How often does it make the news (particularly nationally) when some guy's TV shorts out and ignites, or a car battery explodes.
Well, fair's fair - Apple make the news everytime there's a rumour going around that the next version of the Iphone might include a feature, that's already been in other phones for the last three years anyway. So it's only fair that when there's some negative spin, like one in a billion Ipods might spontanously explode in your face, that that too makes front page news.
Don't worry though, I'm sure they'll manage to put some positive spin on it, like "It doesn't matter that Dell had things which exploded years before - Apple were the ones to make it Just Work".
"works 90% of the time" is only equivalent to "90% of those detained are terrorists" if you only test it on terrorists.
Since a test would be tested on people in general, not just terrorists (obviously - if you already knew who they were, the test wouldn't be needed!), the two statements aren't equivalent.
Which doesn't tell you anything about your false positive rate.
To be exact, we should give both false positives and false negative rates, and I agree that using language like "90% accurate" should be avoided.
There's a second opinion in the US when you're put on the no fly list? Or in the UK, when you're detained without charge for weeks (the Government wanted three months)?
The point is that idiots as described in the article think that a "90% scanner" means 90% probability they are guilty, and use to urge action on such people without further checks. And even in a court of law, the point being made is still important: imagine the prosecution telling the jury that the fingerprint/DNA test is 99.99% accurate, therefore he must be guilty? In other words, these further checks are useless if they also fall on the same flawed statistics.
You're okay with your medical analogy, because most doctors have an understanding of basic statisics - unlike the police, politicians, and random members of a jury.
http://www.allaboutphilosophy.org/atheism.htm - "There are two basic forms of atheism: "strong" atheism and "weak" atheism. Strong atheism is the doctrine that there is no God or gods. Weak atheism is the disbelief in or denial of the existence of God or gods. Weak atheism is often confused with agnosticism, the lack of belief or disbelief in God or gods, and skepticism, the doctrine that the absolute knowledge of God's existence is unobtainable by mere man."
(And http://www.merriam-webster.com/ only gives your definition under "broadly" - according to them, there is no primary term that can be used for those who simply don't believe in God.)
Only if you are a moron and don't pay attention to the rest of the statement.
Yes, my point exactly. I'm not the one who holds that point of view, you are; I'm merely replacing "God" with "pixies".
Then you should get out more. It's within the first paragraph at wikipedia
It states: Agnosticism (Greek: - a-, without + gnsis, knowledge; after Gnosticism) is the philosophical view that the truth value of certain claims particularly metaphysical claims regarding theology, afterlife or the existence of deities, spiritual beings, or even ultimate reality is unknown or, depending on the form of agnosticism, inherently impossible to prove or disprove and hence unknowable. [1] It is not a religious declaration in itself and the terms are not mutually exclusive.
How do you get from that, to: "Not being convinced in something"?
And since you refer to Wikipedia, check out atheism: Atheism can be either the rejection of theism,[1] or the position that deities do not exist.[2] In the broadest sense, it is the absence of belief in the existence of deities.
Case closed. In my earlier comment I give further sources for a range of definitions.
If someone tells you they're an atheist, it's not very clever to make assumptions about what they believe by ignoring sourced definitions, or redefine the terms just so you can make up a straw man. And what's more, when they clarify their stance, shouldn't you accept that? I'm telling you now: I don't believe in God.
Actually, the term goes past a god or gods existences and refers to the ultimate knowledge in any particular subject. It is often used in terms of gods and is so in this conversation. And no, you can't be agnostic and atheist because the act of atheist is a known assertion(there is no god). It removes the unknowable portion of agnostic.
Already proven you wrong, but just OOI, in your personal set of definitions: since I don't believe in God, but I also don't claim his existence or not is unknowable, what category do I fall into?
Atheist assert they know, you can't hold a belief of not knowing while asserting you know. It just doesn't work. I'm sorry I shattered your world view and you might not fit into the popular groups anymore but that's just the logic working, not me.
No, I don't. Have fun with your straw man.
Honestly, I have no idea why so-called agnostics seem to spend so much time attacking people who don't believe in God, just because they use a different term to them - even when numerous dictionaries and other sources back up their usage.
Aha, you have faith - the same mechanism for believe in pixies!
When you don't believe in a god and exclude their possibility
Well this is the point - few atheists go so far as to "exclude their possibility". Even for those who are strong atheists, they would still admit they'd change their mind if confronted with the evidence. So your point is a straw man, and no better than me jumping to conclusions about you "excluding the possibility of pixies".
Not being convinced in something is agnostic
No, that definition is not supported by any dictionary I am aware of. Agnosticism means a belief that God's existence is unknownable. You can be agnostic and atheist, btw.
Its UI sucks in other ways though, e.g., missing fundamental UI features such as copy/paste. Zooming on web browsing has been available for years on ordinary phones, btw. (I'm not sure what you mean by scrolling? Obviously this has been around for ages.)
The apps have been a success because Apple are the only vendor that have made it so easy to buy, download and install apps.
If I want to download and install an app, I just click, and it just works, unlike the Iphone where phones need to be jailbroken for this to work anywhere. Again, a major UI issue.
The iPhone has been the roaring success it has because it's years ahead of any other smartphone.
There are plenty of areas it's been years behind even non-smartphones (3G, Java, video, MMS, copy/paste). OOI, how is it years ahead of all other smartphones? The only credit AFAIK is that it was one of the earlier phones with multitouch, but that was not "years ahead", and I'm not sure if it was even the first. All phone companies have introduced something new when their high end phones come out - it's called progress. Nothing special about Apple.
(It also hasn't been a "roaring" success. An okay success for Apple, sure, but the sales figures put them as a niche player compared with say Nokia.)
You may even recall the infamous slashdot iPod launch coverage
That was the Ipod. Not the Iphone, which has received nothing but an overwhelming amount of coverage on Slashdot (and elsewhere), far more so than other phones, even from much bigger companies that sell vastly more - these are hardly mentioned ever, let alone with weekly stories about every little event and rumour.
This is the history of Apple: there is a market for simple, well-managed products that work out of the box, and maintaining tight proprietary control over the Apple universe is how this is accomplished.
This is a false dichotomy. Other phones work out of the box without these restrictions. And if I need to jailbreak the phone due to the restrictions, that's not working out of the box.
So long as your use cases aren't too far out of the ordinary, I guess it's worth it to have the trains run on time.
If your use case isn't too far out of the ordinary, get a bog standard cheap phone that just works.
There's a huge difference between a game failing for other reasons, and a single company having authority over what can be released.
Furthermore, anyone is free to host an app on their own site. No one's complaining that Apple choose what goes into their own app store, the problem is that people aren't free to host it elsewhere, unlike every other platform, where this just works.
I don't get it. If any other platform was controlled like this by the company, there'd be no end of complaints from Slashdot. Imagine MS announcing that apps for Windows 7 needed approval? There'd be an uproar.
If I have trouble getting my app released, it's hardly consolation to know that other apps are being downloaded lots.
Alternatively, if I as a user want to download an app not on the store, the fact that I can download other apps (such as wonderful classics of "Display a spinning purity ring logo On Your Iphone" - cutting edge stuff) is not consolation.
(Of course, I don't have this problem with my Motorola V980 that Just Works.)
You also ignore the billions of phones out there that can happily download using the common standard of Java. There's no need for a central app store. Yes, Java obviously doesn't have the flexibility of a native app, but for the vast majority of rubbish that people are getting excited over on these app stores, it can do the job (I mean, it can do things like a web browser or Google Maps, which I'd imagine are far more advanced that most of these "apps" on these stores). Also, many phones have traditionally offered applications via the networks, not the manufactureres, so again a comparison of what other phone OS makers have is flawed.
I would just like you to read the rest of this thread, and legitimately say to me that atheists are not antagonistic towards religion.
So what if they are? And at least they're not calling for religious people to be criminalised for expressing their beliefs, unlike the other way round.
This topic has some very strong parallels to the article on racism a day or two ago: do you have the right to be offensive?
You're seriously comparing criticising religion - organisations, and belief systems - to offending people based on their skin colour? (Not to mention that racism isn't simply offending people - it's the rather bigger problems of discrimination, abuse and violence.)
I would argue that yes, you have the right to be offensive. However, you don't have the right to be heard.
Sure. And it looks like that the people who own Slashdot are fine with letting him be heard on this site.
Who exactly is being offensive, btw? The OP certainly wasn't. Can you link me some examples here?
The way I see it, I believe something; you might believe something else. Does that make it ok for me to call you stupid and uneducated?
Depends whether the belief is stupid and uneducated. Surely you're not implying that all beliefs are equally valid?
And FFS, stop stereotyping Christians as anti-environmental, anti-technology ass-backwards inbreeds.
Who claimed this?
Look at yourself before you go spouting off hate at "religionists" who all supposedly spend their time trying to screw atheists.
The issue here, in case you haven't noticed it, is a law against blasphemy. Other things that atheists argue against include religious indoctrination of children; placing faith as a virtue over rationality; terrorism; teaching of creationism in schools.
Last time I looked, I didn't open a book of Dawkins to "OMG, there are religious people being offensive to me on Slashdot!" If that's the worse you have to worry about, then there's nothing to bother you. Quit whining.
Try RTFA. The whole problem is that this wasn't put to the vote (and hence the constitution couldn't be amended). It's unclear whether that particular clause on its own was ever voted on.
Perhaps we should do a lot less patting ourselves on the back and saying that we are better than the Irish law makers, and take some time to look at our own laws and what has been legislated from a visceral reaction. For USians, a good start would be examining any law that was supposed to "protect the children".
Are you new here?:) Pretty much any story about such laws, in the US or elsewhere, receives overwhelming criticism here on Slashdot. Especially any law that claims "OMG Think Of The Children" as a reason.
Who said it's okay? I'm against all "hatred" speech laws, be it religion, sexuality, or race, so long as people aren't inciting violence (we already have laws against that - and in that case it isn't comparable to blasphemy).
Except atheists have no trouble with what to call themselves - we call ourselves atheists. It's everyone else who seems to think it makes sense to quibble over what atheists should call ourselves, claiming that we're not really atheists, or making straw man arguments about what they think atheists believe.
Well if you think there's evidence, fair enough - but note that many theists say how they believe in God despite them acknowledging no evidence, and say that faith alone is acceptable. They also claim that not believing is no more rational than believing.
I choose, as a matter of faith (and I recognize the core of irrational behaviour in doing so), to recognize scriptures as reliable and trustworthy.
Wait - what does that mean? Surely you claimed you believe because of what you see is evidence? If you choose to claim the evidence is reliable, in order to support something you want to believe out of faith, how is that different to those who just believe through faith? And you were criticising him for begging the question?
Funny, I'm an atheist for pretty much the same reasons. The question of how much importance one places on it is independent of the definitions of atheism and agnosticism (if you want to emphasise the view that the question of God is meaningless, you may be interested in Ignosticism).
(Okay, I enjoy arguing with theists... but then you seem to enjoy arguing in this thread.)
No, he's an atheist, as supported by dictionaries, and used by a large number of atheists. He might be an agnostic too, but that's beside the point.
The problem with true atheism
Is true atheism different to other kinds of atheism? What about a true scotsman?
is that it's as extreme as religion itself
*snort* Yes, wake me up when laws are passed "because there is no God", when people are criminalised for insulting atheism, and when atheists fly planes into buildings in the name of their so-called faith.
Atheism says there is no god(s), period.
No it doesn't, period. But even for those who do believe that - yes, there's a period there. That's as far as any claim that a strong atheist makes will go. Contrast with religion, where there is no "period". If only religion was simply "There's a god", and not the vast amounts of other superstition that gets tacked onto that. If only religion was simply a single philosophical position, rather than the endless system of beliefs that it actually is.
Slashdot Mirror
How often does it make the news (particularly nationally) when some guy's TV shorts out and ignites, or a car battery explodes.
Well, fair's fair - Apple make the news everytime there's a rumour going around that the next version of the Iphone might include a feature, that's already been in other phones for the last three years anyway. So it's only fair that when there's some negative spin, like one in a billion Ipods might spontanously explode in your face, that that too makes front page news.
Don't worry though, I'm sure they'll manage to put some positive spin on it, like "It doesn't matter that Dell had things which exploded years before - Apple were the ones to make it Just Work".
But I also know that most weeks, someone somewhere does win. So the pound I place on it each week is a bit of fun.
I get that same fun without paying a pound. I know that someone somewhere does win, and I'm a pound richer! (Over 700 pounds richer by now, in fact.)
"works 90% of the time" is only equivalent to "90% of those detained are terrorists" if you only test it on terrorists.
Since a test would be tested on people in general, not just terrorists (obviously - if you already knew who they were, the test wouldn't be needed!), the two statements aren't equivalent.
Which doesn't tell you anything about your false positive rate.
To be exact, we should give both false positives and false negative rates, and I agree that using language like "90% accurate" should be avoided.
There's a second opinion in the US when you're put on the no fly list? Or in the UK, when you're detained without charge for weeks (the Government wanted three months)?
The point is that idiots as described in the article think that a "90% scanner" means 90% probability they are guilty, and use to urge action on such people without further checks. And even in a court of law, the point being made is still important: imagine the prosecution telling the jury that the fingerprint/DNA test is 99.99% accurate, therefore he must be guilty? In other words, these further checks are useless if they also fall on the same flawed statistics.
You're okay with your medical analogy, because most doctors have an understanding of basic statisics - unlike the police, politicians, and random members of a jury.
http://www.allaboutphilosophy.org/agnostic.htm - "many agnostics are "practical atheists,"".
http://www.allaboutphilosophy.org/atheism.htm - "There are two basic forms of atheism: "strong" atheism and "weak" atheism. Strong atheism is the doctrine that there is no God or gods. Weak atheism is the disbelief in or denial of the existence of God or gods. Weak atheism is often confused with agnosticism, the lack of belief or disbelief in God or gods, and skepticism, the doctrine that the absolute knowledge of God's existence is unobtainable by mere man."
(And http://www.merriam-webster.com/ only gives your definition under "broadly" - according to them, there is no primary term that can be used for those who simply don't believe in God.)
Only if you are a moron and don't pay attention to the rest of the statement.
Yes, my point exactly. I'm not the one who holds that point of view, you are; I'm merely replacing "God" with "pixies".
Then you should get out more. It's within the first paragraph at wikipedia
It states: Agnosticism (Greek: - a-, without + gnsis, knowledge; after Gnosticism) is the philosophical view that the truth value of certain claims particularly metaphysical claims regarding theology, afterlife or the existence of deities, spiritual beings, or even ultimate reality is unknown or, depending on the form of agnosticism, inherently impossible to prove or disprove and hence unknowable. [1] It is not a religious declaration in itself and the terms are not mutually exclusive.
How do you get from that, to: "Not being convinced in something"?
And since you refer to Wikipedia, check out atheism: Atheism can be either the rejection of theism,[1] or the position that deities do not exist.[2] In the broadest sense, it is the absence of belief in the existence of deities.
Case closed. In my earlier comment I give further sources for a range of definitions.
If someone tells you they're an atheist, it's not very clever to make assumptions about what they believe by ignoring sourced definitions, or redefine the terms just so you can make up a straw man. And what's more, when they clarify their stance, shouldn't you accept that? I'm telling you now: I don't believe in God.
Actually, the term goes past a god or gods existences and refers to the ultimate knowledge in any particular subject. It is often used in terms of gods and is so in this conversation. And no, you can't be agnostic and atheist because the act of atheist is a known assertion(there is no god). It removes the unknowable portion of agnostic.
Already proven you wrong, but just OOI, in your personal set of definitions: since I don't believe in God, but I also don't claim his existence or not is unknowable, what category do I fall into?
Atheist assert they know, you can't hold a belief of not knowing while asserting you know. It just doesn't work. I'm sorry I shattered your world view and you might not fit into the popular groups anymore but that's just the logic working, not me.
No, I don't. Have fun with your straw man.
Honestly, I have no idea why so-called agnostics seem to spend so much time attacking people who don't believe in God, just because they use a different term to them - even when numerous dictionaries and other sources back up their usage.
discovering that atheism required a belief that an unevidenced god was also impossible
What? That isn't backed up by any of the references you quote, which all support two definitions of atheism.
Actually, I don't believe in either
Aha, you have faith - the same mechanism for believe in pixies!
When you don't believe in a god and exclude their possibility
Well this is the point - few atheists go so far as to "exclude their possibility". Even for those who are strong atheists, they would still admit they'd change their mind if confronted with the evidence. So your point is a straw man, and no better than me jumping to conclusions about you "excluding the possibility of pixies".
Not being convinced in something is agnostic
No, that definition is not supported by any dictionary I am aware of. Agnosticism means a belief that God's existence is unknownable. You can be agnostic and atheist, btw.
Its UI sucks in other ways though, e.g., missing fundamental UI features such as copy/paste. Zooming on web browsing has been available for years on ordinary phones, btw. (I'm not sure what you mean by scrolling? Obviously this has been around for ages.)
The apps have been a success because Apple are the only vendor that have made it so easy to buy, download and install apps.
If I want to download and install an app, I just click, and it just works, unlike the Iphone where phones need to be jailbroken for this to work anywhere. Again, a major UI issue.
The iPhone has been the roaring success it has because it's years ahead of any other smartphone.
There are plenty of areas it's been years behind even non-smartphones (3G, Java, video, MMS, copy/paste). OOI, how is it years ahead of all other smartphones? The only credit AFAIK is that it was one of the earlier phones with multitouch, but that was not "years ahead", and I'm not sure if it was even the first. All phone companies have introduced something new when their high end phones come out - it's called progress. Nothing special about Apple.
(It also hasn't been a "roaring" success. An okay success for Apple, sure, but the sales figures put them as a niche player compared with say Nokia.)
You may even recall the infamous slashdot iPod launch coverage
That was the Ipod. Not the Iphone, which has received nothing but an overwhelming amount of coverage on Slashdot (and elsewhere), far more so than other phones, even from much bigger companies that sell vastly more - these are hardly mentioned ever, let alone with weekly stories about every little event and rumour.
This is the history of Apple: there is a market for simple, well-managed products that work out of the box, and maintaining tight proprietary control over the Apple universe is how this is accomplished.
This is a false dichotomy. Other phones work out of the box without these restrictions. And if I need to jailbreak the phone due to the restrictions, that's not working out of the box.
So long as your use cases aren't too far out of the ordinary, I guess it's worth it to have the trains run on time.
If your use case isn't too far out of the ordinary, get a bog standard cheap phone that just works.
There's a huge difference between a game failing for other reasons, and a single company having authority over what can be released.
Furthermore, anyone is free to host an app on their own site. No one's complaining that Apple choose what goes into their own app store, the problem is that people aren't free to host it elsewhere, unlike every other platform, where this just works.
I don't get it. If any other platform was controlled like this by the company, there'd be no end of complaints from Slashdot. Imagine MS announcing that apps for Windows 7 needed approval? There'd be an uproar.
If I have trouble getting my app released, it's hardly consolation to know that other apps are being downloaded lots.
Alternatively, if I as a user want to download an app not on the store, the fact that I can download other apps (such as wonderful classics of "Display a spinning purity ring logo On Your Iphone" - cutting edge stuff) is not consolation.
(Of course, I don't have this problem with my Motorola V980 that Just Works.)
Windows Mobile has tons of apps, and a tradition of tiny little utilities costing $20.
Yeah, and the Iphone App store has classics such as paying to display an animated graphic.
You also ignore the billions of phones out there that can happily download using the common standard of Java. There's no need for a central app store. Yes, Java obviously doesn't have the flexibility of a native app, but for the vast majority of rubbish that people are getting excited over on these app stores, it can do the job (I mean, it can do things like a web browser or Google Maps, which I'd imagine are far more advanced that most of these "apps" on these stores). Also, many phones have traditionally offered applications via the networks, not the manufactureres, so again a comparison of what other phone OS makers have is flawed.
I've had no problems running a range of Java apps downloaded from various places on my Motorola V980. It just works.
so you can't run your code on your iPhone without ponying up.
Well that's useful. Apple - it "Just Works".
Apple? With the phone that needs to be jailbroken to get basic features working? Not exactly "Just Works" is it.
And if you just want to make a phone call with features that just work, pick up a dirt cheap phone.
I would just like you to read the rest of this thread, and legitimately say to me that atheists are not antagonistic towards religion.
So what if they are? And at least they're not calling for religious people to be criminalised for expressing their beliefs, unlike the other way round.
This topic has some very strong parallels to the article on racism a day or two ago: do you have the right to be offensive?
You're seriously comparing criticising religion - organisations, and belief systems - to offending people based on their skin colour? (Not to mention that racism isn't simply offending people - it's the rather bigger problems of discrimination, abuse and violence.)
I would argue that yes, you have the right to be offensive. However, you don't have the right to be heard.
Sure. And it looks like that the people who own Slashdot are fine with letting him be heard on this site.
Who exactly is being offensive, btw? The OP certainly wasn't. Can you link me some examples here?
The way I see it, I believe something; you might believe something else. Does that make it ok for me to call you stupid and uneducated?
Depends whether the belief is stupid and uneducated. Surely you're not implying that all beliefs are equally valid?
And FFS, stop stereotyping Christians as anti-environmental, anti-technology ass-backwards inbreeds.
Who claimed this?
Look at yourself before you go spouting off hate at "religionists" who all supposedly spend their time trying to screw atheists.
The issue here, in case you haven't noticed it, is a law against blasphemy. Other things that atheists argue against include religious indoctrination of children; placing faith as a virtue over rationality; terrorism; teaching of creationism in schools.
Last time I looked, I didn't open a book of Dawkins to "OMG, there are religious people being offensive to me on Slashdot!" If that's the worse you have to worry about, then there's nothing to bother you. Quit whining.
Try RTFA. The whole problem is that this wasn't put to the vote (and hence the constitution couldn't be amended). It's unclear whether that particular clause on its own was ever voted on.
Perhaps we should do a lot less patting ourselves on the back and saying that we are better than the Irish law makers, and take some time to look at our own laws and what has been legislated from a visceral reaction. For USians, a good start would be examining any law that was supposed to "protect the children".
Are you new here? :) Pretty much any story about such laws, in the US or elsewhere, receives overwhelming criticism here on Slashdot. Especially any law that claims "OMG Think Of The Children" as a reason.
Who said it's okay? I'm against all "hatred" speech laws, be it religion, sexuality, or race, so long as people aren't inciting violence (we already have laws against that - and in that case it isn't comparable to blasphemy).
Except atheists have no trouble with what to call themselves - we call ourselves atheists. It's everyone else who seems to think it makes sense to quibble over what atheists should call ourselves, claiming that we're not really atheists, or making straw man arguments about what they think atheists believe.
Well if you think there's evidence, fair enough - but note that many theists say how they believe in God despite them acknowledging no evidence, and say that faith alone is acceptable. They also claim that not believing is no more rational than believing.
I choose, as a matter of faith (and I recognize the core of irrational behaviour in doing so), to recognize scriptures as reliable and trustworthy.
Wait - what does that mean? Surely you claimed you believe because of what you see is evidence? If you choose to claim the evidence is reliable, in order to support something you want to believe out of faith, how is that different to those who just believe through faith? And you were criticising him for begging the question?
Funny, I'm an atheist for pretty much the same reasons. The question of how much importance one places on it is independent of the definitions of atheism and agnosticism (if you want to emphasise the view that the question of God is meaningless, you may be interested in Ignosticism).
(Okay, I enjoy arguing with theists ... but then you seem to enjoy arguing in this thread.)
Honest questions - please make a conscious decision about these:
* Do you believe in God?
* Do you believe in magic pixies?
I'd like to see whether you accept or reject belief, so I can then criticise you no matter which response you give.
No, he's an atheist, as supported by dictionaries, and used by a large number of atheists. He might be an agnostic too, but that's beside the point.
The problem with true atheism
Is true atheism different to other kinds of atheism? What about a true scotsman?
is that it's as extreme as religion itself
*snort* Yes, wake me up when laws are passed "because there is no God", when people are criminalised for insulting atheism, and when atheists fly planes into buildings in the name of their so-called faith.
Atheism says there is no god(s), period.
No it doesn't, period. But even for those who do believe that - yes, there's a period there. That's as far as any claim that a strong atheist makes will go. Contrast with religion, where there is no "period". If only religion was simply "There's a god", and not the vast amounts of other superstition that gets tacked onto that. If only religion was simply a single philosophical position, rather than the endless system of beliefs that it actually is.