People get sent to jail for challenging the accuracy of the Holocaust figures, yet freedom of speech in invoked everytime someone gratuitousely insults the prophet Mohammed and his teachings.
You're comparing apples to oranges here.
Freedom of speech would also apply to people insulting Abrahm, Jesus or any other prophet and their respective teachings.
Israel gets away with a stockpile of nukes but no Arab country could dream of being allowed to develop them.
I think that's a matter of culture. Israel is more or less a western country; if someone, say, in denmark, denies the holocaust they'll start some mild diplomatic pressure and release a bunch of press statements. [3]
In the arab world, people get killed and embassies get burned[1] over a bunch of pictures[4]. Of course no one wants that kind of raving lunatics[2] to have nukes.
[1] Of course, the useful idiots that actually did this were agitated by their governments and/or religious leaders for whom "the west" and "israel" are very useful as scapegoats to blame everything that's wrong in their countries on. Those would actually be the people in control of the nukes, and no one wants them to have nukes either. Has anyone actually been prosecuted yet
[2] Yes, that's a very very very broad generalization. Not all arabs are raving lunatics. Actually, I'd bet that only a very tiny minority of arabs are raving lunatics. I'm wondering if any of the raving lunatics got prosecuted for any of the stuff listed here (arson, manslaughter, death threats). And yes, I do realize that there probably were a bunch of non-arab raving lunatics involved, too.
[3] Also I'd claim that Israel has used its nukes in a rather responsible manner (i.e. not at all, even though being involved in plenty of wars). That doesn't mean that I agree with everything Isreal does (which I certainly don't). Also, of course it's easier to prevent someone from getting nukes than to take nukes away from someone who already has them. Especially if they have unconditional backing by the USofA.
[4] I sure hope you do agree that said pictures were pretty harmless.
Disclaimer: The term "raving lunatic" in this posting is intended as a label for acutal raving lunatics only. If someone who isn't a raving lunatic interprets this posting as applying said label to himself, said reader is misinterpreting this posting. IF YOU ARE NOT A RAVING LUNATIC, IT IS NOT THE INTENTION OF THIS POSTING TO LABEL YOU AS SUCH. Please don't burn your local austrian embassy over it.
Well, with windows systems you don't have much choice in your file systems, do you?
Certainly, if you have a bunch of file systems to choose from (ReiserFS, ext3, XFS, JFS, etc.), one of them having this bug/feature is certainly not as troublesome as if you only had two file systems to choose from (FAT, NTFS) and those two were already different enough that you didn't have much choice anyway. (FAT is old and lacks features, but is very universal. Hence, great for USB sticks, MP3 players, partitions used for swapping data between windows and other systems on multi-boot systems, etc. NTFS for everything else.)
Hence, no double standard at all.
If, say, NTFS had this characteristic, millions of users had the choice of risking losing their data on power loss or using FAT only. Since XFS has this characteristic, users that don't want to take that risk (dpendending on the application, it might be worthwile to actually take it) still have plenty file systems to choose from.
Having him in jail is, at the very least, going to be somewhat disruptive to the current development of ReiserFS, and at worst, going to put a really big kink in the future development and stability of the filesystem.
If he is found guilty, the name of the filesystem will have to be changed, too. Otherwise it will fall into obscurity along with MansonFS, OswaldFS and the great-but-forgotten object-based, journalling OJSimpsonFS.
For some reason I remember UN Weapons Inspectors being in Iraq and actually looking for WMDs. I also remember the US government not believing their reports and pushing for war and starting a little invasion before they could even finish their inspection.
Of course, Saddam Hussein being removed from power is great, but look at the price the Iraqi people (and not only they) have to pay every day.
Of course they won't play nice with the US and Israel - they'd lose their own personal Emmanuel Goldstein (what a particularly fitting name in that context). Their people might start asking about those chocolate rations, and who knows what else.
To stay in power, the Mullahs need to have an enemy. Of course, if the enemy can simply remove the from power, that doesn't help. If their enemy is obviously deterred by nukes (see Iraq and North Korea), that's the way to go.
No, I don't know what to do. Actually I'd much prefer Iran not to have nukes.
You know, I actually wanted to add something like ".. and by theocracy I mean Iran" to my post. I didn't because that seemed lame. I could explain that the USofA, while certainly being home to a metric astronomic shitload of idiots, bigots and religious fanatics (and some of the brightest people currently alive) isn't exactly a theocracy. But that would be lame, too.
Instead I'll answer your rhethorical question with the following utterance:
They don't need them, they can disarm any time they want.
While the iranian government certainly is completely insane[1], they certainly have one very good reason to want nukes: they saw what happens if you're on the US' "nasty" list and don't have WMDs.
[1] insane, as in they shouldn't have toy guns, much less nukes.
So several seconds of complete silence is a "creative element"?
A musical composition which apparently consists of only silence, but thereby actually focuses the listener on the sounds that the audience (and the environment) produce, showing the actual impossibility of "silence" in such a context?
I'd certainly call that at least as creative as the gazillionth composition using the same basic set of instruments, song structure, melody, harmony, rhyhtm, optionally lyrics and topics that have been done to death for hundreds of years.
To quote from some random D&D handbook I just made up:
Cowardice
Strength - 0
Dexterity - 0
Constitution - 0
Intelligence - 0
Wisdom - 0
Charisma - 25
The Cowardess (or Cowardice as she is more commonly called) doesn't know any magic and her fighting skills are ridiculous. Yet the fact that she has boobies makes nerds in basements around the world drop their swords and wet their pants. To summarize, she's invincible.
The problem is that evolutionists try to explain the origin and operation of extremely complex living systems apart from the activity of thought arising in a mind.
The theory of evolution shows how complex living systems can evolve from less complex ones (or rather how populations of individuals change in response to selective forces). It shows that there is no need for metaphysical intervention for this process to take place.
TTOE doesn't say anything about the origin of life itself, doesn't deny the existance of metaphysical beings (it wouldn't be very scientific if it did) and is claimed by the roman catholic church [1] to be compatible with its beliefs.
Most people will readily credit one or more programmers as the originators of these binary patterns.
That's a bad example because those patterns don't replicate, have no variation and there's no selective force they are exposed to.
I'll give a little counter-example demonstrating how something as complex as a human eye can evolve from a single light-sensitive cell. Look here for way better explanations than i can give:
Assume a simple organism that needs warmth for its survival. Obviously, if a random mutation of such a beast gives it a single light-sensitive cell, that's an advantage over its light-insensitive comrades.
A while later, we have a variation that has the light-sensitive cell lay in a little depression on its skin. The cell now has slightly better directional "vision". Another bunch of variations, and that depression has grown deeper. The organism now can find the sun easily.
Assume a little change in environment - for example, the lake in which the organisms swam became muddier. From time to time, little pieces of dirt cross our creatures path and get stuck in the depression. No more vision for you, buddy! Along comes another variation which has a single semi-transparent cell across the opening of the depression. Now no dirt can enter that hole and we have gained another evolutionary advantage.
I'll shorten this a bit, but it should be easy to see how having multiple light-sensitive cells gives another advantage (a very simple kind of image, starting with two or four pixels and getting more detailed as more complex nervous systems allow), how developing a lens, an iris (to more easily adapt to different lighting conditions), color vision, a second eye both as a backup and for depth perception, and so on all give slight advantages each. Obviously, the process takes millions of years, but it is far from impossible or even implausible.
[1] Don't know about other religions, I can only assume that at least most mainstream christian religions have a similar stance here.
1. The Universe itself is eternal, has always existed. This has been shown to be false by observation and experiment. 2. The Universe created itself. This logically absurd. 3. There is an existence outside of the universe from whom it came to be.
I wouldn't call 2 absurd. Similar stuff happens all thetime in our universe, albeit on a much smaller scale.
Evolution is the human attempt to escape accountability to God by trying explain the facts of science without reference to Him.
But that's nothing different from any other science, is it? Meteorology allows us to see the weather as a natural phenomenon without the need for some angry god to throw lighting around. Evolution allows us to see the fact that we have different types of animals (and plants, and fungus,...) around us that have certain similarities and certain differences without the need for a god stepping in and creating shitloads of different species. Evolution certainly allows for a god to have created life itself.
But seriously, one thing I want to ask everyone who claims the theory of evolution to be wrong somehow is this: Evolution works because of reproduction, variation and selection. Which of the following four points do you think is wrong?
Reproduction, i.e. living things actually don't reproduce.
Variation, i.e. there are no mutation, no transcription errors and no mixing of traits even for sexually reproducing organisms.
Selection, i.e. death is equally likely for all organisms.
The combination, i.e. it is impossible to breed dogs to have long/short/brown/white hair.
i was taught in university to load entire segments of the standard java libraries, i need some math stuff, oh just import java.math.* etc... not the java.math.stat.normal_distribution or whatever.
The import statement is just syntactical sugar. Only the classes you actually use will be loaded. AFAIK, IANJG[1] .
You perform an action/method/operation ON an object in the normal world
fill $object with data
not $object.fill(data)
Well, strictly talking OO, you send the object a message: object, fill [yourself with] data
That's because of encapsulation and polymorphism. The object consists of its internal state and a bunch of operations that may change said internal state. You don't fill the object, because you don't know how to fill it. A doubly-linked list is filled differently from a hash set. The knowledge how to fill is part of the object. That way you can swap a doubly-linked list for a hash set and keep your client code the same.
Of course, encapsulation and polymorphism don't require the syntax to be the way it is, but they explain it.
Also, I want to mentione something from your original post:
C is a quintisentialy orthogonal language, you dont need X billion extra libs to use C.
C uses the dot operator to access parts of structs in a similar way that java uses it. So your criticism of object.fill(data) should also apply to struct.field = value which according to your logic should be written as set the field of struct to value (which looks a bit like the verbose syntax of ActionScript, IIRC)
I'd claim that you need more extra libs for C than for Java, assuming that by "extra" you mean "not part of the standard". GUIs, database access, threading - you need extra libraries for all that in C. Of course, you could use no libraries at all and write everything you need yourself, but I hope you agree that that would be pointless.
Slashdot Mirror
You're comparing apples to oranges here.
Freedom of speech would also apply to people insulting Abrahm, Jesus or any other prophet and their respective teachings.
I think that's a matter of culture. Israel is more or less a western country; if someone, say, in denmark, denies the holocaust they'll start some mild diplomatic pressure and release a bunch of press statements. [3]
In the arab world, people get killed and embassies get burned[1] over a bunch of pictures[4]. Of course no one wants that kind of raving lunatics[2] to have nukes.
[1] Of course, the useful idiots that actually did this were agitated by their governments and/or religious leaders for whom "the west" and "israel" are very useful as scapegoats to blame everything that's wrong in their countries on. Those would actually be the people in control of the nukes, and no one wants them to have nukes either. Has anyone actually been prosecuted yet
[2] Yes, that's a very very very broad generalization. Not all arabs are raving lunatics. Actually, I'd bet that only a very tiny minority of arabs are raving lunatics. I'm wondering if any of the raving lunatics got prosecuted for any of the stuff listed here (arson, manslaughter, death threats). And yes, I do realize that there probably were a bunch of non-arab raving lunatics involved, too.
[3] Also I'd claim that Israel has used its nukes in a rather responsible manner (i.e. not at all, even though being involved in plenty of wars). That doesn't mean that I agree with everything Isreal does (which I certainly don't). Also, of course it's easier to prevent someone from getting nukes than to take nukes away from someone who already has them. Especially if they have unconditional backing by the USofA.
[4] I sure hope you do agree that said pictures were pretty harmless.
Disclaimer: The term "raving lunatic" in this posting is intended as a label for acutal raving lunatics only. If someone who isn't a raving lunatic interprets this posting as applying said label to himself, said reader is misinterpreting this posting. IF YOU ARE NOT A RAVING LUNATIC, IT IS NOT THE INTENTION OF THIS POSTING TO LABEL YOU AS SUCH. Please don't burn your local austrian embassy over it.
Well, with windows systems you don't have much choice in your file systems, do you?
Certainly, if you have a bunch of file systems to choose from (ReiserFS, ext3, XFS, JFS, etc.), one of them having this bug/feature is certainly not as troublesome as if you only had two file systems to choose from (FAT, NTFS) and those two were already different enough that you didn't have much choice anyway. (FAT is old and lacks features, but is very universal. Hence, great for USB sticks, MP3 players, partitions used for swapping data between windows and other systems on multi-boot systems, etc. NTFS for everything else.)
Hence, no double standard at all.
If, say, NTFS had this characteristic, millions of users had the choice of risking losing their data on power loss or using FAT only.
Since XFS has this characteristic, users that don't want to take that risk (dpendending on the application, it might be worthwile to actually take it) still have plenty file systems to choose from.
OMG NinjaFS!!!11!!
(or, even better, SlowDownCowboyFS. And for all your "bigger" files, SlowDownCowboyNealFS).
Yep, that one has "in-your-face" performance.
If he is found guilty, the name of the filesystem will have to be changed, too. Otherwise it will fall into obscurity along with MansonFS, OswaldFS and the great-but-forgotten object-based, journalling OJSimpsonFS.
For some reason I remember UN Weapons Inspectors being in Iraq and actually looking for WMDs. I also remember the US government not believing their reports and pushing for war and starting a little invasion before they could even finish their inspection.
Of course, Saddam Hussein being removed from power is great, but look at the price the Iraqi people (and not only they) have to pay every day.
Of course they won't play nice with the US and Israel - they'd lose their own personal Emmanuel Goldstein (what a particularly fitting name in that context). Their people might start asking about those chocolate rations, and who knows what else.
To stay in power, the Mullahs need to have an enemy. Of course, if the enemy can simply remove the from power, that doesn't help. If their enemy is obviously deterred by nukes (see Iraq and North Korea), that's the way to go.
No, I don't know what to do. Actually I'd much prefer Iran not to have nukes.
Shouldn't their variant of the Flying Spaghetti Monster protect them and throw lighting at their enemies, like it did in $HOLY_BOOK?
Having to followup on my bad analogy here, improving it:
Erecting a fence so paparazzi don't take pictures of you is the same as firing torpedoes at them?
So blinding paparazzi is the same as killing them?
s/faith/ :wq
You know, I actually wanted to add something like ".. and by theocracy I mean Iran" to my post. I didn't because that seemed lame. I could explain that the USofA, while certainly being home to a metric astronomic shitload of idiots, bigots and religious fanatics (and some of the brightest people currently alive) isn't exactly a theocracy. But that would be lame, too.
Instead I'll answer your rhethorical question with the following utterance:
They don't need them, they can disarm any time they want.
While the iranian government certainly is completely insane[1], they certainly have one very good reason to want nukes: they saw what happens if you're on the US' "nasty" list and don't have WMDs.
[1] insane, as in they shouldn't have toy guns, much less nukes.
What's the problem with the chinese shining their lasers at space that nobody owns anyway?
A theocracy that needs nukes certainly has a faith problem. (Not to mention that whole witches in ponds handing out swords thing.)
A musical composition which apparently consists of only silence, but thereby actually focuses the listener on the sounds that the audience (and the environment) produce, showing the actual impossibility of "silence" in such a context?
I'd certainly call that at least as creative as the gazillionth composition using the same basic set of instruments, song structure, melody, harmony, rhyhtm, optionally lyrics and topics that have been done to death for hundreds of years.
Seriously, who gives a shit about cameras and speakers. The real issue here is: what's with the chocolate rations?
You are so right! Actually this isn't limited to thongs, and isn't limited to mothers or even close relatives either.
I hereby state LittleBigLui's theorem linguistic underwear exclusion theorem:
I have found a proof of this, too, but it is too elaborate to fit into this comment.
To quote from some random D&D handbook I just made up:
[1] One! Million! Dollars!
The theory of evolution shows how complex living systems can evolve from less complex ones (or rather how populations of individuals change in response to selective forces). It shows that there is no need for metaphysical intervention for this process to take place.
TTOE doesn't say anything about the origin of life itself, doesn't deny the existance of metaphysical beings (it wouldn't be very scientific if it did) and is claimed by the roman catholic church [1] to be compatible with its beliefs.
That's a bad example because those patterns don't replicate, have no variation and there's no selective force they are exposed to.
I'll give a little counter-example demonstrating how something as complex as a human eye can evolve from a single light-sensitive cell. Look here for way better explanations than i can give:
Assume a simple organism that needs warmth for its survival. Obviously, if a random mutation of such a beast gives it a single light-sensitive cell, that's an advantage over its light-insensitive comrades.
A while later, we have a variation that has the light-sensitive cell lay in a little depression on its skin. The cell now has slightly better directional "vision". Another bunch of variations, and that depression has grown deeper. The organism now can find the sun easily.
Assume a little change in environment - for example, the lake in which the organisms swam became muddier. From time to time, little pieces of dirt cross our creatures path and get stuck in the depression. No more vision for you, buddy! Along comes another variation which has a single semi-transparent cell across the opening of the depression. Now no dirt can enter that hole and we have gained another evolutionary advantage.
I'll shorten this a bit, but it should be easy to see how having multiple light-sensitive cells gives another advantage (a very simple kind of image, starting with two or four pixels and getting more detailed as more complex nervous systems allow), how developing a lens, an iris (to more easily adapt to different lighting conditions), color vision, a second eye both as a backup and for depth perception, and so on all give slight advantages each. Obviously, the process takes millions of years, but it is far from impossible or even implausible.
[1] Don't know about other religions, I can only assume that at least most mainstream christian religions have a similar stance here.
I wouldn't call 2 absurd. Similar stuff happens all the time in our universe, albeit on a much smaller scale.
But that's nothing different from any other science, is it? Meteorology allows us to see the weather as a natural phenomenon without the need for some angry god to throw lighting around. Evolution allows us to see the fact that we have different types of animals (and plants, and fungus,
But seriously, one thing I want to ask everyone who claims the theory of evolution to be wrong somehow is this:
Evolution works because of reproduction, variation and selection. Which of the following four points do you think is wrong?
The import statement is just syntactical sugar. Only the classes you actually use will be loaded. AFAIK, IANJG[1] .
[1] I am not James Gosling.
Well, strictly talking OO, you send the object a message:
object, fill [yourself with] data
That's because of encapsulation and polymorphism. The object consists of its internal state and a bunch of operations that may change said internal state. You don't fill the object, because you don't know how to fill it. A doubly-linked list is filled differently from a hash set. The knowledge how to fill is part of the object. That way you can swap a doubly-linked list for a hash set and keep your client code the same.
Of course, encapsulation and polymorphism don't require the syntax to be the way it is, but they explain it.
Also, I want to mentione something from your original post: