I don't think that Futurama failed because it was too "smart" for the masses. What a great way to stroke your own ego to think that a show you really liked required you to be smarter than everyone else.
Where did you read that in Lord Ender's post? He never mentioned anything about someone needing to be "smart" to understand Futurama. He made a number of assertions (right or wrong), but none of them mentioned having to be smart. You do not have to be smart to read Asimov or know who Nixon is. While it is true that many of the qualities he mentioned have a fairly strong correlation with being intelligent, he never said that it was necessary.
Also I just want to say that I agree about the headaches of using DataSets. Years ago I did alot of Access programming and DAO was much easier than these stupid DataSets. I am very proficient with DataSets now, but I still do not think that I am more productive than I was with good old DAO.
But on the other hand the new advanced in DataGrid components has definetely made me more productive. I doubt that they needed DataSets to improve their DataGrids and DataBinding in general, but I have found that for every crappy new feature in Visual Studio there are a dozen great improvements.
If you're talking about desktop development, then yes if you include 3rd party components, then.net has and advantage because of the huge number of 3rd party vendors.
If you are talking about large scale (AT&T, Social Security, etc) business logic or database intensive applications, then Java outdoes.net by a mile
I completely agree with both of those statements. But large scale business logic applications are not the ones that are going to affect Window's market share. Desktop Development is what is going to affect Window's market share. Or at least that is my opinion, I make no claims that I am never wrong.
I disagree that.net is "easy". It is easy to do basic stuff, using 3rd party components, and the built in tools and wizards. But it becomes very hard, when you need to move outside what the tools provide; which happens in most applications that are more than trivial.
I probably have less experience than you (about 6 years professionally, about 10 more as a young hobbyist) but I have found.Net programming to be easy from start to finish. Of course the beginning is easier, but that can be said for any language. I have found that you can become far more productive by doing things the way that the language developers intend instead of trying to jury rig things.
As far as DataSets go, 51k lines for 40 tables seams like a bit much (but possible). I have had to handle special cases very often (no project has no "special cases"), and the underlying Designer code is very easy to manage. Editing those many lines of Designer code has been a lot easier than writing it all by hand. Or at least that is what my experience has shown. --
This is a part of the issue, but keep in mind that most commercial software houses are going to target the biggest userbase they can. Even if they have to use Notepad to write the software.
That is rarely true, which is why so much software only works for Windows. Commercial software houses want to sell as much software as possible. If it takes 2 years to develop a Windows program that can sell 2000 copies, and an extra year to port it to OS X & Linux to sell another 350 copies (Windows had about 85% client-side market share in 2004), there is almost no point to porting the software. They could just spend that year working on their next Windows project which will make them three times as much money.
My company sells about 80 copies of our small niche software per month. By porting it to OS X & Linux we might sell another 10 copies per month. And it would probably be alot less than that, because many of the Linux/Mac users out there also have access to the Windows operating system too. So we can either possibly increase our sales by about 10%, or work on a new peice of software that could possibly double our sales (if it is as successful as the first). It seams like a no-brainer to me.
Large development companies of course port their software to at least OS X, but there is alot of useful small niche software out there. And it would generally be a bad idea for most of them to spend too much time worrying out cross-platform programming when the tools to write Windows software are so much easier to use. (I am including Visual Studio,.Net, 3rd party components, etc.)
It isnt just the Visual Studio 2005 IDE. It is all of the components, both built-in and 3rd party, that make it so great. I have components from Infragistics that cut out over half of my development time by automatings most of the programming I would have had to do.
Its just like the cotton gin, just for a different age. I have never worked with anything in OS X or Linux that is easier to use than.NET. And easy to use is ALMOST always more important than more powerful. If it helps get the product finished quicker then you make more money. And when performance is an issue, you have more time to fix the bottlenecks if the other less demanding areas of your project were finished quicker by an easier development environment.
I guess I have always assumed that Java does not have a rich set of components like C# does. I have looked into 3rd party Java components such as JSuite 7.2 from Infragistics, but none that I have found even touched the.Net equivelants (even from within the same company).
The best feature of Visual Studio.Net is not really its user interface alone, it is all of the 3rd party support. Having controls that do 80% of the programming for me helps my company finish software faster.
But I have never really looked into doing Desktop programming with Java. How do the built-in components and 3rd party components in modern Java compare to Visual Studio.Net?
IMHO, Windows will only lose its dominance when cross platform development tools become as easy to use and feature rich as Visual Studio. The software that I write is all Windows-only because it is written in Visual C# from within Visual Studio (using.Net). I have never dealt with such an easy to use development environment than the one Microsoft has in Visual Studio. Granted they stole and borrowed most of their best features from Borland, but the end result is still the best development studio I have ever used.
I would love to write software that would work on Windows, Linux, and OS X; but I work at a small development company. We are far more productive just sticking to one set of code for one platform, because there are no good languages out there that work for any platform. Or at least I have never seen any. RealBasic is the closest I have found, but it is more like going back to VB6 instead of using the newest advances in development user interfaes and other features.
I cannot wait for a language that is as cross-platform friendly as RealBasic but also as feature rich as Visual Studio. I am certain that it will happen someday, and it will certainly be a major blow to Microsoft.
I think both Linux and OS X are great operating systems, but my advice to anyone is still to be wary of getting a computer that alot of software will not run on. Even if you arent using anything other than Word Processing and Email today, what about three years from now? Once cross-platform programming is easier things might change (and hopefully will).
or what it's worth, I think that the real problem isn't theist vs. atheist, it's true believers (of whatever sort) vs. skeptics.
Actually, the real problem is people who do not really understand the belief structures of atheists and agnostics.
Do you have religious faith in a god? (any god, from any religion)
If your answer is NO, then you are an atheist. That does not mean that you are not open to the possibility that a god could exist. It simply means you have no belief in the existance of any god.
From your post, you seam to be an atheist to me. You are also an agnostic, but then again almost all atheists are also agnostic.
I personally find it possible - but very, very improbable - that God exists, and because of the low probability I assign to the existence of God, I don't waste a lot of time pondering "God did it" as a likely cause for various phenomena.
Then in fact, you are an atheist. You are simply an atheist and an agnostic. You do not have to think that there is a 0% chance of God existing to be an atheist. You simply have to be void of religious faith in God. You are simply an atheist who is open to the possibility that God might exist. You are agnostic because of your willingness to realize that you cannot possibly know for sure, and you are an atheist because you lack religious conviction.
Atheism and Agnosticism are not mutually exclusive. In fact, almost all atheists are also agnostic and almost all agnostics are also atheists. It is only through public misconception that they have been regarded as seperate beleifs.
You will be hard pressed to find ANY atheists that believe there is a 0% chance that God exists. They mostly think it is just as likely as there being a race of teapot people living in our asteroid belt. You will also be hard pressed to find ANY agnostics that also have faith in any divine being. If they actually have theistic faith, they wouldnt admit to being unsure. That is why almost everyone who is either an atheist or agnostic is actually both.
The problem is that there is no clear definition of the terms "atheist" and "agnostic". Many different people cling to many different definitions. To say that any two atheists must have the exact same beliefs is to say that any two theists (such as a Mormon and Hindu) have the exact same beliefs.
You can be an atheist and agnostic at the exact same time. They are not mutually exclusive. In fact, almost ALL atheists are also agnostics. They may not realize it because of all the other connotations built up around the words "atheist" and "agnostic" but it is true. You will be hard pressed to find a large amount of atheists that actually believe there is 0% chance that there are any supreme divine beings in the universe. They will simply tell you it has about the same chance as a race of teapot people living in our asteroid belt.
A pure agnostic (meaning they are not atheist as well) are the ones saying that they have completely no idea. They think that there is a good chance that either side could be correct. You will find that almost ALL agnostics also have atheist tendencies, however. That is probably because once you open yourself to the possibility that gods do not exist, it is pretty hard to have any theistic beliefs at all. The type of people that have the capability to think for themselves on such important matters tend to be the type of people who will not accept blind faith in something.
I wonder what opinion polls would have shown about slavery in 1864. Just because a large number of Americans believe in something does not mean it is in their best interest. That is the real reason we live in a Republic instead of a Democracy (although it rarely works out that way). The actual problem is an administration that is built upon a religiously conservative base. But that problem will hopefully be gone soon, so you never know what could happen in the near future.
What makes you think I am from New York City? I have never even been there. I was born in a small town in Illinois, and my father was (and is still) a farmer.
Yes, 10s of millions of acres of arable land goes unfarmed every year. But that is still a small percentage of the 470 million acres that are being farmed today. We are losing about 1 million acres each year from urbanization, and about 2 million acres of prime cropland each year from erosion, salinization, etc. New top soil is only replenishing at less than half the rate that it is being used up. We will use up about 100 million acres of farmland in the next 50 years. That counts farmland that is so stripped of resources that it needs an unsustainable amount of fertilizers to keep productive.
We are keeping this up because of fertilizers. Fertilizers that almost completely come from non-renewable sources (like natural gas). 17% of our energy use in this country is used to grow our food. That is because our land already cannot support us.
Every American "eats" about 400 gallons of oil equivalents each year. 124 gallons from inorganic fertilizers 76 gallons from field machinery 64 gallons from transportation of food 52 gallons from powering irrigation 32 gallons from livestock (not including livestock feed) 20 gallons from crop drying 20 gallons from pesticides 32 gallons miscellaneous
Something has to change when we start to run out of our non-renewable resources. Peak oil is expected to hit within a decade, and peak natural gas will soon follow (probably about a decade later). We will not be able to use the same amount of fertilizers in 50 years. We cannot keep stripping our soil of its nutrients like we are doing today. There simply is not enough land to do it.
These towers might not be the answer, but we need to start looking. At least they are not just sticking their heads in the sand and spouting out nonsense like "we will never run out of farmland."
Want to know why "flyover country" votes differently than big city folk?
It is because of a lack of education. That lack of education leads people to just stick with their current ways of doing things. These farming towers are not just about not having to haul the food around in semis. They are about finding ways to stop using so much fertilizers/pesticides in our food production also. And about conserving water. There are numerous benefits.
The trick is finding out exactly how/when they can become economically viable. But they wont find that out until they try it.
I dont see how this would piss off the IRS agents. They get paid whether they are staring at a wall for 8 hours, or counting pennies for 8 hours. If fact, they may actually like the overtime.
The only ones I can see getting pissed off is the other taxpayers that are now waiting days in line to pay their taxes because a few assholes are holding up the line.
The article talks about impending problems in the next 50 years of growing and distributing food to our growing population. 100 acres in Kansas might be cheaper, but eventually we will run out of land to farm on. And while it is cheap today to transport food hundreds/thousands of miles to get to the grocery store now, I am not so sure about when gasoline costs $20/gallon.
I seriously doubt anyone thinks this is economically viable today. But what I assume they want to do is figure out how to make it work *before* we NEED to.
No, I'm not trolling. Oil really wasn't the main motivation for going in. Oil would have been a much more reasonable reason for us going in than the most likely reasons. Engaging in a war in that region has resulted in a lesser amount of oil being available, higher prices for it and a much more difficult time procuring the amount that we are using.
Uhm, did you do any research before posting that? According the Department of Energy, the US imported about 8.8% MORE oil from Iraq in 2003 than we did in 2002. While the Iraqi oil industry is only exporting about 56% of the oil that they did in 2002, the United States is getting a larger percentage of it.
Engaging in a war in that region has resulted in a lesser amount of oil being available, higher prices for it and a much more difficult time procuring the amount that we are using.
The United States did not go to war to lower the price of gas at the pump. Citizens do not go to war, people in power do. So why would citizens benefit from the war? People in power benefit from war.
The oil companies actually benefit when the price of crude oil goes up. Lets say that you are an oil company that produces 1 million barrels of oil per day. If a barrel of oil sells for $20, then you make $20 million per day. Lets say that your expenses are $19 million per day, and you make $1 million profit per day.
If there is a war in the middle east, then lets say the price of a barrel of oil goes up to $60. That means they are now making $60 million per day for the exact same oil fields. Royalties to governments that lease the rights to drill would also go up (18% in the US), as would taxes (about 40%). That means their new expenses are $42.2 million per day. So with the war going on, they are now making $17.8 million in profit per day, instead of just $1 million.
So while the american public is paying an extra $1.50 per gallon in gas, these oil companies are making extreme profits. That is why we go to war for oil.
If it's all about oil, then where's the $1 gasoline?
That is a fairly rediculous statement. American citizens did not go to war for oil. The people with power in the US went to war for oil. So what makes you think that it is the citizens who would benefit? It is the people with power that benefit, such as the oil companies.
But even if your online characters are kept seperate from your local characters, it still solves most of the problems originally mentioned. You now have a game that you can just pay $50 for and never go online, or you can also pay $15 a month for the online play. You are actually buying 2 games in 1. The $50 is for the single player game, and the $15 a month is for the online play. You may never use the single player features, but that is your fault. You still have the capability, which is where the $50 is paying for.
So basically because I am not God, I cannot find fault in God's creations? It is kind of like:
Me: How do you know God exists? You: The Bible tells me so. Me: How do you know the Bible is true? You: God wrote it. Me: But how do you know God wrote it? You: Because the Bible tells me so. Me: Ugh.
A mechanic can tell if a set of wires is in a place that will make it likely to short, and can tell that it should have been put somewhere else. He doesnt need a PhD in mechanical and electrical engineering to tell that it is a bad design. He may not be able to do better, but he can tell a mistake when he sees one.
None of the things I listed where done based on research of my own. I am a software engineer, not a doctor or biologist. I refer to the experts on such matters. Our current scientists may not be able to design a sapient creature just yet, but they definetly know enough to notice a bad design.
For starters, there is no evidence that the "flawed" structures can evolve by natural methods.
Are you kidding? Fossil evidence is a type of evidence (it is the second word, right after fossil). It is not 100% conclusive; nothing ever is. But macroevolution has alot of evidence in both the fossil record and in the biology of existing creatures. The fact that humans still have gills in early development is a great example of that kind of evidence.
While it is possible that God could have made mistakes (such as with human vertebrae), something like gills in a human is obviously not part of any design. Humans have no use for a set of useless gills. Especially gills that can only develop into harmful cysts. Because the fossil evidence shows that all mammals developed from bony fish, these gills only reinforce that evidence. Evolution used these gills as a stepping stone to create the neck as it is found in mammals. That is why they still exist in early human embryos.
While this is not 100% fact, it is a very good explanation based on actual evidence. "God did it" is just wishful thinking based on no evidence at all.
partly for the reasons mentioned above, and as such, it is impossible to disprove God. Thus, from a scientific point of view, the most one can say is, "I don't know".
While that is technically true, the better answer would be: "I am not technically 100% sure, but it is incredibly unlikely."
There could be an ancient race of "fork people" that fly about our universe stabbing planets for amusement. They are no larger than our more mundane utensils, and as such are undetectable by our current telescopes. In fact they try to hide themselves from detection.
If you were to ask any scientist if these "fork people" actually exist, their answer would be the same as for your question about God. I don't know. That is why I think the answer of: I am not technically 100% sure, but it is incredibly unlikely is much better. While I don't know might be a fine response, some crackpots with their own irrational beliefs might attack those scientists for being close-minded and not accepting other possibilities.
Wow, it's hard to have an argument when words have so many meanings.
Its really not that hard, because most of the meanings of these words are simply generalisations that make conversation easier. The problem comes from using semantic arguments to attack something (like science) by using these generalities. Your arguments are like attacking someone for using F=ma because they are not taking into account special relativity. It is when that happens that things start to get confusing.
From here on out, I will simply use the word "natural" to mean something that is not designed by a sapient creature. So when I talk about a natural being, I am talking about one that has evolved. Unnatural will mean something that has been designed. Any other connotations or denotations from either the word natural or unnatural are not intended.
The reason I went into a very brief tangeant on the invalidity of religion in general is because you have a very valid point about what you call "natural" and "nature identical". But science has many techniques for telling the difference. Science is always open to new theories, but religion is a very poor place to look.
The first and easiest way to tell if something is artificial is to look for flaws. Flaws are used to show that the object is natural instead of artificial. There are artificial diamonds that are basically identical to real diamonds. The only way to tell the difference is that all natural diamonds have some kind of flaws.
So science uses this knowledge to look at things in our world and try to tell if they are designed or have come from more "natural" methods. The human body is a perfect example. It has numerous "design flaws" that show how obviously that we evolved from natural methods.
Semi-soft discs between vertebrae and just anterior to the spinal cord are well suited to quadrupeds. But in humans the upper body weight compresses these and can cause herniations. It is quite obvious that they are left overs from when we walked on all fours.
Our hip joints are also designed for quadrupeds. They are not designed for the stresses of a biped. That is why you would never see high occurances of hip degeneration or femoral neck fractures in a dog or horse. There are numerous other designs in the human body that work better if we were quadrupeds instead of bipeds, but I will just mention those two.
There are also many congenial birth defects that are caused by structures only found in more primitive animals. Gills in our embryonic stage can continue to develop into partial gills called branchial cleft cysts. They can cause pain and abscesses later in life. Chordomas are another remnent of "old" genes. They are tumors made up of embryonic notochordal remnants. These notochords generally regress as the embryo reaches maturity in complex animals, as they are simply leftovers from more primitive animals such as Pikaea and Amphioxus.
There are many other examples of even entire organs that we no longer use (appendix). There is overwhelming evidence that the human body was not designed. You could of course think that God put these things there just to test our faith, but such an explanation stretches any level of credulity.
There is absolutely no way to 100% prove or disprove anything. You could not possibly prove that there is not a flying spaceship above your head that is invisible and undetectable by any natural means; made up of a type of matter that we havent even discovered yet. It all comes down to what are the chances.
The little bit that I spoke about how rediculous it is to believe that the current religions of the world just happen to be "true" (but all others in the history of mankind were "false") just enhances the likelihood that our world is not designed. Once you remove the chance of their being some kind of divine creator based on just how infinitly remote the chances are, the idea of a designer becomes more far fetched. And even if there is a designer, it does not discr
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I don't think that Futurama failed because it was too "smart" for the masses. What a great way to stroke your own ego to think that a show you really liked required you to be smarter than everyone else.
Where did you read that in Lord Ender's post? He never mentioned anything about someone needing to be "smart" to understand Futurama. He made a number of assertions (right or wrong), but none of them mentioned having to be smart. You do not have to be smart to read Asimov or know who Nixon is. While it is true that many of the qualities he mentioned have a fairly strong correlation with being intelligent, he never said that it was necessary.
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I would certainly be more pissed at someone who stole my house than someone who beat me up.
Also I just want to say that I agree about the headaches of using DataSets. Years ago I did alot of Access programming and DAO was much easier than these stupid DataSets. I am very proficient with DataSets now, but I still do not think that I am more productive than I was with good old DAO.
But on the other hand the new advanced in DataGrid components has definetely made me more productive. I doubt that they needed DataSets to improve their DataGrids and DataBinding in general, but I have found that for every crappy new feature in Visual Studio there are a dozen great improvements.
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If you're talking about desktop development, then yes if you include 3rd party components, then .net has and advantage because of the huge number of 3rd party vendors.
.net by a mile
.net is "easy". It is easy to do basic stuff, using 3rd party components, and the built in tools and wizards. But it becomes very hard, when you need to move outside what the tools provide; which happens in most applications that are more than trivial.
.Net programming to be easy from start to finish. Of course the beginning is easier, but that can be said for any language. I have found that you can become far more productive by doing things the way that the language developers intend instead of trying to jury rig things.
If you are talking about large scale (AT&T, Social Security, etc) business logic or database intensive applications, then Java outdoes
I completely agree with both of those statements. But large scale business logic applications are not the ones that are going to affect Window's market share. Desktop Development is what is going to affect Window's market share. Or at least that is my opinion, I make no claims that I am never wrong.
I disagree that
I probably have less experience than you (about 6 years professionally, about 10 more as a young hobbyist) but I have found
As far as DataSets go, 51k lines for 40 tables seams like a bit much (but possible). I have had to handle special cases very often (no project has no "special cases"), and the underlying Designer code is very easy to manage. Editing those many lines of Designer code has been a lot easier than writing it all by hand. Or at least that is what my experience has shown.
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This is a part of the issue, but keep in mind that most commercial software houses are going to target the biggest userbase they can. Even if they have to use Notepad to write the software.
.Net, 3rd party components, etc.)
That is rarely true, which is why so much software only works for Windows. Commercial software houses want to sell as much software as possible. If it takes 2 years to develop a Windows program that can sell 2000 copies, and an extra year to port it to OS X & Linux to sell another 350 copies (Windows had about 85% client-side market share in 2004), there is almost no point to porting the software. They could just spend that year working on their next Windows project which will make them three times as much money.
My company sells about 80 copies of our small niche software per month. By porting it to OS X & Linux we might sell another 10 copies per month. And it would probably be alot less than that, because many of the Linux/Mac users out there also have access to the Windows operating system too. So we can either possibly increase our sales by about 10%, or work on a new peice of software that could possibly double our sales (if it is as successful as the first). It seams like a no-brainer to me.
Large development companies of course port their software to at least OS X, but there is alot of useful small niche software out there. And it would generally be a bad idea for most of them to spend too much time worrying out cross-platform programming when the tools to write Windows software are so much easier to use. (I am including Visual Studio,
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It isnt just the Visual Studio 2005 IDE. It is all of the components, both built-in and 3rd party, that make it so great. I have components from Infragistics that cut out over half of my development time by automatings most of the programming I would have had to do.
.NET. And easy to use is ALMOST always more important than more powerful. If it helps get the product finished quicker then you make more money. And when performance is an issue, you have more time to fix the bottlenecks if the other less demanding areas of your project were finished quicker by an easier development environment.
Its just like the cotton gin, just for a different age. I have never worked with anything in OS X or Linux that is easier to use than
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Excuse me for being naive, but why not Java?
.Net equivelants (even from within the same company).
.Net is not really its user interface alone, it is all of the 3rd party support. Having controls that do 80% of the programming for me helps my company finish software faster.
.Net?
I guess I have always assumed that Java does not have a rich set of components like C# does. I have looked into 3rd party Java components such as JSuite 7.2 from Infragistics, but none that I have found even touched the
The best feature of Visual Studio
But I have never really looked into doing Desktop programming with Java. How do the built-in components and 3rd party components in modern Java compare to Visual Studio
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IMHO, Windows will only lose its dominance when cross platform development tools become as easy to use and feature rich as Visual Studio. The software that I write is all Windows-only because it is written in Visual C# from within Visual Studio (using .Net). I have never dealt with such an easy to use development environment than the one Microsoft has in Visual Studio. Granted they stole and borrowed most of their best features from Borland, but the end result is still the best development studio I have ever used.
I would love to write software that would work on Windows, Linux, and OS X; but I work at a small development company. We are far more productive just sticking to one set of code for one platform, because there are no good languages out there that work for any platform. Or at least I have never seen any. RealBasic is the closest I have found, but it is more like going back to VB6 instead of using the newest advances in development user interfaes and other features.
I cannot wait for a language that is as cross-platform friendly as RealBasic but also as feature rich as Visual Studio. I am certain that it will happen someday, and it will certainly be a major blow to Microsoft.
I think both Linux and OS X are great operating systems, but my advice to anyone is still to be wary of getting a computer that alot of software will not run on. Even if you arent using anything other than Word Processing and Email today, what about three years from now? Once cross-platform programming is easier things might change (and hopefully will).
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This is fun, I want to see how many times someone can respond to their own posts :-)
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or what it's worth, I think that the real problem isn't theist vs. atheist, it's true believers (of whatever sort) vs. skeptics.
Actually, the real problem is people who do not really understand the belief structures of atheists and agnostics.
Do you have religious faith in a god? (any god, from any religion)
If your answer is NO, then you are an atheist. That does not mean that you are not open to the possibility that a god could exist. It simply means you have no belief in the existance of any god.
From your post, you seam to be an atheist to me. You are also an agnostic, but then again almost all atheists are also agnostic.
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I personally find it possible - but very, very improbable - that God exists, and because of the low probability I assign to the existence of God, I don't waste a lot of time pondering "God did it" as a likely cause for various phenomena.
Then in fact, you are an atheist. You are simply an atheist and an agnostic. You do not have to think that there is a 0% chance of God existing to be an atheist. You simply have to be void of religious faith in God. You are simply an atheist who is open to the possibility that God might exist. You are agnostic because of your willingness to realize that you cannot possibly know for sure, and you are an atheist because you lack religious conviction.
Atheism and Agnosticism are not mutually exclusive. In fact, almost all atheists are also agnostic and almost all agnostics are also atheists. It is only through public misconception that they have been regarded as seperate beleifs.
You will be hard pressed to find ANY atheists that believe there is a 0% chance that God exists. They mostly think it is just as likely as there being a race of teapot people living in our asteroid belt. You will also be hard pressed to find ANY agnostics that also have faith in any divine being. If they actually have theistic faith, they wouldnt admit to being unsure. That is why almost everyone who is either an atheist or agnostic is actually both.
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The problem is that there is no clear definition of the terms "atheist" and "agnostic". Many different people cling to many different definitions. To say that any two atheists must have the exact same beliefs is to say that any two theists (such as a Mormon and Hindu) have the exact same beliefs.
You can be an atheist and agnostic at the exact same time. They are not mutually exclusive. In fact, almost ALL atheists are also agnostics. They may not realize it because of all the other connotations built up around the words "atheist" and "agnostic" but it is true. You will be hard pressed to find a large amount of atheists that actually believe there is 0% chance that there are any supreme divine beings in the universe. They will simply tell you it has about the same chance as a race of teapot people living in our asteroid belt.
A pure agnostic (meaning they are not atheist as well) are the ones saying that they have completely no idea. They think that there is a good chance that either side could be correct. You will find that almost ALL agnostics also have atheist tendencies, however. That is probably because once you open yourself to the possibility that gods do not exist, it is pretty hard to have any theistic beliefs at all. The type of people that have the capability to think for themselves on such important matters tend to be the type of people who will not accept blind faith in something.
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I wonder what opinion polls would have shown about slavery in 1864. Just because a large number of Americans believe in something does not mean it is in their best interest. That is the real reason we live in a Republic instead of a Democracy (although it rarely works out that way). The actual problem is an administration that is built upon a religiously conservative base. But that problem will hopefully be gone soon, so you never know what could happen in the near future.
Wow, is that just a gut feeling or do you actually have any reason to believe that nonsense.
What makes you think I am from New York City? I have never even been there. I was born in a small town in Illinois, and my father was (and is still) a farmer.
Yes, 10s of millions of acres of arable land goes unfarmed every year. But that is still a small percentage of the 470 million acres that are being farmed today. We are losing about 1 million acres each year from urbanization, and about 2 million acres of prime cropland each year from erosion, salinization, etc. New top soil is only replenishing at less than half the rate that it is being used up. We will use up about 100 million acres of farmland in the next 50 years. That counts farmland that is so stripped of resources that it needs an unsustainable amount of fertilizers to keep productive.
We are keeping this up because of fertilizers. Fertilizers that almost completely come from non-renewable sources (like natural gas). 17% of our energy use in this country is used to grow our food. That is because our land already cannot support us.
Every American "eats" about 400 gallons of oil equivalents each year.
124 gallons from inorganic fertilizers
76 gallons from field machinery
64 gallons from transportation of food
52 gallons from powering irrigation
32 gallons from livestock (not including livestock feed)
20 gallons from crop drying
20 gallons from pesticides
32 gallons miscellaneous
Something has to change when we start to run out of our non-renewable resources. Peak oil is expected to hit within a decade, and peak natural gas will soon follow (probably about a decade later). We will not be able to use the same amount of fertilizers in 50 years. We cannot keep stripping our soil of its nutrients like we are doing today. There simply is not enough land to do it.
These towers might not be the answer, but we need to start looking. At least they are not just sticking their heads in the sand and spouting out nonsense like "we will never run out of farmland."
Want to know why "flyover country" votes differently than big city folk?
It is because of a lack of education. That lack of education leads people to just stick with their current ways of doing things. These farming towers are not just about not having to haul the food around in semis. They are about finding ways to stop using so much fertilizers/pesticides in our food production also. And about conserving water. There are numerous benefits.
The trick is finding out exactly how/when they can become economically viable. But they wont find that out until they try it.
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What "growing population"?
U.S. population is growing slowly due to immigration.
Um, im not sure I need to respond because you answered your own question. Who cares where the population growth is coming from? They still need food.
I dont see how this would piss off the IRS agents. They get paid whether they are staring at a wall for 8 hours, or counting pennies for 8 hours. If fact, they may actually like the overtime.
The only ones I can see getting pissed off is the other taxpayers that are now waiting days in line to pay their taxes because a few assholes are holding up the line.
The article talks about impending problems in the next 50 years of growing and distributing food to our growing population. 100 acres in Kansas might be cheaper, but eventually we will run out of land to farm on. And while it is cheap today to transport food hundreds/thousands of miles to get to the grocery store now, I am not so sure about when gasoline costs $20/gallon.
I seriously doubt anyone thinks this is economically viable today. But what I assume they want to do is figure out how to make it work *before* we NEED to.
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No, I'm not trolling. Oil really wasn't the main motivation for going in. Oil would have been a much more reasonable reason for us going in than the most likely reasons.
Engaging in a war in that region has resulted in a lesser amount of oil being available, higher prices for it and a much more difficult time procuring the amount that we are using.
Uhm, did you do any research before posting that? According the Department of Energy, the US imported about 8.8% MORE oil from Iraq in 2003 than we did in 2002. While the Iraqi oil industry is only exporting about 56% of the oil that they did in 2002, the United States is getting a larger percentage of it.
Engaging in a war in that region has resulted in a lesser amount of oil being available, higher prices for it and a much more difficult time procuring the amount that we are using.
The United States did not go to war to lower the price of gas at the pump. Citizens do not go to war, people in power do. So why would citizens benefit from the war? People in power benefit from war.
The oil companies actually benefit when the price of crude oil goes up. Lets say that you are an oil company that produces 1 million barrels of oil per day. If a barrel of oil sells for $20, then you make $20 million per day. Lets say that your expenses are $19 million per day, and you make $1 million profit per day.
If there is a war in the middle east, then lets say the price of a barrel of oil goes up to $60. That means they are now making $60 million per day for the exact same oil fields. Royalties to governments that lease the rights to drill would also go up (18% in the US), as would taxes (about 40%). That means their new expenses are $42.2 million per day. So with the war going on, they are now making $17.8 million in profit per day, instead of just $1 million.
So while the american public is paying an extra $1.50 per gallon in gas, these oil companies are making extreme profits. That is why we go to war for oil.
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If it's all about oil, then where's the $1 gasoline?
That is a fairly rediculous statement. American citizens did not go to war for oil. The people with power in the US went to war for oil. So what makes you think that it is the citizens who would benefit? It is the people with power that benefit, such as the oil companies.
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A MMOG one part Populous, one part NWN, one part WOW... It'll never happen
Its not as if the comment "It'll never happen" has ever been proven false in the field of computers before.
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But even if your online characters are kept seperate from your local characters, it still solves most of the problems originally mentioned. You now have a game that you can just pay $50 for and never go online, or you can also pay $15 a month for the online play. You are actually buying 2 games in 1. The $50 is for the single player game, and the $15 a month is for the online play. You may never use the single player features, but that is your fault. You still have the capability, which is where the $50 is paying for.
So basically because I am not God, I cannot find fault in God's creations? It is kind of like:
Me: How do you know God exists?
You: The Bible tells me so.
Me: How do you know the Bible is true?
You: God wrote it.
Me: But how do you know God wrote it?
You: Because the Bible tells me so.
Me: Ugh.
A mechanic can tell if a set of wires is in a place that will make it likely to short, and can tell that it should have been put somewhere else. He doesnt need a PhD in mechanical and electrical engineering to tell that it is a bad design. He may not be able to do better, but he can tell a mistake when he sees one.
None of the things I listed where done based on research of my own. I am a software engineer, not a doctor or biologist. I refer to the experts on such matters. Our current scientists may not be able to design a sapient creature just yet, but they definetly know enough to notice a bad design.
For starters, there is no evidence that the "flawed" structures can evolve by natural methods.
Are you kidding? Fossil evidence is a type of evidence (it is the second word, right after fossil). It is not 100% conclusive; nothing ever is. But macroevolution has alot of evidence in both the fossil record and in the biology of existing creatures. The fact that humans still have gills in early development is a great example of that kind of evidence.
While it is possible that God could have made mistakes (such as with human vertebrae), something like gills in a human is obviously not part of any design. Humans have no use for a set of useless gills. Especially gills that can only develop into harmful cysts. Because the fossil evidence shows that all mammals developed from bony fish, these gills only reinforce that evidence. Evolution used these gills as a stepping stone to create the neck as it is found in mammals. That is why they still exist in early human embryos.
While this is not 100% fact, it is a very good explanation based on actual evidence. "God did it" is just wishful thinking based on no evidence at all.
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partly for the reasons mentioned above, and as such, it is impossible to disprove God. Thus, from a scientific point of view, the most one can say is, "I don't know".
While that is technically true, the better answer would be: "I am not technically 100% sure, but it is incredibly unlikely."
There could be an ancient race of "fork people" that fly about our universe stabbing planets for amusement. They are no larger than our more mundane utensils, and as such are undetectable by our current telescopes. In fact they try to hide themselves from detection.
If you were to ask any scientist if these "fork people" actually exist, their answer would be the same as for your question about God. I don't know. That is why I think the answer of: I am not technically 100% sure, but it is incredibly unlikely is much better. While I don't know might be a fine response, some crackpots with their own irrational beliefs might attack those scientists for being close-minded and not accepting other possibilities.
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Wow, it's hard to have an argument when words have so many meanings.
Its really not that hard, because most of the meanings of these words are simply generalisations that make conversation easier. The problem comes from using semantic arguments to attack something (like science) by using these generalities. Your arguments are like attacking someone for using F=ma because they are not taking into account special relativity. It is when that happens that things start to get confusing.
From here on out, I will simply use the word "natural" to mean something that is not designed by a sapient creature. So when I talk about a natural being, I am talking about one that has evolved. Unnatural will mean something that has been designed. Any other connotations or denotations from either the word natural or unnatural are not intended.
The reason I went into a very brief tangeant on the invalidity of religion in general is because you have a very valid point about what you call "natural" and "nature identical". But science has many techniques for telling the difference. Science is always open to new theories, but religion is a very poor place to look.
The first and easiest way to tell if something is artificial is to look for flaws. Flaws are used to show that the object is natural instead of artificial. There are artificial diamonds that are basically identical to real diamonds. The only way to tell the difference is that all natural diamonds have some kind of flaws.
So science uses this knowledge to look at things in our world and try to tell if they are designed or have come from more "natural" methods. The human body is a perfect example. It has numerous "design flaws" that show how obviously that we evolved from natural methods.
Semi-soft discs between vertebrae and just anterior to the spinal cord are well suited to quadrupeds. But in humans the upper body weight compresses these and can cause herniations. It is quite obvious that they are left overs from when we walked on all fours.
Our hip joints are also designed for quadrupeds. They are not designed for the stresses of a biped. That is why you would never see high occurances of hip degeneration or femoral neck fractures in a dog or horse. There are numerous other designs in the human body that work better if we were quadrupeds instead of bipeds, but I will just mention those two.
There are also many congenial birth defects that are caused by structures only found in more primitive animals. Gills in our embryonic stage can continue to develop into partial gills called branchial cleft cysts. They can cause pain and abscesses later in life. Chordomas are another remnent of "old" genes. They are tumors made up of embryonic notochordal remnants. These notochords generally regress as the embryo reaches maturity in complex animals, as they are simply leftovers from more primitive animals such as Pikaea and Amphioxus.
There are many other examples of even entire organs that we no longer use (appendix). There is overwhelming evidence that the human body was not designed. You could of course think that God put these things there just to test our faith, but such an explanation stretches any level of credulity.
There is absolutely no way to 100% prove or disprove anything. You could not possibly prove that there is not a flying spaceship above your head that is invisible and undetectable by any natural means; made up of a type of matter that we havent even discovered yet. It all comes down to what are the chances.
The little bit that I spoke about how rediculous it is to believe that the current religions of the world just happen to be "true" (but all others in the history of mankind were "false") just enhances the likelihood that our world is not designed. Once you remove the chance of their being some kind of divine creator based on just how infinitly remote the chances are, the idea of a designer becomes more far fetched. And even if there is a designer, it does not discr