were you I'd sure as hell hope I had an airtight alibi for where I was and what I was doing when the crime was committed.
When the checkout chick at Linens 'n Things asks me for my phone number I always answer, "What's the use? You'll never call me. You never do. I wait by the phone night after night hoping and praying but it never rings. Stop teasing me."
In general, when you want to achieve something desireable, you should get the government to take money from some people and give the money to other people. This way the state engineers human behavior to ends the wisest of us deem are most desireable, rather than just letting people do what they think is in their own best interests.
I'm curious however, that since technology products like integrated circuits, batteries and computers have lots of hidden pollution costs related to both their manufacture and their safe disposal, why those silicon valley geniuses didn't propose taxing them.
"even orders of magnitude speed up won't have strong AI systems any time soon"
Exactly.
How can intelligent people think that AI is primarily a hardware problem? If it were a hardware problem then AI would already exist. It would just be way too slow to be practical or to pass the Turing test in real time. If we use Moore's law as an (admittedly rough) approximation of increases in computing power then in 15 years computers are only going to be about a thousand times more powerful than they are now. If all we need is faster hardware than we should be able to do now much of what we'll do then, just at one one-thousandth the speed.
The truth is, AI is really a virtually intractable software problem. We don't know how to artificially turn data and information into thoughts. I don't think anyone has the foggiest idea. Ultra-fast hardware will enable us to make ever more realistic versions of the famous "AI" therapist Eliza. The grammar parsing can be better and the lookup databases larger and larger. But what's the jumping off point for true AI?
Can you have real artificial intelligence without artificial consciousness? If so, what would such an intelligence be like and how useful would it truly be? If AI does mean AC, then at what point will the consciousness arise? Is there one last circuit, one last algorithm, one last something that's the tipping point?
Science fiction overestimates technological change and underestimates cultural change. That's one reason 1950s science fiction movies had us on Mars and beyond in the 70s and 80s but usually assumed all-male crews. I think this Pearson guy fits that mold.
Yeah, and flying one plane full of innocent Americans into a building would ruin the futures of of the people who did it too. I guess that's why no Muslim fanatics have ever done that.
Not in America, dude. In UK English collective nouns are indeed treated as plurals. But in American English they generally aren't.
UK: "Microsoft have come out with a new way to screw consumers.
US: "Microsoft has come out with a new way to screw consumers.
./: "Micro$oft suxxors!"
I still prefer Windows to Linux because Windows is crappy in areas that are easier to understand and deal with than the areas in which Linux is crappy. If you don't want to spend an inordinate amount of your life learning computer stuff, you're better of with Windows or the Mac.
That being said, Microsoft is still in a real bind. The current versions of Windows are simply "good enough" for everything most people want to do. It's hard to imagine a really compelling reason to upgrade to Vista. Sure, new machines will come with it, but if the DRM, phoning home, forced upgrades and the like get too onerous even people who think Linux was the kid with the blanket in Peanuts are going to start asking if there are alternatives to Windows. As arcane and unfriendly as Linux is now, it will only get better over time. If Microsoft overplays its hand retailers like Walmart will revisit the idea of avoiding the Microsoft tax by selling machines with Linux pre-installed.
In related news, I just saw on the Walmart site that they've finally gotten hip to the idea that monitors outlive computers and that a lot of people want to buy a new computer without paying for a monitor they don't need. They're offering 16 machines with no monitors. Hmmm. Letting people buy computers without making them pay for things they don't want and don't need. What a concept!
HDTV is digital and all of those megabits require a ton of processing power. Did you RFTA? They're talking 7680 x 4320 pixels, which is more than 33 megapixels per frame. At just 30 frames a second and say 24 bit color with even a 99% compression rate that's still 240 megabits per second.
Where did you get the crazy idea that Moore's law doesn't apply to TV resolution? Why is it we can now buy HDTVs for less than $1K and we couldn't buy them at any price 25 years ago? There are a number of factors but here's the most significant one: Moore's law.
The article says we might start to see these UHDTV sets in about 25 years. Although SDTV can be said to have started in the 1920s or 30s practically speaking it's about 55 or so years old as the transition to high definition picks up steam. (2006 will be the first year more high definition sets than standard definition sets are sold in the US.) With the rate of technological change and Moore's law it seems reasonable to me that the next generation will arrive in about half the time SDTV lasted.
It's going to cost $29 a month. Like a lot of services they'll offer a free trial, in this case for six months.
Saying this network is free is like saying that Crest toothpaste is free because Procter and Gamble mailed you a free sample--or saying that cars are free because the salesperson offers you a free test drive.
The problem of people calling the computer "the hard drive" isn't necessarily caused only by instructors. A friend of mine who never took a lesson in her life did that--even after she had acquired enough skill to swap out memory chips and install hard drives!
I think people do this mostly because they see the computer as an undifferentiated glob. They put some photos "in the computer." Then when they can't find them, a computer-savvy friend asks, "Where on your hard drive did you put them?" So the noob things that "hard drive" must be a synonym for "computer." People just pick up jargon in a haphazard way. I've heard the term "upload" used on a local news report when obviously they were talking about copying a file from a floppy. Similarly, I hear people talk about "booting" a program. They hear the term "boot" to refer to the computer startup process and then assume it's the computerese term for "start".
Jargon has always baffled the uninitiated. It always will.
You are wrong. Instead of complaining that I was being sanctimonious you should have agreed with me that the writer was incorrect. My post was not ambiguous. You were wrong again.
You mistook my insistence on competent writing as misanthropic because you yourself are not a competent writer. Thus you felt hurt and got defensive.
If your native tongue is other than English, then ignore this. But if you're a native English speaker you should have proofread your piece before posting it. "Mr. Hogan both denies the charges as well as claims he already owns the movie on DVD." What you wrote says that Hogan denies that he owns the movie on DVD. The article says Hogan says he does own the movie on DVD. So you should have written something like "Mr. Hogan denies the charges and claims he already owns the movie on DVD."
And please, save the "grammar Nazi" posts. If you can appreciate that writing clear code is worthwhile you should agree that expresssing yourself well in English is also worthwhile.
I really don't think it's revisionism. I think it's ignorance. For the last couple of decades teaching has attracted more and more undergrads well below the 50th percentile in their graduating classes. I've known and spoken with a number of teachers. Their ignorance is blood-curdling.
Slashdot Mirror
"MS has bundled their software music player with Windows, which is illegal in and of itself."
Says who?
Have they been indicted or sued by the Justice Department for bundling Windows Media Player yet? If not, when do you expect that to happen?
They also bundle Internet Explorer and WordPad. Are they illegal too?
Do you really think you're the prime market Microsoft is shooting for? You're an early adopter and you love your iPod. Maybe they'll be content to go after the 90+ percent of the population that doesn't already own an iPod. They could have an enormously popular and profitable product without making a single convert.
I did back up my claim. I gave two clear, unambiguous reasons why I have concluded that intelligent design is anti-scientific ideology. These are the basis for my claim.
You said that if I "make any sort of assertion" that I should "be ready to back it up." I have.
Now the ball is in the court of the IDers. Present the proof that your assertions are even worthy of the term "scientific," let alone proof of the "theory" itself and I will be forced to reconsider my assertion that ID is anti-scientific ideology.
Touché.
I have no burden to prove intelligent design is wrong. If I say that your grandmother assassinated President Kennedy neither you nor your grandmother have the burden of proving me wrong. I have the burden of proving that I'm right.
Likewise, nobody has any burden to prove any theory wrong. A theory's proponents have the burden of proving it correct. I don't believe that studying whether we were put here by aliens is anti-scientific ideology and your conclusion that I would is unjustified. If you have evidence that leads you to believe that aliens put us here, by all means please let me and the rest of the world see it. If it is is credible it could lead to one of the most exciting and profound scientific breakthroughs in history.
I have good reasons to assert that intelligent design is an anti-scientific ideology. Here are just two of them.
In order for a theory to be scientific, it must falsifiable.
In all of my readings on intelligent design I have never seen any of its proponents say how it could be proven false.
In order for a theory to be scientific, it must make predictions that can be tested.
I've never seen any testable predictions made by ID proponents. (Despite ID proponents' assertions to the contrary, the theory of evolution makes numerous predictions, they've been tested, and have so far been been proven.)
So you see, I didn't call ID an anti-scientific ideology because it doesn't fit into some preconceived notion of mine. I did so because I have never seen these two simple, universally accepted, prerequisites of a scientific theory addressed by intelligent design advocates.
If you can point out to me where these two key points have been adequately addressed I will have to reconsider my judgment that intelligent design is an anti-scientific ideology.
Congratulations. You've managed to get reality exactly wrong. The assumption that the laws of physics will stay the same is the result of years of observing, theorizing, studying and testing. The interlocking evidence that has been observed repeatedly across different disciplines and over centuries leads sober, reasonable and intelligent people to conclude that certain phenonomena are governed by "laws" that appear to be unchanging.
If, on the other hand, you're a theist who believes that the laws of physics are set by an ominipotent god, then you believe he can suspend the laws of physics at will. There's no reason to believe he hasn't in the past and will do so in the future at any time. Indeed, the Bible asserts that god has indeed suspended the laws of the universe on numerous occasions.
Is this not written in the Book of the Just? The sun stood still in the middle of the sky and delayed its setting for almost a whole day (making one day into almost two). There was never a day like that before or since, when God obeyed the voice of a man, for God was fighting for Israel." (Joshua 10:12-14)
Rational people have every reason to believe the sun will rise and set on schedule tomorrow. Christians and Jews can't be so sure.
Elect scientists and engineers? No thanks. Of course there will always be exceptions but scientists and especially engineers are among the dumbest smart people I have ever encountered. In my experience engineers have a greater tendency than people in many other fields to be arrogant and overconfident in their ability in matters outside their areas of expertise. The ranks of intelligent design advocates are filled with aerospace engineers who think they are qualified to render scientifically valid critiques on genetics and geology. One of the reasons computers are so hard to use is that programmers think they can design user interfaces. Remember the Engineer's Code:
Rule #1: Whatever I don't understand is unimportant.
Rule #2: I understand everything so rule #1 never applies.
"Since intelligent design is an ideology, then opposition to ID is also an ideology"
Incorrect.
Intelligent design is an anti-scientific ideology. The opposite of anti-science is science. The only "ideology" of science, if you want to call it that, is to go where the evidence leads you, no matter how unsettling, disruptive or embarrasing the truth may turn out to be.
And slashdotters will still be overclocking the sumbitch.
If you owned a gun and somebody stole it, killed someone with it, and then returned it to your house all before you realized it was missing, you'd still be innocent of the murder. And if the prosecution connected your gun to the crime the burden of proof would still be on themn to prove that you had committed or aided in the committing of the crime.
But if I were you I'd sure as hell hope I had an airtight alibi for where I was and what I was doing when the crime was committed.
When the checkout chick at Linens 'n Things asks me for my phone number I always answer, "What's the use? You'll never call me. You never do. I wait by the phone night after night hoping and praying but it never rings. Stop teasing me."
In general, when you want to achieve something desireable, you should get the government to take money from some people and give the money to other people. This way the state engineers human behavior to ends the wisest of us deem are most desireable, rather than just letting people do what they think is in their own best interests.
I'm curious however, that since technology products like integrated circuits, batteries and computers have lots of hidden pollution costs related to both their manufacture and their safe disposal, why those silicon valley geniuses didn't propose taxing them.
"even orders of magnitude speed up won't have strong AI systems any time soon"
Exactly.
How can intelligent people think that AI is primarily a hardware problem? If it were a hardware problem then AI would already exist. It would just be way too slow to be practical or to pass the Turing test in real time. If we use Moore's law as an (admittedly rough) approximation of increases in computing power then in 15 years computers are only going to be about a thousand times more powerful than they are now. If all we need is faster hardware than we should be able to do now much of what we'll do then, just at one one-thousandth the speed.
The truth is, AI is really a virtually intractable software problem. We don't know how to artificially turn data and information into thoughts. I don't think anyone has the foggiest idea. Ultra-fast hardware will enable us to make ever more realistic versions of the famous "AI" therapist Eliza. The grammar parsing can be better and the lookup databases larger and larger. But what's the jumping off point for true AI?
Can you have real artificial intelligence without artificial consciousness? If so, what would such an intelligence be like and how useful would it truly be? If AI does mean AC, then at what point will the consciousness arise? Is there one last circuit, one last algorithm, one last something that's the tipping point?
Science fiction overestimates technological change and underestimates cultural change. That's one reason 1950s science fiction movies had us on Mars and beyond in the 70s and 80s but usually assumed all-male crews. I think this Pearson guy fits that mold.
Yeah, and flying one plane full of innocent Americans into a building would ruin the futures of of the people who did it too. I guess that's why no Muslim fanatics have ever done that.
Not in America, dude. In UK English collective nouns are indeed treated as plurals. But in American English they generally aren't.
UK: "Microsoft have come out with a new way to screw consumers.US: "Microsoft has come out with a new way to screw consumers.
./: "Micro$oft suxxors!"
I still prefer Windows to Linux because Windows is crappy in areas that are easier to understand and deal with than the areas in which Linux is crappy. If you don't want to spend an inordinate amount of your life learning computer stuff, you're better of with Windows or the Mac.
That being said, Microsoft is still in a real bind. The current versions of Windows are simply "good enough" for everything most people want to do. It's hard to imagine a really compelling reason to upgrade to Vista. Sure, new machines will come with it, but if the DRM, phoning home, forced upgrades and the like get too onerous even people who think Linux was the kid with the blanket in Peanuts are going to start asking if there are alternatives to Windows. As arcane and unfriendly as Linux is now, it will only get better over time. If Microsoft overplays its hand retailers like Walmart will revisit the idea of avoiding the Microsoft tax by selling machines with Linux pre-installed.
In related news, I just saw on the Walmart site that they've finally gotten hip to the idea that monitors outlive computers and that a lot of people want to buy a new computer without paying for a monitor they don't need. They're offering 16 machines with no monitors. Hmmm. Letting people buy computers without making them pay for things they don't want and don't need. What a concept!
HDTV is digital and all of those megabits require a ton of processing power. Did you RFTA? They're talking 7680 x 4320 pixels, which is more than 33 megapixels per frame. At just 30 frames a second and say 24 bit color with even a 99% compression rate that's still 240 megabits per second.
Where did you get the crazy idea that Moore's law doesn't apply to TV resolution? Why is it we can now buy HDTVs for less than $1K and we couldn't buy them at any price 25 years ago? There are a number of factors but here's the most significant one: Moore's law.
The article says we might start to see these UHDTV sets in about 25 years. Although SDTV can be said to have started in the 1920s or 30s practically speaking it's about 55 or so years old as the transition to high definition picks up steam. (2006 will be the first year more high definition sets than standard definition sets are sold in the US.) With the rate of technological change and Moore's law it seems reasonable to me that the next generation will arrive in about half the time SDTV lasted.
It's going to cost $29 a month. Like a lot of services they'll offer a free trial, in this case for six months.
Saying this network is free is like saying that Crest toothpaste is free because Procter and Gamble mailed you a free sample--or saying that cars are free because the salesperson offers you a free test drive.
HP is a sewer of incompetence and dishonesty. They screwed me once. I'll never do business with them again. Caveat emptor.
The problem of people calling the computer "the hard drive" isn't necessarily caused only by instructors. A friend of mine who never took a lesson in her life did that--even after she had acquired enough skill to swap out memory chips and install hard drives!
I think people do this mostly because they see the computer as an undifferentiated glob. They put some photos "in the computer." Then when they can't find them, a computer-savvy friend asks, "Where on your hard drive did you put them?" So the noob things that "hard drive" must be a synonym for "computer." People just pick up jargon in a haphazard way. I've heard the term "upload" used on a local news report when obviously they were talking about copying a file from a floppy. Similarly, I hear people talk about "booting" a program. They hear the term "boot" to refer to the computer startup process and then assume it's the computerese term for "start".
Jargon has always baffled the uninitiated. It always will.
You are wrong. Instead of complaining that I was being sanctimonious you should have agreed with me that the writer was incorrect. My post was not ambiguous. You were wrong again.
You mistook my insistence on competent writing as misanthropic because you yourself are not a competent writer. Thus you felt hurt and got defensive.
You are wrong on both counts. The sentence is not gramatically correct. And precise grammar and precise spelling are never optional.
If your native tongue is other than English, then ignore this. But if you're a native English speaker you should have proofread your piece before posting it. "Mr. Hogan both denies the charges as well as claims he already owns the movie on DVD." What you wrote says that Hogan denies that he owns the movie on DVD. The article says Hogan says he does own the movie on DVD. So you should have written something like "Mr. Hogan denies the charges and claims he already owns the movie on DVD."
And please, save the "grammar Nazi" posts. If you can appreciate that writing clear code is worthwhile you should agree that expresssing yourself well in English is also worthwhile.
I really don't think it's revisionism. I think it's ignorance. For the last couple of decades teaching has attracted more and more undergrads well below the 50th percentile in their graduating classes. I've known and spoken with a number of teachers. Their ignorance is blood-curdling.