Well, for many people it is probably beneficial to be part of such a cult. It's always possible for people to do even crazier things... and the concept of an invisible Big Brother may be just what they need to stay in check. It is rather amusing when some claim that people without the same invisible friend have no reason to be caring, ethical and so on... with that, they explain exactly what kind of ethics they have at their core.
Interestingly, though... there is not much outside of a narrow range of activities that separates a god-believer and an atheist. They are smart enough to rely on exactly the same things an atheist would, like science, hospitals, police, etc. That's evolution at work, I guess. It's my speculation that at least 20% of those who claim to be religious do it for the social benefits.
No, you are trying to masquerade religion as science. The problem with creationists is that they are heavily biased towards one specific religion. Whenever someone defends creationism, you can do a 100 to 1 bet than they'll answer "yes" when asked if they happen to be Christian. Which real scientific field has this level of bias?
Naturalism is not a religion or a foundation for religious thinking. A personality cult centered around (and named after) an egomaniac is a foundation for a religion. Please don't equate your comfortable myth with healthy skepticism.
If you look at it, religion is little more than a cult gone out of control. Christianity is centered around (and named after) a single charismatic and egomaniac leader who passed away 2000 years ago. No matter how watered down it is, it's still a personality-cult at its core.
I find that scary... but maybe I don't have the right genes to "get" this stuff.
This is incorrect. ID does not want either ID or creationism taught in science classes.
The whole purpose of creatonism (and its newest incarnation ID) is to get their god concept regarded as an equivalent or even superior scientific theory. That is why almost 100% of all Creationists and ID proponents are religious and almost all of them happen to be Christians. There is not a single scientific field, including theology, with such a dominance of one specific religion.
Well, the way it works is that the costs of legal battles and almost certain losses are factored into the business plan. In the meantime, they're making insane amounts of money with the spyware installs and they just have to stretch that for as long as possible. It's a winning strategy that doesn't require the legality of their P2P implementation to be defendable in court.
It's rather nasty that the costs of losing in court are not always so prohibitively high that the crime doesn't pay. Look at microsoft... sorry for that comparison.
It seems like glitches and waiting for the right glitch to come along have become an important part of normal operation for these things.
Why didn't they build in some means of communication for this "safe mode"? I find it rather odd that it is in a known state (safe mode) that is known to be undesirable, yet there is no fallback system (even a timed one) to get it out of this mode? How come?
It seems that while it's not the first killer ap per se, it is the first (or one of the first) that got some momentum going in the idea of using computers for small business and personal use.
The amusing thing of such stories is that even the ones portrayed as critical or not religious still somehow manage to accept the deity in some manner.
The reality, however, is that in spite of people calling on their deity to take actions in the physical world, this deity's actions is consistent with the actions of a deity that does not exist or is not involved with mankind.
I would say: post your joke in a medium that does not need science to build or sustain it.
Actually, I'm not saying that if you can disprove it's still true, I'm saying that even if you can disprove it, it still _MAY_ be true,...
Correct, but in your argumentation, the jump from "may be true" to "is most likely true" is a very small one. I find that many people overlook this gap too easily. My argument is that a whole range of other things may then be true as well and on that basis deserve equal attention. Yet in the whole realm of possibilities, certain ones are picked and others discarded... but without mention or reason.
Only if one believes that no religion actually worships the actually existing supernatural being.
Well, my phrasing was a little off. My point was (is) that even if we can accept that one or more sentient supernatural beings exist, then that in itself is not enough proof that a particular religion or religious interpretation is the correct one. The number of different interpretations is an indication that such beings do not favor giving much-needed feedback to their followers.
One interesting assumption is that this being actually desires worship. It is equally reasonable (maybe more reasonable) that such a hypothetical being does not care about our opinions and thus does not require worship. Religions make strong claims about their deity's intentions, yet we can reasonably assume to know almost nothing about the way it thinks or operates. Thus strong claims carry the strong risk of being false. I find it reasonable to question the reasoning of people who do claim to know with certainty what this being wants from us.
In my view, worship satisfies a need in humans, not in any supernatural entity... and thus a religion can be entirely succesful and even helpful even in the absence of its deity. Would there be a point in worshipping a deity that does not consider us the most special beings alive? People require from this deity that we are special and central to divine plans. If not, the deity can just bugger off apparently.
that a religion which advocates the premise that an individual can have a relationship with this supreme being is most likely a correct one,...
Even so, that still doesn't help much because you can base the entire spectrum of opinions and interpretation on religions that advocate such a premise. Also, truth by association is rather weak and you'd most likely not accept the invalidation an entire religion on the basis of being able to disprove a few of its assertions.
In that light, the religion that is most likely correct is the Raelian religion (www.rael.org) as it claims that humans were created by aliens. That fits quite nicely with the many UFO sightings, some by high-ranking and trusted military officials. In fact, they show how the bible supports their points because it speaks of Elohim, which - in its original language - can be both singular and plural. Thus, since the Realian religion advocates alien involvement, UFO sightings must be taken as proof for the truth of that religion.
You make an interesting argument because you're taking the "if you cannot disprove it, it must be true" fallacy to a new height by turning it into "even if you can disprove it, it's still true". You are glancing over two problem issues: one is that you argue that it can be reasonable to believe in any number of entities or claims, as long as you can trace it to something that exists outside of our reality.
Second, the existence or non-existence of a supernatural entity (or entities) is often closely coupled to the validity of religion. True, if the religion is valid, then the deity exists. However, the converse is not true: if a supernatural creating force exists, it is still perfectly valid to reject all religions as bogus.
Thus, the people who believe in "God" actually believe in their religious doctrine, which conveniently uses forces outside the scope of reality or logic to base its authority on. In fact, I hypothesize that organized religion depends on their deity not existing and not interfering with their business.
I always cringe when politicians make a big deal out of such things as it almost always reeks of political opportunism. It's easy, perhaps cowardly, to try to present one's point of any moral quality by attacking an "evil" without a real lobby.
The effort is better spent by not treating people as though they are stupid (even though many indeed are), but educating them in real world practicalities. I'm quite certain that most people are aware that they're not really "killing" anyone or anything in games. Anything killed spawns back or can be replaced. Many would not be that enthusiastic about playing in a game in which they can expect to actually be killed or inflict real damage to real people... and that's perhaps the reason they're playing games and not shooting guns.
Now when politicians start campaigning against actual guns and the actual NRA lobby... that's when they'll be showing guts.
It seems that one constant problem with fighting spam is that sometimes the ones who are fighting the spam are doing more damage than the spammers themselves...
I wonder when we're going to see ads appearing on google maps. Certainly, they have some business model to make that branch profitable? Would they allow a hack (enhancement) that included some form of paid services (as in: paid to be shown in the hack) or ads?
Keeping such bases and supplying them with reserves is quite an expensive undertaking. Look at how difficult it is to get another shuttle up. Some level of international cooperation is necessary... not just for the expertise, but also for covering expenses.
Taking an overtly aggressive stance on this issue is counterproductive for exactly what is being advocated. Regimes with fewer requirements for safety procedures might be motivated to actually try to put a base up there themselves... while the U.S. faces both safety and budget pressure.
The best bet, in my view, is to encourage international peaceful cooperation and thus better cover both expenses and take a leadership position through valuable contributions and not imperialism. It sends wrong signals to both friends and foes to actively seek such dominance.
I don't see why the PC has to stand for "politically correct". That is: it is unreasonable to demand that games are free of any bias with regard to strategy. Most comparisons for games that have been going around are the convergence of games and movies... that is: you are "in" a movie. It can hardly be argued that movies lack any bias in terms of the strategy to handle trouble.
The only situation in which bias is obviously a bad thing is when bias is labeled as fact.
Well, I've had experience both with co-located boxes and with dedicated (rented) boxes. The reason I migrated to rented boxes was because when a co-located box fails, you have to go down there personally and fix things. Migration to another provider is also a lot more cumbersome (you have to pick up your box, during which time you'll be offline) and generally, you're still paying for the bandwidth. In their case, they have the fortunate (but unusual) situation of not having to pay for co-location.
I don't find a 2TB bandwidth cap for $300 expensive at all. You're right about the hard drive thing, but often they'll have some special where you pay a steep one-time fee (e.g. $200) to have a big drive added. I've rented dedicated servers since mid-2003 (2 years now) and I haven't had a formatting error happen to me. My guess is that it's not that common. I did have a PSU break down due to a local power surge on a co-located box... while I was out of the country. Fun!
What I don't get is why they aren't renting their own dedicated box, so they don't have to own the hardware. You can get a dual Xeon configuration for about $200-300/month and with about 2TB of bandwidth. Of course now they won't have a monthly bill, but every time they need to upgrade the machine or repair it, there are going to be costs.
One of the major problems with antimatter is that you need to be able to contain it very very securely. The actualy weight of the antimatter may be substantially less, but the whole infrastructure to create it and contain it is going to be considerably more complex and expensive.
The aspect of them following a religion is foolish. It doesn't mean all of their thinking is foolish or well or they are not capable of rational or intelligent thought outside the scope of their indoctrination.
Btw, Einstein was not religious in the sense that you mean.
I'm curious to know which effect petitions and campaigning has had on this decision. To an extent, it seems to be a bit of internal power struggle as well: "The Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII) says the rejection is a logical response to the Commission and Council's refusal to take parliament's will into consideration."
You're right, that is probably how a charlatan like her would argue. But, even if she succeeds in proving that astrology worked before, she would still need to prove that the same astrology is no longer going to work at all as the result of 1 comet impact.
With other words: in order for her to prove her claim, she has to prove that astrology from now on is false and that all astrologers following the same method will fail to reach "true" conclusions. It actually seems in the interest of other astrologers for this case to never go to court.
I'm certainly interested in seeing such a case appear in court. Usually, charlatans such as these take care to avoid independent scrutiny and measurability. To let it appear before court would place her in the position of having to prove the had any abilities to begin with... and that's going to work against her the most. At least, I'm guessing the judge is going to be a lot more emotionally independent than her clients who probably have an emotional interest in believing in her abilities.
Can't beat the price/performance ratio...
on
Attack of the $1 DVDs
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Well, at $1 per DVD, it beats even free downloading in terms of time and space costs... plus, you get a free DVD to have a backup on. I have been noticing a lot of relatively cheap DVDs ($4-5 range) lately actually. Perhaps part of a parallel-running strategy against ripping?
Slashdot Mirror
Well, for many people it is probably beneficial to be part of such a cult. It's always possible for people to do even crazier things... and the concept of an invisible Big Brother may be just what they need to stay in check. It is rather amusing when some claim that people without the same invisible friend have no reason to be caring, ethical and so on... with that, they explain exactly what kind of ethics they have at their core.
Interestingly, though... there is not much outside of a narrow range of activities that separates a god-believer and an atheist. They are smart enough to rely on exactly the same things an atheist would, like science, hospitals, police, etc. That's evolution at work, I guess. It's my speculation that at least 20% of those who claim to be religious do it for the social benefits.
I'm not equating science and religion.
No, you are trying to masquerade religion as science. The problem with creationists is that they are heavily biased towards one specific religion. Whenever someone defends creationism, you can do a 100 to 1 bet than they'll answer "yes" when asked if they happen to be Christian. Which real scientific field has this level of bias?
Naturalism is not a religion or a foundation for religious thinking. A personality cult centered around (and named after) an egomaniac is a foundation for a religion. Please don't equate your comfortable myth with healthy skepticism.
If you look at it, religion is little more than a cult gone out of control. Christianity is centered around (and named after) a single charismatic and egomaniac leader who passed away 2000 years ago. No matter how watered down it is, it's still a personality-cult at its core.
I find that scary... but maybe I don't have the right genes to "get" this stuff.
This is incorrect. ID does not want either ID or creationism taught in science classes.
The whole purpose of creatonism (and its newest incarnation ID) is to get their god concept regarded as an equivalent or even superior scientific theory. That is why almost 100% of all Creationists and ID proponents are religious and almost all of them happen to be Christians. There is not a single scientific field, including theology, with such a dominance of one specific religion.
Well, the way it works is that the costs of legal battles and almost certain losses are factored into the business plan. In the meantime, they're making insane amounts of money with the spyware installs and they just have to stretch that for as long as possible. It's a winning strategy that doesn't require the legality of their P2P implementation to be defendable in court.
It's rather nasty that the costs of losing in court are not always so prohibitively high that the crime doesn't pay. Look at microsoft... sorry for that comparison.
It seems like glitches and waiting for the right glitch to come along have become an important part of normal operation for these things.
Why didn't they build in some means of communication for this "safe mode"? I find it rather odd that it is in a known state (safe mode) that is known to be undesirable, yet there is no fallback system (even a timed one) to get it out of this mode? How come?
It seems that while it's not the first killer ap per se, it is the first (or one of the first) that got some momentum going in the idea of using computers for small business and personal use.
The amusing thing of such stories is that even the ones portrayed as critical or not religious still somehow manage to accept the deity in some manner.
The reality, however, is that in spite of people calling on their deity to take actions in the physical world, this deity's actions is consistent with the actions of a deity that does not exist or is not involved with mankind.
I would say: post your joke in a medium that does not need science to build or sustain it.
Actually, I'm not saying that if you can disprove it's still true, I'm saying that even if you can disprove it, it still _MAY_ be true, ...
...
Correct, but in your argumentation, the jump from "may be true" to "is most likely true" is a very small one. I find that many people overlook this gap too easily. My argument is that a whole range of other things may then be true as well and on that basis deserve equal attention. Yet in the whole realm of possibilities, certain ones are picked and others discarded... but without mention or reason.
Only if one believes that no religion actually worships the actually existing supernatural being.
Well, my phrasing was a little off. My point was (is) that even if we can accept that one or more sentient supernatural beings exist, then that in itself is not enough proof that a particular religion or religious interpretation is the correct one. The number of different interpretations is an indication that such beings do not favor giving much-needed feedback to their followers.
One interesting assumption is that this being actually desires worship. It is equally reasonable (maybe more reasonable) that such a hypothetical being does not care about our opinions and thus does not require worship. Religions make strong claims about their deity's intentions, yet we can reasonably assume to know almost nothing about the way it thinks or operates. Thus strong claims carry the strong risk of being false. I find it reasonable to question the reasoning of people who do claim to know with certainty what this being wants from us.
In my view, worship satisfies a need in humans, not in any supernatural entity... and thus a religion can be entirely succesful and even helpful even in the absence of its deity. Would there be a point in worshipping a deity that does not consider us the most special beings alive? People require from this deity that we are special and central to divine plans. If not, the deity can just bugger off apparently.
that a religion which advocates the premise that an individual can have a relationship with this supreme being is most likely a correct one,
Even so, that still doesn't help much because you can base the entire spectrum of opinions and interpretation on religions that advocate such a premise. Also, truth by association is rather weak and you'd most likely not accept the invalidation an entire religion on the basis of being able to disprove a few of its assertions.
In that light, the religion that is most likely correct is the Raelian religion (www.rael.org) as it claims that humans were created by aliens. That fits quite nicely with the many UFO sightings, some by high-ranking and trusted military officials. In fact, they show how the bible supports their points because it speaks of Elohim, which - in its original language - can be both singular and plural. Thus, since the Realian religion advocates alien involvement, UFO sightings must be taken as proof for the truth of that religion.
You make an interesting argument because you're taking the "if you cannot disprove it, it must be true" fallacy to a new height by turning it into "even if you can disprove it, it's still true". You are glancing over two problem issues: one is that you argue that it can be reasonable to believe in any number of entities or claims, as long as you can trace it to something that exists outside of our reality.
Second, the existence or non-existence of a supernatural entity (or entities) is often closely coupled to the validity of religion. True, if the religion is valid, then the deity exists. However, the converse is not true: if a supernatural creating force exists, it is still perfectly valid to reject all religions as bogus.
Thus, the people who believe in "God" actually believe in their religious doctrine, which conveniently uses forces outside the scope of reality or logic to base its authority on. In fact, I hypothesize that organized religion depends on their deity not existing and not interfering with their business.
I always cringe when politicians make a big deal out of such things as it almost always reeks of political opportunism. It's easy, perhaps cowardly, to try to present one's point of any moral quality by attacking an "evil" without a real lobby.
The effort is better spent by not treating people as though they are stupid (even though many indeed are), but educating them in real world practicalities. I'm quite certain that most people are aware that they're not really "killing" anyone or anything in games. Anything killed spawns back or can be replaced. Many would not be that enthusiastic about playing in a game in which they can expect to actually be killed or inflict real damage to real people... and that's perhaps the reason they're playing games and not shooting guns.
Now when politicians start campaigning against actual guns and the actual NRA lobby... that's when they'll be showing guts.
It seems that one constant problem with fighting spam is that sometimes the ones who are fighting the spam are doing more damage than the spammers themselves...
I wonder when we're going to see ads appearing on google maps. Certainly, they have some business model to make that branch profitable? Would they allow a hack (enhancement) that included some form of paid services (as in: paid to be shown in the hack) or ads?
Keeping such bases and supplying them with reserves is quite an expensive undertaking. Look at how difficult it is to get another shuttle up. Some level of international cooperation is necessary... not just for the expertise, but also for covering expenses.
Taking an overtly aggressive stance on this issue is counterproductive for exactly what is being advocated. Regimes with fewer requirements for safety procedures might be motivated to actually try to put a base up there themselves... while the U.S. faces both safety and budget pressure.
The best bet, in my view, is to encourage international peaceful cooperation and thus better cover both expenses and take a leadership position through valuable contributions and not imperialism. It sends wrong signals to both friends and foes to actively seek such dominance.
I don't see why the PC has to stand for "politically correct". That is: it is unreasonable to demand that games are free of any bias with regard to strategy. Most comparisons for games that have been going around are the convergence of games and movies... that is: you are "in" a movie. It can hardly be argued that movies lack any bias in terms of the strategy to handle trouble.
The only situation in which bias is obviously a bad thing is when bias is labeled as fact.
Well, I've had experience both with co-located boxes and with dedicated (rented) boxes. The reason I migrated to rented boxes was because when a co-located box fails, you have to go down there personally and fix things. Migration to another provider is also a lot more cumbersome (you have to pick up your box, during which time you'll be offline) and generally, you're still paying for the bandwidth. In their case, they have the fortunate (but unusual) situation of not having to pay for co-location.
I don't find a 2TB bandwidth cap for $300 expensive at all. You're right about the hard drive thing, but often they'll have some special where you pay a steep one-time fee (e.g. $200) to have a big drive added. I've rented dedicated servers since mid-2003 (2 years now) and I haven't had a formatting error happen to me. My guess is that it's not that common. I did have a PSU break down due to a local power surge on a co-located box... while I was out of the country. Fun!
that gets 100GB traffic
I don't know where drupal is hosting, but 100GB is not that much bandwidth if you're hosting in the U.S.
What I don't get is why they aren't renting their own dedicated box, so they don't have to own the hardware. You can get a dual Xeon configuration for about $200-300/month and with about 2TB of bandwidth. Of course now they won't have a monthly bill, but every time they need to upgrade the machine or repair it, there are going to be costs.
One of the major problems with antimatter is that you need to be able to contain it very very securely. The actualy weight of the antimatter may be substantially less, but the whole infrastructure to create it and contain it is going to be considerably more complex and expensive.
The aspect of them following a religion is foolish. It doesn't mean all of their thinking is foolish or well or they are not capable of rational or intelligent thought outside the scope of their indoctrination.
Btw, Einstein was not religious in the sense that you mean.
I'm curious to know which effect petitions and campaigning has had on this decision. To an extent, it seems to be a bit of internal power struggle as well: "The Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII) says the rejection is a logical response to the Commission and Council's refusal to take parliament's will into consideration."
You're right, that is probably how a charlatan like her would argue. But, even if she succeeds in proving that astrology worked before, she would still need to prove that the same astrology is no longer going to work at all as the result of 1 comet impact.
With other words: in order for her to prove her claim, she has to prove that astrology from now on is false and that all astrologers following the same method will fail to reach "true" conclusions. It actually seems in the interest of other astrologers for this case to never go to court.
I'm certainly interested in seeing such a case appear in court. Usually, charlatans such as these take care to avoid independent scrutiny and measurability. To let it appear before court would place her in the position of having to prove the had any abilities to begin with... and that's going to work against her the most. At least, I'm guessing the judge is going to be a lot more emotionally independent than her clients who probably have an emotional interest in believing in her abilities.
Besides, she has 1 million dollars waiting for her if she can prove she has paranormal abilities
Well, at $1 per DVD, it beats even free downloading in terms of time and space costs... plus, you get a free DVD to have a backup on. I have been noticing a lot of relatively cheap DVDs ($4-5 range) lately actually. Perhaps part of a parallel-running strategy against ripping?
For the beginning reciters among us, we at least still have a nice t-shirt with the first 4493 digits of Pi in the shape of the Pi symbol.