I hope so, if only so that after all you "I'm Christian, you're scum" bigots have been rapturized away to meet your maker (and burn in fiery hell for all eternity because you used the internet...) are gone the rest of us can see about actually getting some work done!
The correct response to that conjecture is "Yes, because I see evidence of Watchmaking before my eyes, and if I take the instructions given in the Watchmaking manual and follow them correctly, I will end up with a watch. Your so-called-God has not left any reproducible evidence of his existence or that his methodologies for creating a World work...therefore alternative theories have credence as well"
You are correct, however, in that there is no inherent "moral system" in Man. There is, however, an inherent desire (in most people) to exist in Societies, and societies tend to exist on the basis of "don't harm me, and I won't harm you", which provides the basis for rules forbidding murder, theft, and a whole raft of other things.
Self-Interest works really, really well...religion...well...not so well.
"We all know that kids are becoming over-involved and juggling many different roles is taxing and stressful on the child."
So rather than loading them up with a new gizmo to enable an even shorter childhood...why not just let the kids be kids?
No wonder ADHD is on the rise...we don't give children enough time to learn to concentrate on ONE task before they have to go off and put away the tuba because it's soccer practice time, then off to the sweatsh...err...McDonald's for your 6-10 PM shift...microwave dinner if you're lucky, and then you'd best hit your homework.
I recall being able to actually (whisper) play (/whisper) as a child...without obnoxious structure or schedule concerns other then "It's getting dark...time to come in". Perhaps we should reclaim those days.
They're going to use countless reams of paper to document on hardcopy the information that's been digitized from the original paper copies...
Brilliant...just brilliant!
Re:Great... -- Overrated --didn't read the article
on
AOL's new Linux PC
·
· Score: 1
Hmmm....gee...
" MSNBC (of all places ) has an intersting article about AOLs new PC. "
Yeah, okay, it's software not hardware, but hardware is just a pile of neatly organized sand and plastic, software is what makes it a PC.
They appear to be providing an OS, a browser, and other apps...close enough to me.
Or are you requiring them to manufacture the hardware? If so...guess noone other than Intel or the others in the chip market make PC's...probably news to Dell.
And I can't believe I just spent this much time on a anonymous coward...
Brainless child grows a brain!
WASHINGTON, DC (Reuters--NOT!) George W. Bush today successfully went through an entire day without any malpropisms or misspoken phrases.
Presidential Spokesmen credited the benefits of Stem Cell Cloning Research.
Really? I never knew that...
I thought I just wanted to listen, and was willing to pay if that's the only way I could listen...
I thought the record companies wanted me to pay.
Or have the laws of economics been changed again?
Which explanation for those possible shortcomings makes more sense:
1. "It's impossible, because it hasn't been done yet"
2. "It's a darned good start that hasn't been followed through completely because the ethical implications of creating life are somewhat significant"
Given what we know about single-cell life, we know that the patterns that constitute living things are remarkably adaptable (numerous experiments where 95% of a population are killed by a chemical, and the remaining 5% reproduce so that the entire initial population is restored, and now 99% of them are resistant to the chemical in question), and tend to spread over ever-increasing areas through various methods (witness the West Nile Virus), it doesn't take much of a leap of logic to believe that if just a handful of appropriate chemical combinations were created through some natural process, that they would manage to hang on, reproduce, and go on from there.
Just because it hasn't been done yet doesn't mean it can't be done. Edison tried thousands of lightbulbs, and some of those lit for a moment, but weren't the complete answer, before he came up with the one that lasted for years. Similarly, life scientists (which isn't a very heavily funded field, so doesn't attract the best and brightest, and operates on a relative shoestring) haven't tripped across the correct sequence of events.
That doesn't prove there's a God. That proves that science isn't yet complete. And even if it does prove that there is a God, the sequence of events we can demonstrate lends more evidence to the "Divine Clockbuilder" school of religion than the "Omnipotent and very active, but with one and only one preferred path of activity" school of religion that the "Big Three" religions rely on.
Further, relying on Chick books for your background isn't exactly relying on strong sources. The man, quite simply, is an extremist loon. He may have some legitimate points, but they are unfortunately buried under thousands of pounds of 4-color crapola. For every potentially legitimate point about amino acid behavior and such, there are hundreds of homophobic, cathlophobic, RPGophobic and other phobics.
If God is omnipotent, why can't he cope with the possibility of Good people doing Good works, but not worshipping his "One True" path. My theory is, he can, and does, and we'll never know until the end.
And I have as little patience for people who don't bother to read the entire comment before flaming it.
I didn't say that DNA or RNA were created, I said the chemical combinations that form DNA and RNA, which is precisely what you admit formed.
Read first, then post...you'll discover it works better.
It also works well when you try it out on the Bible...a fine work of fiction with some good life lessons to be gotten from it. I do find the ending smacks a little of deus-ex-machina, but that's not but so much of a problem.
The rules that say "don't wear your cotton/wool blend shirt", "It's okay to enslave your neighbor", and "If your sister's husband dies, it's your duty to impregnate her"?
Remember, "Jesus" said that he wasn't changing the rules, just fulfilling them...so those old rules are still in effect.
Guess we're all condemmed.
OR, alternatively, consider this: God is ominipotent, right? So he can do whatever he wants, right? But you're saying the only way he has chosen to honor his creation is by this one thin path as represented in this book that they can't even agree on the contents of?
Or is it possible that an omnipotent God has the power to provide multiple roads to happiness, the heavily proscriptive "Thou must do this and not that" road for those too simpleminded to contemplate making their own decisions, and the "Do as thou will, so long as it hurt no others" for those who have the intelligence and ability to live their life their own way?
You have to admit it's possible, or else God isn't omnipotent. Pick one.
Umm...technical issue here anonymous Chicklovingtrollboy...
Scientists have frequently reproduced the experiment in which if you put the chemicals that were undoubtedly present in "Pre-Life" earth in a glass jar and then apply a jolt of electricity...say...from a lightning bolt...that within a relatively short (I believe it was hours, but I do not have my copy of Cosmos or my 10th grade science textbooks handy to check) period of time, the chemical combinations that form DNA and the like started to form.
Chick would have known this...had he ever bothered to go to 10th grade. Of course...this is the guy who thinks that rolling pieces of plastic around on a tabletop leads to murder...
No, I'm not posting this anonymously, I'll risk my unimportant karma to show you you're wrong...willing to make the same bet, anonymous coward? Or is the label really correct in this case?
I would like to see some discussions about the boundries of "Speech".
Where does something become speech?
Is code speech? If so, then you can't control code, which brings the entire "copyright" issue into question. Nor can you ban DeCSS and the like, which would probably wouldn't make the RIAA and etc very happy.
On the other hand, if code isn't speech, then it isn't really appropriate for protection under Copyright laws anyhow, since they are designed to protect profit for the benefits of your own thoughts and words. It might become appropriate under Patent laws, but then Microsoft would have to apply for Patents on all of the "New Technology" they develop...which could be subject to Prior Art claims from the companies they stole it from...
But, since the question has never been definitively answered, then the corporations get to use the definitions most benefical to them. "It's speechlike, so I can Copyright it", "It's not speech, so I can ban it".
Those sorts of things need to be redefined in the 21st Century.
Although the article has what would seem to be a darned fine idea for how to handle the desires and do a test, the record labels will never agree to it.
Basic macroeconomics tells us that when supply goes up, price comes down (assuming demand stays constant...I'll discuss this in a moment), so if they suddenly released the X number of tracks currently locked away in their archives to be sold, the number of tracks available to be purchased would increase, and therefore the price per track would decrease.
Although this would seem to be a good thing, and in tune with economic theory, the Record Labels work as a cartel, wherein they receive artifically high profit margins by sharply restricting output (in this case, not so much raw numbers of CD's available as the number of different tracks available in the universe of CD's). So it is in their best interests to keep the "old" music locked away and unavailable/unpurchaseable, so people will spend $14.99 on the latest CD of the new hit group.
The other option would be to increase demand so that the increase in supply keeps pace. Unfortunately, that's much more difficult to do (Market theorists have worked for many years on demand side economic theories, and haven't managed to get it right yet), and therefore experiments are dangerous to the cartel.
so, in short...great idea that will never see the light of day...and the world is much the poorer for it.
"ICANN, of course, has its own take on the Registries' letter..."
Which you'll only be able to examine after a long lawsuit, and you won't be able to copy or leak to anyone without a 10 day opportunity for injunction.
Judging from their financial records history at least....
"but said that ultimately, there may be little an organization can do to prevent an attacker with physical access from setting up a covert channel home. "
But if you can get physical access, why not just use one of the computers so thoughtfully preinstalled by the network administrator?
Heck, they were probably even left logged in overnight by the lusers.
This doesn't seem all that revolutionary..."If I can get into your building, I can do bad stuff". No? Really? Wow...noone's had that idea since...ummm...the invention of the house.
Ummm...actually...they can.
The Supreme Court regularly says something along the lines of "We find this clause of the regulation/law to be unconstitutional".
That's why most bills that go through Congress have clauses that say something like "If any section of this bill shall be found unconstitutional, the remainder shall remain in force" (or words to that effect).
Or for that matter, so do most legal documents (read one sometime, there's almost always a clause in there that says if one clause is found illegal, the rest stay in place).
Hmm...so now the Christian Coalition or the Republican party can buy the phone company's records of who you called and when.
"Hello, this is Pat Robertson, I am calling to tell you that you're a sinner and condemned to burn in hell because you called 1-900-SPANK-ME and talked for 12 hours. Oh, we're also telling your boss, and reporting it to the credit agencies"
Re:Heinlein's Laws out the window
on
Robot Wars
·
· Score: 1
Ayep...you're right...
Regardless...guess they aren't applicable...unless Asimov was smart enough to Trademark the word ROBOT and just release it under the GNU licence and plans on taking it back or something.
Heinlein's Laws out the window
on
Robot Wars
·
· Score: 1
Hmm...won't this take the "No robot shall harm a human" right out the window?
Not that I truly think the military would care, but what would keep some HaCk0R from finding a bug in the WinXP code running these robots and taking over the world?
Just hope there's an off switch somewhere in there.
Let's see...five nines would be just over five minutes of downtime in a year (315 seconds).
For business and other non-life-threatening situations, that would be way better than necessary.
Lots of folks are probably going to harp on the "If 1 out of 10,000 airplanes crashed, there'd be X crashes" line of argument.
There's a problem with that...one mistake doesn't crash an airplane. Every system on an airliner is redundant, and virtually any "pilot error" has time to be fixed before there's a problem.
Listen in on the Air Traffic Control to Cockpit transmissions sometime...just about every flight encounters some minor error at some point, whether it is a pilot needing to reask for a clearance or someone needing to climb or descend a bit to clear a potential collision.
Errors are unavoidable. The key is to ensure recovery from those errors is possible. So sure, your computer may be down for 5 minutes a year. Make sure you have a backup system that is able to take up the slack instantly, and your downtime is down to 3/10 of a second a year.
Redundancy is the key.
Double bullet hack for space invaders is to hold down the reset switch (the one that starts a new game, on the far right as I recall) at the same time as turning on the console (far left switch).
Downside, unfortunately, is that all you can play is the first version of the 60some on the cartridge.
God...I remember that...must go reclaim lost youth...
There is a product, called DBExaminer, that will analyze the differences between two schemas and create a script to update one schema to the other.
It's not free, it's not Open Source, it's not perfect, but it does work for that task, and it's not horribly expensive (on the order of $2000).
It will also analyze your model for Normalization errors...probably a bit too thoroughly, but too much information is better than not enough.
You can get a demo at DBE Software's site .
No, I'm not an employee nor do I make any money from recommending their stuff, I just have used it at a couple of different jobs and it worked darned well for what we needed it for.
Slashdot Mirror
I hope so, if only so that after all you "I'm Christian, you're scum" bigots have been rapturized away to meet your maker (and burn in fiery hell for all eternity because you used the internet...) are gone the rest of us can see about actually getting some work done!
You are correct, however, in that there is no inherent "moral system" in Man. There is, however, an inherent desire (in most people) to exist in Societies, and societies tend to exist on the basis of "don't harm me, and I won't harm you", which provides the basis for rules forbidding murder, theft, and a whole raft of other things.
Self-Interest works really, really well...religion...well...not so well.
So rather than loading them up with a new gizmo to enable an even shorter childhood...why not just let the kids be kids?
No wonder ADHD is on the rise...we don't give children enough time to learn to concentrate on ONE task before they have to go off and put away the tuba because it's soccer practice time, then off to the sweatsh...err...McDonald's for your 6-10 PM shift...microwave dinner if you're lucky, and then you'd best hit your homework.
I recall being able to actually (whisper) play (/whisper) as a child...without obnoxious structure or schedule concerns other then "It's getting dark...time to come in". Perhaps we should reclaim those days.
Brilliant...just brilliant!
" MSNBC (of all places ) has an intersting article about AOLs new PC. "
Yeah, okay, it's software not hardware, but hardware is just a pile of neatly organized sand and plastic, software is what makes it a PC. They appear to be providing an OS, a browser, and other apps...close enough to me.
Or are you requiring them to manufacture the hardware? If so...guess noone other than Intel or the others in the chip market make PC's...probably news to Dell.
And I can't believe I just spent this much time on a anonymous coward...
It's going to be like that Dilbert Cartoon
"All it has is one button, and we press it for you before it leaves the factory."
"But what's the button do?"
"Don't ask me all these techie questions"
Except in this case, the punch line is likely "Submit your credit card numbers to the central server so that we can deduct money from you at will".
So where do I sign?
WASHINGTON, DC (Reuters--NOT!) George W. Bush today successfully went through an entire day without any malpropisms or misspoken phrases.
Presidential Spokesmen credited the benefits of Stem Cell Cloning Research.
Really? I never knew that... I thought I just wanted to listen, and was willing to pay if that's the only way I could listen... I thought the record companies wanted me to pay. Or have the laws of economics been changed again?
YEah, but the packet size is huge...at least if they stuck enough stamps on the envelope.
1. "It's impossible, because it hasn't been done yet"
2. "It's a darned good start that hasn't been followed through completely because the ethical implications of creating life are somewhat significant"
Given what we know about single-cell life, we know that the patterns that constitute living things are remarkably adaptable (numerous experiments where 95% of a population are killed by a chemical, and the remaining 5% reproduce so that the entire initial population is restored, and now 99% of them are resistant to the chemical in question), and tend to spread over ever-increasing areas through various methods (witness the West Nile Virus), it doesn't take much of a leap of logic to believe that if just a handful of appropriate chemical combinations were created through some natural process, that they would manage to hang on, reproduce, and go on from there.
Just because it hasn't been done yet doesn't mean it can't be done. Edison tried thousands of lightbulbs, and some of those lit for a moment, but weren't the complete answer, before he came up with the one that lasted for years. Similarly, life scientists (which isn't a very heavily funded field, so doesn't attract the best and brightest, and operates on a relative shoestring) haven't tripped across the correct sequence of events.
That doesn't prove there's a God. That proves that science isn't yet complete. And even if it does prove that there is a God, the sequence of events we can demonstrate lends more evidence to the "Divine Clockbuilder" school of religion than the "Omnipotent and very active, but with one and only one preferred path of activity" school of religion that the "Big Three" religions rely on.
Further, relying on Chick books for your background isn't exactly relying on strong sources. The man, quite simply, is an extremist loon. He may have some legitimate points, but they are unfortunately buried under thousands of pounds of 4-color crapola. For every potentially legitimate point about amino acid behavior and such, there are hundreds of homophobic, cathlophobic, RPGophobic and other phobics.
If God is omnipotent, why can't he cope with the possibility of Good people doing Good works, but not worshipping his "One True" path. My theory is, he can, and does, and we'll never know until the end.
I didn't say that DNA or RNA were created, I said the chemical combinations that form DNA and RNA, which is precisely what you admit formed.
Read first, then post...you'll discover it works better.
It also works well when you try it out on the Bible...a fine work of fiction with some good life lessons to be gotten from it. I do find the ending smacks a little of deus-ex-machina, but that's not but so much of a problem.
The rules that say "don't wear your cotton/wool blend shirt", "It's okay to enslave your neighbor", and "If your sister's husband dies, it's your duty to impregnate her"?
Remember, "Jesus" said that he wasn't changing the rules, just fulfilling them...so those old rules are still in effect.
Guess we're all condemmed.
OR, alternatively, consider this: God is ominipotent, right? So he can do whatever he wants, right? But you're saying the only way he has chosen to honor his creation is by this one thin path as represented in this book that they can't even agree on the contents of?
Or is it possible that an omnipotent God has the power to provide multiple roads to happiness, the heavily proscriptive "Thou must do this and not that" road for those too simpleminded to contemplate making their own decisions, and the "Do as thou will, so long as it hurt no others" for those who have the intelligence and ability to live their life their own way?
You have to admit it's possible, or else God isn't omnipotent. Pick one.
Scientists have frequently reproduced the experiment in which if you put the chemicals that were undoubtedly present in "Pre-Life" earth in a glass jar and then apply a jolt of electricity...say...from a lightning bolt...that within a relatively short (I believe it was hours, but I do not have my copy of Cosmos or my 10th grade science textbooks handy to check) period of time, the chemical combinations that form DNA and the like started to form.
Chick would have known this...had he ever bothered to go to 10th grade. Of course...this is the guy who thinks that rolling pieces of plastic around on a tabletop leads to murder...
No, I'm not posting this anonymously, I'll risk my unimportant karma to show you you're wrong...willing to make the same bet, anonymous coward? Or is the label really correct in this case?
Where does something become speech?
Is code speech? If so, then you can't control code, which brings the entire "copyright" issue into question. Nor can you ban DeCSS and the like, which would probably wouldn't make the RIAA and etc very happy.
On the other hand, if code isn't speech, then it isn't really appropriate for protection under Copyright laws anyhow, since they are designed to protect profit for the benefits of your own thoughts and words. It might become appropriate under Patent laws, but then Microsoft would have to apply for Patents on all of the "New Technology" they develop...which could be subject to Prior Art claims from the companies they stole it from...
But, since the question has never been definitively answered, then the corporations get to use the definitions most benefical to them. "It's speechlike, so I can Copyright it", "It's not speech, so I can ban it".
Those sorts of things need to be redefined in the 21st Century.
They really should call the sequel TROFF... or perhaps I need to get back on the medications.
Basic macroeconomics tells us that when supply goes up, price comes down (assuming demand stays constant...I'll discuss this in a moment), so if they suddenly released the X number of tracks currently locked away in their archives to be sold, the number of tracks available to be purchased would increase, and therefore the price per track would decrease.
Although this would seem to be a good thing, and in tune with economic theory, the Record Labels work as a cartel, wherein they receive artifically high profit margins by sharply restricting output (in this case, not so much raw numbers of CD's available as the number of different tracks available in the universe of CD's). So it is in their best interests to keep the "old" music locked away and unavailable/unpurchaseable, so people will spend $14.99 on the latest CD of the new hit group.
The other option would be to increase demand so that the increase in supply keeps pace. Unfortunately, that's much more difficult to do (Market theorists have worked for many years on demand side economic theories, and haven't managed to get it right yet), and therefore experiments are dangerous to the cartel.
so, in short...great idea that will never see the light of day...and the world is much the poorer for it.
Which you'll only be able to examine after a long lawsuit, and you won't be able to copy or leak to anyone without a 10 day opportunity for injunction.
Judging from their financial records history at least....
"but said that ultimately, there may be little an organization can do to prevent an attacker with physical access from setting up a covert channel home. " But if you can get physical access, why not just use one of the computers so thoughtfully preinstalled by the network administrator? Heck, they were probably even left logged in overnight by the lusers. This doesn't seem all that revolutionary..."If I can get into your building, I can do bad stuff". No? Really? Wow...noone's had that idea since...ummm...the invention of the house.
Ummm...actually...they can. The Supreme Court regularly says something along the lines of "We find this clause of the regulation/law to be unconstitutional". That's why most bills that go through Congress have clauses that say something like "If any section of this bill shall be found unconstitutional, the remainder shall remain in force" (or words to that effect). Or for that matter, so do most legal documents (read one sometime, there's almost always a clause in there that says if one clause is found illegal, the rest stay in place).
"Hello, this is Pat Robertson, I am calling to tell you that you're a sinner and condemned to burn in hell because you called 1-900-SPANK-ME and talked for 12 hours. Oh, we're also telling your boss, and reporting it to the credit agencies"
Regardless...guess they aren't applicable...unless Asimov was smart enough to Trademark the word ROBOT and just release it under the GNU licence and plans on taking it back or something.
Not that I truly think the military would care, but what would keep some HaCk0R from finding a bug in the WinXP code running these robots and taking over the world?
Just hope there's an off switch somewhere in there.
Let's see...five nines would be just over five minutes of downtime in a year (315 seconds). For business and other non-life-threatening situations, that would be way better than necessary. Lots of folks are probably going to harp on the "If 1 out of 10,000 airplanes crashed, there'd be X crashes" line of argument. There's a problem with that...one mistake doesn't crash an airplane. Every system on an airliner is redundant, and virtually any "pilot error" has time to be fixed before there's a problem. Listen in on the Air Traffic Control to Cockpit transmissions sometime...just about every flight encounters some minor error at some point, whether it is a pilot needing to reask for a clearance or someone needing to climb or descend a bit to clear a potential collision. Errors are unavoidable. The key is to ensure recovery from those errors is possible. So sure, your computer may be down for 5 minutes a year. Make sure you have a backup system that is able to take up the slack instantly, and your downtime is down to 3/10 of a second a year. Redundancy is the key.
Double bullet hack for space invaders is to hold down the reset switch (the one that starts a new game, on the far right as I recall) at the same time as turning on the console (far left switch). Downside, unfortunately, is that all you can play is the first version of the 60some on the cartridge. God...I remember that...must go reclaim lost youth...
There is a product, called DBExaminer, that will analyze the differences between two schemas and create a script to update one schema to the other. It's not free, it's not Open Source, it's not perfect, but it does work for that task, and it's not horribly expensive (on the order of $2000). It will also analyze your model for Normalization errors...probably a bit too thoroughly, but too much information is better than not enough. You can get a demo at DBE Software's site . No, I'm not an employee nor do I make any money from recommending their stuff, I just have used it at a couple of different jobs and it worked darned well for what we needed it for.