Proper tagging: a specific snapshot is marked with a name, only metadata is added to the repository.
Improper tagging (SVN's hacked way): the whole repository is duplicated.
I thought the repository was only *logically* copied. Only the differences are actually stored.
The propane tank is used to generate CO2 (queue global warming rants here). Mosquitos are attracted to CO2 because that is how they locate their prey. When they fly close enough, then the vacuum cleaner comes into play. Zapping them is no good because they don't like ozone (so the plasma ball suggested elsewhere would not attract mosquitos - it would kill lots of moths, however). To be effective in protecting your event, the CO2 generator needs to be upwind. Mosquitos follow CO2 plumes upwind toward their victims using biotech similar to lobsters (compare the concentration detected between two antenna and turn toward the stronger, the greater the difference, the greater the adjustment - simple and effective). Those downwind of the BBQ will likely head toward that instead, so put the BBQ off to one side relative to the breeze.
With broadband, there are no existing 'central offices' in each town*, and all connections must connect to the existing Internet.
There is a partial solution. Thanks to the telephone investment earlier, you can get a T1 anywhere, and pay from $300 to $600 / month for 1.5Mb service. Get the neighbors together for a coop, add some WLAN, and you have almost broadband in the sticks that doesn't have multi-second latency like satellite. Get enough neighbors together with a lily pad WLAN, and you can upgrade to T3. (I know people who have done this. Don't use consumer WAPs designed for indoor use. Use outdoor models for a few $100 more that have lightning protection.)
If you can get line of sight to a friend/business partner in a nearby city, you can get 54Mb via a point to point wireless connection. With parabolic antenna, you can go quite a ways. The current record is 237 miles from a city to the side of a mountain in Venezuela (the mountain is critical to this setup as otherwise the horizon would block line of sight at this distance).
Finally, cell phone service goes many more places than broadband, and cell carriers offer broadband plans via their network. (So long, and thanks for all the honey...)
Actually, laser printers and supermarket scanners often use holograms of optics rather than actual glass optics (mirrors and lenses). The holograms are usually CGI - making equivalent real glass optics would be fabulously expensive and heavy, or even physically impossible.
for tracking which files are no longer used. That is why backup utilities such as tar have a --preserve-atime option to avoid updating atime during a backup. The proposed relatime option preserves the function of finding files no one uses anymore - for that purpose, 1 day resolution is fine. HSM systems depend on atime to know what to archive. Again, 1 day resolution is fine for that purpose.
Defendant was required to produce all hard drives in his possession and control.
I suppose that includes all removable hard drives used for backup. The RIAA gets to completely destroy all computer resources of an individual or small business because someone/something used their internet account. I wish all the non-techies in my acquaintance could understand how this makes computer security even more important. I also wish I could afford a 200G tape drive...
Correct, and you misread what I was trying to say. End-users don't care beans whether it's Linux or Windows. For commodity applications like web/office/email they have trouble telling which system they are on. So why pay extra to have someone install when it's preloaded? They probably do care for less commoditized applications like Photoshop (and games as another reply pointed out).
Why do I often recycle with Linux instead of reloading Windows? End user has to pay for either (unless they are up to doing it themselves, in which case they wouldn't be paying for this kind of hand holding support). Linux is easier for me. Customer doesn't care. No brainer.
The key here is we are talking about commodity applications. The *real* support solution is some kind of web/office/email appliance - this is where I see DRMed Windows as desirable (too bad MS will want to destroy all compatibility and non-DRMed systems in the process).
This is like the old saw about Linux being harder to install than Windows (have you ever tried to actually *install* Windows?) I support hundreds of Windows desktops and dozens of Linux Desktops (Fedora,CentOS). Windows is far harder and more expensive to support, and customers are far more confused by it. Most customers choose it only because all desktops come with it preloaded, and being non-geek end-users, they would have to pay us or pay somebody to load a Linux desktop for them. There has to be a really compelling reason to forfeit the Microsoft tax. We've tried charging more for Windows support - but this seems unfair to end users since from their perspective Windows is included in the price and Linux is extra cost, so why should they pay more for Windows support? The end-user Linux desktops are all recycled Windows machines. Windows "broke" (malware out the wazoo) and starting from scratch was the cheapest option.
A number of customers choose Mac. It comes preloaded, and they don't seem to need any support at all. That says a lot for Apple. (But I still prefer Linux personally because I get to tinker with everything.) A large part of the Mac secret seems to be motivation. Users are so *enamored* with their Mac, I think the attention to the artistic side of the UI helps this, that they try much harder to look for stuff themselves before calling for help.
In my opinion, the only thing holding back Linux on the desktop is Microsoft's illegal preload stranglehold. We'll see if the Dell/Ubuntu experiment changes that opinion.
BTW, updating end-user Linux is easy. *Upgrading* to a new version is still difficult to do remotely. (I use schemes like copying an install image to a logical volume, and having the user test boot from that - but selecting an alternate grub option is scary for an end-user.)
> Actually usage of strncpy() almost certainly guarantees you have bugs, > IMNSHO. You need a real managed string API. Assuming the programer can keep > track of three distinct pieces of information like "size, length and > pointer" is just a losing bet. All of the applications (including mine) that > have had security guarantees with money have internally used a real managed > string API.
I use strncpy() quite a bit - for setting null padded fixed length fields in binary config/database records. I can see that it would be problematic if you thought it had something to do with string handling. (I'm sure it seemed like a good name at the time.)
The C program is just a loader. If you read further, you'll see it could have been done in Java also via custom code generation used only for initial load. This didn't seem to worth the effort, since some handwaving is sufficient to establish the feasibility of doing that last bit in Java.
Now if Tivo were only leasing out their devices, the way the cable and satellite companies are currently doing, that would be a different story. In that case, the hardware would continue to be owned by the vendor, and only the vendor would be entitled to hack their devices. But Tivo is selling devices to the public, and the purchase should convey full rights to the new owner.
Thank you for being polite! As I mentioned on another comment, that is the key point. Tivo needs to rent, not sell, their locked down equipment. That makes everyone happy, including FSF, and they can use all the GPL3 software they want. It is dishonest to pretend to "sell" equipment that the seller still controls and the buyer doesn't.
Parent basically says software in a voting machine is never distributed, hence locking the hardware is not a problem.
That is an excellent point. That also means that companies like Tivo can use GPLv3 software by simply changing their business model from *selling* DVRs to *renting* them. I have always suggested this for all kinds of DRM just for the sake of basic honesty. You can't actually "buy" DRMed media or hardware, since you never actually have control of it. You are only paying for the privilege of using it in the ways prescribed by the true owner. With any other type of product, this would be called a rental, not a sale.
So I think I disagree with posters ranting about how "anti-corporate" GLP3 is. It just forces companies to tell the truth about their product - not to stop making it. There will always be a place for locked hardware. Voting machines and movie projectors at the theater do not allow you to modify them - but no one pretends you can buy them in the first place. You pay (cash or taxes) for the experience. "Buying" a HDVD player is like renting a low end projector for restricted use in your home, since it is controlled by the manufacturer. They shouldn't be allowed to call it a sale.
Renting Tivos and HDVD players could also give the manufacturer additional legal protection. (IANAL.) With purchased media, defeating DRM for personal backups or format shifting is arguably fair use (as much as RIAA is working to change that). That is *not* the case for rented media or equipment. Any attempt to bypass the technical restrictions is clearly a breach of contract.
What do you agree/disagree with in GPL3? I am glad that patent abuse is addressed. However, I never thought Tivo was all that evil. You *could* after all, take their code and use it on your own hardware. We all want our voting machines to run open source software - but such hardware needs to be locked in the same manner as a Tivo. GPL3 software could not be used for an open source voting machine! Fortunately, the application is small enough that alternative licenses could probably be bought/negotiated from copyright holders.
IBM produced a working demonstration system called "Jalapeno" that codes the entire JVM in Java. If you're wondering how it bootstraps, it is a JIT. So in operation the JVM either interprets bytecode or translates it to native machine code. The JIT has hooks to let a utility translate the bytecode of the JVM itself and package it as a loadable module. The demonstration system supports i386 only. The most interesting part of the project was creating a minimal number of privileged bytecodes to support things like memory management and IO.
So if your JVM includes a JIT, it is not so farfetched for it to be "pure" Java. (The privileged bytecodes are an extension to the Java standard.) Such a design eliminates whole classes of common bugs. Unfortunately, there are infinitely many additional classes of bugs to take their place. One reason why production JVMs are still coded in C is that the code generation of mature C compilers is so much better than a first generation JIT.
No, they are very dim, like an incandescent on a dimmer at the lowest setting - or like a standard flourescent with a ballast that is having trouble. I use lots of standard flourescents because they really do last 10+ years and are very efficient. It is just the CFLs that give me trouble. The only drawback to standard flourescents is that they are harder to install. CFLs are certainly easy to install. I can live with the 60 second startup - I just put those 5 in areas where the lights aren't turned on and off a lot (e.g. computer room has 2:-). But it is a real problem - not just imagination. If the problem of dying after 6 months is solved, I'll be using more of them.
BTW, the startup problem is related to temperature. If the light is already running and hot, and you turn it off, it starts up immediately. The 60 seconds is only required for a cold start.
I bought 5 Phillips brand bulbs of various sizes. They all take a minute to reach full brightness. Will know in 6 months whether lifetime has improved.
I had the same complaint 10 years ago. Based on slashdotters telling me these problems have been solved, I went out and bought 5 more CFLs. Still takes a minute to reach full brightness. In 6 months I'll know whether the new breed lasts any longer than 10 years ago. I hope so because of the mercury (in the tube) and other toxic metal (in the electronics) content of CFLs.
Your first three points are still valid (basically the one point that you have to manually keep track of
which byte variables are really unsigned). However, your attempt to add more points is pathetic.
For instance, "short a = (short)65535;" works just like "byte c = (byte)255;". Furthermore, Java actually *does* have an unsigned 16-bit type. It is called "char". As in "char a = 65535; int b = a;".
From TFA: Or, suppose you're Amazon and you send mail to millions of users from orders@amazon.com, but you don't want everyone to have that address whitelisted because then a spammer could use the address "orders@amazon.com" to spam millions of people, hoping it would get through the filter of anyone who's an Amazon customer.
Spammers can't forge a MAIL FROM of "orders@amazon.com" for recipients that
check SPF. Decent spam filters let users whitelist emails/domains. With
decent anti-forgery like SPF and DKIM, the
problem is solved for the immediate future.
PS. For nitpickers who note that the amazon.com sender policy has a
default result of "neutral" instead of "fail", spam filters (like mine) that
track reputation of each mailfrom.domain:SPFresult pair independently
eventually start rejecting amazon.com:neutral anyway.
Won't help because the chaos advocates are already an unorthodox fringe group - i.e. crazy even by Muslim standards. And even if they weren't, judging from other religious groups with specific prophecies that were clearly not fulfilled (e.g. 7th day Adventists), it won't help. They'll just adjust their interpretation, or figure out a way that that group was not orthodox.
From the posters summary:
But now we see another answer to the creationists: maybe this isn't the only Universe. There might have been a string of them, reaching back in time, in meta-time beyond time.
He makes some other valid points (in criticizing "creationists"), but here he seems to be unaware that the "supernatural" in christian thought is not stories about the paranormal, but layers of reality. Until the invention of computers, the classical analogy was "author" and "book". But books are static, and it is hard to imagine characters in books having free will (although many authors of fantasy literature insist that the characters, not the author, make choices).
Virtual reality is the analogy for the computer age. A virtual world is created out of nothing in the sense that it exists as information with no substance of its own. The Biblical texts clearly describe multiple layers, and by no means do they rule out multiple realities at a given level. Christian (and other) fantasy authors often write about characters that somehow migrate between realities. (Given the difficulty of this leap, it is no additional stretch of imagination to have the characters suddenly speak the language, etc.) Time is often described as weakly synchronized between worlds - like the clock on a VmWare guest OS.
One implication of this is that "days" in Genesis are likely not even epochs on our timeline but refer to time in the host reality. This is not a modern idea - the 6 day creation theory was already controversial in the early church, and many church fathers discounted it on the grounds that the days referred to time in the "authors" world rather than our world. For instance, Augustine suggested that the six 'days' refer to stages in the angelic knowledge of creation. In our temporal terms the 'days' reduce to an indivisible instant, so that all the kinds of things mentioned in Genesis were really made simultaneously (i.e. the simulation was started from a precomputed state). I'll have to do some research on whether any church fathers were idiotic enough to make 6 days of our time a dogma like young earth only groups do.
The New Testament also makes a claim with practical implications. This world will not die a thermodynamic "heat death", but will be halted and erased, and souls (living and dead - from tape archives if necessary:-) ) transferred to new bodies in a "new heavens and new earth". This is the doctrine of the resurrection. There are references to it in the Old Testament as well.
In any case, apart from close minded followers of the Greek philosopher Aristotle who caused Galileo so much trouble, Christian and Jewish thought has never had the myopic view imagined by atheists that our earth is the center of reality and "man is the measure of all things". Instead, the Psalmist asks, "What is man that Thou art mindful of him?"
But Iran knows this, the Iranian people and the Iranian government are smart, and they know that the only way they can guarantee the end of their country is to actually nuke Israel.
Shi'as believe that Muhammad al-Mahdi will reappear when the world has fallen into chaos and civil war emerges between the human race for no reason. (Twelfth Imam) Ahmadinejad is part of an unorthodox group that believes muslims can hasten his coming by deliberately sinking the world into chaos (as opposed to "no reason"). (A nuanced discussion is here.) The publicly announced intention of Iran is to sink the world into chaos so as to usher in a new age.
Mutually Assured Destruction does not deter such a leader, because mutual destruction is in fact his goal. The job of our government *should* be to confine the destruction to Iran as much as possible. It seems tempting to try and replace Ahmadinejad, but we always seem to screw up and make things worse with such attempts. (See Iraq.)
Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth." 5 And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built. 6 And the Lord said, "Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another's speech." 8 So the Lord dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city.
I mostly bring this up for fun, but notice the line, "this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them." Sometimes our lack of technical success is a blessing in disguise because we don't often have the moral strength to use tech for good rather than evil.
The nature or existence of God is not a scientific question. And one persons bug is another person feature... Intelligent Design simply points out that Chance plus Selection is not the only explanation for apparent design. Perhaps it really was designed. All of our own intelligent designs have bugs. As programmers, we have "laws" to that effect. The existence of so many flaws in nature is not an argument against design, but against simplistic ideas about the designer.
Slashdot Mirror
I thought the repository was only *logically* copied. Only the differences are actually stored.
The propane tank is used to generate CO2 (queue global warming rants here). Mosquitos are attracted to CO2 because that is how they locate their prey. When they fly close enough, then the vacuum cleaner comes into play. Zapping them is no good because they don't like ozone (so the plasma ball suggested elsewhere would not attract mosquitos - it would kill lots of moths, however). To be effective in protecting your event, the CO2 generator needs to be upwind. Mosquitos follow CO2 plumes upwind toward their victims using biotech similar to lobsters (compare the concentration detected between two antenna and turn toward the stronger, the greater the difference, the greater the adjustment - simple and effective). Those downwind of the BBQ will likely head toward that instead, so put the BBQ off to one side relative to the breeze.
There is a partial solution. Thanks to the telephone investment earlier, you can get a T1 anywhere, and pay from $300 to $600 / month for 1.5Mb service. Get the neighbors together for a coop, add some WLAN, and you have almost broadband in the sticks that doesn't have multi-second latency like satellite. Get enough neighbors together with a lily pad WLAN, and you can upgrade to T3. (I know people who have done this. Don't use consumer WAPs designed for indoor use. Use outdoor models for a few $100 more that have lightning protection.)
If you can get line of sight to a friend/business partner in a nearby city, you can get 54Mb via a point to point wireless connection. With parabolic antenna, you can go quite a ways. The current record is 237 miles from a city to the side of a mountain in Venezuela (the mountain is critical to this setup as otherwise the horizon would block line of sight at this distance).
Finally, cell phone service goes many more places than broadband, and cell carriers offer broadband plans via their network. (So long, and thanks for all the honey...)
Actually, laser printers and supermarket scanners often use holograms of optics rather than actual glass optics (mirrors and lenses). The holograms are usually CGI - making equivalent real glass optics would be fabulously expensive and heavy, or even physically impossible.
for tracking which files are no longer used. That is why backup utilities such as tar have a --preserve-atime option to avoid updating atime during a backup. The proposed relatime option preserves the function of finding files no one uses anymore - for that purpose, 1 day resolution is fine. HSM systems depend on atime to know what to archive. Again, 1 day resolution is fine for that purpose.
I suppose that includes all removable hard drives used for backup. The RIAA gets to completely destroy all computer resources of an individual or small business because someone/something used their internet account. I wish all the non-techies in my acquaintance could understand how this makes computer security even more important. I also wish I could afford a 200G tape drive...
Soon you'll be able to take advanced courses on "1337 5p34" to supplement those on "ebonics".
Correct, and you misread what I was trying to say. End-users don't care beans whether it's Linux or Windows. For commodity applications like web/office/email they have trouble telling which system they are on. So why pay extra to have someone install when it's preloaded? They probably do care for less commoditized applications like Photoshop (and games as another reply pointed out).
Why do I often recycle with Linux instead of reloading Windows? End user has to pay for either (unless they are up to doing it themselves, in which case they wouldn't be paying for this kind of hand holding support). Linux is easier for me. Customer doesn't care. No brainer.
The key here is we are talking about commodity applications. The *real* support solution is some kind of web/office/email appliance - this is where I see DRMed Windows as desirable (too bad MS will want to destroy all compatibility and non-DRMed systems in the process).
A number of customers choose Mac. It comes preloaded, and they don't seem to need any support at all. That says a lot for Apple. (But I still prefer Linux personally because I get to tinker with everything.) A large part of the Mac secret seems to be motivation. Users are so *enamored* with their Mac, I think the attention to the artistic side of the UI helps this, that they try much harder to look for stuff themselves before calling for help.
In my opinion, the only thing holding back Linux on the desktop is Microsoft's illegal preload stranglehold. We'll see if the Dell/Ubuntu experiment changes that opinion.
BTW, updating end-user Linux is easy. *Upgrading* to a new version is still difficult to do remotely. (I use schemes like copying an install image to a logical volume, and having the user test boot from that - but selecting an alternate grub option is scary for an end-user.)
>> strncpy(), not strcpy()!
> Actually usage of strncpy() almost certainly guarantees you have bugs,
> IMNSHO. You need a real managed string API. Assuming the programer can keep
> track of three distinct pieces of information like "size, length and
> pointer" is just a losing bet. All of the applications (including mine) that
> have had security guarantees with money have internally used a real managed
> string API.
I use strncpy() quite a bit - for setting null padded fixed length fields in binary config/database records. I can see that it would be problematic if you thought it had something to do with string handling. (I'm sure it seemed like a good name at the time.)
The C program is just a loader. If you read further, you'll see it could have been done in Java also via custom code generation used only for initial load. This didn't seem to worth the effort, since some handwaving is sufficient to establish the feasibility of doing that last bit in Java.
Thank you for being polite! As I mentioned on another comment, that is the key point. Tivo needs to rent, not sell, their locked down equipment. That makes everyone happy, including FSF, and they can use all the GPL3 software they want. It is dishonest to pretend to "sell" equipment that the seller still controls and the buyer doesn't.
That is an excellent point. That also means that companies like Tivo can use GPLv3 software by simply changing their business model from *selling* DVRs to *renting* them. I have always suggested this for all kinds of DRM just for the sake of basic honesty. You can't actually "buy" DRMed media or hardware, since you never actually have control of it. You are only paying for the privilege of using it in the ways prescribed by the true owner. With any other type of product, this would be called a rental, not a sale.
So I think I disagree with posters ranting about how "anti-corporate" GLP3 is. It just forces companies to tell the truth about their product - not to stop making it. There will always be a place for locked hardware. Voting machines and movie projectors at the theater do not allow you to modify them - but no one pretends you can buy them in the first place. You pay (cash or taxes) for the experience. "Buying" a HDVD player is like renting a low end projector for restricted use in your home, since it is controlled by the manufacturer. They shouldn't be allowed to call it a sale.
Renting Tivos and HDVD players could also give the manufacturer additional legal protection. (IANAL.) With purchased media, defeating DRM for personal backups or format shifting is arguably fair use (as much as RIAA is working to change that). That is *not* the case for rented media or equipment. Any attempt to bypass the technical restrictions is clearly a breach of contract.
What do you agree/disagree with in GPL3? I am glad that patent abuse is addressed. However, I never thought Tivo was all that evil. You *could* after all, take their code and use it on your own hardware. We all want our voting machines to run open source software - but such hardware needs to be locked in the same manner as a Tivo. GPL3 software could not be used for an open source voting machine! Fortunately, the application is small enough that alternative licenses could probably be bought/negotiated from copyright holders.
So if your JVM includes a JIT, it is not so farfetched for it to be "pure" Java. (The privileged bytecodes are an extension to the Java standard.) Such a design eliminates whole classes of common bugs. Unfortunately, there are infinitely many additional classes of bugs to take their place. One reason why production JVMs are still coded in C is that the code generation of mature C compilers is so much better than a first generation JIT.
BTW, the startup problem is related to temperature. If the light is already running and hot, and you turn it off, it starts up immediately. The 60 seconds is only required for a cold start.
I bought 5 Phillips brand bulbs of various sizes. They all take a minute to reach full brightness. Will know in 6 months whether lifetime has improved.
I had the same complaint 10 years ago. Based on slashdotters telling me these problems have been solved, I went out and bought 5 more CFLs. Still takes a minute to reach full brightness. In 6 months I'll know whether the new breed lasts any longer than 10 years ago. I hope so because of the mercury (in the tube) and other toxic metal (in the electronics) content of CFLs.
Your first three points are still valid (basically the one point that you have to manually keep track of which byte variables are really unsigned). However, your attempt to add more points is pathetic. For instance, "short a = (short)65535;" works just like "byte c = (byte)255;". Furthermore, Java actually *does* have an unsigned 16-bit type. It is called "char". As in "char a = 65535; int b = a;".
Or, suppose you're Amazon and you send mail to millions of users from orders@amazon.com, but you don't want everyone to have that address whitelisted because then a spammer could use the address "orders@amazon.com" to spam millions of people, hoping it would get through the filter of anyone who's an Amazon customer.
Spammers can't forge a MAIL FROM of "orders@amazon.com" for recipients that check SPF. Decent spam filters let users whitelist emails/domains. With decent anti-forgery like SPF and DKIM, the problem is solved for the immediate future.
PS. For nitpickers who note that the amazon.com sender policy has a default result of "neutral" instead of "fail", spam filters (like mine) that track reputation of each mailfrom.domain:SPFresult pair independently eventually start rejecting amazon.com:neutral anyway.
Won't help because the chaos advocates are already an unorthodox fringe group - i.e. crazy even by Muslim standards. And even if they weren't, judging from other religious groups with specific prophecies that were clearly not fulfilled (e.g. 7th day Adventists), it won't help. They'll just adjust their interpretation, or figure out a way that that group was not orthodox.
He makes some other valid points (in criticizing "creationists"), but here he seems to be unaware that the "supernatural" in christian thought is not stories about the paranormal, but layers of reality. Until the invention of computers, the classical analogy was "author" and "book". But books are static, and it is hard to imagine characters in books having free will (although many authors of fantasy literature insist that the characters, not the author, make choices).
Virtual reality is the analogy for the computer age. A virtual world is created out of nothing in the sense that it exists as information with no substance of its own. The Biblical texts clearly describe multiple layers, and by no means do they rule out multiple realities at a given level. Christian (and other) fantasy authors often write about characters that somehow migrate between realities. (Given the difficulty of this leap, it is no additional stretch of imagination to have the characters suddenly speak the language, etc.) Time is often described as weakly synchronized between worlds - like the clock on a VmWare guest OS.
One implication of this is that "days" in Genesis are likely not even epochs on our timeline but refer to time in the host reality. This is not a modern idea - the 6 day creation theory was already controversial in the early church, and many church fathers discounted it on the grounds that the days referred to time in the "authors" world rather than our world. For instance, Augustine suggested that the six 'days' refer to stages in the angelic knowledge of creation. In our temporal terms the 'days' reduce to an indivisible instant, so that all the kinds of things mentioned in Genesis were really made simultaneously (i.e. the simulation was started from a precomputed state). I'll have to do some research on whether any church fathers were idiotic enough to make 6 days of our time a dogma like young earth only groups do.
The New Testament also makes a claim with practical implications. This world will not die a thermodynamic "heat death", but will be halted and erased, and souls (living and dead - from tape archives if necessary :-) ) transferred to new bodies in a "new heavens and new earth". This is the doctrine of the resurrection. There are references to it in the Old Testament as well.
In any case, apart from close minded followers of the Greek philosopher Aristotle who caused Galileo so much trouble, Christian and Jewish thought has never had the myopic view imagined by atheists that our earth is the center of reality and "man is the measure of all things". Instead, the Psalmist asks, "What is man that Thou art mindful of him?"
Shi'as believe that Muhammad al-Mahdi will reappear when the world has fallen into chaos and civil war emerges between the human race for no reason. (Twelfth Imam) Ahmadinejad is part of an unorthodox group that believes muslims can hasten his coming by deliberately sinking the world into chaos (as opposed to "no reason"). (A nuanced discussion is here.) The publicly announced intention of Iran is to sink the world into chaos so as to usher in a new age.
Mutually Assured Destruction does not deter such a leader, because mutual destruction is in fact his goal. The job of our government *should* be to confine the destruction to Iran as much as possible. It seems tempting to try and replace Ahmadinejad, but we always seem to screw up and make things worse with such attempts. (See Iraq.)
Genesis 11
Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth." 5 And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built. 6 And the Lord said, "Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another's speech." 8 So the Lord dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city.I mostly bring this up for fun, but notice the line, "this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them." Sometimes our lack of technical success is a blessing in disguise because we don't often have the moral strength to use tech for good rather than evil.
The nature or existence of God is not a scientific question. And one persons bug is another person feature... Intelligent Design simply points out that Chance plus Selection is not the only explanation for apparent design. Perhaps it really was designed. All of our own intelligent designs have bugs. As programmers, we have "laws" to that effect. The existence of so many flaws in nature is not an argument against design, but against simplistic ideas about the designer.