Are you completely new to Doctor Who at all or is this a subtle joke? The Doctor has always regenerated in that way. There was an implied regeneration at the beginning of the series as well.
I know religious people prefer agnosticism, but atheism isn't going to go away. And you aren't going to convert all atheists into nice quaint agnostics.
If you've got a theistic mindset it seems very difficult to understand atheism, but agnosticism is much easier to understand.
I'd say I'm an atheist as I have never seen anything that logically suggests the existence of a god or of any other form of higher power. I don't see the sense in basing your whole life on a set of bronze age beliefs. Do you also believe that the Sun goes around the Earth, that the Earth is flat? Gods seemed very active back then, when nothing seemed to make sense, but now when more is understood they are suddenly very quiet. I wonder why?
It's very convenient that god(s) rely on faith for their existance. The whole set of god like knowledge is all so very human that it's quite shocking that anyone still believes it comes from anything other than human beings. It's like deliberate ignorance is the order of the day.
In fact, I've still to see a logical explanation as to what god is meant to be anyway. It doesn't even seem to know itself.
Atheism means lack of theism. How is that a faith? Is not believing in the tooth fairy a faith? Not believing in pink elephants?
The whole point of Atheism is that you don't need a belief system. You just go about your day to day existence without the necessity to worship any great anti-theistic power. It is an irrelevance.
The difficulty some religious people seem to have is that most of the time we simply don't think about it because it isn't important.
Sometimes when we see acts of mindless violence in the name of religion we will feel a sense of futility, but not at the acts of some great power but rather at the sense in which religious belief is so malleable by those willing to take advantage of it. The problems with religion are largely human problems. It has become just another weapon to be exploited by those who want to guide a mass of people in a way that suits them.
Mozilla kicked IE's arse 3 years ago as well. It had tabs, much better CSS support, Cookie management, Image management, etc. IE has just looked continually worse over that time, but has long played second fiddle.
- which apparently didn't upgrade the system first if that's what they had in mind
Answer: Good point! The only configuration control issue was that the enterprise wouldn't upgrade the OS version until July 1, 2005. This is mainly based on our experience with companies that don't move to the latest OS version until it has had time to "bake" in the community. At that time, SLES 9 was hot off the compiler.
Is it really a realistic situation though to have someone try something that could fundamentally break a running server rather than recommend an upgrade to the later version that is compatible with the software you want to run? Stepping completely outside the supported set-up of the server. I can see the response from any support outfit when you say you've done an unsupported change as fundamental as this.
"The scientists commenting on global warming like to talk about record high tempuratures, and still increasing, but they like to omit that they're also finding certain years with below-normal tempuratures as well."
Duh, of course they would. That would be further evidence for global warning. It isn't everything getting warmer, it's more heat energy going into the system. Like adding weights to one side of a scale, it just increases the extremes. So you get hotter weather and colder weather. Where have you been?
1) They should publicize it a bit more though. And does that support extend beyond birth?
2) Pregnancy is also a risky business though. My sister in law's friend died shortly after giving birth. There's also a chance of miscarriage, the child could be born with brain damage or varying levels of disability. It might be difficult to find adoptive parents for those children.
As for your final point, I'd say having to pay for treatment at all isn't caring. But then I live in a country where health care is free at the point of delivery and paid for through general taxation, and that includes abortions.
Do you have evidence that these rules didn't exist before the bible though? If anything, the society of today is more moral of that in the bible, there's stuff in the bible about not coveting your neighbour's property, yet nothing against child abuse or wife beating. It's an anachronism that doesn't represent modern morality. All these things suggest that the bible is just the word of people rather than the word of man, more representative of its time than any universal morality.
There's nothing wrong with a right to choose. If the pro-lifers really want to achieve their goal they just need to put their money where their mouth is and provide some support to women who would have otherwise had abortions to keep and bring up their children. Help the women choose something other than abortion. I don't see them being very interested in doing that though. They'd rather fight for a bunch of cells than help a woman bring up an actual child through providing financial support. Or once it's an actual growing person are they are no longer interested?
Abortion has always been a part of human life. In fact if you believe in God then he does it all the time, what do you think a miscarriage is but a natural abortion? The body rejecting the growing fetus. Women used to have several methods of bringing on a miscarriage. So you're not going to overcome abortion in a legal manner, certainly not worldwide, so if you want to stop abortions you need to start helping the mothers.
The funny thing is the pro-lifers I've encountered tend to be the people that are against higher taxes, against financial support for single mothers and in favour of the death penalty. Or is that not typical for pro-lifers?
What like reproduction? We can also remove the risk of airborne viruses by not breathing. And remove the risk of terrorism by doing exactly what the terrorists tell us to do. My favourite would be to irradicate road traffic accidents by removing cars.
Life is a risky business and its perfectly possible to modify your behaviour to reduce risks, but there are lots of risks. The only way to be permanently safe from risk is to be dead and at that point you don't worry much about risk anyway, too busy feeding worms.
"2)... Also: try using linux as a desktop for 2 years and see if it doesn't start slowing down when you install a new program once every week or two, new hardware every 6 months, and new graphics drivers and security patches once a month."
I've done that and it doesn't. Why on earth would it get slower? In fact in my experience it tends to get quicker and more optimised over time. Which is what you'd expect. I'm running a new install now because I updated my machine, before that I'd been running Linux on a 500/800Mhz machine from Mandrake 7.2 to 10.1 just doing the standard updates. No clean installs after the initial one.
Microsoft also had another advantage against Netscape - sheer numbers. IE came as the default browser in windows before the real explosion of internet usage occurred, so 90% of the early users of the web were using Netscape, but those numbers were dwarfed by those new users coming online with the browser that came with Windows.
Yeah it's great, you can download programs from all over the place and just install them. And they can often come with all sorts of cool extras. They all pop straight into the brilliant menu structure too, filed under the name of the company that made them.
Seriously though, the issue with installing software reminds me of the article posted on slashdot a while back listing the top 5 security myths (or something like that). One of the entries mentioned having a white list of good software rather than attempting to build a blacklist of malware. This is some Linux already provides. The software you download from your distro archives has been whitelisted. You're not just installing random software you found on an FTP server. This is a huge step forward, and one big security advantage Linux has over Windows software.
The fact you can't double click on an executable file you receive by email is a big plus in my book.
Haven't you heard that phrase "security is a process"? The reason Firefox is more secure, and Mozilla before it, is because they respond quickly to security issues. Not because they don't have any. That's always been the case, since before Mozilla 1.0. The list of security flaws fixed in the release notes of every release going way back should tell you that people have never claimed that Mozilla has zero security bugs.
So any tune you imagined was one inside your own head.
Well, this is slashdot, so how about some lists of ones that should have been on there but weren't. I've seen a few good ones mentioned already, but I'd like to know if I've missed any classics. There are quite a few I'd swop out to replace with any of these:
Planet of the Apes (TV Series) Survivors (BBC 80s series) The Invaders
Unless you have a particularly narrow definition of Science Fiction, most of those fit. For example, The Avengers had invading plants from space, killer robots etc. How can you not call it Science Fiction?
"Oh please! Open source isn't about freedom, it's about getting stuff free. And where I grew up I learned (many times) that you get what you pay for."
Yup, the scientists have had it all wrong for years. Newton should have charged a license fee for access to his research, E=mc^2 should be a secret unless you're a paid up member of the Einstein corporation. Free software is far closer to the concepts of freely shared scientific information than any concept of getting crappy freebies.
It's that free sharing of code that allows the development of these quality applications, as the people doing the sharing are programmers. A lot of non-programmers benefit, but it's that free sharing of code that allows programmers to collaborate without any unnecessary artificial barriers.
Slashdot Mirror
Are you completely new to Doctor Who at all or is this a subtle joke? The Doctor has always regenerated in that way. There was an implied regeneration at the beginning of the series as well.
I know religious people prefer agnosticism, but atheism isn't going to go away. And you aren't going to convert all atheists into nice quaint agnostics.
If you've got a theistic mindset it seems very difficult to understand atheism, but agnosticism is much easier to understand.
I'd say I'm an atheist as I have never seen anything that logically suggests the existence of a god or of any other form of higher power. I don't see the sense in basing your whole life on a set of bronze age beliefs. Do you also believe that the Sun goes around the Earth, that the Earth is flat? Gods seemed very active back then, when nothing seemed to make sense, but now when more is understood they are suddenly very quiet. I wonder why?
It's very convenient that god(s) rely on faith for their existance. The whole set of god like knowledge is all so very human that it's quite shocking that anyone still believes it comes from anything other than human beings. It's like deliberate ignorance is the order of the day.
In fact, I've still to see a logical explanation as to what god is meant to be anyway. It doesn't even seem to know itself.
Atheism means lack of theism. How is that a faith? Is not believing in the tooth fairy a faith? Not believing in pink elephants?
The whole point of Atheism is that you don't need a belief system. You just go about your day to day existence without the necessity to worship any great anti-theistic power. It is an irrelevance.
The difficulty some religious people seem to have is that most of the time we simply don't think about it because it isn't important.
Sometimes when we see acts of mindless violence in the name of religion we will feel a sense of futility, but not at the acts of some great power but rather at the sense in which religious belief is so malleable by those willing to take advantage of it. The problems with religion are largely human problems. It has become just another weapon to be exploited by those who want to guide a mass of people in a way that suits them.
I can imagine how it would be horrible under Windows. However it runs beautifully under Linux, just give it its own desktop and you're all set.
Omniweb is probably just ignoring the attribute that says, "don't remember this password".
Didn't they use the threat of patent enforcement to get the developers to remove ASF support from VirtuaDub?
Mozilla kicked IE's arse 3 years ago as well. It had tabs, much better CSS support, Cookie management, Image management, etc. IE has just looked continually worse over that time, but has long played second fiddle.
- which apparently didn't upgrade the system first if that's what they had in mind
Answer: Good point! The only configuration control issue was that the enterprise wouldn't upgrade the OS version until July 1, 2005. This is mainly based on our experience with companies that don't move to the latest OS version until it has had time to "bake" in the community. At that time, SLES 9 was hot off the compiler.
Is it really a realistic situation though to have someone try something that could fundamentally break a running server rather than recommend an upgrade to the later version that is compatible with the software you want to run? Stepping completely outside the supported set-up of the server. I can see the response from any support outfit when you say you've done an unsupported change as fundamental as this.
"The scientists commenting on global warming like to talk about record high tempuratures, and still increasing, but they like to omit that they're also finding certain years with below-normal tempuratures as well."
Duh, of course they would. That would be further evidence for global warning. It isn't everything getting warmer, it's more heat energy going into the system. Like adding weights to one side of a scale, it just increases the extremes. So you get hotter weather and colder weather. Where have you been?
"Is that why they sold Xbox at a loss?"
They sold the X-box at a loss as they would have sold very few copies at cost, as a loss leader to make back the money on games.
"Is that why they decided to give away VS2005 Express RTM for free through Nov 1996 rather than charging $50 as originally planned?"
Because they like giving freebies to gain market share. Then start charging.
"Is that why WMP10 is free?"
Designed to lock people into their media format where they make the money.
"Is that why hotmail is free?"
Even for POP access? Are their competitors not free?
1) They should publicize it a bit more though. And does that support extend beyond birth?
2) Pregnancy is also a risky business though. My sister in law's friend died shortly after giving birth. There's also a chance of miscarriage, the child could be born with brain damage or varying levels of disability. It might be difficult to find adoptive parents for those children.
As for your final point, I'd say having to pay for treatment at all isn't caring. But then I live in a country where health care is free at the point of delivery and paid for through general taxation, and that includes abortions.
Those are scones, not biscuits :-) Biscuits are hard and dry and most importantly, you can dip them in tea.
"In fact ID is the EXACT equivalent of saying "we don't know how this works"."
In which case, it doesn't belong in a science class as it doesn't progress anything. There's just as much evidence for the flying spagetti monster.
Do you have evidence that these rules didn't exist before the bible though? If anything, the society of today is more moral of that in the bible, there's stuff in the bible about not coveting your neighbour's property, yet nothing against child abuse or wife beating. It's an anachronism that doesn't represent modern morality. All these things suggest that the bible is just the word of people rather than the word of man, more representative of its time than any universal morality.
There's nothing wrong with a right to choose. If the pro-lifers really want to achieve their goal they just need to put their money where their mouth is and provide some support to women who would have otherwise had abortions to keep and bring up their children. Help the women choose something other than abortion. I don't see them being very interested in doing that though. They'd rather fight for a bunch of cells than help a woman bring up an actual child through providing financial support. Or once it's an actual growing person are they are no longer interested?
Abortion has always been a part of human life. In fact if you believe in God then he does it all the time, what do you think a miscarriage is but a natural abortion? The body rejecting the growing fetus. Women used to have several methods of bringing on a miscarriage. So you're not going to overcome abortion in a legal manner, certainly not worldwide, so if you want to stop abortions you need to start helping the mothers.
The funny thing is the pro-lifers I've encountered tend to be the people that are against higher taxes, against financial support for single mothers and in favour of the death penalty. Or is that not typical for pro-lifers?
What like reproduction? We can also remove the risk of airborne viruses by not breathing. And remove the risk of terrorism by doing exactly what the terrorists tell us to do. My favourite would be to irradicate road traffic accidents by removing cars.
Life is a risky business and its perfectly possible to modify your behaviour to reduce risks, but there are lots of risks. The only way to be permanently safe from risk is to be dead and at that point you don't worry much about risk anyway, too busy feeding worms.
"2) ... Also: try using linux as a desktop for 2 years and see if it doesn't start slowing down when you install a new program once every week or two, new hardware every 6 months, and new graphics drivers and security patches once a month."
I've done that and it doesn't. Why on earth would it get slower? In fact in my experience it tends to get quicker and more optimised over time. Which is what you'd expect. I'm running a new install now because I updated my machine, before that I'd been running Linux on a 500/800Mhz machine from Mandrake 7.2 to 10.1 just doing the standard updates. No clean installs after the initial one.
Microsoft also had another advantage against Netscape - sheer numbers. IE came as the default browser in windows before the real explosion of internet usage occurred, so 90% of the early users of the web were using Netscape, but those numbers were dwarfed by those new users coming online with the browser that came with Windows.
Yeah it's great, you can download programs from all over the place and just install them. And they can often come with all sorts of cool extras. They all pop straight into the brilliant menu structure too, filed under the name of the company that made them.
Seriously though, the issue with installing software reminds me of the article posted on slashdot a while back listing the top 5 security myths (or something like that). One of the entries mentioned having a white list of good software rather than attempting to build a blacklist of malware. This is some Linux already provides. The software you download from your distro archives has been whitelisted. You're not just installing random software you found on an FTP server. This is a huge step forward, and one big security advantage Linux has over Windows software.
The fact you can't double click on an executable file you receive by email is a big plus in my book.
Haven't you heard that phrase "security is a process"? The reason Firefox is more secure, and Mozilla before it, is because they respond quickly to security issues. Not because they don't have any. That's always been the case, since before Mozilla 1.0. The list of security flaws fixed in the release notes of every release going way back should tell you that people have never claimed that Mozilla has zero security bugs.
So any tune you imagined was one inside your own head.
How does dashboard compare? http://www.nat.org/dashboard/
That's being reimplemented as part of Beagle.
Well, this is slashdot, so how about some lists of ones that should have been on there but weren't. I've seen a few good ones mentioned already, but I'd like to know if I've missed any classics. There are quite a few I'd swop out to replace with any of these:
Planet of the Apes (TV Series)
Survivors (BBC 80s series)
The Invaders
Unless you have a particularly narrow definition of Science Fiction, most of those fit. For example, The Avengers had invading plants from space, killer robots etc. How can you not call it Science Fiction?
"Oh please! Open source isn't about freedom, it's about getting stuff free. And where I grew up I learned (many times) that you get what you pay for."
Yup, the scientists have had it all wrong for years. Newton should have charged a license fee for access to his research, E=mc^2 should be a secret unless you're a paid up member of the Einstein corporation. Free software is far closer to the concepts of freely shared scientific information than any concept of getting crappy freebies.
It's that free sharing of code that allows the development of these quality applications, as the people doing the sharing are programmers. A lot of non-programmers benefit, but it's that free sharing of code that allows programmers to collaborate without any unnecessary artificial barriers.
You could try Gnumeric, it's currently got a 64K limit to match Excel, but if you compile it yourself you can up the limit by modifying a constant:
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=168875