Or my wife's Dell, with XP SP2 and then Vista. Native Windows drivers for the Geforce Go 7900 GS? No problem, 1920x1200, right there (although one of the OS's, can't remember which, did say "Your display is running at a less than optimum resolution, click here to open the display panel" and hey, whadda you know, native resolution, right there.
Really? Retail XP SP2 does not install drivers that support my laptop's (Go6800) native resolution (1680x1050); Vista did have the appropriate Nvidia compatible drivers @ install, but XP SP2 did not. Perhaps you are talking about an OEM provided XP SP2 disk. In fact, IIRC, the Go7900 was not even out when XP SP2 was released, so I find it highly unlikely that there were drivers to support it included in XP SP2.
Corporate leaders are going to take whatever stand they believe will benefit their shareholders. Shareholders are routinely rewarded and\or punished for the decisions of corporate leaders which they have virtually no influence on. This decision is no different.
Shareholders decide who the corporate executives are, so they hold a great deal of influence over the management of the company. Shareholders typically diversify their investments across entire industries and therefore their primary interest is not in the health of any particular company, but in the profitability of the company (which is the primary driver of stock price). Companies who's primary focus is on the bottom line is fine if all your concerned about is short term profits, but more often than not, companies that are managed in this way ultimately find themselves acting with the shareholders to give customers as little as possible while getting as much as possible from them. As a consumer this should concern you, though it is of no relevence to the topic of this thread.
The only reason the telco's have suits filed against them is because congress failed to extend the law in time to keep the wiretapping practice legal. This bill (whatever version ultimately gets sent to the executive) will renew the legality of the wiretapping. It would be quite strange to expect the govt. to fail to grant retroactive immunity and then blackmail its corporate partners, though Obama for his part did vote against retroactive immunity.
Whereas the problem simply doesn't exist unless you must work an omnipotent, undetectable sky god who takes great interest in human affairs into every equation.
That is a silly statement for reasons I hope will soon become obvious...
Though I am genuinely curious to know how the Church reconciles the chimera scenario.
Why should they? The Church realizes that God comes into the world to save people from sin, not to remove sin from the world. Being undetectable doesn't imply impotence; everyone gets their due as they use their free will to earn it -- for good or for ill -- in this life and/or in eternity.
To quote Sam Harris, "this arithmetic of souls simply does not make sense."
I suspect it would be easier to find reasonable answers to questions were those questions not formed ridiculous to begin with. This one reason why I am a disciple of Christ instead of some contemporary voice in the noise.
The Pope's position's evolved from careful consideration of the issues from a faith perspective as a well as a scientific one (where there is no conflict). People don't seem to realize that the Pope is a highly educated intellectual with many scientists working for him both in the clergy at Vatican City and outside of the clergy in the Church throughout the world.
Ignorance just makes people look like fools, doesn't it?
Several years ago I worked for a defense contractor (Raytheon in case you want to know) as a product trouble shooter. My job was to troubleshoot newly assembled navy communications systems in environments that simulated various user conditions. The test stations consisted of test equiptment controlled by (in most cases) Windows NT PC's. The computers' sole function was to operate the test equiptment and store test data.
I worked largely by myself though occasionally some of the manufacturing test engineers would do software updates or install new test equiptment. Being the last person off shift, before leaving I powered down the PC monitors which were 10-15 year old CRTs (not energy star to say the least). Some of the engineers, who I thought were supposed to know better, got annoyed that I had done this and came up with excuses like 'we expect the computers to be on when we get in' and 'you're interfering with the software drivers' to justify not having to hit the power button to turn the monitor on.
Sooo, the engineers' boss talked to me about it and when I explained to him that the monitor and computer were independent devices, and the monitor consumed about half the power of the computer, and that there was no impact to operation other than simply turning to power switch on and off, he told me that it sound like I might have a good idea... 'you should do a case study on it'.
I could understand why they might want to leave test equiptment (and even the computers) running, but I don't know what was going on inside their heads to justify leaving the monitors on. I suspect they may have been involved in some funky business practices designed to inflate rates. But it just seems like common sense to me to conserve power when its not needed.
The reasons go all the way back to the original design and creation of mankind by God. Man and woman were created for each other as distinct and complimentary persons so that they might learn through their relationship who God is and what his plans for mankind are. Anything outside of the traditionally accepted 1 man + 1 woman relationship was and is frowned upon in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Contemporary problems such as the one you bring up are created by people that don't adhear to tradition; they simply weren't issues in Christ's day.
Why are we always cutting the heads off of people when we're looking at their health?
Because second hand smoke is toxic?
Seriously though, your use of evil presupposes a definition that is not reconcilable with the religious definition (which is absolute). For example, we could design a defect that causes a man to be born with only one eye, but that wouldn't change the fact that having only one eye is bad. If that one eyed man were to enter into a murderous rage as a result of being crippled, that would not change the fact that murder is evil, though it would affect culpability.
Probably because the differentiation between "macro-evolution" ("speciation") and "micro-evolution" is an ID foil. *ALL* evolution is microevolution.
That depends on how you define macro and micro evolution. There are mutations that never make it to birth; there are some that do, but aren't suited to survival in their particular environments. It could be that an insufficient number of changes occur with the birth of a new creature, or insufficient numbers of compatible creatures are produced, in order to insure propgation. In other words, the right conditions at the right place and time are necessary in order for a lifeform to propogate. In any case, those who attempt to negate ID through evolution by assuming mutual exclusivity are just as bound to failure as those who attempt to do so by discounting creationism...
One of the recurring problems in these kinds of discussion is the definition of speciation. If you nail down an ID'er with evidence of speciation,
...except that it's easier to defend ID (assuming a particular definition of ID) since mankind is now capable of producing 3 eyed flys and whatnot, and probably has figured out (or will eventually figure out) how to manufacture them such that they are reproductively compatible. This capability would be evidence that ID is scientifically acceptable, which means of course that people will know that God created the universe first. Well alright, at least it might get them thinking more.;-)
You're arguing from abscence. One could more easily argue that since it was Hebrew custom to take people caught in sexually perverse activities out of the community and stoned, that Jesus's silence on the issue implicity sanctions the murder of homosexuals. However, such a proponent would be just as wrong as you are; homosexuality is still a sin, and for good reasons.
Did he criticize Thomas? Well...Maybe. Not directly. He praised others who had been willing to believe without seeing him directly. That's either indirect criticism of Thomas' skepticism (as people usually assume), or it's praise for people willing to believe without the level of proof Thomas had.
A third option is that Jesus did not intentded to criticize or to praise Thomas, but simply pose the question to get his disciples to realize that true faith "sees".
Remember the disciple whom Jesus complimented saying "Here is a true Isrealite!"?;-) Scupulosity was always encouraged as the expected path to follow leads from blind faith to true faith. Wish more people would use their scruples wisely rather than buying into clever one liners.
Our creation doesn't damage the ecosystem, it is the ecosystem that poses a greater danger to our interests.
Arrogant crap. It's unbelievable what passes for scholarship in modern times.
One of my professors gave a great example that nicely illustrates the situation. Not many people realized that without human intervention, corn can not grow.
C'mon now, what he should have said is that corn as we have it today wouldn't exist, and even that you couldn't be sure of...with crows and whatnot... man need not be the source of the crop.
The food crop that we know as corn has been selectively breed over thousands of years from an ancestral weed that resembles wild grass.
There's a big difference between GM and breeding. With GM we are attempting to control the building blocks of life to create life according to our limited purposes. Breeding allows for creation to evolve in ways that God, 'nature' if that bothers you, allows for. You don't have to know much to get successful results from selective breeding, but even presuming good intentions, there is the possibility that the resultant life might negatively impact the ecosystem. The danger is even greater when you are dealing manipulating the genome of any lifeform. There's always something that man doesn't understand.
The thing is humans create/modify plants/animals/bacteria for specific purposes of which "natural" survivability is a very low priority.
Not necessarily, humans do those things primarily to maximize profit... the driving factor is the bottom line -- that's the problem. Survivability is a big part of profitability as is increasing the size of a crop. There is also the desire to increase resistance to pesticides, to reduce crop resource consumption requirements, to shorten crop growth cycle time, etc... How do you suppose impact to the environment weighs in on the scale of profitablility?
Corn is a primary example of what I'm talking about here, look up Monsanto's GM corn and it's contamination of organic crops if you don't know.
So in conclusion, any handi-work of ours from the brilliant, but still learning minds of our smartest geneticists would more likely than not, *NOT* menace the natural ecosystem.
So long as mr. murphy is dealt a hand, there a chance that his will win. So what would you you define as acceptable loss?
One article of faith for rational scientists is that even if there is a deity, it would not be messing with the behavior of universal laws on a regular basis. Yes, and it would also reasonable to expect that that diety would leave his signature on his creation. Furthermore, I believe that the deity would want to reveal himself through evidence that would indicate both a benevolent purpose and a higher intelligence. Faith then would be a mix of both the impersonal and objective, and the personal and subjective (more than just science).
Yes, and so does the faith of countless other churches and religions who disagree with them on various things, both big & small. My response to such people is that they should take it up with the other churches and religions. Once they've sorted it out amongst themselves, then they can come and bother the rationalists.
Actually the Bible itself claims that 'faith is the evidence of things unseen'. This is very similar to secular science which attempts to arrive at conclusions about things unknown based upon observable data. In fact, biblical exegesis is in a sense a scientific persuit. The Church (the Catholic Church in any case) often meets in ecumenical councils to discuss faith issues. The individual bishops all have their own opinions of what the Bible has to offer in regards to a point of doctrine, or contemporary need. Resolving questions often involves analysing what they already know about the faith, and what insights the Bible might offer. By exploring a number of different ideas and avenues of understanding, certain ideas can be rejected and others persued based upon the degree to which the ideas are in harmony with the faith as it exists, and what new knowledge might have been arrived at.
With respect to God, finding the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow often produces insight into the nature of creation itself; insight that without the proper perspective, wouldn't othwise be recognised. So Faith has the potential to be much stronger than (but in normally in harmony with) the strongest of scientific studies provided one has the eyes to see it. One of the reasons faith has proven to be so resilient throughout human history is different people at different times often see glints of 'the Faith' that give them reason to believe in something far greater than they have the ability to comprehend in and of themselves (such as was the case with Einstein). Of course there are 'fundamentalist extremists' who are in left feild, but that's normally the product of inadequate education and a faith that is blind, and I suspect in many cases, is aided by the influence of those who view religion as a threat to whatever adgendas they may have.
Also, if I don't care about an election I'll vote for the guy who'll legalize pot.
Ugh. Please don't do that. Pot is both extremely addictive and harmful to the body. Think of the impact it would have on society if it were legalized.
At no time have I used the software on more than one machine at a time, and at no time was said software on or used on multiple machines.
That's all fine and dandy.
...so why shouldn't I be allowed to move it between machines as I see fit?
You can, and it's always been that way -- you just can't use one copy of the software on more than one machine. The problem is that FUD spreaders have propogated misinformation as a result of a misinterpretation of the EULA.
The intent of the EULA isn't to suck you dry. It's to prevent abuses that deprive MS of legitimate compensation for their product. The Vista EULA change wasn't really a change at all. MS just wanted to be more clear about the one licence/one machine restriction, unfortunately the change they made was appearently even more confusing than the XP version.
The benchmarking restrictions which impose best practices could simply be an attempt to prevent abuses with benchmarks like those you see at THG. For example, running benchmarks which don't take full advantage of a machine's hardware where the benchmark results are unfairly compared to those of a slower machine.
There are also legitimate reasons for not wanting to support virtualization on home version machines. For example, I'm sure MS doesn't want their support staff diagnosing problems created by Joe Schmoes VM software which could screw up the machines in ways MS would have a hard time figuring out. Business class users who have legitimate need to run VMware can also afford to pay for support, thus that restriction shouldn't (and doesn't) apply to those versions. Furthermore, Joe Schmoes VMware might strip your DRM'd content of DRM protections, so the restiction against playing with DRM'd stuff make sense as well.
In fact the licence for Vista isn't any more restrictive than that of XP, which as the author pointed out, was a fact related by Paul Thurough as a result of receiving that information from a the Microsoft product manager. The "one time" provision that was added to the EULA is a clarification, not a restriction. It is intended to keep people from disingenuously transfering the software from one machine to more than one other machine in star network topology fashion claiming "but I removed it from the original machine!". Somehow the author still thinks his own interpretation and that of other FUD spreaders is more genuine than that of the Microsoft product manager...
When the author started the article with:
"It's Autumn in St. Louis, my favorite time of year in Missouri... darkness is starting to scare away the sun a bit earlier every day.
I probably should have just ignored the rest of it, but I figured what hell, and dove in anyway.
How is there a difference? Where is the difference? Define natural.
Do you really not know the difference between natural and artificial?
Your statements aren't scientific ones, they're all ideological.
These were may statements:
There are some avenues of development that creation was not designed to take. For example, interspecies breeding produces self terminating offspring, and that's assuming embryo's form at all.
That is a scientific observation, not an ideological statement.
Likewise, there are some features that cannot be engineered into a life form without destroying or at least disadvantaging it.
Again -- a scientific observation. In addition this could be derived from Darwinian observations.
Furthermore, there are some features that cannot be bread through natural means; the fictitious blue rose is one such example.
Another scientific observation. Are we beginning to see a pattern here? Natural development, like the emergence of new variations of flowers by crossbreading can occur without any intervention by man. Artificial development is doing things like inserting the genes of a pig into those of a flower in order to produce something that cannot occur outside of the intervention of man. This is a distinction even your average 12 year old is capable of understanding...
For food?
Don't critisize people FOR ANY REASON without first making an effort to understand them.
The vast majority were probbably good practices 2000 years ago when we didn't understand disease.
In the Hebrew religious tradition, dietary restrictions and even specifications for food preparation were commanded by God primarily for the purposes of revealing things about God, not for medical reasons. Note also that the Hebrew culture extends far further back in human history than 2000 years, and it is probably the longest surviving culture in human history. In a certain sense, some of the ancient culture still exists in modern day Judeo-Christian societies.
You should also know that the disease profile of ancient man was far different than it is today. The fact that this is true could easily be derived from our knowledge that there are many diseases that afflicted man in recorded history within the last millenia even that man was able to survive without any artificial intervention of his own. The human body has the ability to develop its own defenses and adapt to its environment on its own over time. For example, ancient man could survive off of rotting carcasses because the appendix acted to filter out toxic substances from his system. Since man no longer eats rotting carcasses, that function is no longer necessary and the human appendix has evolved into a non-functional organ. In medicine, this natural ability of the body to create its own defenses against disease is often exploited for the purpose of creating vacinations. These are all scientific obervations, not ideological statements.
The new ones (vegans, etc) are just people over-identifying with animals, people who don't like people very much and use animals as substitutes, people who want to seperate themselves from everyone else, etc. The anti-GM people like yourself just have an anti-technological ideology, an anti-corporate ideology, or a combination of the two.
You really don't know why a person eats what they eat or does what they do unless you make an effort to understand them. You're simply prone to making presumptution statements, and that can get you into trouble...
Actually, its probably best that you just keep your trap shut.
Guess I must have hit pretty close to the mark, eh?
...which is why I chose to use the term "trap". Your participation here is making it plainly obvious that not
Let's see if I can't stop the hemorrhaging here by doing a quick review of the relevant material in the thread thus far:
Originally you objected to this statement: "Evolution has not equipped man to deal with genetic modification, chemicals, or preservatives." by saying this: "All food produced on a farm has been genetically modified by humans, and has been since agriculture began.". The statement which you objected to was a true statement. Analyzing the context should have told you that he was talking about artificial means of food production, not natural. Your point about salt was thus completely irrelevant. Furthermore, in context, your reply is a false statement since man has only recently acquired the technology to do GM. Remember, we are talking about artificially modifying food, not modifications that occur through natural processes or by natural means. My reply to you: "There's a difference between allowing nature to work its course and attempting to force it into taking whatever direction you want it to." was an attempt to make clear the fact that there is a distinction to be made between natural and artificial processes. That shouldn't have been too difficult for you to figure out; I hope you weren't trying to be contrary just for the hell of it... In any case, you responded: "Right, because "nature" is a good thing, and interferring with it is bad.". Your reply a) is a ridiculous statement (as your own use of medicine demonstrates), and b) falsely presumes intention on my part. The irony of it all is that you then go on to falsely accuse ME of being separatist and leading people to false conclusions.
Now let me address your latest foray:
Just don't go around lying to people, spreading FUD, and trying to ban anything you have some ideological but not scientific problem with.
You simply don't seem to be getting the point. I'll restate it for you: there is a difference between natural development and artificial engineering. Lets go all the way back to the statement you first objected to: "Evolution has not equipped man to deal with genetic modification, chemicals, or preservatives.". It shouldn't be too difficult to understand why this statement is true (except perhaps, if you work for the FDA). There are some avenues of development that creation was not designed to take. For example, interspecies breeding produces self terminating offspring, and that's assuming embryo's form at all. Likewise, there are some features that cannot be engineered into a life form without destroying or at least disadvantaging it. Furthermore, there are some features that cannot be bread through natural means; the fictitious blue rose is one such example. These of course are all scientifically observable. Therefore it is logical to conclude that artificially altering the make up of life forms to bring about whatever changes mankind's limited intellect and will wish to bring into existence makes existence susceptible to disastrous unforeseen consequences which could conceivably come to fruition to late to do anything to reverse the damage. Furthermore, if I were one to draw conclusions based on broad generalizations, then it would be reasonable to conclude something like this: since everything is nature, and nature cannot be separated, everything will suffer.
Finally you said this:
Anyone that's against GM and "processed" food out of hand is no better than the people that reject meat, pork, eggs, etc for religious reasons.
That is a very broad and presumptuous statement. In addition to staying away from fast food, here's another piece of advice that's likely to increase your lifespan in the coming years: don't criticize other people's religious beliefs without first making an effort to understand why they hold them. Better still, don't levy any criticism of others at all without first making an effort to understand them. Actually, its probably best that you just keep your trap shut. Don't feel too bad about misunderstanding religious practices though, the Pharisees were in a much better position to understand the dietary restrictions than you are, and they didn't get it either.
Indeed, and people can do good things or bad things with it.
Seperating the two makes no sense, and leads to false conclusions.
Who did the separating, and who is jumping to false conclusions? Tell you what, you eat all the processed artifical GM foods you want, and leave the organic fruits and vegetables to me.
Well it's almost election time so...
You should realize that everything is pointless. Better tasting milk, more tender beef, none of it matters, for we have reached the limits of what anal probing can tell us. Your planet is DOOMED!!
I am mostly a vegetarian, and like you said, it is for moral reasons. I am also a Christian, and as such believe that God created the universe we live in. As a consequence of my beliefs, and I think this bears out through historical/natural observation, I believe that there are certain evolutionary paths that are open to mankind, and some that are not.
Unfortunately I don't believe that the current situation of separation of science and morality lends itself to determining what is the best direction we should be evolving in. So long as we let secular profit driven entities drive the bus, we will have to deal with hazardous conditions.
Therefore, I agree with what you say. We may not be able to stop people from taking a harmful course, but we should do everything we can to make clear the risks to everyone while protecting the option to stand back and let the risk takers reap the fruits of industry labor.
Unfortunately as it is, price premiums are placed on the food that God gave us, not on the artificial food that dollars were poured into to developing. That pushes the consequences of misdirected research and development onto those who are not responsible for it.
Not likely. The death rate before reproduction dropped precipitously during the last few thousand years.
And the human body has evolved according due to advancing civilization in society. So his point was: it is because of evolution that we no longer have the ability to 'eat rotting carcasses off the jungle floor'.
Right now we can't even weed out severe food allergies by packing peanut butter sandwiches for our preschoolers to share with the weak.
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The only reason the telco's have suits filed against them is because congress failed to extend the law in time to keep the wiretapping practice legal. This bill (whatever version ultimately gets sent to the executive) will renew the legality of the wiretapping. It would be quite strange to expect the govt. to fail to grant retroactive immunity and then blackmail its corporate partners, though Obama for his part did vote against retroactive immunity.
Several years ago I worked for a defense contractor (Raytheon in case you want to know) as a product trouble shooter. My job was to troubleshoot newly assembled navy communications systems in environments that simulated various user conditions. The test stations consisted of test equiptment controlled by (in most cases) Windows NT PC's. The computers' sole function was to operate the test equiptment and store test data.
I worked largely by myself though occasionally some of the manufacturing test engineers would do software updates or install new test equiptment. Being the last person off shift, before leaving I powered down the PC monitors which were 10-15 year old CRTs (not energy star to say the least). Some of the engineers, who I thought were supposed to know better, got annoyed that I had done this and came up with excuses like 'we expect the computers to be on when we get in' and 'you're interfering with the software drivers' to justify not having to hit the power button to turn the monitor on.
Sooo, the engineers' boss talked to me about it and when I explained to him that the monitor and computer were independent devices, and the monitor consumed about half the power of the computer, and that there was no impact to operation other than simply turning to power switch on and off, he told me that it sound like I might have a good idea... 'you should do a case study on it'.
I could understand why they might want to leave test equiptment (and even the computers) running, but I don't know what was going on inside their heads to justify leaving the monitors on. I suspect they may have been involved in some funky business practices designed to inflate rates. But it just seems like common sense to me to conserve power when its not needed.
The reasons go all the way back to the original design and creation of mankind by God. Man and woman were created for each other as distinct and complimentary persons so that they might learn through their relationship who God is and what his plans for mankind are. Anything outside of the traditionally accepted 1 man + 1 woman relationship was and is frowned upon in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Contemporary problems such as the one you bring up are created by people that don't adhear to tradition; they simply weren't issues in Christ's day.
Seriously though, your use of evil presupposes a definition that is not reconcilable with the religious definition (which is absolute). For example, we could design a defect that causes a man to be born with only one eye, but that wouldn't change the fact that having only one eye is bad. If that one eyed man were to enter into a murderous rage as a result of being crippled, that would not change the fact that murder is evil, though it would affect culpability.
You're arguing from abscence. One could more easily argue that since it was Hebrew custom to take people caught in sexually perverse activities out of the community and stoned, that Jesus's silence on the issue implicity sanctions the murder of homosexuals. However, such a proponent would be just as wrong as you are; homosexuality is still a sin, and for good reasons.
A third option is that Jesus did not intentded to criticize or to praise Thomas, but simply pose the question to get his disciples to realize that true faith "sees".
Remember the disciple whom Jesus complimented saying "Here is a true Isrealite!"?
Scupulosity was always encouraged as the expected path to follow leads from blind faith to true faith. Wish more people would use their scruples wisely rather than buying into clever one liners.
Good Post BTW.
Arrogant crap. It's unbelievable what passes for scholarship in modern times.
C'mon now, what he should have said is that corn as we have it today wouldn't exist, and even that you couldn't be sure of
There's a big difference between GM and breeding. With GM we are attempting to control the building blocks of life to create life according to our limited purposes. Breeding allows for creation to evolve in ways that God, 'nature' if that bothers you, allows for. You don't have to know much to get successful results from selective breeding, but even presuming good intentions, there is the possibility that the resultant life might negatively impact the ecosystem. The danger is even greater when you are dealing manipulating the genome of any lifeform. There's always something that man doesn't understand.
Not necessarily, humans do those things primarily to maximize profit... the driving factor is the bottom line -- that's the problem. Survivability is a big part of profitability as is increasing the size of a crop. There is also the desire to increase resistance to pesticides, to reduce crop resource consumption requirements, to shorten crop growth cycle time, etc... How do you suppose impact to the environment weighs in on the scale of profitablility?
Corn is a primary example of what I'm talking about here, look up Monsanto's GM corn and it's contamination of organic crops if you don't know.
So long as mr. murphy is dealt a hand, there a chance that his will win. So what would you you define as acceptable loss?
Actually the Bible itself claims that 'faith is the evidence of things unseen'. This is very similar to secular science which attempts to arrive at conclusions about things unknown based upon observable data. In fact, biblical exegesis is in a sense a scientific persuit. The Church (the Catholic Church in any case) often meets in ecumenical councils to discuss faith issues. The individual bishops all have their own opinions of what the Bible has to offer in regards to a point of doctrine, or contemporary need. Resolving questions often involves analysing what they already know about the faith, and what insights the Bible might offer. By exploring a number of different ideas and avenues of understanding, certain ideas can be rejected and others persued based upon the degree to which the ideas are in harmony with the faith as it exists, and what new knowledge might have been arrived at.
With respect to God, finding the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow often produces insight into the nature of creation itself; insight that without the proper perspective, wouldn't othwise be recognised. So Faith has the potential to be much stronger than (but in normally in harmony with) the strongest of scientific studies provided one has the eyes to see it. One of the reasons faith has proven to be so resilient throughout human history is different people at different times often see glints of 'the Faith' that give them reason to believe in something far greater than they have the ability to comprehend in and of themselves (such as was the case with Einstein). Of course there are 'fundamentalist extremists' who are in left feild, but that's normally the product of inadequate education and a faith that is blind, and I suspect in many cases, is aided by the influence of those who view religion as a threat to whatever adgendas they may have.
At no time have I used the software on more than one machine at a time, and at no time was said software on or used on multiple machines.
...so why shouldn't I be allowed to move it between machines as I see fit?
That's all fine and dandy.
You can, and it's always been that way -- you just can't use one copy of the software on more than one machine. The problem is that FUD spreaders have propogated misinformation as a result of a misinterpretation of the EULA.
The intent of the EULA isn't to suck you dry. It's to prevent abuses that deprive MS of legitimate compensation for their product. The Vista EULA change wasn't really a change at all. MS just wanted to be more clear about the one licence/one machine restriction, unfortunately the change they made was appearently even more confusing than the XP version.
There are also legitimate reasons for not wanting to support virtualization on home version machines. For example, I'm sure MS doesn't want their support staff diagnosing problems created by Joe Schmoes VM software which could screw up the machines in ways MS would have a hard time figuring out. Business class users who have legitimate need to run VMware can also afford to pay for support, thus that restriction shouldn't (and doesn't) apply to those versions. Furthermore, Joe Schmoes VMware might strip your DRM'd content of DRM protections, so the restiction against playing with DRM'd stuff make sense as well.
In fact the licence for Vista isn't any more restrictive than that of XP, which as the author pointed out, was a fact related by Paul Thurough as a result of receiving that information from a the Microsoft product manager. The "one time" provision that was added to the EULA is a clarification, not a restriction. It is intended to keep people from disingenuously transfering the software from one machine to more than one other machine in star network topology fashion claiming "but I removed it from the original machine!". Somehow the author still thinks his own interpretation and that of other FUD spreaders is more genuine than that of the Microsoft product manager...
When the author started the article with:
I probably should have just ignored the rest of it, but I figured what hell, and dove in anyway.
Do you really not know the difference between natural and artificial?
Your statements aren't scientific ones, they're all ideological.
These were may statements:
That is a scientific observation, not an ideological statement.
Again -- a scientific observation. In addition this could be derived from Darwinian observations.
Another scientific observation. Are we beginning to see a pattern here? Natural development, like the emergence of new variations of flowers by crossbreading can occur without any intervention by man. Artificial development is doing things like inserting the genes of a pig into those of a flower in order to produce something that cannot occur outside of the intervention of man. This is a distinction even your average 12 year old is capable of understanding...
For food?
Don't critisize people FOR ANY REASON without first making an effort to understand them.
The vast majority were probbably good practices 2000 years ago when we didn't understand disease.
In the Hebrew religious tradition, dietary restrictions and even specifications for food preparation were commanded by God primarily for the purposes of revealing things about God, not for medical reasons. Note also that the Hebrew culture extends far further back in human history than 2000 years, and it is probably the longest surviving culture in human history. In a certain sense, some of the ancient culture still exists in modern day Judeo-Christian societies.
You should also know that the disease profile of ancient man was far different than it is today. The fact that this is true could easily be derived from our knowledge that there are many diseases that afflicted man in recorded history within the last millenia even that man was able to survive without any artificial intervention of his own. The human body has the ability to develop its own defenses and adapt to its environment on its own over time. For example, ancient man could survive off of rotting carcasses because the appendix acted to filter out toxic substances from his system. Since man no longer eats rotting carcasses, that function is no longer necessary and the human appendix has evolved into a non-functional organ. In medicine, this natural ability of the body to create its own defenses against disease is often exploited for the purpose of creating vacinations. These are all scientific obervations, not ideological statements.
The new ones (vegans, etc) are just people over-identifying with animals, people who don't like people very much and use animals as substitutes, people who want to seperate themselves from everyone else, etc. The anti-GM people like yourself just have an anti-technological ideology, an anti-corporate ideology, or a combination of the two.
You really don't know why a person eats what they eat or does what they do unless you make an effort to understand them. You're simply prone to making presumptution statements, and that can get you into trouble...
Guess I must have hit pretty close to the mark, eh?
...which is why I chose to use the term "trap". Your participation here is making it plainly obvious that not
Let's see if I can't stop the hemorrhaging here by doing a quick review of the relevant material in the thread thus far:
Originally you objected to this statement: "Evolution has not equipped man to deal with genetic modification, chemicals, or preservatives." by saying this: "All food produced on a farm has been genetically modified by humans, and has been since agriculture began.". The statement which you objected to was a true statement. Analyzing the context should have told you that he was talking about artificial means of food production, not natural. Your point about salt was thus completely irrelevant. Furthermore, in context, your reply is a false statement since man has only recently acquired the technology to do GM. Remember, we are talking about artificially modifying food, not modifications that occur through natural processes or by natural means. My reply to you: "There's a difference between allowing nature to work its course and attempting to force it into taking whatever direction you want it to." was an attempt to make clear the fact that there is a distinction to be made between natural and artificial processes. That shouldn't have been too difficult for you to figure out; I hope you weren't trying to be contrary just for the hell of it... In any case, you responded: "Right, because "nature" is a good thing, and interferring with it is bad.". Your reply a) is a ridiculous statement (as your own use of medicine demonstrates), and b) falsely presumes intention on my part. The irony of it all is that you then go on to falsely accuse ME of being separatist and leading people to false conclusions.
Now let me address your latest foray:
Just don't go around lying to people, spreading FUD, and trying to ban anything you have some ideological but not scientific problem with.
You simply don't seem to be getting the point. I'll restate it for you: there is a difference between natural development and artificial engineering. Lets go all the way back to the statement you first objected to: "Evolution has not equipped man to deal with genetic modification, chemicals, or preservatives.". It shouldn't be too difficult to understand why this statement is true (except perhaps, if you work for the FDA). There are some avenues of development that creation was not designed to take. For example, interspecies breeding produces self terminating offspring, and that's assuming embryo's form at all. Likewise, there are some features that cannot be engineered into a life form without destroying or at least disadvantaging it. Furthermore, there are some features that cannot be bread through natural means; the fictitious blue rose is one such example. These of course are all scientifically observable. Therefore it is logical to conclude that artificially altering the make up of life forms to bring about whatever changes mankind's limited intellect and will wish to bring into existence makes existence susceptible to disastrous unforeseen consequences which could conceivably come to fruition to late to do anything to reverse the damage. Furthermore, if I were one to draw conclusions based on broad generalizations, then it would be reasonable to conclude something like this: since everything is nature, and nature cannot be separated, everything will suffer.
Finally you said this:
Anyone that's against GM and "processed" food out of hand is no better than the people that reject meat, pork, eggs, etc for religious reasons.
That is a very broad and presumptuous statement. In addition to staying away from fast food, here's another piece of advice that's likely to increase your lifespan in the coming years: don't criticize other people's religious beliefs without first making an effort to understand why they hold them. Better still, don't levy any criticism of others at all without first making an effort to understand them. Actually, its probably best that you just keep your trap shut. Don't feel too bad about misunderstanding religious practices though, the Pharisees were in a much better position to understand the dietary restrictions than you are, and they didn't get it either.
People are part of nature.
Indeed, and people can do good things or bad things with it.
Seperating the two makes no sense, and leads to false conclusions.
Who did the separating, and who is jumping to false conclusions? Tell you what, you eat all the processed artifical GM foods you want, and leave the organic fruits and vegetables to me.
Its a whole lot more friendly to me than you are.
Unfortunately, the networking overhead causes the computation power of the group to be significantly less than that of any given individual.
That would explain the final score of the game as reported by CNN (so you know it's true): Teens - 0 Brain Signals - 10
Well it's almost election time so... You should realize that everything is pointless. Better tasting milk, more tender beef, none of it matters, for we have reached the limits of what anal probing can tell us. Your planet is DOOMED!!
I am mostly a vegetarian, and like you said, it is for moral reasons. I am also a Christian, and as such believe that God created the universe we live in. As a consequence of my beliefs, and I think this bears out through historical/natural observation, I believe that there are certain evolutionary paths that are open to mankind, and some that are not.
Unfortunately I don't believe that the current situation of separation of science and morality lends itself to determining what is the best direction we should be evolving in. So long as we let secular profit driven entities drive the bus, we will have to deal with hazardous conditions.
Therefore, I agree with what you say. We may not be able to stop people from taking a harmful course, but we should do everything we can to make clear the risks to everyone while protecting the option to stand back and let the risk takers reap the fruits of industry labor.
Unfortunately as it is, price premiums are placed on the food that God gave us, not on the artificial food that dollars were poured into to developing. That pushes the consequences of misdirected research and development onto those who are not responsible for it.
Not likely. The death rate before reproduction dropped precipitously during the last few thousand years.
And the human body has evolved according due to advancing civilization in society. So his point was: it is because of evolution that we no longer have the ability to 'eat rotting carcasses off the jungle floor'.
Right now we can't even weed out severe food allergies by packing peanut butter sandwiches for our preschoolers to share with the weak.
How would doing that weed out food allergies?
There's a difference between allowing nature to work its course and attempting to force it into taking whatever direction you want it to.