There are three possible explanations for existence. One, that it always has been (which from what I can make of your rambling you seem to endorse). Secondly, that it began at some finite point. Thirdly, that it never existed (and this is all a delusion).
None of those possibilities has any real rational proof behind it. Science is a process for dealing with a causal system. A causes B. If we see B, we can infer A. If we see A, we know B shall follow. It can't answer questions which don't fit that model - like beginnings. If you decide to believe any particular one of those options, your belief is based on faith - there are no scientific means for investigating them.
You claim that reality has always existed - that there was a "beginning" before the "beginning", perhaps that the universe is cyclical. But you offer no proof. You make a claim, and expect it to be believed. That's an assertion, not an argument.
Only because you're playing silly buggers with definitions. It's just like saying "God can't create a round circle - look I've disproved omnipotence". Omnipotence doesn't make the claim that God can do everything - there are explicit examples in the Bible of things God can't do. Sin, for example. It's a description of potency, not capability.
In summary, that joke makes God look like the asshole parents who try and win races against their 5 year old children. It's not a flattering image.
Well, yeah, if you take the punchline out of the context of the rest of the joke. If you read it in full, then you'll hit this line: "One day a group of scientists got together and decided that man had come a long way and no longer needed God."
It's more like the kid has just given the parent the finger and said that he doesn't need him anymore, then tried to drive off in his Dad's car - great show of independance.
The point of the joke, as I see it, is that wrangling over evolution is really avoiding the question. If you want to argue over beginnings, argue over the real beginnings - how was matter, time, energy, etc formed? Until you can answer that, you can't really posit a universe without God (or without some other external force that made reality happen).
That doesn't sound much like a superannuation fund - that sounds like a tax. Doesn't seem to be the same thing at all. We get regular statements from our funds, and when we retire, we get access to the full sum. It doesn't go into some generic government pool that funds all citizens. The super funds themselves are run by private companies - if the government were to touch it, it'd be like them dipping in to your bank account.
Don't know how it is in the US, but in Australia, we have compulsory superannuation payments. 9% of your income is automatically deposited into a super account by your boss. You nominate the account, but the payment is mandatory. Most jobs are advertised at the annual rate after super e.g. "70k/year + super". It never really feels like you're losing out on much.
Australia has a system called BPay, which has been almost universally adopted across banks, and most large billers. It comes in two parts:
BPay: Your bills come with a bpay ID, and an account number. You can log into your bank's online system, and issue a payment to that ID and account numbers. Most banks will also allow you to schedule future or recurring payments.
BPay View: Via your bank's online service, you request that this account be registered for BPay View. You provide your billing information, and the account is registered. That biller can now issue bills to your account. They're not paid automatically, but you can login to your bank's online system and pay them. Alternatively, you can instruct your bank to pay them on their due date, when they're received, or a fixed number of days after they're received. Most banks will email you when you get a new bill.
This is the system I use, whenever possible. I get an email whenever a bill arrives, telling me how much it's for. It will be automatically paid on it's due date, but I can log in at any time to stop or defer payment. All money is handled by the banks, not via any third party. Because all major Australian banks have standardized on BPay, I'm not tied to any of them in particular.
It's easy and convenient, and I really can't find any problems with it at all.
Huh? You can implement REST without a single line of javascript. It's a way of defining functions along strict lines, in terms of depending on state and idempotence. It has nothing to do with javascript, and isn't even a web-only concept.
What this really reminds us of is that meatspace is fundamentally different from cyberspace. On the net, we've evolved the ROBOTS.TXT for just this problem, and everybody agrees that websites aren't private by default, unless the owners explicitly say so.
If there was a reasonable indication that the computers were going to be useful, then the officials could have gotten a warrant without too much trouble - the criteria for receiving a warrant aren't too strict.
Well, no, but you can pay money to a record company for the privelege of listening to it, which they can revoke at any time. You can't actually own it.
I think you underestimate online advertising. You probably think it's over-rated for the same reason many people do - it's easy to block it out, and pay no attention to it.
But that has always been the case with advertising. And with traditional advertising, you can never really measure it. Sure, you can figure the rough viewership of a TV program during which your ad airs, but you can't really find out. What's more, internet ads can be interacted with, and you can track *that*. And you can check (if you do online sales) how many clicks lead through to a purchase. Online advertising is the most trackable, stattable advertising there is, and it's the easiest to demonstrate cost-benefit with hard numbers. Marketeers love that stuff.
Not to mention, online advertising has a low barrier of entry. Not many small businesses have the budget to produce radio or television ads, let alone pay for them to be aired. But most businesses can afford some very specific ad-words to get their foot in the door - Google takes pennies from millions with those sorts of ad-words, and that ads up.
I'm betting that politicing has crept into science so they don't want to specify genetic differences based on 'race' or other quantities.
Why would they want to? They can already determine the more immediate racial markers by doing simple analysis of skin cells. If they're doing a genetic comparison, they don't want to find out "was this guy black", they want to find out "are these two samples from the same person". If they were using markers that containing sequences shared by a large number of people, the test would be meaningless. The whole point of those 13 standard loci the FBI use is that they are highly variable, and not likely to be repeated, unlike racial characteristics.
So if the RCMP or FBI etc. was looking at my DNA would they in future profile that I'm a tall, thin, half indian guy...
You can't tell that from DNA. You might have the DNA that would indicate "tallness", but have been exposed to stuff from a young age that stunted your growth. Your DNA may indicate a high metabolism, but you could easily have contracted a disease that altered that, or just binged on junkfood sufficiently to couterract your genetic advantage. You can't necessarily infer fine physical detail from the genome.
Only if you assume that "race" is an entirely genetic category, and not a product of culture and surrounds.
Also, these tests only check (I believe) up to 13 specific sequences. These sequences are the ones most likely to be different between individuals - they're not going to use the sequences for stuff like skin colour, because those would have large number of individuals with the same sequence.
If you match someone else on these tests, it means that you have a certain number of highly-variable sequences in common with them. It doesn't necessarily mean that if you compared the full DNA strand they'd be remotely similar (once you've factored out the large proportion of DNA that all humans have in common).
OK. But don't people accidentally post images/whatnot on public forums occasionally, only to find out they have no rights to it.
Yes. They've unintentionally violated copyright.
When an author uploads a torrent, is that file considered to have entered the public domain?
No, not anymore than if an author gives a free copy of a book away, that book enters the public domain. Authors (assuming they haven't sold their rights away) are allowed to distribute their own work as much as they want, and in whatever form they want. When someone else does it, they're in violation of copyright (unless they are licensed or copyright has been explicitly waived).
There is copyright. All copyrightable works are automatically protected by copyright, no matter if you display a copyright symbol or not. Registering your copyright can make it easier to prove your ownership, but is not compulsory for protection.
Is it pure democracy when you have so much legislation to read that you tend to skim bits, and let representatives - proxies, as it were - handle the rest?
I would say no.
"It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood."
You miss his point. The mirror in the parent's scenario acts, in all respects, as a proper, correct mirror should.
It also logs all requests for updates, and roots any box that requests an update from a known-to-be-vulnerable package. While it acts as a respectable mirror, it is also getting detailed information on what out-of-date packages you have, and has the ability to exploit them *before* the fix you requested is downloaded/installed.
The mirror is never out of date, it keeps it's signatures up to date - and it still compromises machines.
You do. 57% of the electricity generated in the US is generated by burning coal. Reduce your power consumption by 57% or you're saying we need to burn coal. It's that simple.
I've never seen a more appropriate screen-name. I mean, it's inconceivable that the current energy production make-up may change in the future. As the parent says, that coal may be needed as a stop-gap, but long-term, there is no reason why that 57% figure needs to remain true.
Snowcrash, Cryptonomicon, Sword of Truth and A Game of Thrones are all pretty poor suggestions for preteens.
Snowcrash has a lot about cult prostitution, drug-use, and the odd bit of underage sex. Sword of Truth has bondage, sado-masochism, rape, and eating a child's testicles for magical power. A Game of Thrones includes rape, incest and prostitution. Cryptonomicon doesn't have anything really objectionable, but it's incredibly dense, and lacking in any sort of action that might interest preteens. Really, unless the kid is some sort of savant, they're probably not that interested in cryptography algorithms at 11.
Don't get me wrong, I love A Song of Ice and Fire, and Snowcrash (and even Sword of Truth wasn't too bad for the first few books), but this is a thread about recommendations for kids, not listing your favourite sci-fi/fantasy novels.
Slashdot Mirror
There are three possible explanations for existence. One, that it always has been (which from what I can make of your rambling you seem to endorse). Secondly, that it began at some finite point. Thirdly, that it never existed (and this is all a delusion).
None of those possibilities has any real rational proof behind it. Science is a process for dealing with a causal system. A causes B. If we see B, we can infer A. If we see A, we know B shall follow. It can't answer questions which don't fit that model - like beginnings. If you decide to believe any particular one of those options, your belief is based on faith - there are no scientific means for investigating them.
You claim that reality has always existed - that there was a "beginning" before the "beginning", perhaps that the universe is cyclical. But you offer no proof. You make a claim, and expect it to be believed. That's an assertion, not an argument.
Only because you're playing silly buggers with definitions. It's just like saying "God can't create a round circle - look I've disproved omnipotence". Omnipotence doesn't make the claim that God can do everything - there are explicit examples in the Bible of things God can't do. Sin, for example. It's a description of potency, not capability.
In summary, that joke makes God look like the asshole parents who try and win races against their 5 year old children. It's not a flattering image.
Well, yeah, if you take the punchline out of the context of the rest of the joke. If you read it in full, then you'll hit this line: "One day a group of scientists got together and decided that man had come a long way and no longer needed God."
It's more like the kid has just given the parent the finger and said that he doesn't need him anymore, then tried to drive off in his Dad's car - great show of independance.
The point of the joke, as I see it, is that wrangling over evolution is really avoiding the question. If you want to argue over beginnings, argue over the real beginnings - how was matter, time, energy, etc formed? Until you can answer that, you can't really posit a universe without God (or without some other external force that made reality happen).
That doesn't sound much like a superannuation fund - that sounds like a tax. Doesn't seem to be the same thing at all. We get regular statements from our funds, and when we retire, we get access to the full sum. It doesn't go into some generic government pool that funds all citizens. The super funds themselves are run by private companies - if the government were to touch it, it'd be like them dipping in to your bank account.
Don't know how it is in the US, but in Australia, we have compulsory superannuation payments. 9% of your income is automatically deposited into a super account by your boss. You nominate the account, but the payment is mandatory. Most jobs are advertised at the annual rate after super e.g. "70k/year + super". It never really feels like you're losing out on much.
Australia has a system called BPay, which has been almost universally adopted across banks, and most large billers. It comes in two parts:
BPay: Your bills come with a bpay ID, and an account number. You can log into your bank's online system, and issue a payment to that ID and account numbers. Most banks will also allow you to schedule future or recurring payments.
BPay View: Via your bank's online service, you request that this account be registered for BPay View. You provide your billing information, and the account is registered. That biller can now issue bills to your account. They're not paid automatically, but you can login to your bank's online system and pay them. Alternatively, you can instruct your bank to pay them on their due date, when they're received, or a fixed number of days after they're received. Most banks will email you when you get a new bill.
This is the system I use, whenever possible. I get an email whenever a bill arrives, telling me how much it's for. It will be automatically paid on it's due date, but I can log in at any time to stop or defer payment. All money is handled by the banks, not via any third party. Because all major Australian banks have standardized on BPay, I'm not tied to any of them in particular.
It's easy and convenient, and I really can't find any problems with it at all.
If you visit a site that doesn't use SSL, you'll never get any warning that you may be the victim of a man-in-the-middle or DNS poisoning attack.
What you say is true. It doesn't make the parent's post any less true though. SSL > Self-Signed > HTTP.
Huh? You can implement REST without a single line of javascript. It's a way of defining functions along strict lines, in terms of depending on state and idempotence. It has nothing to do with javascript, and isn't even a web-only concept.
If you had some numbers to back that up, I'd be at a loss for words.
Well, I bet the consequences of that last conviction are sure to dissuade them this time.
What this really reminds us of is that meatspace is fundamentally different from cyberspace. On the net, we've evolved the ROBOTS.TXT for just this problem, and everybody agrees that websites aren't private by default, unless the owners explicitly say so.
And in the real world, we evolved curtains.
If there was a reasonable indication that the computers were going to be useful, then the officials could have gotten a warrant without too much trouble - the criteria for receiving a warrant aren't too strict.
No, I got the joke. I just decided it was well worth making a cutting remark on the back of it.
Well, no, but you can pay money to a record company for the privelege of listening to it, which they can revoke at any time. You can't actually own it.
I think you underestimate online advertising. You probably think it's over-rated for the same reason many people do - it's easy to block it out, and pay no attention to it.
But that has always been the case with advertising. And with traditional advertising, you can never really measure it. Sure, you can figure the rough viewership of a TV program during which your ad airs, but you can't really find out. What's more, internet ads can be interacted with, and you can track *that*. And you can check (if you do online sales) how many clicks lead through to a purchase. Online advertising is the most trackable, stattable advertising there is, and it's the easiest to demonstrate cost-benefit with hard numbers. Marketeers love that stuff.
Not to mention, online advertising has a low barrier of entry. Not many small businesses have the budget to produce radio or television ads, let alone pay for them to be aired. But most businesses can afford some very specific ad-words to get their foot in the door - Google takes pennies from millions with those sorts of ad-words, and that ads up.
Yeah! When will there be an online music service that offers real costumer service? I want to know what music goes well with this pantomime lion suit.
I'm betting that politicing has crept into science so they don't want to specify genetic differences based on 'race' or other quantities.
Why would they want to? They can already determine the more immediate racial markers by doing simple analysis of skin cells. If they're doing a genetic comparison, they don't want to find out "was this guy black", they want to find out "are these two samples from the same person". If they were using markers that containing sequences shared by a large number of people, the test would be meaningless. The whole point of those 13 standard loci the FBI use is that they are highly variable, and not likely to be repeated, unlike racial characteristics.
So if the RCMP or FBI etc. was looking at my DNA would they in future profile that I'm a tall, thin, half indian guy...
You can't tell that from DNA. You might have the DNA that would indicate "tallness", but have been exposed to stuff from a young age that stunted your growth. Your DNA may indicate a high metabolism, but you could easily have contracted a disease that altered that, or just binged on junkfood sufficiently to couterract your genetic advantage. You can't necessarily infer fine physical detail from the genome.
Only if you assume that "race" is an entirely genetic category, and not a product of culture and surrounds.
Also, these tests only check (I believe) up to 13 specific sequences. These sequences are the ones most likely to be different between individuals - they're not going to use the sequences for stuff like skin colour, because those would have large number of individuals with the same sequence.
If you match someone else on these tests, it means that you have a certain number of highly-variable sequences in common with them. It doesn't necessarily mean that if you compared the full DNA strand they'd be remotely similar (once you've factored out the large proportion of DNA that all humans have in common).
OK. But don't people accidentally post images/whatnot on public forums occasionally, only to find out they have no rights to it.
Yes. They've unintentionally violated copyright.
When an author uploads a torrent, is that file considered to have entered the public domain?
No, not anymore than if an author gives a free copy of a book away, that book enters the public domain. Authors (assuming they haven't sold their rights away) are allowed to distribute their own work as much as they want, and in whatever form they want. When someone else does it, they're in violation of copyright (unless they are licensed or copyright has been explicitly waived).
There is copyright. All copyrightable works are automatically protected by copyright, no matter if you display a copyright symbol or not. Registering your copyright can make it easier to prove your ownership, but is not compulsory for protection.
Is it pure democracy when you have so much legislation to read that you tend to skim bits, and let representatives - proxies, as it were - handle the rest?
I would say no.
"It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood."
- James Madison
I'm pretty sure installing windows on any submarine is a bad idea.
You miss his point. The mirror in the parent's scenario acts, in all respects, as a proper, correct mirror should.
It also logs all requests for updates, and roots any box that requests an update from a known-to-be-vulnerable package. While it acts as a respectable mirror, it is also getting detailed information on what out-of-date packages you have, and has the ability to exploit them *before* the fix you requested is downloaded/installed.
The mirror is never out of date, it keeps it's signatures up to date - and it still compromises machines.
You do. 57% of the electricity generated in the US is generated by burning coal. Reduce your power consumption by 57% or you're saying we need to burn coal. It's that simple.
I've never seen a more appropriate screen-name. I mean, it's inconceivable that the current energy production make-up may change in the future. As the parent says, that coal may be needed as a stop-gap, but long-term, there is no reason why that 57% figure needs to remain true.
Snowcrash, Cryptonomicon, Sword of Truth and A Game of Thrones are all pretty poor suggestions for preteens.
Snowcrash has a lot about cult prostitution, drug-use, and the odd bit of underage sex. Sword of Truth has bondage, sado-masochism, rape, and eating a child's testicles for magical power. A Game of Thrones includes rape, incest and prostitution. Cryptonomicon doesn't have anything really objectionable, but it's incredibly dense, and lacking in any sort of action that might interest preteens. Really, unless the kid is some sort of savant, they're probably not that interested in cryptography algorithms at 11.
Don't get me wrong, I love A Song of Ice and Fire, and Snowcrash (and even Sword of Truth wasn't too bad for the first few books), but this is a thread about recommendations for kids, not listing your favourite sci-fi/fantasy novels.