Here's one. I would predict that, if there was an intelligent designer, it would look as though the parameters of the universe and our position in it were extremely fine-tuned, and that it would be extremely improbable (say on the order of 1 * 10^(1 with as many 0's as there are particles in the universe) that these things could have happened without a high degree of intentionality.
Thus far, that has been seen to be the case. Many of the basic parameters of the universe, if they're are changed in the slightest, produce an uninhabitable universe. Furthermore, moving the earth's orbit out just a little bit, making the moon just a little bigger, making our sun anything other than the virtually perfect size it is right now, or moving us just a little farther out from the center of the Milky Way makes life an impossibility. What's even more damning is not that there's life here, but that there's such complex life here. Even smaller changes in the above make multicelluar life impossible. Even more interesting is how we appear to be in just the perfect place for observing the rest of the universe, as if somebody wanted us to discover stuff.
The research certainly isn't done yet, but so far, it doesn't look likely at all that a planet could support life without a lot of help from a friend. And it looks like this friend had humans in the cards when he first started working.
...which leads us to two more unreasonable conclusions...
1) Nothing exists. Descartes did a pretty good job of refuting this possibility.
2) I'm assuming that you're hinting all matter is eternal. This still gives us an infinite backwards regression of time. Even if time "stops" when you go back to a certain point, you still need something to start time and get things moving. This certainly wouldn't be from within the universe, because time would be stopped (there's no change in the physical world when delta t = 0).
A chimera or pegasus wouldn't falsify evolution. It could just be that we didn't find similar fossils yet. Evolution isn't hurt at all as a hypothesis.
Likewise, if somebody finds a perfectly reasonable unguided process that could have produced cilia, Dr. Michael Behe's claims in [u]Darwin's Black Box[/u] would be null and void. Evolution would have more explaining power, and ID would have less.
Most of the scientists who are supporting unguided evolution could not be religious, because if they were they would be contradicting themselves. The most extreme position on evolution mandates that it was the source of all life, and that a creator was not necessary. Are most scientists that dumb?
We don't have any evidence of evolution, either. All we have is neutral evidence (as in, it doesn't on its own point to anything) that fits the model of evolution. There's also plenty of neutral evidence that fits the evidence of ID, such as the research done by Behe and biological "black boxes", consciousness, the incredible fine tuning of the universe, DNA, etc, etc. Incidentally, the evidence used in pro-ID arguments doesn't fit in the evolution model, while the evidence used in the pro-evolution/abiogenesis arguments does fit the ID model.
We can deduce the probability of a given model by how much explaining power it has. This is exactly what we do in a court room, as well as anywhere else where we can't just replay the whole situation.
Thus far, ID has much more explaining power than evolution/abiogenesis/etc. It doesn't mean that the latter has to be dismissed, but it certainly means that the former should not be dismissed.
Is unguided evolution/materialism/whatever you personally call it falsifiable?
What we can do with ID is take individual entities and look at their complexity to see whether or not the odds are on them arising independently or requiring a creator. If it looks like no creator would be needed for that entity, then we don't count that as evidence.
On the other hand, whenever it looks like something might take more than evolution or other natural forces to create, we ususally hear that "oh, we'll find the missing link later".
If anything, ID is more falsifiable than unguided evolution because at least ID'ers are performing tests that could fail to uphold their feelings on that matter.
So why are the people pushing it almost universally fundamentalist Christians who hold to a literal Biblical interpretation?
Why are the people pushing abiogenesis/evolution mostly athiests? Why does this mean anything?
You have two choices- either there is something that is eternal (as in it's always been there), or there is an infinite backwards regression of creation (being X created by being Y created by being Z, and so on forever). The illogicallity of something actually being infinite forces us to consider the former.
Anyway, it doesn't make any sense to say that something eternal was created, because "eternal" means that it was always there. Something must be uncreated and eternal, or else we have the infinite regression or there was some point where there was absolute nothing.
Intelligent Design has precious little to do with the Bible. It involves researching origins to see what evidence there is for an intelligent designer. It doesn't care who or what that intelligent designer is- it only cares about what it did in making us and the universe. It's not just for fundies- crap, some of it's logical underpinnings are rooted in medieval Muslim philosophy.
What principle demands that any theory involving an intelligent creator must be systematically dismissed from scientific inquiry?
Too much time is spent by some materialism evangelists dissing somebody's holy book or dismissing all religious folks as inbred hicks, and screaming that ID "isn't science". Their a priori exclusion of still-valid hypothesises isn't helping anybody. Who the heck cares if it doesn't fit into somebody's notion of what "science" should be? Scientific inquiry exists apart from any meaningless definition of it. So, why don't we all open our minds a bit and discuss theories on their merits, instead of our prejudices?
Most states list their laws online, so you can go look them up, but most cities don't list their's.
Last year, I was ticketed in Cleveland Hts. Ohio for a noise violation (for blasting Christian rap from my vintage 1988 original (and totally blown out) speaker system in my car). I really wanted to figure out if I had any way out, because the fine was $120, and it seemed really vauge (the officer said that if you can hear something from 50 feet away, it's a violation- well, I could hear his motorcycle from at least that far away!).
I saw on the ticket that you could pay it online, so I went on their online court system, and pulled up my violation. It said that I had violated "ORC ******" (where the *'s are the number which I cannot remember). Of course, ORC stands for "Ohio Revised Code". When I looked it up in the online ORC, the corresponding number had nothing to do with a noise ordinance. I called up the Cleveland Hts. courthouse and let them know that they listed a state number for a city ordinance, and then I asked if there was any way they could let me know what was on the ordinance, and they said they could mail it to me. Of course, it never came, so I ended up paying the fine because I didn't want to deal with court fees.
Now they have ordinances on their website, but it's not on the court website, so I don't know if they link.
I guess it depends upon what type of company you're working for, but, if it's not necessary, one should not go too crazy with locking down the actual machine. As long as all the important data is kept on a server, and the server is secure, who cares if they hose the local machine? Odd's are, you can reimage it, and, hopefully, folks can get it trouble for doing such things.
At my company, we have kiosk-like machines for hourly employees to clock in at. For them, the restrictions really aren't that complex. We've pared down the start menu to where they can only get at printers, disabled the Windows key, don't let them get to the task manager, etc. They could still log out, but it will auto log back on unless they hit the shift key. Supervisors have the ability to log into their own account, but we have a screensaver that will log them out after 5 minutes of inactivity.
A determined hacker will still be able to get in, but they can't really do much to anything other than the actual computer, which has nothing important on it. And if they do it after a supervisor leaves with himself still logged in, we know which supervisor was, and he'll be partly responsible.
Final Fantasy is only a cash cow because an FF game comes out almost every 1.5 years, rather than Dragon Warrior games, which take a lot longer. However, when a DW/DQ game comes out, it generally sells better than anything Final Fantasy in Japan. I remember reading that Dragon Quest 7 was like the best-selling game ever over there.
As a recall, it was actually Enix that bought out Square (although it was handled more like an even merger). Enix was a cash cow before, probably more so than was Square back before Final Fantasy was real popular in America.
Hopefully things will change for DW outside of Japan with all the eye-candy in VIII.
I don't know if I trust Square Enix more than I trusted Enix alone. After all, I recall Square really needing its arm twisted in order to release Final Fantasy Chronicles in the US, which did much better here than Dragon Warrior VII did. That was after not including FF4 with Anthologies, too. Square has been as reluctant as anybody in releasing non-mainstream stuff in the US, unless it's something nobody wants, like SaGa Frontier:-/.
Argh! Why do I always have trust issues with the people who make my favorite games?!
Finally, stop whining. SE will release new/remade Dragon Warrior stuff in the States soon.
Uh, how do you know?
I don't think the Enix side of things is at the point where we can trust them unequivocally to release their biggest games over here. It took a while for Square to prove that they were committed to bringing all of the Final Fantasies to the American market, and Enix is well far behind them at the moment. We already know that the Dragon Warrior IV will never make it here (although the circumstances with that one were a bit more out of Enix's control), and well, I mostly trust them to bring VIII here, but how much motivation do they really have to bring V here? I'm personally kinda skeptical, seeing that they haven't set a US release date for V...
They got another Dragon Quest (Warrior) Monsters Game? Dragon Quest Monsters: Caravan Heart for the GBA was 7th place. Does anybody know if that's just another name for one we have over here or an entirely different game? I've actually never played one, but I've recently become enamored with the Dragon Warrior series, having played the rereleass of 2 and 3 on the GBC, and DW7 on Playstation.
At any rate, it's a little OT, but, do any other single-player RPG fans out there besides me find the Dragon Warrior games to be a whole lot more satisfying than the Final Fantasy series? Sure, the graphics on DW7 are pretty subpar for the Playstation, but the games seem to be a whole lot more challenging, with less cheesy diolouge, cooler spells and attacks, dungeons with more than one direction to go in, and things like that.
They get plenty of respect in Japan, as Dragon Quest 7 was the greatest selling playstation game ever over there, or something like that. But they really don't get props over in the States. Nobody payed much attention to the GBC rereleases of of Dragon Warrior 1, 2, and 3, even though they were marvelous remakes, and it's been near impossible to find DW7 in a store for a long time now. [sigh]
It's sorta been a joke with my family. When I'm home, we'll usually have two computers working in the house (my laptop and their desktop). We have one 4-port router in the den, so both computers are generally in there. My mom has given up telling me in person to clean my room, so, we'll both be typing away in the same room 3 feet away from each other, and all the sudden I'll get an IM from her asking why I haven't cleaned my room. I've been tempted to block her;-).
Any word if the DRM prevents you from burning a song more than 10 times if you don't burn it with Windows Media Player? I don't see how it could, but who knows?
you forgot about the cops...have the cops wake up right after the assassins, and let them choose one person to "check". The moderator will then nod or shake his head, revealing whether or not that person is an assassin. The cops don't have to reveal that they're cops, either (they're likely to get killed by the assassins if they do, so they usually talk late in the game, and try to influence votings indirectly).
I am a teaching assistant for a programming class at a university. Most of the questions I recieve in email from students can be answered in about a minute. If I get 11 questions, and I answer them right away, then...
They're one of the few mainstream stores that actually has a decent Christian music selection, so hopefully they'll carry that on their service. Some folks may see a lack of choices, but, some of the stuff they sell isn't found at target, K-mart, or even BMG, Best-Buy, or Circuit City. And probably not in the iTunes store either.
So, once me and a few of my friends were walking through a wal-mart, and there was a shelf in hardware that only had a hammer on it- nothing else. So, one of my friend's was like, "Whoa! Check it out- there's just a hammer on that shelf." and an employee in the light blub section said, "Yeah, that's there for bashing your head in." So, my friend went and told customer service, and they said that there's been complaints about the light-bulb guy before. Okay, so it wasn't that great of a story. I guess you just had to be there.
Slashdot Mirror
...Zombo Users are Free and Clear?
I personally am really glad that I can keep using Zombo.com. I can do anything there!
Here's one. I would predict that, if there was an intelligent designer, it would look as though the parameters of the universe and our position in it were extremely fine-tuned, and that it would be extremely improbable (say on the order of 1 * 10^(1 with as many 0's as there are particles in the universe) that these things could have happened without a high degree of intentionality.
Thus far, that has been seen to be the case. Many of the basic parameters of the universe, if they're are changed in the slightest, produce an uninhabitable universe. Furthermore, moving the earth's orbit out just a little bit, making the moon just a little bigger, making our sun anything other than the virtually perfect size it is right now, or moving us just a little farther out from the center of the Milky Way makes life an impossibility. What's even more damning is not that there's life here, but that there's such complex life here. Even smaller changes in the above make multicelluar life impossible. Even more interesting is how we appear to be in just the perfect place for observing the rest of the universe, as if somebody wanted us to discover stuff.
The research certainly isn't done yet, but so far, it doesn't look likely at all that a planet could support life without a lot of help from a friend. And it looks like this friend had humans in the cards when he first started working.
...which leads us to two more unreasonable conclusions...
1) Nothing exists. Descartes did a pretty good job of refuting this possibility.
2) I'm assuming that you're hinting all matter is eternal. This still gives us an infinite backwards regression of time. Even if time "stops" when you go back to a certain point, you still need something to start time and get things moving. This certainly wouldn't be from within the universe, because time would be stopped (there's no change in the physical world when delta t = 0).
A chimera or pegasus wouldn't falsify evolution. It could just be that we didn't find similar fossils yet. Evolution isn't hurt at all as a hypothesis.
Likewise, if somebody finds a perfectly reasonable unguided process that could have produced cilia, Dr. Michael Behe's claims in [u]Darwin's Black Box[/u] would be null and void. Evolution would have more explaining power, and ID would have less.
Most of the scientists who are supporting unguided evolution could not be religious, because if they were they would be contradicting themselves. The most extreme position on evolution mandates that it was the source of all life, and that a creator was not necessary. Are most scientists that dumb?
We don't have any evidence of evolution, either. All we have is neutral evidence (as in, it doesn't on its own point to anything) that fits the model of evolution. There's also plenty of neutral evidence that fits the evidence of ID, such as the research done by Behe and biological "black boxes", consciousness, the incredible fine tuning of the universe, DNA, etc, etc. Incidentally, the evidence used in pro-ID arguments doesn't fit in the evolution model, while the evidence used in the pro-evolution/abiogenesis arguments does fit the ID model.
We can deduce the probability of a given model by how much explaining power it has. This is exactly what we do in a court room, as well as anywhere else where we can't just replay the whole situation.
Thus far, ID has much more explaining power than evolution/abiogenesis/etc. It doesn't mean that the latter has to be dismissed, but it certainly means that the former should not be dismissed.
Is unguided evolution/materialism/whatever you personally call it falsifiable?
What we can do with ID is take individual entities and look at their complexity to see whether or not the odds are on them arising independently or requiring a creator. If it looks like no creator would be needed for that entity, then we don't count that as evidence.
On the other hand, whenever it looks like something might take more than evolution or other natural forces to create, we ususally hear that "oh, we'll find the missing link later".
If anything, ID is more falsifiable than unguided evolution because at least ID'ers are performing tests that could fail to uphold their feelings on that matter.
So why are the people pushing it almost universally fundamentalist Christians who hold to a literal Biblical interpretation?
Why are the people pushing abiogenesis/evolution mostly athiests? Why does this mean anything?
You have two choices- either there is something that is eternal (as in it's always been there), or there is an infinite backwards regression of creation (being X created by being Y created by being Z, and so on forever). The illogicallity of something actually being infinite forces us to consider the former.
Anyway, it doesn't make any sense to say that something eternal was created, because "eternal" means that it was always there. Something must be uncreated and eternal, or else we have the infinite regression or there was some point where there was absolute nothing.
Intelligent Design has precious little to do with the Bible. It involves researching origins to see what evidence there is for an intelligent designer. It doesn't care who or what that intelligent designer is- it only cares about what it did in making us and the universe. It's not just for fundies- crap, some of it's logical underpinnings are rooted in medieval Muslim philosophy.
What principle demands that any theory involving an intelligent creator must be systematically dismissed from scientific inquiry?
Too much time is spent by some materialism evangelists dissing somebody's holy book or dismissing all religious folks as inbred hicks, and screaming that ID "isn't science". Their a priori exclusion of still-valid hypothesises isn't helping anybody. Who the heck cares if it doesn't fit into somebody's notion of what "science" should be? Scientific inquiry exists apart from any meaningless definition of it. So, why don't we all open our minds a bit and discuss theories on their merits, instead of our prejudices?
A Compaq draws near.
Command?
Most states list their laws online, so you can go look them up, but most cities don't list their's.
Last year, I was ticketed in Cleveland Hts. Ohio for a noise violation (for blasting Christian rap from my vintage 1988 original (and totally blown out) speaker system in my car). I really wanted to figure out if I had any way out, because the fine was $120, and it seemed really vauge (the officer said that if you can hear something from 50 feet away, it's a violation- well, I could hear his motorcycle from at least that far away!).
I saw on the ticket that you could pay it online, so I went on their online court system, and pulled up my violation. It said that I had violated "ORC ******" (where the *'s are the number which I cannot remember). Of course, ORC stands for "Ohio Revised Code". When I looked it up in the online ORC, the corresponding number had nothing to do with a noise ordinance. I called up the Cleveland Hts. courthouse and let them know that they listed a state number for a city ordinance, and then I asked if there was any way they could let me know what was on the ordinance, and they said they could mail it to me. Of course, it never came, so I ended up paying the fine because I didn't want to deal with court fees.
Now they have ordinances on their website, but it's not on the court website, so I don't know if they link.
I guess it depends upon what type of company you're working for, but, if it's not necessary, one should not go too crazy with locking down the actual machine. As long as all the important data is kept on a server, and the server is secure, who cares if they hose the local machine? Odd's are, you can reimage it, and, hopefully, folks can get it trouble for doing such things.
At my company, we have kiosk-like machines for hourly employees to clock in at. For them, the restrictions really aren't that complex. We've pared down the start menu to where they can only get at printers, disabled the Windows key, don't let them get to the task manager, etc. They could still log out, but it will auto log back on unless they hit the shift key. Supervisors have the ability to log into their own account, but we have a screensaver that will log them out after 5 minutes of inactivity.
A determined hacker will still be able to get in, but they can't really do much to anything other than the actual computer, which has nothing important on it. And if they do it after a supervisor leaves with himself still logged in, we know which supervisor was, and he'll be partly responsible.
Final Fantasy is only a cash cow because an FF game comes out almost every 1.5 years, rather than Dragon Warrior games, which take a lot longer. However, when a DW/DQ game comes out, it generally sells better than anything Final Fantasy in Japan. I remember reading that Dragon Quest 7 was like the best-selling game ever over there.
:-/.
As a recall, it was actually Enix that bought out Square (although it was handled more like an even merger). Enix was a cash cow before, probably more so than was Square back before Final Fantasy was real popular in America.
Hopefully things will change for DW outside of Japan with all the eye-candy in VIII.
I don't know if I trust Square Enix more than I trusted Enix alone. After all, I recall Square really needing its arm twisted in order to release Final Fantasy Chronicles in the US, which did much better here than Dragon Warrior VII did. That was after not including FF4 with Anthologies, too. Square has been as reluctant as anybody in releasing non-mainstream stuff in the US, unless it's something nobody wants, like SaGa Frontier
Argh! Why do I always have trust issues with the people who make my favorite games?!
Finally, stop whining. SE will release new/remade Dragon Warrior stuff in the States soon.
Uh, how do you know?
I don't think the Enix side of things is at the point where we can trust them unequivocally to release their biggest games over here. It took a while for Square to prove that they were committed to bringing all of the Final Fantasies to the American market, and Enix is well far behind them at the moment. We already know that the Dragon Warrior IV will never make it here (although the circumstances with that one were a bit more out of Enix's control), and well, I mostly trust them to bring VIII here, but how much motivation do they really have to bring V here? I'm personally kinda skeptical, seeing that they haven't set a US release date for V...
In opposition to the war in Iraq, I'm boycotting water, because I hear that soldiers drink it.
So...uh...should he use conduit? :-P
me too!
Was anybody else totally unable to find the reference to FreeDOS from the supplied Dell link? Or am I just dumb?
:-/ .
I have no clue which computer is a "N-series"- all I see are dimensions, precisions, optiplexes, and the like.
And, for some reason, whenever I clicked on a PC's "Customize it" button, it just refeshed the page. Happened on Moz 1.5 and IE 6.
Yeah, I believe it, but it'd be cool to see it, too
They got another Dragon Quest (Warrior) Monsters Game? Dragon Quest Monsters: Caravan Heart for the GBA was 7th place. Does anybody know if that's just another name for one we have over here or an entirely different game? I've actually never played one, but I've recently become enamored with the Dragon Warrior series, having played the rereleass of 2 and 3 on the GBC, and DW7 on Playstation.
At any rate, it's a little OT, but, do any other single-player RPG fans out there besides me find the Dragon Warrior games to be a whole lot more satisfying than the Final Fantasy series? Sure, the graphics on DW7 are pretty subpar for the Playstation, but the games seem to be a whole lot more challenging, with less cheesy diolouge, cooler spells and attacks, dungeons with more than one direction to go in, and things like that.
They get plenty of respect in Japan, as Dragon Quest 7 was the greatest selling playstation game ever over there, or something like that. But they really don't get props over in the States. Nobody payed much attention to the GBC rereleases of of Dragon Warrior 1, 2, and 3, even though they were marvelous remakes, and it's been near impossible to find DW7 in a store for a long time now. [sigh]
It's sorta been a joke with my family. When I'm home, we'll usually have two computers working in the house (my laptop and their desktop). We have one 4-port router in the den, so both computers are generally in there. My mom has given up telling me in person to clean my room, so, we'll both be typing away in the same room 3 feet away from each other, and all the sudden I'll get an IM from her asking why I haven't cleaned my room. I've been tempted to block her ;-).
Any word if the DRM prevents you from burning a song more than 10 times if you don't burn it with Windows Media Player? I don't see how it could, but who knows?
"I'll bet some horrifying data could be gathered on the speed with which riders' heads impact the pavement after an accident."
wish I could mod "-1: distasteful"...
you forgot about the cops...have the cops wake up right after the assassins, and let them choose one person to "check". The moderator will then nod or shake his head, revealing whether or not that person is an assassin. The cops don't have to reveal that they're cops, either (they're likely to get killed by the assassins if they do, so they usually talk late in the game, and try to influence votings indirectly).
I am a teaching assistant for a programming class at a university. Most of the questions I recieve in email from students can be answered in about a minute. If I get 11 questions, and I answer them right away, then...
They're one of the few mainstream stores that actually has a decent Christian music selection, so hopefully they'll carry that on their service. Some folks may see a lack of choices, but, some of the stuff they sell isn't found at target, K-mart, or even BMG, Best-Buy, or Circuit City. And probably not in the iTunes store either.
So, once me and a few of my friends were walking through a wal-mart, and there was a shelf in hardware that only had a hammer on it- nothing else. So, one of my friend's was like, "Whoa! Check it out- there's just a hammer on that shelf." and an employee in the light blub section said, "Yeah, that's there for bashing your head in." So, my friend went and told customer service, and they said that there's been complaints about the light-bulb guy before. Okay, so it wasn't that great of a story. I guess you just had to be there.