Well, it's the difference between living longer whilst remaining healthy during that time, or just extending the time we spend in old age. Obviously the latter has all the problems you describe, but the former is the complete opposite.
From TFA:
Klotho seems to delay many of the effects of old age, like the weakening of bones, clogging of the arteries and loss of muscle fitness.
This is important for those researching the causes of ageing, whose intention is not so much to prolong life as to improve the quality of our final years.
So this certainly seems to be the former category. I'd gladly work for longer if I'm living a healthy life for longer (obviously it would be absurd and selfish to suggest I should work for 65 years, then live for 100 years off the state). The ratio of workers to pensioners would increase.
Even if the downsides such as lack of fertility and diabetes were not solved, this would still not prevent people from working.
Common sense would suggest that pirating might lead to some loss in ticket sales.... The generally crappy quality of pirated movies that are still in theatres available online is no substitute for the real thing.
Indeed, common sense would also suggest that after seeing a good film, but only on a poor quality download, they might want to go out and see it on the big screen whilst they can, thus giving some increase in ticket sales.
With no hard evidence, it's impossible to say which is true.
Actually IQ stands for Intelligence Quotient. It takes our current perception of intelligence, that is, figuring out solutions different problems, that don't really require that you know specific facts, at least outside the basic math/language skills,
Except most IQ tests I've ever seen don't properly test that. First of all, the "figuring out solutions to problems" is restricted to a very small set of problems, usually of the form "spot the pattern". Secondly, they still require some knowledge, as you admit yourself. They are certainly biased towards people who are good at maths for example, and it is possible to improve your "IQ" with practice.
IQ tests are not useless, but it is important to remember they test a very specific sort of "intelligence" - namely, logic, or ability to spot patterns. I had to do some for an interview with a software company - here it is relevant, because those skills are needed in computer programming, but can you really say that computer programming is a better measure of intelligence than say, being a historian?
Whilst an IQ test may require less knowledge than a maths or history exam, it is possible to construct academic tests which are less dependent upon knowledge - eg, a maths test geared towards your natural mathematical ability, a history test geared towards your ability to judge evidence rather than remember dates and other facts, or a science test that involves you working out what's happening by experimentation and forming a hypothesis rather than recalling facts.
However, it would be ludicrous to suggest that because these tests are less dependent upon knowledge, that they therefore test "Intelligence" in general. IQ tests are tests of logic/pattern spotting, which is no more a factor in intelligence than that required for maths, history or science.
IQ tests are the best tool we have to measure, what we understand to be intelligence. It's like saying physics tests don't test physics knowledge, just because we don't fully understand all the laws of physics.
We have many ways to measure intelligence, and we shouldn't discard the rest for one arbitrary type. It's like saying we can measure someone's physics knowledge by setting them a quick quiz on Astronomy.
And the relevance to this issue is that when the school issues laptops to students, and these laptops are implemented specifically to interact with the network upon which the school and its other students depend, deliberately screwing with the system (of which the laptop is a part) is, and should be, alarming to the staff that has to deal with it.
No one is arguing that they shouldn't be "alarmed" by it. The point is that "screwing with the system" should not result in being criminally charged. Those kids who don't follow the dress code are "screwing with the system" and "obviously" need to be watched; I guess we should throw them in jail.
Just like if the kid visited the school at night and came through a window, where he was caught.
Last time I looked, breaking and entering property was inherently a serious illegal offence, independent of the motivation, and with good reason. Firstly, I disagree that breaking the user agreement with equipment you are given should be inherently illegal in the first place, and secondly, even if it is technically illegal, this is comparable to other technically illegal things, such as defacing a textbook you are given.
If I cracked into some school's IT infrastructure, I'd be a felon. So, how is it different when a 17 year old student deliberately does it?
The students hacked into the school's IT system? You must be reading a different article to me.
Also, it ought to be clear that there's a difference. If I broke my company's rules and installed unauthorised software on my machine, this is clearly not the same as a non-employee hacking in to install software. If I walk into a school and start defacing textbooks, this is clearly different to a student who defaces the textbook he is given.
Not on laptops. On systems the laptops and other networked machines connected to. Teachers's machines, on the same network, need access to that sort of stuff, and thus there's vulnerabilities on the network if a kid feels like starting to hack. And if he can install comm software on a machine that's using the same network, that's an indication of being willing to screw around with the infrastructure - and that's a very real threat to the school's operational ability, and to their obligation to keep certain information private.
And if they hacked into those other machines, that would be a different matter. But they didn't. The possible indication of being willing to screw around with the system is not in itself a criminal offence.
No. But students who, say, steal stuff from the school, or break in after hours and screw around in the chemistry classrooms - they definately are subject to arrest and prosecution. Likewise if they were caught breaking into the office of the school and digging through staff records, financial/medical info, etc. It's criminal trespass, and when there's private and/or sensitive data involved, that's worse. So: when they do that with a computer, it's no different than when they do that by going through a broken window, picked lock, or even an unlocked door on the school at night where they know they're not allowed to be.
So why do you make an exception for defacing textbooks, which is vandalism, and illegal?
We are not talking about students stealing laptops, or messing about with machines they were never supposed to use - that would be equivalent to stealing textbooks, or sneaking in a defacing a load of textbooks they weren't meant to use.
Either we are consistent and charge students for anything technically illegal (eg, writing on textbooks or blackboards), or we only involve the police for serious issues. We're talking about a situation where they were given a laptop, and their "crime" was to break the rules about its usage. To suggest that this is equivalent to breaking and entering a school is ridiculous.
The problem is that we actually have had teacher financial records stolen (their social security numbers and other private info that leaves them more vulnerable to identity theft), student medical records pawed through, academic records hacked, tests stolen, etc.
What on earth would such valuable records be doing on a student laptop in the first place? The article is not about a student hacking into some central school database.
Say a student is taking an automotive class - and while everyone else is learning about fuel injection systems, the one kid just can't seem to get enough of learning to disable locks, alarms, and other security features. In and of itself illegal? Probably not. But would a teacher get the idea that the student's off in the wrong direction? Yes.
And would it be acceptable to criminally charge that kid for fiddling about with the car in the lesson?
And if that same student that's been practicing lock-picking all month is caught at night in the school's records room?
Irrelevant. If a student is caught doing some serious activity, then that should be dealt with, and previous behaviour may or may not be admissable evidence. But I'm not sure how that is analogous to this case, where the students have not been caught committing some more serious crime.
But we had students who knew enough to tap phone lines in the ceiling to steal long distance service which was sold to other students, steal expensive lab equipment for their drug dealing businesses, etc. Actual, real criminal activity. These students were arrested, prosecuted, and some got felony records as a result.
And the relevance to this issue is? No one is claiming that students should get away with "Actual, real criminal activity", but the students in this case have done nothing like what you are comparing them too, be it theft, breaking and entering, or drug dealing.
Well, if Apple want to recall copies of OS X and give refunds for all copies that were not sold with a contract presented and signed before purchase, then that would be fair enough.
But they can't have their cake and eat it. They can't reap the profits and enjoy the sales, whilst trying to force a contract upon people who never agreed to one.
It would be the store in breach of a contract, not the purchaser. And try not to confuse criminal law with contracts.
And while we're at it, we're back at what the Copyright Holder wants.
No, we're at what the law says. Copyright infringement is illegal because the law says so, not because a EULA says so.
It is funny that you allow people to give their stuff away, but if someone DOESN'T want to give stuff to certain people all hell breaks loose.
Eh? Apple are well within their rights to only give their stuff to certain people, nowhere have I claimed otherwise. But once they've given it to someone, they can't make up extra rules.
it's that when you have a rule that says there is no hacking, and it's for a reason, you can't leave it up to the kids to decide when and whether that's really important
And since when has breaking school rules been a felony?
It's one thing to justify school punishments for breaking petty rules (which is bad enough - we're not educating people to be robots like some boot camp), but it's quite another to suggest that just because computers are involved, it suddenly becomes a criminal offence.
I don't really know the US system - is it routine for children to be criminally charged if say, they wrote some notes in their books in pencil? (After all, if you've got just one guy looking after the textbooks, it'll take a long time rubbing all those notes out.)
What's the difference between not believing in God and believing God doesn't exist? They're the same thing in my mind, and the very definition of atheism.
I don't think there's really a difference - but if you accept that there's no difference, then how on earth is "not believing in God" a "baseless assertion", or "accepting things without proof", as you stated? Sure, there's no proof - but there's also no acceptance or assertions.
If you ask someone if God exists, you should get the following responses:
You're confusing belief with knowledge. Many athiests, and even some theists, are also agnostics. Atheists might say "I don't know" - but they're still atheists, because they don't believe. Some theists might answer "I don't know, but I believe he does".
You are right to say that agnosticsm is the only position without faith - but that's only compared with those who claim to know. You are wrong to suggest that agnosticsm is mutually exclusive to theism or atheism.
The question to ask regarding atheism and theism is: "Do you believe in God?". Theists answer Yes, Atheists answer No. Some people might answer Don't Know/Care. Either of these three groups may or may not be agnostics.
I see that - I was just pointing it out, as the OP didn't seem to accept that there might be atheists who use the label in different ways (and in my experience, few atheists use it to mean some kind of positive belief).
whereas you're probably saying "not(i believe god exists)", which is often associated with agnostics.
This is true, but it makes no sense to me. Agnosticsm is uaually a statement about knowledge (we can't know if God exists, or I don't know if God exists), but when used in the context of belief, it tends to mean "I don't know what I believe" or "I'm not sure" or "I haven't given it much thought" or "I don't care". But none of these things apply to me.
I never understand why people make these distinctions. I've never heard people claim that you need proof to not believe in fairies, and that somehow means that not believing in fairies is just as irrational as believing in fairies.
If you believe God does not exist, do you have any proof?... Therefore, all atheists are believing something on faith - that is, they are believing that God does not exist without proof.
Except that not all atheists (indeed, most atheists, in my experience) believe that. I simply don't believe in God - I fail to see how I need "proof" not not believe in something.
As for agnostics who claim we cannot know whether God exists, that's totally different. Not all claims are 'faith' - there are some claims (2 > 1) that have proof behind them.
I'm sure that there are many theists who claim to have evidence or "proof" for their beliefs.
Also, note that agnosticsm and atheism are not mutually exclusive. The former is about (lack of) knowledge, the latter is about (lack of) belief. It's a bit misleading to say that only agnostics don't have faith, as that's a separate classification to theism/atheism - everyone, including agnostics, has to fall into the category of "believe in God", "don't believe in God", "I'm not sure if I believe" (the latter of those three is sometimes also referred to as "agnosticsm" - but I can't see that that is a position without faith, since it isn't much of a position at all, it's just uncertainty about whether you believe or not).
What about agnostics who claim that we cannot know whether God exists? That's a claim, and could be considered faith. OTOH, I don't see how not believing in something requires faith.
This is what Juries are for. This will not wind up in felony convictions - it'll get whittled down to misdemeanors
Yeah, I remember in my day whenever kids would break a rule, they'd get charged and sentenced in court. They sometimes got charged with felonies, but it was okay, because they usually only got misdemeanors.
Oh wait. No I just made that up.
Felonies or not, getting found guilty or not, the whole point is that involving the police or courts full stop is ridiculous for a pupil who violates a school rule. In my day, a detention would be the worse you'd get for such activity - and even that would be excessive for personalising the use of something, even if it was school property. Even where pupils are expelled, that is not a criminal matter.
The police would only ever be involved for serious criminal offences such as where someone had been physically assualted.
I must admit, I'm astounded that this sort of thing would be considered criminal - hacking into a foreign machine is one thing; breaking a contractual agreement over a machine you are given is a violation of the contract, not a criminal offence.
But to apply this to schoolchildren is even worse. There are all sorts of worse things that schoolchildren do that would be technically illegal in the adult world, but would be dealt with internally by the school. This is partly simply because it tends to make more sense, and is more productive and less hassle for both the pupil and the school, but also I guess a reflection that school is compulsory - were the pupils in question allowed to negiotiate the terms that the laptops were given under, as would be allowed in the real adult world?
Why aren't we involving the police and the courts for all these other things which pupils do, which are far more serious?
And if, while sitting there using school equipment, you decide to use the car in a way that it can be technically used, but which by any common-sense take on things would be completely ass-holish
Reconfiguring the laptop or installing sofware is by common sense "completely ass-holish"?
It's both a theory and a law. "Law" tends to refer specifically to the equation giving the force of attraction, rather than the theory as a whole. I'm not sure how checking Google helps - there are plenty of references to "theory of gravity".
But having said that - are you saying that all those major universities refering to Newton's Law are wrong, and that they should be using the term "Observation"? That's what your earlier comment said.
Of course Newtonian Gravitation is known to be incorrect now, no one is suggesting otherwise - but by your logic, surely we should not call it an "observation" either, since it is wrong, just as we should no longer call it a law?
And rightly or wrongly, it is a trend in all science that we stick with the name "law" for observed relationships, whether or not they are known to be inaccurate (eg, gas laws are not exact).
Laws are NOT observations. Laws are rules. Laws are do or die, if you don't follow the rules you can't exist.
I think you are confusing law in the scientific sense, with law in the legal sense. Or are you suggesting that you are right, and the entire scientific community is wrong in their usage?
Observations are theories
Theories may be based on observations, but they are models to explain the observed behaviour.
He actually meant that a Joule is approximately the amount of energy required to lift 1 kilogram of mass up by 10 centimeters in the earth's gravitational field.
Where does the 10 centimetres come from? It comes from the strength of the earth's gravity. If we approximate the acceleration due to earth's gravity as 10 m/s^2, then 1 joule (ie, 1 kg m^2/s^2) divided by 10 m/s^2 gives you 0.1 kg m, ie, 10 kg cm. So 1 joule is enough to push 1 kg up by 10cm.
And the strength of the earth's gravity has nothing to do with what units you choose.
Let's start with something simple: speed = distance / time.
Are you going to tell me that this equation only holds if distance is in metres, time is in seconds, and speed is in metres per second? Are you going to say that it's a coincidence that the units all match up?
Clearly, you can choose whatever units you like. If you use miles and hour, you get speed in miles per hour.
Similarly, if you measure mass in kilograms, and speed of light in metres per second, you get energy measured in "Kilograms metres squared per second squared". "Joule" is simply a shorthand way of saying this - there's no coincidence, the Joule was define that way.
Copyright infringement has been upheld in court many times! The GPL doesn't have to be upheld or obeyed - distributing code without permission is against the law, whether or not it's written in an EULA.
Installing OS X on a non-Mac however, is not against the law.
Isn't that a bit of a double standard?
Yeah, it's a double standard that we're not allowed to do things which are illegal, but we are allowed to do things which are legal...
I covered the issue of a sticker in my other reply. But:
By your reasoning, what binds ANYBODY to abide by the GPL? They can just download it, then use the code and put it in their own software, after all, it was just lying around there, no?
Haven't we covered this a million times on Slashdot? A person is free not to accept the GPL. But if they don't, they are guilty of copyright infringement if they distribute any of the code.
That situation would be fair enough. I don't know about OS X, but all software and computers I've bought have not had the salesperson ask me to agree to anything, even though the software may have an EULA.
I hope you're not suggesting that a sticker on a piece of software is capable of entering into a legal contract just like a salesperson? (Your later comment suggests you do think this.)
If I say to the salesperson "I don't agree to this" when they ask me, but they then sell it to me anyway, there is clearly no agreement to that contract, despite the sale.
If I say to the sticker "I don't agree with this", and then the saleperson lets me buy it anyway, again there is clearly no agreement to that contract.
A company has every right to not sell to people who don't agree to a contract - but if they sell it without asking people if they will accept the contract, it's their own damn fault.
Of course not. But if they choose to, they don't get to impose extra conditions.
because the moment you forked over the money you agreed to this condition.
The only thing implicit in handing over money is that I want to buy the thing. You don't get to make assumptions about whether or not the person agrees with your additional contract - if you want to do that, you need to present the contract, allow them to negiotate, and then explicitly ask if they clearly accept or not.
Oh, and this post may only be modded up - after all, the moment anyone chooses to moderate my post, they have clearly agreed to this condition...
Sure. But at what point do we cross the line between an augmented human and something different altogether? Do I want to be a demi, a cyb or a draff?
But whilst there may be issues raised by such technology, I do not see that crossing that line is inherentely bad, nor do we have to lose any of the good things which are currently good about being "human". It's the bad bits we want to get rid of.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, it's the difference between living longer whilst remaining healthy during that time, or just extending the time we spend in old age. Obviously the latter has all the problems you describe, but the former is the complete opposite.
From TFA:
Klotho seems to delay many of the effects of old age, like the weakening of bones, clogging of the arteries and loss of muscle fitness.
This is important for those researching the causes of ageing, whose intention is not so much to prolong life as to improve the quality of our final years.
So this certainly seems to be the former category. I'd gladly work for longer if I'm living a healthy life for longer (obviously it would be absurd and selfish to suggest I should work for 65 years, then live for 100 years off the state). The ratio of workers to pensioners would increase.
Even if the downsides such as lack of fertility and diabetes were not solved, this would still not prevent people from working.
Common sense would suggest that pirating might lead to some loss in ticket sales. ... The generally crappy quality of pirated movies that are still in theatres available online is no substitute for the real thing.
Indeed, common sense would also suggest that after seeing a good film, but only on a poor quality download, they might want to go out and see it on the big screen whilst they can, thus giving some increase in ticket sales.
With no hard evidence, it's impossible to say which is true.
Actually IQ stands for Intelligence Quotient. It takes our current perception of intelligence, that is, figuring out solutions different problems, that don't really require that you know specific facts, at least outside the basic math/language skills,
Except most IQ tests I've ever seen don't properly test that. First of all, the "figuring out solutions to problems" is restricted to a very small set of problems, usually of the form "spot the pattern". Secondly, they still require some knowledge, as you admit yourself. They are certainly biased towards people who are good at maths for example, and it is possible to improve your "IQ" with practice.
IQ tests are not useless, but it is important to remember they test a very specific sort of "intelligence" - namely, logic, or ability to spot patterns. I had to do some for an interview with a software company - here it is relevant, because those skills are needed in computer programming, but can you really say that computer programming is a better measure of intelligence than say, being a historian?
Whilst an IQ test may require less knowledge than a maths or history exam, it is possible to construct academic tests which are less dependent upon knowledge - eg, a maths test geared towards your natural mathematical ability, a history test geared towards your ability to judge evidence rather than remember dates and other facts, or a science test that involves you working out what's happening by experimentation and forming a hypothesis rather than recalling facts.
However, it would be ludicrous to suggest that because these tests are less dependent upon knowledge, that they therefore test "Intelligence" in general. IQ tests are tests of logic/pattern spotting, which is no more a factor in intelligence than that required for maths, history or science.
IQ tests are the best tool we have to measure, what we understand to be intelligence. It's like saying physics tests don't test physics knowledge, just because we don't fully understand all the laws of physics.
We have many ways to measure intelligence, and we shouldn't discard the rest for one arbitrary type. It's like saying we can measure someone's physics knowledge by setting them a quick quiz on Astronomy.
And the relevance to this issue is that when the school issues laptops to students, and these laptops are implemented specifically to interact with the network upon which the school and its other students depend, deliberately screwing with the system (of which the laptop is a part) is, and should be, alarming to the staff that has to deal with it.
No one is arguing that they shouldn't be "alarmed" by it. The point is that "screwing with the system" should not result in being criminally charged. Those kids who don't follow the dress code are "screwing with the system" and "obviously" need to be watched; I guess we should throw them in jail.
Just like if the kid visited the school at night and came through a window, where he was caught.
Last time I looked, breaking and entering property was inherently a serious illegal offence, independent of the motivation, and with good reason. Firstly, I disagree that breaking the user agreement with equipment you are given should be inherently illegal in the first place, and secondly, even if it is technically illegal, this is comparable to other technically illegal things, such as defacing a textbook you are given.
If I cracked into some school's IT infrastructure, I'd be a felon. So, how is it different when a 17 year old student deliberately does it?
The students hacked into the school's IT system? You must be reading a different article to me.
Also, it ought to be clear that there's a difference. If I broke my company's rules and installed unauthorised software on my machine, this is clearly not the same as a non-employee hacking in to install software. If I walk into a school and start defacing textbooks, this is clearly different to a student who defaces the textbook he is given.
Not on laptops. On systems the laptops and other networked machines connected to. Teachers's machines, on the same network, need access to that sort of stuff, and thus there's vulnerabilities on the network if a kid feels like starting to hack. And if he can install comm software on a machine that's using the same network, that's an indication of being willing to screw around with the infrastructure - and that's a very real threat to the school's operational ability, and to their obligation to keep certain information private.
And if they hacked into those other machines, that would be a different matter. But they didn't. The possible indication of being willing to screw around with the system is not in itself a criminal offence.
No. But students who, say, steal stuff from the school, or break in after hours and screw around in the chemistry classrooms - they definately are subject to arrest and prosecution. Likewise if they were caught breaking into the office of the school and digging through staff records, financial/medical info, etc. It's criminal trespass, and when there's private and/or sensitive data involved, that's worse. So: when they do that with a computer, it's no different than when they do that by going through a broken window, picked lock, or even an unlocked door on the school at night where they know they're not allowed to be.
So why do you make an exception for defacing textbooks, which is vandalism, and illegal?
We are not talking about students stealing laptops, or messing about with machines they were never supposed to use - that would be equivalent to stealing textbooks, or sneaking in a defacing a load of textbooks they weren't meant to use.
Either we are consistent and charge students for anything technically illegal (eg, writing on textbooks or blackboards), or we only involve the police for serious issues. We're talking about a situation where they were given a laptop, and their "crime" was to break the rules about its usage. To suggest that this is equivalent to breaking and entering a school is ridiculous.
The problem is that we actually have had teacher financial records stolen (their social security numbers and other private info that leaves them more vulnerable to identity theft), student medical records pawed through, academic records hacked, tests stolen, etc.
What on earth would such valuable records be doing on a student laptop in the first place? The article is not about a student hacking into some central school database.
Say a student is taking an automotive class - and while everyone else is learning about fuel injection systems, the one kid just can't seem to get enough of learning to disable locks, alarms, and other security features. In and of itself illegal? Probably not. But would a teacher get the idea that the student's off in the wrong direction? Yes.
And would it be acceptable to criminally charge that kid for fiddling about with the car in the lesson?
And if that same student that's been practicing lock-picking all month is caught at night in the school's records room?
Irrelevant. If a student is caught doing some serious activity, then that should be dealt with, and previous behaviour may or may not be admissable evidence. But I'm not sure how that is analogous to this case, where the students have not been caught committing some more serious crime.
But we had students who knew enough to tap phone lines in the ceiling to steal long distance service which was sold to other students, steal expensive lab equipment for their drug dealing businesses, etc. Actual, real criminal activity. These students were arrested, prosecuted, and some got felony records as a result.
And the relevance to this issue is? No one is claiming that students should get away with "Actual, real criminal activity", but the students in this case have done nothing like what you are comparing them too, be it theft, breaking and entering, or drug dealing.
Well, if Apple want to recall copies of OS X and give refunds for all copies that were not sold with a contract presented and signed before purchase, then that would be fair enough.
But they can't have their cake and eat it. They can't reap the profits and enjoy the sales, whilst trying to force a contract upon people who never agreed to one.
It would be the store in breach of a contract, not the purchaser. And try not to confuse criminal law with contracts.
And while we're at it, we're back at what the Copyright Holder wants.
No, we're at what the law says. Copyright infringement is illegal because the law says so, not because a EULA says so.
It is funny that you allow people to give their stuff away, but if someone DOESN'T want to give stuff to certain people all hell breaks loose.
Eh? Apple are well within their rights to only give their stuff to certain people, nowhere have I claimed otherwise. But once they've given it to someone, they can't make up extra rules.
it's that when you have a rule that says there is no hacking, and it's for a reason, you can't leave it up to the kids to decide when and whether that's really important
And since when has breaking school rules been a felony?
It's one thing to justify school punishments for breaking petty rules (which is bad enough - we're not educating people to be robots like some boot camp), but it's quite another to suggest that just because computers are involved, it suddenly becomes a criminal offence.
I don't really know the US system - is it routine for children to be criminally charged if say, they wrote some notes in their books in pencil? (After all, if you've got just one guy looking after the textbooks, it'll take a long time rubbing all those notes out.)
What's the difference between not believing in God and believing God doesn't exist? They're the same thing in my mind, and the very definition of atheism.
I don't think there's really a difference - but if you accept that there's no difference, then how on earth is "not believing in God" a "baseless assertion", or "accepting things without proof", as you stated? Sure, there's no proof - but there's also no acceptance or assertions.
If you ask someone if God exists, you should get the following responses:
You're confusing belief with knowledge. Many athiests, and even some theists, are also agnostics. Atheists might say "I don't know" - but they're still atheists, because they don't believe. Some theists might answer "I don't know, but I believe he does".
You are right to say that agnosticsm is the only position without faith - but that's only compared with those who claim to know. You are wrong to suggest that agnosticsm is mutually exclusive to theism or atheism.
The question to ask regarding atheism and theism is: "Do you believe in God?". Theists answer Yes, Atheists answer No. Some people might answer Don't Know/Care. Either of these three groups may or may not be agnostics.
I see that - I was just pointing it out, as the OP didn't seem to accept that there might be atheists who use the label in different ways (and in my experience, few atheists use it to mean some kind of positive belief).
whereas you're probably saying "not(i believe god exists)", which is often associated with agnostics.
This is true, but it makes no sense to me. Agnosticsm is uaually a statement about knowledge (we can't know if God exists, or I don't know if God exists), but when used in the context of belief, it tends to mean "I don't know what I believe" or "I'm not sure" or "I haven't given it much thought" or "I don't care". But none of these things apply to me.
I never understand why people make these distinctions. I've never heard people claim that you need proof to not believe in fairies, and that somehow means that not believing in fairies is just as irrational as believing in fairies.
If you believe God does not exist, do you have any proof? ... Therefore, all atheists are believing something on faith - that is, they are believing that God does not exist without proof.
Except that not all atheists (indeed, most atheists, in my experience) believe that. I simply don't believe in God - I fail to see how I need "proof" not not believe in something.
As for agnostics who claim we cannot know whether God exists, that's totally different. Not all claims are 'faith' - there are some claims (2 > 1) that have proof behind them.
I'm sure that there are many theists who claim to have evidence or "proof" for their beliefs.
Also, note that agnosticsm and atheism are not mutually exclusive. The former is about (lack of) knowledge, the latter is about (lack of) belief. It's a bit misleading to say that only agnostics don't have faith, as that's a separate classification to theism/atheism - everyone, including agnostics, has to fall into the category of "believe in God", "don't believe in God", "I'm not sure if I believe" (the latter of those three is sometimes also referred to as "agnosticsm" - but I can't see that that is a position without faith, since it isn't much of a position at all, it's just uncertainty about whether you believe or not).
What about agnostics who claim that we cannot know whether God exists? That's a claim, and could be considered faith. OTOH, I don't see how not believing in something requires faith.
Atheism is not believing in God. Some atheists might have faith in that, or something else, but most do not have any faith.
I don't have any faith in God, therefore I am atheist.
This is what Juries are for. This will not wind up in felony convictions - it'll get whittled down to misdemeanors
Yeah, I remember in my day whenever kids would break a rule, they'd get charged and sentenced in court. They sometimes got charged with felonies, but it was okay, because they usually only got misdemeanors.
Oh wait. No I just made that up.
Felonies or not, getting found guilty or not, the whole point is that involving the police or courts full stop is ridiculous for a pupil who violates a school rule. In my day, a detention would be the worse you'd get for such activity - and even that would be excessive for personalising the use of something, even if it was school property. Even where pupils are expelled, that is not a criminal matter.
The police would only ever be involved for serious criminal offences such as where someone had been physically assualted.
I must admit, I'm astounded that this sort of thing would be considered criminal - hacking into a foreign machine is one thing; breaking a contractual agreement over a machine you are given is a violation of the contract, not a criminal offence.
But to apply this to schoolchildren is even worse. There are all sorts of worse things that schoolchildren do that would be technically illegal in the adult world, but would be dealt with internally by the school. This is partly simply because it tends to make more sense, and is more productive and less hassle for both the pupil and the school, but also I guess a reflection that school is compulsory - were the pupils in question allowed to negiotiate the terms that the laptops were given under, as would be allowed in the real adult world?
Why aren't we involving the police and the courts for all these other things which pupils do, which are far more serious?
And if, while sitting there using school equipment, you decide to use the car in a way that it can be technically used, but which by any common-sense take on things would be completely ass-holish
Reconfiguring the laptop or installing sofware is by common sense "completely ass-holish"?
It's both a theory and a law. "Law" tends to refer specifically to the equation giving the force of attraction, rather than the theory as a whole. I'm not sure how checking Google helps - there are plenty of references to "theory of gravity".
But having said that - are you saying that all those major universities refering to Newton's Law are wrong, and that they should be using the term "Observation"? That's what your earlier comment said.
Of course Newtonian Gravitation is known to be incorrect now, no one is suggesting otherwise - but by your logic, surely we should not call it an "observation" either, since it is wrong, just as we should no longer call it a law?
And rightly or wrongly, it is a trend in all science that we stick with the name "law" for observed relationships, whether or not they are known to be inaccurate (eg, gas laws are not exact).
Laws are NOT observations. Laws are rules. Laws are do or die, if you don't follow the rules you can't exist.
I think you are confusing law in the scientific sense, with law in the legal sense. Or are you suggesting that you are right, and the entire scientific community is wrong in their usage?
Observations are theories
Theories may be based on observations, but they are models to explain the observed behaviour.
How does that change what he said? Laws are observations or mathematical relationships, whilst theories are models to explain the behaviour.
Also I would say that it is Newtown's theory which says that gravitation is instantaneous. The law just tells us the strength of the force.
He actually meant that a Joule is approximately the amount of energy required to lift 1 kilogram of mass up by 10 centimeters in the earth's gravitational field.
Where does the 10 centimetres come from? It comes from the strength of the earth's gravity. If we approximate the acceleration due to earth's gravity as 10 m/s^2, then 1 joule (ie, 1 kg m^2/s^2) divided by 10 m/s^2 gives you 0.1 kg m, ie, 10 kg cm. So 1 joule is enough to push 1 kg up by 10cm.
And the strength of the earth's gravity has nothing to do with what units you choose.
Let's start with something simple: speed = distance / time.
Are you going to tell me that this equation only holds if distance is in metres, time is in seconds, and speed is in metres per second? Are you going to say that it's a coincidence that the units all match up?
Clearly, you can choose whatever units you like. If you use miles and hour, you get speed in miles per hour.
Similarly, if you measure mass in kilograms, and speed of light in metres per second, you get energy measured in "Kilograms metres squared per second squared". "Joule" is simply a shorthand way of saying this - there's no coincidence, the Joule was define that way.
Copyright infringement has been upheld in court many times! The GPL doesn't have to be upheld or obeyed - distributing code without permission is against the law, whether or not it's written in an EULA.
Installing OS X on a non-Mac however, is not against the law.
Isn't that a bit of a double standard?
Yeah, it's a double standard that we're not allowed to do things which are illegal, but we are allowed to do things which are legal...
I covered the issue of a sticker in my other reply. But:
By your reasoning, what binds ANYBODY to abide by the GPL? They can just download it, then use the code and put it in their own software, after all, it was just lying around there, no?
Haven't we covered this a million times on Slashdot? A person is free not to accept the GPL. But if they don't, they are guilty of copyright infringement if they distribute any of the code.
That situation would be fair enough. I don't know about OS X, but all software and computers I've bought have not had the salesperson ask me to agree to anything, even though the software may have an EULA.
I hope you're not suggesting that a sticker on a piece of software is capable of entering into a legal contract just like a salesperson? (Your later comment suggests you do think this.)
If I say to the salesperson "I don't agree to this" when they ask me, but they then sell it to me anyway, there is clearly no agreement to that contract, despite the sale.
If I say to the sticker "I don't agree with this", and then the saleperson lets me buy it anyway, again there is clearly no agreement to that contract.
A company has every right to not sell to people who don't agree to a contract - but if they sell it without asking people if they will accept the contract, it's their own damn fault.
And they don't have to sell it to you
Of course not. But if they choose to, they don't get to impose extra conditions.
because the moment you forked over the money you agreed to this condition.
The only thing implicit in handing over money is that I want to buy the thing. You don't get to make assumptions about whether or not the person agrees with your additional contract - if you want to do that, you need to present the contract, allow them to negiotate, and then explicitly ask if they clearly accept or not.
Oh, and this post may only be modded up - after all, the moment anyone chooses to moderate my post, they have clearly agreed to this condition...
I agree with you, but note that marketing does not imply making a profit.
A company which makes zero profit still has to pay its costs, such as wages for the scientists, and so still needs revenue.
Sure. But at what point do we cross the line between an augmented human and something different altogether? Do I want to be a demi, a cyb or a draff?
But whilst there may be issues raised by such technology, I do not see that crossing that line is inherentely bad, nor do we have to lose any of the good things which are currently good about being "human". It's the bad bits we want to get rid of.