The reason it's more of a concern is that most people keep large amounts of personal info on their laptops. It's more like people taking the entire contents of their house with them, and having to worry about rummaging through the entire contents, remove anything sensitive, and find somewhere else to put it.
It's not a case of "just not put any documents there", rather, it's now a case of actively having to remove anything that shouldn't be there, and back it up elsewhere. Not to mention that taking something out your briefcase is easier than scrubbing something off the hard disk.
The analogy to the past works both ways - in the past, customs weren't able to get access to such personal info, so it doesn't mean they should be able to now.
As they should be able to. Any sovereign nation has the right to control who and what enters the country.
That seems a statement of the bleeding obvious - anytime there's an article on a Government doing something that people are annoyed with, do you post "As they should be able to. Any sovereign nation has the right to pass what laws it likes"?
The matter for debate here is whether such actions are a good thing or not.
And even if you take the opinion that non-nationals have no say in the matter - people still have a say over what their own Government does (e.g., I don't want my Government hassling my gf who comes to visit, nor do I want to be hassled when I leave or return to my country; also I would fear that if my country does it, other countries will follow in return).
Comments such as yours appear everytime there's a discussion on customs/travel, and I don't understand why. You assume that everyone in a country is in favour of draconian measures, which is not true at all.
because surely, if neither position can be proven - then it is the most rational decision to withhold judgment!
You replied "exactly! well explained.." to Steve Hamlin's comment above, but it seems you missed what he was saying - many atheists (weak atheists) do share the exact same viewpoint as you, and you should be careful to use the correct term.
As an atheist, there's nothing I disagree with in your statement (except to note that just because we have no proof either way does not imply that each claim is necessarily equally likely).
Regarding your jury example - if you couldn't decide either way whether he was guilty or innocent, would you say that letting him go free is just as irrational as sending him to prison? Of course not - the burden is upon those who want to send him to prison (i.e., making the positive claim he has committed a crime) to prove their case; it isn't for others to prove it didn't happen.
This is such a nuanced discussion that one can't throw around words without rigorously defining them first. We may both answer "No", but exactly what we mean is very different. That IS semantics. Agnosticisim vs. positive atheism vs. negative atheism are not the same, and they shouldn't be used as such.
Agreed - your comment should be directed at the person I replied to, who did not define his terms, or use the term strong/positive atheism, or say anything that implied he was talking specifically about them.
A positive claim of agnosticism is more rational than a claim of atheism... Atheism and theism are both faith
Be careful to stick to your own definitions - you mean strong/positive atheism.
Also I would point out that agnosticism can also mean the belief that we can never know, not that we simply don't know, which is just as much a statement of faith.
And note that just because two things are both statements without evidence does not mean they are equal in any sense. "I believe there is a teapot orbiting Jupiter" is far more of a claim than "I believe there is no teapot orbiting Jupiter" (especially when it's people in the former group that often rule their lives by this belief). To pick on the latter group seems rather petty to me.
How convenient that you only post one of the definitions of atheism! Look, I can do this for agnosticism:
agnostic
a person who holds the view that any ultimate reality (as God) is unknown and probably unknowable
Look, agnostics are making a statement of faith without evidence - that's an irrational position!
Seriously - do you go around telling Christians what they believe, even when they tell you otherwise? I might as well ridicule theists by insisting they believe something that they don't. This is just making straw men.
And that's the pointless argument I was trying to avoid when I said this is a semantics issue. There are numerous other meanings of those words (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheism for references). I reject believe in God, therefore I'm an atheist, end of story. If you want to have a big discussion over semantics, that's up to you, but the point is that when someone identifies as an atheist (or agnostic), they do not necessarily mean what you think it means.
Shouldn't we ask what atheists believe (or don't believe), rather than you telling them what they supposedly believe?
In my experience many athiests hold the position in part as an emotional pushback against the constant pressure they get from theists.
No - I don't believe in God because there is absolutely no evidence.
It's these agnostics (in your sense of the word) that are suffering under the pressure of theism, because they are so scared of admitting they don't believe. If I asked if you believed in unicorns, you'd simply say "No" - none of this "Well I don't believe, and I do not not believe, therefore I'm in a more rational position than those people who don't believe, but believe that unicorns don't exist".
The same argument athiests use to try and explain how there isnt a God because we can't collectively perceive of a God, is the exact argument I'm using to prove that nothing exists without being perceived into existence.
No, I've not heard atheists use that argument. The argument we use is that it's a load of made-up unfalsifiable rubbish.
It is no "fact" that things only exist if they are perceived - this is an assertion that you need to prove in the first place.
I might as well claim that things only exist if they are covered in invisible pixie dust, therefore there exist invisible pixies who put invisible pixie dust on everything.
The idea that you only fall through the hole because God perceives the hole is no different to the ancient idea that things fall because they are pushed by angels.
You just assume these ideas exist outide of the mind we think with on pure faith alone.
I make no assumptions. These things exist, period. If you make claims of God, it's up to you to prove it.
After learning more about arguments for/against and generally more about religious ideas I've realised that agnosticism is a much more rational position on the whole idea of a god.
As much as agnostics love to claim how they are in a more rational position, there is often no difference other than what they think the word "atheism" and "agnosticsm" mean, which is a semantics issue (and where there is a difference, either one may be the more rational position, depending on the meanings used).
Do you believe in God? If you answer "No", we both share the same position, but just use different labels.
I could make the point in reverse - if you make the claim that God is unknowable (which is what agnosticism actually means), then firstly this is not mutually exclusive to atheism, but moreover, how is this positive claim without evidence a "more rational position" to those who don't make such a claim?
Whilst some atheists may note that surveys of scientists today show an extremely low number (even in Christian America) believe in God, I've never heard anyone use the argument "Einstein didn't believe in God, and he's likely to be right".
What I have heard is countless theists doing the reverse, claiming "Einstein was a theist, and he's likely to be right", which is why it's necessary for others to debunk this claim.
And to answer your point - as Dawkins points out, should one have to be a professor of leprechaunology to be in a qualified position to discuss whether leprechauns exist?
"It is a fact that the earth with liquid water, is more than 3.6 billion years old. It is a fact that cellular life has been around for at least half of that period and that organized multicellular life is at least 800 million years old. It is a fact that major life forms now on earth were not at all represented in the past. There were no birds or mammals 250 million years ago. It is a fact that major life forms of the past are no longer living. There used to be dinosaurs and Pithecanthropus, and there are none now. It is a fact that all living forms come from previous living forms. Therefore, all present forms of life arose from ancestral forms that were different. Birds arose from nonbirds and humans from nonhumans. No person who pretends to any understanding of the natural world can deny these facts any more than she or he can deny that the earth is round, rotates on its axis, and revolves around the sun. "
These things are facts, and they were never a scientific theory. Scientific theories and facts are different things, they never progress from one to another.
"Still a theory" makes no sense - it's a good thing it's "still" a theory, as the only time it stops being a theory is when it's disproven!
"Up your skirt" (or in any other way under your clothes) is not public, it doesn't matter if you are in a bedroom, or in the town square, it is assuredly private and one reasonably has an expectation of privacy in that regard.
You are conflating meanings of private/public. My face is not public either, in the sense that it is not owned by others, but the point being argued is that if you're in public, you have no expectation of privacy. Now, is the point being modified to say that if we're in public, we do have an expectation of privacy for some body parts, but not others?
Well that is the point - that there is no absolute of "no expectation of privacy", and which things people should still have an expectation of privacy over is a matter for debate.
My understanding is that people in public should have no expectations of privacy.
If I'm walking in public, I expect to be seen by other people on the street at that time. I don't expect to be seen by millions of people around the planet, for an indefinite period of time.
Perhaps with future technology those expectations will have to change - e.g., perhaps eventually everyone's movements and appearances in public could be tracked and checked up on by anyone else. That doesn't make it a good thing. Nor does the fact that it's "in public" mean that sort of world bears any resemblance to the world where you're only seen by other people you see on the street at the time you're there.
There doesn't need to be a reason for us to have the right to do or see something. But there does have to be a good reason to take a right away.
I don't think Google are being forced to do this, so this isn't "censorship" as some people have tagged the article. So in fact, the OP did have it the right way round - Google have chosen to blur the images, and you don't have a right to force them to show them unblurred.
Google have decided to make a change to their tool to help preserve anonymity, and good luck to them for doing so.
3 things down here on the ground should be addressed first.
1) a replacement for oil so WW III might be averted 2) world wide weather/tsunami/hurricane/volcano warning system 3) permaculture food sources for the 3rd world
The way that everyone always brings up their list of pet priorities, only on these articles, anyone would think that space is the only thing the Government spends money on!
Why don't you post your list to every other article that talks about the Government doing something?
Re:anthropology lesson
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iMac Turns 10
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I'd say it doesn't count because the CDTV was designed to be a game console / set-top box, not a complete computer.
Nope, it was a fully fledged Amiga computer, you could add keyboard and mouse, and it was also sold with these.
What it was marketed as is an irrelevant distinction - the point is, it dropped the floppy drive long before Apple did, so it's silly to suggest that there's anything special about not having a floppy drive. And if it was the Mac that was marketed as a set-top box, we'd be hearing "Apple made the first set-top box that stopped including floppy".
Mac fans are always doing this - something different about the Mac is always cited as a "first", whilst something different for other platforms is cited as "reason why it doesn't count".
I'm not sure how branding matters - I might as well quibble it was iMac rather than Macintosh.
You'd have a point if it had been designed and marketed as a general purpose computer, as the iMac was.
As was the CDTV.
Re:anthropology lesson
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iMac Turns 10
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Well I believe the iMac was, in fact, the prime factor in killing off the floppy drive in consumer desktops. It was the first major consumer model (perhaps consumer model, period) to dispense with it,
Nope, Amiga CDTV for example did so years earlier (of course, I predict you will now say that wasn't "major" enough, but that's a pointless claim - I might as well say the Imac doesn't count, as it still isn't major enough, and instead we should go by when PCs dropped the floppy).
and it was quite a topic of discussion at the time.
As with the Amiga CDTV. But only because a floppy drive was still a needed item back then for most people, and the Imac had no other means to write data to media.
PC vendors are still, 10 years later, reluctant to drop it entirely (cf. many *current* Dell and Gateway models).
So which is it? You can't say that Macs killed the floppy, but then state that floppies are still being used?
That is why Apple was able to ditch the floppy drive.
Of course - it wasn't Apple who caused this, they were just taking advantage of changing times, just like other computer manufacturers did. Doing it earlier has disadvantages as well as advantages (CD writers were expensive, and didn't come with the Imac; dial-up Internet was still slow, a pain to use, and costly - widespread broadband was still a few years off, not to mention things like wireless home networks).
Amiga and Macs could use PC format floppies too, so that's not an issue. I was able to transfer my data this way.
Re:Floppy vs. CD use case
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iMac Turns 10
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Flash drives didn't even come out until late 2000 and by then floppy was already all but dead.
I'm not sure where you get these timescales from. I only got my first CD-RW in mid-2000, which was a 4x costing £150, and there were still plenty of people who didn't have them, nor where they sold as standard AFAICR. Even then, I was still using floppies for a bit afterwards.
And even if what you say is true - it would be the availability of CD-RW that killed the floppy, not the Imac, which only a minority of people had. It's a niche platform.
What exactly would email or the internet have to do with the death of floppies? There was email and internet during the times when floppy was still widely used.
And there was an Imac when floppy was still widely used!
But it was the Internet becoming available to all (which obviously didn't happen with the Imac), broadband, home-networking that meant there was less need for floppies. Also things like CD-RW and USB drives. All of these things were not widely available when floppies were still widely used.
Saying "The Imac had no floppy, therefore it caused the death of the floppy" is absurd logic at its best. Why not cite the Amiga CDTV, which dropped the floppy years before Apple thought of it.
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The reason it's more of a concern is that most people keep large amounts of personal info on their laptops. It's more like people taking the entire contents of their house with them, and having to worry about rummaging through the entire contents, remove anything sensitive, and find somewhere else to put it.
It's not a case of "just not put any documents there", rather, it's now a case of actively having to remove anything that shouldn't be there, and back it up elsewhere. Not to mention that taking something out your briefcase is easier than scrubbing something off the hard disk.
The analogy to the past works both ways - in the past, customs weren't able to get access to such personal info, so it doesn't mean they should be able to now.
As they should be able to. Any sovereign nation has the right to control who and what enters the country.
That seems a statement of the bleeding obvious - anytime there's an article on a Government doing something that people are annoyed with, do you post "As they should be able to. Any sovereign nation has the right to pass what laws it likes"?
The matter for debate here is whether such actions are a good thing or not.
And even if you take the opinion that non-nationals have no say in the matter - people still have a say over what their own Government does (e.g., I don't want my Government hassling my gf who comes to visit, nor do I want to be hassled when I leave or return to my country; also I would fear that if my country does it, other countries will follow in return).
Comments such as yours appear everytime there's a discussion on customs/travel, and I don't understand why. You assume that everyone in a country is in favour of draconian measures, which is not true at all.
Look, it's a straw man. If you're not interested in debating with me, go and debate with the straw man instead.
Again I ask, do you believe in God, yes or no? "Neither" is not an answer to a yes or no question.
because surely, if neither position can be proven - then it is the most rational decision to withhold judgment!
You replied "exactly! well explained.." to Steve Hamlin's comment above, but it seems you missed what he was saying - many atheists (weak atheists) do share the exact same viewpoint as you, and you should be careful to use the correct term.
As an atheist, there's nothing I disagree with in your statement (except to note that just because we have no proof either way does not imply that each claim is necessarily equally likely).
Regarding your jury example - if you couldn't decide either way whether he was guilty or innocent, would you say that letting him go free is just as irrational as sending him to prison? Of course not - the burden is upon those who want to send him to prison (i.e., making the positive claim he has committed a crime) to prove their case; it isn't for others to prove it didn't happen.
This is such a nuanced discussion that one can't throw around words without rigorously defining them first. We may both answer "No", but exactly what we mean is very different. That IS semantics. Agnosticisim vs. positive atheism vs. negative atheism are not the same, and they shouldn't be used as such.
... Atheism and theism are both faith
Agreed - your comment should be directed at the person I replied to, who did not define his terms, or use the term strong/positive atheism, or say anything that implied he was talking specifically about them.
A positive claim of agnosticism is more rational than a claim of atheism
Be careful to stick to your own definitions - you mean strong/positive atheism.
Also I would point out that agnosticism can also mean the belief that we can never know, not that we simply don't know, which is just as much a statement of faith.
And note that just because two things are both statements without evidence does not mean they are equal in any sense. "I believe there is a teapot orbiting Jupiter" is far more of a claim than "I believe there is no teapot orbiting Jupiter" (especially when it's people in the former group that often rule their lives by this belief). To pick on the latter group seems rather petty to me.
How convenient that you only post one of the definitions of atheism! Look, I can do this for agnosticism:
agnostic
a person who holds the view that any ultimate reality (as God) is unknown and probably unknowable
Look, agnostics are making a statement of faith without evidence - that's an irrational position!
Seriously - do you go around telling Christians what they believe, even when they tell you otherwise? I might as well ridicule theists by insisting they believe something that they don't. This is just making straw men.
And that's the pointless argument I was trying to avoid when I said this is a semantics issue. There are numerous other meanings of those words (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheism for references). I reject believe in God, therefore I'm an atheist, end of story. If you want to have a big discussion over semantics, that's up to you, but the point is that when someone identifies as an atheist (or agnostic), they do not necessarily mean what you think it means.
Shouldn't we ask what atheists believe (or don't believe), rather than you telling them what they supposedly believe?
In my experience many athiests hold the position in part as an emotional pushback against the constant pressure they get from theists.
No - I don't believe in God because there is absolutely no evidence.
It's these agnostics (in your sense of the word) that are suffering under the pressure of theism, because they are so scared of admitting they don't believe. If I asked if you believed in unicorns, you'd simply say "No" - none of this "Well I don't believe, and I do not not believe, therefore I'm in a more rational position than those people who don't believe, but believe that unicorns don't exist".
So if I follow elucido's argument correctly - it's that there exists an all-seeing pigeon watching over us, perceiving everything into existence?
The same argument athiests use to try and explain how there isnt a God because we can't collectively perceive of a God, is the exact argument I'm using to prove that nothing exists without being perceived into existence.
No, I've not heard atheists use that argument. The argument we use is that it's a load of made-up unfalsifiable rubbish.
It is no "fact" that things only exist if they are perceived - this is an assertion that you need to prove in the first place.
I might as well claim that things only exist if they are covered in invisible pixie dust, therefore there exist invisible pixies who put invisible pixie dust on everything.
The idea that you only fall through the hole because God perceives the hole is no different to the ancient idea that things fall because they are pushed by angels.
You just assume these ideas exist outide of the mind we think with on pure faith alone.
I make no assumptions. These things exist, period. If you make claims of God, it's up to you to prove it.
1. God is the half-eaten sandwich on my desk.
There, proof that God exists!
After learning more about arguments for/against and generally more about religious ideas I've realised that agnosticism is a much more rational position on the whole idea of a god.
As much as agnostics love to claim how they are in a more rational position, there is often no difference other than what they think the word "atheism" and "agnosticsm" mean, which is a semantics issue (and where there is a difference, either one may be the more rational position, depending on the meanings used).
Do you believe in God? If you answer "No", we both share the same position, but just use different labels.
I could make the point in reverse - if you make the claim that God is unknowable (which is what agnosticism actually means), then firstly this is not mutually exclusive to atheism, but moreover, how is this positive claim without evidence a "more rational position" to those who don't make such a claim?
Whilst some atheists may note that surveys of scientists today show an extremely low number (even in Christian America) believe in God, I've never heard anyone use the argument "Einstein didn't believe in God, and he's likely to be right".
What I have heard is countless theists doing the reverse, claiming "Einstein was a theist, and he's likely to be right", which is why it's necessary for others to debunk this claim.
And to answer your point - as Dawkins points out, should one have to be a professor of leprechaunology to be in a qualified position to discuss whether leprechauns exist?
There are two main theories groups that attempt to explain the creation of the Universe and the origin of life and humanity.
Note - there's one group of theories, and then there's countless stories and myths.
AFAIK, Evolution is still a theory. A very convincing theory, I do not doubt that, but a theory nonetheless.
Did you not read his post? Evolution is a fact and a theory. From http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/evolution-fact.html :
"It is a fact that the earth with liquid water, is more than 3.6 billion years old. It is a fact that cellular life has been around for at least half of that period and that organized multicellular life is at least 800 million years old. It is a fact that major life forms now on earth were not at all represented in the past. There were no birds or mammals 250 million years ago. It is a fact that major life forms of the past are no longer living. There used to be dinosaurs and Pithecanthropus, and there are none now. It is a fact that all living forms come from previous living forms. Therefore, all present forms of life arose from ancestral forms that were different. Birds arose from nonbirds and humans from nonhumans. No person who pretends to any understanding of the natural world can deny these facts any more than she or he can deny that the earth is round, rotates on its axis, and revolves around the sun. "
These things are facts, and they were never a scientific theory. Scientific theories and facts are different things, they never progress from one to another.
"Still a theory" makes no sense - it's a good thing it's "still" a theory, as the only time it stops being a theory is when it's disproven!
but it is not proven
And what do you mean by "proven"?
Evolution is not a fact, it is a logical conclusion based on the existing body of evidence.
That's what a fact is!
So yes, evolution is a fact. There's also the Theory of Evolution which explains that fact.
"Up your skirt" (or in any other way under your clothes) is not public, it doesn't matter if you are in a bedroom, or in the town square, it is assuredly private and one reasonably has an expectation of privacy in that regard.
You are conflating meanings of private/public. My face is not public either, in the sense that it is not owned by others, but the point being argued is that if you're in public, you have no expectation of privacy. Now, is the point being modified to say that if we're in public, we do have an expectation of privacy for some body parts, but not others?
Well that is the point - that there is no absolute of "no expectation of privacy", and which things people should still have an expectation of privacy over is a matter for debate.
My understanding is that people in public should have no expectations of privacy.
If I'm walking in public, I expect to be seen by other people on the street at that time. I don't expect to be seen by millions of people around the planet, for an indefinite period of time.
Perhaps with future technology those expectations will have to change - e.g., perhaps eventually everyone's movements and appearances in public could be tracked and checked up on by anyone else. That doesn't make it a good thing. Nor does the fact that it's "in public" mean that sort of world bears any resemblance to the world where you're only seen by other people you see on the street at the time you're there.
There doesn't need to be a reason for us to have the right to do or see something. But there does have to be a good reason to take a right away.
I don't think Google are being forced to do this, so this isn't "censorship" as some people have tagged the article. So in fact, the OP did have it the right way round - Google have chosen to blur the images, and you don't have a right to force them to show them unblurred.
Google have decided to make a change to their tool to help preserve anonymity, and good luck to them for doing so.
How many miles can a self-propeled craft go straight up into the air today?
I'll tell you want - when you find me someone who can swim across the world's oceans, I'll find you someone who can jump into space.
3 things down here on the ground should be addressed first.
1) a replacement for oil so WW III might be averted
2) world wide weather/tsunami/hurricane/volcano warning system
3) permaculture food sources for the 3rd world
The way that everyone always brings up their list of pet priorities, only on these articles, anyone would think that space is the only thing the Government spends money on!
Why don't you post your list to every other article that talks about the Government doing something?
I'd say it doesn't count because the CDTV was designed to be a game console / set-top box, not a complete computer.
Nope, it was a fully fledged Amiga computer, you could add keyboard and mouse, and it was also sold with these.
What it was marketed as is an irrelevant distinction - the point is, it dropped the floppy drive long before Apple did, so it's silly to suggest that there's anything special about not having a floppy drive. And if it was the Mac that was marketed as a set-top box, we'd be hearing "Apple made the first set-top box that stopped including floppy".
Mac fans are always doing this - something different about the Mac is always cited as a "first", whilst something different for other platforms is cited as "reason why it doesn't count".
I'm not sure how branding matters - I might as well quibble it was iMac rather than Macintosh.
You'd have a point if it had been designed and marketed as a general purpose computer, as the iMac was.
As was the CDTV.
Well I believe the iMac was, in fact, the prime factor in killing off the floppy drive in consumer desktops. It was the first major consumer model (perhaps consumer model, period) to dispense with it,
Nope, Amiga CDTV for example did so years earlier (of course, I predict you will now say that wasn't "major" enough, but that's a pointless claim - I might as well say the Imac doesn't count, as it still isn't major enough, and instead we should go by when PCs dropped the floppy).
and it was quite a topic of discussion at the time.
As with the Amiga CDTV. But only because a floppy drive was still a needed item back then for most people, and the Imac had no other means to write data to media.
PC vendors are still, 10 years later, reluctant to drop it entirely (cf. many *current* Dell and Gateway models).
So which is it? You can't say that Macs killed the floppy, but then state that floppies are still being used?
That is why Apple was able to ditch the floppy drive.
Of course - it wasn't Apple who caused this, they were just taking advantage of changing times, just like other computer manufacturers did. Doing it earlier has disadvantages as well as advantages (CD writers were expensive, and didn't come with the Imac; dial-up Internet was still slow, a pain to use, and costly - widespread broadband was still a few years off, not to mention things like wireless home networks).
Amiga and Macs could use PC format floppies too, so that's not an issue. I was able to transfer my data this way.
Flash drives didn't even come out until late 2000 and by then floppy was already all but dead.
I'm not sure where you get these timescales from. I only got my first CD-RW in mid-2000, which was a 4x costing £150, and there were still plenty of people who didn't have them, nor where they sold as standard AFAICR. Even then, I was still using floppies for a bit afterwards.
And even if what you say is true - it would be the availability of CD-RW that killed the floppy, not the Imac, which only a minority of people had. It's a niche platform.
What exactly would email or the internet have to do with the death of floppies? There was email and internet during the times when floppy was still widely used.
And there was an Imac when floppy was still widely used!
But it was the Internet becoming available to all (which obviously didn't happen with the Imac), broadband, home-networking that meant there was less need for floppies. Also things like CD-RW and USB drives. All of these things were not widely available when floppies were still widely used.
Saying "The Imac had no floppy, therefore it caused the death of the floppy" is absurd logic at its best. Why not cite the Amiga CDTV, which dropped the floppy years before Apple thought of it.