The author of the article makes a huge mistake about the nature of science and does not understand what religious people mean by faith .
The Slashdot comments above are slightly better in that they understand that science is testable: there is quite a lot of it you can test yourself easily enough (and a fair bit that is tested by children if you paid attention in school).
The Slashdot comments still do not understand what faith means in a religious context. It does not mean "believing without evidence". It is an attitude that only makes sense if you believe. "I have faith in God" is a very similar statement to "I have faith in Fred". The difference is that there is usually no controversy over Fred's existence, whereas there is over God's so the statement becomes a statement of belief in God's existence AS WELL.
In fact, people are convinced of the existence of God for one, or a combination of, a comparatively small number of reasons: philosophical argument, experience of God's presence ("religious experiences") and other people's and historical accounts of the latter. There is plenty of room to argue about the validity of these, but that does not make it "belief without evidence".
Of course there are people who believe in any given religion without having considered the evidence - but the same is true about belief in the truth of almost any contestable statement whether religious, scientific, or something else (the guilt of an alleged criminal, the validity of a political cause, etc.). Think of all the people who think Obama is not American by birth, or that homoeopathy works (placebo effect aside), of that all the world's problems would be solved if the proletariat owned the means of production. That some people believe something for inadequate reasons does not disprove it: it is irrelevant to proof.
You DO realize they are a first world country, with an incredible military, right?
An incredible military certainly, but a population barely larger than Hong Kong and an economy smaller than Ireland or Egypt. In comparison the UAE alone has a bigger economy and a bigger population.
There is no way Israel could have sustained its military without massive outside assistance.
There is an interesting point though. The Vatican does own some porn.
1) They cannot destroy it because its historically valuable. 2) They cannot sell it because it would not exactly be appropriate to profit from selling porn.
Obviously serious scholars need access, which needs to be free (no taking money from porn), so the best solution would be to digitise it and release it for others to redistribute.
the laptop is 2.5 years old. The battery will be almost gone and there will likely be other HW issues developing.
The same age as my cheap consumer laptop (Lenovo 3000 N200). I bought a new (bigger battery) and there are no signs of any other hardware problems. GSmartcontrol says the hard drive is fine (although I might upgrade that as well) apart from two reallocations.
Why chuck money away as long as your old hardware does the job?
This was true when the financial system was focused on directly investing in real businesses and better financial systems meant a better and less costly allocation of capital to those who could use it.
Increasingly however, the talent is being wasted on what are at best zero sum games against other similar players, such as high frequency trading. At worst these activities are actually harmful, and parasitical, on those that benefit the wider economy by profiting traders at the cost of investors (OK those groups are not well defined, you we both know what I mean well enough).
There is also the problem that even on the most optimistic "markets are always right" take on this, there is too much investment in the financial activity because the socialised risk together with privatised profit means that the level of investment no longer reflects the level of risk/
Theocracy is a natural extension of a feudal society where individual freedom is very restricted. Even now the most theocratic societies are feudal, middle Eastern Ones: only the gulf Arab states compel all their citizens to follow a single religion.
The thinking of people who want a theocracy follows the usual pattern of thought of politicians and terrorists: "I know what is best for everyone so I should force them to do it".
News and journalism works in free-markets like everything else
But you do not want them to:
Journalists, editors, publishers, all are individuals who do potentially rough work (not in every case, but in some) that serves broader society in a way that is both practically relevant and creatively compelling. They deserve to be compensated
A free market system does not pay what is deserved, it pays for what there is demand.
At the moment there demand is falling as consumers switch to free alternatives.
People are quite happy to pay if the product is worth it: the Financial Times, The Economist, The New Scientist etc. have no problem getting people to pay because they have content that does not have a suitable free alternative, because they actually have a high quality product that is hard replace.
Most newspapers do little investigative journalism, and largely reproduce press releases, government announcements, and whatever else they are fed. The net lets us bypass them and read the original.
TO put it another way, the REAL problem is not whether this or any other particular app is "acceptable", its that if you buy an Apple product that is tied to their app store then Apple decide what software it is acceptable for you to use, not you.
The unmanageable regulations stay in place because the people most able to lobby against them are quire happy knowing they can bribe their way around them, while rivals with less access are hobbled.
I think consequence no 6 "Make pot loads of money for ICANN and registrars everywhere. " is what they are after.
I cannot see effective criminalisation of porn on non-XXX domains: too many free speech issues, and there will be well funded push-back from established sites that use other TLDs.
You are going to see all the porn sites on.xxx in the same way that all businesses use.biz or all airlines use.aero
This is Slashdot, it is automatically assumed that anything can be blamed on Christianity, and the hive mind does not welcome rational discussion of the issue.
Nudity has a lot of implications:
1) Cod-pieces in the (very Christian) middle-ages in Europe, and similar penis casing in other cultures are probably some form of status display other societies suppress. 2) Monkey's display errect penises as a sign of aggression: http://pin.primate.wisc.edu/factsheets/entry/proboscis_monkey/behav 3) A visible erect penis may reveal information its owner wishes to conceal. 4) Periods, as you implied, need some clothing to deal with. 5) Breasts. Once you start concealing organs with sexual significance they are the next step. 6) Once you start wearing clothes for other reasons (e.g. protection in a cold or very hot climate) not wearing the usual level of clothing becomes sexually provocative.
Except that the statistical technique would not work if the source of the interference was omnipotent and eternal. The interference could take place in the starting conditions of the Big Bang (eternal means God sees everything from the start of time to the end of time in His "now"), or within the normal random fluctuations.
Of course you can teach Norse Mythology creationism. The wording says ID "or other alternate theories of the origination and development of organisms" With a bit of luck someone doing just that will get hired and:
1) Students will get some exposure to mythology that has had huge literary influence. 2) The legislature will look stupid.
Why do you say they are more likely to get addicted. I know a study of morphine (I read a summary in print form many years ago) found that those taking it as a medication (legally prescribed) were much less likely to get addicted than those who took it for fun.
I think it is commoner for corporations to use "people skills" either as a synonym for popular or, much worse, an excuse for promoting people the current management like.
Slashdot Mirror
The author of the article makes a huge mistake about the nature of science and does not understand what religious people mean by faith .
The Slashdot comments above are slightly better in that they understand that science is testable: there is quite a lot of it you can test yourself easily enough (and a fair bit that is tested by children if you paid attention in school).
The Slashdot comments still do not understand what faith means in a religious context. It does not mean "believing without evidence". It is an attitude that only makes sense if you believe. "I have faith in God" is a very similar statement to "I have faith in Fred". The difference is that there is usually no controversy over Fred's existence, whereas there is over God's so the statement becomes a statement of belief in God's existence AS WELL.
In fact, people are convinced of the existence of God for one, or a combination of, a comparatively small number of reasons: philosophical argument, experience of God's presence ("religious experiences") and other people's and historical accounts of the latter. There is plenty of room to argue about the validity of these, but that does not make it "belief without evidence".
Of course there are people who believe in any given religion without having considered the evidence - but the same is true about belief in the truth of almost any contestable statement whether religious, scientific, or something else (the guilt of an alleged criminal, the validity of a political cause, etc.). Think of all the people who think Obama is not American by birth, or that homoeopathy works (placebo effect aside), of that all the world's problems would be solved if the proletariat owned the means of production. That some people believe something for inadequate reasons does not disprove it: it is irrelevant to proof.
They seemed to do quite fine for all those years we didnt support them.[/url]
When was that? Israel has always been a major recipient of US aid and was the largest recipient of US aid (something like a third of total foreign aid) for about 30 years.
You DO realize they are a first world country, with an incredible military, right?
An incredible military certainly, but a population barely larger than Hong Kong and an economy smaller than Ireland or Egypt. In comparison the UAE alone has a bigger economy and a bigger population.
There is no way Israel could have sustained its military without massive outside assistance.
There is an interesting point though. The Vatican does own some porn.
1) They cannot destroy it because its historically valuable.
2) They cannot sell it because it would not exactly be appropriate to profit from selling porn.
Obviously serious scholars need access, which needs to be free (no taking money from porn), so the best solution would be to digitise it and release it for others to redistribute.
I have a problem with irradiated food because it is a way of making food safe to eat despite a lack of proper handling.
It no longer carries an infection, but it is a sign of low quality, and may contain the products of the bacteria killed by irradiation.
the laptop is 2.5 years old. The battery will be almost gone and there will likely be other HW issues developing.
The same age as my cheap consumer laptop (Lenovo 3000 N200). I bought a new (bigger battery) and there are no signs of any other hardware problems. GSmartcontrol says the hard drive is fine (although I might upgrade that as well) apart from two reallocations.
Why chuck money away as long as your old hardware does the job?
What sort of work are you doing? Some kind of advisory of capital markets work?
How well would your arguments stack up if you were a foreign exchange trader, structuring CDOs, doing high frequency trading, or proprietary trading?
Finance covers a lot of different stuff, some socially useful, and vital to a capitalist economy, but some we could live without.
This was true when the financial system was focused on directly investing in real businesses and better financial systems meant a better and less costly allocation of capital to those who could use it.
Increasingly however, the talent is being wasted on what are at best zero sum games against other similar players, such as high frequency trading. At worst these activities are actually harmful, and parasitical, on those that benefit the wider economy by profiting traders at the cost of investors (OK those groups are not well defined, you we both know what I mean well enough).
There is also the problem that even on the most optimistic "markets are always right" take on this, there is too much investment in the financial activity because the socialised risk together with privatised profit means that the level of investment no longer reflects the level of risk/
Theocracy is a natural extension of a feudal society where individual freedom is very restricted. Even now the most theocratic societies are feudal, middle Eastern Ones: only the gulf Arab states compel all their citizens to follow a single religion.
The thinking of people who want a theocracy follows the usual pattern of thought of politicians and terrorists: "I know what is best for everyone so I should force them to do it".
The most busy body societies have been run by atheists (think of the Soviet Union or Communist China).
News and journalism works in free-markets like everything else
But you do not want them to:
Journalists, editors, publishers, all are individuals who do potentially rough work (not in every case, but in some) that serves broader society in a way that is both practically relevant and creatively compelling. They deserve to be compensated
A free market system does not pay what is deserved, it pays for what there is demand.
At the moment there demand is falling as consumers switch to free alternatives.
People are quite happy to pay if the product is worth it: the Financial Times, The Economist, The New Scientist etc. have no problem getting people to pay because they have content that does not have a suitable free alternative, because they actually have a high quality product that is hard replace.
Most newspapers do little investigative journalism, and largely reproduce press releases, government announcements, and whatever else they are fed. The net lets us bypass them and read the original.
TO put it another way, the REAL problem is not whether this or any other particular app is "acceptable", its that if you buy an Apple product that is tied to their app store then Apple decide what software it is acceptable for you to use, not you.
If its WIndows using FF's own update mechanism, probably yes.
If its Linux from a repo, probably not.
The fact that I got the update before Firefox reported it tells me all I want to know about:
1) How fast the PCLinuxOS packagers get stuff done.
2) How long it takes Slashdot editors to get a paragraph on to a website,
The unmanageable regulations stay in place because the people most able to lobby against them are quire happy knowing they can bribe their way around them, while rivals with less access are hobbled.
I think consequence no 6 "Make pot loads of money for ICANN and registrars everywhere. " is what they are after.
I cannot see effective criminalisation of porn on non-XXX domains: too many free speech issues, and there will be well funded push-back from established sites that use other TLDs.
You are going to see all the porn sites on .xxx in the same way that all businesses use .biz or all airlines use .aero
This is Slashdot, it is automatically assumed that anything can be blamed on Christianity, and the hive mind does not welcome rational discussion of the issue.
Nudity has a lot of implications:
1) Cod-pieces in the (very Christian) middle-ages in Europe, and similar penis casing in other cultures are probably some form of status display other societies suppress.
2) Monkey's display errect penises as a sign of aggression: http://pin.primate.wisc.edu/factsheets/entry/proboscis_monkey/behav
3) A visible erect penis may reveal information its owner wishes to conceal.
4) Periods, as you implied, need some clothing to deal with.
5) Breasts. Once you start concealing organs with sexual significance they are the next step.
6) Once you start wearing clothes for other reasons (e.g. protection in a cold or very hot climate) not wearing the usual level of clothing becomes sexually provocative.
Its also bad theology. If I wanted to study theology I would not go anywhere near a faculty that included a creationist.
Except that the statistical technique would not work if the source of the interference was omnipotent and eternal. The interference could take place in the starting conditions of the Big Bang (eternal means God sees everything from the start of time to the end of time in His "now"), or within the normal random fluctuations.
Of course you can teach Norse Mythology creationism. The wording says ID "or other alternate theories of the origination and development of organisms" With a bit of luck someone doing just that will get hired and:
1) Students will get some exposure to mythology that has had huge literary influence.
2) The legislature will look stupid.
I thought home education was legal in the US.
It goes much deeper than that.
Why are American employers who have no stake in any of that test employees - and Americans are far more likely to test that Europeans.
This even applies to jobs where cocaine is likely to improve performance, so the employer would benefit from employees taking it.
they're stupid, hypocritical and self serving.
Just like the rest of the world!
Most Europeans are left wing by US standards. So are most Asians. So is most of the rest of the world.
In any case the objections to Rand, the Tea Party, GWB, and Reagan are shared by most of the right wing outside the US.
Right wing is one thing, stupid right wing is another.
Why do you say they are more likely to get addicted. I know a study of morphine (I read a summary in print form many years ago) found that those taking it as a medication (legally prescribed) were much less likely to get addicted than those who took it for fun.
I think it is commoner for corporations to use "people skills" either as a synonym for popular or, much worse, an excuse for promoting people the current management like.
Legal aid does not cover libel. The income level at which it cuts off is quite low as well.
Given how much an open and shut libel case like this cost, its obvious that funding the typical libel case is well beyond the reach of most people.