So, although Evolution "does not require abandoning belief in God" it allows it, and this is bad enough for those who choose religious dogma over scientific discoveries.
That's it exactly. Science is seen as threatening because it removes what is probably the single strongest motivation towards religious belief. The desire for an answer to the questions of how and why we and everything around us came to be. Science provides answers to the "how" (not all of it, but more and more all the time), and opens the possibility that there isn't a "why" at all. With a naturalistic process, events need causes, but do not require a purpose.
For those for whom faith is a way of life, the findings of science will not dissuade them from their belief in God. But for those who approach life more rationally, it makes a big difference. And to that extent, science is a threat to religion. 18th century freethinkers and modern freethinkers are philosophically similar, but with one really glaring difference. 18th century freethinkers were mostly deists. Modern freethinkers are mostly atheists. This change is wrought by evolution and cosmology. And I consider it a good thing.
Perhaps, rather than prognosticating about what kind of future we expect, it would be more useful to contemplate what kind of future we want. We are not powerless. We may individually control only a very small part, but collectively, the future is, with the exception of physical laws and natural phenomena, entirely the product of our decisions and actions. The future is not something that just happens to us.
The future is ours to create. And the sky is no limit.
What are the chances of finding another intelligent species?
Does it matter? Not finding it is also an interesting result. It tells us something that we did not previously know (by giving us something more than mere speculation about how rare it must be). The more thoroughly we search, the more interesting the negative result becomes. Unless, of course, we find something. But that would be even more interesting, wouldn't it?
If that's the case, then there is also an easy solution: breakaway pockets.
Great thinking. Now you can have two victims. One with a punctured aorta and a missing pocket, the other with a burnt cell phone sticking out of his forehead.
...but it sounds like this was something picked up off a site like CodeProject.com, where it's completely reasonable to assume that the intent of the poster was that this code be incorporated and adapted without further license terms.
I agree that's a very reasonable thing to assume. But will "reasonable to assume" work as a legal defense in the unlikely case that the original poster discovers the code in your commercial product and decides to sue?
(Not a rhetorical question. I'd really like to know.)
The probably of YOUR vote actually being the swing vote in a national election is practically 0...
So, if candidate A wins with 1 million votes, and that happens to be exactly one vote more than candidate B, which one of those votes was this all-important "swing vote" that you speak of? If the last guy at the polls broke the tie, would not the influence of the 2nd to last candidate A voter have been just as crucial? Or each of the 999,998 before that? What about the candidate B supporter who stayed home because he thought his vote didn't matter. Wouldn't that guy's choice have been just as crucial to candidate A's victory as the one that broke the tie?
Of course, real elections are rarely that close. So, many believe that their individual vote hardly matters at all. And they believe rightly. It is extremely unlikely to make any difference whether you, a lone individual, vote for candidate A, candidate B, candidate C, or just stay home. Spending a dollar on a lottery ticket would have a much better chance of benefiting you than spending it on gasoline to drive to the poll.
But, if a significant number of people believe that and choose to act on that belief by making the entirely logical choice to just not bother with it and use the time for something more productive, democracy suffers.
My point is, rational people don't vote to benefit themselves, or to get the outcome that they want. That would be wishful thinking. They vote in order to benefit something bigger than themselves. They vote in order to keep democracy healthy.
I vote mostly for Democrats. But I live in a district that is highly conservative. The Republicans win by a landslide, always. My vote makes no difference. I could just stay home. My Republican friend who lives on the next street could just stay home too. Their margins are much to big for his lack of voting to make any difference. But come election day, you'll find us both at the polls.
The problem was, they didn't know the nukes were on board. It may or may not make sense to fly instead of drive them, but you have to agree that transporting nukes without knowing the nature of your cargo is a pretty dicey business.
Don't forget the complementary (and IMHO even more disturbing) problem that while the folks flying the plane were unaware that they had them, whoever should have had them was unaware that they didn't have them.
The whereabouts of six nuclear weapons was either unknown or "known" incorrectly for three hours, and I'd guess that they transported with far less security than would have been the case if they had been moved intentionally.
Sounds like you're grasping a bit here. I mean come on, one Burroughs machine and several IBM machines? I'll look into your references on Univac and Eniac because that does surprise me. Are you sure there wasn't a conversion going on there. It's easy to convert from binary to decimal but you're saying the machine code was decimal? I'll take a look on my own and I'd be happy to check out any links you have but I will be surprised to find they were using a decimal machine code.
Looking into it a bit further myself (via wikipedia and other misc. pages found using Google), I find that I was wrong about the Univac. I've read that it used decimal numbers, but that appears to be not entirely accurate. Best I can gather, it used words consisting of 12 decimal digits, but these digits were represented as BCD. I have to concede that I would consider that to be a fundamentally binary computer, not a genuinely decimal one.
I couldn't find anything about the inner workings of the Boroughs and IBM machines, but have read that these used base 10 numbers. But, Knowing what I now know about the Univac, I recognize that these could have been BCD computers also. So, I have to retract that claim since I can't confirm it either way.
Eniac, however, can reasonably be considered a decimal computer. It represented digits using 10 position ring counters, stepping values into them using a series of pulses. The counters had base 10 place values. The 10 positions within each counter had no place values, so it would not be correct to consider them bits even though they had only two possible states. An analogy off the top of my head is using stacks of coins to represent digits, with each stack assigned a base10 place value and each coin having a value of 1.
Anyway, thanks for challenging my claims, as I've learned a few interesting things in the process of digging further.
When you get right down to it, there's no question that what makes machine computing possible is the simplification of the input: that is the conversion from decimal to binary. Without the concept of binary numeracy, computing is simply too complicated.
Binary certainly made machine computation simpler and more cost-effective, but it definitely isn't a requirement for making it possible. Several early computers (Eniac, Univac, at least one Boroughs machine, several IBM machines) used base 10, not binary.
I do agree with your basic idea that simplification is a big part of what makes machine computation possible. This just isn't the best example for that.
As an aside, there have also been a few base 3 computers (Google for "ternary", "trinary", and "tertiary", as all three terms are sometimes used.). I had a friend many years ago who was a strong advocate of ternary computing. More specifically, what is sometimes called "balanced ternary", in which each trit can represent -1, 0, or 1, rather than 0, 1 or 2. He believed that the added complexity of circuitry that could handle three logic levels would be outweighed by the benefits. I read somewhere that Donald Knuth has also advocated this.
I'd like to go ahead and admit that I'm one of these people. Unfortunately, the Republicans now are starting not to follow through on the fiscal conservatism which is a problem.
"Starting"? If you believe the Republican party's lack of follow-through with their fiscal conservatism is a new thing, I'd say you've spent too much time listening to what they say, and too little watching what they do. All it takes is a comparison of the OMB's historical Federal budget data with who was in power (consider both Congress and Pres.) to see that the Republican party has had a severe credit abuse and government bloat problem since before either of us was born.
Their talk about small government and fiscal responsibility is a deception. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.
Yes, how old are we talking about? A Seamonkey full install runs quite nicely on my 333mhz PII, 256M, Win98 (not SE) system. If you get much older than that, (P1's, K6's, Cyrix's, etc.) you're talking about a vanishingly small market share.
Then there's the question of demographics. Who's running most of these old machines? My bet is that very few are granny's or impoverished neophytes who lack awareness of non-MS browsers. I'd bet that it's mostly long-experienced and tech-savvy geeks who are putting the old hardware to use for dedicated purposes. Purposes such as Linux based DIY routers. Purposes such as dedicated front ends for DIY home automation. Purposes such as running old software such as DOS based games that won't run well (or at all) on more modern machines. Purposes such as extra machines for the garage or workshop. These are people who need no introduction to non-IE browsers. They already have newer and faster machines that can run the modern, full featured, browsers. And if they do feel a need to run a web browser on a really old machine, they know enough to go hunt down a leaner one like Opera, or if that's still too much, Lynx.
Even with schools or other organizations who may be running donated or older machines, you'd be hard pressed to find machines that aren't at least as capable as my old PII-333, because better machines than that are retired all the time now, so should be easy to get as donations, or to purchase cheap at a flea market. And machines at that level don't need feature-reduced browsers. They just need browsers that will run on an old Windows version if they're not running Linux.
Re:Good news, if of limited use...
on
Zune DRM Cracked
·
· Score: 3, Funny
No, I did not get a brown one. The brown makes it look too much like a friggin' candy bar made out of-- well, you know.
(Of course, I understand that radios in cars are far more common than cell phones. Was merely making a point.)
Given the small number of vehicles that qualify to use the HOV lane, I would bet that the number of vehicles carrying children or other passengers is much smaller than those carrying either radios or cell phones, and yet "Child/Passenger Distraction" accounts for more accidents.
You guys laugh, but I once ripped a woofer cone by playing an audiophile quality vinyl record of Also Sprach Zarathustra too loud. The low frequency waves on this thing were of such amplitude that they were clearly visible to the naked eye, the groove having been spaced out more than usual so that it wouldn't collide with itself. I had discovered that when played at high volume the timpani crescendo seemed to resonate with some of the bones in my fingers and would make my fingertips go numb. So, of course, I had to try it even louder. This proved quite thrilling until an awful thumping noise emerged from one speaker when the cone ripped and left the voice coil free to knock against the magnet assembly, with still enough cone attached to produce lots of ugly noise.
The cone had a tear that went about 2/3 of the way around the center dome. Some Elmer's Glue-All and a couple of hours to dry put it back in operation.
I'd guess that those are pretty solidly in first amendment territory, being both artistic expression and political protest. Will the AACS dare issue takedown letters for them?
It seems to me that nearly all of what has appeared on the net containing this code since the start of the Digg uprising should qualify as protected speech. Most has been comments about either the unusual social phenomenon itself, or about the political/free speech implications of this mess. Very few posts or articles have had anything to do with how to circumvent copy protection.
Slashdot Mirror
For those for whom faith is a way of life, the findings of science will not dissuade them from their belief in God. But for those who approach life more rationally, it makes a big difference. And to that extent, science is a threat to religion. 18th century freethinkers and modern freethinkers are philosophically similar, but with one really glaring difference. 18th century freethinkers were mostly deists. Modern freethinkers are mostly atheists. This change is wrought by evolution and cosmology. And I consider it a good thing.
That's an excellent observation.
Perhaps, rather than prognosticating about what kind of future we expect, it would be more useful to contemplate what kind of future we want. We are not powerless. We may individually control only a very small part, but collectively, the future is, with the exception of physical laws and natural phenomena, entirely the product of our decisions and actions. The future is not something that just happens to us.
The future is ours to create. And the sky is no limit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Lai_Massacre
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12th_Street_Riot
http://history1900s.about.com/cs/martinlutherking/a/mlkassass.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_F._Kennedy_assassination
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orangeburg_Massacre
They can't both be different. That would make them the same.
Plays for shit.
Of course, real elections are rarely that close. So, many believe that their individual vote hardly matters at all. And they believe rightly. It is extremely unlikely to make any difference whether you, a lone individual, vote for candidate A, candidate B, candidate C, or just stay home. Spending a dollar on a lottery ticket would have a much better chance of benefiting you than spending it on gasoline to drive to the poll.
But, if a significant number of people believe that and choose to act on that belief by making the entirely logical choice to just not bother with it and use the time for something more productive, democracy suffers.
My point is, rational people don't vote to benefit themselves, or to get the outcome that they want. That would be wishful thinking. They vote in order to benefit something bigger than themselves. They vote in order to keep democracy healthy.
I vote mostly for Democrats. But I live in a district that is highly conservative. The Republicans win by a landslide, always. My vote makes no difference. I could just stay home. My Republican friend who lives on the next street could just stay home too. Their margins are much to big for his lack of voting to make any difference. But come election day, you'll find us both at the polls.
Wouldn't "negative damping" be positive feedback?
The whereabouts of six nuclear weapons was either unknown or "known" incorrectly for three hours, and I'd guess that they transported with far less security than would have been the case if they had been moved intentionally.
Looking into it a bit further myself (via wikipedia and other misc. pages found using Google), I find that I was wrong about the Univac. I've read that it used decimal numbers, but that appears to be not entirely accurate. Best I can gather, it used words consisting of 12 decimal digits, but these digits were represented as BCD. I have to concede that I would consider that to be a fundamentally binary computer, not a genuinely decimal one.
I couldn't find anything about the inner workings of the Boroughs and IBM machines, but have read that these used base 10 numbers. But, Knowing what I now know about the Univac, I recognize that these could have been BCD computers also. So, I have to retract that claim since I can't confirm it either way.
Eniac, however, can reasonably be considered a decimal computer. It represented digits using 10 position ring counters, stepping values into them using a series of pulses. The counters had base 10 place values. The 10 positions within each counter had no place values, so it would not be correct to consider them bits even though they had only two possible states. An analogy off the top of my head is using stacks of coins to represent digits, with each stack assigned a base10 place value and each coin having a value of 1.
Anyway, thanks for challenging my claims, as I've learned a few interesting things in the process of digging further.
Binary certainly made machine computation simpler and more cost-effective, but it definitely isn't a requirement for making it possible. Several early computers (Eniac, Univac, at least one Boroughs machine, several IBM machines) used base 10, not binary.
I do agree with your basic idea that simplification is a big part of what makes machine computation possible. This just isn't the best example for that.
As an aside, there have also been a few base 3 computers (Google for "ternary", "trinary", and "tertiary", as all three terms are sometimes used.). I had a friend many years ago who was a strong advocate of ternary computing. More specifically, what is sometimes called "balanced ternary", in which each trit can represent -1, 0, or 1, rather than 0, 1 or 2. He believed that the added complexity of circuitry that could handle three logic levels would be outweighed by the benefits. I read somewhere that Donald Knuth has also advocated this.
And how many heavily loaded trucks drive across those each day?
Just what is it that you think a smelter does?
Yes, how old are we talking about? A Seamonkey full install runs quite nicely on my 333mhz PII, 256M, Win98 (not SE) system. If you get much older than that, (P1's, K6's, Cyrix's, etc.) you're talking about a vanishingly small market share. Then there's the question of demographics. Who's running most of these old machines? My bet is that very few are granny's or impoverished neophytes who lack awareness of non-MS browsers. I'd bet that it's mostly long-experienced and tech-savvy geeks who are putting the old hardware to use for dedicated purposes. Purposes such as Linux based DIY routers. Purposes such as dedicated front ends for DIY home automation. Purposes such as running old software such as DOS based games that won't run well (or at all) on more modern machines. Purposes such as extra machines for the garage or workshop. These are people who need no introduction to non-IE browsers. They already have newer and faster machines that can run the modern, full featured, browsers. And if they do feel a need to run a web browser on a really old machine, they know enough to go hunt down a leaner one like Opera, or if that's still too much, Lynx. Even with schools or other organizations who may be running donated or older machines, you'd be hard pressed to find machines that aren't at least as capable as my old PII-333, because better machines than that are retired all the time now, so should be easy to get as donations, or to purchase cheap at a flea market. And machines at that level don't need feature-reduced browsers. They just need browsers that will run on an old Windows version if they're not running Linux.
You guys laugh, but I once ripped a woofer cone by playing an audiophile quality vinyl record of Also Sprach Zarathustra too loud. The low frequency waves on this thing were of such amplitude that they were clearly visible to the naked eye, the groove having been spaced out more than usual so that it wouldn't collide with itself. I had discovered that when played at high volume the timpani crescendo seemed to resonate with some of the bones in my fingers and would make my fingertips go numb. So, of course, I had to try it even louder. This proved quite thrilling until an awful thumping noise emerged from one speaker when the cone ripped and left the voice coil free to knock against the magnet assembly, with still enough cone attached to produce lots of ugly noise.
The cone had a tear that went about 2/3 of the way around the center dome. Some Elmer's Glue-All and a couple of hours to dry put it back in operation.
My computer has a thing like that, but it only holds the cup of coffee.
I don't know what they had in mind, but there are at least two songs that feature it.
Oh Nine, Eff Nine
What's in a Number?
I'd guess that those are pretty solidly in first amendment territory, being both artistic expression and political protest. Will the AACS dare issue takedown letters for them?
It seems to me that nearly all of what has appeared on the net containing this code since the start of the Digg uprising should qualify as protected speech. Most has been comments about either the unusual social phenomenon itself, or about the political/free speech implications of this mess. Very few posts or articles have had anything to do with how to circumvent copy protection.
Any lawyers in the house?