Well, the personalized card is supposed to make it seem that they are treating you like a human, not like "a number". We introduce ourselves to other people by our name, not by our social insurance or driver's license numbers. The card is intended to psychologically make it seem that the store is just being friendly and neighbourly. "Hi, Comrade Smith. Here's the discount that is YOURS and just YOURS because the card has YOUR name on it. Have a nice day."
It's ego-stroking. Doesn't work the same way on everyone.
We seem to be talking about different things. I said that Hubble proved that space was not spatially infinite.
As for whether the Universe is ever going to start contracting... well, it all depends on how much mass there is. There's not enough visible matter for it, and I think the consensus is that there's not enough dark matter either. New evidence one way or another will be forthcoming.
You are full of shit. Atheism gets exactly zero time in the current system. When I took a World Religions class in Grade 10, all the suggested essay topics were pro-Religion. I was allowed to pick my own that was anti-, but still. Ugh.
If you think Darwin's (somewhat outdated) work makes your religion obsolete, that's just you. It's no harder to come up with a conspiracy theory that allows for Christianity to co-exist with reality than it is for a conspiracy theory that allows for Faked Moon Landings to co-exist with reality.
Other things in similar vein that disprove your religion:
- Ezekiel 7:2, Isaiah 11:12, Revelations 7:1. The Earth has four corners. In reality, The Earth is round and does not have corners. Ergo, Christianity is bullshit. Ban geography!
- Chronicles 4:2. A molten sea is 10 cubits across and 30 cubits around. It should be 31 cubits around according to elementary math. Ergo, Christianity is bullshit. Ban arithmetic!
- Psalms 19:4-6. The Sun is alleged to move around the Earth. In reality, the Earth orbits the Sun. Ergo, Christianity bullshit. Ban astronomy!
- Joshua 10:12-13. The rotation of the Earth is stopped so that the Sun and the Moon may stand still in the sky. This would result in everything not on Earth flying off into space due to the law of conservation of angular momentum. Ergo, Christianity bullshit. Ban physics!
If you don't think that the above are major errors and permit for metaphorical interpretation, then you have no fucking reason to pretend that evolution is incompatible with Christianity. Evolution is just your fucking God's instrument, okay?
Why the fuck do you care about the Genesis anyways? Jesus didn't give much of a damn about the Old Testament. St. Paul of Tarsus liked it, but St. Paul was an asshole before converting and stayed an asshole after.
Now, please don't advocate the slaughter of millions of your countrymen because they happen to teach and have a brain.
Hmm. I'll go with Hoyle or Hubble. Ah. Hubble proved that the Universe is expanding and that other galaxies exist. Close enough.:) Hoyle is a crackpot who died in 2001.
The difficulty of Libertarianism: not 'I must be free' but 'That other jerk must be free, as well'.
Why is that a difficulty?
Perhaps because Libertarianism is an insiduously politically correct way of referring to Feudalism, a system where people are permitted to "willingly" become serfs of others and the concept of economic coercion is Orwelled out. The actual difficulty of Libertarianism is not that 'I must be free to oppress others' but that 'That other jerk must be free to oppress me, as well'.
Designing sites compatible for both major(widely used) browsers (IE and FF) is a pain. And heck AFAIK Opera snubs some css syntax, sheez.
Oh? Like what? -moz-border-radius?
Firefox snubs display:inline-block;, a CSS 2.1 property that's in both Opera and the Microsoft thingie. To replace it, you need to do a lot of fancy magic with float and clear. Oy.
Which brings us to an even more interesting question: how is selective breeding and modern medicine degenerating the human gene pool? Are we going to be muscle-less blobs that can't survive without robots? Are we going to be so stupid that we need computers to run our lives?
Survival-neutral genes may drift through a population, but they don't take over as long as other genes are survival-beneficial.
Or is that only going to be the Slashdot population, and the 'beautiful' people will become more cosmetically disfigured by gigangic breasts and other such desired features? Is that how human women got such big titties in the first place, at least in certain lineages?
Sexual selection could certainly be a factor, but other reasons may be involved. Perhaps larger breasts provide better insulation in cold climates, or perhaps they act as storage for energy-rich fat to help the bearer last through droughts and famines.
So Microsoft initially missed the boat on the Internet. They go on to spend enormous sums of money to destroy Netscape and win the browser war. Once the war is over, what do they do? Nothing. They let the technology stagnate. [...] What was the point of Microsoft trying so hard to destroy another company and take over the market?
Netscape and Sun were mumbling were loudly about how all applications would be delivered through the browser and how that would make the OS irrelevant. Microsoft does not want the OS to be irrelevant or a commodity because Windows is one of its two lone cash crops.
Seconds are the standard SI unit of time. We should forget about crap like minutes, hours, and the likes and switch to a pure seconds-based system.
There are 86.4 kiloseconds in a day. However, we are not farmers. Day and night don't matter. We should make 100 kiloseconds the standard length of a sleep-wakefulness cycle. My body always wants to stay up for an extra three hours and I pay for it in the morning. With an extra 3.8 standard hours in a "day", we'd be able to stay up longer and sleep in every time.
Certain shorthands will disappear when we switch to seconds, kiloseconds, and megaseconds, but others will arise to take their place. Long-term durations and short-term durations will become much easier to relate to each other.
So...
- Replace days with periods of 100 kiloseconds for an extra 3.8 hours of fun and rest
- Replace weeks with periods of 10 megaseconds. A weekend can last 300 kiloseconds (or more). w00t!
- Have New Years-style parties every 100 megaseconds. Sweeeeeeet.:)
- Forget the damn astrological bs of days, months, and years. What has the moon ever done for you? Nothing! Then why should you give a damn about it? It's easier to just do everything in seconds.:)
Well, you are assuming that the conditions on the primordial Earth were exceptional. I am not aware of anything in particular that supports that assumption.
Experimentally, we've gotten from basic chemicals to amino acids easily given rather simple hands-off conditions. With a million or a hundred million years of chemical selection, the jump from amino acids to proteins and from proteins to life is very short.
There's the Earth-is-special-because-of-a-huge-Moon theory. It's kinda hand-wavey. Pluto's got a huge moon. Huge moons are unlikely, but not improbable.
There might not be any technological civilizations out there, but bacterial life is not an unreasonable thing to expect. NASA keeps expecting for it to turn up on Mars. Eh.
Okay, say that you are flipping a coin. The probability of getting heads is 50%. As the number of flips approaches infinity, the probability of one or more of them turning out to be heads approaches 100%.
Now, you are rolling a die. The probability of getting a six is 17%. As the number of rolls approaches infinity, the probability of one or mor eof them turning out to be a six approaches 100%.
Finally, you are watching amino acids interact and mingle. The probability of a self-reproducing collective of amino acids forming is, say, 0.000001%. As the number of interactions approaches infinity, the probability of a self-reproducing collective of amino acids forming approaches 100%.
The problem with your approach is that you are assuming infinity is composed of extra nothingness dilutes what is already there. That's not appropriate for this thought experiment. The assumption is not that time approaches infinity, but that applicable instances approach infinity.
Religion is a conspiracy theory. There's no room for your Christian God or pretty much any other sort of supernatural in the universe that we know without a huge fudge factor. I'd much rather you didn't choose to fudge reality that much, but it's a free planet...
Sounds more like spyware than a virus. The difference is that viruses are written by individuals, while spyware is written by corporations. Anti-virus applications don't remove spyware because the corporations that write spyware would sue them. You want Spybot Search & Destroy or some analogue.
Also, you should find a utility for digging through startup items. Stuff like FindFast and Office Startup needs to be eradicated. I'd recommend X-Setup, but it seems to have turned into shareware since the last time I had a use for it.
"If the planet's environment is life-friendly, then it's only a matter of time before life evolves on it."
And you base this one what? An empirical basis of exactly 1 instance? Pretty presumptious of you.
Not really. Since life evolved once, the probability of life evolving is greater than zero. Ergo, given arbitrarily sufficient time, the probability of life having evolved will approach 100%. Unfortunately, time required for life to evolve may exceed the lifespan of even the universe. The grandparent post is technically correct, but it's not a particularly useful form of correct.
Historically, Wien has always been to the german speaking world what Carthage was to the Greeks - the centre of learning and the export of culture and ideas.
Actually, Carthage was a Phoenician city perpetually at war with the Greek colony of Syracuse. It was not renowned for learning.
Linus deserves a pat on the back for his bargaining prowess.
Linus is, quite obviously, not involved with this. He's a programmer and an architect, not a marketer.
...a successful Linuks experiment will "trickle down"...
There is an 'x' in the German alphabet, so this is an intentional misspelling.
* yes, we are the country with the tazmanian devils
Actually, Tasmanian Devils live in Tasmania, an island province of Australia just to the south of the main landmass. They shouldn't be in New Zealand at all.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, the personalized card is supposed to make it seem that they are treating you like a human, not like "a number". We introduce ourselves to other people by our name, not by our social insurance or driver's license numbers. The card is intended to psychologically make it seem that the store is just being friendly and neighbourly. "Hi, Comrade Smith. Here's the discount that is YOURS and just YOURS because the card has YOUR name on it. Have a nice day."
It's ego-stroking. Doesn't work the same way on everyone.
We seem to be talking about different things. I said that Hubble proved that space was not spatially infinite.
As for whether the Universe is ever going to start contracting... well, it all depends on how much mass there is. There's not enough visible matter for it, and I think the consensus is that there's not enough dark matter either. New evidence one way or another will be forthcoming.
Try Greg Egan for some brilliant hard scifi. Kim Stanley Robinson tends to write scientist-as-hero stuff too.
You are full of shit. Atheism gets exactly zero time in the current system. When I took a World Religions class in Grade 10, all the suggested essay topics were pro-Religion. I was allowed to pick my own that was anti-, but still. Ugh.
If you think Darwin's (somewhat outdated) work makes your religion obsolete, that's just you. It's no harder to come up with a conspiracy theory that allows for Christianity to co-exist with reality than it is for a conspiracy theory that allows for Faked Moon Landings to co-exist with reality.
Other things in similar vein that disprove your religion:
- Ezekiel 7:2, Isaiah 11:12, Revelations 7:1. The Earth has four corners. In reality, The Earth is round and does not have corners. Ergo, Christianity is bullshit. Ban geography!
- Chronicles 4:2. A molten sea is 10 cubits across and 30 cubits around. It should be 31 cubits around according to elementary math. Ergo, Christianity is bullshit. Ban arithmetic!
- Psalms 19:4-6. The Sun is alleged to move around the Earth. In reality, the Earth orbits the Sun. Ergo, Christianity bullshit. Ban astronomy!
- Joshua 10:12-13. The rotation of the Earth is stopped so that the Sun and the Moon may stand still in the sky. This would result in everything not on Earth flying off into space due to the law of conservation of angular momentum. Ergo, Christianity bullshit. Ban physics!
If you don't think that the above are major errors and permit for metaphorical interpretation, then you have no fucking reason to pretend that evolution is incompatible with Christianity. Evolution is just your fucking God's instrument, okay?
Why the fuck do you care about the Genesis anyways? Jesus didn't give much of a damn about the Old Testament. St. Paul of Tarsus liked it, but St. Paul was an asshole before converting and stayed an asshole after.
Now, please don't advocate the slaughter of millions of your countrymen because they happen to teach and have a brain.
Hmm. I'll go with Hoyle or Hubble. Ah. Hubble proved that the Universe is expanding and that other galaxies exist. Close enough.:) Hoyle is a crackpot who died in 2001.
The difficulty of Libertarianism: not 'I must be free' but 'That other jerk must be free, as well'.
Why is that a difficulty?
Perhaps because Libertarianism is an insiduously politically correct way of referring to Feudalism, a system where people are permitted to "willingly" become serfs of others and the concept of economic coercion is Orwelled out. The actual difficulty of Libertarianism is not that 'I must be free to oppress others' but that 'That other jerk must be free to oppress me, as well'.
forums (fori?) just acknowledge the problem;
"forum" is a second declension neuter noun. The Latin plural is "fora".
Designing sites compatible for both major(widely used) browsers (IE and FF) is a pain. And heck AFAIK Opera snubs some css syntax, sheez.
Oh? Like what? -moz-border-radius?
Firefox snubs display:inline-block;, a CSS 2.1 property that's in both Opera and the Microsoft thingie. To replace it, you need to do a lot of fancy magic with float and clear. Oy.
Which brings us to an even more interesting question: how is selective breeding and modern medicine degenerating the human gene pool? Are we going to be muscle-less blobs that can't survive without robots? Are we going to be so stupid that we need computers to run our lives?
Survival-neutral genes may drift through a population, but they don't take over as long as other genes are survival-beneficial.
Or is that only going to be the Slashdot population, and the 'beautiful' people will become more cosmetically disfigured by gigangic breasts and other such desired features? Is that how human women got such big titties in the first place, at least in certain lineages?
Sexual selection could certainly be a factor, but other reasons may be involved. Perhaps larger breasts provide better insulation in cold climates, or perhaps they act as storage for energy-rich fat to help the bearer last through droughts and famines.
So Microsoft initially missed the boat on the Internet. They go on to spend enormous sums of money to destroy Netscape and win the browser war. Once the war is over, what do they do? Nothing. They let the technology stagnate. [...] What was the point of Microsoft trying so hard to destroy another company and take over the market?
Netscape and Sun were mumbling were loudly about how all applications would be delivered through the browser and how that would make the OS irrelevant. Microsoft does not want the OS to be irrelevant or a commodity because Windows is one of its two lone cash crops.
On the other hand, I'm having a hard time resisting the urge to make a crack about how the repeated blows to the head came from an enlarged penis.
You misspelled the term. It's actually an ENRArGED P3NiS.;)
In some contexts, slug is a synonym for "bullet".;)
Seconds are the standard SI unit of time. We should forget about crap like minutes, hours, and the likes and switch to a pure seconds-based system.
There are 86.4 kiloseconds in a day. However, we are not farmers. Day and night don't matter. We should make 100 kiloseconds the standard length of a sleep-wakefulness cycle. My body always wants to stay up for an extra three hours and I pay for it in the morning. With an extra 3.8 standard hours in a "day", we'd be able to stay up longer and sleep in every time.
Certain shorthands will disappear when we switch to seconds, kiloseconds, and megaseconds, but others will arise to take their place. Long-term durations and short-term durations will become much easier to relate to each other.
So...
- Replace days with periods of 100 kiloseconds for an extra 3.8 hours of fun and rest
- Replace weeks with periods of 10 megaseconds. A weekend can last 300 kiloseconds (or more). w00t!
- Have New Years-style parties every 100 megaseconds. Sweeeeeeet.:)
- Forget the damn astrological bs of days, months, and years. What has the moon ever done for you? Nothing! Then why should you give a damn about it? It's easier to just do everything in seconds.:)
Uh, look harder. It does have very obvious scalable icons.;)
Well, you are assuming that the conditions on the primordial Earth were exceptional. I am not aware of anything in particular that supports that assumption.
Experimentally, we've gotten from basic chemicals to amino acids easily given rather simple hands-off conditions. With a million or a hundred million years of chemical selection, the jump from amino acids to proteins and from proteins to life is very short.
There's the Earth-is-special-because-of-a-huge-Moon theory. It's kinda hand-wavey. Pluto's got a huge moon. Huge moons are unlikely, but not improbable.
There might not be any technological civilizations out there, but bacterial life is not an unreasonable thing to expect. NASA keeps expecting for it to turn up on Mars. Eh.
Uhm.
Okay, say that you are flipping a coin. The probability of getting heads is 50%. As the number of flips approaches infinity, the probability of one or more of them turning out to be heads approaches 100%.
Now, you are rolling a die. The probability of getting a six is 17%. As the number of rolls approaches infinity, the probability of one or mor eof them turning out to be a six approaches 100%.
Finally, you are watching amino acids interact and mingle. The probability of a self-reproducing collective of amino acids forming is, say, 0.000001%. As the number of interactions approaches infinity, the probability of a self-reproducing collective of amino acids forming approaches 100%.
The problem with your approach is that you are assuming infinity is composed of extra nothingness dilutes what is already there. That's not appropriate for this thought experiment. The assumption is not that time approaches infinity, but that applicable instances approach infinity.
Religion is a conspiracy theory. There's no room for your Christian God or pretty much any other sort of supernatural in the universe that we know without a huge fudge factor. I'd much rather you didn't choose to fudge reality that much, but it's a free planet...
America: Okay, have a cigar.
Canada: Nah, but thanks. We prefer Cuban.:)
Sounds more like spyware than a virus. The difference is that viruses are written by individuals, while spyware is written by corporations. Anti-virus applications don't remove spyware because the corporations that write spyware would sue them. You want Spybot Search & Destroy or some analogue.
Also, you should find a utility for digging through startup items. Stuff like FindFast and Office Startup needs to be eradicated. I'd recommend X-Setup, but it seems to have turned into shareware since the last time I had a use for it.
"If the planet's environment is life-friendly, then it's only a matter of time before life evolves on it."
And you base this one what? An empirical basis of exactly 1 instance? Pretty presumptious of you.
Not really. Since life evolved once, the probability of life evolving is greater than zero. Ergo, given arbitrarily sufficient time, the probability of life having evolved will approach 100%. Unfortunately, time required for life to evolve may exceed the lifespan of even the universe. The grandparent post is technically correct, but it's not a particularly useful form of correct.
I think you mean:
Historically, Wien has always been to the german speaking world what Carthage was to the Greeks - the centre of learning and the export of culture and ideas.
...a successful Linuks experiment will "trickle down"...
Actually, Carthage was a Phoenician city perpetually at war with the Greek colony of Syracuse. It was not renowned for learning.
Linus deserves a pat on the back for his bargaining prowess.
Linus is, quite obviously, not involved with this. He's a programmer and an architect, not a marketer.
There is an 'x' in the German alphabet, so this is an intentional misspelling.
* yes, we are the country with the tazmanian devils
Actually, Tasmanian Devils live in Tasmania, an island province of Australia just to the south of the main landmass. They shouldn't be in New Zealand at all.
*I'm not really a New Zealander
It shows.:)
Not to put too fine a point on it, but any Christian knowingly involved in Moon's coronation as Returning Messiah would be guilty of apostacy.
What if Moon is is the Returning Messiah?
Several fundamentalist Christians I know, have no trouble at all understanding that Genesis is allegory.
What's your definition of a fundamentalist Christian if it's not one who interprets Genesis literally?
Thank God I am a killer robot from the future.