Thank you for agreeing with me that it is a theory. A theory is not a fact (check the dictionary or a definition of the scientific process). Are you saying that you have proof that a species has evolved into a completely new species? This is breaking news, why isn't it on the headlines page here? I do not accept that slight modifications of a species proves evolution. As I stated before, that happens all the time, but it is still the same species.
Oh, no it isn't based on misunderstanding. The theory that started this whole conversation is the beginning of the universe. And if there isn't a superior being that created the universe, then it just happened. The laws of mechanics and physics must have evolved over time and thus could be changing regularly and thus anything done using the scientific process would be invalid as the laws could change right our from under it. In other words, the theory turns on itself over time.
Ah, but gravity can be witnessed, and atomic theory was witnessed in early August, 1945. The roundness of the world has been witnessed, as has Copernican's theory. How have you placed evolution into the same group as these. Each and every one of these represents the mechanical and physical laws that govern our universe.
Evolution isn't proven by your arguements. You are simply attempting to increase the acceptance by proximity (another great tool of science, get enough people to lie and it will be accepted as truth).
Oh, but this is simple modification and it does happen all the time. Extrapolating this to say that one species evolves into something completely different over time is a stretch. I will agree that a species can and will change over time. And both examples you gave are a species doing slight (relatively speaking) modifications for survival.
This can be accomplished in many ways. In the case of the wallabys, the habitat for the species was changed somewhat and quickly. They had to adapt or die. Sometimes man is involved in these changes, such as selective breeding of animals producing a new breed. This occurs relatively regularly with domesticated animals.
You haven't proven evolution of species however. The wallaby was still a wallaby and the moth was still a moth. You have proven survival of the fittest, but that still doesn't imply evolution of species.
But evolution is a theory. It can't be proven unless (according to the scientific process) someone sees it happen. To the best of my knowledge, no one has seen anything evolve into something else. Thus it remains a theory.
In Psalm 119:160, David wrote "Thy word is true from the beginning: and every one of thy righteous judgments endureth for ever." This is not a theory, it is a declaration (if I remember my grammer properly).
Don't go throwing a walking fish at me to prove evolution, unless you saw the fish start walking or can prove that it didn't walk before. Have you ever thought that maybe it was an undiscovered species (that still happens you know)? Evolution makes a neat theory for those that don't want to believe in God, but it has never been proven.
I just can't understand how anyone can look at the world/universe in all of the splendor with all the mechanical and physical laws that work so tightly together and say "It just happened that way". To me that would be like saying "my computer built itself from the sands on the beach". It took intelligence to build a computer and it took even more intelligence to build the universe.
I have often wondered along this same line. How do we know that the ratio of (say) tungsten-182 and hafnium-182 is a constant? Or how do we know that
the change in the speed of light didn't change the half-life of hafnium-182?
I agree that in lab conditions the process works very well, but we are talking about very controlled testing. And even very controlled testing isn't perfect, as bugs are accidentally released with software, and consumer products aren't all hugh successes.
Also, in the "real world" environment, how are they sure that there hasn't been a loss of one of the elements? A loss of tungsten-182 would make the time measurement be less as the ratio would be higher in favor of hafnium-182. And how do they know that the astroids that they used were not from a planet, moon, or something that didn't form a core? I seriously doubt that they can prove where that astroid came from.
It seems to me that they are extending the scientific process over things that aren't controllable. The scientific process is susceptible to error when a lack of control is allowed to enter the experiment.
But you can't purchase the TV version and unfortunately they don't do every movie for TV especially as quickly as they are available on DVD or tape. And yes there are still things questionable about TV. Have you really watched much on TV recently (even movies modified for TV)? Well, actually it probably is calm to you given your language here, but I find many things objectionable and do use the power switch and my money (by not purchasing things that are advertised on those shows or movies) to cast a vote against them.
As for the directors spending time on movies, you are correct that they spend time on them. No arguement on that at all and I don't suggest that they not receive their payment for that work. However, it isn't a product that is incapable of modification. This goes back to my statement about open source software to you earlier, those programmers spend a lot of time on those projects. Do you think that I should be able to modify them? If I can modify that, then why can't I modify a movie or view a modified copy of a movie (assuming that no law is being broken)?
Your only arguement so far is something that you call art. Well only a truly appreciated artwork will survive the test of time. The modification of a few copies will in no way harm the appreciation of an artwork. After all there have been copies of the "Venus de Milo" made with arms and that hasn't hurt the appreciation of that particular artwork. There have been copies of other works of art made as well (nude artworks having clothes added, incomplete artworks completed, etc.) Schubert's "Unfinished Symphony" was finished and it still stands. I don't think that your artwork arguement holds water in the test of time. There are way too many specific points against it.
However, the arguement of freedoms seems to hold water. Look at history when a culture or nation started losing freedoms. Usually it wasn't long until all freedoms were lost and the civilization, nation, or culture fell. Rome, Germany, Russia (the original one under the czars), USSR, and many more.
Yes, your previous posts all have to do with freedoms. I take the stand that I have the freedom to watch a movie without the language (such as you are using in this thread). Your statements simply show me that the profanity has become so normal to you, that you can't understand life without it and without using it to insult others.
I too am interested in freedoms and I oppose most of the things that you oppose. I feel that macrovision, regions, and copy protections, etc are all wrong. They interfere with freedoms that I am granted by other laws (such as copyright law). I agree that the folks involved in the production of these movies are entitled to their payments on them, I would in no way suggest that these movies should be modified and replicated without paying the necessary royalties, etc.
However, I don't believe that you have the right to tell me that I have to listen to the profanity to see the story. I don't feel that you should be using it here either. But I strongly believe in the freedom of speech, so I would fight and die for your right to say here exactly what you want to say, even if you feel that profanity is what you want to say.
Art, like beauty, is in the eyes of the beholder. When I purchase a movie, I have the more rights (under the current law) than you have to watch your out-of-region movie. Under current law, modifying your DVD player is possibly in volation of the DMCA. If I decide to purchase a modified version of the movie (and if no current laws exist against this), then that is my business. Is this any different than watching the director's cut, or the "new extra scenes added" version? They aren't the original release either!
My biggest point was that you should think things through and be consistent. If you believe in freedoms, you had better stand for freedoms. Don't try to pick and choose which freedoms are OK. If I don't have the freedom to edit a video, you probably don't have the freedom to copy it (macrovision) either. The two are that closely related!!! And if I can't edit it, you had better watch out trying to get that out-of-region video through customs, the MPAA has a great lobbying organization.
Interesting coming from you. I went and looked at your previous posts and found one where you were talking about the APEX AD600 DVD player (you were refering to hacking the AD1500). Your opinion in that post was that you should be allowed to watch a DVD how you wanted.
Well, I want to watch a good movie without the foul language maybe. What is the difference in me watching it without the foul language and you watching it without the trailer for the next flick to be released? They were both put there by the same people at least indirectly. I guess you could argue that the director and actor put the foul language there and the producer put the trailer there, however the producer hired the director and actor, thus it is at least indirectly there from the same source.
Also in your previous post you are encouraging people to break a law (DMCA) to make their DVD player macrovision and region free, and this differs from removing un-necessary foul language in what way? Just because you don't like DMCA because it doesn't allow fair use of your purchase? Well, the way I see it is if I want to pay the original producer for their movie and also pay someone else to make it more pleasurable for me and my family to watch, then I haven't hurt anyone. The producer got his money, the director got his money, the actor got his money, and my editor got his money. In exchange for all of that, I got a movie that I was willing to watch, which I otherwise would not have watched (in which case the producer, director, and actor got nothing).
You also made a similar comment in the thread about the Sony BetaMax when talking about macrovision. And again when talking about SecurRom protection on NWN. After those I quit looking as there was a trend that was very apparent. It really appears to me, that you feel anything is wrong that in any way henders you, but me making a change that only affects me bothers you, as my version is different than yours.
Following that logic, I guess you are a Microsoft lover as you wouldn't possibly want me to modify anything concerning my OS or applications on my computer as they would then be different than yours. If I removed Konqueror from KDE it would be a really bad thing wouldn't it? Of if I decided to use PostgreSQL instead of MySQL? I shouldn't have a choice, I should just be happy with what I have force feed to me? You probably don't eat at Burger King either as there "you can have it your way"!!!
And you were using Linux on these USB-serial devices because?
Oh, yeah, OS/400 doesn't support USB and you didn't have source for Windows to modify the drivers for this purpose. So you wouldn't recommend linux for anything complex? But there might not be any other alternative, as in your example.
Now, let me also state that I don't think that Linux is the only OS out there. There probably are a few things for which it isn't the best suited OS. Also let me state that doing "normal" type stuff, I haven't had any significant issues with the 2.4 kernel. I use Linux as my desktop and server OS and do development on it as well (at home). I do use USB for cameras and CF cards, but not for serial stuff. I realize that this isn't what you were doing but as I pointed out, you were likely breaking new ground.
You are correct, I wouldn't be quite so happy. However, I would hope that I was as much a Christian in that situation and I am now. I do disagree with you on religious freedoms or any freedoms. Freedoms are totally separate from beliefs. There are many things posted here on/. that I disagree with, however I will fight for the right for them to be posted. The same is true for religous freedom in the U.S.A. I don't agree with a large number of belief systems including many "christian" religions. I will, however, fight for the right of religous freedom for each of them and for each non-christian religion as well.
If anyone or anything can silence any one freedom, they can silence any other freedom also. If you really believe in the right of free speech, free press, or any other freedom granted by the Constitution and its amendments, you should fight for every other freedom granted by those same documents.
I personnally believe that the press often times takes their freedom a little too far, but I wouldn't dare start a campaign to remove their freedom. The same goes for free speech, in that I believe sometimes it is used incorrectly as a shield to say hurtful things about others, but I wouldn't dare suggest that free speech be impaired. There are many rights that we have in the U.S.A. that could be impaired in what would seem reasonable ways, but once you start impairing them, even a little, it will start a land slide.
Context is very important. Especially in interpreting any text. That would be like saying "pointers in C are a good thing" and then saying "pointers in C are a bad thing". Both statements are correct, depending upon the context. Without context you can't even determine if X + Y = Z is a correct equation.
Ex. 20:13 is the giving of the 10 Commandents. These commandments are the basis of the Law of Moses as given unto the Hebrew (God's chosen) people. The context is murder or killing without provocation. Ex 32:27 is a command given unto the men of the tribe of Levi (the Levites were to be the religious leaders of the Hebrew nation). These men were expected to be model citizens and keepers of the laws, and in this case these men had lead the nation astray. Gods punishment for this crime was death. The punishment for many crimes under the Law of Moses was death. God also in many cases command the army of the nation of Israel to kill their enemies, but this is still not murder.
As for salvation by faith or works, again there is no contradiction here. We are saved by the grace of God. However, we are required to prove our faith by our works. If I told you that I would give you $100.00 if you would drive to my house and pick it up, would the drive earn you that $100.00? No, the $100.00 is a gift, you did not earn it, I gave it to you. However, you had to get to me to get it.
I am not sure what Matt. 19:16-21 has to do with the topic of work and faith. The "rich young ruler" had something between him and God. He loved his wealth as much or more than he loved God. God demands the number 1 spot in our heart and our life, he is a jealous God, and the "rich young ruler" apparently could not deal with that, in Matt. 19:22 "he went away sorrowful: for he had great possessions."
One more point on this, is that you are saved before you do any work of faith. The commandents apply to the saved, not to the unsaved. You (as an atheist) are not commanded to go into the world and teach, or anything else. I (as a Christian) am under that commandent. Therefore you can not be saved by works, as you perform the works after salvation.
I wish that I could take the time to comment on each and every one of the so called contradictions on the site that you pointed out. However, the time and space aren't best used here on SlashDot. As this would be getting O.T. (Off Topic not Old Testament) quite a bit.
And your attitude is exactly why I hope the church that I attend will never accept any federal funding for its programs. I don't want anything to stand in the way of teaching the truth. According to my bible (Mark 16:15), "Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature". And I certainly don't want anyone in government to tell me what the gospel is.
The church I attend does participate in the faith-based work with the local prison, and has been quite successful with it. I am thankful that we have been able to help some people live a more productive life in some way. However, I believe that the government dictating what the faith in a faith-based program is would completely distroy most programs.
Not necessarily true. If you live in Tennessee and work in Alabama, you must pay Alabama Income Tax. I haven't hit this personally, but my uncle did, and I do see it on my Alabama tax form.
Good for you. I am happy that it worked for you. However, my son was starting to give up. It wasn't that it was difficult. Maybe posting this to SlashDot was the wrong thing to do, but I was hoping to make life a little easier on someone else that might be forced to start making the same decision. I obviously can't include everything that happened in the two and a half years that my son was in public and private schools.
My son did get speech therapy to aid him with his speech problems, and vision therapy for his vision problems. He has plenty of incentive to "fix this" as he is now driven positively instead of being driven into the ground by constant failure. Unfortunately "normal" schools are not based on positive re-enforcement, but are based on the fact that students do not want to fail. He was starting to accept failure as his lot in life.
But now with a year and a half of homeschooling, he has learned to succeed. He can handle success and failure, because he knows that both are possible. He also knows that his efforts can often affect the success or failure of some things. He has learned that some people can do some things much easier than others and that it doesn't make you any better of a person because you can do certain things.
Also as someone else pointed out in another post, schools are an artificially harsh environment. They only teach you to deal with people of your own age, and as we all know "kids can be cruel". My son will have to deal with all sorts of problems in life, but he will most likely not have to deal with 5-8 year old kids making fun of him once he is out of elementary school. So he hasn't missed any thing important there, yet he is learning how to work with others of different ages and skills. Yes, he could be doing outside things while being in public or private schools, but it is easier to get him to try things now that he knows he can succeed if he applies himself and works at it.
You learned because you responded to the negative attention. My son was becoming the class clown because of that same negative attention. I could not stand by and see him wasted because of this. After all a mind is a terrible thing to waste.
Maybe you don't but I DID and I WOULD DO IT AGAIN. I understand what you are saying about real life and so does my son. He doesn't succeed at everything, but this isn't an environment where life is artificially hard either.
I am happy that your siblings have succeeded, that is a credit to them and your parents. I have friends that feel the same way you feel, and have children that are succeeding in the public school environment despite their problems. I am also a trained educator and I know that what was happening to my son in the normally accepted school scenerios, was not helping him in any way. It took much discussion and many hours of talking (and praying) to make the decision to pull our son from the private school and start homeschooling. He was involved in much of that discussion as it was an important decision for his life.
I am happy that I didn't use your two words with my son. He faces the real world everyday and has opportunities that other children do not have. If you read other posts of mine you will find that he has many interests and is active in many groups with other children. He also knows that his education is partly his responsibility. He values his education.
Thanks AC, it appears that you are genuinely concerned (NOT!!!). The mention of this was simply to go along with the learning to work on a team, and to work with people of differing skill levels. He obviously doesn't have to skills of a person of 6th-12th grade, but they feel that he is a valuable member of the team and he pulls his share of the load.
You simply had to make a negative statement given that I used a religous example here. Well, I will be perfectly happy if he wants to make his life by "punding nails as a carpentar", because at least he will be able to spell "POUNDING", and BTW he is performing at like an 8th grader taking the 3rd grade test in mathematics (California Achievement Test), and is studying geometry and physics in school this year.
He is also a fan of military history, world history, and many other subjects. He is likely a much more well rounded student than any fourth grader in public or private schools.
In short, I will be contributing some software to the educational arena soon. I will be starting to write some stuff in the next few days and will release as soon as possible. My wife and I are already determining what she needs for school this year.
You are so right about school being more than learning to read and write. My son (now 9+) went to public school for K-1 and then went to a private school for the first half of 2nd grade. He was successful at learning to read and write, but he was a little slow at each and had a very minor speech problem. As a consequence, the other kids made fun of him. This did wonders for his self esteem, to the point that he wouldn't even try anything new anymore.
We took him out of the private school, and started home schooling. In Alabama, you have to be in a cover school, so we joined a cover school. The cover school has meetings regularly and schedules field trips every month.
After only a year and a half, his self esteem has increased tremendously. He is learning at rate that far exceeds the public schools. He has made up the losses caused by the harassment of the other children. We have spent time working on his speech problem to the point that it is basically non-existant, and corrected a vision problem that was discovered also.
He is competing with Junior High and High School kids in a Bible knowledge competion with our church and doing very well (thus learning to work with a team). He is talking about learning to play a musical instrument, and is talking about going back to either public or private school in Junior High.
He hasn't been deprived of any positive social aspects. He is in scouts, still stays in contact with a few friends from his public and private school days, and is very active in church activities. He is also active in Karate and has progressed very rapidly at that. He has managed a promotion of one belt level every three months for the last year and a half (he uses that as some of his PE in home-schooling) and is now in an advanced class. Yes, he is protected from the bullies that would beat him up and steal his lunch money, and from the kids that would make fun of him. But don't we want to encourage success and not failure in our kids?
So in short, if home schooling is warping my son, I wish there were more warped kids in this world! My daughter is also being warped. She will be 4 this fall and is starting to read because she "goes to school" with her older brother. That pretty unusual these days especially with second or later children.
Maybe this is how this should be approached in the future. We are guaranteed the right to pursuit of happiness. If money is what makes Bill Gates and company happy, we can't stop them from pursuing that, but then he can't stop us from giving away our work.
OK, maybe in some way these guys broke a licensing agreement, I don't know, there isn't enough data here. But if we really crack down and start working, we can put anything else the MS touches to shame.
We have to start a good grassroots movement here. We are at a disadvantage as geek types do not tend to be politically active, but the big guys are using the laws against us and we will have to start fighting there or we will all be assimilated soon.
It needs to be determined what is wrong (software patents, DMCA, EULAs, what else?) and then we must let our lawmakers know that we will campaign against them in their next election if the laws aren't changed. Then we have to keep the promise!!!
We have to start voting with our $$$s as well. Don't buy anything that incurs the MS tax. I don't care how good that XYZ pc is, if the MS tax is imposed DON'T BUY IT! We have to support companies that are friendly to Open Source/Free Software. That doesn't mean that we can't buy software, we have already let some companies go away or almost at least (LOKI, VistaSource, Corel, and others) that were attempting to make money in the Open Source world with commercial software).
It seems that our judical system doesn't have the guts that they did back when they took on the likes of Standard Oil, Dupont, etc. in the Trust Buster days. Therefore we have to do it. We have to sell our friends and family on the good of Linux, not the bad of MS, and we have to do it quickly.
I agree with your statement about bigger projects probably not using sourceforge. If you think about the most successful, mature projects out there, they all have independent sites for their information.
They also usually have a large number of contributors. Projects such as XFree86, KDE, Gnome, Apache, and others aren't on sourceforge and were completely ignored by this study.
His study is valid for projects on sourceforge and sourceforge is obviously a tool that is used by projects that don't have lots of resources and are attempting to build a community. Large numbers of those projects never build a large development community and many as was pointed out die at sourceforge. But their death is not in vain, at least that code is available if anyone would want to pick it up and renew the project or learn from it later.
Care should be taken in applying this study to Open-Source projects as a whole. The projects not represented by this study might or might not follow the trend seen at sourceforge. We tend to see the large projects that are in the "wild", like the ones I mentioned earlier, but there have been many projects (prior to sourceforge) that have also died. Many have not totally died, such as FVWM, but their community has dwindled. And the best have survived into mature projects.
It might be an interesting study to look at why these projects developed a large developer community and the ones on sourceforge did not. Most of these projects are even older than the ones on sourceforge, but some are not. There is also the difference in scope of the project. As an example, I just went to sourceforge and looked at the projects marked as "Mature", the first project returned is phpAdsNew. phpAdsNew is likely an interesting project, if
banner management and tracking is important to you, but the scope of that is much narrower than say Apache, or XFree86, etc. There are obviously some big projects on sourceforge also (wxWindows, Python, and NASM were all on the first page of my list).
My conclusion (probably not quite as scientific as the authors is that sourceforge isn't quite mature enough (not even two years to the start of his average project) to be used to draw such conclusions.
"We always collaborate fully with the SEC and take our accounting very seriously,"
I like this statement made by Microsoft. I believe they really meant what they said also. They thought that most folks wouldn't pick up on the slight difference between collaborate and cooperate. Just goes to show you what you can do when you are a monopoly that the government fears. What we need is a good trust-busting president. Someone not afraid to stand up to Bill Gates and crew and let them know that it is time to quite walking on the American people.
You are correct. When you start to stoop to the level that your opponent is sitting upon, you are no different that your opponent. Politics is a good example of this, is there any real difference in the Democratic and Republican parties to someone from the outside? Very little. Don't get me wrong for those of you that are political zealots, I know that there are differences. In one case they claim that they will tax us to support people that aren't as well off as we are and to support public programs and in the other case they claim that they will tax us to improve the infrastructure so that business will increase to support us. Does this mean that RH is going to keep us from developing free software, to protect our free software?
I have started formatting my hard drives on my 4 RH boxes and am installing SuSE 8.0 on them. I had tried SuSE about 2 years ago and didn't feel that it was as polished as RH, but that seems to have changed. I don't buy the theory that we are worried about protecting you. If they were worried about protecting us, why not help provide lawyers to fight some of these bogus patents that could be defeated on prior art? Prior art has been a good defense in the past, and having prior art is almost as good as having a patent from that point of view, but isn't as crippling as a patent to the community.
A one-time loser walks into a bank carrying a sawed-off shotgun. He shoots the guard at the bank, robs the bank, and starts his get-away. During the police chase in his get-away, 10 people a hurt and numerous cars are wrecked including several police cars.
time passes to trial
He comes before the judge and jury. He is given 90 days suspended sentence for the robbery because he came from a home where his mother didn't love him. He is given 5 years suspended sentence on the murder of the guard because his father abused him. He is given a $200.00 fine for wreckless driving which caused all the destruction of property (he had no insurance so all of the other folks are on thier own for the cost of repairs, etc). However, upon arresting him it was discovered that he had a felt-tipped marker in his pocket and a copy-protected CD in the CD-player in his car. He is given life in prison for DMCA violation.
The real catch here is a VCP with no rewind. There won't be any DVD's as they will figure out that with video cassettes and no rewind, they will have your viewing habits, as you will have to purchase a new tape each time you wish to watch something!!! To assure this, they will likely not really attach the tape to one spool to make sure that you don't build an illegal external rewinder. They wouldn't want you to be able to view that tape that you legally purchased more than one time.
If there is a DVD at the time, it will actually be a DVD rewriter and there will be a signal at the end of the DVD that forces an erase on it. But the unit will be sealed with explosives so that they will know if you attempt to open it and illegally us the writer portion or disable it. Not large explosives, just enough to remove your hands (the device being used to circumvent their protection of intellectual properties). After all, that is their right, and the rights of the few exceed the rights of the many.
I used to work at a large medical institution. We had a large population of
female employees, and as such had employees undergoing name changes quite
frequently (marriage and divorice, etc). To overcome this issue we quit using
last names in the username totally. We used the first 5 characters of the first name and a 3 digit sequence number.
This carries with it the problems of remembering your username, but with everyone wanting to keep their username matching their current last name, we were changing about 20 usernames a week on about 30 systems.
Also companies have (in the past and present) designed screws, nuts, and bolts to use odd shaped heads or slots (philips head screws, torx, etc) so that you had to buy the tools from them. Now is this much different from Microsoft either?
Bill not only wants you to buy the nuts and bolts (word and excel) from him, but the tools also (VB.net, C#.net, etc). If he can get everything sufficently tied together, then you will have no option to install those non-Microsoft wipers on you Microsoft Modular Car (get it MMC). It will be modular, as long as it is a Microsoft module that you are installing. You can't possibly replace the speedometer with the OSX version that looks nicer, nor the fuel injectors with the Linux version that gets better fuel economy, nor can you replace the tires with Java tires so that you can run on roads built by Sun Microsystems, IBM, and many others.
Do you trust your entire life to the folks that want to know what you watch on TV (remember Web-TV)?
Slashdot Mirror
Thank you for agreeing with me that it is a theory. A theory is not a fact (check the dictionary or a definition of the scientific process). Are you saying that you have proof that a species has evolved into a completely new species? This is breaking news, why isn't it on the headlines page here? I do not accept that slight modifications of a species proves evolution. As I stated before, that happens all the time, but it is still the same species.
Oh, no it isn't based on misunderstanding. The theory that started this whole conversation is the beginning of the universe. And if there isn't a superior being that created the universe, then it just happened. The laws of mechanics and physics must have evolved over time and thus could be changing regularly and thus anything done using the scientific process would be invalid as the laws could change right our from under it. In other words, the theory turns on itself over time.
Ah, but gravity can be witnessed, and atomic theory was witnessed in early August, 1945. The roundness of the world has been witnessed, as has Copernican's theory. How have you placed evolution into the same group as these. Each and every one of these represents the mechanical and physical laws that govern our universe.
Evolution isn't proven by your arguements. You are simply attempting to increase the acceptance by proximity (another great tool of science, get enough people to lie and it will be accepted as truth).
Oh, but this is simple modification and it does happen all the time. Extrapolating this to say that one species evolves into something completely different over time is a stretch. I will agree that a species can and will change over time. And both examples you gave are a species doing slight (relatively speaking) modifications for survival.
This can be accomplished in many ways. In the case of the wallabys, the habitat for the species was changed somewhat and quickly. They had to adapt or die. Sometimes man is involved in these changes, such as selective breeding of animals producing a new breed. This occurs relatively regularly with domesticated animals.
You haven't proven evolution of species however. The wallaby was still a wallaby and the moth was still a moth. You have proven survival of the fittest, but that still doesn't imply evolution of species.
But evolution is a theory. It can't be proven unless (according to the scientific process) someone sees it happen. To the best of my knowledge, no one has seen anything evolve into something else. Thus it remains a theory.
In Psalm 119:160, David wrote "Thy word is true from the beginning: and every one of thy righteous judgments endureth for ever." This is not a theory, it is a declaration (if I remember my grammer properly).
Don't go throwing a walking fish at me to prove evolution, unless you saw the fish start walking or can prove that it didn't walk before. Have you ever thought that maybe it was an undiscovered species (that still happens you know)? Evolution makes a neat theory for those that don't want to believe in God, but it has never been proven.
I just can't understand how anyone can look at the world/universe in all of the splendor with all the mechanical and physical laws that work so tightly together and say "It just happened that way". To me that would be like saying "my computer built itself from the sands on the beach". It took intelligence to build a computer and it took even more intelligence to build the universe.
I have often wondered along this same line. How do we know that the ratio of (say) tungsten-182 and hafnium-182 is a constant? Or how do we know that the change in the speed of light didn't change the half-life of hafnium-182?
I agree that in lab conditions the process works very well, but we are talking about very controlled testing. And even very controlled testing isn't perfect, as bugs are accidentally released with software, and consumer products aren't all hugh successes.
Also, in the "real world" environment, how are they sure that there hasn't been a loss of one of the elements? A loss of tungsten-182 would make the time measurement be less as the ratio would be higher in favor of hafnium-182. And how do they know that the astroids that they used were not from a planet, moon, or something that didn't form a core? I seriously doubt that they can prove where that astroid came from.
It seems to me that they are extending the scientific process over things that aren't controllable. The scientific process is susceptible to error when a lack of control is allowed to enter the experiment.
But you can't purchase the TV version and unfortunately they don't do every movie for TV especially as quickly as they are available on DVD or tape. And yes there are still things questionable about TV. Have you really watched much on TV recently (even movies modified for TV)? Well, actually it probably is calm to you given your language here, but I find many things objectionable and do use the power switch and my money (by not purchasing things that are advertised on those shows or movies) to cast a vote against them.
As for the directors spending time on movies, you are correct that they spend time on them. No arguement on that at all and I don't suggest that they not receive their payment for that work. However, it isn't a product that is incapable of modification. This goes back to my statement about open source software to you earlier, those programmers spend a lot of time on those projects. Do you think that I should be able to modify them? If I can modify that, then why can't I modify a movie or view a modified copy of a movie (assuming that no law is being broken)?
Your only arguement so far is something that you call art. Well only a truly appreciated artwork will survive the test of time. The modification of a few copies will in no way harm the appreciation of an artwork. After all there have been copies of the "Venus de Milo" made with arms and that hasn't hurt the appreciation of that particular artwork. There have been copies of other works of art made as well (nude artworks having clothes added, incomplete artworks completed, etc.) Schubert's "Unfinished Symphony" was finished and it still stands. I don't think that your artwork arguement holds water in the test of time. There are way too many specific points against it.
However, the arguement of freedoms seems to hold water. Look at history when a culture or nation started losing freedoms. Usually it wasn't long until all freedoms were lost and the civilization, nation, or culture fell. Rome, Germany, Russia (the original one under the czars), USSR, and many more.
Yes, your previous posts all have to do with freedoms. I take the stand that I have the freedom to watch a movie without the language (such as you are using in this thread). Your statements simply show me that the profanity has become so normal to you, that you can't understand life without it and without using it to insult others.
I too am interested in freedoms and I oppose most of the things that you oppose. I feel that macrovision, regions, and copy protections, etc are all wrong. They interfere with freedoms that I am granted by other laws (such as copyright law). I agree that the folks involved in the production of these movies are entitled to their payments on them, I would in no way suggest that these movies should be modified and replicated without paying the necessary royalties, etc.
However, I don't believe that you have the right to tell me that I have to listen to the profanity to see the story. I don't feel that you should be using it here either. But I strongly believe in the freedom of speech, so I would fight and die for your right to say here exactly what you want to say, even if you feel that profanity is what you want to say.
Art, like beauty, is in the eyes of the beholder. When I purchase a movie, I have the more rights (under the current law) than you have to watch your out-of-region movie. Under current law, modifying your DVD player is possibly in volation of the DMCA. If I decide to purchase a modified version of the movie (and if no current laws exist against this), then that is my business. Is this any different than watching the director's cut, or the "new extra scenes added" version? They aren't the original release either!
My biggest point was that you should think things through and be consistent. If you believe in freedoms, you had better stand for freedoms. Don't try to pick and choose which freedoms are OK. If I don't have the freedom to edit a video, you probably don't have the freedom to copy it (macrovision) either. The two are that closely related!!! And if I can't edit it, you had better watch out trying to get that out-of-region video through customs, the MPAA has a great lobbying organization.
Interesting coming from you. I went and looked at your previous posts and found one where you were talking about the APEX AD600 DVD player (you were refering to hacking the AD1500). Your opinion in that post was that you should be allowed to watch a DVD how you wanted.
Well, I want to watch a good movie without the foul language maybe. What is the difference in me watching it without the foul language and you watching it without the trailer for the next flick to be released? They were both put there by the same people at least indirectly. I guess you could argue that the director and actor put the foul language there and the producer put the trailer there, however the producer hired the director and actor, thus it is at least indirectly there from the same source.
Also in your previous post you are encouraging people to break a law (DMCA) to make their DVD player macrovision and region free, and this differs from removing un-necessary foul language in what way? Just because you don't like DMCA because it doesn't allow fair use of your purchase? Well, the way I see it is if I want to pay the original producer for their movie and also pay someone else to make it more pleasurable for me and my family to watch, then I haven't hurt anyone. The producer got his money, the director got his money, the actor got his money, and my editor got his money. In exchange for all of that, I got a movie that I was willing to watch, which I otherwise would not have watched (in which case the producer, director, and actor got nothing).
You also made a similar comment in the thread about the Sony BetaMax when talking about macrovision. And again when talking about SecurRom protection on NWN. After those I quit looking as there was a trend that was very apparent. It really appears to me, that you feel anything is wrong that in any way henders you, but me making a change that only affects me bothers you, as my version is different than yours.
Following that logic, I guess you are a Microsoft lover as you wouldn't possibly want me to modify anything concerning my OS or applications on my computer as they would then be different than yours. If I removed Konqueror from KDE it would be a really bad thing wouldn't it? Of if I decided to use PostgreSQL instead of MySQL? I shouldn't have a choice, I should just be happy with what I have force feed to me? You probably don't eat at Burger King either as there "you can have it your way"!!!
And you were using Linux on these USB-serial devices because?
Oh, yeah, OS/400 doesn't support USB and you didn't have source for Windows to modify the drivers for this purpose. So you wouldn't recommend linux for anything complex? But there might not be any other alternative, as in your example.
Now, let me also state that I don't think that Linux is the only OS out there. There probably are a few things for which it isn't the best suited OS. Also let me state that doing "normal" type stuff, I haven't had any significant issues with the 2.4 kernel. I use Linux as my desktop and server OS and do development on it as well (at home). I do use USB for cameras and CF cards, but not for serial stuff. I realize that this isn't what you were doing but as I pointed out, you were likely breaking new ground.
You are correct, I wouldn't be quite so happy. However, I would hope that I was as much a Christian in that situation and I am now. I do disagree with you on religious freedoms or any freedoms. Freedoms are totally separate from beliefs. There are many things posted here on /. that I disagree with, however I will fight for the right for them to be posted. The same is true for religous freedom in the U.S.A. I don't agree with a large number of belief systems including many "christian" religions. I will, however, fight for the right of religous freedom for each of them and for each non-christian religion as well.
If anyone or anything can silence any one freedom, they can silence any other freedom also. If you really believe in the right of free speech, free press, or any other freedom granted by the Constitution and its amendments, you should fight for every other freedom granted by those same documents.
I personnally believe that the press often times takes their freedom a little too far, but I wouldn't dare start a campaign to remove their freedom. The same goes for free speech, in that I believe sometimes it is used incorrectly as a shield to say hurtful things about others, but I wouldn't dare suggest that free speech be impaired. There are many rights that we have in the U.S.A. that could be impaired in what would seem reasonable ways, but once you start impairing them, even a little, it will start a land slide.
Context is very important. Especially in interpreting any text. That would be like saying "pointers in C are a good thing" and then saying "pointers in C are a bad thing". Both statements are correct, depending upon the context. Without context you can't even determine if X + Y = Z is a correct equation.
Ex. 20:13 is the giving of the 10 Commandents. These commandments are the basis of the Law of Moses as given unto the Hebrew (God's chosen) people. The context is murder or killing without provocation. Ex 32:27 is a command given unto the men of the tribe of Levi (the Levites were to be the religious leaders of the Hebrew nation). These men were expected to be model citizens and keepers of the laws, and in this case these men had lead the nation astray. Gods punishment for this crime was death. The punishment for many crimes under the Law of Moses was death. God also in many cases command the army of the nation of Israel to kill their enemies, but this is still not murder.
As for salvation by faith or works, again there is no contradiction here. We are saved by the grace of God. However, we are required to prove our faith by our works. If I told you that I would give you $100.00 if you would drive to my house and pick it up, would the drive earn you that $100.00? No, the $100.00 is a gift, you did not earn it, I gave it to you. However, you had to get to me to get it.
I am not sure what Matt. 19:16-21 has to do with the topic of work and faith. The "rich young ruler" had something between him and God. He loved his wealth as much or more than he loved God. God demands the number 1 spot in our heart and our life, he is a jealous God, and the "rich young ruler" apparently could not deal with that, in Matt. 19:22 "he went away sorrowful: for he had great possessions."
One more point on this, is that you are saved before you do any work of faith. The commandents apply to the saved, not to the unsaved. You (as an atheist) are not commanded to go into the world and teach, or anything else. I (as a Christian) am under that commandent. Therefore you can not be saved by works, as you perform the works after salvation.
I wish that I could take the time to comment on each and every one of the so called contradictions on the site that you pointed out. However, the time and space aren't best used here on SlashDot. As this would be getting O.T. (Off Topic not Old Testament) quite a bit.
And your attitude is exactly why I hope the church that I attend will never accept any federal funding for its programs. I don't want anything to stand in the way of teaching the truth. According to my bible (Mark 16:15), "Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature". And I certainly don't want anyone in government to tell me what the gospel is.
The church I attend does participate in the faith-based work with the local prison, and has been quite successful with it. I am thankful that we have been able to help some people live a more productive life in some way. However, I believe that the government dictating what the faith in a faith-based program is would completely distroy most programs.
Not necessarily true. If you live in Tennessee and work in Alabama, you must pay Alabama Income Tax. I haven't hit this personally, but my uncle did, and I do see it on my Alabama tax form.
Good for you. I am happy that it worked for you. However, my son was starting to give up. It wasn't that it was difficult. Maybe posting this to SlashDot was the wrong thing to do, but I was hoping to make life a little easier on someone else that might be forced to start making the same decision. I obviously can't include everything that happened in the two and a half years that my son was in public and private schools.
My son did get speech therapy to aid him with his speech problems, and vision therapy for his vision problems. He has plenty of incentive to "fix this" as he is now driven positively instead of being driven into the ground by constant failure. Unfortunately "normal" schools are not based on positive re-enforcement, but are based on the fact that students do not want to fail. He was starting to accept failure as his lot in life.
But now with a year and a half of homeschooling, he has learned to succeed. He can handle success and failure, because he knows that both are possible. He also knows that his efforts can often affect the success or failure of some things. He has learned that some people can do some things much easier than others and that it doesn't make you any better of a person because you can do certain things.
Also as someone else pointed out in another post, schools are an artificially harsh environment. They only teach you to deal with people of your own age, and as we all know "kids can be cruel". My son will have to deal with all sorts of problems in life, but he will most likely not have to deal with 5-8 year old kids making fun of him once he is out of elementary school. So he hasn't missed any thing important there, yet he is learning how to work with others of different ages and skills. Yes, he could be doing outside things while being in public or private schools, but it is easier to get him to try things now that he knows he can succeed if he applies himself and works at it.
You learned because you responded to the negative attention. My son was becoming the class clown because of that same negative attention. I could not stand by and see him wasted because of this. After all a mind is a terrible thing to waste.
Maybe you don't but I DID and I WOULD DO IT AGAIN. I understand what you are saying about real life and so does my son. He doesn't succeed at everything, but this isn't an environment where life is artificially hard either.
I am happy that your siblings have succeeded, that is a credit to them and your parents. I have friends that feel the same way you feel, and have children that are succeeding in the public school environment despite their problems. I am also a trained educator and I know that what was happening to my son in the normally accepted school scenerios, was not helping him in any way. It took much discussion and many hours of talking (and praying) to make the decision to pull our son from the private school and start homeschooling. He was involved in much of that discussion as it was an important decision for his life.
I am happy that I didn't use your two words with my son. He faces the real world everyday and has opportunities that other children do not have. If you read other posts of mine you will find that he has many interests and is active in many groups with other children. He also knows that his education is partly his responsibility. He values his education.
Thanks AC, it appears that you are genuinely concerned (NOT!!!). The mention of this was simply to go along with the learning to work on a team, and to work with people of differing skill levels. He obviously doesn't have to skills of a person of 6th-12th grade, but they feel that he is a valuable member of the team and he pulls his share of the load.
You simply had to make a negative statement given that I used a religous example here. Well, I will be perfectly happy if he wants to make his life by "punding nails as a carpentar", because at least he will be able to spell "POUNDING", and BTW he is performing at like an 8th grader taking the 3rd grade test in mathematics (California Achievement Test), and is studying geometry and physics in school this year.
He is also a fan of military history, world history, and many other subjects. He is likely a much more well rounded student than any fourth grader in public or private schools.
In short, I will be contributing some software to the educational arena soon. I will be starting to write some stuff in the next few days and will release as soon as possible. My wife and I are already determining what she needs for school this year.
You are so right about school being more than learning to read and write. My son (now 9+) went to public school for K-1 and then went to a private school for the first half of 2nd grade. He was successful at learning to read and write, but he was a little slow at each and had a very minor speech problem. As a consequence, the other kids made fun of him. This did wonders for his self esteem, to the point that he wouldn't even try anything new anymore.
We took him out of the private school, and started home schooling. In Alabama, you have to be in a cover school, so we joined a cover school. The cover school has meetings regularly and schedules field trips every month.
After only a year and a half, his self esteem has increased tremendously. He is learning at rate that far exceeds the public schools. He has made up the losses caused by the harassment of the other children. We have spent time working on his speech problem to the point that it is basically non-existant, and corrected a vision problem that was discovered also.
He is competing with Junior High and High School kids in a Bible knowledge competion with our church and doing very well (thus learning to work with a team). He is talking about learning to play a musical instrument, and is talking about going back to either public or private school in Junior High.
He hasn't been deprived of any positive social aspects. He is in scouts, still stays in contact with a few friends from his public and private school days, and is very active in church activities. He is also active in Karate and has progressed very rapidly at that. He has managed a promotion of one belt level every three months for the last year and a half (he uses that as some of his PE in home-schooling) and is now in an advanced class. Yes, he is protected from the bullies that would beat him up and steal his lunch money, and from the kids that would make fun of him. But don't we want to encourage success and not failure in our kids?
So in short, if home schooling is warping my son, I wish there were more warped kids in this world! My daughter is also being warped. She will be 4 this fall and is starting to read because she "goes to school" with her older brother. That pretty unusual these days especially with second or later children.
Maybe this is how this should be approached in the future. We are guaranteed the right to pursuit of happiness. If money is what makes Bill Gates and company happy, we can't stop them from pursuing that, but then he can't stop us from giving away our work.
OK, maybe in some way these guys broke a licensing agreement, I don't know, there isn't enough data here. But if we really crack down and start working, we can put anything else the MS touches to shame.
We have to start a good grassroots movement here. We are at a disadvantage as geek types do not tend to be politically active, but the big guys are using the laws against us and we will have to start fighting there or we will all be assimilated soon.
It needs to be determined what is wrong (software patents, DMCA, EULAs, what else?) and then we must let our lawmakers know that we will campaign against them in their next election if the laws aren't changed. Then we have to keep the promise!!!
We have to start voting with our $$$s as well. Don't buy anything that incurs the MS tax. I don't care how good that XYZ pc is, if the MS tax is imposed DON'T BUY IT! We have to support companies that are friendly to Open Source/Free Software. That doesn't mean that we can't buy software, we have already let some companies go away or almost at least (LOKI, VistaSource, Corel, and others) that were attempting to make money in the Open Source world with commercial software).
It seems that our judical system doesn't have the guts that they did back when they took on the likes of Standard Oil, Dupont, etc. in the Trust Buster days. Therefore we have to do it. We have to sell our friends and family on the good of Linux, not the bad of MS, and we have to do it quickly.
I agree with your statement about bigger projects probably not using sourceforge. If you think about the most successful, mature projects out there, they all have independent sites for their information.
They also usually have a large number of contributors. Projects such as XFree86, KDE, Gnome, Apache, and others aren't on sourceforge and were completely ignored by this study.
His study is valid for projects on sourceforge and sourceforge is obviously a tool that is used by projects that don't have lots of resources and are attempting to build a community. Large numbers of those projects never build a large development community and many as was pointed out die at sourceforge. But their death is not in vain, at least that code is available if anyone would want to pick it up and renew the project or learn from it later.
Care should be taken in applying this study to Open-Source projects as a whole. The projects not represented by this study might or might not follow the trend seen at sourceforge. We tend to see the large projects that are in the "wild", like the ones I mentioned earlier, but there have been many projects (prior to sourceforge) that have also died. Many have not totally died, such as FVWM, but their community has dwindled. And the best have survived into mature projects.
It might be an interesting study to look at why these projects developed a large developer community and the ones on sourceforge did not. Most of these projects are even older than the ones on sourceforge, but some are not. There is also the difference in scope of the project. As an example, I just went to sourceforge and looked at the projects marked as "Mature", the first project returned is phpAdsNew. phpAdsNew is likely an interesting project, if banner management and tracking is important to you, but the scope of that is much narrower than say Apache, or XFree86, etc. There are obviously some big projects on sourceforge also (wxWindows, Python, and NASM were all on the first page of my list).
My conclusion (probably not quite as scientific as the authors is that sourceforge isn't quite mature enough (not even two years to the start of his average project) to be used to draw such conclusions.
You are correct. When you start to stoop to the level that your opponent is sitting upon, you are no different that your opponent. Politics is a good example of this, is there any real difference in the Democratic and Republican parties to someone from the outside? Very little. Don't get me wrong for those of you that are political zealots, I know that there are differences. In one case they claim that they will tax us to support people that aren't as well off as we are and to support public programs and in the other case they claim that they will tax us to improve the infrastructure so that business will increase to support us. Does this mean that RH is going to keep us from developing free software, to protect our free software?
I have started formatting my hard drives on my 4 RH boxes and am installing SuSE 8.0 on them. I had tried SuSE about 2 years ago and didn't feel that it was as polished as RH, but that seems to have changed. I don't buy the theory that we are worried about protecting you. If they were worried about protecting us, why not help provide lawyers to fight some of these bogus patents that could be defeated on prior art? Prior art has been a good defense in the past, and having prior art is almost as good as having a patent from that point of view, but isn't as crippling as a patent to the community.
A one-time loser walks into a bank carrying a sawed-off shotgun. He shoots the guard at the bank, robs the bank, and starts his get-away. During the police chase in his get-away, 10 people a hurt and numerous cars are wrecked including several police cars.
time passes to trial
He comes before the judge and jury. He is given 90 days suspended sentence for the robbery because he came from a home where his mother didn't love him. He is given 5 years suspended sentence on the murder of the guard because his father abused him. He is given a $200.00 fine for wreckless driving which caused all the destruction of property (he had no insurance so all of the other folks are on thier own for the cost of repairs, etc). However, upon arresting him it was discovered that he had a felt-tipped marker in his pocket and a copy-protected CD in the CD-player in his car. He is given life in prison for DMCA violation.
Now isn't that justice for you!
The real catch here is a VCP with no rewind. There won't be any DVD's as they will figure out that with video cassettes and no rewind, they will have your viewing habits, as you will have to purchase a new tape each time you wish to watch something!!! To assure this, they will likely not really attach the tape to one spool to make sure that you don't build an illegal external rewinder. They wouldn't want you to be able to view that tape that you legally purchased more than one time.
If there is a DVD at the time, it will actually be a DVD rewriter and there will be a signal at the end of the DVD that forces an erase on it. But the unit will be sealed with explosives so that they will know if you attempt to open it and illegally us the writer portion or disable it. Not large explosives, just enough to remove your hands (the device being used to circumvent their protection of intellectual properties). After all, that is their right, and the rights of the few exceed the rights of the many.
I used to work at a large medical institution. We had a large population of female employees, and as such had employees undergoing name changes quite frequently (marriage and divorice, etc). To overcome this issue we quit using last names in the username totally. We used the first 5 characters of the first name and a 3 digit sequence number.
This carries with it the problems of remembering your username, but with everyone wanting to keep their username matching their current last name, we were changing about 20 usernames a week on about 30 systems.
Also companies have (in the past and present) designed screws, nuts, and bolts to use odd shaped heads or slots (philips head screws, torx, etc) so that you had to buy the tools from them. Now is this much different from Microsoft either?
Bill not only wants you to buy the nuts and bolts (word and excel) from him, but the tools also (VB.net, C#.net, etc). If he can get everything sufficently tied together, then you will have no option to install those non-Microsoft wipers on you Microsoft Modular Car (get it MMC). It will be modular, as long as it is a Microsoft module that you are installing. You can't possibly replace the speedometer with the OSX version that looks nicer, nor the fuel injectors with the Linux version that gets better fuel economy, nor can you replace the tires with Java tires so that you can run on roads built by Sun Microsystems, IBM, and many others.
Do you trust your entire life to the folks that want to know what you watch on TV (remember Web-TV)?