why can't we let the kids decide for themselves?.....i thought that was the beauty of a an educational system.....
Kids can decide for themselves. If they want to go away still believing in creationism, or that Paris is the capital of Australia, that's up to them. But the purpose of the education system is to educate them.
equipping people to make decisions not just be handed them.
Exactly. That includes learning what science is, so they can tell the difference between scientific theories, and made up fairy tales that some people happen to believe.
No. His clarification is the blog post that you linked to, which was authored and posted by him. Part of his original statement was the sound file posted at the top of that blog post, in which he was speaking to a reporter.
Well okay, but either way, it's been clarified by his own words.
The second link you're referring to is not only a further clarification on his original clarification, but it's just a second-hand quote published by the Public Relations arm of his employer.
In other words, that second-hand clarification doesn't really count
And the second hand sources about what he supposedly has claimed certainly shouldn't count.
His explanation for evolution is that the overwhelming majority biologists and scientists "believe" in it. Is that really how he was taught Science?
Where does he say that?
He states: "the overwhelming majority of biologists consider evolution to be the central concept in biological sciences, providing a conceptual framework that unifies every aspect of the life sciences into a single coherent discipline". I do not see him simply seeing this as a "belief", and he doesn't even mention belief in evolution at all.
And then, he goes on to say that creationism shouldn't be approached as a misconception, but as a world view. Why?
Whilst at first this sounds worrying, he explains it later in his blog:
"Creationism can profitably be seen not as a simple misconception that careful science teaching can correct. Rather, a student who believes in creationism has a non-scientific way of seeing the world, and one very rarely changes one's world view as a result of a 50-minute lesson, however well taught."
I.e., he's not saying "It's not a misconception, we should accept it as a valid viewpoint", he's saying that the problem is that it's not a simple misconception, but a worldview that has been ingrained into them.
And he's right - unfortunately creationists beliefs often aren't due to a simple misunderstanding that you can correct like a spelling error, it's something they've been brought up to believe, and all of their worldview has been based around it. That's a difficult issue to fix.
Perhaps it would have been clearer if he'd said "Creationism isn't a simple misconception, it's brainwashing", but I guess he was trying to maintain some politeness.
And of course, to him, it's the "theory of evolution", not the concept of evolution, nor is just straight -- evolution. So on one hand, he doesn't think relevant to mention testable ideas or the scientific method when arguing *for* evolution, but on the other hand, he likes to place the code word "theory" in front of "evolution" when we all know
What? Evolution is a theory. And creationism isn't a theory. You appear to be mistaking "theory" for a guess or idea, which is just the same trick that creationists pull when they say "Evolution is just a theory". A theory in science means it's supported by evidence (overwhelming amounts, in the case of evolution), and has been tested.
Scientists often do talk about the "theory of gravity" (or the theory of general relativity which is the modern theory of gravitation; or other examples include quantum theory), and they are not kicked out of their job for it! On top of that, multiple times in the article, he does refer to simply "evolution" on its own.
I have linked to direct quotes to support what I have said about him - you appear to be basing your view of him on hearsay and misrepresentations, and worse, you are using the same misunderstanding of scientific terminology that creationists use. I think this shows that we really do need to teach pupils better about what science is about, and what a scientific theory is.
Your Guardian article confirms that he wasn't misquoted at all. Mind you, I don't believe for a minute that he's a creationist, but his attitude to the issue was wrong.
By misquoted, it's meant that the media reported he supported teaching creationism. Where does he say this in the Guardian article? Or if that's not what you mean, what is it about his point of view that makes you think it's right for him to resign?
Now sure, I can see the viewpoint that perhaps it's better not to mention creationism at all, but when all sides are in agreement that creationism is not science, and we should be trying to get pupils to accept evolution, I don't see why this means he needs to resign simply over a difference in opinion in how to tackle the problem of creationism?
And yes, I have been following this issue on other forums and blogs too.
I have read scores of stories in the Daily Mail over the years (linked from Drudge)
First of all, it should be noted that their print edition is in my opinion worse than their online articles - although occasionally there are rather biased and prejudiced articles online, many of them are much more reasonable than the equivalent articles that's in the print edition (I read it for years, as my parents read it).
As for pro-Christian, I do not mean in the same sense as a committed Christian (e.g., a regular church goer), nor in the sense that people in the US are usually Christian. For the Daily Mail, it's more the sense that Christianity is seen as a fundamental part of our culture - yet they are unable to distinguish between the religion, and the cultural aspects of religion. So even whilst they aren't necessarily promoting Christian views, they think that everyone should be Christians and criticise anyone who isn't (in this case, atheists, but Muslims are another obvious target). They're representative of the people who believe in God, identify as Christian and will insist that faith is important, but who never go to Church except for christenings/weddings/funerals, and it's not clear whether they really believe anything specifically Christian, beyond a general belief in God. There seem to be quite a lot of these people in the UK.
So yes, pro-Christian isn't perhaps the right word for this - I'm not sure what is (pro-cultural Christian?) And I know plenty of Christians (actual Christians like you, not the ones I describe above) who hate the Daily Mail.
And as for porn, actually they do often take a rather prudish pro-Censorship issue, for anything more than a clothed woman showing a bit of cleavage. (The fact that they shove images of women's cleavage everywhere, whilst demonising porn, is just another example of their hypocrisy. Indeed this is true of the UK tabloid media in general - they shove sexualised images of women all over their articles, in some cases underaged women, but love to demonise porn, especially material on the Internet, even though the latter is often less likely to be seen by those who don't want to see it.)
I disagree that they have an atheistic or humanistic philosophy - what makes you think that?
And your post is a perfect example of using this issue to give support to Creationism.
It's beyond unreasonable, they are dogmatic evolutionists to the point where it is a religious point of view of opposing the IDers.
There is nothing wrong with opposing IDers, and this is done based on overwhelming scientific evidence.
But that is not what happened here. Scientists are not opposing IDers, because, for the millionth time, Reiss is not a Creationist. Both Reiss and those arguing against him agree that ID should be opposed, but unfortunately his views were misrepresented.
If Reiss really had supported teaching ID, then asking him to resign would have been perfectly fine.
The facts don't matter; even if some evidence supporting ID appeared, they would hold true to the evolutionist dogma.
Complete rubbish. Scientific theories are always modified or even discarded if new evidence suggests they are wrong. If evidence existed for ID, it would be accepted - but evidence does not exist. You might as well criticise zoologists for not accepting existence of unicorns, claiming "even if evidence of unicorns existed, they wouldn't accept their existence".
ID is not science, and it is unfalsifiable, and it is not something that can be easily tested anyway.
Fundamentalist? What fundamentalism is this? Atheists blowing themselves up in the name of their beliefs? States persecuting people for their religious beliefs? Atheists trying to force others to believe, or persecuting others, either through laws or violence? Atheists stifling criticism of their beliefs, again either through laws or violence? Perhaps you means people who take everything 100% literally true from a particular Atheist book?
What rubbish. Yes, people here are guilty of being misled or even possibly intentionally misrepresenting the facts, but this isn't anything to do with fundamentalism. Nor is it specifically an atheist issue - plenty of religious people oppose ID (remember this is the UK, where even though many are religious, hardly anyone believes in Creationism). A large amount of the media misrepresented Reiss's views, and it's not clear that atheists are in control of the media.
Trying to paint this as an atheist v. religious issue as the Daily Mail does is misleading, and is just as damaging when it comes to giving support to Creationists - it means they can hide in with the religious group, saying "Look how atheists oppress us!" In fact, many if not most religious people oppose Creationism is schools too. The issue here is "People getting the wrong end of the stick", where "people" includes both atheists and religious people.
They can now decry the persecution of this individual (you know they will) and get good millage out of the argument because they would not have be totally wrong in this case.
For non-UK readers - the Daily Mail is a conservative right wing tabloid. Whilst it doesn't seem to support Intelligent Design, it is very pro-Christian, and anti-atheism, and this is just the story it loves: look at the references to being "hounded" after a "campaign" by "militant atheists" / "atheist scientists". And the sad thing is that, for once, I can't fault their story for being misleading - despite the biased phrasing, it's one of the few media outlets to be reporting what actually happened.
He just showed them why it is not such a good idea to put a religious person at the head of a science organisation.
What, by saying that teachers should explain why creationism isn't scientific, when trying to get children to accept evolution?
Dawkins is making the more general point about whether a priest should be in such a position, which is a matter for debate, but not relevant to this issue. I've generally been a great fan of Dawkins, but would lose respect if he decides to make an issue out of this false version of Reiss's views - especially since usually I'd expect Dawkins to be arguing against the creationists false claims that "leading scientists support teaching creationism"!
As Richard Dawkins suggested, he could have given up his religious position too, that would have been much more convincing.
An interesting idea, but not sure it's relevant here, since (a) it wasn't fellow vicars asking him to resign from being a vicar, and (b) as much as I dislike the Church of England for other reasons, they neither support teaching creationism, nor oppose teaching evolution. In fact, in 2002 a group of bishops wrote a letter to the Government to oppose a school which was teaching creationism ( http://richarddawkinsfoundation.org/foundation,questionableFoundations ).
Sure, but that's irrelevant. What if he declared that we should teach children about the earth not being flat, and that such views are not based in science?
See my comment here for link to what he actually said, and that he was misrepresented by the media. (Of course googling news pieces wouldn't tell you that the news had misrepresented him;)
I think he expressed his views rather poorly in what was said originally, making it easy to misread unless you look very closely. And it was reasonable to express criticism over that. But the media should not ignore the clarification after it has been made.
Sure, there's a valid argument that it's better not to mention creationism at all (even to debunk it and explain why it isn't science, as Reiss was suggesting), but let's be clear: he was not advocating teaching creationism.
To suggest otherwise is just the sort of thing IDers want - do we really want them to be able to say "Leading scientists support teaching creationism in science lessons"? Of course not, which is why this myth should not be propagated.
This isn't anything new here -- he's basically saying what Intel has already said... You'll see less OpenGL/DirectX and more CUDA/Shader based implementations for rendering engines.
Indeed, this has been happening for years - there's less reliance on using fixed function pipeline commands, and instead it's all done in shaders.
I'm not sure that APIs will disappear. There'll be perhaps less usage of them, e.g., with a single CPU/GPU there's no need to transfer data between them using vertex buffers and so on.
But you still want an API - the whole point of using APIs rather than banging the hardware directly is that the same software can support hardware from different companies, and that the hardware can be upgraded more easily without breaking compatibility. This is surely a better situation than with CPUs, where software for one CPU won't run on another, unless it's specifically been made with the same instruction set.
APIs are also useful to avoid reinventing the wheel - things like setting up the screen, setting up the multithreaded code (it's much easier to just provide the vertex and pixel shaders, and pass them to the API) and matrix transformations.
Disproving atheism would entail proving that God exists. I'm not sure what on earth you are rabbitting on about "rules" for.
And the response of virtually all atheists would be either to dispute the argument (what mostly happens, given just how weak the arguments typically are), or, in the hypothetical case of evidence actually being shown, changing their stance.
It's probably just a backlash at long last - for years it was the case that anything that didn't praise Apple would get modded down, even if it was fair criticism backed with facts, but simply saying "Apple, it just works!" would get you +5. Apple storie are the only ones I have to browse at -1, because the moderation is so broken.
Since the Iphone, I've noticed a change - perhaps people are finally fed up with ludicrous claims about Apple having the first phone with a web browser, or seeing loads of Iphone stories when we hardly see a story about any other phones.
It's not gone as far as you think though. Also, one way to avoid the so-called "hate-fests" would be to reduce the number of Iphone articles. I doubt Apple complain at all the free advertising the media gives them, but that also means people here get tired of hearing about it - they can't have it both ways.
FSM was invented to counter the asininity of "teaching the controversy" as a back door to get Creationism into public schools and the science classroom. Stop the Creationist push and you wont hear of the poor old FSM any longer.
Since that is clearly not the intent of the Royal Society, given their stance against creationism, that is off-topic here.
Too fucking bad for them. Should English teachers make room for "ain't" and misuses of their/they're/there along with good English diction just because students do it?
Well, surely they should address such issues, and correct their mistakes? That's what's being suggested here. You seem to be the one suggesting that we should ignore such mistakes, and let them slip by.
"Creationism has no scientific basis. However, when young people ask questions about creationism in science classes, teachers need to be able to explain to them why evolution and the Big Bang are scientific theories but they should also take the time to explain how science works and why creationism has no scientific basis."
xehonk's suggestion was not that we tell them it's not science, his suggestion was that it shouldn't be mentioned at all.
It's not clear to me that damages could be limited with your agreement - e.g., you can't give up your right to sue, in many countries.
But if agreement does make a difference anyway, then the GPL is out of luck. If I was suing a GPL author for damages, the first thing I will say is that I didn't accept the GPL.
So the GPL is not trying to force users to agree to things like an EULA - it's just hoping that presenting information on lack of liability may help to limit damages (this seems reasonable: for example, if I sell something and say "This is not intended for use as a boat", and someone goes and uses it as a boat, and it sinks, they wouldn't have much luck suing me. It doesn't matter whether they agree to anything, all that matters is that they were informed of the purpose of my device).
There is never a prominent place there where you tell them it's licensed to them under the GPL.
But now you're conflating informing the user (putting the information in a prominent place) with requiring agreement. Sure, put the information up on the website, or when they install the program. No one has a problem with those kinds of messages. The problem is an EULA which says that you must "agree" with the terms in order to use the program. Which is not the case here.
Who claimed it was holy? Sure, feel free to argue the philosophical definitions of what science is. But saying that science includes creationism makes the word meaningless - you're not talking about science, you're talking about making up stories.
Unlike what many have said here there is an overwhelming body of evidence for an intelligent designer to anyone who is honest with themselves and has half a brain (the former requirement is the most difficult to most).
You only have half a brain?
And what is this overwhelming evidence?
Also, unlike the science community claims, acknowledging a creator does not necessarily mean weakening the fundamentals or ability of science - eg "because God made is so" does not equate to "we'll just believe that and not try to understand it how God made it so".
So why this insistence of trying to pass of religion as science?
Now they are spending how many billions more to find the "God particle" to essentially prove that God doesn't exist.. good luck!
Please tell me you're just trolling, and that you really aren't this ignorant?
they still tend to have clunky software interfaces and other arbitrary restrictions put in place by the carrier in order to charge you that much more
I've heard this is common in the US, but in the UK (and probably Europe in general) it's not. We've had cheap bog standard phones with full unrestricted Internet access (not to mention 3G, and all those features such as MMS, Java, video recording as standard, so you don't have to worry if you might need them or not), and no restrictive interfaces, for years now. Which is probably why no one cares about the Iphone over here.
If it's not an agreement, then you have the full right to use, modify, and distribute as per the license grant
Yes, exactly.
I believe the FSF and the courts disagree. Moreover, the developers disagree--if you can ignore it, you can ignore the limitation of liability and the warranty disclaimer.
No, it's stated: "Acceptance Not Required for Having Copies. You are not required to accept this License in order to receive or run a copy of the Program."
The limitation of liability does not require you to agree to anything (since the user might not agree), it's provided for information. If I sell (or give away) a product with no warranty, I don't require the user to agree.
Under copyright law, on a daily basis, I negotiate and grant distribution rights to licensees.
This is why I said would not otherwise be allowed. Obviously, those rights can be granted. That's the point. That is just what the GPL does. This isn't want an EULA does (at least, the ones that people criticise).
But those sections do not require you to agree to anything, so this is still not an EULA. Although companies often put these statements in their EULAs too, those are not the bits which people have a problem with. The problem is that it's claimed you have to agree to the EULA in order to use the software.
You don't have to agree to the GPL in order to use GPL software: "You are not required to accept this License in order to receive or run a copy of the Program."
Slashdot Mirror
why can't we let the kids decide for themselves?.....i thought that was the beauty of a an educational system.....
Kids can decide for themselves. If they want to go away still believing in creationism, or that Paris is the capital of Australia, that's up to them. But the purpose of the education system is to educate them.
equipping people to make decisions not just be handed them.
Exactly. That includes learning what science is, so they can tell the difference between scientific theories, and made up fairy tales that some people happen to believe.
No. His clarification is the blog post that you linked to, which was authored and posted by him. Part of his original statement was the sound file posted at the top of that blog post, in which he was speaking to a reporter.
Well okay, but either way, it's been clarified by his own words.
The second link you're referring to is not only a further clarification on his original clarification, but it's just a second-hand quote published by the Public Relations arm of his employer.
In other words, that second-hand clarification doesn't really count
And the second hand sources about what he supposedly has claimed certainly shouldn't count.
His explanation for evolution is that the overwhelming majority biologists and scientists "believe" in it. Is that really how he was taught Science?
Where does he say that?
He states: "the overwhelming majority of biologists consider evolution to be the central concept in biological sciences, providing a conceptual framework that unifies every aspect of the life sciences into a single coherent discipline". I do not see him simply seeing this as a "belief", and he doesn't even mention belief in evolution at all.
And then, he goes on to say that creationism shouldn't be approached as a misconception, but as a world view. Why?
Whilst at first this sounds worrying, he explains it later in his blog:
"Creationism can profitably be seen not as a simple misconception that careful science teaching can correct. Rather, a student who believes in creationism has a non-scientific way of seeing the world, and one very rarely changes one's world view as a result of a 50-minute lesson, however well taught."
I.e., he's not saying "It's not a misconception, we should accept it as a valid viewpoint", he's saying that the problem is that it's not a simple misconception, but a worldview that has been ingrained into them.
And he's right - unfortunately creationists beliefs often aren't due to a simple misunderstanding that you can correct like a spelling error, it's something they've been brought up to believe, and all of their worldview has been based around it. That's a difficult issue to fix.
Perhaps it would have been clearer if he'd said "Creationism isn't a simple misconception, it's brainwashing", but I guess he was trying to maintain some politeness.
And of course, to him, it's the "theory of evolution", not the concept of evolution, nor is just straight -- evolution. So on one hand, he doesn't think relevant to mention testable ideas or the scientific method when arguing *for* evolution, but on the other hand, he likes to place the code word "theory" in front of "evolution" when we all know
What? Evolution is a theory. And creationism isn't a theory. You appear to be mistaking "theory" for a guess or idea, which is just the same trick that creationists pull when they say "Evolution is just a theory". A theory in science means it's supported by evidence (overwhelming amounts, in the case of evolution), and has been tested.
Scientists often do talk about the "theory of gravity" (or the theory of general relativity which is the modern theory of gravitation; or other examples include quantum theory), and they are not kicked out of their job for it! On top of that, multiple times in the article, he does refer to simply "evolution" on its own.
I have linked to direct quotes to support what I have said about him - you appear to be basing your view of him on hearsay and misrepresentations, and worse, you are using the same misunderstanding of scientific terminology that creationists use. I think this shows that we really do need to teach pupils better about what science is about, and what a scientific theory is.
Your Guardian article confirms that he wasn't misquoted at all. Mind you, I don't believe for a minute that he's a creationist, but his attitude to the issue was wrong.
By misquoted, it's meant that the media reported he supported teaching creationism. Where does he say this in the Guardian article? Or if that's not what you mean, what is it about his point of view that makes you think it's right for him to resign?
Now sure, I can see the viewpoint that perhaps it's better not to mention creationism at all, but when all sides are in agreement that creationism is not science, and we should be trying to get pupils to accept evolution, I don't see why this means he needs to resign simply over a difference in opinion in how to tackle the problem of creationism?
And yes, I have been following this issue on other forums and blogs too.
I have read scores of stories in the Daily Mail over the years (linked from Drudge)
First of all, it should be noted that their print edition is in my opinion worse than their online articles - although occasionally there are rather biased and prejudiced articles online, many of them are much more reasonable than the equivalent articles that's in the print edition (I read it for years, as my parents read it).
As for pro-Christian, I do not mean in the same sense as a committed Christian (e.g., a regular church goer), nor in the sense that people in the US are usually Christian. For the Daily Mail, it's more the sense that Christianity is seen as a fundamental part of our culture - yet they are unable to distinguish between the religion, and the cultural aspects of religion. So even whilst they aren't necessarily promoting Christian views, they think that everyone should be Christians and criticise anyone who isn't (in this case, atheists, but Muslims are another obvious target). They're representative of the people who believe in God, identify as Christian and will insist that faith is important, but who never go to Church except for christenings/weddings/funerals, and it's not clear whether they really believe anything specifically Christian, beyond a general belief in God. There seem to be quite a lot of these people in the UK.
So yes, pro-Christian isn't perhaps the right word for this - I'm not sure what is (pro-cultural Christian?) And I know plenty of Christians (actual Christians like you, not the ones I describe above) who hate the Daily Mail.
And as for porn, actually they do often take a rather prudish pro-Censorship issue, for anything more than a clothed woman showing a bit of cleavage. (The fact that they shove images of women's cleavage everywhere, whilst demonising porn, is just another example of their hypocrisy. Indeed this is true of the UK tabloid media in general - they shove sexualised images of women all over their articles, in some cases underaged women, but love to demonise porn, especially material on the Internet, even though the latter is often less likely to be seen by those who don't want to see it.)
I disagree that they have an atheistic or humanistic philosophy - what makes you think that?
And your post is a perfect example of using this issue to give support to Creationism.
It's beyond unreasonable, they are dogmatic evolutionists to the point where it is a religious point of view of opposing the IDers.
There is nothing wrong with opposing IDers, and this is done based on overwhelming scientific evidence.
But that is not what happened here. Scientists are not opposing IDers, because, for the millionth time, Reiss is not a Creationist. Both Reiss and those arguing against him agree that ID should be opposed, but unfortunately his views were misrepresented.
If Reiss really had supported teaching ID, then asking him to resign would have been perfectly fine.
The facts don't matter; even if some evidence supporting ID appeared, they would hold true to the evolutionist dogma.
Complete rubbish. Scientific theories are always modified or even discarded if new evidence suggests they are wrong. If evidence existed for ID, it would be accepted - but evidence does not exist. You might as well criticise zoologists for not accepting existence of unicorns, claiming "even if evidence of unicorns existed, they wouldn't accept their existence".
ID is not science, and it is unfalsifiable, and it is not something that can be easily tested anyway.
Fundamentalist? What fundamentalism is this? Atheists blowing themselves up in the name of their beliefs? States persecuting people for their religious beliefs? Atheists trying to force others to believe, or persecuting others, either through laws or violence? Atheists stifling criticism of their beliefs, again either through laws or violence? Perhaps you means people who take everything 100% literally true from a particular Atheist book?
What rubbish. Yes, people here are guilty of being misled or even possibly intentionally misrepresenting the facts, but this isn't anything to do with fundamentalism. Nor is it specifically an atheist issue - plenty of religious people oppose ID (remember this is the UK, where even though many are religious, hardly anyone believes in Creationism). A large amount of the media misrepresented Reiss's views, and it's not clear that atheists are in control of the media.
Trying to paint this as an atheist v. religious issue as the Daily Mail does is misleading, and is just as damaging when it comes to giving support to Creationists - it means they can hide in with the religious group, saying "Look how atheists oppress us!" In fact, many if not most religious people oppose Creationism is schools too. The issue here is "People getting the wrong end of the stick", where "people" includes both atheists and religious people.
They can now decry the persecution of this individual (you know they will) and get good millage out of the argument because they would not have be totally wrong in this case.
That's an excellent point.
And not just IDers, but also anyone who wants to paint atheists as being unreasonable - for example, I see that the Daily Mail are already at it: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1056715/Top-scientist-supported-teaching-creationism-schools-hounded-Royal-Society.html .
For non-UK readers - the Daily Mail is a conservative right wing tabloid. Whilst it doesn't seem to support Intelligent Design, it is very pro-Christian, and anti-atheism, and this is just the story it loves: look at the references to being "hounded" after a "campaign" by "militant atheists" / "atheist scientists". And the sad thing is that, for once, I can't fault their story for being misleading - despite the biased phrasing, it's one of the few media outlets to be reporting what actually happened.
He just showed them why it is not such a good idea to put a religious person at the head of a science organisation.
What, by saying that teachers should explain why creationism isn't scientific, when trying to get children to accept evolution?
Dawkins is making the more general point about whether a priest should be in such a position, which is a matter for debate, but not relevant to this issue. I've generally been a great fan of Dawkins, but would lose respect if he decides to make an issue out of this false version of Reiss's views - especially since usually I'd expect Dawkins to be arguing against the creationists false claims that "leading scientists support teaching creationism"!
As Richard Dawkins suggested, he could have given up his religious position too, that would have been much more convincing.
An interesting idea, but not sure it's relevant here, since (a) it wasn't fellow vicars asking him to resign from being a vicar, and (b) as much as I dislike the Church of England for other reasons, they neither support teaching creationism, nor oppose teaching evolution. In fact, in 2002 a group of bishops wrote a letter to the Government to oppose a school which was teaching creationism ( http://richarddawkinsfoundation.org/foundation,questionableFoundations ).
Sure, but that's irrelevant. What if he declared that we should teach children about the earth not being flat, and that such views are not based in science?
See my comment here for link to what he actually said, and that he was misrepresented by the media. (Of course googling news pieces wouldn't tell you that the news had misrepresented him ;)
Citation please, where he did this?
royal society did the right thing.
Both The Royal Society and Reiss are entirely in agreement that creationism should not be taught as a science: http://royalsociety.org/news.asp?id=8004
Agreed, and just for reference (since Slashdot, along with the rest of the media, seem unwilling to link to them):
Here is what he originally said: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2008/sep/11/michael.reiss.creationism
Here is the clarification just one day later: http://royalsociety.org/news.asp?id=8004
I think he expressed his views rather poorly in what was said originally, making it easy to misread unless you look very closely. And it was reasonable to express criticism over that. But the media should not ignore the clarification after it has been made.
Sure, there's a valid argument that it's better not to mention creationism at all (even to debunk it and explain why it isn't science, as Reiss was suggesting), but let's be clear: he was not advocating teaching creationism.
To suggest otherwise is just the sort of thing IDers want - do we really want them to be able to say "Leading scientists support teaching creationism in science lessons"? Of course not, which is why this myth should not be propagated.
This isn't anything new here -- he's basically saying what Intel has already said... You'll see less OpenGL/DirectX and more CUDA/Shader based implementations for rendering engines.
Indeed, this has been happening for years - there's less reliance on using fixed function pipeline commands, and instead it's all done in shaders.
I'm not sure that APIs will disappear. There'll be perhaps less usage of them, e.g., with a single CPU/GPU there's no need to transfer data between them using vertex buffers and so on.
But you still want an API - the whole point of using APIs rather than banging the hardware directly is that the same software can support hardware from different companies, and that the hardware can be upgraded more easily without breaking compatibility. This is surely a better situation than with CPUs, where software for one CPU won't run on another, unless it's specifically been made with the same instruction set.
APIs are also useful to avoid reinventing the wheel - things like setting up the screen, setting up the multithreaded code (it's much easier to just provide the vertex and pixel shaders, and pass them to the API) and matrix transformations.
Disproving atheism would entail proving that God exists. I'm not sure what on earth you are rabbitting on about "rules" for.
And the response of virtually all atheists would be either to dispute the argument (what mostly happens, given just how weak the arguments typically are), or, in the hypothetical case of evidence actually being shown, changing their stance.
It's probably just a backlash at long last - for years it was the case that anything that didn't praise Apple would get modded down, even if it was fair criticism backed with facts, but simply saying "Apple, it just works!" would get you +5. Apple storie are the only ones I have to browse at -1, because the moderation is so broken.
Since the Iphone, I've noticed a change - perhaps people are finally fed up with ludicrous claims about Apple having the first phone with a web browser, or seeing loads of Iphone stories when we hardly see a story about any other phones.
It's not gone as far as you think though. Also, one way to avoid the so-called "hate-fests" would be to reduce the number of Iphone articles. I doubt Apple complain at all the free advertising the media gives them, but that also means people here get tired of hearing about it - they can't have it both ways.
And yet here I am wondering why today, Slashdot appears to have been overtaken by Daily Mail readers...
YES possessing illegal drugs makes one a crook
Thank you for the tautology, captain obvious...
However, the statement was "possessing drugs". Hence bringing up examples of legal drugs is entirely relevant.
Clearly he wasn't disputing the rather trivially obvious point that illegal things are illegal, so let's not make up a straw man.
FSM was invented to counter the asininity of "teaching the controversy" as a back door to get Creationism into public schools and the science classroom. Stop the Creationist push and you wont hear of the poor old FSM any longer.
Since that is clearly not the intent of the Royal Society, given their stance against creationism, that is off-topic here.
Too fucking bad for them. Should English teachers make room for "ain't" and misuses of their/they're/there along with good English diction just because students do it?
Well, surely they should address such issues, and correct their mistakes? That's what's being suggested here. You seem to be the one suggesting that we should ignore such mistakes, and let them slip by.
Um, telling them it's not science?
Exactly. Which is what the Royal Society and Professor Reiss are saying. From http://royalsociety.org/news.asp?id=8004 :
"Creationism has no scientific basis. However, when young people ask questions about creationism in science classes, teachers need to be able to explain to them why evolution and the Big Bang are scientific theories but they should also take the time to explain how science works and why creationism has no scientific basis."
xehonk's suggestion was not that we tell them it's not science, his suggestion was that it shouldn't be mentioned at all.
It's not clear to me that damages could be limited with your agreement - e.g., you can't give up your right to sue, in many countries.
But if agreement does make a difference anyway, then the GPL is out of luck. If I was suing a GPL author for damages, the first thing I will say is that I didn't accept the GPL.
So the GPL is not trying to force users to agree to things like an EULA - it's just hoping that presenting information on lack of liability may help to limit damages (this seems reasonable: for example, if I sell something and say "This is not intended for use as a boat", and someone goes and uses it as a boat, and it sinks, they wouldn't have much luck suing me. It doesn't matter whether they agree to anything, all that matters is that they were informed of the purpose of my device).
There is never a prominent place there where you tell them it's licensed to them under the GPL.
But now you're conflating informing the user (putting the information in a prominent place) with requiring agreement. Sure, put the information up on the website, or when they install the program. No one has a problem with those kinds of messages. The problem is an EULA which says that you must "agree" with the terms in order to use the program. Which is not the case here.
Who claimed it was holy? Sure, feel free to argue the philosophical definitions of what science is. But saying that science includes creationism makes the word meaningless - you're not talking about science, you're talking about making up stories.
Unlike what many have said here there is an overwhelming body of evidence for an intelligent designer to anyone who is honest with themselves and has half a brain (the former requirement is the most difficult to most).
You only have half a brain?
And what is this overwhelming evidence?
Also, unlike the science community claims, acknowledging a creator does not necessarily mean weakening the fundamentals or ability of science - eg "because God made is so" does not equate to "we'll just believe that and not try to understand it how God made it so".
So why this insistence of trying to pass of religion as science?
Now they are spending how many billions more to find the "God particle" to essentially prove that God doesn't exist.. good luck!
Please tell me you're just trolling, and that you really aren't this ignorant?
they still tend to have clunky software interfaces and other arbitrary restrictions put in place by the carrier in order to charge you that much more
I've heard this is common in the US, but in the UK (and probably Europe in general) it's not. We've had cheap bog standard phones with full unrestricted Internet access (not to mention 3G, and all those features such as MMS, Java, video recording as standard, so you don't have to worry if you might need them or not), and no restrictive interfaces, for years now. Which is probably why no one cares about the Iphone over here.
If it's not an agreement, then you have the full right to use, modify, and distribute as per the license grant
Yes, exactly.
I believe the FSF and the courts disagree. Moreover, the developers disagree--if you can ignore it, you can ignore the limitation of liability and the warranty disclaimer.
No, it's stated: "Acceptance Not Required for Having Copies. You are not required to accept this License in order to receive or run a copy of the Program."
The limitation of liability does not require you to agree to anything (since the user might not agree), it's provided for information. If I sell (or give away) a product with no warranty, I don't require the user to agree.
Under copyright law, on a daily basis, I negotiate and grant distribution rights to licensees.
This is why I said would not otherwise be allowed. Obviously, those rights can be granted. That's the point. That is just what the GPL does. This isn't want an EULA does (at least, the ones that people criticise).
But those sections do not require you to agree to anything, so this is still not an EULA. Although companies often put these statements in their EULAs too, those are not the bits which people have a problem with. The problem is that it's claimed you have to agree to the EULA in order to use the software.
You don't have to agree to the GPL in order to use GPL software: "You are not required to accept this License in order to receive or run a copy of the Program."