The sum of thousands of years of human suffering at the hands of religious leaders can't hold a candle to the hundreds of millions of deaths at the hands of 20th century dictators, nevermind the suffering worldwide today caused by the western greed. Every single day 10 times as people die due to poverty as were killed by the spanish inquisition, when we in the west waste vast sums on skiing holidays, cosmetics and keeping our appliances on standby. That's 10 million people a year!
The single largest cause of suffering? Greed. For money, power, sex etc. No question. Religion is merely the context in which some people have exercised that greed.
The pursuit of knowledge has often required a leap into the unknown. Just look at Columbus, the Wright brothers and countless others who have risked life and limb to obtain answers. Once to leap was taken the answer was revealed, and so it is with religious faith. It's not delusional to believe what you experience. On the contrary, were someone to experience God (whatever that means) it would in fact be delusional and illogical to deny the proof of their eyes simply because they could not explain it. As for Muhammed et al, I do not follow them because I consider the doctrine illogical and inconsistent immoral both internally and with my experience of the world. This problem I do not have with Christianity once you accept that you cannot logically deny the possibility of the existence of God.
As for the resurrection, the Bible records that on one occasion Jesus appeared to hundreds of people after his death, and on other occasions appeared in the middle of locked rooms, or that he vanished from sight. Yes he was cut down early, but by Roman soldiers who knew a bit about death and killing people, who crucified hundreds of people and who faced death themselves if they did not do their job right. There are only a couple of accounts of people surviving crucifixion, and they were brought down because they were being pardoned, and required serious medical support after, not left in a cold tomb with a squad of Roman guards outside. Disregarding these accounts on the basis that people cannot do that after they're dead, ignores the fact that its not a problem if you're God. You deny the very evidence that there is a God because of your unprovable assertion that there is no God, and that therefore the evidence is derisory.
Not exactly. The historical evidence is, in my opinion, strong, but not strong enough to constitute proof that would satisfy everyone. In that sense I remain of the opinion that God does not provide evidence that cannot be denied, if someone is intent upon doing so. The Bible always speaks of people being unable to see the truth because they harden their hearts against God. I do not, and have never been of the opinion that reason is to be set aside, or that faith is blind, but I do think a small leap of faith is required to bridge the gap. Someone once said that faith is reason gone courageous, in that we look at the evidence and think it might be true, but that we cannot be 100% certain until we test it. My experience is that taking that leap, doing the experiment, and choosing to trust that God will catch you on the other side of the gap provides the subjective evidence that is necessary for an individual to declare the existence of God to be true, but you have to have the courage and humility to leap without guarantees.
Were any Faith (that is religion) 100% faith based, with no evidence of any kind then I would tend to agree, and in fact reasoning like that led me to agnosticism when I was about 13 until I was 26. However, the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus is astonishingly good when judged according to the appropriate standards, i.e. historical standards. I personally cannot comprehend or explain why people like Peter and the other disciples of Jesus would die for something they would have had to have known was an outrageous lie. How did they go from fishermen to preachers having stolen the body of Jesus, and not admit it rather than face death? If on the other hand they were simply mistaken and had simply lost the body, why did the Jewish authorities not simply produce it to quell the troublemakers and crush the young faith?
Christianity is a religion founded on history, not on pure blind faith.
"If the former, then isn't the absurdity enough to conclude the falsity of theism?"
The fallacious argument from personal incredulity, also known as argument from personal belief or argument from personal conviction, refers to an assertion that because one personally finds a premise unlikely or unbelievable, the premise can be assumed not to be true, or alternately that another preferred but unproven premise is true instead.
What you're talking about is the balance of evidence, and is a question that scientists are singularly disadvantaged at dealing with, being unfamiliar with situation where evidence is fragmentary or incomplete. A scientist is used to being able to locate all the required evidence, or in its absence assume absence of evidence is equivalent to evidence of absence. Typically in science this is a valid approximation, but not always. However, in other fields, such as law or history, where one can never assume that absence of evidence is equivalent to evidence of absence, concepts such as the balance of evidence are given more consideration. Questions such as what evidence would we expect to find given some third party wilfully concealing evidence are routine. Many lawyer friends of mine, and also historians say that they find the evidence of the resurrection in particular "compelling", which is not the same as conclusive, but that's the difference between a scientist and a lawyer. A lawyer is prepared to live in world of uncertainties, probabilities and incomplete evidence, and being prepared to accept that situation is better able to evaluate incomplete or fragmentary evidence.
If science was the only way of determining truth then the courts would be staffed by professors and PhD's, but they are in fact populated by judges and lawyers. This should alert us to the possibility the science is not the be all and end all of knowledge.
Remember the woman who drank so much water that it killed her, all for a Nintendo Wii? That's an abuse of power because she was so desperate to win it for her children that she paid the ultimate price.
We all know plenty of people who work Sundays, and very few of them I know would say it "suits them". The would mostly say they don't have much of a choice really. The point about the abuse is that no-one should have to work 7 days, and yet if the opportunity is there many people will, and many will feel they have no choice but to work 7 days a week.
You talk about kids earning extra cash, but that just doesn't ring true in my experience. Maybe in a small town with one or two shops, but not in a major shopping centre with hundreds of shops, or a megamarket. In Europe fortunately, we have quite strong laws about what hours people can work, how many consecutive days you can work, and how many days off you get in any 14 day period, but when people have to hold down more than one job, to make ends meet, then those protections are hard to enforce. I don't know what the laws are like in the US, but I'd be very surprised if they were anywhere near as strong.
not really, especially if you're stuck on a checkout. It's about preventing the abuse of people who have no power, because they are so desperate that they'll do almost anything for money.
I'd be stunned if IBM and Microsoft did not already have an extensive patent licence agreement. If that was the case then IBM would probably not be in a position to threaten MS. I think, had they been able to sue Microsoft they might have done so before now, if only to prevent the death of OS2.
I'm a sucker for Green and Blacks Maya Gold. 55% cocoa solids, with orange, cinnamon, nutmeg and vanilla. Put a piece in your mouth and let it melt for an organic, ethically sound,chocolate high. Yum.
There is already an OSS VC1 implementation, and you're free to use it in any country that does not allow software patents. You can hardly blame Microsoft when they have an obligation to their shareholders to take advantage of any opportunity that the law allows. If it's anyone's fault, its the fault of those who elect governments that allow software patents.
I can't agree strongly enough. I used Vista at home from november until this weekend when I finally got too fed up with the crappy performance from the nVidia driver, but in all that time I don't remember getting annoyed at the UAC dialog once. I suspect that people who are finding that it gets in the way are doing things wrong. If the UAC dialog appears during file operations it's because you're writing to folders that are part of the system, and not owned by you. These operations can only be done by someone with admin rights, and until you say yes to UAC that's not you. The question has to be, why on earth are you trying to write to a system folder? Sure, you may have a good reason to do it, but it's not something that most users are going to do, and it's certainly not something you want a program that's running as a limited user to be able to do.
Calling that racist SOB a christian really is a stretch. He certainly doesn't represent any church officially, although I admit he may belong to one (although I very much doubt they're proud to have him as a member). In reality he just represents white working class people who look to blame everyone but themselves for their situation, and pick on the local immigrant population as an easy target.
If by 'not ok with homosexuality' you mean you don't practice it, no one rational will argue with that. If you think people shouldn't be homosexual, this is clearly discriminatory. It's no different than saying people shouldn't be black.
What if you mean "people with homosexual tendancies ought not to indulge them"? That's not like telling black people not to be black. It's far more like telling people not to steal regardless of how much they want that nice car.
Wow you can't get much more nearsighted than that. 1 year - you'll see Vista-only games. Gamers will be forced to upgrade.
I don't see anyone putting a gun to your head. Besides, there are plenty of games which are restricted to certain consoles, so why should Vista be any different. MS is in it to make money, and if leveraging DX10 will shift more copies of Vista then I expect them to do it. Of course, that will only work if DX10 is good enough to encourage independent game devs to use the DX10 only features. I can see no benefit for games to use DRM for content protection, nor really for any interactive content.
It would be fairer to have life or life plus one generation for an individual, 20 years for a corporation or assignee.
Why? No-one's going to pay me for the work I do today when I retire. Instead I invest a proportion of what I earn in a pension. I see no reason why musicians shouldn't do the same thing for their retirement. They already have talent and a lifestyle that many of us would kill for, and I don't see why they cannot be satisfied with the tremendous hand they've been dealt.
The thing that gets to me is that the artists are campaigning for the extension, saying that it ought to be their income for retirement. I don't know about you but I don't earn nearly as much as these people do and I have to put away a proportion of what I earn today in order to have enough money to retire on in 40 years time. I don't see why recording artists should be any different. They have a lifestyle and talents that many of us would kill for, and they still moan that they ought to have a right to more. I think they should learn to understand how lucky they are, and be content with that.
I'd be willing to bend that ideal and recommend that kernel developers sue for damages.
What damages precisely? As far as I can see nVidia's breach of the GPL has cost all the kernel developers the princely sum of $0.00, and in fact increases the use of Linux as presumably the nVidia driver is a substantial improvement on what went before. nVidia are under no obligation to provide a driver for their hardware, and I suspect that any implementation of a driver would violate nVidia (or other) patents
As far as I can see this has nothing to do with the GPL, except with regards to people who may write code that violates patents and then licence that code under the GPL when they have no right to do so.
The fact is that IF there is code in Linux that violates MS patents, then they are perfectly entitled under the law to enforce those patents. Nothing in the GPL can override the law in this regard, and it's not about who wrote or contributed code into Linux, or even who owns that code, but simply that someone other than Microsoft is making money (or damaging MS sales) by using those patented ideas. The Novell deal would suggest that they believe that Linux IS in violation of MS owned patents and that Microsoft may be about to start suing users/distributers, and I can't say I'm all that surprised.
Such is the price of software patents, and I for one am glad that here in the EU such software patents are not supposed to be allowed.
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The sum of thousands of years of human suffering at the hands of religious leaders can't hold a candle to the hundreds of millions of deaths at the hands of 20th century dictators, nevermind the suffering worldwide today caused by the western greed. Every single day 10 times as people die due to poverty as were killed by the spanish inquisition, when we in the west waste vast sums on skiing holidays, cosmetics and keeping our appliances on standby. That's 10 million people a year!
The single largest cause of suffering? Greed. For money, power, sex etc. No question. Religion is merely the context in which some people have exercised that greed.
The pursuit of knowledge has often required a leap into the unknown. Just look at Columbus, the Wright brothers and countless others who have risked life and limb to obtain answers. Once to leap was taken the answer was revealed, and so it is with religious faith. It's not delusional to believe what you experience. On the contrary, were someone to experience God (whatever that means) it would in fact be delusional and illogical to deny the proof of their eyes simply because they could not explain it.
As for Muhammed et al, I do not follow them because I consider the doctrine illogical and inconsistent immoral both internally and with my experience of the world. This problem I do not have with Christianity once you accept that you cannot logically deny the possibility of the existence of God.
As for the resurrection, the Bible records that on one occasion Jesus appeared to hundreds of people after his death, and on other occasions appeared in the middle of locked rooms, or that he vanished from sight.
Yes he was cut down early, but by Roman soldiers who knew a bit about death and killing people, who crucified hundreds of people and who faced death themselves if they did not do their job right. There are only a couple of accounts of people surviving crucifixion, and they were brought down because they were being pardoned, and required serious medical support after, not left in a cold tomb with a squad of Roman guards outside.
Disregarding these accounts on the basis that people cannot do that after they're dead, ignores the fact that its not a problem if you're God. You deny the very evidence that there is a God because of your unprovable assertion that there is no God, and that therefore the evidence is derisory.
Not exactly. The historical evidence is, in my opinion, strong, but not strong enough to constitute proof that would satisfy everyone. In that sense I remain of the opinion that God does not provide evidence that cannot be denied, if someone is intent upon doing so. The Bible always speaks of people being unable to see the truth because they harden their hearts against God. I do not, and have never been of the opinion that reason is to be set aside, or that faith is blind, but I do think a small leap of faith is required to bridge the gap. Someone once said that faith is reason gone courageous, in that we look at the evidence and think it might be true, but that we cannot be 100% certain until we test it. My experience is that taking that leap, doing the experiment, and choosing to trust that God will catch you on the other side of the gap provides the subjective evidence that is necessary for an individual to declare the existence of God to be true, but you have to have the courage and humility to leap without guarantees.
Were any Faith (that is religion) 100% faith based, with no evidence of any kind then I would tend to agree, and in fact reasoning like that led me to agnosticism when I was about 13 until I was 26.
However, the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus is astonishingly good when judged according to the appropriate standards, i.e. historical standards. I personally cannot comprehend or explain why people like Peter and the other disciples of Jesus would die for something they would have had to have known was an outrageous lie. How did they go from fishermen to preachers having stolen the body of Jesus, and not admit it rather than face death? If on the other hand they were simply mistaken and had simply lost the body, why did the Jewish authorities not simply produce it to quell the troublemakers and crush the young faith?
Christianity is a religion founded on history, not on pure blind faith.
"If the former, then isn't the absurdity enough to conclude the falsity of theism?"
The fallacious argument from personal incredulity, also known as argument from personal belief or argument from personal conviction, refers to an assertion that because one personally finds a premise unlikely or unbelievable, the premise can be assumed not to be true, or alternately that another preferred but unproven premise is true instead.
What you're talking about is the balance of evidence, and is a question that scientists are singularly disadvantaged at dealing with, being unfamiliar with situation where evidence is fragmentary or incomplete. A scientist is used to being able to locate all the required evidence, or in its absence assume absence of evidence is equivalent to evidence of absence. Typically in science this is a valid approximation, but not always. However, in other fields, such as law or history, where one can never assume that absence of evidence is equivalent to evidence of absence, concepts such as the balance of evidence are given more consideration. Questions such as what evidence would we expect to find given some third party wilfully concealing evidence are routine. Many lawyer friends of mine, and also historians say that they find the evidence of the resurrection in particular "compelling", which is not the same as conclusive, but that's the difference between a scientist and a lawyer. A lawyer is prepared to live in world of uncertainties, probabilities and incomplete evidence, and being prepared to accept that situation is better able to evaluate incomplete or fragmentary evidence.
If science was the only way of determining truth then the courts would be staffed by professors and PhD's, but they are in fact populated by judges and lawyers. This should alert us to the possibility the science is not the be all and end all of knowledge.
He should have linked to this
Genesis 2:7 the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground.
Ageing
n. Chiefly British.
Variant of aging.
in fact, my firefox british dictionary is underlining Aging as the incorrect spelling.
Remember the woman who drank so much water that it killed her, all for a Nintendo Wii? That's an abuse of power because she was so desperate to win it for her children that she paid the ultimate price.
We all know plenty of people who work Sundays, and very few of them I know would say it "suits them". The would mostly say they don't have much of a choice really. The point about the abuse is that no-one should have to work 7 days, and yet if the opportunity is there many people will, and many will feel they have no choice but to work 7 days a week.
You talk about kids earning extra cash, but that just doesn't ring true in my experience. Maybe in a small town with one or two shops, but not in a major shopping centre with hundreds of shops, or a megamarket. In Europe fortunately, we have quite strong laws about what hours people can work, how many consecutive days you can work, and how many days off you get in any 14 day period, but when people have to hold down more than one job, to make ends meet, then those protections are hard to enforce. I don't know what the laws are like in the US, but I'd be very surprised if they were anywhere near as strong.
not really, especially if you're stuck on a checkout. It's about preventing the abuse of people who have no power, because they are so desperate that they'll do almost anything for money.
I'd be stunned if IBM and Microsoft did not already have an extensive patent licence agreement. If that was the case then IBM would probably not be in a position to threaten MS. I think, had they been able to sue Microsoft they might have done so before now, if only to prevent the death of OS2.
I'm a sucker for Green and Blacks Maya Gold. 55% cocoa solids, with orange, cinnamon, nutmeg and vanilla. Put a piece in your mouth and let it melt for an organic, ethically sound ,chocolate high. Yum.
There is already an OSS VC1 implementation, and you're free to use it in any country that does not allow software patents. You can hardly blame Microsoft when they have an obligation to their shareholders to take advantage of any opportunity that the law allows. If it's anyone's fault, its the fault of those who elect governments that allow software patents.
I can't agree strongly enough. I used Vista at home from november until this weekend when I finally got too fed up with the crappy performance from the nVidia driver, but in all that time I don't remember getting annoyed at the UAC dialog once. I suspect that people who are finding that it gets in the way are doing things wrong. If the UAC dialog appears during file operations it's because you're writing to folders that are part of the system, and not owned by you. These operations can only be done by someone with admin rights, and until you say yes to UAC that's not you. The question has to be, why on earth are you trying to write to a system folder? Sure, you may have a good reason to do it, but it's not something that most users are going to do, and it's certainly not something you want a program that's running as a limited user to be able to do.
Calling that racist SOB a christian really is a stretch. He certainly doesn't represent any church officially, although I admit he may belong to one (although I very much doubt they're proud to have him as a member). In reality he just represents white working class people who look to blame everyone but themselves for their situation, and pick on the local immigrant population as an easy target.
I don't see anyone putting a gun to your head. Besides, there are plenty of games which are restricted to certain consoles, so why should Vista be any different. MS is in it to make money, and if leveraging DX10 will shift more copies of Vista then I expect them to do it. Of course, that will only work if DX10 is good enough to encourage independent game devs to use the DX10 only features. I can see no benefit for games to use DRM for content protection, nor really for any interactive content.
Why? No-one's going to pay me for the work I do today when I retire. Instead I invest a proportion of what I earn in a pension. I see no reason why musicians shouldn't do the same thing for their retirement. They already have talent and a lifestyle that many of us would kill for, and I don't see why they cannot be satisfied with the tremendous hand they've been dealt.
The thing that gets to me is that the artists are campaigning for the extension, saying that it ought to be their income for retirement. I don't know about you but I don't earn nearly as much as these people do and I have to put away a proportion of what I earn today in order to have enough money to retire on in 40 years time. I don't see why recording artists should be any different. They have a lifestyle and talents that many of us would kill for, and they still moan that they ought to have a right to more. I think they should learn to understand how lucky they are, and be content with that.
What damages precisely? As far as I can see nVidia's breach of the GPL has cost all the kernel developers the princely sum of $0.00, and in fact increases the use of Linux as presumably the nVidia driver is a substantial improvement on what went before. nVidia are under no obligation to provide a driver for their hardware, and I suspect that any implementation of a driver would violate nVidia (or other) patents
As far as I can see this has nothing to do with the GPL, except with regards to people who may write code that violates patents and then licence that code under the GPL when they have no right to do so.
The fact is that IF there is code in Linux that violates MS patents, then they are perfectly entitled under the law to enforce those patents. Nothing in the GPL can override the law in this regard, and it's not about who wrote or contributed code into Linux, or even who owns that code, but simply that someone other than Microsoft is making money (or damaging MS sales) by using those patented ideas. The Novell deal would suggest that they believe that Linux IS in violation of MS owned patents and that Microsoft may be about to start suing users/distributers, and I can't say I'm all that surprised.
Such is the price of software patents, and I for one am glad that here in the EU such software patents are not supposed to be allowed.
If you like Raymond's Blog, you should also watch his talk at PDC05 "Five Things Every Win32 Programmer Needs to Know" - FUN412
Also check out Larry Osterman's blog (another good MS blogger)
Except that they're supposed to be used for test purposes, with some exceptions.
If those numbers were from either of the betas, I think you'll find it much improved in time for release.
Of course not. I use my MSDN subscription from work to download a copy for home.