Watch any older adult try to pick up a game controller and play a videogame. *IF* they manage to get the hang of using the controller, they typically are overwhelmed by the sheer complexity of the modern videogame and the number of things they must simultaneously (and QUICKLY) keep track of. This has always been, IMHO, at least anecdotal evidence that videogames clearly develop a certain set of mental skills that very few other activities develop so effectively.
ME: When we wanted to transfer money between accounts we had to use this thing called PAPER and we'd all learn by reading through hundreds of sheets of this paper in things called BOOKS and we even used this "paper" to wipe ourselves (apologies to "Demolition Man")!
MY GRANDKIDS: Wow! HAHAHA! That's RIDICULOUS!
ME: Yeah, and there was no Internet so if you wanted to send people things you had to give it to the MAILMAN and he'd drive it all the way across the country or the world in a TRUCK , or it'd go in an AIRPLANE!
MY GRANDKIDS: WOW! HAHA! Grandpa what's a truck?
ME: We used to have these things called AUTOMOBILES. Even after we had better technology we kept using these things to travel because we all loved to drive so much that we refused to let global positioning satellites guide us to our destinations!
MY GRANDKIDS: WOW! HAHAHA!
ME: Yep, and there used to be this thing called cancer, we got rid of that eventually. Get this, it used to cost us like $500 BILLION just to send ONE space shuttle to places as nearby as the friggin' MOON! And, you won't believe this, that $500 BILLION space shuttle, you could only use it like once or twice before you had to throw it away!
MY GRANDKIDS: WOW! HAHAHHAA! We learned E=MC^2 in kindergarden! HAHAH!
ME: Oh, and get this, I saved the WEIRDEST thing for last -- we used to have to drive to the stores to buy these plastic optical discs that had our videogames on them!
Quoted below is a previous post I made on the subject of whether this move is anticompetitive, as well as on the idea of it being a conflict of interest for MS to be providing it. I think it's still perfectly relevant:
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I'm not sure that MS integrating AV software into Windows is the best move for a variety of reasons (both for MS and for users), but all this talk of such a move being anticompetitive is unfounded, and suggests that some people were not paying enough attention during the Internet Explorer antitrust trial.
Recall one of the principle arguments:
US DOJ: Internet Explorer is a bundled product, NOT a necessary component of the operating system, and is being bundled to leverage the Windows monopoly against Netscape et. al.
MS: Internet Explorer is a necessary component of the operating system, and cannot be removed without crippling it.
Now, any computer veteran knows that a web browser is not a necessary component of an operating system. MS' claim was only true in the sense that they had supposedly (intentionally, it is argued) tied IE into the OS in such a way that they were one and the same, making removal of IE impossible.
More to the point, the inverse of the DOJ's argument was, essentially, "Bundling IE with Windows gives MS an unfair advantage over Netscape in the web browser market. Such a bundling might be justifiable if web browsers were integral to the functionality of the operating system, but this is not the case."
Flash forward to now.
Were MS to go ahead with integrating AV with Windows and find themselves in an "unfair product bundling" court case, they should easily succeed with AV where they failed with Internet Explorer. Why?
Show me one security expert who would advise NOT running antivirus software with Windows.
If security is an important goal of the operating system, antivirus software is quite obviously a *necessary* component in today's virus-wild world. The proof of that is in the pudding: any "well-configured" Windows PC has antivirus software installed on it as an integral part of that configuration. And since antivirus software is a necessary component, it is, by definition, NOT a "bundled product" but rather a part of the single overall operating system product, which invalidates the basis of the antitrust argument.
It doesn't matter that other companies want to sell their own AV software, nor that they've built an "industry" doing so. The only question that matters is, does Windows 2000/XP *NEED* antivirus software in order to meet the security expectations of the average user? If the answer to that question is yes, then MS has just as much right to bundle AV software as car makers have to include airbags.
And the argument that "MS should fix the flaws in the OS rather than integrate AV software" misses the point entirely. The broad definition of a computer virus is not "code designed to take advantage of operating system flaws." It's "code designed to do destructive, disruptive acts, act against the will of the rightful owner of the system, etc, etc." Viruses can't all be blamed on Windows.
Oh, also worth noting: Microsoft Office is *NOT* part of Windows! I mention this because of the discussion on email worms coming in through Outlook.
Yes, they should fix the flaws, but AV software is like another layer of defense, it attacks the problem from a different angle, bringing advantages that improve the overall "security" of the operating system. I think most people understand this point and are simply looking to take cheap shots at Windows even though they're well aware that AV software is more than simply a "dynamic OS flaw patcher." Is it sometimes used that way? Yes. But that's not the sole premise of AV software. Especially in Windows, where everything often runs with Administrator privileges, many viruses don't exploit holes in the operating system, they exploit the fact that the user was silly enough to open and run an EXE attached to an email message.
I'll take 10 users getting their documents destroyed over one DoS zombie any day. The former only has an impact on me if I'm an idiot, the latter becomes a problem when other people are idiots.
That's easy for people like us to say, but the reality is that the documents and data of a person who lacks a sufficient understanding of computer security are not automatically less important than our data or documents.
Or, by way of analogy, the life of a person who didn't think to buy a carbon monoxide detector for their home, is not less important than your life, just because you happened to be wise enough to purchase a detector.
However I do agree with you that it's better for people's problems to affect themselves rather than other people. In fact that is one of the biggest reasons why the current generation of internet worms and trojans are so successful: the people getting infected are causing damage to other people's systems, not their own, and so they have no motivation to tighten up security on their systems. This is no doubt a big contributor to the fact that a huge percentage of computer systems don't have basic protections like antivirus, firewall, or up-to-date Windows security patches.
People don't have much fear of viruses/worms/trojans because it's been years since the days when these things were truly destructive to the infected individual's computer. In fact, to the extent that people DO have some fear of viruses, it is probably a remnant of the mid-to-late 90's when viruses were more locally destructive.
The worm's ranking was overtaken by MyDoom and Netsky variants, which have been around for a number of years.
This information distorts the issue. Kama Sutra carries an extremely destructive payload, deleting a user's local data and data on attached network drives (and, worse, the antivirus software on the networked computers can't prevent these deletions). This cannot be directly compared to MyDoom or NetSky, which merely clog networks, install backdoors (that are not usually used for anything nearly as destructive), and turn computers into spam and DoS zombies.
The above statement is like saying that rainstorms have overtaken tornados in prevalence. That doesn't matter, because tornados do much, much more damage than rainstorms do.
This is one of those areas where Microsoft is damned if they do and damned if they don't.
No, it's not.
I'm not sure that MS integrating AV software into Windows is the best move for a variety of reasons (both for MS and for users), but all this talk of such a move being anticompetitive is unfounded, and suggests that some people were not paying enough attention during the Internet Explorer antitrust trial.
Recall one of the principle arguments:
US DOJ: Internet Explorer is a bundled product, NOT a necessary component of the operating system, and is being bundled to leverage the Windows monopoly against Netscape et. al.
MS: Internet Explorer is a necessary component of the operating system, and cannot be removed without crippling it.
Now, any computer veteran knows that a web browser is not a necessary component of an operating system. MS' claim was only true in the sense that they had supposedly (intentionally, it is argued) tied IE into the OS in such a way that they were one and the same, making removal of IE impossible.
More to the point, the inverse of the DOJ's argument was, essentially, "Bundling IE with Windows gives MS an unfair advantage over Netscape in the web browser market. Such a bundling might be justifiable if web browsers were integral to the functionality of the operating system, but this is not the case."
Flash forward to now.
Were MS to go ahead with integrating AV with Windows and find themselves in an "unfair product bundling" court case, they should easily succeed with AV where they failed with Internet Explorer. Why?
Show me one security expert who would recommend NOT running Windows with antivirus software.
If security is an important goal of the operating system, antivirus software is quite obviously a *necessary* component in today's virus-wild world. The proof of that is in the pudding: any "well-configured" Windows PC has antivirus software installed on it as an integral part of that configuration. And since antivirus software is a necessary component, it is, by definition, NOT a "bundled product" but rather a single product, which invalidates the basis of the antitrust argument.
It doesn't matter that other companies want to sell their own AV software. Other companies sell software packages for add-on mouse cursors. That doesn't change the fact that a mouse-oriented operating system like Windows NEEDS some mouse cursors to be built in so the user can see what the hell they're doing. And yes, MS does hold an unfair advantage in the market for mouse cursors.
And the argument that "MS should fix the flaws in the OS rather than integrate AV software" misses the point entirely. Yes, they should fix the flaws, but AV software is like another layer of defense, it attacks the problem from a different angle, bringing advantages that improve the overall "security" of the operating system. I think most people understand this point and are simply looking to take cheap shots at Windows even though they're well aware that AV software is more than simply a "dynamic OS flaw patcher." Is it sometimes used that way? Yes. But that's not the sole premise of AV software. Especially in Windows, where everything often runs with Administrator privileges, many viruses don't exploit holes in the operating system, they exploit the fact that the user was silly enough to open and run an EXE attached to an email message.
Might integrated AV cause MS to slack on patching the operatings system? Sure. Might it create problems (or conflicts of interest) if MS "patches" their OS via their AV software, leaving the OS flaws exposed if the customer switches to someone else's AV software? Sure.
There are lots of hurdles MS will have to deal with if they decide to go forward with integrated AV. All I'm saying is that antitrust concerns shouldn't be one of them.
This argument is like saying that Ford can't bundle seatbelts with their cars, because it's unfair to third-party seatbelt makers. It's a necessary compon
Right, but my whole point was that if the study's advice is widely followed (as they seem comfortable recommending), it won't result in even distribution of energy throughout the day, it will result in peak capacity occurring during morning hours instead of during afternoon hours.
If the suggestion is to stagger demand, they should explicitly suggset that, instead of implying that "this is something advantageous that EVERYONE could do" and silently hoping that only 50% of the population actually do it. There were other important aspects to the study's findings besides the aspect I was questioning, though, which is why my subject was "partially illogical" -- I was only criticizing a singular aspect of the findings, while making no comment on the rest of it.
Part of this study's theory is that people should cool their buildings in the morning, because energy is less in-demand -- and therefore less expensive -- in the morning, because most people currently try to cool their offices in the afternoon, when it's actually hot.
Sounds smart, right? Except if everyone does this, suddenly there's an increased demand for energy in the morning (thus raising the price for morning energy use) and a decreased demand for energy in the afternoon.
That is, the "use energy in the morning when nobody else is using it" aspect of this solution is like proposing, "There's a tremendous amount of traffic on the roads between 5-6pm. We propose that people leave work at 4pm to avoid this traffic congestion." If everyone takes you up on that suggestion, all you've accomplished is shifting rush hour back an hour, and everyone STILL has to sit in traffic.
Perhaps the worst part is that, in many cases, this isn't even a case of 'embrace and extend', but just plain doing it wrong.
Yeah, seriously. I, for one, am outraged that Apple has merely made mistakes in implementation, and is not making deliberate attempts to hijack an open standard. It just doesn't get any worse than that.
Considering that MLB would almost certainly lose if they tried to make this argument in court, looking their gift horse in the mouth was not the smartest of ideas, methinks.
They were getting PAID by companies to license information that's in the public domain. They should have kept to chuckling in the boardroom and stayed quiet on what was a great deal for them. Instead they've thrust the issue into the spotlight. If this company succeeds in court, more and more licensees may decide that licensing stats from the MLB is a stupider idea than, say, using those stats for free...
"...expect Apple to continue to outperform competitors, citing 2006 as 'poised to be the year of both iPod growth and, more importantly, Mac market share gains,
I'm sorry did you say MORE importantly? I know Apple is SUPPOSED to be a computer company first and foremost, but I'm having a hard time with this sentence given the ridiculous number of iPods they're selling. Anyone have a figure on what % of 2005 sales were iPods vs. "macs"?
I don't believe there's this "live in the moment/dangerous enjoyment" thing going on (perhaps for some teens or something?). People do 80 mph on the highway because they feel they can control their vehicle at that speed.
But that doesn't explain why people go the maximum speed they're comfortable with. The driver who's comfortable driving 80 is also comfortable driving 65. Why doesn't he drive 65? Aside from people who are actually in a hurry to get where they're going, there clearly is an additional motive (or motives) behind the need for speed.
Frankly, things like this simply do not happen. Huge potholes do not sudden appear directly in front of your vehicle as if from nowhere.
Yes they do! Sure, they didn't suddenly "appear," but it's all-too-common for the driver to not realize there's a pothole (or to underestimate the depth of a pothole) until they hear the giant "THUD!" And it's not just a matter of "bad driver," it's simply that often potholes are stealthy creatures. Especially at night. And I've been on roads where the traffic speed is ~60mph and there's a giant pothole in the road (and nobody sees it either because it's hidden by the cars in front of you or it's nighttime, etc). Sorry, potholes do in fact appear out of nowhere.
I think much of what goes wrong in driving is the result of the increasing disconnect from reality that modern drivers face.
When you're riding a bike, the danger of what can happen if you're not cautious is all too real. Same with skiing. Same with walking.
Cars are another story entirely. It goes far beyond gadgetry like ABS, traction control, and the other modern technologies. It's far more fundamental than that.
You're in an enclosed environment. The windows are up. You can't fully hear the sounds outside the car. When you're on the highway going 80 mph, you've got the windows up. You can't feel or hear the loud, howling, fierce, blistering wind, the loud, raw sound of the tires grinding down the pavement. The shrieks of cars and trucks passing you by. You hear and feel maybe 20% of that, with the windows rolled up. These are all danger cues, things to keep you on high alert, but you've blocked them out, enclosed in the false security of your vehicular cockpit, with comfortable reclining bucket seat, music and talk radio, comfort-maximizing air conditioning and heating, zero wind, etc.
And then you've got those nice cars with the great suspension. No longer can you feel the all-too-real road beneath you. Now you don't even realize you just drove over a giant pothole at 40 mph.
The car control schema itself is like a video game. One pressure-sensitive button to stop, another to go. A wheel to steer. Each of these controls, your low-effort movements are amplified 1000x to control the multi-ton vehicle you're sitting in. Tired of pressing the B button? No problem, flip on the cruise control.
And most importantly, of course, is the need for speed! We love going 70, 80, 90 mph -- as fast as we can get away with. Why? Because we love to live in the moment, and that's ALL you feel when you're zooming along at 100 mph down an open road. You're steering a giant death machine at 100 mph...you don't have TIME to think about anything but the present.
And this, "living in the moment," is dangerous for exactly the same reasons it's enjoyable: You're not thinking about the future. Not even the near future. Not even the next few minutes. You've all but completely blocked out all thoughts, all concerns of the potential consequences of your actions.
Google search for "old dos games". Check out the "essential utilities" link. I also doubt there are really "millions of DOS gamers", especially ones who are running win2k/xp and aren't savvy enough to figure it out.
However many people were buying and playing DOS games in the early-mid 90's, that's how many potential "I want to play DOS games" gamers exist today. I don't know if it's a few hundred thousand or a few million, but I'm guessing it's the latter. Nearly everyone is running Win2k/XP today. You don't have to be savvy to run it -- it comes preinstalled with every computer. For most computer users, downloading programs off the Internet is still beyond them, and DosBox assumes at least a slight amount of savviness, as it would be seen by the average user.
Also, although I do realize the point you're making is mostly true (that the number of people who want to play old DOS games today and don't know how to use DosBox is very small), I think you may have missed mine. To quote my original post:
If MS were to say that with enough legacy technologies, people would get mad at them.
Yes, the "pissed off that they can't play their old DOS games" users might comprise only, say, 0.5% of all Windows users. But now add in all the people wanting to run 16-bit programs -- that's maybe another 3-4%. Now add in people using older hardware that requires legacy device drivers -- another 3-4%. People who need to share files over a network with Win9x machines -- another 5%. Access to Program Manager (from Windows 3.x -- which, believe it or not, is still included on Windows 2000 machines, and in a non-functional form on Windows XP machines). Remove support for the half-dozen database APIs MS has gone through over the past decade, that's gonna piss even more people off...
Start throwing all these small users bases together, and suddenly you have a large number of users complaining that the operating system breaks compatibility with their stuff, and so they choose not to upgrade. Of course, ironically, by choosing not to upgrade, they're likely exposing themselves to far more serious security risks than the ones that are discovered-and-eventually-patched in still-supported versions of the operating system.
As a matter of fact, there's no need to speculate what such a system would be like, because it exists! It's called Windows NT. Corporate IT admins loved it because it was much more secure and stable than Windows 9x, and nobody else wanted it because it didn't support all the things people wanted. And although it's true that this is a bit different, since you're merely suggesting that the OS make the user "opt-in" to compatibility-oriented features, it's also true that for non-savvy computer users this is often too difficult in practice (sure, in a perfect world the O.S. would magically detect when you need compatibility with WMF files and temporarily start the "WMF reader service," but if we were debating a perfect world, we could have both compatibility and security). Lots of device manufacturers released device drivers for Windows NT, but most users aren't skilled enough to go online, figure out what device driver they need, download it, install it, and, as if that weren't enough for them, troubleshoot any problems that arise during or after the driver installation.
These "legacy adapters" don't come with the device. You have to buy them separately, and install them yourself. Sure, there are probably some people out there that don't realize the risks of doing so, but since 3-prong plugs won't fit into a 2-prong outlet by default, the user has to make a conscious effort to put themselves at risk, and users who don't need the compatibility are safer.
Users have to make a conscious effort to buy the 3-prong adapter. That doesn't mean they understand the risk. They probably don't even know what a "ground" wire is. Same with polarity. They might think, for example, that the "risk" is simply that the device won't work when they plug it in because it's not
This particular example is not too good; old DOS games work perfectly fine in an x86 emulator like Dosbox.
There's workarounds, adapters, modifcations, etc, for lots of obsolete technologies. That doesn't help the millions of DOS gamers who aren't savvy enough to download DosBox.
But perhaps a better example that's similar to the WMF exploit is electrical outlets: Modern consumer electronics have plugs designed to only be compatible with outlets that indicate the proper polarity. They won't fit into older outlets. Devices that require a ground wire effectively make obsolete outlets that don't provide a ground.
But there are adapters and such (not to mention you can put in a 3-pronged outlet with no ground wire attached to the ground hole), that let you use polarity-free outlets with polarity-sensitive devices, and ground-less outlets with ground-requiring devices. These "legacy" adapters are similar to MS's continued inclusion of WMF. They provide some backwards compatibility, at the expense of safety/security.
Part of the problem is that MS is reluctant to phase out obsolete technologies.
Take WMF files for example. Obviously nobody making new software today, would incorporate WMF technology. It's obsolete and unpopular. The only people who use WMF tech today are those who are using software that was designed to make use of that format. And therein lies the problem. At some point in time, software programs were created that used WMF technology. MS could come out and say "WMF is obsolete, and rather than take the risk of continuing to include a software component that may compromise security, we're going to completely remove support for it in future versions of Windows, since barely anybody uses it anyway." If MS were to say that with enough legacy technologies, people would get mad at them. If you're using or writing software for some new technology, you AT LEAST want to take solace in knowing that, even if it's unpopular and discontinued, it will at least remain USABLE on future systems.
So I can sort of understand MS's pickle from that point of view. It's sort of like users complaining that some security hole in Windows 3.1 has, in 2005, still not been patched. And on the other hand, a whole wave of users would potentially be up in arms if MS decided to, in the name of security, remove support for running old 16-bit Windows 3.1 programs in Windows XP.
And incidentally, I have a box of clip art CDs in WMF format.
The same people on this forum who would criticize MS for not patching AND not removing WMF support, probably wish that Windows XP had better support for the old early-mid 90's DOS games. And yet it might be a completely impractical task (not to mention an expensive one given the limited appeal of the feature) to eliminate all of the security risks posed by support for DOS (and, don't forget, back in the DOS era, a virus was more likely to format your hard drive than email your address book).
Windows may be a feature-driven, compatibility-over-security operating system, but just because we all want security, let's not pretend we don't like features and compatibility.
But today, in a private meeting with ITD General Counsel Linda Hamel, Secretary of Administration and Finance Thomas Trimarco assured her that Peter Quinn's departure "will result in no change to the Administration's position on the ODF standard."
Well I'm sure Mr. Trimarco will be pleased to know that his private comments to Ms. Hamel remained private, leaving bloggers like Andy Updegrove with no choice but to resort to speculation as to the contents of said meeting, in absence of a direct quote from those inolved.
There's only one smart reason for Microsoft to buy Opera: to stop Google from buying it or forming a Google/Opera partnership that locks MS out.
Firefox is not a threat to MS. Opera is not a threat to MS. But Google has enough verve and popularity to potentially get a Google-branded Opera browser into the hands of the masses.
It's actually a bit incomplete to say that there's anything special about a robot becoming self-aware.
What makes it noteworthy that we humans are self-aware, is the fact that we discover this fact on our own. It is not a specific "function" of our species -- it's a realization that our developed brains allow us to achieve.
If we program a robot to understand that it "exists," even if we program it to have a full understanding of what that means, it's not really significant.
Being self-aware is a landmark achievement for humans. For robots, the landmark achievement is not self-awareness, but free will and independent thought.
However, even these things, are really not so special, because they are not so special in us. Think about humans. We are simply a very-complex and imperfect learning machine, a neural net simulation, juxtaposed atop our more primordal desires: self-preservation, procreation, the achievement of pleasure, and the avoidance of pain. It is the interplay between these two things -- the neural net, and the base desires, in tandem, of course, with the recognition of self-awareness and the recognition that we can die, that mostly comprise "what it is to be human."
Can a robot achieve this? Sure. We can program it to learn in the same manner that we humans do. In doing so, it will make its own independent discovery that it "exists" (self-awareness) and it will also learn that it can die (by watching other robots "die"). It can be programmed to have biases toward self-preservation and procreation (whatever that would mean for a robot). We could program it to seek "pleasure stimulus" and avoid "pain stimulus," and then program it to randomly associate (based on early childhood influences) certain "enjoyable" activities with different intensities of pleasure data, and do something similar for pain.
We can program it to find pleasurable, in random quantities, cetain activities, certain personalities, certain kinds of people/robots ("random" in the sense that the experiential influences on which these factors are based upon are far too complex and subtle to be superficially noticed).
In short, we could make a perfect simulation of human beings.
Just as with self-awareness, what makes it not-special, is the fact that even after all that hard work, even though it would probably be just as fun and meaningful to interact with as a normal human, and even though it may be an accurate simulation of a real, live, unique human being, it is still, ultimately, just executing its program code.
This is, ultimately, what is disappointing about AI. But then again, this is also equally true of humans. The only difference is, since we didn't design ourselves, it's not important to us. The interesting thing here, then, is that these human-like robots would value "what it is to be robot" just as much as we value our humanity. They would consider themselves just as unique as we consider ourselves, because they didn't design themselves, just as we didn't design ourselves.
Something I find interesting, is that it's completely circular to take the perspective, "What are the odds that the Earth and Humans and all this stuff would come to be, so much would have to go just right to result in the conditions for our existence," -- which, of course, is true, but then to follow that up with "the odds of us existing are so small, that this must have been the work of some intelligient being."
I would call this a non-sequitur. Why? Because if you accept the idea that the odds of us existing are, say, 1-in-6-billion, and especially if you also accept that the odds of some other world with "life," or anything even slightly related and stable enough to survive over billions of years (or even "10,000 years" as the bible reads), existing close enough to us in this huge universe that we'd be able to know about it with the current state of space exploration progress, then the "intelligient design" theory doesn't hold.
Why? Because the argument is essentially, "it's so unlikely that we'd come to exist, that it's more likely we were created by an intelligient being."
This is actually a really stupid thing to say, though, because it is only as a result of your EXISTING that you're able to have such a thought.
A perfect analogy is a different kind of "creationism" -- human conception. Let's say there's 6 billion sperm all trying to get into the one-passenger-only unfertilized egg. And let's say you are that one, single sperm that managed the feat. Now, 20 years later, you exist. And you say "what are the chances that I exist?" There's not really any useful meaning to be derived some such a thought. The other 5.999999999 billion sperm would be thinking the same thing, if they existed instead of you. There were 6 billion babies/Earths with the potential to exist, and one that came to exist. All 6 billion of those potential babies would grow up to ask the same question, maybe even to believe that "God" created them. This fact alone is why it's foolish for you to consider yourself "unique" in your existence. All 6 billion babies were unique and "unlikely", and if they had the chance to grow into humans they'd tell you that themselves.
To put this another way, saying "something intelligent MUST have created us because it's too unlikely that we came to exist through random events," discounts the obvious fact you've already stated -- that you DO exist as the combination of extremely random events, and that even if some intelligent being later took credit for it, the other 5.999999999 billion possible alternate realities you calculated, based on the known elements the intelligient being placed in the world, do not cease to exist as potential alternate realities.
So what I'm saying is, it is actually irrelevant to the concept of evolution (and "Big Bang" theory, and all other science theories) whether there is a "God" or any other creator. The explanations remain unchanged, theories based on the observed reality. Even with the revelation of an intelligent creator, we are still an "extremely unlikely" permutation of the existing world/universe/reality (regardless of who created it), so you cannot argue that our unlikeliness is somehow "proof" or "suggestive" of the idea of there being an intelligent creator.
In other words "God" could have created 5.9999999999 billion other realities. If "He" exists, he chose to create ours. If "He" does not exist, ours was created out of extreme randomness. Because the outcome is the same whether "He" exists or not, it is foolish to suggest that the outcome (our reality) in any way points to or against "His" existence.
Even as a theory, Intelligent Design doesn't make sense. It draws an illogical conclusion (the existence of an intelligent creator) from its observation (the unlikeliness of our existence).
And claiming there are "gaps" in Darwin's theory is even more ridiculous, as if to say "our theory gains credence from the fact that Darwin's theory is incomplete." This makes no sense, nor does its opposite: Even if Darwin's theory explains everything 100%, this does not weaken a competing theory. It does make it likely that someone will want to reach for Occam's Razor, though.
Slashdot Mirror
'The question the court is facing is whether you can copyright an idea, a conjecture.'
Wait, hundreds of years of UK case law and legislation and this question has never come up before?
I'm sorry, I thought the year was 2006. My mistake.
Watch any older adult try to pick up a game controller and play a videogame. *IF* they manage to get the hang of using the controller, they typically are overwhelmed by the sheer complexity of the modern videogame and the number of things they must simultaneously (and QUICKLY) keep track of. This has always been, IMHO, at least anecdotal evidence that videogames clearly develop a certain set of mental skills that very few other activities develop so effectively.
Yeah, I can see it now...
ME: When we wanted to transfer money between accounts we had to use this thing called PAPER and we'd all learn by reading through hundreds of sheets of this paper in things called BOOKS and we even used this "paper" to wipe ourselves (apologies to "Demolition Man")!
MY GRANDKIDS: Wow! HAHAHA! That's RIDICULOUS!
ME: Yeah, and there was no Internet so if you wanted to send people things you had to give it to the MAILMAN and he'd drive it all the way across the country or the world in a TRUCK , or it'd go in an AIRPLANE!
MY GRANDKIDS: WOW! HAHA! Grandpa what's a truck?
ME: We used to have these things called AUTOMOBILES. Even after we had better technology we kept using these things to travel because we all loved to drive so much that we refused to let global positioning satellites guide us to our destinations!
MY GRANDKIDS: WOW! HAHAHA!
ME: Yep, and there used to be this thing called cancer, we got rid of that eventually. Get this, it used to cost us like $500 BILLION just to send ONE space shuttle to places as nearby as the friggin' MOON! And, you won't believe this, that $500 BILLION space shuttle, you could only use it like once or twice before you had to throw it away!
MY GRANDKIDS: WOW! HAHAHHAA! We learned E=MC^2 in kindergarden! HAHAH!
ME: Oh, and get this, I saved the WEIRDEST thing for last -- we used to have to drive to the stores to buy these plastic optical discs that had our videogames on them!
MY GRANDKIDS: Uhh, that's uh...that's nice...
Quoted below is a previous post I made on the subject of whether this move is anticompetitive, as well as on the idea of it being a conflict of interest for MS to be providing it. I think it's still perfectly relevant:
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I'm not sure that MS integrating AV software into Windows is the best move for a variety of reasons (both for MS and for users), but all this talk of such a move being anticompetitive is unfounded, and suggests that some people were not paying enough attention during the Internet Explorer antitrust trial.
Recall one of the principle arguments:
US DOJ: Internet Explorer is a bundled product, NOT a necessary component of the operating system, and is being bundled to leverage the Windows monopoly against Netscape et. al.
MS: Internet Explorer is a necessary component of the operating system, and cannot be removed without crippling it.
Now, any computer veteran knows that a web browser is not a necessary component of an operating system. MS' claim was only true in the sense that they had supposedly (intentionally, it is argued) tied IE into the OS in such a way that they were one and the same, making removal of IE impossible.
More to the point, the inverse of the DOJ's argument was, essentially, "Bundling IE with Windows gives MS an unfair advantage over Netscape in the web browser market. Such a bundling might be justifiable if web browsers were integral to the functionality of the operating system, but this is not the case."
Flash forward to now.
Were MS to go ahead with integrating AV with Windows and find themselves in an "unfair product bundling" court case, they should easily succeed with AV where they failed with Internet Explorer. Why?
Show me one security expert who would advise NOT running antivirus software with Windows.
If security is an important goal of the operating system, antivirus software is quite obviously a *necessary* component in today's virus-wild world. The proof of that is in the pudding: any "well-configured" Windows PC has antivirus software installed on it as an integral part of that configuration. And since antivirus software is a necessary component, it is, by definition, NOT a "bundled product" but rather a part of the single overall operating system product, which invalidates the basis of the antitrust argument.
It doesn't matter that other companies want to sell their own AV software, nor that they've built an "industry" doing so. The only question that matters is, does Windows 2000/XP *NEED* antivirus software in order to meet the security expectations of the average user? If the answer to that question is yes, then MS has just as much right to bundle AV software as car makers have to include airbags.
And the argument that "MS should fix the flaws in the OS rather than integrate AV software" misses the point entirely. The broad definition of a computer virus is not "code designed to take advantage of operating system flaws." It's "code designed to do destructive, disruptive acts, act against the will of the rightful owner of the system, etc, etc." Viruses can't all be blamed on Windows.
Oh, also worth noting: Microsoft Office is *NOT* part of Windows! I mention this because of the discussion on email worms coming in through Outlook.
Yes, they should fix the flaws, but AV software is like another layer of defense, it attacks the problem from a different angle, bringing advantages that improve the overall "security" of the operating system. I think most people understand this point and are simply looking to take cheap shots at Windows even though they're well aware that AV software is more than simply a "dynamic OS flaw patcher." Is it sometimes used that way? Yes. But that's not the sole premise of AV software. Especially in Windows, where everything often runs with Administrator privileges, many viruses don't exploit holes in the operating system, they exploit the fact that the user was silly enough to open and run an EXE attached to an email message.
Might integ
I'll take 10 users getting their documents destroyed over one DoS zombie any day. The former only has an impact on me if I'm an idiot, the latter becomes a problem when other people are idiots.
That's easy for people like us to say, but the reality is that the documents and data of a person who lacks a sufficient understanding of computer security are not automatically less important than our data or documents.
Or, by way of analogy, the life of a person who didn't think to buy a carbon monoxide detector for their home, is not less important than your life, just because you happened to be wise enough to purchase a detector.
However I do agree with you that it's better for people's problems to affect themselves rather than other people. In fact that is one of the biggest reasons why the current generation of internet worms and trojans are so successful: the people getting infected are causing damage to other people's systems, not their own, and so they have no motivation to tighten up security on their systems. This is no doubt a big contributor to the fact that a huge percentage of computer systems don't have basic protections like antivirus, firewall, or up-to-date Windows security patches.
People don't have much fear of viruses/worms/trojans because it's been years since the days when these things were truly destructive to the infected individual's computer. In fact, to the extent that people DO have some fear of viruses, it is probably a remnant of the mid-to-late 90's when viruses were more locally destructive.
The worm's ranking was overtaken by MyDoom and Netsky variants, which have been around for a number of years.
This information distorts the issue. Kama Sutra carries an extremely destructive payload, deleting a user's local data and data on attached network drives (and, worse, the antivirus software on the networked computers can't prevent these deletions). This cannot be directly compared to MyDoom or NetSky, which merely clog networks, install backdoors (that are not usually used for anything nearly as destructive), and turn computers into spam and DoS zombies.
The above statement is like saying that rainstorms have overtaken tornados in prevalence. That doesn't matter, because tornados do much, much more damage than rainstorms do.
This is one of those areas where Microsoft is damned if they do and damned if they don't.
No, it's not.
I'm not sure that MS integrating AV software into Windows is the best move for a variety of reasons (both for MS and for users), but all this talk of such a move being anticompetitive is unfounded, and suggests that some people were not paying enough attention during the Internet Explorer antitrust trial.
Recall one of the principle arguments:
US DOJ: Internet Explorer is a bundled product, NOT a necessary component of the operating system, and is being bundled to leverage the Windows monopoly against Netscape et. al.
MS: Internet Explorer is a necessary component of the operating system, and cannot be removed without crippling it.
Now, any computer veteran knows that a web browser is not a necessary component of an operating system. MS' claim was only true in the sense that they had supposedly (intentionally, it is argued) tied IE into the OS in such a way that they were one and the same, making removal of IE impossible.
More to the point, the inverse of the DOJ's argument was, essentially, "Bundling IE with Windows gives MS an unfair advantage over Netscape in the web browser market. Such a bundling might be justifiable if web browsers were integral to the functionality of the operating system, but this is not the case."
Flash forward to now.
Were MS to go ahead with integrating AV with Windows and find themselves in an "unfair product bundling" court case, they should easily succeed with AV where they failed with Internet Explorer. Why?
Show me one security expert who would recommend NOT running Windows with antivirus software.
If security is an important goal of the operating system, antivirus software is quite obviously a *necessary* component in today's virus-wild world. The proof of that is in the pudding: any "well-configured" Windows PC has antivirus software installed on it as an integral part of that configuration. And since antivirus software is a necessary component, it is, by definition, NOT a "bundled product" but rather a single product, which invalidates the basis of the antitrust argument.
It doesn't matter that other companies want to sell their own AV software. Other companies sell software packages for add-on mouse cursors. That doesn't change the fact that a mouse-oriented operating system like Windows NEEDS some mouse cursors to be built in so the user can see what the hell they're doing. And yes, MS does hold an unfair advantage in the market for mouse cursors.
And the argument that "MS should fix the flaws in the OS rather than integrate AV software" misses the point entirely. Yes, they should fix the flaws, but AV software is like another layer of defense, it attacks the problem from a different angle, bringing advantages that improve the overall "security" of the operating system. I think most people understand this point and are simply looking to take cheap shots at Windows even though they're well aware that AV software is more than simply a "dynamic OS flaw patcher." Is it sometimes used that way? Yes. But that's not the sole premise of AV software. Especially in Windows, where everything often runs with Administrator privileges, many viruses don't exploit holes in the operating system, they exploit the fact that the user was silly enough to open and run an EXE attached to an email message.
Might integrated AV cause MS to slack on patching the operatings system? Sure. Might it create problems (or conflicts of interest) if MS "patches" their OS via their AV software, leaving the OS flaws exposed if the customer switches to someone else's AV software? Sure.
There are lots of hurdles MS will have to deal with if they decide to go forward with integrated AV. All I'm saying is that antitrust concerns shouldn't be one of them.
This argument is like saying that Ford can't bundle seatbelts with their cars, because it's unfair to third-party seatbelt makers. It's a necessary compon
The other 2% get rejected.
I hope this doesn't somehow indirectly lead to the near-death of Mr. Burns...
Right, but my whole point was that if the study's advice is widely followed (as they seem comfortable recommending), it won't result in even distribution of energy throughout the day, it will result in peak capacity occurring during morning hours instead of during afternoon hours.
If the suggestion is to stagger demand, they should explicitly suggset that, instead of implying that "this is something advantageous that EVERYONE could do" and silently hoping that only 50% of the population actually do it. There were other important aspects to the study's findings besides the aspect I was questioning, though, which is why my subject was "partially illogical" -- I was only criticizing a singular aspect of the findings, while making no comment on the rest of it.
I only read half of the TFA, but...
Part of this study's theory is that people should cool their buildings in the morning, because energy is less in-demand -- and therefore less expensive -- in the morning, because most people currently try to cool their offices in the afternoon, when it's actually hot.
Sounds smart, right? Except if everyone does this, suddenly there's an increased demand for energy in the morning (thus raising the price for morning energy use) and a decreased demand for energy in the afternoon.
That is, the "use energy in the morning when nobody else is using it" aspect of this solution is like proposing, "There's a tremendous amount of traffic on the roads between 5-6pm. We propose that people leave work at 4pm to avoid this traffic congestion." If everyone takes you up on that suggestion, all you've accomplished is shifting rush hour back an hour, and everyone STILL has to sit in traffic.
Perhaps the worst part is that, in many cases, this isn't even a case of 'embrace and extend', but just plain doing it wrong.
Yeah, seriously. I, for one, am outraged that Apple has merely made mistakes in implementation, and is not making deliberate attempts to hijack an open standard. It just doesn't get any worse than that.
Umm, hey there, Intel, are you all right there? You look a little flustered...
Some water, maybe?
You SURE you don't wanna be "intel inside" anymore?
ok, ok, relax, just a suggestion. Don't worry, no one's gonna force you to be intel inside, just calm down, take it easy there...
OF COURSE you can always be pentium. Don't worry, everything's gonna be fine. Have some of these crackers and pretzels...
No no, don't say that, you'll ALWAYS be pentium.
That's crazy talk! You ARE pentium, man! You've always been Pentium!
You just wait right here, I'm gonna get you some more water, k?
Agh! That's just...that's just not right! It's Intel *INSIDE* man, not "Intel all over my new shoes"!
Considering that MLB would almost certainly lose if they tried to make this argument in court, looking their gift horse in the mouth was not the smartest of ideas, methinks.
They were getting PAID by companies to license information that's in the public domain. They should have kept to chuckling in the boardroom and stayed quiet on what was a great deal for them. Instead they've thrust the issue into the spotlight. If this company succeeds in court, more and more licensees may decide that licensing stats from the MLB is a stupider idea than, say, using those stats for free...
"...expect Apple to continue to outperform competitors, citing 2006 as 'poised to be the year of both iPod growth and, more importantly, Mac market share gains,
I'm sorry did you say MORE importantly? I know Apple is SUPPOSED to be a computer company first and foremost, but I'm having a hard time with this sentence given the ridiculous number of iPods they're selling. Anyone have a figure on what % of 2005 sales were iPods vs. "macs"?
I don't believe there's this "live in the moment/dangerous enjoyment" thing going on (perhaps for some teens or something?). People do 80 mph on the highway because they feel they can control their vehicle at that speed.
But that doesn't explain why people go the maximum speed they're comfortable with. The driver who's comfortable driving 80 is also comfortable driving 65. Why doesn't he drive 65? Aside from people who are actually in a hurry to get where they're going, there clearly is an additional motive (or motives) behind the need for speed.
Frankly, things like this simply do not happen. Huge potholes do not sudden appear directly in front of your vehicle as if from nowhere.
Yes they do! Sure, they didn't suddenly "appear," but it's all-too-common for the driver to not realize there's a pothole (or to underestimate the depth of a pothole) until they hear the giant "THUD!" And it's not just a matter of "bad driver," it's simply that often potholes are stealthy creatures. Especially at night. And I've been on roads where the traffic speed is ~60mph and there's a giant pothole in the road (and nobody sees it either because it's hidden by the cars in front of you or it's nighttime, etc). Sorry, potholes do in fact appear out of nowhere.
I think much of what goes wrong in driving is the result of the increasing disconnect from reality that modern drivers face.
When you're riding a bike, the danger of what can happen if you're not cautious is all too real. Same with skiing. Same with walking.
Cars are another story entirely. It goes far beyond gadgetry like ABS, traction control, and the other modern technologies. It's far more fundamental than that.
You're in an enclosed environment. The windows are up. You can't fully hear the sounds outside the car. When you're on the highway going 80 mph, you've got the windows up. You can't feel or hear the loud, howling, fierce, blistering wind, the loud, raw sound of the tires grinding down the pavement. The shrieks of cars and trucks passing you by. You hear and feel maybe 20% of that, with the windows rolled up. These are all danger cues, things to keep you on high alert, but you've blocked them out, enclosed in the false security of your vehicular cockpit, with comfortable reclining bucket seat, music and talk radio, comfort-maximizing air conditioning and heating, zero wind, etc.
And then you've got those nice cars with the great suspension. No longer can you feel the all-too-real road beneath you. Now you don't even realize you just drove over a giant pothole at 40 mph.
The car control schema itself is like a video game. One pressure-sensitive button to stop, another to go. A wheel to steer. Each of these controls, your low-effort movements are amplified 1000x to control the multi-ton vehicle you're sitting in. Tired of pressing the B button? No problem, flip on the cruise control.
And most importantly, of course, is the need for speed! We love going 70, 80, 90 mph -- as fast as we can get away with. Why? Because we love to live in the moment, and that's ALL you feel when you're zooming along at 100 mph down an open road. You're steering a giant death machine at 100 mph...you don't have TIME to think about anything but the present.
And this, "living in the moment," is dangerous for exactly the same reasons it's enjoyable: You're not thinking about the future. Not even the near future. Not even the next few minutes. You've all but completely blocked out all thoughts, all concerns of the potential consequences of your actions.
Google search for "old dos games". Check out the "essential utilities" link. I also doubt there are really "millions of DOS gamers", especially ones who are running win2k/xp and aren't savvy enough to figure it out.
However many people were buying and playing DOS games in the early-mid 90's, that's how many potential "I want to play DOS games" gamers exist today. I don't know if it's a few hundred thousand or a few million, but I'm guessing it's the latter. Nearly everyone is running Win2k/XP today. You don't have to be savvy to run it -- it comes preinstalled with every computer. For most computer users, downloading programs off the Internet is still beyond them, and DosBox assumes at least a slight amount of savviness, as it would be seen by the average user.
Also, although I do realize the point you're making is mostly true (that the number of people who want to play old DOS games today and don't know how to use DosBox is very small), I think you may have missed mine. To quote my original post:
If MS were to say that with enough legacy technologies, people would get mad at them.
Yes, the "pissed off that they can't play their old DOS games" users might comprise only, say, 0.5% of all Windows users. But now add in all the people wanting to run 16-bit programs -- that's maybe another 3-4%. Now add in people using older hardware that requires legacy device drivers -- another 3-4%. People who need to share files over a network with Win9x machines -- another 5%. Access to Program Manager (from Windows 3.x -- which, believe it or not, is still included on Windows 2000 machines, and in a non-functional form on Windows XP machines). Remove support for the half-dozen database APIs MS has gone through over the past decade, that's gonna piss even more people off...
Start throwing all these small users bases together, and suddenly you have a large number of users complaining that the operating system breaks compatibility with their stuff, and so they choose not to upgrade. Of course, ironically, by choosing not to upgrade, they're likely exposing themselves to far more serious security risks than the ones that are discovered-and-eventually-patched in still-supported versions of the operating system.
As a matter of fact, there's no need to speculate what such a system would be like, because it exists! It's called Windows NT. Corporate IT admins loved it because it was much more secure and stable than Windows 9x, and nobody else wanted it because it didn't support all the things people wanted. And although it's true that this is a bit different, since you're merely suggesting that the OS make the user "opt-in" to compatibility-oriented features, it's also true that for non-savvy computer users this is often too difficult in practice (sure, in a perfect world the O.S. would magically detect when you need compatibility with WMF files and temporarily start the "WMF reader service," but if we were debating a perfect world, we could have both compatibility and security). Lots of device manufacturers released device drivers for Windows NT, but most users aren't skilled enough to go online, figure out what device driver they need, download it, install it, and, as if that weren't enough for them, troubleshoot any problems that arise during or after the driver installation.
These "legacy adapters" don't come with the device. You have to buy them separately, and install them yourself. Sure, there are probably some people out there that don't realize the risks of doing so, but since 3-prong plugs won't fit into a 2-prong outlet by default, the user has to make a conscious effort to put themselves at risk, and users who don't need the compatibility are safer.
Users have to make a conscious effort to buy the 3-prong adapter. That doesn't mean they understand the risk. They probably don't even know what a "ground" wire is. Same with polarity. They might think, for example, that the "risk" is simply that the device won't work when they plug it in because it's not
This particular example is not too good; old DOS games work perfectly fine in an x86 emulator like Dosbox.
There's workarounds, adapters, modifcations, etc, for lots of obsolete technologies. That doesn't help the millions of DOS gamers who aren't savvy enough to download DosBox.
But perhaps a better example that's similar to the WMF exploit is electrical outlets: Modern consumer electronics have plugs designed to only be compatible with outlets that indicate the proper polarity. They won't fit into older outlets. Devices that require a ground wire effectively make obsolete outlets that don't provide a ground.
But there are adapters and such (not to mention you can put in a 3-pronged outlet with no ground wire attached to the ground hole), that let you use polarity-free outlets with polarity-sensitive devices, and ground-less outlets with ground-requiring devices. These "legacy" adapters are similar to MS's continued inclusion of WMF. They provide some backwards compatibility, at the expense of safety/security.
Part of the problem is that MS is reluctant to phase out obsolete technologies.
Take WMF files for example. Obviously nobody making new software today, would incorporate WMF technology. It's obsolete and unpopular. The only people who use WMF tech today are those who are using software that was designed to make use of that format. And therein lies the problem. At some point in time, software programs were created that used WMF technology. MS could come out and say "WMF is obsolete, and rather than take the risk of continuing to include a software component that may compromise security, we're going to completely remove support for it in future versions of Windows, since barely anybody uses it anyway." If MS were to say that with enough legacy technologies, people would get mad at them. If you're using or writing software for some new technology, you AT LEAST want to take solace in knowing that, even if it's unpopular and discontinued, it will at least remain USABLE on future systems.
So I can sort of understand MS's pickle from that point of view. It's sort of like users complaining that some security hole in Windows 3.1 has, in 2005, still not been patched. And on the other hand, a whole wave of users would potentially be up in arms if MS decided to, in the name of security, remove support for running old 16-bit Windows 3.1 programs in Windows XP.
And incidentally, I have a box of clip art CDs in WMF format.
The same people on this forum who would criticize MS for not patching AND not removing WMF support, probably wish that Windows XP had better support for the old early-mid 90's DOS games. And yet it might be a completely impractical task (not to mention an expensive one given the limited appeal of the feature) to eliminate all of the security risks posed by support for DOS (and, don't forget, back in the DOS era, a virus was more likely to format your hard drive than email your address book).
Windows may be a feature-driven, compatibility-over-security operating system, but just because we all want security, let's not pretend we don't like features and compatibility.
But today, in a private meeting with ITD General Counsel Linda Hamel, Secretary of Administration and Finance Thomas Trimarco assured her that Peter Quinn's departure "will result in no change to the Administration's position on the ODF standard."
Well I'm sure Mr. Trimarco will be pleased to know that his private comments to Ms. Hamel remained private, leaving bloggers like Andy Updegrove with no choice but to resort to speculation as to the contents of said meeting, in absence of a direct quote from those inolved.
There's only one smart reason for Microsoft to buy Opera: to stop Google from buying it or forming a Google/Opera partnership that locks MS out.
Firefox is not a threat to MS. Opera is not a threat to MS. But Google has enough verve and popularity to potentially get a Google-branded Opera browser into the hands of the masses.
It's actually a bit incomplete to say that there's anything special about a robot becoming self-aware.
What makes it noteworthy that we humans are self-aware, is the fact that we discover this fact on our own. It is not a specific "function" of our species -- it's a realization that our developed brains allow us to achieve.
If we program a robot to understand that it "exists," even if we program it to have a full understanding of what that means, it's not really significant.
Being self-aware is a landmark achievement for humans. For robots, the landmark achievement is not self-awareness, but free will and independent thought.
However, even these things, are really not so special, because they are not so special in us. Think about humans. We are simply a very-complex and imperfect learning machine, a neural net simulation, juxtaposed atop our more primordal desires: self-preservation, procreation, the achievement of pleasure, and the avoidance of pain. It is the interplay between these two things -- the neural net, and the base desires, in tandem, of course, with the recognition of self-awareness and the recognition that we can die, that mostly comprise "what it is to be human."
Can a robot achieve this? Sure. We can program it to learn in the same manner that we humans do. In doing so, it will make its own independent discovery that it "exists" (self-awareness) and it will also learn that it can die (by watching other robots "die"). It can be programmed to have biases toward self-preservation and procreation (whatever that would mean for a robot). We could program it to seek "pleasure stimulus" and avoid "pain stimulus," and then program it to randomly associate (based on early childhood influences) certain "enjoyable" activities with different intensities of pleasure data, and do something similar for pain.
We can program it to find pleasurable, in random quantities, cetain activities, certain personalities, certain kinds of people/robots ("random" in the sense that the experiential influences on which these factors are based upon are far too complex and subtle to be superficially noticed).
In short, we could make a perfect simulation of human beings.
Just as with self-awareness, what makes it not-special, is the fact that even after all that hard work, even though it would probably be just as fun and meaningful to interact with as a normal human, and even though it may be an accurate simulation of a real, live, unique human being, it is still, ultimately, just executing its program code.
This is, ultimately, what is disappointing about AI. But then again, this is also equally true of humans. The only difference is, since we didn't design ourselves, it's not important to us. The interesting thing here, then, is that these human-like robots would value "what it is to be robot" just as much as we value our humanity. They would consider themselves just as unique as we consider ourselves, because they didn't design themselves, just as we didn't design ourselves.
Something I find interesting, is that it's completely circular to take the perspective, "What are the odds that the Earth and Humans and all this stuff would come to be, so much would have to go just right to result in the conditions for our existence," -- which, of course, is true, but then to follow that up with "the odds of us existing are so small, that this must have been the work of some intelligient being."
I would call this a non-sequitur. Why? Because if you accept the idea that the odds of us existing are, say, 1-in-6-billion, and especially if you also accept that the odds of some other world with "life," or anything even slightly related and stable enough to survive over billions of years (or even "10,000 years" as the bible reads), existing close enough to us in this huge universe that we'd be able to know about it with the current state of space exploration progress, then the "intelligient design" theory doesn't hold.
Why? Because the argument is essentially, "it's so unlikely that we'd come to exist, that it's more likely we were created by an intelligient being."
This is actually a really stupid thing to say, though, because it is only as a result of your EXISTING that you're able to have such a thought.
A perfect analogy is a different kind of "creationism" -- human conception. Let's say there's 6 billion sperm all trying to get into the one-passenger-only unfertilized egg. And let's say you are that one, single sperm that managed the feat. Now, 20 years later, you exist. And you say "what are the chances that I exist?" There's not really any useful meaning to be derived some such a thought. The other 5.999999999 billion sperm would be thinking the same thing, if they existed instead of you. There were 6 billion babies/Earths with the potential to exist, and one that came to exist. All 6 billion of those potential babies would grow up to ask the same question, maybe even to believe that "God" created them. This fact alone is why it's foolish for you to consider yourself "unique" in your existence. All 6 billion babies were unique and "unlikely", and if they had the chance to grow into humans they'd tell you that themselves.
To put this another way, saying "something intelligent MUST have created us because it's too unlikely that we came to exist through random events," discounts the obvious fact you've already stated -- that you DO exist as the combination of extremely random events, and that even if some intelligent being later took credit for it, the other 5.999999999 billion possible alternate realities you calculated, based on the known elements the intelligient being placed in the world, do not cease to exist as potential alternate realities.
So what I'm saying is, it is actually irrelevant to the concept of evolution (and "Big Bang" theory, and all other science theories) whether there is a "God" or any other creator. The explanations remain unchanged, theories based on the observed reality. Even with the revelation of an intelligent creator, we are still an "extremely unlikely" permutation of the existing world/universe/reality (regardless of who created it), so you cannot argue that our unlikeliness is somehow "proof" or "suggestive" of the idea of there being an intelligent creator.
In other words "God" could have created 5.9999999999 billion other realities. If "He" exists, he chose to create ours. If "He" does not exist, ours was created out of extreme randomness. Because the outcome is the same whether "He" exists or not, it is foolish to suggest that the outcome (our reality) in any way points to or against "His" existence.
Even as a theory, Intelligent Design doesn't make sense. It draws an illogical conclusion (the existence of an intelligent creator) from its observation (the unlikeliness of our existence).
And claiming there are "gaps" in Darwin's theory is even more ridiculous, as if to say "our theory gains credence from the fact that Darwin's theory is incomplete." This makes no sense, nor does its opposite: Even if Darwin's theory explains everything 100%, this does not weaken a competing theory. It does make it likely that someone will want to reach for Occam's Razor, though.