I needed no further convincing. I ignored the whole debate. I thought it was a mistake to suspend the first Iraq war without getting rid of Saddam when we had all the rats in one trap.
So, if a man makes a mistake 15 years ago, you yourself no longer have to make any choices, ever again?
The enemy combatants are rightly and legally being held while the war against Al-Qaida is being fought.
The USA hasn't declared a war since 1941. If Bush wants a war against those guys, he's free to ask Congress to make that declaration.
Until that happens, the War on Terror is equally legitimate as the War On Drugs.
Besides, Bush has declared victory in Afganistan years ago, and he says that he no longer cares about pursuing the rest of Al Quaeda.
We're talking about wholesale genocide here, that makes the Holocaust look like chump change in numbers.
No, that's simply not true.
For one thing, Hitler in 1942 killed more people than the entire population of North America in 1492.
For another, the European conquerors actually killed a very tiny fraction of the population of the continents they colonized. Specifically, the population numbers of "Native Americans" has increased every year since 1530. Not once did enough die to outweigh that year's births.
Plus, why would they remain in the Stone Age? Slower technological advances != no technological advances.
True, true. Why, with a little luck, the Aztec civilization of Mexico could've invented high technology and spread an empire across the two continents.
That's be great! All the benefits of crowded civilized modern America, plus daily human sacrifices to the sun god!
On the other hand, if the Aztecs didn't make a big leap forward, then the Americas could've remained easy pickings until Adolf Hitler decides to colonize them in 1943. That would work out great, too.
I'm british, and i can admit we've done some really crappy stuff in the past (appeasment
What was the alternative to appeasement? Face Hitler with an ultimatum. Since Germany's (non-naval) military power was so much greater at the time, he would've eagerly gone into a fight. (He was aggressive like that)
And, a battle with Nazi Germany on the continent at that time would've seen the RAF completely obliterated- the losses at Dunkirk would seem minor in comparison. Without them, the eventual Battle of Britain would be lost, and the Nazis would achieve absolute air superiority over the Isles (able to bomb any ship that visits).
That would mean they'd have no risk of an American amphibious invasion of France (it was hard enough to cross the Channel- crossing from Iceland would be suicide), and could move all their heavy army units into the Russian front, which would've been enough to capture Leningrad, Stalingrad, and Moscow. Although they still couldn't occupy all of the USSR, any serious retaliation would be gone.
And so, with the Caucus mountains firmly under control, the Germans could retake the Middle East, including the areas today called Iraq, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia. With that much new fuel under their control, German Me-262 jets can be mass produced and transferred to Japan, producing untouchable Kamikaze bombers that easily sink whole aircraft carriers. Without any footholds in Europe or Asia, the USA's only remaining chance to beat the Axis would be wide-scale nuclear warfare.
So, all in all, that "appeasement" thing didn't work out so badly in the end. Appeasment can mean saying "Nice doggie" while you look around for a big rock.
Creationism isn't "God created the universe", it is "God created man and the animals"
Creationism, as I understand it, basically is the idea that there is some higher power or order to how the universe operates.
You understand it wrong. It might make sense if Creationism meant what it sounds like, and was the belief that the observed universe had an intelligent creator. (Just like it would simplify things Pro-Life implied Anti-Death-Penalty).
But unfortunately, despite jgardn's disingenous claims to the contrary, that isn't what Creationism means. Creationism is the very specific belief that all life on earth was created full-formed in a divine miracle.
Creationism, for example, is incompatible with Prime Mover theory, which posits a being intentionally created the universe some billions of years ago, and hasn't interfered with it since. jardgn described Creationism as if it were the same thing as Prime-Moverism (which some mislabel as "deism"), but if that were true, then Creationists wouldn't be as antagonistic towards "evolutionists" as they are today.
Spoiling the Trilogy with awful prequels is also tough, since the only way they could affect the original Trilogy is if they somehow altered existing copies.
No, sorry. You are denying that it is possible for a bad ending to spoil an otherwise good movie, but it's a common fact of artistic appreciation that it happens every year. They even have a phrase for a major subcategory of this: "jumping the shark".
A patient viewer can take a stoic, Zen attitude and say "I'll pretend that certain episodes didn't exist, or that The Matrix had no sequels"... but just because some people can actively avoid it, doesn't mean the harm is wholely nonexistent.
Star Wars is for kids. We all know that (hopefully). It's okay to like them, but they're not made for you. They're made for 8 and 10 year olds who go home and hit each other with sticks pretending to be Darth Vader or Luke Skywalker.
You must be a kid- because only someone who wasn't alive in 1977 to see what Star Wars was like when it first came out would say something like that.
A movie about shooting faces, chopping off heads and arms, and the military demolition of millions of people was not thought to be "kid fare", in those days.
Why should George Lucas's property be in the public domain,
Because as the "Phantom Edit" of Star Wars Episode One has demonstrated, many people do Star Wars better than George Lucas can.
If Star Wars had been public domain 5 years ago, the huge error called "Episode One" wouldn't have happened like it did (because, at least, it would be competing with other Star Wars films from people who actually understand what was cool about the originals- like Kevin Smith, for one, or maybe Spielburg).
See one of my other replies. The books I mentioned are the official continuation.
Some Lucasfilm flak advertising this or that book as "canon" means little. All this stuff is fake, and George Lucas can change the canon whenever he wants. (Other publishers have rejected"canon" too)
For a specific example, the Star Wars movie produced in 1977 (Episode IV) used to be canon, which means that events it depicted were "true", so officially, Han shot first. But as we all know, Lucas de-canonicalized the original movies, denying that they even existed, and replacing them with "Special Editions" that were worse in several ways.
So if he wants to stomp over the continuity of a book to make a profitable movie, he absolutely will.
Huh? The EULA for Windows XP says no such thing. I think you've confused typical "terms of service" for web sites, which often do say things
EULAs don't matter, because they're not legally binding (I'm talking about for PC software, not access to an online service).
But if you did, hypothetically believe in EULAs, then the current text of the Windows XP EULA should give you no reassurance. Microsoft can force upgrades of WinXP one way or another (automatic installation of an update, or simply not patching a critical security hole without an update), and those upgrades can include new EULAs that must be clicked-through to proceed. And you can be pretty sure that thousands of people will click-through before even one of them slows down to read it.
Because nobody, except for a true sheep, would agree to such a license, for one thing.
Hypothetically, if clicking "Yes" under an EULA constituted agreement, then you'd be demonstrably wrong. Fortunately it's non-binding, or Microsoft could decide to randomly extract $10,000,000 from every millionth customer of Windows XP.
Except you can do this with a GPL'ed program as well. If you are the sole copyright holder of a program, even if you have only ever released it under the GPL, you can revoke that license. The GPL does not preclude this. You can revoke all users license at any time, and even replace it with a non-free license, if you so desire.
Wrong. Twice wrong. First, the GPL specifically precludes that. Second, the copyright laws of most countries (including the USA, where Linus lives) also forbids it.
Linus Torvalds could say, tomorrow, that he revokes everyone's right to use the parts of the Linux kernel he wrote. That's his right as copyright holder.
If you have a shred of reference supporting that, I'd love to see it. But you won't be able to find any. (Australian laws or "moral rights" DON'T count)
Similarly, if you post a program on your website and say "Here, you may, until the sun burns out, copy this program, make derivative works from it, and distribute them, as long as you provide source code, etc." [i.e. implement the GPL], you can later take it down and revoke your permission. Then people will no longer be able to distribute their derivative works. Too bad for them. They should have made a contract with you: e.g. paid you $5 for a written license allowing all of the above.
Nope. Only if you failed to download a copy of the permission to your own computer would that work.
In realistic situations, the author has no legal way to destroy the offer they made when the code was given to you, and must honor it if presented.
THIS is the reason why non-free software, in its current form, is a scary thing. Most licenses can be modified at any time, without notice, by the licensor. Bill Gates could, in theory, tell the whole world tomorrow "You can no longer use Windows."
No, he can't. This is completely established in copyright law. An author's control is limited to when a work can be copied, and when it can be distributed- and after it's been distributed once, his control is gone (by the Right of First Sale)
Maybe if you believed that EULAs were legally binding contracts, then you might think Bill Gates could revoke Windows at a whim. But indeed, the fact that binding EULAs would lead to such a ludicrously disasterous possibility is one of the reasons why they CANNOT be held valid by a sane court.
There are many, many reasons that EULAs aren't binding. In fact, the argument for EULAs is a circular one: if Gates had the ability to revoke Windows from you, then he'd have leverage to push you into agreeing with the EULA. But since he has no leverage, you don't have to sign the EULA, and he gets no revokation right.
He believes *VERY* strongly that software is a freedom (liberty) like free speech, the right to assemble, etc etc.
Free speech isn't inherently good. It too is a path to pragmatic benefit (what some call "economic benefit"). Any ideal must have, as a foundation, the promise of pragmatic good once it becomes universally applied.
The ideal of pacifism is like that, for example.
He believes *VERY* strongly that software is a freedom (liberty) like free speech, the right to assemble, etc etc.
When the rebels who founded the USA battled for those rights, it is because they had seen the stark economic damage they suffered without them. The battle cry was "No taxation without representation", which is inherently economic.
Instead of inventing an ethical principle out of his head (something theoretical and Utopian like, say, Marxism), he grounded it in the common practice around him: people can do this stuff
To be off-topic, Marxism was based in the real world too. It was an extrapolation of observed anti-aristocratic trends.
The tremenous failure of Leninist-Maoist pseudo-communism shouldn't be used as evidence against the accuracy of the theory of which they were perversions. Marx said that communism would come after capitalism, and so far even capitalism hasn't covered the whole world yet. Even if he were right, we wouldn't expect to see the results til later.
There still remains an outside chance that we will end up in a society conforming to his ideals. For example, if corporations along the lines of Wal-Mart continue to grow and manage ever-increasing domination of the economy, they could become tantamount to a communist government.
No, the core of my argument is that there is just as much danger of 'critical' software being abandoned/EoLed/etc... in the OSS world as there is in the closed source world.
Nope, that isn't your argument, that's your conclusion. You may have gotten confused because you don't actually have any argument worthy of the name. You continue to trot out examples of OSS projects that were discontinued, and then leap to the unsupported conclusion that it is legally impossible to resume them.
You posted it, so don't ask me where it came from. (If you really don't remember, just read your post again, and look carefully at the words "JUST", "CAN'T", and "WOULD", which are all conveniently capitalized. Those are sentences #2 and #3)
Same as in the closed source world, except that if it is marginally profitable, they won't discontinue it in the first place.
Wrong. There are many business scenarios where it is more profitable as a whole to disgard a venture that is itself profitable. (For an MBA view, look for "The Cannibal's Dilemma" in your local bookshop)
For example, I've seen $79 software be discontinued because it was so good that commercial users could get by without purchasing the $499 "Pro" version.
Same as in the closed source world, except that if it is marginally profitable, they won't discontinue it in the first place.
If that were true, then monopolies wouldn't be dangerous to free markets. Consult any econ 101 book to see how wrong that is.
"Intelligent Design" is not science, no matter what pseudo-scientific babble it's dressed in, because it lacks that.
Technically, ID could be science. If I claim that the earth was seeded by releasing 154 species of plant and animal from a flying saucer 900,000 years ago, and that this saucer was then parked on the far side of the moon and is waiting to drive us to the Universal Federation of Intelligent Life, then my specific claims have clear-cut conditions for disproof.
Of course, an Intelligent-Design-partisan you meet in the real world is unlikely to hold those views, as they are usually Creationists. (Although Raelians come close...)
Omnipotence means being able to have concern for every creature and concern, no matter how small.
Omnipotence means being able to have disdain for every creature and concern, no matter how large. It means being able to propagate a false story about heavenly salvation for thousands of years, just as a mean joke.
Omnipotence means being able to do absolutely anything, good or evil, and concealing your true intentions if you wish.
If you believe someone is omnipotent, you can't believe anything else about him, because you've already decided he has the power to totally mislead you if he wanted.
How can a force that is not a force exist? It is a paradox.
A misnomer isn't a paradox. That's like claiming there is no such thing as panda bear or an American Indian. How can an Indian that is American exist? It is a paradox!
Gravity is not a force. It is a "pseudo-force" or a perceived force.
Things that aren't forces can still exist.
By the way, you do not exist. You are not material, but just a phenomena created by the interaction of some atoms.
This sentence does not exist. You percieve some effects as if it did, but it's really just electrons.
Oh, and your observation that things that spin have masses that fly outwards is incorrect.
Wrong.
They do not fly outwards, but proceed according to Newton's law of motion, in a straight line at the same velocity
They travel in a straight line, or actually a ray. And since an infinte amount of that ray is outside the area of spin, but only a finite amount of it is inside, then an infinitely large portion of the movement is away from the starting point, which is called "outwards".
In fact, we are growing right now at such a rate that today's billions will be a drop in the bucket tomorrow. This is due to sheer growth and expansion, not based on inflation.
Haha, he ha. Tell another one! Here: In fact, I am growing right now at such a rate that in 10 years, I will be 65 meters tall. That is due to sheer growth and expansion, not inflation.
Assumptions of eternal grow are moronic.
If anything, the fact that we can float such a huge debt and that our debtors are fine with the rates is a testament to the power of our nation.
That's true, and it's something to be ASHAMED of. Where I come from, "bullying" was still considered wrong.
If they were willing to send fighter-jets to destroy a small plane that might hit a small city in the middle of nowhere, they would be a thousand times as willing to blow up a big plane flying towards the biggest city on the continent.
Or are you saying that they will shoot to protect low-value targets (Dakota farmland) or super-high-value targets (the White House), but not anything in between?
Slashdot Mirror
I needed no further convincing. I ignored the whole debate. I thought it was a mistake to suspend the first Iraq war without getting rid of Saddam when we had all the rats in one trap.
So, if a man makes a mistake 15 years ago, you yourself no longer have to make any choices, ever again?
The enemy combatants are rightly and legally being held while the war against Al-Qaida is being fought.
The USA hasn't declared a war since 1941. If Bush wants a war against those guys, he's free to ask Congress to make that declaration.
Until that happens, the War on Terror is equally legitimate as the War On Drugs.
Besides, Bush has declared victory in Afganistan years ago, and he says that he no longer cares about pursuing the rest of Al Quaeda.
Besides, what did they do? Some minor hazing; ruffled the prisoners pride a little bit.
Strangled them to death...
We're talking about wholesale genocide here, that makes the Holocaust look like chump change in numbers.
No, that's simply not true.
For one thing, Hitler in 1942 killed more people than the entire population of North America in 1492.
For another, the European conquerors actually killed a very tiny fraction of the population of the continents they colonized. Specifically, the population numbers of "Native Americans" has increased every year since 1530. Not once did enough die to outweigh that year's births.
Plus, why would they remain in the Stone Age? Slower technological advances != no technological advances.
True, true. Why, with a little luck, the Aztec civilization of Mexico could've invented high technology and spread an empire across the two continents.
That's be great! All the benefits of crowded civilized modern America, plus daily human sacrifices to the sun god!
On the other hand, if the Aztecs didn't make a big leap forward, then the Americas could've remained easy pickings until Adolf Hitler decides to colonize them in 1943. That would work out great, too.
I'm british, and i can admit we've done some really crappy stuff in the past (appeasment
What was the alternative to appeasement? Face Hitler with an ultimatum. Since Germany's (non-naval) military power was so much greater at the time, he would've eagerly gone into a fight. (He was aggressive like that)
And, a battle with Nazi Germany on the continent at that time would've seen the RAF completely obliterated- the losses at Dunkirk would seem minor in comparison. Without them, the eventual Battle of Britain would be lost, and the Nazis would achieve absolute air superiority over the Isles (able to bomb any ship that visits).
That would mean they'd have no risk of an American amphibious invasion of France (it was hard enough to cross the Channel- crossing from Iceland would be suicide), and could move all their heavy army units into the Russian front, which would've been enough to capture Leningrad, Stalingrad, and Moscow. Although they still couldn't occupy all of the USSR, any serious retaliation would be gone.
And so, with the Caucus mountains firmly under control, the Germans could retake the Middle East, including the areas today called Iraq, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia. With that much new fuel under their control, German Me-262 jets can be mass produced and transferred to Japan, producing untouchable Kamikaze bombers that easily sink whole aircraft carriers. Without any footholds in Europe or Asia, the USA's only remaining chance to beat the Axis would be wide-scale nuclear warfare.
So, all in all, that "appeasement" thing didn't work out so badly in the end. Appeasment can mean saying "Nice doggie" while you look around for a big rock.
Creationism isn't "God created the universe", it is "God created man and the animals"
Creationism, as I understand it, basically is the idea that there is some higher power or order to how the universe operates.
You understand it wrong. It might make sense if Creationism meant what it sounds like, and was the belief that the observed universe had an intelligent creator. (Just like it would simplify things Pro-Life implied Anti-Death-Penalty).
But unfortunately, despite jgardn's disingenous claims to the contrary, that isn't what Creationism means. Creationism is the very specific belief that all life on earth was created full-formed in a divine miracle.
Creationism, for example, is incompatible with Prime Mover theory, which posits a being intentionally created the universe some billions of years ago, and hasn't interfered with it since. jardgn described Creationism as if it were the same thing as Prime-Moverism (which some mislabel as "deism"), but if that were true, then Creationists wouldn't be as antagonistic towards "evolutionists" as they are today.
Spoiling the Trilogy with awful prequels is also tough, since the only way they could affect the original Trilogy is if they somehow altered existing copies.
No, sorry. You are denying that it is possible for a bad ending to spoil an otherwise good movie, but it's a common fact of artistic appreciation that it happens every year. They even have a phrase for a major subcategory of this: "jumping the shark".
A patient viewer can take a stoic, Zen attitude and say "I'll pretend that certain episodes didn't exist, or that The Matrix had no sequels"... but just because some people can actively avoid it, doesn't mean the harm is wholely nonexistent.
Star Wars is for kids. We all know that (hopefully). It's okay to like them, but they're not made for you. They're made for 8 and 10 year olds who go home and hit each other with sticks pretending to be Darth Vader or Luke Skywalker.
You must be a kid- because only someone who wasn't alive in 1977 to see what Star Wars was like when it first came out would say something like that.
A movie about shooting faces, chopping off heads and arms, and the military demolition of millions of people was not thought to be "kid fare", in those days.
Why should George Lucas's property be in the public domain,
Because as the "Phantom Edit" of Star Wars Episode One has demonstrated, many people do Star Wars better than George Lucas can.
If Star Wars had been public domain 5 years ago, the huge error called "Episode One" wouldn't have happened like it did (because, at least, it would be competing with other Star Wars films from people who actually understand what was cool about the originals- like Kevin Smith, for one, or maybe Spielburg).
See one of my other replies. The books I mentioned are the official continuation.
Some Lucasfilm flak advertising this or that book as "canon" means little. All this stuff is fake, and George Lucas can change the canon whenever he wants. (Other publishers have rejected "canon" too)
For a specific example, the Star Wars movie produced in 1977 (Episode IV) used to be canon, which means that events it depicted were "true", so officially, Han shot first. But as we all know, Lucas de-canonicalized the original movies, denying that they even existed, and replacing them with "Special Editions" that were worse in several ways.
So if he wants to stomp over the continuity of a book to make a profitable movie, he absolutely will.
I know I'm supposed to represent LMCO in a positive light when I talk about them in public,
No, check your employee handbook. You aren't supposed to represent them in public AT ALL (unless you are in the PR department).
Huh? The EULA for Windows XP says no such thing. I think you've confused typical "terms of service" for web sites, which often do say things
EULAs don't matter, because they're not legally binding (I'm talking about for PC software, not access to an online service).
But if you did, hypothetically believe in EULAs, then the current text of the Windows XP EULA should give you no reassurance. Microsoft can force upgrades of WinXP one way or another (automatic installation of an update, or simply not patching a critical security hole without an update), and those upgrades can include new EULAs that must be clicked-through to proceed. And you can be pretty sure that thousands of people will click-through before even one of them slows down to read it.
Because nobody, except for a true sheep, would agree to such a license, for one thing.
Hypothetically, if clicking "Yes" under an EULA constituted agreement, then you'd be demonstrably wrong. Fortunately it's non-binding, or Microsoft could decide to randomly extract $10,000,000 from every millionth customer of Windows XP.
Except you can do this with a GPL'ed program as well. If you are the sole copyright holder of a program, even if you have only ever released it under the GPL, you can revoke that license. The GPL does not preclude this. You can revoke all users license at any time, and even replace it with a non-free license, if you so desire.
Wrong. Twice wrong. First, the GPL specifically precludes that. Second, the copyright laws of most countries (including the USA, where Linus lives) also forbids it.
Linus Torvalds could say, tomorrow, that he revokes everyone's right to use the parts of the Linux kernel he wrote. That's his right as copyright holder.
If you have a shred of reference supporting that, I'd love to see it. But you won't be able to find any. (Australian laws or "moral rights" DON'T count)
Similarly, if you post a program on your website and say "Here, you may, until the sun burns out, copy this program, make derivative works from it, and distribute them, as long as you provide source code, etc." [i.e. implement the GPL], you can later take it down and revoke your permission. Then people will no longer be able to distribute their derivative works. Too bad for them. They should have made a contract with you: e.g. paid you $5 for a written license allowing all of the above.
Nope. Only if you failed to download a copy of the permission to your own computer would that work.
In realistic situations, the author has no legal way to destroy the offer they made when the code was given to you, and must honor it if presented.
THIS is the reason why non-free software, in its current form, is a scary thing. Most licenses can be modified at any time, without notice, by the licensor. Bill Gates could, in theory, tell the whole world tomorrow "You can no longer use Windows."
No, he can't. This is completely established in copyright law. An author's control is limited to when a work can be copied, and when it can be distributed- and after it's been distributed once, his control is gone (by the Right of First Sale)
Maybe if you believed that EULAs were legally binding contracts, then you might think Bill Gates could revoke Windows at a whim. But indeed, the fact that binding EULAs would lead to such a ludicrously disasterous possibility is one of the reasons why they CANNOT be held valid by a sane court.
There are many, many reasons that EULAs aren't binding. In fact, the argument for EULAs is a circular one: if Gates had the ability to revoke Windows from you, then he'd have leverage to push you into agreeing with the EULA. But since he has no leverage, you don't have to sign the EULA, and he gets no revokation right.
He believes *VERY* strongly that software is a freedom (liberty) like free speech, the right to assemble, etc etc.
Free speech isn't inherently good. It too is a path to pragmatic benefit (what some call "economic benefit"). Any ideal must have, as a foundation, the promise of pragmatic good once it becomes universally applied.
The ideal of pacifism is like that, for example.
He believes *VERY* strongly that software is a freedom (liberty) like free speech, the right to assemble, etc etc.
When the rebels who founded the USA battled for those rights, it is because they had seen the stark economic damage they suffered without them. The battle cry was "No taxation without representation", which is inherently economic.
Instead of inventing an ethical principle out of his head (something theoretical and Utopian like, say, Marxism), he grounded it in the common practice around him: people can do this stuff
To be off-topic, Marxism was based in the real world too. It was an extrapolation of observed anti-aristocratic trends.
The tremenous failure of Leninist-Maoist pseudo-communism shouldn't be used as evidence against the accuracy of the theory of which they were perversions. Marx said that communism would come after capitalism, and so far even capitalism hasn't covered the whole world yet. Even if he were right, we wouldn't expect to see the results til later.
There still remains an outside chance that we will end up in a society conforming to his ideals. For example, if corporations along the lines of Wal-Mart continue to grow and manage ever-increasing domination of the economy, they could become tantamount to a communist government.
No, the core of my argument is that there is just as much danger of 'critical' software being abandoned/EoLed/etc... in the OSS world as there is in the closed source world.
Nope, that isn't your argument, that's your conclusion. You may have gotten confused because you don't actually have any argument worthy of the name. You continue to trot out examples of OSS projects that were discontinued, and then leap to the unsupported conclusion that it is legally impossible to resume them.
You've been refuted a few times in this thread, but you seem oblivious.
What orifice did you extract THAT out of?
You posted it, so don't ask me where it came from. (If you really don't remember, just read your post again, and look carefully at the words "JUST", "CAN'T", and "WOULD", which are all conveniently capitalized. Those are sentences #2 and #3)
Same as in the closed source world, except that if it is marginally profitable, they won't discontinue it in the first place.
Wrong. There are many business scenarios where it is more profitable as a whole to disgard a venture that is itself profitable. (For an MBA view, look for "The Cannibal's Dilemma" in your local bookshop)
For example, I've seen $79 software be discontinued because it was so good that commercial users could get by without purchasing the $499 "Pro" version.
Same as in the closed source world, except that if it is marginally profitable, they won't discontinue it in the first place.
If that were true, then monopolies wouldn't be dangerous to free markets. Consult any econ 101 book to see how wrong that is.
"Intelligent Design" is not science, no matter what pseudo-scientific babble it's dressed in, because it lacks that.
Technically, ID could be science. If I claim that the earth was seeded by releasing 154 species of plant and animal from a flying saucer 900,000 years ago, and that this saucer was then parked on the far side of the moon and is waiting to drive us to the Universal Federation of Intelligent Life, then my specific claims have clear-cut conditions for disproof.
Of course, an Intelligent-Design-partisan you meet in the real world is unlikely to hold those views, as they are usually Creationists. (Although Raelians come close...)
Omnipotence means being able to have concern for every creature and concern, no matter how small.
Omnipotence means being able to have disdain for every creature and concern, no matter how large. It means being able to propagate a false story about heavenly salvation for thousands of years, just as a mean joke.
Omnipotence means being able to do absolutely anything, good or evil, and concealing your true intentions if you wish.
If you believe someone is omnipotent, you can't believe anything else about him, because you've already decided he has the power to totally mislead you if he wanted.
How can a force that is not a force exist? It is a paradox.
A misnomer isn't a paradox. That's like claiming there is no such thing as panda bear or an American Indian. How can an Indian that is American exist? It is a paradox!
Gravity is not a force. It is a "pseudo-force" or a perceived force.
Things that aren't forces can still exist.
By the way, you do not exist. You are not material, but just a phenomena created by the interaction of some atoms.
This sentence does not exist. You percieve some effects as if it did, but it's really just electrons.
Oh, and your observation that things that spin have masses that fly outwards is incorrect.
Wrong.
They do not fly outwards, but proceed according to Newton's law of motion, in a straight line at the same velocity
They travel in a straight line, or actually a ray. And since an infinte amount of that ray is outside the area of spin, but only a finite amount of it is inside, then an infinitely large portion of the movement is away from the starting point, which is called "outwards".
In fact, we are growing right now at such a rate that today's billions will be a drop in the bucket tomorrow. This is due to sheer growth and expansion, not based on inflation.
Haha, he ha. Tell another one! Here: In fact, I am growing right now at such a rate that in 10 years, I will be 65 meters tall. That is due to sheer growth and expansion, not inflation.
Assumptions of eternal grow are moronic.
If anything, the fact that we can float such a huge debt and that our debtors are fine with the rates is a testament to the power of our nation.
That's true, and it's something to be ASHAMED of. Where I come from, "bullying" was still considered wrong.
Then they can have Vader jump over some evil kind of "shark-like" monster....to get better ratings, of course
It was tried, but "Boba Fett jumps the Sarlack" turned into a fiasco.
Right - in a rural area. Not in NYC.
Which goes further to disprove your position.
If they were willing to send fighter-jets to destroy a small plane that might hit a small city in the middle of nowhere, they would be a thousand times as willing to blow up a big plane flying towards the biggest city on the continent.
Or are you saying that they will shoot to protect low-value targets (Dakota farmland) or super-high-value targets (the White House), but not anything in between?
Did you not read a word I said?
Your entry in the 2005 Twirp-Pudge memorial contest has been recorded.