Good web site, showing the christian objection to evolution in a way that all anti-creationists can understand.
And attached, an article wholy reproduced, stating a common christian objection to the 'but its not scientific', 'Creationism isn't science.' 'They don't understand the rules of what science is, or they deliberately ignore them.' objections:
The rules of the game As the 'rules' of science are now defined, creation is forbidden as a conclusion--even if true. by Carl Wieland
'Creationism isn't science.'
'They don't understand the rules of what science is, or they deliberately ignore them.'
Comments such as these flow readily from the pens of the many critics of the modern creationist movement. Why are such comments so widely and passionately believed? I believe that the only rule creationists are 'breaking' is one which cannot be said to properly belong to a scientific inquiry into origins, and which effectively imposes a religious dogma upon science.
Rhonda Jones (Professor of Zoology, James Cook University, Townsville, Australia) is one who has reacted with what she calls 'stunned indignation' to the suggestion that science students should have evidence for creation presented to them along with evidence for evolution (Quadrant, August, 1988).
She gives two criteria which she feels are universal to all definitions of science. She insists that evolutionary theory meets both requirements, but creationism meets neither. Let's examine these.
Correctibility (1) 'Correctibility -- some acknowledgment that what we currently think can be changed by future discoveries.' It is a common caricature of creationism to paint it as a fixed, immovable set of ideas that leaves no room for change or discussion, as opposed to 'real' science (read 'evolutionary theorizing') which is vibrantly alive with constantly changing ideas and concepts refined by new evidence. This is, of course, simply not true. There are, always have been, and presumably always will be many healthy scientific controversies among creation-oriented scientists. The speed of light decay theory is just one example that springs to mind (this is the belief that the speed of light is not constant, but has been decreasing).
It is true that there is a 'bottom line' in the creationist framework belief in the literal truth of Genesis. However, there is a 'bottom line' for evolutionary theorists too just as fixed and immovable, in my experience. It too is a belief that the world has made itself. Put another way, it is a belief that natural processes and causes must have been sufficient to build planets and people from particles.
There are indeed many controversies about the mechanism of this self-transformation. Opinions shift and scientists are often willing to correct and abandon their ideas about how evolution happened. But they are not prepared to abandon the bottom line, the belief that some sort of evolution did occur. To put it another way, the how of evolution is negotiable, but not the whether.
At the 1967 Wistar Institute Symposium, top-level evolutionary biologists and mathematicians met to mathematically test the idea of evolution by mutation/selection. When the super-computers finished crunching their numbers, it was obvious that the answer was 'impossible'. It was reported that when someone very cautiously (maybe even rhetorically) asked whether this meant that perhaps one should look at special creation as an option, there were loud cries of 'No!' 'No!' from the floor.
Study Nature (2) 'A commitment to finding out how the world works by studying the natural world itself.' Creationist scientists are of course equally committed to this statement, since you will notice it refers to 'how the world works'
Excelent summary. Now only one question remains, which is the one I am looking for on this page, is his asertion true or false?
If it is true, we have misnamed the steps, and the proof is in reality, what do we need to do to change reality and ensure delivery of projects on time - on budget - to requirements?
And if it is false, lets see the proof.
None of the stakeholders (*the ones who are paying for the software) care one jot what the programmers and designers call themselves or the steps. They simply care that when someone says "that'll take $500k and 1000 man hours to give you what you want" that it really does cost that to deliver. And works, first time. Just like most houses / bridges / other engineering works!
I would like to posit a reply as to why there is such a big fuss.
Most orthodox Protestants and Catholics believe that the central figure of their faith, Jesus Christ the Messiah (the saviour), is the literal Son of God.
They believe that he alone is able to mitigate the certain punishment, by God, of their sins (bad deeds) on judgement day, by merit of his resurection (return to life after death on the cross).
They also believe that the eventual punishment of their sins (as stated by the standard protestant and catholic bible) is demonstrated by the observed nature of sickness / decay and death on this planet. I.e. human death is caused by sin, and the advent of an eventual judgement day is certain.
The main problem then that they (the orthodox believers) have with evolution is that creationism states that "death is the result of sin (bad deeds)" whilst evolution implies that "death is the natural order of things".
If they accept that "death is the natural order of things" they feel that it implies that "death is not the result of sin" and therefore "no eventual eternal punishment for Sin." as both belief's are proven to be false.
"No punishment" equates to "No need for a Messiah", ergo no need for Jesus Christ.
This is what all the fuss is about. It appears that Evolution strikes at the very main root of their faith.
And they should be upset if there is any actual proof of Evolution.
A far easier way is to wait for the spam problem to get really bad and then start requesting that all systems that are sending you email put their own GPG key on outbound email.
voila! instand sender verification, which is the real problem. Then when people can be sure that email that arrives is identifiable, people will start to stop worrying about non-spam destruction.
If you are a small setup, verification will ensure that anything that is important to you won't get destroyed, whilst anything that can't be verified can be held or deleted. We are allready seeing this with spam detection now. The bar will get higher and the spammers will slow down to acceptable levels.
Once spam stops working financially, spam-sending will stop too.
1) put stake in center of garden, tie motorised lawnmower to stake 2) start lawnmower at edge of garden with rope taut, let motorised mower go , sit on deck chair on edge of lawn reading paper, glance up every so often 3) PROFIT! as mower circles round stake rope slack will be drawn up and motorised mower will move in ever decreasing circles till lawn is done
Added Benefits : any anoying items in path of mower such as toys / stupid garden flowers that wife likes/ slow pets / unclaimed junk mail etc will be shreded and removed.
I too use my combi palm / cell (kyocera 7135) all the time and wouldn't be without it for the world.
However I couldn't write on it in most meetings as fast as I would like to take down notes, its too slow. I often transcribe the information after the meeting and I am considering investing in an external keyboard or usb transfer device.
How do you manage to take down the notes quick enough?
The biggest problem with a proper PDA that most slashdotters don't realise is that the geek crowd aren't the target market. I use the pda to make money from, I am a consultant where the ability to remember huge ammounts of information/ such as contacts / meetings / notes etc is directly relatable to my income, therefore the cost is immaterial to me.
The ability to stay organised at this price is fine for me, I care only about the ability to get the information into my palm quicker!!
Good point, though it doesn't help me. Whether or not these extensions (if in this case it is an extension) were purposely done to lock users in (in this case perhaps not) the fact remains that it does act as a barrier to porting to a free solution.
thanks for your valuable input, i'm not going to continue this discussion further (mainly because I have to get soime work done before the boss finds me slacking!!)
with regards to the assumptions, I wasn't refering to whether or not you (and the posters of said assumptions) had an opinion of my customers usage, I was making a reference to the fact that your reply was typical of postgres' user response to the issue of case insensativity.
I have no idea whether or not MS-SQL's ability to store characters in a variety of different sets is part of the SQL standard, ASNI 92 or otherwise, I am merely selfishly interested in the fact that it is a common feature available by default to MS SQL users, that is not available in any useable format to Postgres users.
I am also not making a blame on Postgres or anyone with regards to said feature, casting of blame isn't necessary as I am not a judge.
Again I am merely pointing out the fact that this barrier to porting MS SQL apps exist, and the response you gave is typical amongst postgres users when faced with the case-insensativity problem, yet in practice isn't useable.
I would welcome a more practical solution, else in the mean time I will be forced to wait whilst the postgres team decide on whether or not to implement this capability.
How very true. This is why money is so widely miss-understood. Money (price/cost etc) has a "time" component as well as a "trust" component.
For a product to be used, the very first thing that must occur, from the sellers point of view, is that there must be a demand. Your loss of time has increased a demand for a product, that demand doesn't exist in other segments of the market. (i.e. geeks with heaps of time on their hands)
From the buyers point of view, the first step in the buying process is an awareness of a problem, that may be solveable via a solution.
If there is no problem for the buyer, or at least no awareness that there is a problem, no purchase descsion will be entered into, as there is nothing to fix.
Most PC users see windows (and related software) as the solution to a number of problems, none of which are in the majority unsolved, in their opinions.
Hence there is no need for linux in the mass consumer market as there is no problem that it can solve.
so all this talk about making linux for the masses isn't going to work as the masses don't even have a problem that linux can solve yet!!!!
Your reply, like the suggestions on the postgres site, are based on the assumption that my users are comfortable with sql and that thousands of screens and reports and queries can be re-written just to do case-insensative sorts.
Oh and that the lower/upper function will perform reasonably well given the large record sets returned.
Ironically the case issue is a make or break for my users. Not sure why but there you have it.
as for case sensative sorts, no trouble. In sql simply store the data using a case sensative charater set. Don't confuse the functions with the stored data character sets.
If Postgres is so clever, why can't i do sort orders and case-insensative searches without using functions of some sort or other workarounds? MS SQL server can store the data in case-insensative order, why can't postgresql?
(this one thing has stopped us using postgresql as a replacement backend to our sql-powered client)
Rock solid? lets see proper multi-threaded multi-cpu queries working, lets see the memory limitations removed, lets see the multi cpu stupid wait states problem resolved.
Your point about the community networking concept is great, and as you pointed out, one of the original intentions of the internet was to provide redundancy for DARPA.
However, the barrier to that problem is that the combination of purchasing a PC from a recognised retailer along with installed OS, Browser and modem, combined with the presence of made-for-dummies ISP's ensures that the largely non-tech population can get onto the internet.
Can you imagine the required "help / infrastructure / support" etc that would be needed to get newbies to connect to each other to ensure the same level of service and support that people via AOL etc receive now?? And most will be doing it without profit, for few community groups make a profit.
Your point is valid, but I suspect that type of community network will highly likely to turn out to be similar to the HAM radio model existing now, a hobby, but no where close to the internet as we know it now.
Thanks for taking the time to reply, It was interesting to read of your turn to athesisim.
I myself struggled with my faith during my late teenage years, but we come from different backgrounds, as neither of my parents were "religious" in any sense of the term when I came to the church.
My parents sent my brother and I to church when we were five so that they could sleep in on a sunday morning! not a bad idea and as the youth paster picked us up in his van I always thought it was a cunning way to get parents to send their children to church!
Anyhow I made a comitment to Christ when I was 13 and then was baptised when I was 17. The years I struggled with most were during my early tertiary educational years, struggling with my lifestyle choices compared to how I felt a christian should live his life.
As I have grown physically as well as spiritually, I have come to see that for me personally, every difficult situation I have faced has been made a million times easier because of my faith in Christ. My life is truly blessed by having a personal relationship with God, and although my life is pock-marked with personal failure and defeat, every fall has been marked by a following renewed uplifiting and understanding of the permenance of my relation-ship with Christ.
Now I am actually able to experience real peace and joy at the most difficult moments of my life because of the many times before when I have felt miserable and Christ has helped me through.
The reason I have stuck with my faith mostly though, in moments of huge self doubt and pain, has not been just becuase of the awesome nature of going moment-by-moment, day-by-day walking through my crazy life with the God of the universe, IT has been because of this.....
When Jesus was asked by the greater disciples (not just the twelve but the Jews who had been following him as their teacher and wanted to know him more) "What must we do to do the works God requires?" (Jn 6) Jesus answered, "The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent."
He then went on to list just why they should believe in Him, because he was the only way to eternal life and a relationship with the Father. When the greater disciples heard this, many turned away and Jesus was left mainly with the tweleve. When Jesus turned to the twelve and said v67 ' "You do not want to leave too, do you?",
Simon Peter's answer is why I personally stick it out,
v68 Simon Peter answered him, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. 69We believe and know that you are the Holy One of God."
(http://bible.gospelcom.net/cgi-bin/bible?langua ge =english&passage=john+6&version=NIV)
That is why i stick it out, when even faith leaves me and doubt takes over, I am asured of the bible and its truths based on that one passage, there is no where else to turn to for me. I have tried many other options and they never work for me, peace and joy are mine whilst I stay close to God, praying daily and trusting in him. It is this simple fact that draws me back to him.
For yourself, one last personal question, if I may so bold, have you found your atheistic beliefs to provide you with the same joy & comfort that you received when you gave your whole heart at 17? (did you receive that joy and comfort at 17 that I profess now?)
I appreciate I have asked personal questions you may not wish to answer, you are free to ignore me as I am on the other side of the world to you!!!!
I trust you receive my questions in the humblness I hope I am transmitting. In our world much good work is undone by Christians and those who profess to be Christians because of a lack of sensativity and general thoughtlesness.
It has always been of great comfort to me to note that those who were closest to God and to Christ in the bible were the very worst sort of people (viewed in human eyes) , Murder'ers, rapists, adulteerers, theives and the like. Yet it is those to
The parent is a very accurate description of why the internet is still not viewed correctly by/. techies.
The problem is that the internet is exactly as the parent describes it, nothing more than a medium for comunication (end points be damned!), just like the air we breathe is a natural medium for voice, light, tv & radio waves.
the average human cares very little about the medium when it comes down to technical details (other than the extreme desire to breathe it when it is not present!)
And here in lies the problem, the content, just like t.v., is in fact all the average user cares about. This is why the average IT person is not alowed to run-the-world!!! People do not give a shit about the techie stuff.
The content is the only thing of importance once the medium becomes stable infrastructure which simply fades into the background. (think air, and perhaps more literally postal service or road , telephone or electricity networks)
And don't forget that unlike air, which is nearly impossible to regulate and yet the FCC seems to have regulated it quite nicely, the average owner of the large backbone pipes can easily and heavily regulate the "internet". So can the average isp, because most cannot afford to setup their own isp, unlike the ability to setup a t.v. / radio or ham receiver or even just simply talk to someone.
All this freedom-of-information crap is bollocks.
The internet will not remain "free" for much longer, mark my words. Where there is an opportunity to make money, greed will appear, followed shortly by "government". Otherwise anyone could set up a t.v. or radio station.
Prediction: in less than ten years we will see the internet as we know it now to become a heavily regulated medium having two or more major appearances (i) corporate owned and sponsered content, and (ii) ham radio / comunity owned and heavily regulated free but esentially crap.
Wow, what a lot of pain, I'm truly sad to hear of your experiences.
My wife and I (she's non-geek and we've made nine years of marriage so far...) read your postings and then did a bit of research in our bible.
We read that divorce was only permitted by Moses, but that its not supposed to be that way (rough paraphrase, read the stuff yourself in Matt 19) and that if possible Christ says we should forgive. He then is told by the disciples that to forgive is so hard (again my paraphrase) that its better not to marry. So Jesus says that this command, to forgive, is only binding on those to whom accept it.
My question is, have you considered forgiving? and if so have you considered the possibility that it is Jesus who can give you the strength to forgive?
Just to qualify my question, I'm convinced that I myself would find it almost impossible to forgive my own wife (and she would find it equally as difficult to forgive me ) such a "crime". But the fact remains that Jesus said this, and promises in other places in scripture to be there to help us with strength through the tough times.
Just a thought, please don't think I am preaching, I have no real experience on this matter! And like I said before, I'm almost sure I would be unable to accept it!
some quick googling failed to turn up how to go about this, and my postgresql is limited (though i've been a DBA for over ten years so i'm reasonably quick)
could you give me a pointer on where to start researching this option, the Postgresql web site and related docs don't make mention of case-insenstivity in relation to locales, and the relevant research looks like the indices ignore the locale settings anyhow, so searches may turn up nothing?
cheers, though i have this information already, in the standard faq for postgresql. the problem is performance, and the fact that the use of a function often invalidates index usage.
in MS SQL a different character code page and sort order is offered for the various languages types around the world , the default is case in-sensative english.
My customers would love to take advantage of postgres but won't consider losing functionality as basic as case insensative searches, and performance loss is not acceptable.
the other suggestions are based on similar ideas, none of which are good for performance.
I also wondered about the OLAP support, and trawled through the blurb and didn't find a thing. I suspect like the other responder that its generic speed related rather than a decent OLAP interface.
The day we can use Postgresql as a cheap alternative to MS SQL for DW (when the client won't cough up for a decent DB like informix / red brick or DB2) Postgresql will have arrived!
Slashdot Mirror
http://www.answersingenesis.org/
Good web site, showing the christian objection to evolution in a way that all anti-creationists can understand.
And attached, an article wholy reproduced, stating a common christian objection to the 'but its not scientific', 'Creationism isn't science.' 'They don't understand the rules of what science is,
or they deliberately ignore them.' objections:
jech
http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v11/i1/ru les.asp
The rules of the game
As the 'rules' of science are now defined, creation is forbidden as a conclusion--even if true.
by Carl Wieland
'Creationism isn't science.'
'They don't understand the rules of what science is,
or they deliberately ignore them.'
Comments such as these flow readily from the pens of the many critics of the modern creationist movement. Why are such comments so widely and passionately believed? I believe that the only rule creationists are 'breaking' is one which cannot be said to properly belong to a scientific inquiry into origins, and which effectively imposes a religious dogma upon science.
Rhonda Jones (Professor of Zoology, James Cook University, Townsville, Australia) is one who has reacted with what she calls 'stunned indignation' to the suggestion that science students should have evidence for creation presented to them along with evidence for evolution (Quadrant, August, 1988).
She gives two criteria which she feels are universal to all definitions of science. She insists that evolutionary theory meets both requirements, but creationism meets neither. Let's examine these.
Correctibility
(1) 'Correctibility -- some acknowledgment that what we currently think can be changed by future discoveries.'
It is a common caricature of creationism to paint it as a fixed, immovable set of ideas that leaves no room for change or discussion, as opposed to 'real' science (read 'evolutionary theorizing') which is vibrantly alive with constantly changing ideas and concepts refined by new evidence. This is, of course, simply not true. There are, always have been, and presumably always will be many healthy scientific controversies among creation-oriented scientists. The speed of light decay theory is just one example that springs to mind (this is the belief that the speed of light is not constant, but has been decreasing).
It is true that there is a 'bottom line' in the creationist framework belief in the literal truth of Genesis. However, there is a 'bottom line' for evolutionary theorists too just as fixed and immovable, in my experience. It too is a belief that the world has made itself. Put another way, it is a belief that natural processes and causes must have been sufficient to build planets and people from particles.
There are indeed many controversies about the mechanism of this self-transformation. Opinions shift and scientists are often willing to correct and abandon their ideas about how evolution happened. But they are not prepared to abandon the bottom line, the belief that some sort of evolution did occur. To put it another way, the how of evolution is negotiable, but not the whether.
At the 1967 Wistar Institute Symposium, top-level evolutionary biologists and mathematicians met to mathematically test the idea of evolution by mutation/selection. When the super-computers finished crunching their numbers, it was obvious that the answer was 'impossible'. It was reported that when someone very cautiously (maybe even rhetorically) asked whether this meant that perhaps one should look at special creation as an option, there were loud cries of 'No!' 'No!' from the floor.
Study Nature
(2) 'A commitment to finding out how the world works by studying the natural world itself.'
Creationist scientists are of course equally committed to this statement, since you will notice it refers to 'how the world works'
Excelent summary. Now only one question remains, which is the one I am looking for on this page, is his asertion true or false?
If it is true, we have misnamed the steps, and the proof is in reality, what do we need to do to change reality and ensure delivery of projects on time - on budget - to requirements?
And if it is false, lets see the proof.
None of the stakeholders (*the ones who are paying for the software) care one jot what the programmers and designers call themselves or the steps. They simply care that when someone says "that'll take $500k and 1000 man hours to give you what you want" that it really does cost that to deliver. And works, first time. Just like most houses / bridges / other engineering works!
jech.
Or alternatively these things SCREAM, "something has gone horribly wrong". jech
I would like to posit a reply as to why there is such a big fuss.
Most orthodox Protestants and Catholics believe that the central figure of their faith, Jesus Christ the Messiah (the saviour), is the literal Son of God.
They believe that he alone is able to mitigate the certain punishment, by God, of their sins (bad deeds) on judgement day, by merit of his resurection (return to life after death on the cross).
They also believe that the eventual punishment of their sins (as stated by the standard protestant and catholic bible) is demonstrated by the observed nature of sickness / decay and death on this planet. I.e. human death is caused by sin, and the advent of an eventual judgement day is certain.
The main problem then that they (the orthodox believers) have with evolution is that creationism states that "death is the result of sin (bad deeds)" whilst evolution implies that "death is the natural order of things".
If they accept that "death is the natural order of things" they feel that it implies that "death is not the result of sin" and therefore "no eventual eternal punishment for Sin." as both belief's are proven to be false.
"No punishment" equates to "No need for a Messiah", ergo no need for Jesus Christ.
This is what all the fuss is about. It appears that Evolution strikes at the very main root of their faith.
And they should be upset if there is any actual proof of Evolution.
Jech.
A far easier way is to wait for the spam problem to get really bad and then start requesting that all systems that are sending you email put their own GPG key on outbound email. voila! instand sender verification, which is the real problem. Then when people can be sure that email that arrives is identifiable, people will start to stop worrying about non-spam destruction. If you are a small setup, verification will ensure that anything that is important to you won't get destroyed, whilst anything that can't be verified can be held or deleted. We are allready seeing this with spam detection now. The bar will get higher and the spammers will slow down to acceptable levels. Once spam stops working financially, spam-sending will stop too.
Overkill,
1) put stake in center of garden, tie motorised lawnmower to stake
2) start lawnmower at edge of garden with rope taut, let motorised mower go , sit on deck chair on edge of lawn reading paper, glance up every so often
3) PROFIT! as mower circles round stake rope slack will be drawn up and motorised mower will move in ever decreasing circles till lawn is done
Added Benefits : any anoying items in path of mower such as toys / stupid garden flowers that wife likes/ slow pets / unclaimed junk mail etc will be shreded and removed.
volia!
I too use my combi palm / cell (kyocera 7135) all the time and wouldn't be without it for the world.
However I couldn't write on it in most meetings as fast as I would like to take down notes, its too slow. I often transcribe the information after the meeting and I am considering investing in an external keyboard or usb transfer device.
How do you manage to take down the notes quick enough?
The biggest problem with a proper PDA that most slashdotters don't realise is that the geek crowd aren't the target market. I use the pda to make money from, I am a consultant where the ability to remember huge ammounts of information/ such as contacts / meetings / notes etc is directly relatable to my income, therefore the cost is immaterial to me.
The ability to stay organised at this price is fine for me, I care only about the ability to get the information into my palm quicker!!
jech
Good point, though it doesn't help me. Whether or not these extensions (if in this case it is an extension) were purposely done to lock users in (in this case perhaps not) the fact remains that it does act as a barrier to porting to a free solution.
thanks for your valuable input, i'm not going to continue this discussion further (mainly because I have to get soime work done before the boss finds me slacking!!)
cheers
Jech
Hi,
with regards to the assumptions, I wasn't refering to whether or not you (and the posters of said assumptions) had an opinion of my customers usage, I was making a reference to the fact that your reply was typical of postgres' user response to the issue of case insensativity.
I have no idea whether or not MS-SQL's ability to store characters in a variety of different sets is part of the SQL standard, ASNI 92 or otherwise, I am merely selfishly interested in the fact that it is a common feature available by default to MS SQL users, that is not available in any useable format to Postgres users.
I am also not making a blame on Postgres or anyone with regards to said feature, casting of blame isn't necessary as I am not a judge.
Again I am merely pointing out the fact that this barrier to porting MS SQL apps exist, and the response you gave is typical amongst postgres users when faced with the case-insensativity problem, yet in practice isn't useable.
I would welcome a more practical solution, else in the mean time I will be forced to wait whilst the postgres team decide on whether or not to implement this capability.
jech
How very true. This is why money is so widely miss-understood. Money (price/cost etc) has a "time" component as well as a "trust" component.
For a product to be used, the very first thing that must occur, from the sellers point of view, is that there must be a demand. Your loss of time has increased a demand for a product, that demand doesn't exist in other segments of the market. (i.e. geeks with heaps of time on their hands)
From the buyers point of view, the first step in the buying process is an awareness of a problem, that may be solveable via a solution.
If there is no problem for the buyer, or at least no awareness that there is a problem, no purchase descsion will be entered into, as there is nothing to fix.
Most PC users see windows (and related software) as the solution to a number of problems, none of which are in the majority unsolved, in their opinions.
Hence there is no need for linux in the mass consumer market as there is no problem that it can solve.
so all this talk about making linux for the masses isn't going to work as the masses don't even have a problem that linux can solve yet!!!!
jech
Your reply, like the suggestions on the postgres site, are based on the assumption that my users are comfortable with sql and that thousands of screens and reports and queries can be re-written just to do case-insensative sorts.
Oh and that the lower/upper function will perform reasonably well given the large record sets returned.
Ironically the case issue is a make or break for my users. Not sure why but there you have it.
as for case sensative sorts, no trouble. In sql simply store the data using a case sensative charater set. Don't confuse the functions with the stored data character sets.
jech
If Postgres is so clever, why can't i do sort orders and case-insensative searches without using functions of some sort or other workarounds? MS SQL server can store the data in case-insensative order, why can't postgresql?
(this one thing has stopped us using postgresql as a replacement backend to our sql-powered client)
jech
Rock solid? lets see proper multi-threaded multi-cpu queries working, lets see the memory limitations removed, lets see the multi cpu stupid wait states problem resolved.
please.....
Thanks for the reply and the discussion and good luck with the counseling!
Jech
Your point about the community networking concept is great, and as you pointed out, one of the original intentions of the internet was to provide redundancy for DARPA.
However, the barrier to that problem is that the combination of purchasing a PC from a recognised retailer along with installed OS, Browser and modem, combined with the presence of made-for-dummies ISP's ensures that the largely non-tech population can get onto the internet.
Can you imagine the required "help / infrastructure / support" etc that would be needed to get newbies to connect to each other to ensure the same level of service and support that people via AOL etc receive now?? And most will be doing it without profit, for few community groups make a profit.
Your point is valid, but I suspect that type of community network will highly likely to turn out to be similar to the HAM radio model existing now, a hobby, but no where close to the internet as we know it now.
jech
HI, thanks for taking the time to reply, just a quick thought, I was under the impression from my physics clases that sound didn't travel in a vacume?
I could be wrong as i didn't get a high mark in physics if i recall correctly!!! haha.
jech
Thanks for taking the time to reply, It was interesting to read of your turn to athesisim.
,
I myself struggled with my faith during my late teenage years, but we come from different backgrounds, as neither of my parents were "religious" in any sense of the term when I came to the church.
My parents sent my brother and I to church when we were five so that they could sleep in on a sunday morning! not a bad idea and as the youth paster picked us up in his van I always thought it was a cunning way to get parents to send their children to church!
Anyhow I made a comitment to Christ when I was 13 and then was baptised when I was 17. The years I struggled with most were during my early tertiary educational years, struggling with my lifestyle choices compared to how I felt a christian should live his life.
As I have grown physically as well as spiritually, I have come to see that for me personally, every difficult situation I have faced has been made a million times easier because of my faith in Christ. My life is truly blessed by having a personal relationship with God, and although my life is pock-marked with personal failure and defeat, every fall has been marked by a following renewed uplifiting and understanding of the permenance of my relation-ship with Christ.
Now I am actually able to experience real peace and joy at the most difficult moments of my life because of the many times before when I have felt miserable and Christ has helped me through.
The reason I have stuck with my faith mostly though, in moments of huge self doubt and pain, has not been just becuase of the awesome nature of going moment-by-moment, day-by-day walking through my crazy life with the God of the universe, IT has been because of this.....
When Jesus was asked by the greater disciples (not just the twelve but the Jews who had been following him as their teacher and wanted to know him more) "What must we do to do the works God requires?" (Jn 6) Jesus answered, "The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent."
He then went on to list just why they should believe in Him, because he was the only way to eternal life and a relationship with the Father. When the greater disciples heard this, many turned away and Jesus was left mainly with the tweleve. When Jesus turned to the twelve and said v67 ' "You do not want to leave too, do you?"
Simon Peter's answer is why I personally stick it out,
v68 Simon Peter answered him, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. 69We believe and know that you are the Holy One of God."
(http://bible.gospelcom.net/cgi-bin/bible?langua ge =english&passage=john+6&version=NIV)
That is why i stick it out, when even faith leaves me and doubt takes over, I am asured of the bible and its truths based on that one passage, there is no where else to turn to for me. I have tried many other options and they never work for me, peace and joy are mine whilst I stay close to God, praying daily and trusting in him. It is this simple fact that draws me back to him.
For yourself, one last personal question, if I may so bold, have you found your atheistic beliefs to provide you with the same joy & comfort that you received when you gave your whole heart at 17? (did you receive that joy and comfort at 17 that I profess now?)
I appreciate I have asked personal questions you may not wish to answer, you are free to ignore me as I am on the other side of the world to you!!!!
I trust you receive my questions in the humblness I hope I am transmitting. In our world much good work is undone by Christians and those who profess to be Christians because of a lack of sensativity and general thoughtlesness.
It has always been of great comfort to me to note that those who were closest to God and to Christ in the bible were the very worst sort of people (viewed in human eyes) , Murder'ers, rapists, adulteerers, theives and the like. Yet it is those to
The parent is a very accurate description of why the internet is still not viewed correctly by /. techies.
The problem is that the internet is exactly as the parent describes it, nothing more than a medium for comunication (end points be damned!), just like the air we breathe is a natural medium for voice, light, tv & radio waves.
the average human cares very little about the medium when it comes down to technical details (other than the extreme desire to breathe it when it is not present!)
And here in lies the problem, the content, just like t.v., is in fact all the average user cares about. This is why the average IT person is not alowed to run-the-world!!! People do not give a shit about the techie stuff.
The content is the only thing of importance once the medium becomes stable infrastructure which simply fades into the background. (think air, and perhaps more literally postal service or road , telephone or electricity networks)
And don't forget that unlike air, which is nearly impossible to regulate and yet the FCC seems to have regulated it quite nicely, the average owner of the large backbone pipes can easily and heavily regulate the "internet". So can the average isp, because most cannot afford to setup their own isp, unlike the ability to setup a t.v. / radio or ham receiver or even just simply talk to someone.
All this freedom-of-information crap is bollocks.
The internet will not remain "free" for much longer, mark my words. Where there is an opportunity to make money, greed will appear, followed shortly by "government". Otherwise anyone could set up a t.v. or radio station.
Prediction: in less than ten years we will see the internet as we know it now to become a heavily regulated medium having two or more major appearances (i) corporate owned and sponsered content, and (ii) ham radio / comunity owned and heavily regulated free but esentially crap.
jech
Wow, what a lot of pain, I'm truly sad to hear of your experiences.
My wife and I (she's non-geek and we've made nine years of marriage so far...) read your postings and then did a bit of research in our bible.
We read that divorce was only permitted by Moses, but that its not supposed to be that way (rough paraphrase, read the stuff yourself in Matt 19) and that if possible Christ says we should forgive. He then is told by the disciples that to forgive is so hard (again my paraphrase) that its better not to marry. So Jesus says that this command, to forgive, is only binding on those to whom accept it.
My question is, have you considered forgiving? and if so have you considered the possibility that it is Jesus who can give you the strength to forgive?
Just to qualify my question, I'm convinced that I myself would find it almost impossible to forgive my own wife (and she would find it equally as difficult to forgive me ) such a "crime". But the fact remains that Jesus said this, and promises in other places in scripture to be there to help us with strength through the tough times.
Just a thought, please don't think I am preaching, I have no real experience on this matter! And like I said before, I'm almost sure I would be unable to accept it!
God bless you no matter what course you choose.
jech
it is , i've just finished reading it this weekend.
jech
BUGGER, i've just realised that should be 20,000 leagues (my memory is really shot these days!)
jech
so nobody else thought of captain nemo, living under water totally self-reliant, never comming up for air unless he wanted to?
at $60k perhaps i can build a home built one and live under the water for ever?
man the mind boggles!
jech
some quick googling failed to turn up how to go about this, and my postgresql is limited (though i've been a DBA for over ten years so i'm reasonably quick)
could you give me a pointer on where to start researching this option, the Postgresql web site and related docs don't make mention of case-insenstivity in relation to locales, and the relevant research looks like the indices ignore the locale settings anyhow, so searches may turn up nothing?
have i understood this correctly?
ta
jech
cheers, though i have this information already, in the standard faq for postgresql. the problem is performance, and the fact that the use of a function often invalidates index usage.
in MS SQL a different character code page and sort order is offered for the various languages types around the world , the default is case in-sensative english.
My customers would love to take advantage of postgres but won't consider losing functionality as basic as case insensative searches, and performance loss is not acceptable.
the other suggestions are based on similar ideas, none of which are good for performance.
jech
I also wondered about the OLAP support, and trawled through the blurb and didn't find a thing. I suspect like the other responder that its generic speed related rather than a decent OLAP interface.
The day we can use Postgresql as a cheap alternative to MS SQL for DW (when the client won't cough up for a decent DB like informix / red brick or DB2) Postgresql will have arrived!
jech