The problem is that when you're old... Right now, the problem in Japan and some other Western countries is that the rising number of retired people
If aging is cured, you won't need to retire. The main problem we face is lack of a workforce, so this would solve this problem. And I also don't see why people will continue to get all the medical problems that are associated with aging, if aging is cured?
I don't know if it matters for the law, but I note this is subtely different to when other trademarks have become generic, because the verb "to Google" does not mean "to use a search engine" in general, it specifically means "to use Google". So even if it did become generic, it would be incorrect at least for another search engine to use the term to describe their own product.
There's more to the concept of "free speech" than the First Amendment of the United States (or do you think that the concept doesn't exist outside the US?)
Just because something isn't covered by the amendment, doesn't mean we can't debate about whether it's a good that significant amounts of land, or in this case, distribution of content, is in private hands.
Indeed, but that's the whole point - people were criticising Intel and the Pentium brand as a whole over this issue, long after it was no longer relevant and Intel had moved onto new CPUs (that just still happened to use the "Pentium" brand).
All through the PowerMac years, this was touted as an example of why the Pentium was bad - even though it hadn't been relevant for years and Intel had moved onto the P2 etc - but now all of a sudden it's "Obviously I'm only joking about the original Pentium".
We see this with Windows too - Windows is bad, except when Macs can run it, then it's touted as an advantage.
You are confusing "not okay" with "a criminal offence".
Just because a website has a ToS doesn't mean it gets to dictate what the law is. What the provider "expects" has got nothing to do with it. I don't get to pass my own laws, and neither should MySpace.
PS - I take it teknopurge isn't your real name, in which case, time to call the police.
I use Windows today, but why is there this obsession with rewriting history? Do you honestly think that before Microsoft came along, the home market consisted of people running UNIX at $1000+ per CPU on $10,000 machines?
This completely ignores the generations of non-PC machines that people used in the home in the 80s and 90s, many of which were far more advanced than PCs and DOS/Windows of the time.
Indeed, you've got it backwards - it was companies like Commodore who paved the way in the home, and caused Microsoft to become interested. If it weren't for these home computers, then I doubt IBM, Sun or Microsoft would target the "little man". Even as far as PCs are concerned, the marketing into the home was done primarily by PC manufacturers in the early 90s - Microsoft never showed an interest at targetting their products towards home users until PCs started to become commonplace there, and even then, it took them years to play catchup and offer a user-friendly OS.
Shows what you know. The Commodore and the Amiga all shipped with BASIC written by and licensed from Microsoft.
A single piece of software written for an entire platform hardly backs up the claim "without Microsoft software, we would have never seen the price of computing dive into regular joe range." You can be pedantic about the claim "nothing to do with", but this has nothing to do with the point that was originally made.
Furthermore, it was not shipped with all Amigas, but was dropped as early as the release of AmigaOS 2.
And this shows what you know - Microsoft Amiga BASIC was slow and buggy, and easily superseded by other BASICs that appeared such as AMOS and Blitz.
Regular people were happily using home computers without Microsoft before, and they'd be happily using them now still if MS never existed.
Who said anything about charity? What country do you live in where hospitals are maintained only by charities?
The point is that there would be more money left over to use for useful things. Quibbling about whether that's hospitals or whatever is beside the point - the OP's point still stands.
Well, there's more scope for allowing a "veto" of some kind - whether that's a veto to remove politicans from power, or a veto for new laws. That would be better than simply putting full control of every issue into the hands of a popular vote.
I don't know why are people so afraid of "will of the masses". That's exactly what democracy is about.
This is not an argument. I might as well say "I don't know why are people so afraid of elected politicians. That's exactly what [representative] democracy is about".
You have to trust that someone else, but you have no veto power over his decision.
My veto power in a direct democracy is little more than in a representative one where I can choose to vote for someone else - it's one-in-however-many-millions.
I will resist being dragged into an off-topic gay rights debate - the point is that it's not clear that going by what >50% of the population think is always going to get what you want (or what the OP wants), and anyone in a minority group (including groups that we don't think of as "minorities", such as "people who use filesharing software") may be more likely to lose their rights than in a representative democracy.
One could just as easily refute the OP I replied to's comment by stating "If the elected Government decide such-and-such, then that's what should happen", or in particular, "If the EU decides that filesharers should be banned from the Internet, then that's what should happen. It's not a fundamental right. It is determined by law".
Obviously "It is determined by law" - the law is what is being debated, whether it's gay rights, or being banned from the Internet.
(Shall we take a vote on what rights you should be allowed to have?)
Note though that the question is usually phrased in terms of "If you drop both at the same time...", so the heavier object won't have an advantage by pulling the earth up faster, as that would benefit the lighter object too.
Also your answer assumes a frame of reference fixed to the earth - just because the heavier object reaches the ground more quickly, that doesn't mean it is travelling faster with respect to its original starting location, so whilst it could be said that the "ignorant response" isn't wrong, note that this doesn't mean the "proven" response is wrong, it's just that the question becomes too vague to have a definite answer.
An observation is some type of measurement. We could call this a fact if we like, but observation is better because is acknowledges the role of the observer in a way that "fact" does not.
Perhaps, but I think we also need the word "fact" as a subtely different meaning, to refer to something that we have overwhelming observed evidence for, but which we did not observe directly.
E.g., it is a fact that the earth is more than 3.6 billion years old - this is based on observed evidence, but we obviously didn't have someone observe the earth existing all of this time. Similarly, it is a fact that World War One took place - and it will still be considered a fact even when every last "observer" alive at the time is no longer alive.
And if it survives the test of time, it may become a "Law". There are very few scientific "laws", however. The gas laws are pretty much the only ones I can think of off the top of my head. Everything else is stuck at "theory".
And to add to MyNymWasTaken's correct answer, it should be noted that gas laws aren't correct anyway, as they only work in "ideal" circumstances. So if the theory/law distinction was as you claimed, then we should have stopped calling them gas laws a long time ago.
Although I think direct democracy would have its own problems too - we'd be under the will of the masses.
There are some things that referendums are appropriate for (issues that affect everyone), but just look at what happens when you put questions like "Should gay people be allowed to marry" to referendums as I believe has happened in some US states.
I'm not sure how things would work in this case - whilst few people would care about the record industry and most people happily copy CDs/tapes, filesharing is still something only done by a minority of people AFAIK, and most people probably don't see the Internet as some fundamental need, so I fear that a proposal to ban filesharers (especially with a bit of campaigning that associates "filesharing" with not only "stealing", but terrorism and p0rn) would still get passed in a referendum.
Here in the UK, our unelected second house is the only thing that can stop some of the authoritarian measures the Government is pushing through (similarly with the unelected Supreme Court in the US being the thing which protects the Constitution).
Although note that Chess is an easily parallelisable task anyway, so probably not a good example.
For non-parallelisable tasks, a problem I see with this method is that you'd have to do this on a per-instruction level. So for every instruction, you have several cores working out the next instruction based on what the result might be - but I wonder if the overhead for setting up different threads this way might not outweigh any advantages?
The point about advertising is a common one brought up in these debates - but clearly, no one is saying that things we see can have absolutely no effect on us whatsoever.
But it is flawed logic to see that "Because X affects us in this way, it's true to say that Y affects us in a completely different way".
Now, I'm not sure what my view is on any affects of a 14 year old seeing some naughty pics, but I'm not sure that whatever claims being made are in anyway comparable to be hearing about a new product that I might want to buy.
Another flaw with this argument is: if adverts are so similar, then why don't we ban those for children? There is far more sexualisation and stereotyping of women that comes in mainstream marketing, that is far more widespread and harder to avoid than the problem or a few naughty pics of red pixels in a computer game.
or there really isn't anything exciting here other than saying this is now possible on an iPhone too...
That's what's "exciting" about it. Every feature or rumour about the Iphone gets its own story, whilst every other phone manufacturer is ignored. Of course I predict that there will be replies saying that this feature is somehow different on the Iphone, because it "Just Works" or something.
See, next we'll have an article about the next Iphone supporting 3G...
The problem they've had is that there's a lot more transition from dos to 95 to 98 to 2000 to xp to vista. None of those was entirely pleasant, and none of them were very transparent.
I think that's very misleading. The transitions from 95 to 98, and 2000 to XP were minor, and whilst Vista had some issues, this was more a case of slow support for drivers than any application incompatibility issues. This is in no way comparable to Apple's repeated switching of CPU (to PPC, then to Intel) or a complete change of operating system (classic MacOS replaced with OS X). It would be like listing every point release of OS X and then claiming that therefore Apple had had far more transitions!
The major changes for Windows have been from DOS to Windows 9x, and then from Windows 9x to the NT line. Even for these, I disagree that these were problematic or noticeable to the user - I use Windows 2000 (i.e., the version before Microsoft thought it was okay to merge the two product lines), and I never had any problem switching from 98.
in their two bumps that windows has seen in their five. The interim transitions (os 8 to os 9, 10.1 all the way to 10.5 really) were almost completely transparent.
See - why do you count Windows as 5, and Apple as 2, hand-waving away the others as "interim transitions"?
Microsoft has never had a knack for making those internal transparent emulators like classic and rosetta.
Because they don't need to. They haven't switched CPUs, and their new OS was API compatible.
For a +4 post, you are lacking in actual examples of how the Windows transitions were more problematic, and have simply done an arbitrary count of new versions to falsely claim that Windows had had more transitions. So how are Windows transitions more problematic?
But that's just it - the answer is not "Maybe", it's "They've already done it".
I know we like to joke about Windows being unstable, but the reality is that the NT/XP line is rock solid, and any differences between Windows/OS X/Linux, if any, are neglible compared to the difference between those operating systems and Windows 9x or classic MacOS. To me the idea that Windows needs to be rewritten seems to be anti-Vista FUD, especially if it's suggested this is "just like Apple did with OS X".
It's Apple who were playing catchup with OS X - that was their response in order to find an OS that was stable with memory protection, in order to catch up with Microsoft who now had Windows 2000 (not to mention catching up on other basic functionality, like multitasking).
If Microsoft do rewrite their OS from scratch, it'll be because they're moving onto something new, and not playing catchup with Apple. Yes we can quibble about whether Windows or OS X is better, but any claimed advantages of the latter are not thing which require a rewrite (as opposed to introducing things like memory protection, which couldn't really be fudged into an OS that lacked it).
Actually, I'm more interested in a fair appraisal of evidence, and particularly in analyzing a source document based on its contents rather than what I'd prefer it to say so as to make my off-hand dismissal of its value easier.
Okay, so you are right to point out that the Bible says "kinds" not "species". That does not make you anti-science, but it does make you a pedant - the point still stands, namely, it is nonsense for someone to suggest that all life we see today descended from a collection of lifeforms that someone could fit on a boat.
Even if you replace 6,000 years with 400,000 years, it's still nonsense.
As to devastating floods, they are a widespread theme across a broad cross-section of cultures from geographically dispersed areas. The Jewish version states that "kinds" of animal pairs were preserved in a large ark - to claim this must necessarily represent hundreds of thousands of species, and thus the tale is fantasy on its face and couldn't have a foundation in a historic event, is foolish and close-minded in my opinion.
It depends what you mean by "foundation". It's possible, even likely, that it was based on a story related to an actual flood. But the idea of a worldwide flood that killed all animals except those rescued in the ark is fantasy.
why are you assuming a world-wide flood?
Because that's what many people claim the Bible means. Yes, I fully agree that the Bible doesn't mean what it says due to mistranslations, and could just be a story about a man and a boat and some local flood. There's nothing shocking about that - but that does not mean the story of Noah's Ark is true, just as the fact that King Arthur or Robin Hood may have been based on an actual person mean that any of those stories are true.
The point is that once you claim that parts of the Bible aren't meant to be taken literally, are mistranslations and so on, you can no longer hold it as a source of truth - because by what means do you tell which bits are true, and which bits are mistranslations?
is that critical analysis of any text, and especially a text that I don't like very much, should be based on the content of that text, not on inaccurate summaries or "what I wish the text said so I could make fun of it more easily".
You are the one claiming that when the Bible talks of a worldwide flood which kills everything else, perhaps it means something entirely different.
If you agree that the story of Noah - as told literally by the Bible - is nonsense, then we are in agreement. There is no need to get into a pedantic discussion about what the Bible says, when there are millions of people on the Earth who take the Bible literally, and take it as their source of truth.
What about the other things the OP stated? Are you going to quibble the virgin birth? That Jesus came back to life? That he fed 5,000 people with bread and a fish? If you say that these are mistranslations, then we are agreement - tell that to the millions of Christians who believe these events to be true, because "that's what the Bible says".
Well sure, to me any critical thinking is fine. I don't know what the OP meant specifically by the qualifier "scientific", but note we are discussing the issue of science lessons, so I suspect he meant "scientific critical thinking" versus unfounded criticisms, or unfalsifiable conjecture, from Creationists.
Do I understand you to believe that all species spontaneously appeared in their current form???
No - I'm not the one who is a creationist. It seems odd to me that one would reject science, where our scientific knowledge is that lifeforms evolved over millions of years, but they would believe that all life today evolved from a boatful of animals just a few thousand years ago!
OK, clear this up for me, please. Given that life was not created, but was spontaneously produced from non-living matter by the laws of science: How many species were so produced from non-living matter? How many "kinds" of animals had to spontaneously appear on earth to populate it in the first place to the point of variation we see today?
The overwhelming evidence is that all life evolved from a common ancestor, so yes, only one "kind". But are you seriously suggesting that what took billions of years could somehow magically happen in a few thousand? Noah says to himself "Oh dear, all the world's lifeforms have been wiped out. But nevermind, between me, this cat and this dog, we'll reproduce the world's diversity in no time"?
Even if someone did make this absurd claim, this wasn't the viewpoint of the person you responded to, so it is a straw man. Why not respond to the comment that allegedly made this claim, rather than replying to the person you did?
It doesnt to the people who choose not to believe certain things. And to deny them their thoughts and beliefs denies them their fundamental human rights. So, like.. fuck your PC bullshit.
Temper, temper!
Well in science, the reasons why things might be true or not do matter. The fact that it doesn't to people who believe in fairies and other supernatural beings says it all.
Who on earth is denying people thoughts and beliefs? And what on earth has this possibly got to do with "PC"? (Of course, screaming "PC" is typically the cry of those who cannot argue their case.)
Teaching RELIGION to kids would go a long way to bridging the gaps in this country.
You do love your straw men don't you. I have nothing against teaching about religion in the appropriate lessons, indeed I am in favour of it. As are most people who oppose creationism being taught in science lessons. The topic here is not whether children should be taught about religion at all, it's the question of what goes on in science lessons.
We have black studies and women studies and uyet when it comes to religion
We have black studies, women studies and yes, we have religious studies (at least in the schools I want to). But last time I looked, there weren't people trying to get women studies taught in place of science.
Learning something AND something else does not mean they get taught neither - it means they learn BOTH and are better equipped to decide for themselves.
So, assuming that's fact, by your own logic it should be OK for scientists who oppose Global Warming to teach in the classroom.
Sure, I make no comment on global warming.
Yes, how dare we question the wisdom of the know-it-alls that reside on our school boards? If they're not supposed to listen to the community they serve, who pray tell, are they supposed to listen to?
Firstly, education is not about serving the parents, it's purpose is education of children, for their sake. Whilst it is nice to allow parents to have some say, this should not be to the extent of violating a child's right to education.
Secondly, I think we're confusing things in terms of what sort of say they should have. It's one thing to say "We want our children to learn more about history of such and such", that's fair enough. But the community doesn't get to dictate what is or isn't science - anymore than we would expect the community to dictate that children should be taught that Iraq is located in Europe, or that the Earth is flat, or 1 + 1 = 3.
which is tired of having one radical political ideology running rampart and dominating their children's highly impressionable minds.
Such as the political lobbying to get Creationism taught in schools.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem is that when you're old ... Right now, the problem in Japan and some other Western countries is that the rising number of retired people
If aging is cured, you won't need to retire. The main problem we face is lack of a workforce, so this would solve this problem. And I also don't see why people will continue to get all the medical problems that are associated with aging, if aging is cured?
I don't know if it matters for the law, but I note this is subtely different to when other trademarks have become generic, because the verb "to Google" does not mean "to use a search engine" in general, it specifically means "to use Google". So even if it did become generic, it would be incorrect at least for another search engine to use the term to describe their own product.
There's more to the concept of "free speech" than the First Amendment of the United States (or do you think that the concept doesn't exist outside the US?)
Just because something isn't covered by the amendment, doesn't mean we can't debate about whether it's a good that significant amounts of land, or in this case, distribution of content, is in private hands.
Indeed, but that's the whole point - people were criticising Intel and the Pentium brand as a whole over this issue, long after it was no longer relevant and Intel had moved onto new CPUs (that just still happened to use the "Pentium" brand).
All through the PowerMac years, this was touted as an example of why the Pentium was bad - even though it hadn't been relevant for years and Intel had moved onto the P2 etc - but now all of a sudden it's "Obviously I'm only joking about the original Pentium".
We see this with Windows too - Windows is bad, except when Macs can run it, then it's touted as an advantage.
You are confusing "not okay" with "a criminal offence".
Just because a website has a ToS doesn't mean it gets to dictate what the law is. What the provider "expects" has got nothing to do with it. I don't get to pass my own laws, and neither should MySpace.
PS - I take it teknopurge isn't your real name, in which case, time to call the police.
I use Windows today, but why is there this obsession with rewriting history? Do you honestly think that before Microsoft came along, the home market consisted of people running UNIX at $1000+ per CPU on $10,000 machines?
This completely ignores the generations of non-PC machines that people used in the home in the 80s and 90s, many of which were far more advanced than PCs and DOS/Windows of the time.
Indeed, you've got it backwards - it was companies like Commodore who paved the way in the home, and caused Microsoft to become interested. If it weren't for these home computers, then I doubt IBM, Sun or Microsoft would target the "little man". Even as far as PCs are concerned, the marketing into the home was done primarily by PC manufacturers in the early 90s - Microsoft never showed an interest at targetting their products towards home users until PCs started to become commonplace there, and even then, it took them years to play catchup and offer a user-friendly OS.
Shows what you know. The Commodore and the Amiga all shipped with BASIC written by and licensed from Microsoft.
A single piece of software written for an entire platform hardly backs up the claim "without Microsoft software, we would have never seen the price of computing dive into regular joe range." You can be pedantic about the claim "nothing to do with", but this has nothing to do with the point that was originally made.
Furthermore, it was not shipped with all Amigas, but was dropped as early as the release of AmigaOS 2.
And this shows what you know - Microsoft Amiga BASIC was slow and buggy, and easily superseded by other BASICs that appeared such as AMOS and Blitz.
Regular people were happily using home computers without Microsoft before, and they'd be happily using them now still if MS never existed.
Who said anything about charity? What country do you live in where hospitals are maintained only by charities?
The point is that there would be more money left over to use for useful things. Quibbling about whether that's hospitals or whatever is beside the point - the OP's point still stands.
Well, there's more scope for allowing a "veto" of some kind - whether that's a veto to remove politicans from power, or a veto for new laws. That would be better than simply putting full control of every issue into the hands of a popular vote.
I don't know why are people so afraid of "will of the masses". That's exactly what democracy is about.
This is not an argument. I might as well say "I don't know why are people so afraid of elected politicians. That's exactly what [representative] democracy is about".
You have to trust that someone else, but you have no veto power over his decision.
My veto power in a direct democracy is little more than in a representative one where I can choose to vote for someone else - it's one-in-however-many-millions.
I will resist being dragged into an off-topic gay rights debate - the point is that it's not clear that going by what >50% of the population think is always going to get what you want (or what the OP wants), and anyone in a minority group (including groups that we don't think of as "minorities", such as "people who use filesharing software") may be more likely to lose their rights than in a representative democracy.
One could just as easily refute the OP I replied to's comment by stating "If the elected Government decide such-and-such, then that's what should happen", or in particular, "If the EU decides that filesharers should be banned from the Internet, then that's what should happen. It's not a fundamental right. It is determined by law".
Obviously "It is determined by law" - the law is what is being debated, whether it's gay rights, or being banned from the Internet.
(Shall we take a vote on what rights you should be allowed to have?)
Note though that the question is usually phrased in terms of "If you drop both at the same time ...", so the heavier object won't have an advantage by pulling the earth up faster, as that would benefit the lighter object too.
Also your answer assumes a frame of reference fixed to the earth - just because the heavier object reaches the ground more quickly, that doesn't mean it is travelling faster with respect to its original starting location, so whilst it could be said that the "ignorant response" isn't wrong, note that this doesn't mean the "proven" response is wrong, it's just that the question becomes too vague to have a definite answer.
An observation is some type of measurement. We could call this a fact if we like, but observation is better because is acknowledges the role of the observer in a way that "fact" does not.
Perhaps, but I think we also need the word "fact" as a subtely different meaning, to refer to something that we have overwhelming observed evidence for, but which we did not observe directly.
E.g., it is a fact that the earth is more than 3.6 billion years old - this is based on observed evidence, but we obviously didn't have someone observe the earth existing all of this time. Similarly, it is a fact that World War One took place - and it will still be considered a fact even when every last "observer" alive at the time is no longer alive.
And if it survives the test of time, it may become a "Law". There are very few scientific "laws", however. The gas laws are pretty much the only ones I can think of off the top of my head. Everything else is stuck at "theory".
And to add to MyNymWasTaken's correct answer, it should be noted that gas laws aren't correct anyway, as they only work in "ideal" circumstances. So if the theory/law distinction was as you claimed, then we should have stopped calling them gas laws a long time ago.
Although I think direct democracy would have its own problems too - we'd be under the will of the masses.
There are some things that referendums are appropriate for (issues that affect everyone), but just look at what happens when you put questions like "Should gay people be allowed to marry" to referendums as I believe has happened in some US states.
I'm not sure how things would work in this case - whilst few people would care about the record industry and most people happily copy CDs/tapes, filesharing is still something only done by a minority of people AFAIK, and most people probably don't see the Internet as some fundamental need, so I fear that a proposal to ban filesharers (especially with a bit of campaigning that associates "filesharing" with not only "stealing", but terrorism and p0rn) would still get passed in a referendum.
Here in the UK, our unelected second house is the only thing that can stop some of the authoritarian measures the Government is pushing through (similarly with the unelected Supreme Court in the US being the thing which protects the Constitution).
Although note that Chess is an easily parallelisable task anyway, so probably not a good example.
For non-parallelisable tasks, a problem I see with this method is that you'd have to do this on a per-instruction level. So for every instruction, you have several cores working out the next instruction based on what the result might be - but I wonder if the overhead for setting up different threads this way might not outweigh any advantages?
The point about advertising is a common one brought up in these debates - but clearly, no one is saying that things we see can have absolutely no effect on us whatsoever.
But it is flawed logic to see that "Because X affects us in this way, it's true to say that Y affects us in a completely different way".
Now, I'm not sure what my view is on any affects of a 14 year old seeing some naughty pics, but I'm not sure that whatever claims being made are in anyway comparable to be hearing about a new product that I might want to buy.
Another flaw with this argument is: if adverts are so similar, then why don't we ban those for children? There is far more sexualisation and stereotyping of women that comes in mainstream marketing, that is far more widespread and harder to avoid than the problem or a few naughty pics of red pixels in a computer game.
Sure, if I also get to claim back the tax I paid for those Government benefits.
(Actually I'm not a smoker, but your logic is flawed. Especially since smokers pay even more tax due to the tax on cigarettes.)
or there really isn't anything exciting here other than saying this is now possible on an iPhone too...
That's what's "exciting" about it. Every feature or rumour about the Iphone gets its own story, whilst every other phone manufacturer is ignored. Of course I predict that there will be replies saying that this feature is somehow different on the Iphone, because it "Just Works" or something.
See, next we'll have an article about the next Iphone supporting 3G...
The problem they've had is that there's a lot more transition from dos to 95 to 98 to 2000 to xp to vista. None of those was entirely pleasant, and none of them were very transparent.
I think that's very misleading. The transitions from 95 to 98, and 2000 to XP were minor, and whilst Vista had some issues, this was more a case of slow support for drivers than any application incompatibility issues. This is in no way comparable to Apple's repeated switching of CPU (to PPC, then to Intel) or a complete change of operating system (classic MacOS replaced with OS X). It would be like listing every point release of OS X and then claiming that therefore Apple had had far more transitions!
The major changes for Windows have been from DOS to Windows 9x, and then from Windows 9x to the NT line. Even for these, I disagree that these were problematic or noticeable to the user - I use Windows 2000 (i.e., the version before Microsoft thought it was okay to merge the two product lines), and I never had any problem switching from 98.
in their two bumps that windows has seen in their five. The interim transitions (os 8 to os 9, 10.1 all the way to 10.5 really) were almost completely transparent.
See - why do you count Windows as 5, and Apple as 2, hand-waving away the others as "interim transitions"?
Microsoft has never had a knack for making those internal transparent emulators like classic and rosetta.
Because they don't need to. They haven't switched CPUs, and their new OS was API compatible.
For a +4 post, you are lacking in actual examples of how the Windows transitions were more problematic, and have simply done an arbitrary count of new versions to falsely claim that Windows had had more transitions. So how are Windows transitions more problematic?
Microsoft did something similar with windows NT
But that's just it - the answer is not "Maybe", it's "They've already done it".
I know we like to joke about Windows being unstable, but the reality is that the NT/XP line is rock solid, and any differences between Windows/OS X/Linux, if any, are neglible compared to the difference between those operating systems and Windows 9x or classic MacOS. To me the idea that Windows needs to be rewritten seems to be anti-Vista FUD, especially if it's suggested this is "just like Apple did with OS X".
It's Apple who were playing catchup with OS X - that was their response in order to find an OS that was stable with memory protection, in order to catch up with Microsoft who now had Windows 2000 (not to mention catching up on other basic functionality, like multitasking).
If Microsoft do rewrite their OS from scratch, it'll be because they're moving onto something new, and not playing catchup with Apple. Yes we can quibble about whether Windows or OS X is better, but any claimed advantages of the latter are not thing which require a rewrite (as opposed to introducing things like memory protection, which couldn't really be fudged into an OS that lacked it).
Actually, I'm more interested in a fair appraisal of evidence, and particularly in analyzing a source document based on its contents rather than what I'd prefer it to say so as to make my off-hand dismissal of its value easier.
Okay, so you are right to point out that the Bible says "kinds" not "species". That does not make you anti-science, but it does make you a pedant - the point still stands, namely, it is nonsense for someone to suggest that all life we see today descended from a collection of lifeforms that someone could fit on a boat.
Even if you replace 6,000 years with 400,000 years, it's still nonsense.
As to devastating floods, they are a widespread theme across a broad cross-section of cultures from geographically dispersed areas. The Jewish version states that "kinds" of animal pairs were preserved in a large ark - to claim this must necessarily represent hundreds of thousands of species, and thus the tale is fantasy on its face and couldn't have a foundation in a historic event, is foolish and close-minded in my opinion.
It depends what you mean by "foundation". It's possible, even likely, that it was based on a story related to an actual flood. But the idea of a worldwide flood that killed all animals except those rescued in the ark is fantasy.
why are you assuming a world-wide flood?
Because that's what many people claim the Bible means. Yes, I fully agree that the Bible doesn't mean what it says due to mistranslations, and could just be a story about a man and a boat and some local flood. There's nothing shocking about that - but that does not mean the story of Noah's Ark is true, just as the fact that King Arthur or Robin Hood may have been based on an actual person mean that any of those stories are true.
The point is that once you claim that parts of the Bible aren't meant to be taken literally, are mistranslations and so on, you can no longer hold it as a source of truth - because by what means do you tell which bits are true, and which bits are mistranslations?
is that critical analysis of any text, and especially a text that I don't like very much, should be based on the content of that text, not on inaccurate summaries or "what I wish the text said so I could make fun of it more easily".
You are the one claiming that when the Bible talks of a worldwide flood which kills everything else, perhaps it means something entirely different.
If you agree that the story of Noah - as told literally by the Bible - is nonsense, then we are in agreement. There is no need to get into a pedantic discussion about what the Bible says, when there are millions of people on the Earth who take the Bible literally, and take it as their source of truth.
What about the other things the OP stated? Are you going to quibble the virgin birth? That Jesus came back to life? That he fed 5,000 people with bread and a fish? If you say that these are mistranslations, then we are agreement - tell that to the millions of Christians who believe these events to be true, because "that's what the Bible says".
Well sure, to me any critical thinking is fine. I don't know what the OP meant specifically by the qualifier "scientific", but note we are discussing the issue of science lessons, so I suspect he meant "scientific critical thinking" versus unfounded criticisms, or unfalsifiable conjecture, from Creationists.
Do I understand you to believe that all species spontaneously appeared in their current form???
No - I'm not the one who is a creationist. It seems odd to me that one would reject science, where our scientific knowledge is that lifeforms evolved over millions of years, but they would believe that all life today evolved from a boatful of animals just a few thousand years ago!
OK, clear this up for me, please. Given that life was not created, but was spontaneously produced from non-living matter by the laws of science: How many species were so produced from non-living matter? How many "kinds" of animals had to spontaneously appear on earth to populate it in the first place to the point of variation we see today?
The overwhelming evidence is that all life evolved from a common ancestor, so yes, only one "kind". But are you seriously suggesting that what took billions of years could somehow magically happen in a few thousand? Noah says to himself "Oh dear, all the world's lifeforms have been wiped out. But nevermind, between me, this cat and this dog, we'll reproduce the world's diversity in no time"?
Seriously - are you really a science teacher?
Yes. Apparently you have nto read all the posts.
So, like... it's not a strawman... and stuff.
Even if someone did make this absurd claim, this wasn't the viewpoint of the person you responded to, so it is a straw man. Why not respond to the comment that allegedly made this claim, rather than replying to the person you did?
It doesnt to the people who choose not to believe certain things. And to deny them their thoughts and beliefs denies them their fundamental human rights. So, like.. fuck your PC bullshit.
Temper, temper!
Well in science, the reasons why things might be true or not do matter. The fact that it doesn't to people who believe in fairies and other supernatural beings says it all.
Who on earth is denying people thoughts and beliefs? And what on earth has this possibly got to do with "PC"? (Of course, screaming "PC" is typically the cry of those who cannot argue their case.)
Teaching RELIGION to kids would go a long way to bridging the gaps in this country.
You do love your straw men don't you. I have nothing against teaching about religion in the appropriate lessons, indeed I am in favour of it. As are most people who oppose creationism being taught in science lessons. The topic here is not whether children should be taught about religion at all, it's the question of what goes on in science lessons.
We have black studies and women studies and uyet when it comes to religion
We have black studies, women studies and yes, we have religious studies (at least in the schools I want to). But last time I looked, there weren't people trying to get women studies taught in place of science.
Learning something AND something else does not mean they get taught neither - it means they learn BOTH and are better equipped to decide for themselves.
Both? What "Both"? See my comment here.
So, assuming that's fact, by your own logic it should be OK for scientists who oppose Global Warming to teach in the classroom.
Sure, I make no comment on global warming.
Yes, how dare we question the wisdom of the know-it-alls that reside on our school boards? If they're not supposed to listen to the community they serve, who pray tell, are they supposed to listen to?
Firstly, education is not about serving the parents, it's purpose is education of children, for their sake. Whilst it is nice to allow parents to have some say, this should not be to the extent of violating a child's right to education.
Secondly, I think we're confusing things in terms of what sort of say they should have. It's one thing to say "We want our children to learn more about history of such and such", that's fair enough. But the community doesn't get to dictate what is or isn't science - anymore than we would expect the community to dictate that children should be taught that Iraq is located in Europe, or that the Earth is flat, or 1 + 1 = 3.
which is tired of having one radical political ideology running rampart and dominating their children's highly impressionable minds.
Such as the political lobbying to get Creationism taught in schools.