Why on earth is religious tolerance seen as good? Religious people have disabled a part of the brain dedicated to analysing and evaluating ideas: some ideas are simply off limits, not subject to challenge.
I suppose I could draw a distinction between doctrine and philosophy: chunks of religions (especially Buddhism, but all of them to some extent) tend to be dedicated to helping people to live happily. That's worthwhile, and social and psychological research has only very recently started to provide statistical evidence and theories that can do any better.
But people who believe that some doctrine very important to them is true (or especially that some other doctrine is false) just because someone told them so and invoked an invisible friend as the authority should be mocked, denied power, and generally marginalised (or ideally, if we fix our school-and-pop-culture delivery system, educated) until they learn to turn on their brains.
ID is scientific. It is a theory, and it explains data.
The problem is that it explains any data. Not only the world we live in, but any other possible world, is just as likely. A theory with so many free parameters is extremely weak: it makes all predictions, so the probability of any one of them (ie. the world we actually live in) is negligible. A theory with fewer free parameters, that only predicts what we actually see and shows alternatives to be very unlikely, is far stronger.
Just a note for those who don't click through everything: I believe that the fourth article ("Intensify the witch-hunt") in lixee's post is far more interesting and far-reaching than the others. Don't miss it!
Mostly I agree. But we can work on true security: encouraging education, family planning, sustainable (as a minimum) practices, economic equality, and basic "human rights" (whatever that means) throughout the world would make quite a dent in the ability of terrorist organisations to recruit new members, or to be "elected" in the USA.
It's time for a body that can manage globally shared resources--of which there are a bunch that are more critical to our survival (like, you know, air 'n' stuff), but it'd be a good precedent if we could get some governing body to start holding people responsible for putting junk into space. "Clean it up, or else...". The "or else" bit is tricky, though.
If they could manage that, then moving onwards to more urgent problems might stand some tiny chance. But without accountability, does anyone really expect to have this problem solve itself?
I gave up on sponges. Even in Colorado, they get stinky in a week or two. Now I use a vegetable brush: it doesn't reek, it's dishwasher-safe, and it cleans dishes better.
Now that you mention it, if it came down to a choice between Bush having a major say in our policy and not being able to borrow money, I would take the latter in a heartbeat.
IBM has been pushing Linux pretty heavily. I heard a rumour that IBM was making more on "Linux-related" products than on licensing its patents (however that is measured)!
I don't need to tell many Slashdotters that IBM is currently by far the best manufacturer of Linux-capable laptops. Software developers and researchers demand Linux more and more often, and while they're still in a minority, the minority is growing exponentially.
If IBM sells off its ThinkPad business, it will be much harder to persuade people to migrate to Linux, since a homogeneous environment is easier to support and since difficulty of installation is still perceived as a huge disincentive to move to Linux. As an IT manager who has installed Linux on numerous laptops, I can say that IBM is the only company that makes it easy.
IBM has been trying to position itself as the world leader in Linux solutions. If, through the selloff of its ThinkPad line, it becomes much harder for people to run Linux at home, IBM is hurting its long-term strategy.
I don't believe that gay civil unions are likely to be as beneficial for children as traditional marriages.
I have seen little evidence showing that traditional marriages are the best way to raise children either. I could probably be convinced that, say, a Heinlein marriage would be better. Or community-raised children. Or something else entirely. Certainly there are plenty of traditional families that are horrible for children.
No-one really knows how the children of gay marriages will turn out. Some countries are doing the experiment, but the results will of course be different in the US. How? We don't know. Let's find out, rather than legislating based on ignorance.
My personal feeling is that the government should have nothing to do with marriage. Marriage is for religions. Adoption and whatnot will probably be government-controlled, but that can be done through civil unions. Of course, I realise that my hatred of religious government puts me in a minority in this country.
Come to think of it, aren't there strict requirements for couples who want to adopt? Why aren't natural parents required to pass the same tests?
Supports raising gas mileage standards for passenger vehicles. (dictating what I want in a vehicle)
One primary job of a government is to protect citizens from bullies who would take more than their share. We simply don't have the resources to support everyone doing just what he wants, and the government is the only body that has the power to limit the devastating effect that irresponsible citizens can have. Who do you think should force Americans to take some responsibility? Because assholes don't take responsibility by choice.
socalizeing the medical system. we have clear examples of how bad this turns out
Do we? I grew up in Canada. The US medical system is better than the Canadian one if all of the following conditions are met:
The person who needs care has a job that provides a really really extensive health care plan.
The health problem's cure is state-of-the-art.
So for at least 99% of health care issues, I can vouch for at least one socialised health care system being miles ahead of the US's.
The Republican agenda would appear to be "Keep the poor poor, keep the rich rich, and then we can control both more easily." The closer people are to equal, the harder it is to manipulate them.
If you don't like the copyright restrictions placed on music, then start releasing music under copyright terms that you like better. In other words, stop complaining and start acting!
Of course, lower-cost software will on average not be as good as more expensive stuff. You get what you pay for whenever the producer expects to be paid in money for her creative effort. After all, if you are going to charge for your software, you will charge as much as you think is fair.
Free software is entirely different. Since it is given away on principle, not because it couldn't possibly fetch a higher price, judging it on price is just fabulously uninsightful. Which is better, Pine or Mutt? They're both free. Oh, then they must be equally good. Riiiiight...
Nonononono!!!! People who write software that makes it possible to do something illegal (or, what's worse, immoral) are NOT the ones to go after. Have you forgotten DeCSS already?
Of course, it might encourage people to keep their systems patched. Perhaps if they can't prove intent to spam, there could be a lesser penalty...? I suppose if someone cracks your system, you can consider your computer "stolen" from you, but you still have physical control. Is that "possession of stolen goods"?;)
I'm never against internet access for anyone, as far as I can tell.
But as for the punishment fitting the crime: what an odd concept. If he cost a million people one second, does that mean he should go to jail for 0.0317 years? Remember that the punishment should not be "what you do to others will happen to you", since that is only a deterrent if the probability of you getting caught is 100%. If you can catch 1% of spammers, then their break-even point is if the cost to them of getting caught is 100 times their likely profit. You need to make life much more difficult for them than "break-even" in order to actually deter them!
Besides, it's very fashionable in the US to make prison sentences absurdly long. The smallest infraction can make quite a dent in your life! It's basically a really expensive version of capital punishment (I'm not actually sure how much of a "life" you can have in prison; sounds like federal prison might be OK, as long as they have a really well-stocked library)...
A professional carpenter with $10 worth of old hand tools will always produce better furniture than an amateur with $1,000 worth of power tools. Cameras are no different.
Gee, where have I heard that before recently? Oh yeah, "Should there be a reason to believe that code that comes from a variety of people around the world would be higher-quality than from people who do it professionally? Why is its pedigree better than code done in a controlled fashion? I don't get that,' [Ballmer].
"What kind of person are you?" "Engineer!" "Left-dominant!" "Hindu!" "C affeinated!" "CowboyNeal!" "Windows 95!"
More or less the same hardware, different software. Your answer depends on what factors you consider relevant. The hardware all behaves more or less the same modulo how fast things run; the software is far more interesting!
There are many ways of applying force to the cork, involving levers, air pressure, who knows what else. Use what you like, but just make sure of one thing: if you get a screw-in kind, it should look like it's made of some kind of helicially wrapped wire (ie no rod down the middle). There are some otherwise great corkscrews that are built like a wood screw (rod down the middle) - these have a great deal of frontal area and easily split the cork while wedging it into the bottle.
Other than that, I use a bartender-style corkscrew, but it has a built-in foil cutter (not just a knife blade, but a 4-wheel cutter that lets you remove the foil by clamping it over the neck and twisting a quarter turn). For that reason alone I prefer it to any Screwpull(tm) etc. Bonus: it was $3.99 CAD in a loquor commission in Halifax.
Since I just moved to Boulder and don't really have many friends to hang out with, and since my girlfriend is in Boston and will remain there for the forseeable future, and since Dave's girlfriend is a thousand miles away, I'll probably do dinner with him. Somewhere public - ladies always smile at me when they think I'm gay;) Then I'll go home and read Sutton&Barto.
Why did the interviewer ask all those questions concerning Valenti's anti-censorship stance and then not connect them to the MPAA's attempt to censor cryptography research? Did he think the link was too obvious to bear mentioning?
I have a site dedicated to providing free classical music recordings. The recordings are performances that I've been part of (some are not great, but there are a few real gems), and I'd cleared the legality with the other members of the groups, sound engineers, etc. I'd like to see more people do this, and in the interest of encouraging this, please check out my Free Classical Music archive.
-Ben
Got a problem with non-free music?
on
CDs Want To Be Free
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
In music, just as in software, you can't complain that other people are trying to make money off what they do. If you don't like the fact that you have to pay for music, go and make some music! Distribute it for free. Put it under the EFF OAL or something. Whatever works.
There's certainly a place for professionals in music (questions about how well the current payment system works aside), but music should also be an amateur (look it up) endeavour. If you have a day job, then share what you create!
Finding my recording of the Brahms Requiem is left as an exercise for the reader.
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Why on earth is religious tolerance seen as good? Religious people have disabled a part of the brain dedicated to analysing and evaluating ideas: some ideas are simply off limits, not subject to challenge.
I suppose I could draw a distinction between doctrine and philosophy: chunks of religions (especially Buddhism, but all of them to some extent) tend to be dedicated to helping people to live happily. That's worthwhile, and social and psychological research has only very recently started to provide statistical evidence and theories that can do any better.
But people who believe that some doctrine very important to them is true (or especially that some other doctrine is false) just because someone told them so and invoked an invisible friend as the authority should be mocked, denied power, and generally marginalised (or ideally, if we fix our school-and-pop-culture delivery system, educated) until they learn to turn on their brains.
ID is scientific. It is a theory, and it explains data.
The problem is that it explains any data. Not only the world we live in, but any other possible world, is just as likely. A theory with so many free parameters is extremely weak: it makes all predictions, so the probability of any one of them (ie. the world we actually live in) is negligible. A theory with fewer free parameters, that only predicts what we actually see and shows alternatives to be very unlikely, is far stronger.
So yes, ID is scientific. And provably useless.
For more, see Jeffreys and Berger, Sharpening Ockham's Razor on a Bayesian Strop.
Just a note for those who don't click through everything: I believe that the fourth article ("Intensify the witch-hunt") in lixee's post is far more interesting and far-reaching than the others. Don't miss it!
Mostly I agree. But we can work on true security: encouraging education, family planning, sustainable (as a minimum) practices, economic equality, and basic "human rights" (whatever that means) throughout the world would make quite a dent in the ability of terrorist organisations to recruit new members, or to be "elected" in the USA.
It's time for a body that can manage globally shared resources--of which there are a bunch that are more critical to our survival (like, you know, air 'n' stuff), but it'd be a good precedent if we could get some governing body to start holding people responsible for putting junk into space. "Clean it up, or else...". The "or else" bit is tricky, though.
If they could manage that, then moving onwards to more urgent problems might stand some tiny chance. But without accountability, does anyone really expect to have this problem solve itself?
I guess we're pretty much screwed.
Ah... Linux is a religion and Windows isn't. It's all starting to make sense!
I gave up on sponges. Even in Colorado, they get stinky in a week or two. Now I use a vegetable brush: it doesn't reek, it's dishwasher-safe, and it cleans dishes better.
Now that you mention it, if it came down to a choice between Bush having a major say in our policy and not being able to borrow money, I would take the latter in a heartbeat.
IBM has been pushing Linux pretty heavily. I heard a rumour that IBM was making more on "Linux-related" products than on licensing its patents (however that is measured)!
I don't need to tell many Slashdotters that IBM is currently by far the best manufacturer of Linux-capable laptops. Software developers and researchers demand Linux more and more often, and while they're still in a minority, the minority is growing exponentially.
If IBM sells off its ThinkPad business, it will be much harder to persuade people to migrate to Linux, since a homogeneous environment is easier to support and since difficulty of installation is still perceived as a huge disincentive to move to Linux. As an IT manager who has installed Linux on numerous laptops, I can say that IBM is the only company that makes it easy.
IBM has been trying to position itself as the world leader in Linux solutions. If, through the selloff of its ThinkPad line, it becomes much harder for people to run Linux at home, IBM is hurting its long-term strategy.
I have seen little evidence showing that traditional marriages are the best way to raise children either. I could probably be convinced that, say, a Heinlein marriage would be better. Or community-raised children. Or something else entirely. Certainly there are plenty of traditional families that are horrible for children.
No-one really knows how the children of gay marriages will turn out. Some countries are doing the experiment, but the results will of course be different in the US. How? We don't know. Let's find out, rather than legislating based on ignorance.
My personal feeling is that the government should have nothing to do with marriage. Marriage is for religions. Adoption and whatnot will probably be government-controlled, but that can be done through civil unions. Of course, I realise that my hatred of religious government puts me in a minority in this country.
Come to think of it, aren't there strict requirements for couples who want to adopt? Why aren't natural parents required to pass the same tests?
One primary job of a government is to protect citizens from bullies who would take more than their share. We simply don't have the resources to support everyone doing just what he wants, and the government is the only body that has the power to limit the devastating effect that irresponsible citizens can have. Who do you think should force Americans to take some responsibility? Because assholes don't take responsibility by choice.
Do we? I grew up in Canada. The US medical system is better than the Canadian one if all of the following conditions are met:
So for at least 99% of health care issues, I can vouch for at least one socialised health care system being miles ahead of the US's.
The Republican agenda would appear to be "Keep the poor poor, keep the rich rich, and then we can control both more easily." The closer people are to equal, the harder it is to manipulate them.
Now, look for specially-marked packages: "No spammers were encouraged in the making of this product".
So I don't seem hypocritical, here are my free classical music recordings!
Of course, lower-cost software will on average not be as good as more expensive stuff. You get what you pay for whenever the producer expects to be paid in money for her creative effort. After all, if you are going to charge for your software, you will charge as much as you think is fair.
Free software is entirely different. Since it is given away on principle, not because it couldn't possibly fetch a higher price, judging it on price is just fabulously uninsightful. Which is better, Pine or Mutt? They're both free. Oh, then they must be equally good. Riiiiight...
Nonononono!!!! People who write software that makes it possible to do something illegal (or, what's worse, immoral) are NOT the ones to go after. Have you forgotten DeCSS already?
Of course, it might encourage people to keep their systems patched. Perhaps if they can't prove intent to spam, there could be a lesser penalty...? I suppose if someone cracks your system, you can consider your computer "stolen" from you, but you still have physical control. Is that "possession of stolen goods"? ;)
I'm never against internet access for anyone, as far as I can tell.
But as for the punishment fitting the crime: what an odd concept. If he cost a million people one second, does that mean he should go to jail for 0.0317 years? Remember that the punishment should not be "what you do to others will happen to you", since that is only a deterrent if the probability of you getting caught is 100%. If you can catch 1% of spammers, then their break-even point is if the cost to them of getting caught is 100 times their likely profit. You need to make life much more difficult for them than "break-even" in order to actually deter them!
Besides, it's very fashionable in the US to make prison sentences absurdly long. The smallest infraction can make quite a dent in your life! It's basically a really expensive version of capital punishment (I'm not actually sure how much of a "life" you can have in prison; sounds like federal prison might be OK, as long as they have a really well-stocked library)...
A professional carpenter with $10 worth of old hand tools will always produce better furniture than an amateur with $1,000 worth of power tools. Cameras are no different.
Gee, where have I heard that before recently? Oh yeah, "Should there be a reason to believe that code that comes from a variety of people around the world would be higher-quality than from people who do it professionally? Why is its pedigree better than code done in a controlled fashion? I don't get that,' [Ballmer].
Please remember what "amateur" means...
"What kind of person are you?"C affeinated!"
"Engineer!"
"Left-dominant!"
"Hindu!"
"
"CowboyNeal!"
"Windows 95!"
More or less the same hardware, different software. Your answer depends on what factors you consider relevant. The hardware all behaves more or less the same modulo how fast things run; the software is far more interesting!
What about having an electrode trickle current into the pleasure centers of your brain?
Why is sex good? Just a bunch of chemicals released into your brain. Same reason food is good, or anything else... choose your poison wisely.
Probably sex is healthier than lots of other ways of releasing the appropriate chemicals, but what do you mean "should be"?
There are many ways of applying force to the cork, involving levers, air pressure, who knows what else. Use what you like, but just make sure of one thing: if you get a screw-in kind, it should look like it's made of some kind of helicially wrapped wire (ie no rod down the middle). There are some otherwise great corkscrews that are built like a wood screw (rod down the middle) - these have a great deal of frontal area and easily split the cork while wedging it into the bottle.
Other than that, I use a bartender-style corkscrew, but it has a built-in foil cutter (not just a knife blade, but a 4-wheel cutter that lets you remove the foil by clamping it over the neck and twisting a quarter turn). For that reason alone I prefer it to any Screwpull(tm) etc. Bonus: it was $3.99 CAD in a loquor commission in Halifax.
Since I just moved to Boulder and don't really have many friends to hang out with, and since my girlfriend is in Boston and will remain there for the forseeable future, and since Dave's girlfriend is a thousand miles away, I'll probably do dinner with him. Somewhere public - ladies always smile at me when they think I'm gay ;) Then I'll go home and read Sutton&Barto.
Why did the interviewer ask all those questions concerning Valenti's anti-censorship stance and then not connect them to the MPAA's attempt to censor cryptography research? Did he think the link was too obvious to bear mentioning?
I have a site dedicated to providing free classical music recordings. The recordings are performances that I've been part of (some are not great, but there are a few real gems), and I'd cleared the legality with the other members of the groups, sound engineers, etc. I'd like to see more people do this, and in the interest of encouraging this, please check out my Free Classical Music archive.
-Ben
There's certainly a place for professionals in music (questions about how well the current payment system works aside), but music should also be an amateur (look it up) endeavour. If you have a day job, then share what you create!
Finding my recording of the Brahms Requiem is left as an exercise for the reader.