No. You may have been told by those in authority in your church group that atheists have never thought about the issue, but that is not the truth.
What you describe is the Anthropic Principle, and far from never being seriously thought about, it's been debated to death all over the internet.
Ha-ha. You know debate existed before the internet! How about debated since humans began to measure the Universe? I know "anthropic" principles are considered new but even an infant will happen upon a question such as "why can't we live on other planets" (I know because my 3 yo asked me this last week) which naturally leads to questions such as "was this planet made for us or is that illusory"... and you're practically there then. I digress.
When the GP says "few" I think he means few as a proportion of the population of the Earth. I think his "seriously" modifier makes it true because I doubt that such a large proportion have both the faculty and motivation to consider it seriously.
Your argument about extreme environments on Earth is specious. If I design a house for you to live in there has to be places that are uninhabitable within that house in order for the house as a whole to be habitable. If you submerse yourself in the water tank, lock yourself in the freezer or stay in the wood-burner you'll die. Yet all these areas make the whole habitable. Similarly humans require an entire eco-system to maintain them not all parts of that system are directly useful (underwater vents of superheated water, perhaps) but they form a part of the system (providing a growth area for organisms further down the food chain so that eventually fish are sustained to provide food for us) that enables our continued existence.
I'd agree that agnosticism is generally the only logical position. My personal experience means that I'm a Christian because I can no more doubt Jesus than doubt my own existence.
The question of God's origin is interesting, but I find it peculiar that most are prepared to accept the whole of space-time's appearance/ex nihilo/ but are not prepared to accept God's eternal existence (or indeed his appearance/ex nihilo/ if you'd like to consider that).
I think GIMP 2.6 added it but older versions do not offer it. Without these two capabilities, which are important for many pros, pros have little reason to use GIMP.
On the other hand CinePaint does do them. However many graphics/photography pros use Macs and CinePaint doesn't work well in OS X.
You seem to be mistakenly conflating professional graphic design with print design - there's this new media called "the web", you may have heard of it, it works on RGB and so CMYK capabilities aren't that important.
To be honest, I run a small business and GIMP/Inkscape (without colour profiles) work fine for our print advertising. PS would provide no ROI for us - mainly because customers couldn't care less if ads are using Pantone spot colours or not and partly because we use small print runs on digital presses where precise colour match is deprecated in favour of financial value.
Yes if you're doing solely graphic design, or working for print (in a quality critical sector) then CS4 or CorelX4 is essential.
"And Lo! The Lord did sayeth 'emerge earth' and he did wait five days and five nights. Verily he did then adjust his holy USE flags, and then did emerge again!"
Spoiler alert, he eventually created the world after spending a lot of time compiling from source. Later, on the forums, he bragged he did it in seven days and that everybody who couldn't do it that was either a noob or needed a faster computer.
That came back to bite him when he had to do a zero write flood and clean install from a huge arkive (sounds like Ubu' to me).
I don't know where you hang out but I've never been subjected to anything that mortifyingly disturbing in real life, nor would I want to be. This sort of thing disturbs adults psychologically,...
They're bits of color on a piece of plastic or glass. They can't be disturbing, if you've learned abstraction properly.
So what you're saying here is shock doesn't exist? I look forward to your paper in the journals of the Brit. Psych. Soc..
Trying to teach a toddler gun safety won't work, but if they can read, write and type they should also be able to learn the basics of gun safety. Even more important if you have one in the house.
One, nobody spams strangers with CP. Too easily traced.
Yeah that Nigerian internet cafe using a swedish anonymising proxy to connect via tor to a botted computer to send emails, that cafe keeps meticulous logs of users names and addresses... seriously I can give you my IP address, you still can't tell me who's using this computer.
Hi, I'm just wondering what the hell can be a "clearance to watch child pornography" and who the hell is able to get or deliver one to another???
Presumable if your part of a team investigating a child porn ring then you need clearance to assess if the material is indeed illegal, also to try and track the children so you can be sure they're not/no longer suffering from abuse.
The thing about condom based sex ed is that the teens seem to have a short attention span they forget the ".. so long as you use a condom." bit and only remember the "If you're having sex you won't get STDs/STIs or pregnant.." bit.
Teach your kid the values of sexuality you feel are healthiest and know that no matter how much you try to keep them protected from exposure to "bad" things, they are going to find those things on their own, one way or another. Giving kids the proper tools and knowledge on how to deal with the "bad things" is far better than trying to protect them with any sort of shell.
I think your wisdom is fine for the world of 5-10 years ago (when you grew up?). However the depraved extremes of human behaviour have previously been hidden behind locked doors in secluded, private areas only really accessible to those who want to find them. Now all the extremes of behaviour that extend from psychological damage or hedonistic excess, etc., are 2 clicks away in your web-browser.
I don't know where you hang out but I've never been subjected to anything that mortifyingly disturbing in real life, nor would I want to be. This sort of thing disturbs adults psychologically,...
Then there's all the close-up images of road accident victims and things. I'm happy to filter this stuff for my own sake nevermind my 3 year old's.
You may as well say "I never understood parents that want to teach their kids not to mess about with guns. They'll have to live with the fact people die from being shot, they should learn that naturally."
Just pump 100 posts an hour with viagra/watches/penny-stock spam links into those feeds, they'll either get unsubscribed immediately or pull you a huge profit.. it could be fun finding out which..
However it is hypocritical to pretend that P2P is used mostly for legal purposes.
I don't really listen to music much, I used to like listening to last.fm but the PRS put a stop to that recently. Not bothered about latest films, can make do with what's on TV.
I've used BT a few times, or at least tried, the latest was for downloading a free copy of Linux Format magazine. Usually it's Linux distros. I get about half the bw I get with other download methods. Performance tends to be so poor that it takes 4 times longer with BT (ktorrent) than simply wget-ing. Perhaps it's just me / my setup?
You can put off IE8 support until it proves it can achieve the same penetration as IE7.
You know how IE7 achieved speedy penetration don't you? MS flick the switch that says "push the new IE to windows update". Kaboom, instant market uptake. I'm pretty sure eventually they'll do that again, there's less reason not to now as they've the IE7 compat' mode.
Seriously though, you rail against pervasive accessible multimedia. I think yours is probably a contrary view to that of the populous who wish their telecoms, music, video and such to be seamlessly presented across various devices. The commonality for that seamless presentation is the internet and, for the persistent media, the web.
What you are proposing appears to be the equivalent of suggesting everyone should only read for entertainment/information gathering rather than watching video or listening to music.
The web very soon after its genesis stopped being solely a system of textual information presentation and moved to be a system for multimedia presentation and, shock-horror, entertainment.
Millions and millions of people are enjoying playing flash games online in their browser right now - but you think we should cut this off until what, until we can present all human knowledge on a teletype?
Accessibility is King, granted (I'm a huge advocate of accessibility and standards compliance) but without features to access what's the point?
NB: Flash/per se/ isn't that bad, it's just that on the whole it is written without accessibility in mind - this too is not as bad as it seems as multimedia games [the primary use it seems] simply aren't [generally] accessible by the blind and deaf.
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No. You may have been told by those in authority in your church group that atheists have never thought about the issue, but that is not the truth.
What you describe is the Anthropic Principle, and far from never being seriously thought about, it's been debated to death all over the internet.
Ha-ha. You know debate existed before the internet! How about debated since humans began to measure the Universe? I know "anthropic" principles are considered new but even an infant will happen upon a question such as "why can't we live on other planets" (I know because my 3 yo asked me this last week) which naturally leads to questions such as "was this planet made for us or is that illusory" ... and you're practically there then. I digress.
When the GP says "few" I think he means few as a proportion of the population of the Earth. I think his "seriously" modifier makes it true because I doubt that such a large proportion have both the faculty and motivation to consider it seriously.
Your argument about extreme environments on Earth is specious. If I design a house for you to live in there has to be places that are uninhabitable within that house in order for the house as a whole to be habitable. If you submerse yourself in the water tank, lock yourself in the freezer or stay in the wood-burner you'll die. Yet all these areas make the whole habitable. Similarly humans require an entire eco-system to maintain them not all parts of that system are directly useful (underwater vents of superheated water, perhaps) but they form a part of the system (providing a growth area for organisms further down the food chain so that eventually fish are sustained to provide food for us) that enables our continued existence.
I'd agree that agnosticism is generally the only logical position. My personal experience means that I'm a Christian because I can no more doubt Jesus than doubt my own existence.
The question of God's origin is interesting, but I find it peculiar that most are prepared to accept the whole of space-time's appearance /ex nihilo/ but are not prepared to accept God's eternal existence (or indeed his appearance /ex nihilo/ if you'd like to consider that).
I think GIMP 2.6 added it but older versions do not offer it. Without these two capabilities, which are important for many pros, pros have little reason to use GIMP.
On the other hand CinePaint does do them. However many graphics/photography pros use Macs and CinePaint doesn't work well in OS X.
You seem to be mistakenly conflating professional graphic design with print design - there's this new media called "the web", you may have heard of it, it works on RGB and so CMYK capabilities aren't that important.
To be honest, I run a small business and GIMP/Inkscape (without colour profiles) work fine for our print advertising. PS would provide no ROI for us - mainly because customers couldn't care less if ads are using Pantone spot colours or not and partly because we use small print runs on digital presses where precise colour match is deprecated in favour of financial value.
Yes if you're doing solely graphic design, or working for print (in a quality critical sector) then CS4 or CorelX4 is essential.
"And Lo! The Lord did sayeth 'emerge earth' and he did wait five days and five nights. Verily he did then adjust his holy USE flags, and then did emerge again!"
Spoiler alert, he eventually created the world after spending a lot of time compiling from source. Later, on the forums, he bragged he did it in seven days and that everybody who couldn't do it that was either a noob or needed a faster computer.
That came back to bite him when he had to do a zero write flood and clean install from a huge arkive (sounds like Ubu' to me).
They're bits of color on a piece of plastic or glass. They can't be disturbing, if you've learned abstraction properly.
So what you're saying here is shock doesn't exist? I look forward to your paper in the journals of the Brit. Psych. Soc..
Trying to teach a toddler gun safety won't work, but if they can read, write and type they should also be able to learn the basics of gun safety. Even more important if you have one in the house.
But teaching them safe internet usage does??
Isn't the UK bit a bit superfluous?
One, nobody spams strangers with CP. Too easily traced.
Yeah that Nigerian internet cafe using a swedish anonymising proxy to connect via tor to a botted computer to send emails, that cafe keeps meticulous logs of users names and addresses ... seriously I can give you my IP address, you still can't tell me who's using this computer.
Staged / Consensual is indistinguishable from real abuse and can be an easy way to hide real abuse.
Hi, I'm just wondering what the hell can be a "clearance to watch child pornography" and who the hell is able to get or deliver one to another???
Presumable if your part of a team investigating a child porn ring then you need clearance to assess if the material is indeed illegal, also to try and track the children so you can be sure they're not/no longer suffering from abuse.
.. or she's rooted the proxy?
Wow an actual parent on /.
The thing about condom based sex ed is that the teens seem to have a short attention span they forget the ".. so long as you use a condom." bit and only remember the "If you're having sex you won't get STDs/STIs or pregnant.." bit.
Teach your kid the values of sexuality you feel are healthiest and know that no matter how much you try to keep them protected from exposure to "bad" things, they are going to find those things on their own, one way or another. Giving kids the proper tools and knowledge on how to deal with the "bad things" is far better than trying to protect them with any sort of shell.
I think your wisdom is fine for the world of 5-10 years ago (when you grew up?). However the depraved extremes of human behaviour have previously been hidden behind locked doors in secluded, private areas only really accessible to those who want to find them. Now all the extremes of behaviour that extend from psychological damage or hedonistic excess, etc., are 2 clicks away in your web-browser.
goatse, lemonparty, tubgirl, ...
I don't know where you hang out but I've never been subjected to anything that mortifyingly disturbing in real life, nor would I want to be. This sort of thing disturbs adults psychologically, ...
Then there's all the close-up images of road accident victims and things. I'm happy to filter this stuff for my own sake nevermind my 3 year old's.
You may as well say "I never understood parents that want to teach their kids not to mess about with guns. They'll have to live with the fact people die from being shot, they should learn that naturally."
Just pump 100 posts an hour with viagra/watches/penny-stock spam links into those feeds, they'll either get unsubscribed immediately or pull you a huge profit .. it could be fun finding out which ..
[no, really don't do this]
Aren't there enough satellites up that we wouldn't need undersea cables anyway?
Aren't there enough pigeons that we wouldn't need over-sky satellites anyway?
No clippy I don't think he is.
Apparently a lot of people who should know better .. http://www.sophos.com/blogs/gc/g/2009/01/02/internet-explorer-loses-ground-firefox-safari/ !
However it is hypocritical to pretend that P2P is used mostly for legal purposes.
I don't really listen to music much, I used to like listening to last.fm but the PRS put a stop to that recently. Not bothered about latest films, can make do with what's on TV.
I've used BT a few times, or at least tried, the latest was for downloading a free copy of Linux Format magazine. Usually it's Linux distros. I get about half the bw I get with other download methods. Performance tends to be so poor that it takes 4 times longer with BT (ktorrent) than simply wget-ing. Perhaps it's just me / my setup?
FWIW.
It's actually an interesting question - friends 2.0 would be the people you spend your leisure time with, whether your rl friends or not.
I was trying to think how an anthropomorphised vegetable would reply so I could make a witty retort, but I couldn't.
I'm not sure if that means I did or not.
The mind of a vegetable is too complex.
http://marketshare.hitslink.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qprid=2# is more interesting, with versions you can see IE7 > FF3 > IE6 > Saf3.2.
Aug06 to Feb07 MSIE7 gained 30% of the market, how, via windows update.
I'd bet FF is the most installed browser, whilst IE is the most pre-/auto-installed operating system component for internet browsing.
You can put off IE8 support until it proves it can achieve the same penetration as IE7.
You know how IE7 achieved speedy penetration don't you? MS flick the switch that says "push the new IE to windows update". Kaboom, instant market uptake. I'm pretty sure eventually they'll do that again, there's less reason not to now as they've the IE7 compat' mode.
Things like integrated spell-check are overrated?
Seriously though, you rail against pervasive accessible multimedia. I think yours is probably a contrary view to that of the populous who wish their telecoms, music, video and such to be seamlessly presented across various devices. The commonality for that seamless presentation is the internet and, for the persistent media, the web.
What you are proposing appears to be the equivalent of suggesting everyone should only read for entertainment/information gathering rather than watching video or listening to music.
The web very soon after its genesis stopped being solely a system of textual information presentation and moved to be a system for multimedia presentation and, shock-horror, entertainment.
Millions and millions of people are enjoying playing flash games online in their browser right now - but you think we should cut this off until what, until we can present all human knowledge on a teletype?
Accessibility is King, granted (I'm a huge advocate of accessibility and standards compliance) but without features to access what's the point?
NB: Flash /per se/ isn't that bad, it's just that on the whole it is written without accessibility in mind - this too is not as bad as it seems as multimedia games [the primary use it seems] simply aren't [generally] accessible by the blind and deaf.