I USE OpenSource and other free software because I find it to be better than commercial software, and more responsive to users requests for a lot of different things. WinAmp - rocks. I hate Windows Media Player still. Plus, since everyone is able to develop for WinAmp, there are all sorts of wonderful plugins for it. Linux - love it! It may not be as simple as Windows yet, and yes, there's still plenty of little desktop features to be improved upon, but it's a huge project. I just installed Mandrake8.1 last night. Man the new KDE is sharp, and Konqueror is EVEN better than before. Even after installing win2k recently from Win98 I can't say I was all that wowed by it, just another Winblows OS.
So I can't offer insight on why developers do it, but as a user, I use it because it's better than paying for software that doesn't and CAN'T fulfill my needs because only a limited set of developers at the 'company' are allowed to make changes. I can't wait until the full Kapital release comes out. Yes, it's proprietary and a paid for program, but it's one of the last reasons I'm stuck with Windows for important personal stuff. And the KDE developers have so much other really wonderful completely free stuff, that paying $50 for one program out of an entire desktop full of OpenSource software is a very minute price to pay. This isn't meant to be a Windows rant, it's more of a slashdottian comparison of why many here find Linux and OpenSource in general so much better.
Battlebots is my new favorite sport (besides soccer, futbol for the Ur-a-pee-ans) to watch on TV. I pine for the day that we'll see this go mainstream and have upright 2, 4, & 6 legged creatures running around ripping each other's appendages off.
Of course I'll get modded down for this, it goes against most slashdotter's opinions, *gasp*! But I don't really care. I'm going to give you a little bit of info here everyone, and you'll hate me for it, until it comes true of course, at which point you'll really hate me anyways:
The Bible! *Another gasp!* Since most of the anti-Christian zealots are now listening: What better reason to require having the 'Mark of the Beast' imprinted on everyone's head and hand? You don't want you number stolen, so the only way to safeguard against that with any pretty reasonable protection would be to have it tattooed, chip implanted, or whatever on two places on your body that are important for everyday life. IE - your head and your hand. Scan everyone's hand at the checkout line, just like those stupid supermarket Saver! cards that are around these days, and you can verify if the person is who they claim to be or not. Plus, you get big savings! (Not to mention the fact that the supermarkets just hike the prices for everything that's "on sale" using their Saver! cards so that anyone who doesn't have 'the card' gets screwed.)
Now look, I won't take part in any universal numbering scheme that requires me to place said number in or on my person (in a permanant fashion, such as a tattoo or embedded chip), but if you people want to, be my guest. I'm just going on the record as saying: "The Bible tells us not to," and it does so because it's just a bad idea, for one thing. The rules and laws contained in the Bible are not to keep us repressed, they're to keep us from harming ourselves, just like parents discipline their kids to keep them from harming themselves. It just so happens that God knows everything, therefore He knows everything that could harm us, even if it seems fun or 'beneficial' at the moment.
Funny dude! Anyways, the article mentions that the overall effect of CodeRed on users wasn't that big of a deal because people patched their systems??! Yeah, right! I use RoadRunner through TimeWarner at home, and in chatting with other CounterStrike players, we've all come to the conclusion that while @Home and RR closed their port 80 access to users outside of the networks, that still doesn't stop internal CodeRed worms to ping away on the internal network. I am STILL receiving hits every 5-10 minutes from CodeRed'd machines on RoadRunner's internal network. It's made the lag quite unbearable (worse than dialup speeds) for playing online games at least 50% of the time. Sure, that's not productive, but it's the primary reason I pay for monthly cable service. I'd say I personally have lost about 50% of the usability of my broadband connection because of this, so YES, it is still affecting us.
Well, obviously this radiou station plays some of the same old stuff as pop radio, but they also play some really cool stuff as well. POD obviously isn't anything like Michael W Smith or Jackie Valazquez. Lifehouse, while pretty mainstream, is still really good and not a 'boy band' or 'hymnals'. This radio station is NOT CCM, which I personally find boring. They target all there music at the alternative teenage/20 something/30 something crowd, not the 'hip' moms and dads who are into Jackie Velazquez and the like. That's why I made the point that they're a niche market (Christian) and popular on the net. Sure they play some really stupid stuff sometimes, but they have a niche that the rest of the radio stations around here don't.
Exactly. I've listened to a local radio station for several years now that is decidedly different: they play Christian rock/hard-core/dance/pop/rap music. They also play stuff that mainstream stations sometimes pick up like POD, Sixpence None The Richer, and Lifehouse, because it can be also classified as Christian. They also broadcast each day streaming media on the net. In fact, they 'advertise' (with little blurbs from listeners) how many listeners they have via satellite and the net nearly every day. I think they've actually grown a lot from their original size specifically because they embraced 'net and satellite feeds.
It is quite stupid to say that digital audio is dying. If anything, those of us with any real musical appreciation of good stuff, not boy bands and teen hip-hop models, will be using the net MORE for quality content. Just like Napster, if the 'old media' can't catch up, they'll just try and legislate and litigate it into oblivion, unfortunately.:( how lame.
I suspect that laptops with wireless cards are filling the role that web appliances were supposed to fill.
My friend's parents have a laptop w/ dialup in the kitchen, my roommate has one in his room/or wherever he is in the apt, and I would have one too if I wasn't so broke. Heck, you can probably pick up an old 486 or Pentium laptop for the same amount as a bulky monitor/keyboard/mouse 'internet appliance' would cost these days.
t's very easy to say "well, I can sue you in my country."
It's quite another to enforce it and deal with all the implications of said enforcement.
This is precisely why the 2nd Amendment, the right to bear arms, is so important to protecting our 1st Amendment rights. If we are to protect not only our country's rights, but our own individual, God-given rights, we need to be able to project our force, in defense of those rights. Our founding fathers realized this, and made sure it got included in the Bill of Rights. We won our freedom from taxation without representation, and a generally opressive rule of the colonies of the America's from the Britain government, partly due to the fact that most settler's possessed and were trained in the use of firearms. Therefore, when British soldiers tried to demand everyday colonists to quarter them and provide them with supplies against their will, the colonists had the ability (in mass) to resist.
Now, while it can be argued that certain people should no longer be allowed such freedoms (convicted felons, small children, dogs, etc.) due to their higher potential for mishandling such a 'freedom', we should realize that we cannot do away with our ability to project force on an individual level (not just trusting government to take care of it for us) without reaping the consequences eventually. This is precisely why I see no need for further 'gun laws' in America. The world is still a dangerous place, and rulings like this from Australia, while it has not come to actual armed conflict, are the reasons why you cannot disarm everyone and expect those in authority positions to not abuse their power.
I have had this book for at least five years now, and I have to agree with Katz on this one. It is really detailed (far more detailed than I could have imagined just reading Tolkien's books), and offers a lot of help when reading through Tolkien's books, especially the Silmarillion. I'm a die-hard Tolkien fan (just got The Hobbit millenium edition, and the Lord of the Rings is on the way!), so I'm very familiar with the history and imagery of Middle-Earth, but the Atlas reviewed here really does justice to the series. It might be interesting to note that Karen Wynn Fonstad has done lots of other fiction cartography work for other popular book series' out there (I think D&D and other related stuff), so she's pretty good at giving the fantastical flair to her work (at least I think so). Get this book and reread through the Silmarillion. It's a much better read with maps like this in hand (The Silmarillion maps do take up approximately 1/2 of the Atlas of Middle Earth - IIRC).
Now this sort of simplistic toy would be a pretty cool project to put together from kit form. I'm thinking a big boys set of Lego's type kit. That's what my computer has become to me, another way to have fun while building and constantly changing the design to try and make it better. I have one original Lego design I could still put together in several alternative configurations because I spent SOOO much time refining it, I memorized the design. Anyone have any links on cool kit projects to build little toys like this that are sold specifically as electrical/mechanical learning kits? It's been awhile since last I've played with toys.:(
1. the guy had rubber soled shoes on
2. had big fro hair
3. shuffled along the office style carpeting because he was tired of doing tax returns
4. rubbed his head with the Palm Pilot before replacing it in it's cradle
I think MS is making a mistake in yanking Netscape plugin/Java support from IE. With any luck, they are opening the door to the resurgence of Netscape/Mozilla.
Well, the whole idea from Microsoft is to once again stomp out competition. They know that IE has dominance in the market these days because of Netscape's inability to keep up with M$. They also know that if they don't include Netscape plugins or Java immediately, some of their users will not notice the difference, and even worse, those same users will complain to the website owners about using Netscape and Java before they complain to M$ for not including it in the browser. So yes, it sucks, but it's an intelligent business move designed to further cement IE's (unfortunate) market dominance.
It's sort of like NSync, Brittany Spears, and all the other crap pop music: The masses buy it, even if musically it's all the same (and not very creative). Notice my sig... Probably one of the most creative, inventive, bands still making music, but no teenager these days has ever heard of them. And that's the way I like it, it keeps the music creative, unique, and wonderful.
The only thing I find lacking from IE5.5 bug wise would be lack of UI settings for maintaining and editing Java, JavaScript, and other security/annoyance type issues that sites think need to bombard me with to give me a 'quality', sticky experience on their webpage. Besides that, I've finally set Windows to use Mozilla exclusively as the default web browser. (Konq is still my fav on Mandrake8:) ). Sure some things are still a little slow, but Mozilla's open format to releasing software (and testing it) means that it has become a 10 times more useful to me than the *other* guys' software.
The point is not whether MS is putting out good software and not being the neighborhood bully NOW...
It's that they were in the past, and the courts ruled that this was anti-competitive action, and should therefore be punished accordingly. The next step now is figuring how to appropriately punish the company. Just because a mass murderer is convicted of heinous crimes, doesn't mean you let them off the hook without consequences for his/her actions!<p>
The debate now is whether or not breaking the company is too harsh, just right, or not harsh enough, or whether they should face less strict consequences for their PAST actions.
Reminds me of the old PS game, PaRappa the Rappa. That game was sorta cool, but because of the idea behind the game: Mash buttons in rythm to the beats to become the best 'rappa' around. Why would you change the virtual world of Zelda? It's like going from 2d overhead 'simulated' 3dimensional space (Zelda 1), to an isometric view (SuperNES Zelda), to full 3d (N64 Zelda), and then back to some wierd mixture of 2d characters in a 3d world (Gamecube Zelda). That's like putting us four dimensional humans into a 6 dimensional space!
To add to the usability of flat-screen LCD displays:
Here at work we have a Customer Care command center, with about 20 LCD monitors in one little room. It allows for easily locating and monitoring those departments and individuals that are getting too many customer calls. The LCD's are hung three monitors high on two walls. This room would have to be 2-3 times its current size of 12'x 12' to fit as many CRT monitors (even if they were half the size of current CRT monitors). And this is just for your average customer call center, nothing all that special. I'm sure the savings on running 20 LCD's 24hours a day is much better than trying to cool down what the equivalantly sized room X 20 CRT displays would cost.
...and if they're 'snooping' i.e. - reading your downloaded files as they d/l, what's to say they don't accidentally catch a purchasing transaction of legal software, a d/l of an update to existing software, or other such info that contains you're credit card #, passwords, usernames, real name, etc? I agree. This is a completely illegal invasion of privacy, unless you want to go back to Nazi Germany days and live in such a suppressed, brainwashed society.
From the article: "Excite@Home, however, said that users are made aware through the terms and conditions set out in its Acceptable Use Policy (AUP), which say that it will monitor the network from time to time."
Anyone else ever seen how the EULA's often include a clause saying that the EULA can change at any time and that you'll be held to the new terms? So if you sign up for service from an ISP for a year, non-refundable, and they change their Acceptable Uses policies, you can't back out of their service without paying the full price for your year's service? If you're paying monthly, isn't that like renigging on a business contract when they change the rules on you? But you can't call the contract null and void, even though the rules changed on you. Something smells to high heaven about that...
Re:Will the recorders get banned via the DMCA?
on
RIAA To Target CD-R
·
· Score: 1
Sorry, but individuals don't have any power under the DMCA. You've gotta be a big corporate power or giant "organization" (Church of Scientology) to be heard, even if you have a valid beef with someone distributing your copyrighted works illegally.
Maybe if you attached some four letter acronym in your correspondence with the ISP's, they'd listen?
From the website: "Queen Elizabeth feared that she would lose her grip on the people if the Puritans were not held in check. She therefore introduced severe legislation against them. In spite of this, the various Puritan groups continued to meet, but secretly, in private homes."
So we know Microsoft and other media outlets fund gov't in a big way from the previous story today, and we know that the DMCA protects these companies' copyrights, and we know that the government is the one passing and enforcing such a law. Hmmm... Sounds like a nice protection racket they've got going there. Keep those in power, there, everyone else: "Kiss our ass or we'll legislate you right out of existence!"
I say again: Those who forget the past, are doomed to repeat it.
In many areas today, there is only one broadband provider.
Much like their is primarily only one OS (much to the chagrin of all the Linux users out there - it's sad, but pretty much true for the desktop). This article once again shows me why I was in such a foul mood today: There's lots wrong in the world today, and not much we can do about it...
This isn't a problem with the theory at all. It's a valid next question to ask, once you've established that panspermia is true, but you don't need to answer it before you prove panspermia.
But the point is, where did the original matter and 'evolution/design' to create the n-th advanced civilization prior to us come from? If we say it's always been there, and that the universe is infinite in all time directions (past, present, and future), we have problems with basic physics principles. 1st Law of Thermodynamics: Every action has an opposite and equal reaction. How is it that the universe's being can be infinite if a basic rule of it is the 1st law of thermodynamics? The mere dimension of time indicates to us on a physical, observable level that matter, and the universe are not infinite in the truest sense of complete infinte being...
Even modern science claims that the universe is approx. 15-20 billion years old. This indicates to me that for this panspermia thing to hold true, there would at the very least need to be an ultimate beginning to it all.
Slashdot Mirror
Here's the story without the signup restriction: http://archive.nytimes.com/2001/09/06/technology/c ircuits/06IMAG.html
So I can't offer insight on why developers do it, but as a user, I use it because it's better than paying for software that doesn't and CAN'T fulfill my needs because only a limited set of developers at the 'company' are allowed to make changes. I can't wait until the full Kapital release comes out. Yes, it's proprietary and a paid for program, but it's one of the last reasons I'm stuck with Windows for important personal stuff. And the KDE developers have so much other really wonderful completely free stuff, that paying $50 for one program out of an entire desktop full of OpenSource software is a very minute price to pay. This isn't meant to be a Windows rant, it's more of a slashdottian comparison of why many here find Linux and OpenSource in general so much better.
Battlebots is my new favorite sport (besides soccer, futbol for the Ur-a-pee-ans) to watch on TV. I pine for the day that we'll see this go mainstream and have upright 2, 4, & 6 legged creatures running around ripping each other's appendages off.
The Bible! *Another gasp!* Since most of the anti-Christian zealots are now listening: What better reason to require having the 'Mark of the Beast' imprinted on everyone's head and hand? You don't want you number stolen, so the only way to safeguard against that with any pretty reasonable protection would be to have it tattooed, chip implanted, or whatever on two places on your body that are important for everyday life. IE - your head and your hand. Scan everyone's hand at the checkout line, just like those stupid supermarket Saver! cards that are around these days, and you can verify if the person is who they claim to be or not. Plus, you get big savings! (Not to mention the fact that the supermarkets just hike the prices for everything that's "on sale" using their Saver! cards so that anyone who doesn't have 'the card' gets screwed.)
Now look, I won't take part in any universal numbering scheme that requires me to place said number in or on my person (in a permanant fashion, such as a tattoo or embedded chip), but if you people want to, be my guest. I'm just going on the record as saying: "The Bible tells us not to," and it does so because it's just a bad idea, for one thing. The rules and laws contained in the Bible are not to keep us repressed, they're to keep us from harming ourselves, just like parents discipline their kids to keep them from harming themselves. It just so happens that God knows everything, therefore He knows everything that could harm us, even if it seems fun or 'beneficial' at the moment.
Let the flames begin...
Funny dude! Anyways, the article mentions that the overall effect of CodeRed on users wasn't that big of a deal because people patched their systems??! Yeah, right! I use RoadRunner through TimeWarner at home, and in chatting with other CounterStrike players, we've all come to the conclusion that while @Home and RR closed their port 80 access to users outside of the networks, that still doesn't stop internal CodeRed worms to ping away on the internal network. I am STILL receiving hits every 5-10 minutes from CodeRed'd machines on RoadRunner's internal network. It's made the lag quite unbearable (worse than dialup speeds) for playing online games at least 50% of the time. Sure, that's not productive, but it's the primary reason I pay for monthly cable service. I'd say I personally have lost about 50% of the usability of my broadband connection because of this, so YES, it is still affecting us.
Well, obviously this radiou station plays some of the same old stuff as pop radio, but they also play some really cool stuff as well. POD obviously isn't anything like Michael W Smith or Jackie Valazquez. Lifehouse, while pretty mainstream, is still really good and not a 'boy band' or 'hymnals'. This radio station is NOT CCM, which I personally find boring. They target all there music at the alternative teenage/20 something/30 something crowd, not the 'hip' moms and dads who are into Jackie Velazquez and the like. That's why I made the point that they're a niche market (Christian) and popular on the net. Sure they play some really stupid stuff sometimes, but they have a niche that the rest of the radio stations around here don't.
It is quite stupid to say that digital audio is dying. If anything, those of us with any real musical appreciation of good stuff, not boy bands and teen hip-hop models, will be using the net MORE for quality content. Just like Napster, if the 'old media' can't catch up, they'll just try and legislate and litigate it into oblivion, unfortunately. :( how lame.
My friend's parents have a laptop w/ dialup in the kitchen, my roommate has one in his room/or wherever he is in the apt, and I would have one too if I wasn't so broke. Heck, you can probably pick up an old 486 or Pentium laptop for the same amount as a bulky monitor/keyboard/mouse 'internet appliance' would cost these days.
It's quite another to enforce it and deal with all the implications of said enforcement.
This is precisely why the 2nd Amendment, the right to bear arms, is so important to protecting our 1st Amendment rights. If we are to protect not only our country's rights, but our own individual, God-given rights, we need to be able to project our force, in defense of those rights. Our founding fathers realized this, and made sure it got included in the Bill of Rights. We won our freedom from taxation without representation, and a generally opressive rule of the colonies of the America's from the Britain government, partly due to the fact that most settler's possessed and were trained in the use of firearms. Therefore, when British soldiers tried to demand everyday colonists to quarter them and provide them with supplies against their will, the colonists had the ability (in mass) to resist.
Now, while it can be argued that certain people should no longer be allowed such freedoms (convicted felons, small children, dogs, etc.) due to their higher potential for mishandling such a 'freedom', we should realize that we cannot do away with our ability to project force on an individual level (not just trusting government to take care of it for us) without reaping the consequences eventually. This is precisely why I see no need for further 'gun laws' in America. The world is still a dangerous place, and rulings like this from Australia, while it has not come to actual armed conflict, are the reasons why you cannot disarm everyone and expect those in authority positions to not abuse their power.
I have had this book for at least five years now, and I have to agree with Katz on this one. It is really detailed (far more detailed than I could have imagined just reading Tolkien's books), and offers a lot of help when reading through Tolkien's books, especially the Silmarillion. I'm a die-hard Tolkien fan (just got The Hobbit millenium edition, and the Lord of the Rings is on the way!), so I'm very familiar with the history and imagery of Middle-Earth, but the Atlas reviewed here really does justice to the series. It might be interesting to note that Karen Wynn Fonstad has done lots of other fiction cartography work for other popular book series' out there (I think D&D and other related stuff), so she's pretty good at giving the fantastical flair to her work (at least I think so). Get this book and reread through the Silmarillion. It's a much better read with maps like this in hand (The Silmarillion maps do take up approximately 1/2 of the Atlas of Middle Earth - IIRC).
Now this sort of simplistic toy would be a pretty cool project to put together from kit form. I'm thinking a big boys set of Lego's type kit. That's what my computer has become to me, another way to have fun while building and constantly changing the design to try and make it better. I have one original Lego design I could still put together in several alternative configurations because I spent SOOO much time refining it, I memorized the design. Anyone have any links on cool kit projects to build little toys like this that are sold specifically as electrical/mechanical learning kits? It's been awhile since last I've played with toys. :(
1. the guy had rubber soled shoes on
2. had big fro hair
3. shuffled along the office style carpeting because he was tired of doing tax returns
4. rubbed his head with the Palm Pilot before replacing it in it's cradle
Real smart fro hair dude!
Well, the whole idea from Microsoft is to once again stomp out competition. They know that IE has dominance in the market these days because of Netscape's inability to keep up with M$. They also know that if they don't include Netscape plugins or Java immediately, some of their users will not notice the difference, and even worse, those same users will complain to the website owners about using Netscape and Java before they complain to M$ for not including it in the browser. So yes, it sucks, but it's an intelligent business move designed to further cement IE's (unfortunate) market dominance.
It's sort of like NSync, Brittany Spears, and all the other crap pop music: The masses buy it, even if musically it's all the same (and not very creative). Notice my sig... Probably one of the most creative, inventive, bands still making music, but no teenager these days has ever heard of them. And that's the way I like it, it keeps the music creative, unique, and wonderful.
Damnit! So you're the one that stole the domain name I wanted! lol.
The only thing I find lacking from IE5.5 bug wise would be lack of UI settings for maintaining and editing Java, JavaScript, and other security/annoyance type issues that sites think need to bombard me with to give me a 'quality', sticky experience on their webpage. Besides that, I've finally set Windows to use Mozilla exclusively as the default web browser. (Konq is still my fav on Mandrake8 :) ). Sure some things are still a little slow, but Mozilla's open format to releasing software (and testing it) means that it has become a 10 times more useful to me than the *other* guys' software.
It's that they were in the past, and the courts ruled that this was anti-competitive action, and should therefore be punished accordingly. The next step now is figuring how to appropriately punish the company. Just because a mass murderer is convicted of heinous crimes, doesn't mean you let them off the hook without consequences for his/her actions!<p>
The debate now is whether or not breaking the company is too harsh, just right, or not harsh enough, or whether they should face less strict consequences for their PAST actions.
Reminds me of the old PS game, PaRappa the Rappa. That game was sorta cool, but because of the idea behind the game: Mash buttons in rythm to the beats to become the best 'rappa' around. Why would you change the virtual world of Zelda? It's like going from 2d overhead 'simulated' 3dimensional space (Zelda 1), to an isometric view (SuperNES Zelda), to full 3d (N64 Zelda), and then back to some wierd mixture of 2d characters in a 3d world (Gamecube Zelda). That's like putting us four dimensional humans into a 6 dimensional space!
To add to the usability of flat-screen LCD displays:
Here at work we have a Customer Care command center, with about 20 LCD monitors in one little room. It allows for easily locating and monitoring those departments and individuals that are getting too many customer calls. The LCD's are hung three monitors high on two walls. This room would have to be 2-3 times its current size of 12'x 12' to fit as many CRT monitors (even if they were half the size of current CRT monitors). And this is just for your average customer call center, nothing all that special. I'm sure the savings on running 20 LCD's 24hours a day is much better than trying to cool down what the equivalantly sized room X 20 CRT displays would cost.
...and if they're 'snooping' i.e. - reading your downloaded files as they d/l, what's to say they don't accidentally catch a purchasing transaction of legal software, a d/l of an update to existing software, or other such info that contains you're credit card #, passwords, usernames, real name, etc? I agree. This is a completely illegal invasion of privacy, unless you want to go back to Nazi Germany days and live in such a suppressed, brainwashed society.
Anyone else ever seen how the EULA's often include a clause saying that the EULA can change at any time and that you'll be held to the new terms? So if you sign up for service from an ISP for a year, non-refundable, and they change their Acceptable Uses policies, you can't back out of their service without paying the full price for your year's service? If you're paying monthly, isn't that like renigging on a business contract when they change the rules on you? But you can't call the contract null and void, even though the rules changed on you. Something smells to high heaven about that...
Send comments to the RIAA here. I did.
Sorry, but individuals don't have any power under the DMCA. You've gotta be a big corporate power or giant "organization" (Church of Scientology) to be heard, even if you have a valid beef with someone distributing your copyrighted works illegally.
Maybe if you attached some four letter acronym in your correspondence with the ISP's, they'd listen?
From the website: "Queen Elizabeth feared that she would lose her grip on the people if the Puritans were not held in check. She therefore introduced severe legislation against them. In spite of this, the various Puritan groups continued to meet, but secretly, in private homes."
So we know Microsoft and other media outlets fund gov't in a big way from the previous story today, and we know that the DMCA protects these companies' copyrights, and we know that the government is the one passing and enforcing such a law. Hmmm... Sounds like a nice protection racket they've got going there. Keep those in power, there, everyone else: "Kiss our ass or we'll legislate you right out of existence!"
I say again: Those who forget the past, are doomed to repeat it.
Much like their is primarily only one OS (much to the chagrin of all the Linux users out there - it's sad, but pretty much true for the desktop). This article once again shows me why I was in such a foul mood today: There's lots wrong in the world today, and not much we can do about it...
But the point is, where did the original matter and 'evolution/design' to create the n-th advanced civilization prior to us come from? If we say it's always been there, and that the universe is infinite in all time directions (past, present, and future), we have problems with basic physics principles. 1st Law of Thermodynamics: Every action has an opposite and equal reaction. How is it that the universe's being can be infinite if a basic rule of it is the 1st law of thermodynamics? The mere dimension of time indicates to us on a physical, observable level that matter, and the universe are not infinite in the truest sense of complete infinte being...
Even modern science claims that the universe is approx. 15-20 billion years old. This indicates to me that for this panspermia thing to hold true, there would at the very least need to be an ultimate beginning to it all.