The alarmists being virtually all scientists who know anything about global warming.
And "scientists who know anything about global warming" being defined as "those who agree with me". Any time anyone trots out a scientist with a dissenting opinion, the rebuttal that comes back is "well, they're not a real scientist, or obviously they'd agree with me.
It's a good thing we have oil companies who pay those few scientists who have the integrity to produce studies like this
And this is why people like me and the OP find the whole debate tiresome. Everyone has a vested interest in the perspective they're pushing.
Darwinism isn't about mutations. Darwinism is about how random mutations propagate through a population (Darwin's paper wasn't on evolution per se, it was on evolution through the mechanism of natural selection). A mutation favoring an individual is not enough. A mutations has to favor an individual to the extent that they have a greater chance of producing a greater number of offspring. In an environment where death is uncommon, and competition for mates is low, there is no natural selection driving the spread of genetic variations. Variations will occur, but they will not spread throughout the population, and they will probably not accrete with other mutations in other parts of the population.
In our modern situation, death before child-bearing age is really very rare, and even those incidents are largely caused by more-or-less random chance, rather than things which you can be genetically predisposed to survive (as you say, genes to increase the survival rate in car accidents are unlikely). In the same way, widespread monogamy spreads the availability of mates, government aid means that you don't have to be wealthy to support a large number of children, and IVF technologies mean that you don't even need to attract a mate to spread your genes to the next generation.
And every first-world nation has laws against polygamy - spreading the available mates around more evenly - and access to IVF - and IVF is only going to get cheaper as time goes on. It really isn't that hard to procreate - most people who don't have children now don't have them by choice, not due to an inability.
They need to be told, clearly and unequivocally, what's the recommended thing to do in issues involving science/medicine/etc
Well, they have been. They've been told that vaccines are harmful, and they shouldn't give them to their kids. If we had an educated population used to questioning things and doing research themselves, then ignorant demagogues wouldn't be able to get such traction.
Except - in the developed world at least - there just aren't many evolutionary pressures any more. Modern medicine can help carriers of almost any gene survive to procreate, and with in vitro fertilisation and suchlike, you don't even need to necessarily be attractive to pass them on. Evolution is an adaptive mechanism, not some endless process churning out more and more advanced forms of life. When there's drastic environmental changes (evolutionary pressures) you get rapid evolution, as problematic traits are ruthlessly selected against. When a species is already well-adapated to its environment, you get evolutionary stability.
Look at the people who die before child-bearing age: http://www.statisticstop10.com/Causes_of_Death_Kids.html . Accidental deaths and homicides account for around 45% of deaths before child bearing age. Unless we're adapting to being stab-resistant, or able to survive collision at 100km/hr, we're not really moving anywhere.
I'm sorry, but that's their fault. They knew they had to keep track of these things.
No, they probably didn't. After all, if I lose the receipt for my laptop, Dell doesn't get to charge me again. Why should they think they need to retain proof of purchase?
Change of tune much? Firstly you said that the BSA are the good guys because they only go after nasty, evil pirating companies. Now you say that they're the good guys because they only go after the nasty, evil not-conforming-to-EULA companies.
Sorry, no. BSA are an extortion racket, and EULAs are the tools they use to squeeze unearned money from their marks. They are in no way, shape or form "good guys".
Many of the victims of the BSA aren't people who maliciously copied software - they're people who paid for it, then lost the docket. Seriously, look up the requirements the BSA have for your software to be deemed "legitimate".
DeBeers has almost total control over diamond production (there are only a handful of mines worldwide that are not DeBeers controlled). They produce more than they sell, and stockpile the rest, creating artificial scarcity. Their marketing department is also responsible for a large proportion of the demand for diamonds. Despite what people think of as a long-standing tratition, prior to DeBeers marketing the hell out of them, diamonds weren't often used in engagement rings. Check your great grandparents rings, if they're still around - they probably have ruby, sapphire, amethyst or emerald settings.
This has nothing to do with the "walled garden" app-distribution model. It's perfectly feasible for Apple to do the same - they just don't because they have half a brain. The same way my Google Nexus S didn't have crapware pre-loaded on it - because Google cares about the reputation of their device.
No, you fail at logic. GP isn't making any claims - and certainly not the one you're trying to straw-man him into. He's refuting the GGP, who claimed that all 5th graders were incapable of understanding complex thoughts. He provided a single example to the contrary, which is sufficient to disprove a general statement such as the GGP made. He didn't attempt to claim that the inverse of the GGP's statement was true, just that the statement itself wasn't.
Atheism ultimately is the argument that "I haven't heard a sound argument for a God from anyone so I maintain the default position of nothing on the subject."
Actually, that's the agnostic position - "There's not enough data for a rational determination of the existence of God, therefore the I hold no opinion as to whether God exists or not". Atheism is a positive assertion of the non-existence of God.
I think it's due to the change in the economy. In the last 20 years, the AUD has gone from being worth 0.5USD to now worth something like 1.04USD. The retailers just kept their prices steady, and pocketed the profit from the exchange rate.
Part of the problem is that they are small markets and as such have less competition. All the people erroneously claiming shipping costs, government taxes and consumer protection laws just don't seem to have a clue about how companies fix their pricing based on what the market will bear (i.e. what they can get away with). And of course, this is the essence of capitalism.
...and then they buy laws making it illegal to circumvent regional codes on products, artificially dividing the market, despite all this ostensible "Free Trade" going on. How's that for capitalism?
Yep, shipping all those bits from the US to Australia must cost a bundle. It's not just iTunes either; computer games are frequently marked up +50% over here, even for digital purchases.
Not to mention, people are increasingly turning to ordering online and shipping from America precisely because, even with shipping prices, its cheaper to do it than buy from local retail. I recently pitched in with a bunch of other people, an bought ~$700 worth of boardgames from the US, including shipping. Buying locally, it would have cost $1000. And presumably, the retailers would be able to gain from economies of scale, and warehousing, when it came to shipping.
For that matter, peons could too - within the limits of the freedom afforded by their station in life, which was zilch. (But maybe if they just worked a bit harder...)
Yeah, no. There was no prospect for advancement for a medieval serf, no matter how hard they worked. Unless you count pulling up stakes, and hitting the road as a bandit.
The more I hear about Libertarians, the less I'm impressed. None of them seem able to learn from past mistakes, understand why things are the way they are now or what the straightforward, repeatedly demonstrated consequences of their pipe-dreams are.
Probably because the only Libertarians you hear about are the lunatic fringe. The other kind aren't newsworthy.
If you test for the feature, and Firefox X doesn't have the feature, then your site doesn't support Firefox X. Supporting specific browser version has nothing to do with how that support is implemented in a code level (ie: browser-test or feature-test).
Hell, I'm part of the slashdot crowd, and also one of the latter. I didn't bitch about Firefox, but I've used nothing but Chrome (except for browser compat testing) for the last three months - which is when I finally got sick of Mozilla's crap.
Totally different. Parent suggested raising tariffs for the purpose of covering the costs incurred in scanning them - likely a very small increase. The other results he indicated as possible side-effects. Smoot-Hawley raised tariffs for the express purpose of shutting out foreign imports, and raised them sky-high. Even then, the actual negative effects weren't caused by the high tariffs, but by the inevitable international response to them.
the modus operandi is more like Microsoft than Apple
Is there a difference anymore? My initial reaction when I read this was almost exactly the same as when I read about Eolas' suit against Microsoft: "I still hope the patent troll fails and gets slapped down, but it's a close run thing."
Well, yeah. Isn't that what "superior" means? Better? If something is out-competing you, either it's based on blind luck, or it's "better" - that is to say "superior" - to your product in some way, shape or form. That's what competitors in the market place should be doing - identify why their competitor's products are doing better than them, and find strategies to make their own products more appealing.
Sure there is...people don't make purchasing decisions based solely on quality
Agreed - see my thread posted in reply to the Betamax comment. "Superior Product" doesn't mean "has better specs" - it means "people want it more". That can be a result of numerous factors - specs, price, marketing, etc. There are plenty examples of technology that has had better specs, but has fallen down on other aspects - notably marketing - and subsequently been superceded by the technically-inferior, yet more greatly-demanded competition.
Yes, Android being free threatens the iOS model - good, that's what competition is supposed to do. Apple should be responding by giving iOS greater features - such that it's higher price point is justified in comparison to android - or reducing its price, so it can better compete with Android on that front.
using their patents could be a way of protecting them from having to compete solely on a price and specs basis
Exactly. That's the whole problem. They don't want to compete in the meritocratic environment of the marketplace, they want to play the "see who raped the patent system first, and most thoroughly" game.
The parent stated that OpenGL had more features and better performance than DirectX. You responded criticizing Linux gaming, and accusing the parent of making fallacious arguments. Either you're just totally off-topic and decided to randomly spurt about how linux gaming sucks in this thread, or you're making an implicit assertion that linux/windows parallels OpenGL/DirectX, which is false.
Slashdot Mirror
The alarmists being virtually all scientists who know anything about global warming.
And "scientists who know anything about global warming" being defined as "those who agree with me". Any time anyone trots out a scientist with a dissenting opinion, the rebuttal that comes back is "well, they're not a real scientist, or obviously they'd agree with me.
It's a good thing we have oil companies who pay those few scientists who have the integrity to produce studies like this
And this is why people like me and the OP find the whole debate tiresome. Everyone has a vested interest in the perspective they're pushing.
No, you don't get it.
Darwinism isn't about mutations. Darwinism is about how random mutations propagate through a population (Darwin's paper wasn't on evolution per se, it was on evolution through the mechanism of natural selection). A mutation favoring an individual is not enough. A mutations has to favor an individual to the extent that they have a greater chance of producing a greater number of offspring. In an environment where death is uncommon, and competition for mates is low, there is no natural selection driving the spread of genetic variations. Variations will occur, but they will not spread throughout the population, and they will probably not accrete with other mutations in other parts of the population.
In our modern situation, death before child-bearing age is really very rare, and even those incidents are largely caused by more-or-less random chance, rather than things which you can be genetically predisposed to survive (as you say, genes to increase the survival rate in car accidents are unlikely). In the same way, widespread monogamy spreads the availability of mates, government aid means that you don't have to be wealthy to support a large number of children, and IVF technologies mean that you don't even need to attract a mate to spread your genes to the next generation.
And every first-world nation has laws against polygamy - spreading the available mates around more evenly - and access to IVF - and IVF is only going to get cheaper as time goes on. It really isn't that hard to procreate - most people who don't have children now don't have them by choice, not due to an inability.
They need to be told, clearly and unequivocally, what's the recommended thing to do in issues involving science/medicine/etc
Well, they have been. They've been told that vaccines are harmful, and they shouldn't give them to their kids. If we had an educated population used to questioning things and doing research themselves, then ignorant demagogues wouldn't be able to get such traction.
Except - in the developed world at least - there just aren't many evolutionary pressures any more. Modern medicine can help carriers of almost any gene survive to procreate, and with in vitro fertilisation and suchlike, you don't even need to necessarily be attractive to pass them on. Evolution is an adaptive mechanism, not some endless process churning out more and more advanced forms of life. When there's drastic environmental changes (evolutionary pressures) you get rapid evolution, as problematic traits are ruthlessly selected against. When a species is already well-adapated to its environment, you get evolutionary stability.
Look at the people who die before child-bearing age: http://www.statisticstop10.com/Causes_of_Death_Kids.html . Accidental deaths and homicides account for around 45% of deaths before child bearing age. Unless we're adapting to being stab-resistant, or able to survive collision at 100km/hr, we're not really moving anywhere.
I'm sorry, but that's their fault. They knew they had to keep track of these things.
No, they probably didn't. After all, if I lose the receipt for my laptop, Dell doesn't get to charge me again. Why should they think they need to retain proof of purchase?
Change of tune much? Firstly you said that the BSA are the good guys because they only go after nasty, evil pirating companies. Now you say that they're the good guys because they only go after the nasty, evil not-conforming-to-EULA companies.
Sorry, no. BSA are an extortion racket, and EULAs are the tools they use to squeeze unearned money from their marks. They are in no way, shape or form "good guys".
BSA is a good organization.
So's your local mafia strong man.
Many of the victims of the BSA aren't people who maliciously copied software - they're people who paid for it, then lost the docket. Seriously, look up the requirements the BSA have for your software to be deemed "legitimate".
DeBeers has almost total control over diamond production (there are only a handful of mines worldwide that are not DeBeers controlled). They produce more than they sell, and stockpile the rest, creating artificial scarcity. Their marketing department is also responsible for a large proportion of the demand for diamonds. Despite what people think of as a long-standing tratition, prior to DeBeers marketing the hell out of them, diamonds weren't often used in engagement rings. Check your great grandparents rings, if they're still around - they probably have ruby, sapphire, amethyst or emerald settings.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Beers#Diamond_monopoly
This has nothing to do with the "walled garden" app-distribution model. It's perfectly feasible for Apple to do the same - they just don't because they have half a brain. The same way my Google Nexus S didn't have crapware pre-loaded on it - because Google cares about the reputation of their device.
all of them foreign desserts they're fighting in
I must have missed the Battle of the Gateau
No, you fail at logic. GP isn't making any claims - and certainly not the one you're trying to straw-man him into. He's refuting the GGP, who claimed that all 5th graders were incapable of understanding complex thoughts. He provided a single example to the contrary, which is sufficient to disprove a general statement such as the GGP made. He didn't attempt to claim that the inverse of the GGP's statement was true, just that the statement itself wasn't.
Atheism ultimately is the argument that "I haven't heard a sound argument for a God from anyone so I maintain the default position of nothing on the subject."
Actually, that's the agnostic position - "There's not enough data for a rational determination of the existence of God, therefore the I hold no opinion as to whether God exists or not". Atheism is a positive assertion of the non-existence of God.
I think it's due to the change in the economy. In the last 20 years, the AUD has gone from being worth 0.5USD to now worth something like 1.04USD. The retailers just kept their prices steady, and pocketed the profit from the exchange rate.
Part of the problem is that they are small markets and as such have less competition. All the people erroneously claiming shipping costs, government taxes and consumer protection laws just don't seem to have a clue about how companies fix their pricing based on what the market will bear (i.e. what they can get away with). And of course, this is the essence of capitalism.
...and then they buy laws making it illegal to circumvent regional codes on products, artificially dividing the market, despite all this ostensible "Free Trade" going on. How's that for capitalism?
Yep, shipping all those bits from the US to Australia must cost a bundle. It's not just iTunes either; computer games are frequently marked up +50% over here, even for digital purchases.
Not to mention, people are increasingly turning to ordering online and shipping from America precisely because, even with shipping prices, its cheaper to do it than buy from local retail. I recently pitched in with a bunch of other people, an bought ~$700 worth of boardgames from the US, including shipping. Buying locally, it would have cost $1000. And presumably, the retailers would be able to gain from economies of scale, and warehousing, when it came to shipping.
For that matter, peons could too - within the limits of the freedom afforded by their station in life, which was zilch. (But maybe if they just worked a bit harder...)
Yeah, no. There was no prospect for advancement for a medieval serf, no matter how hard they worked. Unless you count pulling up stakes, and hitting the road as a bandit.
The more I hear about Libertarians, the less I'm impressed. None of them seem able to learn from past mistakes, understand why things are the way they are now or what the straightforward, repeatedly demonstrated consequences of their pipe-dreams are.
Probably because the only Libertarians you hear about are the lunatic fringe. The other kind aren't newsworthy.
If you test for the feature, and Firefox X doesn't have the feature, then your site doesn't support Firefox X. Supporting specific browser version has nothing to do with how that support is implemented in a code level (ie: browser-test or feature-test).
Hell, I'm part of the slashdot crowd, and also one of the latter. I didn't bitch about Firefox, but I've used nothing but Chrome (except for browser compat testing) for the last three months - which is when I finally got sick of Mozilla's crap.
Totally different. Parent suggested raising tariffs for the purpose of covering the costs incurred in scanning them - likely a very small increase. The other results he indicated as possible side-effects. Smoot-Hawley raised tariffs for the express purpose of shutting out foreign imports, and raised them sky-high. Even then, the actual negative effects weren't caused by the high tariffs, but by the inevitable international response to them.
the modus operandi is more like Microsoft than Apple
Is there a difference anymore? My initial reaction when I read this was almost exactly the same as when I read about Eolas' suit against Microsoft: "I still hope the patent troll fails and gets slapped down, but it's a close run thing."
Well, yeah. Isn't that what "superior" means? Better? If something is out-competing you, either it's based on blind luck, or it's "better" - that is to say "superior" - to your product in some way, shape or form. That's what competitors in the market place should be doing - identify why their competitor's products are doing better than them, and find strategies to make their own products more appealing.
Sure there is...people don't make purchasing decisions based solely on quality
Agreed - see my thread posted in reply to the Betamax comment. "Superior Product" doesn't mean "has better specs" - it means "people want it more". That can be a result of numerous factors - specs, price, marketing, etc. There are plenty examples of technology that has had better specs, but has fallen down on other aspects - notably marketing - and subsequently been superceded by the technically-inferior, yet more greatly-demanded competition.
Yes, Android being free threatens the iOS model - good, that's what competition is supposed to do. Apple should be responding by giving iOS greater features - such that it's higher price point is justified in comparison to android - or reducing its price, so it can better compete with Android on that front.
using their patents could be a way of protecting them from having to compete solely on a price and specs basis
Exactly. That's the whole problem. They don't want to compete in the meritocratic environment of the marketplace, they want to play the "see who raped the patent system first, and most thoroughly" game.
The parent stated that OpenGL had more features and better performance than DirectX. You responded criticizing Linux gaming, and accusing the parent of making fallacious arguments. Either you're just totally off-topic and decided to randomly spurt about how linux gaming sucks in this thread, or you're making an implicit assertion that linux/windows parallels OpenGL/DirectX, which is false.