You lose all rights to this statement when your leading argument is: "There is a scientific consensus." Think about it.
I understand your point. The thing is that scientists will probably never know the exact age of the Earth. All they can do is use the best tools available to them now, and come to some sort of agreement. If an astrophysicist says that based on her observations, she thinks that the Earth is 4.5 billion years old, and a geologist says that based on his observations, he thinks that the Earth is 5.0 billion years old, that's a consensus. But it's a consensus based on OBSERVABLE FACTS and limited knowledge (we'd need a time machine to be sure). It's very different from some ignorant person saying that the Earth is 2000 years old because it says so in a book. It's an educated guess, which is much better than an uneducated guess.
That's irrelevant. The point of the parent post was not the specific facts. Anybody can Google. The point of the parent post was a question as to whether or not we get our facts from scientists.
But along those lines, Google (or Wikipedia) are not in any way authoritative. That's facts by consensus (which is not how science works). There are scientists out there who do know the approximate age of the Earth, and I'll leave that up to them. That's the whole point.
Although, I do know that the Earth isn't a few thousand years old, or whatever Jesus-freaks are deciding on today.
Religion is a never-ending (or, if one is religious, an eventually-ending) quest for truth.
That's a lie. Religion has nothing to do with truth or facts.
Just because some people cling to a disbelief in God to counter their insecurities by creating a false superiority over others doesn't mean that it's all a hoax.
It's not a "disbelief in God". That presupposes that there is a God. Any sane person would assume that there is not a "God" unless one comes across some kind of proof. You might as well pre-suppose that you have an invisible pink elephant sitting on your lap at your computer, and say that people are "clinging to a disbelief in your pink elephant" because it cannot be disproven.
By the way. You are an aardvark. If you don't believe me, then you're simply insecure.
Well, it's not "evolutionists" who determine how old the Earth is. As far as I know, there's no such thing as an "evolutionist". There are scientists who study evolution, but they wouldn't know how old the Earth is. I believe that that the age of the earth is generally determined by geologists and/or astrophysicists. I'm not an expert on the subject, though.
I didn't say that I was in favor of the movie. I've never seen it, and I don't know much about it. Bu, science is science, regardless of who is presenting it, or who disagrees with it. That's the beauty of facts.
The big problem is that we, as humans, tend to live 70-80 years. Why is that a problem? Well, it's physically impossible, unless somebody invents time travel, for anybody to be a scientific expert in much more than one or possibly two fields. There's just not enough time for everybody to become an expert on every issue. So where does that leave us?
Well, we can believe nothing until each one of us personally has spent 20 years researching the thickness of arctic ice caps.
Or, we can hope that peer review still works in our academic communities, and trust the experts.
As you can see, there really is no choice. I still have faith in the academic communities. I have to! The alternative is what, believing that the the "whole thing" is run be Jeebus?
And please don't associate science with religion. That's what the fundamentalist morons are trying to argue. They're arguing that science is also "faith" which is 1984 doublespeak. Religion and science are polar opposites. Science is a neverending quest for facts and information. Religion is about explicitly ignoring facts and information, and believing in something that not only has no basis in reality, but is actually diametrically opposed to the facts that we DO know. (The earth is hundreds of millions of years old. It was NOT invented in 7 days by some mystical being a few thousand years ago. That's a fact.)
I'm sorry, but the Ozone layer isn't registered to vote. You getting skin cancer has nothing to do with Republicans or Democrats. Good science is about facts. Politics is about bullshit.
If that is so, then why can I use MICROSOFT Visual Basic and imbed a copy of MICROSOFT Internet Explorer in any app I'd like in 6 mouse clicks? The web browser is embedded as a core element of their flagship product, which has helped make the Internet available to the public at large. If that's "harmed", then I wish we'd see more software writers "harm" the web.
So, you want to use MORE obscure formats? Oh yeah, that's a good idea. There are 1000's of programs today that handle MP3. It's even burned in chips for regular old stereo hardware. I know that in 20 years, I'll easily be able to find a program that reads MP3's. Considering there are only a handful now that read FLAC and the other ones you mentioned, I wouldn't be so sure that any of these formats will survive. (And PDF? Are you kidding? PDF is such a shitty format, that I've gone so far as to formally ban all use of it from my business.)
Well, I think I'd like to extend what you said. I think that people should start making their own microprocessors. Otherwise, how do they know how they work? We should mandate microprocessor design in public schools. Otherwise, how can you debug your own kernel panics? After that, we need to make sure that people can make their own hard drives. After all, if you don't know where the 0's and 1's go, how can you fix the problems?
I've already done the same for my car. I won't drive one, until I know how it works. Right now, I'm busy growing rubber trees so that I can make my own tires so I can change one myself. I'm pretty excited. Only another 5 years to go, and I'll have enough rubber to make a tire! After that, I have to learn how to mine iron to make steel for the steel belting in the tires. But hey, I'm not ignorant! I figure in another 200-300 years, I should have the know-how needed to drive my car.
Does anybody know how to make a tire stem and valve? I can't put air in my tires until I know how these little bastards work.
You're right. Eventually, you realize that most (or at least a lot) of what a programmer does never gets implemented. Instead of hanging your personal interest on code that might never be used, the smart thing to do is to be happy with your (higher) pay and keep it simple.
Hey idiot... how do you think everything you consume on a daily basis, from your toilet paper to your furniture gets to that city center from outside? Fairy dust? Grow up. Cars are an absolute necessity, and no amount of pseudo-environmental mental masturbation is going to change that fact.
$400 is 'less than a good mobile phone'? Now granted, I'm not a professional consumer like some people are, but what moron pays $400 (or more??) for a phone? Last time I needed a phone, it was either free, or it was like $50. It definitely wasn't more than $100. Are people really dumb enough to pay $400 for a fucking phone?
I see. My biz is in there, too. Hmm... Well, I think that this has the potential to be real problems for people who have their toll-free numbers listed in Google (luckily, only our local number is in there).
I don't know how many people will use this. It seems like it's *only* going to be used by people that want to call completely anonymously and people who want to call you long-distance for free. I think that even the laziest person in the world wouldn't find pressing buttons on a telephone to be too hard of a task.
This is stupid. It's a non-issue. The advertiser has to opt-in. Hell, I'm guessing that the advertiser is going to have to pay for it (it's part of AdWords). If the advertiser chooses to try it, and gets too much crap, the advertiser can stop it.
As a business owner, if I used AdWords (I don't... too much click fraud), I'd try it, because any way that customers can contact you easier is generally good. But if it gets abused by a bunch of 12 year old's, I'd cut it in a heartbeat.
Little do you realize, but being a contractor instead of a "permanent" person in the IT industry has many, many benefits, such as much higher pay (Even without benefits), either not working mind-boggling hours, or at least being compensated for it, an ability to ignore beauracracy, an ability to go from project to project with no "job-hopper" penalty, the ability to take long vacations whenever we felt like it (between jobs), etc., etc.
Those of us who were professional contractors during the dot-com era always laughed the poor suckers working "perm".
The funny thing is that they thought they had it better! Morons.
Oh, big deal. Anybody can hack anything. Any of this stuff is likely not to work very well, and it's certainly not supported by Apple. Lock-in is lock-in, no matter how many kludgy workarounds people build. People wouldn't have to build these things in the first place if not for the lock-in.
Don't forget the XBox. I have had a PS2 for many years, and my girlfriend recently bought an XBox to play a single game. I couldn't believe what a piece of shit it was! It's huge compared to the PS2. At least 5 times as large, it's loud (both the fan, and the stupid menu when no disk is in makes some stupid cartoon robot sound), it's obnoxious, and all of the parts and controls on it look like they're made for retarded, giant, kindergarteners. It reminded me of the first time I saw the dashboard of a modern American car after always driving Japanese. Big, clunky, ugly, and cheap. Just the way most Americans want it.
That's simply not true. Apple has the worst lock in sceme in the entire consumer electronics industry, yet people line up outside their stores like they're in the former Soviet Union waiting for toilet paper. Slashdot geeks all hyped up on Jolt and Slashdot groupthink don't want lock in. Consumers at large couldn't care less.
Big deal. Plumbers created and maintain basic sanitation. Give somebody a choice between having a toilet and having an Internet connection, and the toilet is going to be chosen every single time.
I wouldn't, however, expect plumbers to change our entire legal and political system any more than I would expect IT people to. Although with that being said, I've met several plumbers that are more in touch with the real world than most IT people could ever hope to be.
Wow. More myopic IT people. If some of you guys would read about things OTHER than IT, you'd realize that this stuff happens every single day in all industries, all over the world. These lawsuits are in no way, shape, or form, unique. The sports companies (they're not commissions... they're private companies that are treated like public institutions) are very, very sue-happy.
Slashdot Mirror
You lose all rights to this statement when your leading argument is: "There is a scientific consensus." Think about it.
I understand your point. The thing is that scientists will probably never know the exact age of the Earth. All they can do is use the best tools available to them now, and come to some sort of agreement. If an astrophysicist says that based on her observations, she thinks that the Earth is 4.5 billion years old, and a geologist says that based on his observations, he thinks that the Earth is 5.0 billion years old, that's a consensus. But it's a consensus based on OBSERVABLE FACTS and limited knowledge (we'd need a time machine to be sure). It's very different from some ignorant person saying that the Earth is 2000 years old because it says so in a book. It's an educated guess, which is much better than an uneducated guess.
That's irrelevant. The point of the parent post was not the specific facts. Anybody can Google. The point of the parent post was a question as to whether or not we get our facts from scientists.
But along those lines, Google (or Wikipedia) are not in any way authoritative. That's facts by consensus (which is not how science works). There are scientists out there who do know the approximate age of the Earth, and I'll leave that up to them. That's the whole point.
Although, I do know that the Earth isn't a few thousand years old, or whatever Jesus-freaks are deciding on today.
Religion is a never-ending (or, if one is religious, an eventually-ending) quest for truth.
That's a lie. Religion has nothing to do with truth or facts.
Just because some people cling to a disbelief in God to counter their insecurities by creating a false superiority over others doesn't mean that it's all a hoax.
It's not a "disbelief in God". That presupposes that there is a God. Any sane person would assume that there is not a "God" unless one comes across some kind of proof. You might as well pre-suppose that you have an invisible pink elephant sitting on your lap at your computer, and say that people are "clinging to a disbelief in your pink elephant" because it cannot be disproven.
By the way. You are an aardvark. If you don't believe me, then you're simply insecure.
Well, it's not "evolutionists" who determine how old the Earth is. As far as I know, there's no such thing as an "evolutionist". There are scientists who study evolution, but they wouldn't know how old the Earth is. I believe that that the age of the earth is generally determined by geologists and/or astrophysicists. I'm not an expert on the subject, though.
I didn't say that I was in favor of the movie. I've never seen it, and I don't know much about it. Bu, science is science, regardless of who is presenting it, or who disagrees with it. That's the beauty of facts.
The big problem is that we, as humans, tend to live 70-80 years. Why is that a problem? Well, it's physically impossible, unless somebody invents time travel, for anybody to be a scientific expert in much more than one or possibly two fields. There's just not enough time for everybody to become an expert on every issue. So where does that leave us?
Well, we can believe nothing until each one of us personally has spent 20 years researching the thickness of arctic ice caps.
Or, we can hope that peer review still works in our academic communities, and trust the experts.
As you can see, there really is no choice. I still have faith in the academic communities. I have to! The alternative is what, believing that the the "whole thing" is run be Jeebus?
And please don't associate science with religion. That's what the fundamentalist morons are trying to argue. They're arguing that science is also "faith" which is 1984 doublespeak. Religion and science are polar opposites. Science is a neverending quest for facts and information. Religion is about explicitly ignoring facts and information, and believing in something that not only has no basis in reality, but is actually diametrically opposed to the facts that we DO know. (The earth is hundreds of millions of years old. It was NOT invented in 7 days by some mystical being a few thousand years ago. That's a fact.)
I'm sorry, but the Ozone layer isn't registered to vote. You getting skin cancer has nothing to do with Republicans or Democrats. Good science is about facts. Politics is about bullshit.
If that is so, then why can I use MICROSOFT Visual Basic and imbed a copy of MICROSOFT Internet Explorer in any app I'd like in 6 mouse clicks? The web browser is embedded as a core element of their flagship product, which has helped make the Internet available to the public at large. If that's "harmed", then I wish we'd see more software writers "harm" the web.
So, you want to use MORE obscure formats? Oh yeah, that's a good idea. There are 1000's of programs today that handle MP3. It's even burned in chips for regular old stereo hardware. I know that in 20 years, I'll easily be able to find a program that reads MP3's. Considering there are only a handful now that read FLAC and the other ones you mentioned, I wouldn't be so sure that any of these formats will survive. (And PDF? Are you kidding? PDF is such a shitty format, that I've gone so far as to formally ban all use of it from my business.)
Well, I think I'd like to extend what you said. I think that people should start making their own microprocessors. Otherwise, how do they know how they work? We should mandate microprocessor design in public schools. Otherwise, how can you debug your own kernel panics? After that, we need to make sure that people can make their own hard drives. After all, if you don't know where the 0's and 1's go, how can you fix the problems?
I've already done the same for my car. I won't drive one, until I know how it works. Right now, I'm busy growing rubber trees so that I can make my own tires so I can change one myself. I'm pretty excited. Only another 5 years to go, and I'll have enough rubber to make a tire! After that, I have to learn how to mine iron to make steel for the steel belting in the tires. But hey, I'm not ignorant! I figure in another 200-300 years, I should have the know-how needed to drive my car.
Does anybody know how to make a tire stem and valve? I can't put air in my tires until I know how these little bastards work.
You're right. Eventually, you realize that most (or at least a lot) of what a programmer does never gets implemented. Instead of hanging your personal interest on code that might never be used, the smart thing to do is to be happy with your (higher) pay and keep it simple.
Hey idiot... how do you think everything you consume on a daily basis, from your toilet paper to your furniture gets to that city center from outside? Fairy dust? Grow up. Cars are an absolute necessity, and no amount of pseudo-environmental mental masturbation is going to change that fact.
No, I've actually had a cell phone for about 10 years. Never paid more than $100 for it, though.
$400 is 'less than a good mobile phone'? Now granted, I'm not a professional consumer like some people are, but what moron pays $400 (or more??) for a phone? Last time I needed a phone, it was either free, or it was like $50. It definitely wasn't more than $100. Are people really dumb enough to pay $400 for a fucking phone?
I see. My biz is in there, too. Hmm... Well, I think that this has the potential to be real problems for people who have their toll-free numbers listed in Google (luckily, only our local number is in there).
I don't know how many people will use this. It seems like it's *only* going to be used by people that want to call completely anonymously and people who want to call you long-distance for free. I think that even the laziest person in the world wouldn't find pressing buttons on a telephone to be too hard of a task.
This is stupid. It's a non-issue. The advertiser has to opt-in. Hell, I'm guessing that the advertiser is going to have to pay for it (it's part of AdWords). If the advertiser chooses to try it, and gets too much crap, the advertiser can stop it.
As a business owner, if I used AdWords (I don't... too much click fraud), I'd try it, because any way that customers can contact you easier is generally good. But if it gets abused by a bunch of 12 year old's, I'd cut it in a heartbeat.
(if you're lucky enough to avoid contractor-dom)
Little do you realize, but being a contractor instead of a "permanent" person in the IT industry has many, many benefits, such as much higher pay (Even without benefits), either not working mind-boggling hours, or at least being compensated for it, an ability to ignore beauracracy, an ability to go from project to project with no "job-hopper" penalty, the ability to take long vacations whenever we felt like it (between jobs), etc., etc.
Those of us who were professional contractors during the dot-com era always laughed the poor suckers working "perm".
The funny thing is that they thought they had it better! Morons.
Oh, big deal. Anybody can hack anything. Any of this stuff is likely not to work very well, and it's certainly not supported by Apple. Lock-in is lock-in, no matter how many kludgy workarounds people build. People wouldn't have to build these things in the first place if not for the lock-in.
And the program that you have to use to put the MP3's on your iPod? iTunes.
The one OS that you can run on your Apple box? OSX.
The only way you can run OSX? Buy an Apple.
If that's not lock-in, then I don't know what is.
Don't forget the XBox. I have had a PS2 for many years, and my girlfriend recently bought an XBox to play a single game. I couldn't believe what a piece of shit it was! It's huge compared to the PS2. At least 5 times as large, it's loud (both the fan, and the stupid menu when no disk is in makes some stupid cartoon robot sound), it's obnoxious, and all of the parts and controls on it look like they're made for retarded, giant, kindergarteners. It reminded me of the first time I saw the dashboard of a modern American car after always driving Japanese. Big, clunky, ugly, and cheap. Just the way most Americans want it.
That's simply not true. Apple has the worst lock in sceme in the entire consumer electronics industry, yet people line up outside their stores like they're in the former Soviet Union waiting for toilet paper. Slashdot geeks all hyped up on Jolt and Slashdot groupthink don't want lock in. Consumers at large couldn't care less.
Big deal. Plumbers created and maintain basic sanitation. Give somebody a choice between having a toilet and having an Internet connection, and the toilet is going to be chosen every single time.
I wouldn't, however, expect plumbers to change our entire legal and political system any more than I would expect IT people to. Although with that being said, I've met several plumbers that are more in touch with the real world than most IT people could ever hope to be.
Wow. More myopic IT people. If some of you guys would read about things OTHER than IT, you'd realize that this stuff happens every single day in all industries, all over the world. These lawsuits are in no way, shape, or form, unique. The sports companies (they're not commissions... they're private companies that are treated like public institutions) are very, very sue-happy.
What's the point of having broadband without power? Seems kind of silly.
Exactly. Perfect time to short. In about one year when the stock is in the toilet, I'll make out like a bandit.