Intelligence is the only thing separating theists and atheists
I find that offensive - and I'm an atheist. In the past we've had people claim that whites are smarter than blacks, men are smarter than women, democrats are smarter than republicans and vice versa.
I suspect that the people making such claims are the stupid ones. Not in the sense of IQ, but in the sense of being dumb-asses looking to affirm their "I'm better than someone else" beliefs, same as some religious people have internalized a "holier-than-thou" attitude and look down on other religions and the "unwashed heathen".
If ETs have enough energy at their disposal to get here, certainly they have enough energy to deal with anything that this world's religions can throw at them.
Depends. If they got here on a solar sail, they may not have much in terms of "space blasters" and such. Then again, just what CAN religion throw at them? Pamphlets? Tracts? Bibles?
The aliens will be anxious to talk with all religious groups, because this will give them insights into our thinking (and any Achilles heels we may have should we prove to be rabidly xenophobic).
That is, if they want to talk to us at all. They may be more interested in what other residents of this planet have to say. Or they may be machine life instead of organic-based life, and the whole concept of organic life is so far in their past that it's become lost, or is considered as a fable.
Or they may just be doing some survey work before blowing up the planet to make way for a new interstellar highway.
The average intelligence of theists is a lot lower than atheists, I don't think they would even believe science if it was true. Intelligence is the only thing separating theists and atheists, other than that, we are all basically the same.
Not flaimbait. Just facts!
[citation needed].
So what happens when a believer converts to atheism? Did their IQ suddenly go up? The opposite argument can be made. If, as a believer, they were smart enough to drop their religious beliefs, seems that IQ and religious belief are not tightly correlated.
Religion has more to do with cultural influences than inherent intelligence.
In 2006, the Mozilla Foundation received US$66.8 million in revenues, of which US$61.5 million is attributed to "search royalties" from Google.[8]
The foundation has an ongoing deal with Google to make Google search the default in the Firefox browser search bar and hence send it search referrals; a Firefox themed Google search site has also been made the default home page of Firefox. The original contract expired in November 2006. However, Google renewed the contract until November 2008 and again through 2011.[9] On 20 December 2011 Mozilla announced that the contract was once again renewed for at least three years to November 2014, at three times the amount previously paid, or nearly US$300 million annually.[10][11] Approximately 85% of Mozilla’s revenue for 2006 was derived from this contract.
Glad to be of service:-)
I agree on the need for competition to keep everyone on the up-and-up. Too bad that Opera, which was doing great things at the time, has pretty much vanished from most people's radar.
Just because the app can be installed via the Google Play store doesn't mean it *has* to be installed that way. Android users can also transfer the app directly to each other via NFC (when available), WiFi, and Bluetooth.
You forgot one - they can easily put it into developer mode and load stuff via usb from a laptop, etc.:-)
NEW YORK - The online streaming service Grooveshark suffered a legal defeat on Monday when a U.S. judge found its operators liable to nine record companies for having directed employees to upload thousands of copyrighted songs without permission.
The judge held Grooveshark's parent company, Escape Media Group Inc, and its founders Samuel Tarantino and Joshua Greenberg, responsible for the illegal uploads of 5,977 songs by musicians such as Eminem, Green Day, Jay-Z and Madonna.
Griesa ordered both sides to propose within 21 days a permanent injunction to hold further infringements.
With offices in Gainesville, Florida, Grooveshark describes itself on its website as "one of the largest on-demand music services on the Internet," with more than 30 million users sharing in excess of 15 million files.
I doubt Eminem, Green Day, Jay-Z and Madonna gave them permission to freely distribute their music. You can follow the link to read the rest, or just google for other stories.
FireChat requires that users create an account online (with an email address) before they can use the app. This and the lack of encryption limits its usefulness.
It's available from both the Apple App Store and Google Play. People downloading it from either source already have given them an email addy.
All this means is that the Chinese government will try harder to break into Google's nd Apple's servers.
Its comedic how much effort you're putting in to comments focusing on the version number being 10 rather than 9. When did the audience of slashdot change such that instead of technical discussions it's become all about marketing and licensing. Who really gives a shit about the name of it?
Obviously Microsoft does, and their marketing department told them "get as far from 7 and 8 as possible. We need to make 7 look old and obsolete, or nobody will upgrade. And you already know why we need to put extra space between 8 and the next version."
In effect, this is confirming what many people think. Windows 7 is the new Windows XP - it's going to be hard to get people to make the upgrade, because it already does what they want, and the next version (Windows 8 in the case of Windows 7, and Vista in the case of XP) really sucked^Wfailed to meet user expectations. In both cases, the previous version got heavily entrenched and became almost impossible to move from.
Or they really, really want to make Windows 7 look obsolete, because, like the people who refused to upgrade from XP, it's "good enough."
Good enough so that the old joke "Q: Why is the number 10 scared? A: Because 7 8 9" would be the joke de jour to "explain why 9 (or 10) can't get market traction":-)
The Windows 9 upgrade might not be as free as initially believed
... just those customers who have purchased a Windows 8 (or Windows 8.1) copy will qualify for free upgrades. Users who have purchased a computer with Windows 8 preinstalled (OEM version of the software) will have to pay a fee.
Guess they wanted to catch up to Apple OSX version 10. Same as when one linux distro would bump their version number, others would to, even if that meant skipping a few digits in the process, so they wouldn't seem "behind."
I hated it every time when my smartphone would ring and I was visiting a relative in isolation. Step out of isolation, take off the gloves and gown, disinfect my hands, take out the phone, see the text, put the phone back in the pocket, new gloves and gown, back in the room.
You also can just not answer your phone right away.
Kind of hard to do when the rest of the family wants to be kept up to date on what's happening to someone who in the space of a month had a quintuple bypass, two strokes that left them paralyzed on one side, cognitive problems, etc., and you want to give the patient feedback from them that everyone's rooting for them, and is there anything they need?
The hospital cleans everything - floors washed multiple times a day, surfaces wiped down on a regular basis, etc. Infections are going to spread because that's what they do. If the patient is contaminated, they're contaminated. If it's a bug that's transmitted by contact, everything they come into contact with has to be assumed to be contaminated. They have a separate pressure cuff and stethoscope reserved for their exclusive use, etc. But still bugs get transmitted. It happens when you put a large amount of sick people, many of them weakened or immuno-compromised, together. And many of those bugs are already out in the wild, not just confined to hospitals.
Some things, like electronic devices, you can't just throw in the laundry or wash down. They need disinfecting.
You're not the only one, obviously, and that's intentional. By calling it Windows 10, they're trying to put as much distance as possible between it and Windows 8. And make 7 look even more "old".
So now you have yet another thing to carry around and disinfect.
Easier to just put a keyboard and screen in every room. Keyboards are easy to use, and there are keyboard protectors that can be easily disinfected. The screens are larger, so it's a lot easier to see all the necessary data, including what precautions to take, special requirements such as "do not give liquids orally", the patient's schedule if they are seeing specialists for physio or a checkup, etc.
Changing gloves between patients is already the norm. Having to disinfect a tablet and stylus between patients is going add more time lost between patients, raising costs and lowering effectiveness. Not every problem is suited for a tablet.
The "recommended consumer price" for someone purchasing a tray of cpus is $107. If you were working on a prototype design or a very limited production run, you'd buy just a tray of 1000, not the craploads that HP is going to buy.
Ever tried to use a touch screen while wearing those blue Nitrile surgical gloves? The ones that make your hands stink?
Not only is the screen not exactly responsive any more, but you have to disinfect it after every use. Not just at the end of a shift, but between every patient you come into contact with.
I hated it every time when my smartphone would ring and I was visiting a relative in isolation. Step out of isolation, take off the gloves and gown, disinfect my hands, take out the phone, see the text, put the phone back in the pocket, new gloves and gown, back in the room. So I left it out, and tried using it with gloves, figuring I'd disinfect it later. Hint - touch screens don't work so well with gloves, but at least it let me see who was texting/calling, and disinfecting it before I left wasn't that big a deal.
Hospitals are a huge source of infections, despite efforts to disinfect everything in sight.
I didn't "read this on gossipy tech blogs" - it was an obvious deduction that I came to last night when looking at the future of Firefox and Mozilla Corp.
Google renewed the deal because it made financial sense. Now it doesn't, because Firefox users are so used to using Google that any attempt to set, say, Bing as the default search is only going to last as long as it takes for the average Firefox user to switch it back to Google.
So where's the financial incentive to pay Mozilla for something that they don't have to? Or pay nearly as much? The situation has changed a LOT over the last 4 years in terms of market share. Firefox has lost half. I still use FF on my laptops, but not my smartphone. And there isn't much reason left not to make the switch either - Chrome is pretty much feature-compatible with FF for what I need to do, so it's mostly inertia. The same inertia that would make me switch back to Google search if they made Bing the default for the next 4 years.
So, even if Google doesn't renew the deal, they'll still be the choice of Firefox users. So, again, why should they continue to pay for something that they've already got a lock on that has a diminishing market share? And why should they continue to subsidize a competitor in the browser, phone, tablet, and other markets? Without all that money, firefox falls behind in development, causing more people to switch to chrome. If google walks away from the deal, they can convert the browser market to a duopoly within a few years on everything except Apple products.
The deal under which Mozilla makes about $300 million a year putting Google as the default browser in Firefox is ending in November of this year. This deal provides the vast majority of Mozilla's funding. Does Google need to renew it? The situation has changed from 4 years ago - Chrome is the default on Android, People are installing it on their laptops to have the same browser as their phones, etc.
So maybe Mozilla can see the writing on the wall and doesn't care to "offend" Google any more. Making the Firefox phone OS, and now competing with Google Chromecast... and on tablets, desktops, and TVs. Because there aren't already others competing for the bottom 0.01% of users in any of those spaces (hello, Canonical).
Because really, if Google doesn't renew the deal, or renews it a a much lower price, there's going to be a lot of pain and suffering at Mozilla. And if Mozilla signs with Microsoft instead, how quickly do you think people would put their default search back to Google? Microsoft knows that, so they're not going to be willing to pay big bucks either for a browser that has lost half it's market share and that most FF users will quickly switch back to Google for their default search engine.
Certainly both Microsoft and Apple have more money to spend on this than Mozilla. Mozilla may be looking down the road to the end (November of this year) of their current deal with Google that has placement of Google search as the default search - this deal provides almost all Mozilla's revenue. However, it might make sense to knee-cap Mozilla by not renewing the deal, now that Mozilla wants to compete in the mobile OS space.
The only other real potential candidate for the replacement deal is Microsoft, and if they don't bite, then what? After all, Chrome continues to gain market share - it's the default browser on all android devices. Even if Mozilla worked out a deal to make Bing the default search engine in 2015, most Firefox users will just switch it search back to Google - or switch browsers to Chrome.
So, Mozilla needs to do something NOW to preserve it's relevancy over the next 4-year contract term if they want either Google or Microsoft to ink a deal that will keep them anywhere near the lifestyle they've grown used to.
I know the bit about him being from Canada and having something to do wtih music and about him being unpleasant to neighboring homeowners.
But is he someone I need to know about to be not oblivious to current culture, that is, apart from "getting" Justin Bieber jokes on late night TV?
Justin Bieber is to music as Rob Ford is to politics.
Both are Canadians, both have problems with the cops, the people around them, the news media, booze,drugs, inappropriate public behaviour, more money than brains, etc.
My first thought was "but... the children!?"... I would think that the primary marketing for such software would be for parents. Not that I condone such actions, at the very least it would be socially acceptable.
Not really. People are fed up with parents that are so insecure in their parenting skills that they're hovering around almost 100% of the time - they're called "helicopter parents" for a reason, and like real helicopters, people in the immediate neighborhood of one don't exactly appreciate their nuisance factor.
Does anyone want to be one of "those parents?" Do you want your kids hanging around with the kids of one of "those parents" as they listen to everything your kids say and then gossip about how bad, how clueless parents you are? Or call CPS on you because they freaked out over something out of context?
Of course, you can pick different stats to prove pretty much anything when it comes to the web.
Using W3 counter it could be IE, it could be Safari, it could be Firefox.
But recently both Google and Apple have thrown down the gauntlet with respect to requests by the DoJ. Microsoft could very well be taking a different tack; having your browsing routed through TOR makes it harder to know the contents - until you upload it to "the Cloud" and it sits on the servers unencrypted.
Unleash the "Microsoft is in bed with the NSA" hounds.
Slashdot Mirror
The original poster made the claim:
Intelligence is the only thing separating theists and atheists
I find that offensive - and I'm an atheist. In the past we've had people claim that whites are smarter than blacks, men are smarter than women, democrats are smarter than republicans and vice versa.
I suspect that the people making such claims are the stupid ones. Not in the sense of IQ, but in the sense of being dumb-asses looking to affirm their "I'm better than someone else" beliefs, same as some religious people have internalized a "holier-than-thou" attitude and look down on other religions and the "unwashed heathen".
If ETs have enough energy at their disposal to get here, certainly they have enough energy to deal with anything that this world's religions can throw at them.
Depends. If they got here on a solar sail, they may not have much in terms of "space blasters" and such. Then again, just what CAN religion throw at them? Pamphlets? Tracts? Bibles?
The aliens will be anxious to talk with all religious groups, because this will give them insights into our thinking (and any Achilles heels we may have should we prove to be rabidly xenophobic).
That is, if they want to talk to us at all. They may be more interested in what other residents of this planet have to say. Or they may be machine life instead of organic-based life, and the whole concept of organic life is so far in their past that it's become lost, or is considered as a fable.
Or they may just be doing some survey work before blowing up the planet to make way for a new interstellar highway.
The average intelligence of theists is a lot lower than atheists, I don't think they would even believe science if it was true. Intelligence is the only thing separating theists and atheists, other than that, we are all basically the same.
Not flaimbait. Just facts!
[citation needed].
So what happens when a believer converts to atheism? Did their IQ suddenly go up? The opposite argument can be made. If, as a believer, they were smart enough to drop their religious beliefs, seems that IQ and religious belief are not tightly correlated.
Religion has more to do with cultural influences than inherent intelligence.
(I don't know where that $300 million claimed figure comes from as I doubt they publish this info but perhaps I'm wrong).
Wikipedia
In 2006, the Mozilla Foundation received US$66.8 million in revenues, of which US$61.5 million is attributed to "search royalties" from Google.[8]
The foundation has an ongoing deal with Google to make Google search the default in the Firefox browser search bar and hence send it search referrals; a Firefox themed Google search site has also been made the default home page of Firefox. The original contract expired in November 2006. However, Google renewed the contract until November 2008 and again through 2011.[9] On 20 December 2011 Mozilla announced that the contract was once again renewed for at least three years to November 2014, at three times the amount previously paid, or nearly US$300 million annually.[10][11] Approximately 85% of Mozilla’s revenue for 2006 was derived from this contract.
Glad to be of service :-)
I agree on the need for competition to keep everyone on the up-and-up. Too bad that Opera, which was doing great things at the time, has pretty much vanished from most people's radar.
Just because the app can be installed via the Google Play store doesn't mean it *has* to be installed that way. Android users can also transfer the app directly to each other via NFC (when available), WiFi, and Bluetooth.
You forgot one - they can easily put it into developer mode and load stuff via usb from a laptop, etc. :-)
NEW YORK - The online streaming service Grooveshark suffered a legal defeat on Monday when a U.S. judge found its operators liable to nine record companies for having directed employees to upload thousands of copyrighted songs without permission.
The judge held Grooveshark's parent company, Escape Media Group Inc, and its founders Samuel Tarantino and Joshua Greenberg, responsible for the illegal uploads of 5,977 songs by musicians such as Eminem, Green Day, Jay-Z and Madonna.
Griesa ordered both sides to propose within 21 days a permanent injunction to hold further infringements.
With offices in Gainesville, Florida, Grooveshark describes itself on its website as "one of the largest on-demand music services on the Internet," with more than 30 million users sharing in excess of 15 million files.
I doubt Eminem, Green Day, Jay-Z and Madonna gave them permission to freely distribute their music. You can follow the link to read the rest, or just google for other stories.
FireChat requires that users create an account online (with an email address) before they can use the app. This and the lack of encryption limits its usefulness.
It's available from both the Apple App Store and Google Play. People downloading it from either source already have given them an email addy.
All this means is that the Chinese government will try harder to break into Google's nd Apple's servers.
Its comedic how much effort you're putting in to comments focusing on the version number being 10 rather than 9. When did the audience of slashdot change such that instead of technical discussions it's become all about marketing and licensing. Who really gives a shit about the name of it?
Obviously Microsoft does, and their marketing department told them "get as far from 7 and 8 as possible. We need to make 7 look old and obsolete, or nobody will upgrade. And you already know why we need to put extra space between 8 and the next version."
In effect, this is confirming what many people think. Windows 7 is the new Windows XP - it's going to be hard to get people to make the upgrade, because it already does what they want, and the next version (Windows 8 in the case of Windows 7, and Vista in the case of XP) really sucked^Wfailed to meet user expectations. In both cases, the previous version got heavily entrenched and became almost impossible to move from.
Good enough so that the old joke "Q: Why is the number 10 scared? A: Because 7 8 9" would be the joke de jour to "explain why 9 (or 10) can't get market traction" :-)
There will be no free upgrade if your computer came with Win8.x pre-installed. And there is not going to be a Windows 9 - they skipped directly to 10.
The Windows 9 upgrade might not be as free as initially believed
Guess they wanted to catch up to Apple OSX version 10. Same as when one linux distro would bump their version number, others would to, even if that meant skipping a few digits in the process, so they wouldn't seem "behind."
I hated it every time when my smartphone would ring and I was visiting a relative in isolation. Step out of isolation, take off the gloves and gown, disinfect my hands, take out the phone, see the text, put the phone back in the pocket, new gloves and gown, back in the room.
You also can just not answer your phone right away.
Kind of hard to do when the rest of the family wants to be kept up to date on what's happening to someone who in the space of a month had a quintuple bypass, two strokes that left them paralyzed on one side, cognitive problems, etc., and you want to give the patient feedback from them that everyone's rooting for them, and is there anything they need?
Not quite. If you read the article, what the article is calling "Windows 9" is now "Windows 10."
Also, from the same site, if your computer came with Windows 8 installed, you'll have to pay to upgrade. Which ain't gonna happen.
The hospital cleans everything - floors washed multiple times a day, surfaces wiped down on a regular basis, etc. Infections are going to spread because that's what they do. If the patient is contaminated, they're contaminated. If it's a bug that's transmitted by contact, everything they come into contact with has to be assumed to be contaminated. They have a separate pressure cuff and stethoscope reserved for their exclusive use, etc. But still bugs get transmitted. It happens when you put a large amount of sick people, many of them weakened or immuno-compromised, together. And many of those bugs are already out in the wild, not just confined to hospitals.
Some things, like electronic devices, you can't just throw in the laundry or wash down. They need disinfecting.
You're not the only one, obviously, and that's intentional. By calling it Windows 10, they're trying to put as much distance as possible between it and Windows 8. And make 7 look even more "old".
So now you have yet another thing to carry around and disinfect.
Easier to just put a keyboard and screen in every room. Keyboards are easy to use, and there are keyboard protectors that can be easily disinfected. The screens are larger, so it's a lot easier to see all the necessary data, including what precautions to take, special requirements such as "do not give liquids orally", the patient's schedule if they are seeing specialists for physio or a checkup, etc.
Changing gloves between patients is already the norm. Having to disinfect a tablet and stylus between patients is going add more time lost between patients, raising costs and lowering effectiveness. Not every problem is suited for a tablet.
The "recommended consumer price" for someone purchasing a tray of cpus is $107. If you were working on a prototype design or a very limited production run, you'd buy just a tray of 1000, not the craploads that HP is going to buy.
Ever tried to use a touch screen while wearing those blue Nitrile surgical gloves? The ones that make your hands stink?
Not only is the screen not exactly responsive any more, but you have to disinfect it after every use. Not just at the end of a shift, but between every patient you come into contact with.
I hated it every time when my smartphone would ring and I was visiting a relative in isolation. Step out of isolation, take off the gloves and gown, disinfect my hands, take out the phone, see the text, put the phone back in the pocket, new gloves and gown, back in the room. So I left it out, and tried using it with gloves, figuring I'd disinfect it later. Hint - touch screens don't work so well with gloves, but at least it let me see who was texting/calling, and disinfecting it before I left wasn't that big a deal.
Hospitals are a huge source of infections, despite efforts to disinfect everything in sight.
I didn't "read this on gossipy tech blogs" - it was an obvious deduction that I came to last night when looking at the future of Firefox and Mozilla Corp.
Google renewed the deal because it made financial sense. Now it doesn't, because Firefox users are so used to using Google that any attempt to set, say, Bing as the default search is only going to last as long as it takes for the average Firefox user to switch it back to Google.
So where's the financial incentive to pay Mozilla for something that they don't have to? Or pay nearly as much? The situation has changed a LOT over the last 4 years in terms of market share. Firefox has lost half. I still use FF on my laptops, but not my smartphone. And there isn't much reason left not to make the switch either - Chrome is pretty much feature-compatible with FF for what I need to do, so it's mostly inertia. The same inertia that would make me switch back to Google search if they made Bing the default for the next 4 years.
So, even if Google doesn't renew the deal, they'll still be the choice of Firefox users. So, again, why should they continue to pay for something that they've already got a lock on that has a diminishing market share? And why should they continue to subsidize a competitor in the browser, phone, tablet, and other markets? Without all that money, firefox falls behind in development, causing more people to switch to chrome. If google walks away from the deal, they can convert the browser market to a duopoly within a few years on everything except Apple products.
The deal under which Mozilla makes about $300 million a year putting Google as the default browser in Firefox is ending in November of this year. This deal provides the vast majority of Mozilla's funding. Does Google need to renew it? The situation has changed from 4 years ago - Chrome is the default on Android, People are installing it on their laptops to have the same browser as their phones, etc.
So maybe Mozilla can see the writing on the wall and doesn't care to "offend" Google any more. Making the Firefox phone OS, and now competing with Google Chromecast ... and on tablets, desktops, and TVs. Because there aren't already others competing for the bottom 0.01% of users in any of those spaces (hello, Canonical).
Because really, if Google doesn't renew the deal, or renews it a a much lower price, there's going to be a lot of pain and suffering at Mozilla. And if Mozilla signs with Microsoft instead, how quickly do you think people would put their default search back to Google? Microsoft knows that, so they're not going to be willing to pay big bucks either for a browser that has lost half it's market share and that most FF users will quickly switch back to Google for their default search engine.
So just click on the "block all" option. Is that so hard?
Certainly both Microsoft and Apple have more money to spend on this than Mozilla. Mozilla may be looking down the road to the end (November of this year) of their current deal with Google that has placement of Google search as the default search - this deal provides almost all Mozilla's revenue. However, it might make sense to knee-cap Mozilla by not renewing the deal, now that Mozilla wants to compete in the mobile OS space.
The only other real potential candidate for the replacement deal is Microsoft, and if they don't bite, then what? After all, Chrome continues to gain market share - it's the default browser on all android devices. Even if Mozilla worked out a deal to make Bing the default search engine in 2015, most Firefox users will just switch it search back to Google - or switch browsers to Chrome.
So, Mozilla needs to do something NOW to preserve it's relevancy over the next 4-year contract term if they want either Google or Microsoft to ink a deal that will keep them anywhere near the lifestyle they've grown used to.
I know the bit about him being from Canada and having something to do wtih music and about him being unpleasant to neighboring homeowners.
But is he someone I need to know about to be not oblivious to current culture, that is, apart from "getting" Justin Bieber jokes on late night TV?
Justin Bieber is to music as Rob Ford is to politics.
Both are Canadians, both have problems with the cops, the people around them, the news media, booze,drugs, inappropriate public behaviour, more money than brains, etc.
Good point. Thanks for reminding everybody :-)
My first thought was "but... the children!?" ... I would think that the primary marketing for such software would be for parents. Not that I condone such actions, at the very least it would be socially acceptable.
Not really. People are fed up with parents that are so insecure in their parenting skills that they're hovering around almost 100% of the time - they're called "helicopter parents" for a reason, and like real helicopters, people in the immediate neighborhood of one don't exactly appreciate their nuisance factor.
Does anyone want to be one of "those parents?" Do you want your kids hanging around with the kids of one of "those parents" as they listen to everything your kids say and then gossip about how bad, how clueless parents you are? Or call CPS on you because they freaked out over something out of context?
Firefox has been well over 20% for years.
IE dropped below 20 percent two years ago.
Of course, you can pick different stats to prove pretty much anything when it comes to the web.
Using W3 counter it could be IE, it could be Safari, it could be Firefox.
But recently both Google and Apple have thrown down the gauntlet with respect to requests by the DoJ. Microsoft could very well be taking a different tack; having your browsing routed through TOR makes it harder to know the contents - until you upload it to "the Cloud" and it sits on the servers unencrypted.
Unleash the "Microsoft is in bed with the NSA" hounds.