I agree that electronics waste is a major problem that should be worked on, but I think a simple tax is a stupid way to go about it that does nothing to get these products out of the waste stream. Why not do for PCs/TVs/DVD players/etc what we've done for aluminum cans & plastics for decades? Have cash return value for recycling CRV-labelled products, and require retailers to accept the trash electronics & pay back the CRV (getting reimbursed from the state pool of CRV money produced), where it can be sent to a recycling center.
Rather than throw another tax on people, you charge them a certain amount (maybe about $10 per PC or monitor, for example) with the product, which is stamped, like cans, with its CRV value. Then, the user or homeless guy who collects it or whatever can turn it in for the cash! Tah-dah! Hell, I'd drag an out-of-use old PC or monitor to Best Buy for $10 off a game.
You've got a lot of good points. "It's Bill's fault" (why is this still some people's fscking political mantra?) isn't one of them. The administration & the FCC put together the package the networks wanted, and initially they loved it. None of them were forced to accept the HD bandwidth, but in doing so agreed to provide HD broadcasts. Their mistake was in not realizing that the FCC would eventually get around to demanding they'd do what they said they'd do.
All in all, there's alot of blame & acrimony to go around -- networks for not providing broadcasts, TV makers for deciding it'd be nice to rake in ridiculous profits on the switch (1.5K for a TV + $500 for a bogus "decoder" they could include in the damn TV to being with? Fuck that.), every damn asshole coming up with a new "standard" to try & corner the equipment market with patents, government relying on old/bad data, the corporate cash influence in policy making, etc etc etc. Everyone's had their hands in the cookie jar on this one, and the problems with the FCC & the administration's motives are good ones. Blaming it all on Clinton though just makes you sound like a Freeper.
Hell, I love the environment, but I realize the need to save human life & livelihood when I see it. Too many of you seem too comfortable with sitting in front of your computers in your cubicle this morning with a coffee & bagel, deciding that Africans should continue to get sick & lose livestock because you don't want them to "harm the ecosystem".
For all of the environmentalists lamenting the horrible, cataclysmic attack upon the Tstetse fly, consider for a second if it were YOU and YOUR family's health & livelihood that took a constant beating because of these little boogers, if it was your kid almost dead with sleeping sickness, or your cattle you've spent the last 2 years raising that're fast becoming worthless. If there was an infestation by an insect that made people sick and destroyed fiber-optic cable in the SF bay area or New York City you would all shut the fsck up so fast it'd make John Muir's corpse spin.
For fsck's sake, if you want to preserve the environment deal with the planks in your own eyes before pointing out the motes in the African's.
This is a wonderful example of why vertical marketing sucks in the entertainment industry in general and in the music & movie industries in particular for the consumer.
Vertical marketing, for those more familiar with a Unix prompt than corporate strategy, is the positioning of your company such that you control all aspects of production & distribution for the life of your product, from soup to nuts per se, or from artist to consumer. For example: in the beginning of the movie industry in the 20's - 30's, Edison had a vertical lock on motion picture production and distribution. Through patents he controled both the ability to make movies and the ability to show movies. There were Edison theaters, and you had to have Edison cameras to make films (at least in the US). The result was that he could charge the movie companies whatever he wanted to make a movie, then he could force them to show them only in his theaters, and at prices he decided. In a free market the owner of the technology (Edison) and the owners of the talent (studios) needed each other. but because Edison had a lock through patents the studios had nowhere else to go. Eventually he was forced to divest the theater business to people like Loews, etc.
How the story ties into the music industry is thusly. The music industry has been vertically integrated for a LONG time. They find the talent, produce the product, and control the distribution to retailers. Only what's hapenned to them is that because of innovation the nature of the product has changed in people's minds. People now know that music isn't a piece of magnetic tape or a little plastic disc. It's a piece of information.
Crushing Napster/KaZaa/Morpheus is vital to the future of the big 5 companies for this reason. It's has nothing to do with "piracy", because there's never been any evidence of a hit to their bottom line -- in fact, they've been raking it in over the past 5 years. It's about crushing your competitors and bad-mouthing the very innovation that's threatening you (thus you get the MP3 = piracy thing), introducing your own service that essentially does the same thing, and thus staying vertically integrated. Hell, my bet is they don't even care about downstream sharing as long as they're controling the original source.
Fucking over the artists is just a sideshow - icing on the cake. It's really about staying a small group of very big companies who make money by controling what you listen to.
I suppose not, except in that I think internet voting, if they ever got over the security/legal hurdles (which are huge), has the potential to become THE way to vote, since it'd be quicker, cheaper, & easier to count (& recount). Hell, you could have vote tallies in real time.
I guess I'm just not that eager to do away with one more community interraction. Doesn't anyone want to know the people in their neighborhood anymore?
Besides the easy ability for fraud, etc, that others have mentioned, I think it's a bad idea simply because it would attenuate one more of the instances where you get to see and speak to the other people in your neighborhood.
Everyone there at your polling place lives somewhere nearby, as you do. Isn't it nice in our personalized, lonely world, to once in a while be in a situation where you get a good look at who the neighbors are, maybe even get to say hi? Maybe you can meet that old lady who's always going on her evening walk past your house at about 7pm. You might be able to say hi to the guy down the street who's always working on his car. I think it's a wonderful exercise, not only in civil rights but in community, of which there are damn too few these days, and it'd be a shame to run the risk of losing it in the future.
Remember California kiddies, primary vote is on March 5!
He who shall introduce into public affairs the principles of Christianity will change the face of the world. -BFranklin
And those of us with a bit of historical knowledge will surely remember the devout, holy christian nature of Ben Franklin's life. Franklin makes Clinton look like the pope.
Excuse us scientists for only being able to get pieces of a 5-6 billion year-old puzzle. We're really doing the best we can. Here goes.
So they change a key gene or two and the shrimp lose some legs. SO WHAT? As useful as this may prove to be for gene therapy
and all, this does not explain away the Creationists' argument!
First, I don't see how making an animal lose a pair of limbs helps for gene therapy. That aside, nobody's claiming that this is the final piece of evidence, only that it's another nail in the creationist coffin. A common argument of theirs has been that entire organs & limbs can't simply appear or disappear through simple genetic changes. Well, genetically, scientists have made that happen, and showed that on that score creationists are wrong.
An animal that can survive in a marine environment
just cannot migrate to land, no matter how many legs it has.
Walruses. Penguins. Hermit crabs. Mudskippers. Etc. I know they're evolved (oops), but these are all animals that in their daily lives, apparently, do the impossible. With all these animals doing it every day, is it so impossible to believe that it might have happened at some point in the past, with or without legs? And who said legs were a requirement to move to land?
To explain away the Creationists' argument, not only does a candidate mechanism such as this have to be found, but there must be a
detailed explanation of which changes occurred, to which species, in what order, and how the resulting creatures could survive in
either land or water.
Glad to get down to brass tacks with you. The mechanism is natural selection, which we're constantly seeking to describe more thoroughly in our work. We're also seeking all the factual evidence we can to mount atop the mountains of it we already have. While it's difficult to reach through the millenia of the fossil record, we're working on it, based on facts, as we go along.
Now I'd like to require the same factual rigor of you. Please provide factual proof of a God's existence and his influence in placing living things on this planet. I want a candidate mechanism and a detailed explanation of what changes occurred and how. Again, we'd like facts and not bible quotations please.
The evolutionists still have a lot of work to do. If a shrimp loses legs and gills, and absorbs oxygen through the skin, can it still survive
in water long enough to go ashore?
This comment is pointless, as there's no reason a shrimp would have to either lose legs or gills to come ashore. There are gilled fish that can survive for a time ashore as well as gill-less marine mammals, as are there many legless and multilegged animals that can do so.
Are those same people now criticizing Creationists for not bowing before this
non-proof?
The difference is that our evidence is based on a preponderance of facts, developed through repeatable experiment, and leading us in a direction toward a theory that has withstood almost 150 years of scientific scrutiny, despite concerted effort from your camp. Yours is based on mythology, as written by a group of middle-eastern tribesmen under Roman rule between 100 & 500AD. Again, the extraordinary claim that we were placed here by a God requires the extraordinary proof of being provided evidence of God's existence and his influence in worldly affairs.
I have very little knowledge of Biology
This is possibly the most needless statement I've read on Slashdot ever. Congratulations.
I for one reserve the right to doubt an idea like evolution, that if true would completely invalidate
my world-view, without more evidence than we currently have.
We all have the right to persist in a comforting delusion, despite the facts. It's when creationists push for that delusion to be the basis of other's lives through law and forced creationist teaching in public schools that I get indignant.
Lots of you Slashdot types love the stance of universal skepticism, but everybody believes something they
can't prove. Evolution may be yours, or atheism, or astrology, but Creationism is mine.
The law in this case requires the collection and publication of opinions. The judge can do with these opinions whatever she wishes, including disregard them completely.
Intelligent conversation and discussion can only occur when you throw away all your stereotypes before stepping up to the table. Some
philosopher talked about this once, but basically, you are supposed to try your best to approach the situation without making any
assumption about the person/people with whom are you discussing, how it will benefit you, etc.
I believe quite the opposite. Because of science and its ability to give us solid facts, it's wrong to give all views equal credence at the starting line in a scientific discussion. Of course the idea appeals to us because most of us believe in democracy, equality, etc, and in a purely philosophical question like ideas of right & wrong, aesthetics, etc, you'd be in the right. Science, however, is by no means democratic, by which I mean that any idea MUST match known facts. Discussions on evolution are thus NOT philosophical in nature, because they seek to project facts to formulate an idea about the past. The theory being contested is that animals, including ourselves, developed over time through natural selection. Whether this is true, for a scientist, can only be demonstrated and proven with facts. Creationists OTOH choose to use science when it suits them and discard it when it contravenes their religious beliefs.
This leads me to another argument of yours, that creationists are in the majority. That may be so, but the facts do not rely upon consensus, only on veracity through experimentation. Also, the silly pretense that creationism isn't a religious belief is belied by the fact that it relies on a sort of de novo, deus ex machina placement of life on the planet by a higher power, an inherently religious phenomenon. One could argue in response as Richard Dawkins does, that the idea of the development of man over millenia from more basic organisms is infinitely more awe-inspiring than being plopped here by the almighty about 6000 years ago.
Creationism is to some worthy of ridicule, and understandably so. It's a relic of a time when humans looked up at the sky and thought the stars spoke to them, when we didn't understand why the ground shook or the sun turned dark in mid-day. While I don't agree with bashing people's religious beliefs, when they want to use those beliefs to create public policy, or mandate the passing of those beliefs on in schools, in science classes no less, it's only my duty as a scientist and someone true to simple fact to oppose such stupidity, here and anywhere else I see it.
Best Buy reserves the
right to revoke any stated offer and to correct any errors, inaccuracies or omissions (including after an order has been
submitted)
IANAL, but no entity can "reserve a right" it never had to begin with. It's thoroughly possible that you could make Best Buy honor their offer in a court, depending on laws wherever you are.
For example, I could post a sign on my front door that says I "reserve the right" to search you if you come into my house. Of course, it's all BS because I never had the right to search you to begin with, and thus cannot reserve such a right. In this sense, it's just a meaningless turn of phrase thought up by company lawyers to let you think you've divested yourself of rights you never gave up. The sales tactic of bait & switch, even on the internet, is still bait & switch, and isn't looked upon kindly by judges no matter where you live. I'd say give it a shot.
TV is a huge timesuck of passive eyeball cramming, detrimental to yourself, relationships with your friends & family, and your free time. I've got tons of things to do in my free time - being advertised to while sitting through the crap on the screen that passes for entertainment doesn't even register. And the ability to watch same crap at some other time and without commercials isn't much better, IMO.
Nothing sucks more than watching the average American family huddle around a glowing box in silence for 2-3 hours a weeknight instead of talking to one another, playing a game, reading, enjoying a hobby, etc. So many people miss out on so much in life doing this, and in exchange for what? Seinfeld?
You're right of course, but I wan't going to bother going into what constitutes existential morality, etc. to make a general point about the difference between this putz & a real anti-establishment protest.
Thoreau, in Civil Disobediance, explained that philosophically it's right to disobey what you honestly feel is an unjust law. In doing so though, one needs to be willing to accept society's punishment for its violation.
In comparison, doesn't this whiny punk who's spent too much time in the 2600/Mother Jones/High Times section of the magazine rack seem a little lacking? No matter though. I'm sure his bunkmates in Leavenworth will show him the meaning of passive resistance.
The post is funny, but it actually points to a good legal precedent. New Line could argue that MGM doesn't have a leg to stand on because they've let the Bond series be parodied explicitly twice before in the previous two Austin Powers movies. It's the responsibility of the person or organization that holds a copyright to enforce it in the courts. Thus, if you have been aware of previous copyright violations and failed to act, you've put yourself in a position where your copyright may be invalidated because you've tacitly allowed use of it before through your previous inaction.
Basically, MGM doesn't get to decide to enforce its copyright sometimes and not others. It either enforces it or not, and if it's chosen not to with the Powers movies then it may not legally have the option to now.
So very sorry, but these revolutionary new master stem cells aren't going to be permitted for scientific or medical use. You see, they're not on the list of 30 Bush drew up last year. So, no go. Flush 'em. His Chimpness has spoken.
Well, as far as the snowmobiling stuff was concerned, it was people who wanted it limited but not eliminated, people who wanted it relegated to certain times, certain places, restrict what sort of snowmobiles could be used, etc. There are usually a number of opinions on a subject between "ban it altogether" and "no restrictions whatsoever".
I've sent in my comments regarding the antitrust too, but I thought I'd share a little info on what the federales are likely to pay attention to. I've got a relative at Sequoia / King's Canyon Nat'l Park, and they recently had a comment period on prohibiting snowmobiles in the park. This relative was one of the people sifting through the comments, and we talked then about how it was done. While the federal courts may do things differently, the following was the experience I heard about.
My relative said that form letters / chain letters / spam / one sentence responses were all completely set aside and virtually ignored. Despite the link in the story here where the guy says it's the number of complaints that count, it's complete BS. It's content that counts. What the park superintendent and NPS officials were interested in were the original responses of people who'd thought about the situation and expressed their opinion, no matter what that opinion was. They cared not a bit what the content of the response was, only that it seemed to be something someone thought about. Copies of responses, like the cut & paste jobs people are advocating here, were tossed except for one copy because they really represented the writing of only one person.
Then, these functionary-types sift through all these filtered responses, and place them in about a dozen separate stacks, from vehemently against to completely for, and everything in-between. The numbers of responses in each stack was counted, and a "summary report" of what the people in each stack thought was made, and responses the functionaries agreed should be seen copied and forwarded to the big-wigs. The Superintendent and NPS officials then read the summary reports, the selected reports, and the superintendent, since he's actually at the park, came & read a number of the nonselected responses in the stacks & prepared his short report on the people's response to the proposed rule.
I guess the point is that the comments definitely count, but they shouldn't be forms or cut & pastes, and should represent your own feelings on the matter. Think about it -- if all you're willing to do is cut & paste or pass on someone else's words, what credence should you be given?
I'm finishing up Lawrence Lessig's latest book "The Future of Ideas", and one of his main points both in this book and in "Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace" is that the open, accessible by all with all being equal nature of the TCP/IP protocol is the central point around which the internet has grown, allowing anyone who wishes to use the internet however they wish.
In this latest book he does a good if sometimes abstruse job of showing how not only computer companies but all kinds of businesses are trying to prioritize/demarcate/segment/control the net and prevent any more innovative uses ala P2P to occur because it threatens the old way of doing business. It's a good related read if anyone's interested.
In other news, even if this is true, there's no reason us geeks can't continue to use our own TCP/IP & not use any new proprietary protocol. Who knows? Might be nice to have the spamming, virus-spreading masses that don't know anything about their computers all off on a different protocol & all. Remember too that AOL/Prodigy/Compuserve never volunteered to provide access to the 'net. They were forced to by customer demand for the content TCP/IP made it possible to provide.
Ever since EA started partnerning with companies like AOL their quality has shot to hell. Yes, "let's make a game identical to a previous
one, provide even more unrealistic action, beef up the graphics (because that's the only thing we do anyway) and advertise a song by
calling it SSX Tricky. People will love it!"
HEY! WAIT A DAMN MINUTE!
Slightly off-topic here, but I'm willing to risk the mod-down.
You can't have played it, 'cause SSX Tricky for PS2 is a complete kick-ass improvement on SSX for PS2. The next level of "ubertricks" that you can accumulate to get a continual turbo-boost for your whole downhill run, the great soundtrack that yes, includes RunDMC's "Tricky" as well as a bucketful of other great songs, as well as the nicely beefed-up graphics make for a great game worthy of the PS2 platform. Sure, there are only 2 "completely new" tracks, but they also went back and modified all the old tracks almost beyond recognition. And BTW, people DO love it. This game still sells like hotcakes (still in the top 5-10 for PS2 games), so the proof is in the pudding.
And am I reading this correctly or did you just call this game "unrealistic"? OF COURSE it's unrealistic! It's a GAME for godsakes. If my sports videogames were all true-to-life they'd suck ass because I simply don't have the fucking talent that the pros do and though I can snowboard, if I ever tried even the most rudimentary air trick I'm certain I'd break my neck. Does anyone complain about Alice in Wonderland being unrealistic? Of course not, because that's the point. Same goes with all video games.
I've had SSX Tricky for about 3 weeks now and every single one of the 6 people whom I've played it with were as blown away as I was. Some people just love to bitch, I guess.
While I was standing there playing at a (particularly violent) first person shoot-em-up, some kid (maybe 20 years old) pokes me in the back and says "You better watch where ya go when ya get outta here 'cuz I might just wanna shoot ya with my real piece." Great... I've just been threatened with death.
See?!? He obviously knew the difference between the simulated violence in the game and the nine in his pocket. Who say's kids can't differentiate between video game and real violence?
For me the best part of the Indy Star article was the attempt by the city attorney defending the case and other supporters of the ordinance in justifying blowing tax revenue to the tune of 3/4 of a million dollars to "bring awareness of the issue" to people. They weren't trying to bring awareness to jack shit. They were trying to enforce an unjust law.
That new mayor of theirs, Bart Peterson, hasn't done the city any favors by blowing over $700K on a case any college law professor could've told them they'd lose. Any assertion that they've "made their point" belies the fact that the other side has made theirs BETTER because they WON. Morons.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree that electronics waste is a major problem that should be worked on, but I think a simple tax is a stupid way to go about it that does nothing to get these products out of the waste stream. Why not do for PCs/TVs/DVD players/etc what we've done for aluminum cans & plastics for decades? Have cash return value for recycling CRV-labelled products, and require retailers to accept the trash electronics & pay back the CRV (getting reimbursed from the state pool of CRV money produced), where it can be sent to a recycling center.
Rather than throw another tax on people, you charge them a certain amount (maybe about $10 per PC or monitor, for example) with the product, which is stamped, like cans, with its CRV value. Then, the user or homeless guy who collects it or whatever can turn it in for the cash! Tah-dah! Hell, I'd drag an out-of-use old PC or monitor to Best Buy for $10 off a game.
Bill Clinton did this to us.
You've got a lot of good points. "It's Bill's fault" (why is this still some people's fscking political mantra?) isn't one of them. The administration & the FCC put together the package the networks wanted, and initially they loved it. None of them were forced to accept the HD bandwidth, but in doing so agreed to provide HD broadcasts. Their mistake was in not realizing that the FCC would eventually get around to demanding they'd do what they said they'd do.
All in all, there's alot of blame & acrimony to go around -- networks for not providing broadcasts, TV makers for deciding it'd be nice to rake in ridiculous profits on the switch (1.5K for a TV + $500 for a bogus "decoder" they could include in the damn TV to being with? Fuck that.), every damn asshole coming up with a new "standard" to try & corner the equipment market with patents, government relying on old/bad data, the corporate cash influence in policy making, etc etc etc. Everyone's had their hands in the cookie jar on this one, and the problems with the FCC & the administration's motives are good ones. Blaming it all on Clinton though just makes you sound like a Freeper.
Hell, I love the environment, but I realize the need to save human life & livelihood when I see it. Too many of you seem too comfortable with sitting in front of your computers in your cubicle this morning with a coffee & bagel, deciding that Africans should continue to get sick & lose livestock because you don't want them to "harm the ecosystem".
For all of the environmentalists lamenting the horrible, cataclysmic attack upon the Tstetse fly, consider for a second if it were YOU and YOUR family's health & livelihood that took a constant beating because of these little boogers, if it was your kid almost dead with sleeping sickness, or your cattle you've spent the last 2 years raising that're fast becoming worthless. If there was an infestation by an insect that made people sick and destroyed fiber-optic cable in the SF bay area or New York City you would all shut the fsck up so fast it'd make John Muir's corpse spin.
For fsck's sake, if you want to preserve the environment deal with the planks in your own eyes before pointing out the motes in the African's.
This is a wonderful example of why vertical marketing sucks in the entertainment industry in general and in the music & movie industries in particular for the consumer.
Vertical marketing, for those more familiar with a Unix prompt than corporate strategy, is the positioning of your company such that you control all aspects of production & distribution for the life of your product, from soup to nuts per se, or from artist to consumer. For example: in the beginning of the movie industry in the 20's - 30's, Edison had a vertical lock on motion picture production and distribution. Through patents he controled both the ability to make movies and the ability to show movies. There were Edison theaters, and you had to have Edison cameras to make films (at least in the US). The result was that he could charge the movie companies whatever he wanted to make a movie, then he could force them to show them only in his theaters, and at prices he decided. In a free market the owner of the technology (Edison) and the owners of the talent (studios) needed each other. but because Edison had a lock through patents the studios had nowhere else to go. Eventually he was forced to divest the theater business to people like Loews, etc.
How the story ties into the music industry is thusly. The music industry has been vertically integrated for a LONG time. They find the talent, produce the product, and control the distribution to retailers. Only what's hapenned to them is that because of innovation the nature of the product has changed in people's minds. People now know that music isn't a piece of magnetic tape or a little plastic disc. It's a piece of information.
Crushing Napster/KaZaa/Morpheus is vital to the future of the big 5 companies for this reason. It's has nothing to do with "piracy", because there's never been any evidence of a hit to their bottom line -- in fact, they've been raking it in over the past 5 years. It's about crushing your competitors and bad-mouthing the very innovation that's threatening you (thus you get the MP3 = piracy thing), introducing your own service that essentially does the same thing, and thus staying vertically integrated. Hell, my bet is they don't even care about downstream sharing as long as they're controling the original source.
Fucking over the artists is just a sideshow - icing on the cake. It's really about staying a small group of very big companies who make money by controling what you listen to.
I suppose not, except in that I think internet voting, if they ever got over the security/legal hurdles (which are huge), has the potential to become THE way to vote, since it'd be quicker, cheaper, & easier to count (& recount). Hell, you could have vote tallies in real time.
I guess I'm just not that eager to do away with one more community interraction. Doesn't anyone want to know the people in their neighborhood anymore?
Besides the easy ability for fraud, etc, that others have mentioned, I think it's a bad idea simply because it would attenuate one more of the instances where you get to see and speak to the other people in your neighborhood.
Everyone there at your polling place lives somewhere nearby, as you do. Isn't it nice in our personalized, lonely world, to once in a while be in a situation where you get a good look at who the neighbors are, maybe even get to say hi? Maybe you can meet that old lady who's always going on her evening walk past your house at about 7pm. You might be able to say hi to the guy down the street who's always working on his car. I think it's a wonderful exercise, not only in civil rights but in community, of which there are damn too few these days, and it'd be a shame to run the risk of losing it in the future.
Remember California kiddies, primary vote is on March 5!
A computer scientist is a scientist about as much as a sanitation engineer is an engineer.
He who shall introduce into public affairs the principles of Christianity will change the face of the world. -BFranklin
And those of us with a bit of historical knowledge will surely remember the devout, holy christian nature of Ben Franklin's life. Franklin makes Clinton look like the pope.
Excuse us scientists for only being able to get pieces of a 5-6 billion year-old puzzle. We're really doing the best we can. Here goes.
So they change a key gene or two and the shrimp lose some legs. SO WHAT? As useful as this may prove to be for gene therapy
and all, this does not explain away the Creationists' argument!
First, I don't see how making an animal lose a pair of limbs helps for gene therapy. That aside, nobody's claiming that this is the final piece of evidence, only that it's another nail in the creationist coffin. A common argument of theirs has been that entire organs & limbs can't simply appear or disappear through simple genetic changes. Well, genetically, scientists have made that happen, and showed that on that score creationists are wrong.
An animal that can survive in a marine environment
just cannot migrate to land, no matter how many legs it has.
Walruses. Penguins. Hermit crabs. Mudskippers. Etc. I know they're evolved (oops), but these are all animals that in their daily lives, apparently, do the impossible. With all these animals doing it every day, is it so impossible to believe that it might have happened at some point in the past, with or without legs? And who said legs were a requirement to move to land?
To explain away the Creationists' argument, not only does a candidate mechanism such as this have to be found, but there must be a
detailed explanation of which changes occurred, to which species, in what order, and how the resulting creatures could survive in
either land or water.
Glad to get down to brass tacks with you. The mechanism is natural selection, which we're constantly seeking to describe more thoroughly in our work. We're also seeking all the factual evidence we can to mount atop the mountains of it we already have. While it's difficult to reach through the millenia of the fossil record, we're working on it, based on facts, as we go along.
Now I'd like to require the same factual rigor of you. Please provide factual proof of a God's existence and his influence in placing living things on this planet. I want a candidate mechanism and a detailed explanation of what changes occurred and how. Again, we'd like facts and not bible quotations please.
The evolutionists still have a lot of work to do. If a shrimp loses legs and gills, and absorbs oxygen through the skin, can it still survive
in water long enough to go ashore?
This comment is pointless, as there's no reason a shrimp would have to either lose legs or gills to come ashore. There are gilled fish that can survive for a time ashore as well as gill-less marine mammals, as are there many legless and multilegged animals that can do so.
Are those same people now criticizing Creationists for not bowing before this
non-proof?
The difference is that our evidence is based on a preponderance of facts, developed through repeatable experiment, and leading us in a direction toward a theory that has withstood almost 150 years of scientific scrutiny, despite concerted effort from your camp. Yours is based on mythology, as written by a group of middle-eastern tribesmen under Roman rule between 100 & 500AD. Again, the extraordinary claim that we were placed here by a God requires the extraordinary proof of being provided evidence of God's existence and his influence in worldly affairs.
I have very little knowledge of Biology
This is possibly the most needless statement I've read on Slashdot ever. Congratulations.
I for one reserve the right to doubt an idea like evolution, that if true would completely invalidate
my world-view, without more evidence than we currently have.
We all have the right to persist in a comforting delusion, despite the facts. It's when creationists push for that delusion to be the basis of other's lives through law and forced creationist teaching in public schools that I get indignant.
Lots of you Slashdot types love the stance of universal skepticism, but everybody believes something they
can't prove. Evolution may be yours, or atheism, or astrology, but Creationism is mine.
Ah, yes. You forgot to say "I'm OK, you're OK".
The law in this case requires the collection and publication of opinions. The judge can do with these opinions whatever she wishes, including disregard them completely.
So, don't get your panties in a twist.
Intelligent conversation and discussion can only occur when you throw away all your stereotypes before stepping up to the table. Some
philosopher talked about this once, but basically, you are supposed to try your best to approach the situation without making any
assumption about the person/people with whom are you discussing, how it will benefit you, etc.
I believe quite the opposite. Because of science and its ability to give us solid facts, it's wrong to give all views equal credence at the starting line in a scientific discussion. Of course the idea appeals to us because most of us believe in democracy, equality, etc, and in a purely philosophical question like ideas of right & wrong, aesthetics, etc, you'd be in the right. Science, however, is by no means democratic, by which I mean that any idea MUST match known facts. Discussions on evolution are thus NOT philosophical in nature, because they seek to project facts to formulate an idea about the past. The theory being contested is that animals, including ourselves, developed over time through natural selection. Whether this is true, for a scientist, can only be demonstrated and proven with facts. Creationists OTOH choose to use science when it suits them and discard it when it contravenes their religious beliefs.
This leads me to another argument of yours, that creationists are in the majority. That may be so, but the facts do not rely upon consensus, only on veracity through experimentation. Also, the silly pretense that creationism isn't a religious belief is belied by the fact that it relies on a sort of de novo, deus ex machina placement of life on the planet by a higher power, an inherently religious phenomenon. One could argue in response as Richard Dawkins does, that the idea of the development of man over millenia from more basic organisms is infinitely more awe-inspiring than being plopped here by the almighty about 6000 years ago.
Creationism is to some worthy of ridicule, and understandably so. It's a relic of a time when humans looked up at the sky and thought the stars spoke to them, when we didn't understand why the ground shook or the sun turned dark in mid-day. While I don't agree with bashing people's religious beliefs, when they want to use those beliefs to create public policy, or mandate the passing of those beliefs on in schools, in science classes no less, it's only my duty as a scientist and someone true to simple fact to oppose such stupidity, here and anywhere else I see it.
Best Buy reserves the
right to revoke any stated offer and to correct any errors, inaccuracies or omissions (including after an order has been
submitted)
IANAL, but no entity can "reserve a right" it never had to begin with. It's thoroughly possible that you could make Best Buy honor their offer in a court, depending on laws wherever you are.
For example, I could post a sign on my front door that says I "reserve the right" to search you if you come into my house. Of course, it's all BS because I never had the right to search you to begin with, and thus cannot reserve such a right. In this sense, it's just a meaningless turn of phrase thought up by company lawyers to let you think you've divested yourself of rights you never gave up. The sales tactic of bait & switch, even on the internet, is still bait & switch, and isn't looked upon kindly by judges no matter where you live. I'd say give it a shot.
TV is a huge timesuck of passive eyeball cramming, detrimental to yourself, relationships with your friends & family, and your free time. I've got tons of things to do in my free time - being advertised to while sitting through the crap on the screen that passes for entertainment doesn't even register. And the ability to watch same crap at some other time and without commercials isn't much better, IMO.
Nothing sucks more than watching the average American family huddle around a glowing box in silence for 2-3 hours a weeknight instead of talking to one another, playing a game, reading, enjoying a hobby, etc. So many people miss out on so much in life doing this, and in exchange for what? Seinfeld?
You're right of course, but I wan't going to bother going into what constitutes existential morality, etc. to make a general point about the difference between this putz & a real anti-establishment protest.
I never mentioned prison rape. YOU are the one who filled in the blanks there, you filthy little boy.
Let me guess: this is about the 15th time today you've been completely offended by something you've read on the net?
Bite me.
Thoreau, in Civil Disobediance, explained that philosophically it's right to disobey what you honestly feel is an unjust law. In doing so though, one needs to be willing to accept society's punishment for its violation.
In comparison, doesn't this whiny punk who's spent too much time in the 2600/Mother Jones/High Times section of the magazine rack seem a little lacking? No matter though. I'm sure his bunkmates in Leavenworth will show him the meaning of passive resistance.
The post is funny, but it actually points to a good legal precedent. New Line could argue that MGM doesn't have a leg to stand on because they've let the Bond series be parodied explicitly twice before in the previous two Austin Powers movies. It's the responsibility of the person or organization that holds a copyright to enforce it in the courts. Thus, if you have been aware of previous copyright violations and failed to act, you've put yourself in a position where your copyright may be invalidated because you've tacitly allowed use of it before through your previous inaction.
Basically, MGM doesn't get to decide to enforce its copyright sometimes and not others. It either enforces it or not, and if it's chosen not to with the Powers movies then it may not legally have the option to now.
So very sorry, but these revolutionary new master stem cells aren't going to be permitted for scientific or medical use. You see, they're not on the list of 30 Bush drew up last year. So, no go. Flush 'em. His Chimpness has spoken.
Well, as far as the snowmobiling stuff was concerned, it was people who wanted it limited but not eliminated, people who wanted it relegated to certain times, certain places, restrict what sort of snowmobiles could be used, etc. There are usually a number of opinions on a subject between "ban it altogether" and "no restrictions whatsoever".
I've sent in my comments regarding the antitrust too, but I thought I'd share a little info on what the federales are likely to pay attention to. I've got a relative at Sequoia / King's Canyon Nat'l Park, and they recently had a comment period on prohibiting snowmobiles in the park. This relative was one of the people sifting through the comments, and we talked then about how it was done. While the federal courts may do things differently, the following was the experience I heard about.
My relative said that form letters / chain letters / spam / one sentence responses were all completely set aside and virtually ignored. Despite the link in the story here where the guy says it's the number of complaints that count, it's complete BS. It's content that counts. What the park superintendent and NPS officials were interested in were the original responses of people who'd thought about the situation and expressed their opinion, no matter what that opinion was. They cared not a bit what the content of the response was, only that it seemed to be something someone thought about. Copies of responses, like the cut & paste jobs people are advocating here, were tossed except for one copy because they really represented the writing of only one person.
Then, these functionary-types sift through all these filtered responses, and place them in about a dozen separate stacks, from vehemently against to completely for, and everything in-between. The numbers of responses in each stack was counted, and a "summary report" of what the people in each stack thought was made, and responses the functionaries agreed should be seen copied and forwarded to the big-wigs. The Superintendent and NPS officials then read the summary reports, the selected reports, and the superintendent, since he's actually at the park, came & read a number of the nonselected responses in the stacks & prepared his short report on the people's response to the proposed rule.
I guess the point is that the comments definitely count, but they shouldn't be forms or cut & pastes, and should represent your own feelings on the matter. Think about it -- if all you're willing to do is cut & paste or pass on someone else's words, what credence should you be given?
I'm finishing up Lawrence Lessig's latest book "The Future of Ideas", and one of his main points both in this book and in "Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace" is that the open, accessible by all with all being equal nature of the TCP/IP protocol is the central point around which the internet has grown, allowing anyone who wishes to use the internet however they wish.
In this latest book he does a good if sometimes abstruse job of showing how not only computer companies but all kinds of businesses are trying to prioritize/demarcate/segment/control the net and prevent any more innovative uses ala P2P to occur because it threatens the old way of doing business. It's a good related read if anyone's interested.
In other news, even if this is true, there's no reason us geeks can't continue to use our own TCP/IP & not use any new proprietary protocol. Who knows? Might be nice to have the spamming, virus-spreading masses that don't know anything about their computers all off on a different protocol & all. Remember too that AOL/Prodigy/Compuserve never volunteered to provide access to the 'net. They were forced to by customer demand for the content TCP/IP made it possible to provide.
Ever since EA started partnerning with companies like AOL their quality has shot to hell. Yes, "let's make a game identical to a previous
one, provide even more unrealistic action, beef up the graphics (because that's the only thing we do anyway) and advertise a song by
calling it SSX Tricky. People will love it!"
HEY! WAIT A DAMN MINUTE!
Slightly off-topic here, but I'm willing to risk the mod-down.
You can't have played it, 'cause SSX Tricky for PS2 is a complete kick-ass improvement on SSX for PS2. The next level of "ubertricks" that you can accumulate to get a continual turbo-boost for your whole downhill run, the great soundtrack that yes, includes RunDMC's "Tricky" as well as a bucketful of other great songs, as well as the nicely beefed-up graphics make for a great game worthy of the PS2 platform. Sure, there are only 2 "completely new" tracks, but they also went back and modified all the old tracks almost beyond recognition. And BTW, people DO love it. This game still sells like hotcakes (still in the top 5-10 for PS2 games), so the proof is in the pudding.
And am I reading this correctly or did you just call this game "unrealistic"? OF COURSE it's unrealistic! It's a GAME for godsakes. If my sports videogames were all true-to-life they'd suck ass because I simply don't have the fucking talent that the pros do and though I can snowboard, if I ever tried even the most rudimentary air trick I'm certain I'd break my neck. Does anyone complain about Alice in Wonderland being unrealistic? Of course not, because that's the point. Same goes with all video games.
I've had SSX Tricky for about 3 weeks now and every single one of the 6 people whom I've played it with were as blown away as I was. Some people just love to bitch, I guess.
While I was standing there playing at a (particularly violent) first person shoot-em-up, some kid (maybe 20 years old) pokes me in the back and says "You better watch where ya go when ya get outta here 'cuz I might just wanna shoot ya with my real piece." Great... I've just been threatened with death.
See?!? He obviously knew the difference between the simulated violence in the game and the nine in his pocket. Who say's kids can't differentiate between video game and real violence?
For me the best part of the Indy Star article was the attempt by the city attorney defending the case and other supporters of the ordinance in justifying blowing tax revenue to the tune of 3/4 of a million dollars to "bring awareness of the issue" to people. They weren't trying to bring awareness to jack shit. They were trying to enforce an unjust law.
That new mayor of theirs, Bart Peterson, hasn't done the city any favors by blowing over $700K on a case any college law professor could've told them they'd lose. Any assertion that they've "made their point" belies the fact that the other side has made theirs BETTER because they WON. Morons.