"Even within this physical reality there are these things we call mind, spirit, information, software etc. These are all a separate class, apart from the matter-energy science deals with."
Philosophical mumbo-jumbo. Just as there is no time without motion and no motion without time, information does not exists without matter to contain it or energy to transfer it.
The material realm can contain and manipulate existing information, but only a mind can create it.
Minds don't "create information" they simply sort through existing information looking for meaningfull patterns. If the converse were true then the Universe could not exist without a "mind" to create the information it holds, and since a "mind" is dependent on the existance of matter (see above) then how could it exist in the first place?
"No, forming testable hypothesis is a part of science."
There, fixed now.
"If you jump right to Theory, then you are obviously adjusting data to match your theory, instead of the other way around."
Black holes and spacetime (just two examples) were discovered with a pencil and paper well before anyone knew how to collect data about them or even test for their existance.
"Sorry for the bitterness, but I wouldn't even call these people scientists."
I'm not at all bitter yet I wouldn't call them scientists, due mainly to the fact they are talking about mathematics. Much the same way as Eienstien talked about spacetime as a mathematical curiosity until it's predictions were observed, or the fact that black holes were discovered by pencil and paper well before they were found with a telescope. Given the uncanny ability of maths to model the Universe I am inclined to say let the maths wizzes have their big hairy formulas, on the rare occasions when they do find a basic truth it always has spectacular consequences for science.
"Much of science is becoming mere entertainment. Strings and branes. hahah. Good."
Until someone thinks of a way to test for the existence of strings and/or branes they are not part of science, they are at best mathematical curiosities.
"Well, in several cultures, it was (and still is) acceptable to marry within the family."
I agree with your post and was actually thinking of Egypt when I said "(and many other) cultures" instead of "all other cultures". As you have pointed out marriage between siblings is not particularly rare, but marriage and sex are two different things (ie: marriage is cultural, sex is instinctive).
This isn't aimed at you personally, but much of the discussion seems to be confusing incest with paedophilia. The only thing they really have in common is both are sexual taboos in western (and many other) cultures. On a "human behaviour" level the definition of both words varys greatly across different cultures and generations.
I suspect that now the word "terrorist" is starting to loose it's "magic spell" quality, we will be hearing more incantantions of the "sex offender" spell. The USG (as distinct from it's people) will drop Bush and Iraq at the same time and rush home for the new "war on evil sex offenders" who may be guilty of anything from "pissing on a tree" to "trading in child sex-slaves" or worse. The really sad part about this theory is that genuine "rock spiders" will be able to use a "saftey in numbers" strategy and simply dissapear into large chunk of the population collectively known as "registered sex offenders".
"You've got it wrong; they haven't pissed off their customers, they're probably in fact doing what their customers have asked. You forget that advertisers are their customers. Now they may have pissed off consumers who use their site (and thus generate the traffic they need to attract advertisers), but I'm pretty sure their customers (the advertisers) won't be at all upset about this."
If that's what is going on here then LJ has it "wrong".
The users are buying LJ's service, it's just that the users "pay" in eyeball hours and personal trivia rather than dollars. Regardless of wether LJ sells advertising on their site or not, their one major asset is a database chock full of demographically mapped eyeballs that can be exchanged for real $$$ in more ways than I can imagine.
Wether LJ choose to call the eyeballs "users" or "customers", the GP's point remains valid: failure to maintain (preferably grow/diversify) their primary assest will end badly for them.
Let's see if the current POTUS can shed any light on that question...
"Tribal sovereignty means that; it's sovereign. I mean, you're a -- you've been given sovereignty, and you're viewed as a sovereign entity. And therefore the relationship between the federal government and tribes is one between sovereign entities." -- GWB
According to the WP entry for "cultural revolution"...
"Although Mao himself officially declared the Cultural Revolution to have ended in 1969, the term is today widely used to also include the period between 1969 and the arrest of the Gang of Four in 1976."
I was 10yrs old in '69 and thought the "little red book" had something to do with sex but I do recall "the end of the revolution". I agree that China spent much of the 70's trying to forget Mao's fuck-ups.
"Because it has brought the greatest prosperity to the greatest number of people?"
I'm not disputing that capitalisim works but since the 1960's China has dragged more people out of starvation/poverty than the rest of the planet put together. Sure chairman Mao was largely responsible for the poverty in the first place, but that's beside the point.
"Setting up a complex build environment on Windows can be nightmarish. My project uses 10 - 15 sub-libraries and downloading working and compatible versions of all the dependencies can take a whole day."
I fail to see how downlading and building a few libs on windows is any more difficult that the same task on *nix, or are you talking about setting up the box in the first place? (the language in your post is somewhat ambigious).
"apt-get and friends are far, far better than Window's add/remove system. They track dependencies, so when you install "rails", for example, it will automatically install apache, mysql, ruby, all the various connectors, configure them and link them all together. This is especially useful for development"
There's no disputing that apt_get is an elegant solution, but when in Rome and all that...
"Many people claim it is the sun. Who do you believe?"
The question is not "who" but "what", I belive that science has the most usefull answers. The link I pointed to represents one of the most rigourous scientific investigations ever undertaken.
People who say "the sun did it" obviously have not looked at figure SPM2 in the 2007 IPCC SPM. I thank you for the links and offer one of my own that I have found very informative. It is also worth noting that the site is run by world renowned climatologists who have had some input into the IPCC reports, so what you get is "straight from the horses mouth" so to speak.
"It more bugs me how many sites in google news are exact copies of the same thing. Makes finding more than one story somewhat of a bitch."
On the contrary I think that stories that have put in their own research/spin can be easily identified by scrolling through google's list of snipets. Why do you think content producers both love and hate google?
"That's all fine and good, but how exactly do you explain the molten pools of steel"
You have that the wrong way around, the question(s) should be along the lines of:
1. Where is the (non-anecdotal) evidence that such "pools" existed?
2. How do we know the "pools" are made from steel and not some other common metal with a lower melt point, eg: tin or zinc?
3. Why do "molten pools" of metal imply "secret explosives" when a burning jumbo jet has been observed sticking out the side of the building?
4. By what mechanisim does the (theorised) explosive melt steel into a nice neat pool?????
"I know I'm burning Karma on this one, but I'm truly tired of hearing know-it-alls completely dismiss anyone who doesn't tow the party line when it comes to the explanation of what happened to all the WTC buildings."
BTW: "I'm truly tired of hearing know-it-alls" who fail to even question their own bat-shit ideas.
"My feeling is that I believe that it is certainly POSSIBLE that global warming is the result of CO2 emissions. However, nobody has stepped forward with definitive evidence to show me that there is a link between warming and CO2 emissions."
The Evidence is not disputed by the scientific community, although many scientists belive the IPCC is a conservative assesment of our current understanding. The required GHG cuts are somewhere between the two political extremes of "zero emmissions" and "bussiness as usual", similarly the "cause" of the warming is part natural but predominently man-made.
The problem for people who don't accept the 100+yr old repeatable observation that C02 acts as a GHG is to point to an alternative explaination for the observed warming. In other words natural "forcings" have been accunted for, so where is the extra warming coming from if not from GHG emmissions?
I agree, have a look at what happens in an oil-rig fire, the steel rigs are reduced to a twisted pile metal. AFAIK the towers buckled because they did not have a "central column" (not because the "central column" had explosives strapped to it)....
Putting conspiracy crap like that on the same list as the world-wide collapse of fisheries says more about journalistic ignorance than it does about censorship.
Slashdot Mirror
"Even within this physical reality there are these things we call mind, spirit, information, software etc. These are all a separate class, apart from the matter-energy science deals with."
Philosophical mumbo-jumbo. Just as there is no time without motion and no motion without time, information does not exists without matter to contain it or energy to transfer it.
The material realm can contain and manipulate existing information, but only a mind can create it.
Minds don't "create information" they simply sort through existing information looking for meaningfull patterns. If the converse were true then the Universe could not exist without a "mind" to create the information it holds, and since a "mind" is dependent on the existance of matter (see above) then how could it exist in the first place?
"No, forming testable hypothesis is a part of science."
There, fixed now.
"If you jump right to Theory, then you are obviously adjusting data to match your theory, instead of the other way around."
Black holes and spacetime (just two examples) were discovered with a pencil and paper well before anyone knew how to collect data about them or even test for their existance.
"Sorry for the bitterness, but I wouldn't even call these people scientists."
I'm not at all bitter yet I wouldn't call them scientists, due mainly to the fact they are talking about mathematics. Much the same way as Eienstien talked about spacetime as a mathematical curiosity until it's predictions were observed, or the fact that black holes were discovered by pencil and paper well before they were found with a telescope. Given the uncanny ability of maths to model the Universe I am inclined to say let the maths wizzes have their big hairy formulas, on the rare occasions when they do find a basic truth it always has spectacular consequences for science.
"Much of science is becoming mere entertainment. Strings and branes. hahah. Good."
Until someone thinks of a way to test for the existence of strings and/or branes they are not part of science, they are at best mathematical curiosities.
"Well, in several cultures, it was (and still is) acceptable to marry within the family."
I agree with your post and was actually thinking of Egypt when I said "(and many other) cultures" instead of "all other cultures". As you have pointed out marriage between siblings is not particularly rare, but marriage and sex are two different things (ie: marriage is cultural, sex is instinctive).
As a fellow Aussie I am compeled to say: "Fuc_an_owth" - sovereignty sounds like too much like paper work anyway.
This isn't aimed at you personally, but much of the discussion seems to be confusing incest with paedophilia. The only thing they really have in common is both are sexual taboos in western (and many other) cultures. On a "human behaviour" level the definition of both words varys greatly across different cultures and generations.
I suspect that now the word "terrorist" is starting to loose it's "magic spell" quality, we will be hearing more incantantions of the "sex offender" spell. The USG (as distinct from it's people) will drop Bush and Iraq at the same time and rush home for the new "war on evil sex offenders" who may be guilty of anything from "pissing on a tree" to "trading in child sex-slaves" or worse. The really sad part about this theory is that genuine "rock spiders" will be able to use a "saftey in numbers" strategy and simply dissapear into large chunk of the population collectively known as "registered sex offenders".
"You've got it wrong; they haven't pissed off their customers, they're probably in fact doing what their customers have asked. You forget that advertisers are their customers. Now they may have pissed off consumers who use their site (and thus generate the traffic they need to attract advertisers), but I'm pretty sure their customers (the advertisers) won't be at all upset about this."
If that's what is going on here then LJ has it "wrong".
The users are buying LJ's service, it's just that the users "pay" in eyeball hours and personal trivia rather than dollars. Regardless of wether LJ sells advertising on their site or not, their one major asset is a database chock full of demographically mapped eyeballs that can be exchanged for real $$$ in more ways than I can imagine.
Wether LJ choose to call the eyeballs "users" or "customers", the GP's point remains valid: failure to maintain (preferably grow/diversify) their primary assest will end badly for them.
I said since the 60's and you took that to mean including the 60's - I think.
"...if they are a sovereign nation?"
Let's see if the current POTUS can shed any light on that question...
"Tribal sovereignty means that; it's sovereign. I mean, you're a -- you've been given sovereignty, and you're viewed as a sovereign entity. And therefore the relationship between the federal government and tribes is one between sovereign entities." -- GWB
According to the WP entry for "cultural revolution"...
"Although Mao himself officially declared the Cultural Revolution to have ended in 1969, the term is today widely used to also include the period between 1969 and the arrest of the Gang of Four in 1976."
I was 10yrs old in '69 and thought the "little red book" had something to do with sex but I do recall "the end of the revolution". I agree that China spent much of the 70's trying to forget Mao's fuck-ups.
"Because it has brought the greatest prosperity to the greatest number of people?"
I'm not disputing that capitalisim works but since the 1960's China has dragged more people out of starvation/poverty than the rest of the planet put together. Sure chairman Mao was largely responsible for the poverty in the first place, but that's beside the point.
Come on, there are an infinite number of ways to hold your tounge and squint.
Too right - as a father of two grown children I say if you care for your kids then spy on the sneaky little bastards.
"How is that supposed to be a question?"
Silly me, I assumed people would read the summary and infer the context.
"Setting up a complex build environment on Windows can be nightmarish. My project uses 10 - 15 sub-libraries and downloading working and compatible versions of all the dependencies can take a whole day."
I fail to see how downlading and building a few libs on windows is any more difficult that the same task on *nix, or are you talking about setting up the box in the first place? (the language in your post is somewhat ambigious).
"apt-get and friends are far, far better than Window's add/remove system. They track dependencies, so when you install "rails", for example, it will automatically install apache, mysql, ruby, all the various connectors, configure them and link them all together. This is especially useful for development"
There's no disputing that apt_get is an elegant solution, but when in Rome and all that...
Hmmm, by chance I installed NASA's "world wind" last night and it comes with LandSAT-7 overlays?
I don't have the link handy but Robert Fisk wrote an excellent article about the bombing of AJ and the loss of one of his friends during the attack.
"Many people claim it is the sun. Who do you believe?"
The question is not "who" but "what", I belive that science has the most usefull answers. The link I pointed to represents one of the most rigourous scientific investigations ever undertaken.
People who say "the sun did it" obviously have not looked at figure SPM2 in the 2007 IPCC SPM. I thank you for the links and offer one of my own that I have found very informative. It is also worth noting that the site is run by world renowned climatologists who have had some input into the IPCC reports, so what you get is "straight from the horses mouth" so to speak.
If that fails we can always ban unfreindly newspapers in Iraq and bomb Al Jazeera's headquarters.
"It more bugs me how many sites in google news are exact copies of the same thing. Makes finding more than one story somewhat of a bitch."
On the contrary I think that stories that have put in their own research/spin can be easily identified by scrolling through google's list of snipets. Why do you think content producers both love and hate google?
A hint from TFA (my emph.): "That evening in January 1957..."
"That's all fine and good, but how exactly do you explain the molten pools of steel"
You have that the wrong way around, the question(s) should be along the lines of:
1. Where is the (non-anecdotal) evidence that such "pools" existed?
2. How do we know the "pools" are made from steel and not some other common metal with a lower melt point, eg: tin or zinc?
3. Why do "molten pools" of metal imply "secret explosives" when a burning jumbo jet has been observed sticking out the side of the building?
4. By what mechanisim does the (theorised) explosive melt steel into a nice neat pool?????
"I know I'm burning Karma on this one, but I'm truly tired of hearing know-it-alls completely dismiss anyone who doesn't tow the party line when it comes to the explanation of what happened to all the WTC buildings."
BTW: "I'm truly tired of hearing know-it-alls" who fail to even question their own bat-shit ideas.
"My feeling is that I believe that it is certainly POSSIBLE that global warming is the result of CO2 emissions. However, nobody has stepped forward with definitive evidence to show me that there is a link between warming and CO2 emissions."
The Evidence is not disputed by the scientific community, although many scientists belive the IPCC is a conservative assesment of our current understanding. The required GHG cuts are somewhere between the two political extremes of "zero emmissions" and "bussiness as usual", similarly the "cause" of the warming is part natural but predominently man-made.
The problem for people who don't accept the 100+yr old repeatable observation that C02 acts as a GHG is to point to an alternative explaination for the observed warming. In other words natural "forcings" have been accunted for, so where is the extra warming coming from if not from GHG emmissions?
I agree, have a look at what happens in an oil-rig fire, the steel rigs are reduced to a twisted pile metal. AFAIK the towers buckled because they did not have a "central column" (not because the "central column" had explosives strapped to it)....
Putting conspiracy crap like that on the same list as the world-wide collapse of fisheries says more about journalistic ignorance than it does about censorship.