I ran into an MA-social worker that didn't understand what "demonstrative" meant. Unfortunately I was drunk at the time and couldn't adequately explain it. So I hugged her.
If there had been wifi at my college when I was there, I might have actually attended a few classes that I chose to put a lower priority on, knowing that I could get other things done while in class.
Ditto, except that I left it on in the admin account. I don't do anything w/ that account other than un/install things and do maintenence, so it's not so bad.
Nice straw man with the "eye" example - nobody has seriously used that in quite some time. But no, Irreducable complexity is not bullshit. I refer you to Darwin...
"If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down." - The Origin of Species
I will also refer you to my original post:
The smart critics reply that all of the supposed counter-examples can be refuted, or are at best inconclusive.
In short, I'm sick of the uninformed masses denouncing an idea they don't even comprehend just because of who supports it. Reject it for the evidence; don't reject it because of its implications. (That I've been accused of falling prey to religious nuts for merely trying to point the discussion where should be is quite telling, and frankly, annoying.)
They make that claim, but is it backed up by anything even remotely resembling real science?
They would say yes. Frankly, the discussion about this evidence is way above 99% of the population, including myself. I watched something on TV (Cspan?) where both sides were presented by folks w/ PhDs, I think both were college professors. Again, I'm not here to defend ID balls-to-the-wall, I'm just sick of the Spaghetti Monster people making arguments that are totally irrelevant.
Uh... I fail to see how "prove the existence of X" logically != "disprove non-existence of X".
I was (uneloquently) trying to make the point that you don't just go digging up a piece of God, proof positive. ID makes more of a negative argument, which is totally in-bounds in any field of study... math, science, philosophy. But yes, the end result is the same.
This is independent of the *fact* that the evidence to "disprove non-existance" is pretty much "we don't understand this process, so it must be X at work!", which is hardly scientific.
ID claims to have found irreducably complex systems. (I'm not about to discuss whether they've got the goods or not.) An irreducably complex system is logically inconsistent with everything that has ever been said about materialistic evolution. This is very much a scientific discussion, even if much of the public discourse isn't.
Ok, I slightly overstated the ID position, but not as much as you think. The designer could have been a super-advanced race of aliens, wholly material and not supernatural. However, it seems to me that the "aliens" explanation is even more fantastic than a supernatural one, and not substantially more "scientific".
It seems pretty clear that life here has undergone substantial evolution. Either this evolution was guided, or it wasn't. ID claims to have eliminated the unguided part, leaving only some sort of guide.
Either ID has succeeded in disbunking unguided evolution, or it hasn't. This debate takes place in the realm of evidence and logic. It seems to me to be a stretch to suggest that unguided (materialistic) evolution is wrong* while also suggesting that some other non-supernatural (or alien, if you want to go there) "scientific" forces brought about life as we know it.
* (By "wrong", I don't just mean "not fully flushed out", but logically impossible.)
Maybe the ID'ers are full of crap, but the discourse on this matter has been very lowbrow, especially coming from the would-be defenders of "science".
One doesn't attempt to directly prove the existence of God through ID. ID argues that the non-existence of a higher-power can be disproved. ID doesn't really say much about the higher power whose non-existence is claimed to be disproved. The irony of the Flying Spaghetti Monster movement is that ID is actually generic enough to accommodate His Noodly Appendage.
Materialistic evolution (The standard view of contemporary science) supposes that all living systems evolved from simpler forms, down to the first single celled organisms, previous to which our knowledge is (understandably) incomplete. ID claims (rightly or wrongly) to have evidence that some living systems could not have come about in this manner. In short, they claim to have counter-examples to the fundamental premise of materialistic evolution. By eliminating materialistic evolution, the only remaining hypotheses are by definition non-materialistic, or "supernatural", or even "non-scientific". This is a perfectly logical conclusion based entirely on the strength of the counter-examples. Most critics of ID fail to see this. The smart critics reply that all of the supposed counter-examples can be refuted, or are at best inconclusive.
If materialistic evolution cannot be fairly criticized in this manner (that is, attempting to find counterexamples or logical inconsistencies), then it is entirely unscientific itself in so much as it is unfalsifiable.
Of course, in a utopian world, the geeks would run the show, and leave the politicians out of it.
Thankfully, it is largely an oversight and technical function anyway, so there is little room for the politicians to muck it up. The current fight is basically over whose geeks get to call the shots anyway.
How would anybody feel about an Internet "Security Council" to oversee the 'net? As an American (a conservative Republican American, no less), wouldn't care too much if the current permanent members of the UN Security coucil formed an Internet Security and Oversight Council. By definition, it would be a small number of economically and technologically advanced nations with a common interest in making sure the internet works. You'd even be forced to come to a solution on multi-lingual/"international" domain names that might even sorta work.
I hate the French (government) as much as any God-fearing red-blooded American, but how much could they screw up the internet if they had a few other nations looking after things too?
In my experience, OOo does a better job converting.doc files than WordPerfect does (which came pre-installed on my Dell). Not always perfect, but better, and more reliably so.
I would add to this: "Make yourself necessary". As in, "the office will not function properly without your presence".
Re:how many people actually _like_ windows?
on
Pepping Up Windows
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· Score: 1
apt has its problems, especially if you stray to Debian testing or unstable.
I ran into a bizarre problem on my "testing" box where apt allowed something to install, but not run because of a dependency, which screwed up another update. After poking around on the Debian bboards for a while I learned that I had to add "stable" back into apt, downgrade a particular package, upgrade the kernel by a point-release, and re-upgrade everything. For a while I was also thrown off by the fact that (due to added support for HURD) the kernel image packages are not called "kernel-image" anymore, but "linux-image". Not insurmountable, but not a piece of cake either.
I would imagine that if you stuck with "stable", you'd be OK, but then you'd be stuck with ancient packages for a while.
Re:Integration versus Bundling, Choice
on
Pepping Up Windows
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· Score: 1
Actually, "Integration" was msft's defense in the IE debacle. If IE is integrated, it can't be separated. If IE hadn't been integrated (to the extent that they claimed it was), then they could have removed it and there would be no more IE shipped w/ Windows.
Typical p2p use is mostly illegal - the kind that is run from a kazaa or (old)napster-like interface. Probably like 99% infringing. Bittorrent is categorically different because the offenders are easy to track down and sue. Torrents are great for linux distributions and the like. I can't imagine getting a Knoppix release without Bittorrent. With the demise of suprnova and its ilk, I wouldn't be surprised if the majority of torrents are legal now.
Without getting into a prolonged political flame-war (which would be very easy to do), I'd just like to apologize for feeding the original troll, who seems to think that political freedoms in Communist China and the USA are comparable. If this was the truth, Michael Moore would have been shot in the head long ago.
Cindy Sheehan, darling of the left, staged a prolonged protest of GWB and the war.
What happened? She got made fun of a little bit in the right-wing press and blogs because she's an idiot. Now she's making decent cash as a lefty keynote speaker.
So, if by you mean "bend over...", you mean become a political starlet and make money, then yes, we must bend over.
A not-so-significant bug in Win95: The OS reported the size of my ftp log to be about 3.2Gb, which at the time was larger than the partition on which the file was stored. The actual file size was maybe a couple hundred k.
And then there was the crashing my computer all the bloody time thing too... that sucked.
I'll ditto this. Everything off by default, build a white-list as you go. It even stops "changed" programs (like every time you update Firefox) and re-asks.
The biggest thing missing from XP-Home right now is a reasonable level of adminstrative control over folder and file access by less privileged users. The work-around for file access seems to be "run as administrator", which is a terrible policy.
This is a situation that linux wins HANDS DOWN. A logged-in admin can use gui tools to deliver just the amount of access he wants, or a more knowledgable user can su and chmod to his heart's content.
Unfortunately, I suspect that the lowest common denominator between being able to do "home" things (games, basic multimedia) and real adminstrative power will be the wayyyyy-too-overpriced Ultimate Edition.
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Many herbivores, especially male, will not hesitate to kill your ass if you get too close. Moose, rhino, even deer.
I ran into an MA-social worker that didn't understand what "demonstrative" meant. Unfortunately I was drunk at the time and couldn't adequately explain it. So I hugged her.
If there had been wifi at my college when I was there, I might have actually attended a few classes that I chose to put a lower priority on, knowing that I could get other things done while in class.
Ditto, except that I left it on in the admin account. I don't do anything w/ that account other than un/install things and do maintenence, so it's not so bad.
"If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down." - The Origin of Species
I will also refer you to my original post:
The smart critics reply that all of the supposed counter-examples can be refuted, or are at best inconclusive.
In short, I'm sick of the uninformed masses denouncing an idea they don't even comprehend just because of who supports it. Reject it for the evidence; don't reject it because of its implications. (That I've been accused of falling prey to religious nuts for merely trying to point the discussion where should be is quite telling, and frankly, annoying.)
They would say yes. Frankly, the discussion about this evidence is way above 99% of the population, including myself. I watched something on TV (Cspan?) where both sides were presented by folks w/ PhDs, I think both were college professors. Again, I'm not here to defend ID balls-to-the-wall, I'm just sick of the Spaghetti Monster people making arguments that are totally irrelevant.
Uh... I fail to see how "prove the existence of X" logically != "disprove non-existence of X".
I was (uneloquently) trying to make the point that you don't just go digging up a piece of God, proof positive. ID makes more of a negative argument, which is totally in-bounds in any field of study... math, science, philosophy. But yes, the end result is the same.
This is independent of the *fact* that the evidence to "disprove non-existance" is pretty much "we don't understand this process, so it must be X at work!", which is hardly scientific.
ID claims to have found irreducably complex systems. (I'm not about to discuss whether they've got the goods or not.) An irreducably complex system is logically inconsistent with everything that has ever been said about materialistic evolution. This is very much a scientific discussion, even if much of the public discourse isn't.
It seems pretty clear that life here has undergone substantial evolution. Either this evolution was guided, or it wasn't. ID claims to have eliminated the unguided part, leaving only some sort of guide.
Either ID has succeeded in disbunking unguided evolution, or it hasn't. This debate takes place in the realm of evidence and logic. It seems to me to be a stretch to suggest that unguided (materialistic) evolution is wrong* while also suggesting that some other non-supernatural (or alien, if you want to go there) "scientific" forces brought about life as we know it.
* (By "wrong", I don't just mean "not fully flushed out", but logically impossible.)
Maybe the ID'ers are full of crap, but the discourse on this matter has been very lowbrow, especially coming from the would-be defenders of "science".
Materialistic evolution (The standard view of contemporary science) supposes that all living systems evolved from simpler forms, down to the first single celled organisms, previous to which our knowledge is (understandably) incomplete. ID claims (rightly or wrongly) to have evidence that some living systems could not have come about in this manner. In short, they claim to have counter-examples to the fundamental premise of materialistic evolution. By eliminating materialistic evolution, the only remaining hypotheses are by definition non-materialistic, or "supernatural", or even "non-scientific". This is a perfectly logical conclusion based entirely on the strength of the counter-examples. Most critics of ID fail to see this. The smart critics reply that all of the supposed counter-examples can be refuted, or are at best inconclusive.
If materialistic evolution cannot be fairly criticized in this manner (that is, attempting to find counterexamples or logical inconsistencies), then it is entirely unscientific itself in so much as it is unfalsifiable.
But, it's a Guardian (UK) article, so "medic" may imply "physician", even if he would not refer to himself that way.
Of course, in a utopian world, the geeks would run the show, and leave the politicians out of it.
Thankfully, it is largely an oversight and technical function anyway, so there is little room for the politicians to muck it up. The current fight is basically over whose geeks get to call the shots anyway.
I hate the French (government) as much as any God-fearing red-blooded American, but how much could they screw up the internet if they had a few other nations looking after things too?
On a seemingly unrelated note, I discovered that fried cow brain w/ onion sandwiches were once popular in Chicago.
Clinton blew up an asprin factory. Shit happens. (Never mind the suspicious timing.)
In my experience, OOo does a better job converting .doc files than WordPerfect does (which came pre-installed on my Dell). Not always perfect, but better, and more reliably so.
I would add to this: "Make yourself necessary". As in, "the office will not function properly without your presence".
I ran into a bizarre problem on my "testing" box where apt allowed something to install, but not run because of a dependency, which screwed up another update. After poking around on the Debian bboards for a while I learned that I had to add "stable" back into apt, downgrade a particular package, upgrade the kernel by a point-release, and re-upgrade everything. For a while I was also thrown off by the fact that (due to added support for HURD) the kernel image packages are not called "kernel-image" anymore, but "linux-image". Not insurmountable, but not a piece of cake either.
I would imagine that if you stuck with "stable", you'd be OK, but then you'd be stuck with ancient packages for a while.
Actually, "Integration" was msft's defense in the IE debacle. If IE is integrated, it can't be separated. If IE hadn't been integrated (to the extent that they claimed it was), then they could have removed it and there would be no more IE shipped w/ Windows.
Typical p2p use is mostly illegal - the kind that is run from a kazaa or (old)napster-like interface. Probably like 99% infringing. Bittorrent is categorically different because the offenders are easy to track down and sue. Torrents are great for linux distributions and the like. I can't imagine getting a Knoppix release without Bittorrent. With the demise of suprnova and its ilk, I wouldn't be surprised if the majority of torrents are legal now.
As far as community standards, even ultra-liberal (even pro-fetish) sex advice columnist Dan Savage thinks that poop-eating is out of bounds.
Without getting into a prolonged political flame-war (which would be very easy to do), I'd just like to apologize for feeding the original troll, who seems to think that political freedoms in Communist China and the USA are comparable. If this was the truth, Michael Moore would have been shot in the head long ago.
Cindy Sheehan, darling of the left, staged a prolonged protest of GWB and the war.
What happened? She got made fun of a little bit in the right-wing press and blogs because she's an idiot. Now she's making decent cash as a lefty keynote speaker.
So, if by you mean "bend over...", you mean become a political starlet and make money, then yes, we must bend over.
As far as fake cursing goes, I'm a fan of "Mother pus bucket!" from Ghostbusters.
And then there was the crashing my computer all the bloody time thing too... that sucked.
I'll ditto this. Everything off by default, build a white-list as you go. It even stops "changed" programs (like every time you update Firefox) and re-asks.
This is a situation that linux wins HANDS DOWN. A logged-in admin can use gui tools to deliver just the amount of access he wants, or a more knowledgable user can su and chmod to his heart's content.
Unfortunately, I suspect that the lowest common denominator between being able to do "home" things (games, basic multimedia) and real adminstrative power will be the wayyyyy-too-overpriced Ultimate Edition.