I've been using GoDaddy.com very happily for the past few years. They were the first to go really cheap (sub $10/year), I think. And they provide every service I've ever wanted, administration (updating name servers, etc.) is simple, parking is free, etc.. I don't know about customer service since I've never needed any.
There are more now. I just ran across another the other day... secureserver.net.
I'm not going to go as far as saying that this case was completely justified (because I do agree it's a fringe case), but it's not as ridiculous as you're saying.
That's why misuse of products shouldn't count. You don't put dangerous items near sensitive organs.
Your "parallel" examples are acid and razors. We're talking coffee here, which is intended to be poured into the mouth. Yes, sensitive organs are involved.
If she had simply used the coffee as directed (drinking it) from any other major chain at the time, she might have experienced some minor burns. Ouch, coffee hasn't cooled enough to drink yet. But this particular coffee was hot enough that she would have required hospitalization (if I understand the case correctly).
Yes, it would have been a stronger case if the burned person had been a rushed businessman who tried to gulp his coffee... but the logical leap is not nearly as big as you're implying.
No, I'm worried that the 3-line chunks could be out of phase.
An MD5 sum of these 3 lines: one two three...won't match with the MD5 sum of these 3 lines: two three four...even though they share two lines. Now imagine the same thing for a few thousand more lines, identical except that one started on "one" and the other on "two". Every single MD5 will be unique, because you'll always have only two lines in common.
It hashes the code in 3 line chunks, and the unique hashes from the shreds of both source trees are thrown out. Simple. And yes, whitespace can be ignored.
I still have a question about how the 3-line thing works, though (I read the article, but not the source or docs): if the source files are exactly the same, but the Linux version has an extra single line comment on top, won't all of the 3-line chunks come out as unique because they're out of phase?
Maybe it has some logic to restart the 3-line patter after any double linebreak, or some pattern detection (i.e., restart at comment start/end) to ameliorate this.
Anyway, I do have to say: this is by far the MOST EXCITING news I've heard yet in this whole mess. What reason can SCO possibly give to refuse providing the shreds of their code? Either they provide the shred results and their lying is exposed, or they refuse, and their lying is exposed.
licensing costs, only on MS OS
on
Java vs .NET
·
· Score: 1
From the article:.NETs ease of use and lower licensing costs also will be a draw.
This is related. "Lower licensing costs" is not so black and white as all that. J2EE can be expensive to use, if you're paying for WebLogic or WebSphere. If I'm using JBoss or Tomcat/Castor, etc., running on a RedHat server with MySql or SAPDB, how does the licensing compare now, especially considering that since you're locked into the win OS you have to pay MS for your server's operating system, too?
Personally, I can't comment on.NET's ease of use -- I haven't used it yet, because my company doesn't see the need to pay to try it (already paying for WebSphere and DB2, running on Solaris and OS/400), and I can't afford it for my private projects (where I use only the free stuff.. but it works amazingly well).
A forger would have a hard time copying the variations in speed that the actual person uses even if the forger traces the same path or tries to "get good" at the signature.
The problem is that the actual person may also have a really tough time reproducing the same speeds, patterns, etc. in their signature.
This is why handwriting analysis/comparison is almost always inadmissable in court -- it's too variable.
The reasons for this are especially apparent when you look at the handwriting of people like myself whose fine motor control (like many guys) is not so "fine"... I can type quickly, but my signature varies *widely* each time I sign my name. The slant of the letters in my handwriting, type of loops, etc. also varies depending on my mood, the pen and writing surface, my posture, etc.
My real point here is that there's certainly a future in some kind of online "signature", but I'm guessing we'll end up with a system based more on asynchronous crypto as opposed to some kind of biometrics like this.
Normal hard-copy signatures aren't particularly secure -- no one pretends they are. That's why most of the time the cashier doesn't compare the signatures (in more automated systems like many gas stations, and online, they CAN'T). That's also why we have Notary Publics in the US who will certify that you were the one who marked the paper. The advantage of hard-copy signatures is that they're tough to scam safely, in bulk.
I suspect that most online signature methods *WILL* be comparitively easy to scam in bulk, simply because this is the internet, and it's all just data.
I agree that some of the things you listed *are* offensive. Some of the repeated media coverage of 9/11 was especially frightening (so I've read) because they showed it again and again... and a decent percentage of children thought it was happening again. Scary, huh?
But I have no problem with a doll that refuses to say a bad word... it's a doll, for crying out loud! It's not preventing the kid from saying the words, or hearing them from the parents, for example.
Besides, chances are that little Tommy will NOT die in a gutter. But he will spend a lot of time dealing with other members of society, most of whom will not look upon him kindly if he chooses to sprinkle his regular conversations with obscenities.
And here's my really good reason for not overusing those words -- what in the world will you say when you're actually mad? You should fight to keep those words taboo, so Tommy has something to say that packs a punch when he does encounter some of the nasty things that you talked about.
..there are programs on the Internet that will generate infinite activation codes for specific software. This doesn't require any help from authorized activation code holders
Little glitches like this are pretty strong arguments against disabling your software... it's much safer to see a pattern (i.e., 50+ users have downloaded the latest update using this reg number, or it's a valid reg pattern but isn't in the user database yet) and do something to make pirates nervous (call this automated 800 number, available 24-7, to get the unlock code).
You'll weed out most of them that way, without costing the legal users more than 30 seconds.
I think where these anti-piracy techniques really start to go wrong is when the vendor *thinks* they have a foolproof way to id a pirate... and they think they can "take revenge" then. There's almost always going to be that one case that didn't occur to them... and then the vilification on Slashdot begins.
Very good point. If you want to promote/criticize belief systems that are part of the game, rock on... but discussion of a real-world religion (including telling another player, "Come worship the Nameless One with me - He's the same as the Jewish G_d!") should be as taboo as trying to sell real-world vaccuum cleaners to other players.
I read an article about this yesterday on BBC news that specifically mentioned that none of the high-temp microorganisms discovered so far have pathogens.
In other words, they aren't interested in the iron in your blood. Yet.
I finally realized that the reason behind your backwards treble clef symbol is a desperate attempt at making an "e". Good God, man. I highly recommend you ditch that idea.
Not so terribly OT -- this may provide a clue as to why basement dotcoms don't tend to launch their creators instantly to fame and fortune. When the creator does it all, "all" tends to include some tasks s/he knows nothing about...
I'm a software developer, not a graphic designer (damnit Jim). Hey, I can make sweeping changes to the entire mediocre GUI with a few keystrokes!
If I had a budget of any kind, or if I expected to make enough money to share, I could get someone to help w/ the graphics... but I don't, so I make due for now. At least I know enough to avoid blinking things and clashing colors.:)
Well, "serious post" as much as any endeavor of this type can be considered serious...
I've worked completely solo to build this website -- basically, it offers online interactive music exercises with a lot of support for teachers.
I brought it online just a week ago... now I'm waiting to work out a few more kinks before I open the doors to floods of subscribers.
Well, I think I'm guaranteed 2 or 3 subscribers... we'll have to see about the "floods". Anyway, I'm hosting it for $30/month, which I mostly paid for by reselling a bit of my bandwidth to an uncle for his website (he sells batteries and UPS systems).
So... thus far the only real cost are my time (and I built it all outside of my normal working hours).
In some ways, this nicest payoff from this sort of project is the emails from appreciative users... but yeah, I'm hoping it'll become a minor revenue stream. Ego boosts only go so far, in the end (as the work gets less fun).
I think it may have been the OS that was gumming things up in my case, but I used my 64MB pen drive to transfer stuff from an old computer (win98) to a newer one (win2k), and the free space kept shrinking even though I deleted the files.
So obviously this is an MS-only tip -- but you can alter your folder options to show hidden/ os-protected files, and all the junk will show up. Just delete it, and you have your space back (no negative side-effects that I noticed).
Alas, that drive was somehow left on a driveway at my parents' house when I was visiting, now that I have it back (via the postal service) it's no longer recognized as a valid USB device. I'm guessing no one will have any tips on how to fix mine?
You're definitely going to run into problems trying to program this in Java, for now...
However, you can get pretty close to what you want in many current phones. They are designed to be used without requiring users to keep their eyes fixed on the screen -- since that tends to cause more car crashes.
The features you want aren't far off, though. I currently have a Motorola V60. No camera, no multiphonic ringtones... but it has voice recognition for the numbers in my phone book. I just press a button on the side of the phone and say "home" or "Jim", it repeats it back to me, and dials.
It takes one button press to get to the phone book, and as I scan through the names, it plays the audio for each one.
I can also make changes to the navigation menus (reorder main menu, reprogram shortcut keys, etc.); no programming involved.
It's not perfect, but she could definitely have a usable phone with minimal button pattern memorization. And if she gets lost, she just closes the cover and reopens it to start over.
I think the V66 (an even cheaper phone) has the same features, but the buttons might be too small to use comfortably w/o looking.
A recursive call is just as fast as any other procedure call.
True; I should have pointed that out.
My point was that if we are talking about maximum optimization of an area of code, any construct that will call lots of methods in a tight loop isn't ideal, because of that overhead.
Note: you'd only even consider this if you're trying to eek out every last drop of performance... don't screw up your code's maintainability for a gain that no one will notice.
I'm certainly not trying to convert you, and I apologize if I'm coming across as that. I'm just trying to show that there are a lot of people (myself included) who have pretty much your same exact set of doubts, and who manage to find in their religion a faith which is not offensive to their reason.:)
Even if that were a conversion attempt, I could deal with it. You're actually responding to my comments instead of setting up straw men and awkwardly knocking them down. And from what I can tell you're actually interested in following the priciples of the your beliefs. (Bravo!)
I do think there are a lot of good ideas in various religions about how we should interact with our fellow humans... OTOH, the same religions can be so easily twisted into bludgeons (if you try to stop me, you're fighting God's will!) or self-applied blindfolds (why should we even discuss the consequences of these actions? This is what God wants, and He'll protect us!) -- that's the stuff that scares me.
Obviously, most of the 80 or 90% of Americans who associate with some faith aren't dangerous in that way, but I think this is where the rant tendency of some atheists tends to come from (I almost got going there in the previous paragraph)... when someone says "faith", we hear "pig-ignorance" no matter what the speaker is really talking about.
But personally (regarding the sort of faith you're talking about), it still doesn't seem likely to me that there is a god/gods who are so much like we are.
If you can believe there's some force out there that got this ball rolling, try asking yourself: how would the Creator want me to act towards his Creation?
My answer to this sort of question would go into the assumptions inherent in it, i.e. this Creator is a lot like we are. We have instincts to preserve the products of our labor (even babies have a tendency for a while to want to keep their.. um.. solid products - Freud was pretty interested in that). These instincts make it more likely that we'll survive -- by fending off the squirrels from the nuts I gathered, and by driving off the family of skunks from my shelter, I'm now more likely to pass on my genes.
Why would the Creator have that same instinct? If it didn't cost him any effort to build the universe, why would he care what happens to it? Unless he's mortal, why would he worry about the time it would take to recreate it all? Does all that free will stuff really still make sense when God knows exactly what we're all going to do?
Here's the crossroads I find myself at: 1) There really is a single, benevolent God who has many human characteristics in spite of being immortal, omnipotent, and all-knowing. He cares about us, but didn't bother to tell us that for thousands of years. 2) The complex and benevolent God that many people now believe in is the much-evolved and improved version of the scary monsters that our early ancestors believed caused lightning and thunder.
The historical context suggests to me that we are continuously reinventing our spirituality, not receiving it. There is plenty for us all to learn from what a lot of great thinkers have come up with -- but I think we're learning from ourselves, not a higher power.
These are my doubts (summarized). I don't know the "truth" of the matter, obviously, but my assumption is that I'll be better off assuming the most likely option (some would say that's a big assumption..).
A few quick replies... overall, I'd urge you to try moving towards the attitude of the parent post to yours a bit more. I'm personally an atheist, but I'm very comfortable dealing with "believers" who know what it is they're choosing, and how it relates to science.
I defy anyone to explain to me how one species ever evolves into a completely different species.
What do you mean by "completely different species"? All it means when a different species appears is that members of the new group are different enough that they can't reproduce with the original species anymore. We still have something like 98% of our DNA exactly like that of a chimp... but our reproductive details are different enough that we can't produce a natural hybrid. It's silly to say we're completely different.
Now, suppose I'm right... The Bible talks about a time when everyone answers to God for what they've done.
Where do you fit in the atheist who volunteers for public services, gives to charities, etc.? There are plenty of people out there who don't believe in God but who follow the same ethical rules as you do, for different reasons.
And where do you fit in people who lived before monotheistic religions were even an option? Are they all still in hell? Poor suckers.
Just my thoughts on this... I think you'll find that the average atheist didn't choose that path to "permit" them to break the rules. For me, at least, all of the human religions that I know about just seem... well, really unlikely. The only idea that comes close is the suggestion that there's some force that started the whole ball rolling... but we know nothing about it, and praying to it or worshipping it as about as useful as praying to my own foot.
I'd probably sleep better if I believed that I would move on to some kind of pleasant afterlife after I die, but I'd rather live my life based on the best assumptions I can come up with -- not the most comfortable ones.
I'm just getting a website off the ground that builds on this idea, with online games that students can use to practice basic music theory skills.
Right now the games aren't very exciting... (yeah, yeah; I'm working on it) but they're definitely highly effective. I've had a previous generation of the site running at the college I went to for the past 6 years, and I've gotten a lot of very positive feedback from students and teachers.
Practicing this kind of thing (music theory skills) on paper is *deadly* boring, and most students need a *lot* of practice before they are natural and quick enough to understand written music effectively.
NOTE... I'm talking about drills here, not real FPL (First Person Learner?) games, which are the real focus of this article. I think drills tend to be more effective for just raw practice of very basic skills, but more immersive interactivity would be better than simple drills for helping students understand "big picture" kinds of issues. Assembling an orchestra and learning about how different timbres from different instruments color the overall sound might be neat in a computer game.
Or... maybe almost anything could be taught via a game wherein a mathemetician/ composer/ architect/ accountant/ software engineer/ whatever was murdered, and to understand the clues the student needs to learn these basics....
Slashdot Mirror
There are more and more cheap ones popping up.
I've been using GoDaddy.com very happily for the past few years. They were the first to go really cheap (sub $10/year), I think. And they provide every service I've ever wanted, administration (updating name servers, etc.) is simple, parking is free, etc.. I don't know about customer service since I've never needed any.
There are more now. I just ran across another the other day... secureserver.net.
I'm not going to go as far as saying that this case was completely justified (because I do agree it's a fringe case), but it's not as ridiculous as you're saying.
That's why misuse of products shouldn't count. You don't put dangerous items near sensitive organs.
Your "parallel" examples are acid and razors. We're talking coffee here, which is intended to be poured into the mouth. Yes, sensitive organs are involved.
If she had simply used the coffee as directed (drinking it) from any other major chain at the time, she might have experienced some minor burns. Ouch, coffee hasn't cooled enough to drink yet. But this particular coffee was hot enough that she would have required hospitalization (if I understand the case correctly).
Yes, it would have been a stronger case if the burned person had been a rushed businessman who tried to gulp his coffee... but the logical leap is not nearly as big as you're implying.
Okay, here it is (from the man page):
comparator works by first chopping the specified trees into overlapping shreds (by default 3 lines long) and computing the MD5 hash of each shred.
(Emphasis added)
No, I'm worried that the 3-line chunks could be out of phase.
...won't match with the MD5 sum of these 3 lines: ...even though they share two lines. Now imagine the same thing for a few thousand more lines, identical except that one started on "one" and the other on "two". Every single MD5 will be unique, because you'll always have only two lines in common.
An MD5 sum of these 3 lines:
one
two
three
two
three
four
It hashes the code in 3 line chunks, and the unique hashes from the shreds of both source trees are thrown out. Simple. And yes, whitespace can be ignored.
I still have a question about how the 3-line thing works, though (I read the article, but not the source or docs): if the source files are exactly the same, but the Linux version has an extra single line comment on top, won't all of the 3-line chunks come out as unique because they're out of phase?
Maybe it has some logic to restart the 3-line patter after any double linebreak, or some pattern detection (i.e., restart at comment start/end) to ameliorate this.
Anyway, I do have to say: this is by far the MOST EXCITING news I've heard yet in this whole mess. What reason can SCO possibly give to refuse providing the shreds of their code? Either they provide the shred results and their lying is exposed, or they refuse, and their lying is exposed.
From the article: .NETs ease of use and lower licensing costs also will be a draw.
.NET's ease of use -- I haven't used it yet, because my company doesn't see the need to pay to try it (already paying for WebSphere and DB2, running on Solaris and OS/400), and I can't afford it for my private projects (where I use only the free stuff.. but it works amazingly well).
This is related. "Lower licensing costs" is not so black and white as all that. J2EE can be expensive to use, if you're paying for WebLogic or WebSphere. If I'm using JBoss or Tomcat/Castor, etc., running on a RedHat server with MySql or SAPDB, how does the licensing compare now, especially considering that since you're locked into the win OS you have to pay MS for your server's operating system, too?
Personally, I can't comment on
Did anyone else read "Kroll OnTrack" as "Troll OnKrack"?
Wait, did anyone else even read the article?
Oh, never mind.
Why go with a low caliber MP5 when you can use This?
Wow, is that thing really made by General Electric?
Makes you wonder about the unspoken correlary to their motto, "we bring good things to life".
A forger would have a hard time copying the variations in speed that the actual person uses even if the forger traces the same path or tries to "get good" at the signature.
The problem is that the actual person may also have a really tough time reproducing the same speeds, patterns, etc. in their signature.
This is why handwriting analysis/comparison is almost always inadmissable in court -- it's too variable.
The reasons for this are especially apparent when you look at the handwriting of people like myself whose fine motor control (like many guys) is not so "fine"... I can type quickly, but my signature varies *widely* each time I sign my name. The slant of the letters in my handwriting, type of loops, etc. also varies depending on my mood, the pen and writing surface, my posture, etc.
My real point here is that there's certainly a future in some kind of online "signature", but I'm guessing we'll end up with a system based more on asynchronous crypto as opposed to some kind of biometrics like this.
Normal hard-copy signatures aren't particularly secure -- no one pretends they are. That's why most of the time the cashier doesn't compare the signatures (in more automated systems like many gas stations, and online, they CAN'T). That's also why we have Notary Publics in the US who will certify that you were the one who marked the paper. The advantage of hard-copy signatures is that they're tough to scam safely, in bulk.
I suspect that most online signature methods *WILL* be comparitively easy to scam in bulk, simply because this is the internet, and it's all just data.
I agree that some of the things you listed *are* offensive. Some of the repeated media coverage of 9/11 was especially frightening (so I've read) because they showed it again and again... and a decent percentage of children thought it was happening again. Scary, huh?
But I have no problem with a doll that refuses to say a bad word... it's a doll, for crying out loud! It's not preventing the kid from saying the words, or hearing them from the parents, for example.
Besides, chances are that little Tommy will NOT die in a gutter. But he will spend a lot of time dealing with other members of society, most of whom will not look upon him kindly if he chooses to sprinkle his regular conversations with obscenities.
And here's my really good reason for not overusing those words -- what in the world will you say when you're actually mad? You should fight to keep those words taboo, so Tommy has something to say that packs a punch when he does encounter some of the nasty things that you talked about.
..there are programs on the Internet that will generate infinite activation codes for specific software. This doesn't require any help from authorized activation code holders
Little glitches like this are pretty strong arguments against disabling your software... it's much safer to see a pattern (i.e., 50+ users have downloaded the latest update using this reg number, or it's a valid reg pattern but isn't in the user database yet) and do something to make pirates nervous (call this automated 800 number, available 24-7, to get the unlock code).
You'll weed out most of them that way, without costing the legal users more than 30 seconds.
I think where these anti-piracy techniques really start to go wrong is when the vendor *thinks* they have a foolproof way to id a pirate... and they think they can "take revenge" then. There's almost always going to be that one case that didn't occur to them... and then the vilification on Slashdot begins.
Very good point. If you want to promote/criticize belief systems that are part of the game, rock on... but discussion of a real-world religion (including telling another player, "Come worship the Nameless One with me - He's the same as the Jewish G_d!") should be as taboo as trying to sell real-world vaccuum cleaners to other players.
I read an article about this yesterday on BBC news that specifically mentioned that none of the high-temp microorganisms discovered so far have pathogens.
In other words, they aren't interested in the iron in your blood. Yet.
A niagra falls power grod overloaded and shut down
Someone should have told them.. you aren't supposed to get those things wet.
To clarify the announcement, from the article:
If you don't use Visual Age for Java or , there is no reason to upgrade from Ant 1.5.3.
So... even most Java developers won't be interested in this announcement.
I finally realized that the reason behind your backwards treble clef symbol is a desperate attempt at making an "e". Good God, man. I highly recommend you ditch that idea.
:)
Not so terribly OT -- this may provide a clue as to why basement dotcoms don't tend to launch their creators instantly to fame and fortune. When the creator does it all, "all" tends to include some tasks s/he knows nothing about...
I'm a software developer, not a graphic designer (damnit Jim). Hey, I can make sweeping changes to the entire mediocre GUI with a few keystrokes!
If I had a budget of any kind, or if I expected to make enough money to share, I could get someone to help w/ the graphics... but I don't, so I make due for now. At least I know enough to avoid blinking things and clashing colors.
Well, "serious post" as much as any endeavor of this type can be considered serious...
I've worked completely solo to build this website -- basically, it offers online interactive music exercises with a lot of support for teachers.
I brought it online just a week ago... now I'm waiting to work out a few more kinks before I open the doors to floods of subscribers.
Well, I think I'm guaranteed 2 or 3 subscribers... we'll have to see about the "floods". Anyway, I'm hosting it for $30/month, which I mostly paid for by reselling a bit of my bandwidth to an uncle for his website (he sells batteries and UPS systems).
So... thus far the only real cost are my time (and I built it all outside of my normal working hours).
In some ways, this nicest payoff from this sort of project is the emails from appreciative users... but yeah, I'm hoping it'll become a minor revenue stream. Ego boosts only go so far, in the end (as the work gets less fun).
That post wasn't helping anyone.
Listen, if you don't know any *extroverted* losers, you need to get out more often.
Wait, now I'm even confusing even myself...
I think it may have been the OS that was gumming things up in my case, but I used my 64MB pen drive to transfer stuff from an old computer (win98) to a newer one (win2k), and the free space kept shrinking even though I deleted the files.
So obviously this is an MS-only tip -- but you can alter your folder options to show hidden/ os-protected files, and all the junk will show up. Just delete it, and you have your space back (no negative side-effects that I noticed).
Alas, that drive was somehow left on a driveway at my parents' house when I was visiting, now that I have it back (via the postal service) it's no longer recognized as a valid USB device. I'm guessing no one will have any tips on how to fix mine?
You're definitely going to run into problems trying to program this in Java, for now...
However, you can get pretty close to what you want in many current phones. They are designed to be used without requiring users to keep their eyes fixed on the screen -- since that tends to cause more car crashes.
The features you want aren't far off, though. I currently have a Motorola V60. No camera, no multiphonic ringtones... but it has voice recognition for the numbers in my phone book. I just press a button on the side of the phone and say "home" or "Jim", it repeats it back to me, and dials.
It takes one button press to get to the phone book, and as I scan through the names, it plays the audio for each one.
I can also make changes to the navigation menus (reorder main menu, reprogram shortcut keys, etc.); no programming involved.
It's not perfect, but she could definitely have a usable phone with minimal button pattern memorization. And if she gets lost, she just closes the cover and reopens it to start over.
I think the V66 (an even cheaper phone) has the same features, but the buttons might be too small to use comfortably w/o looking.
A recursive call is just as fast as any other procedure call.
True; I should have pointed that out.
My point was that if we are talking about maximum optimization of an area of code, any construct that will call lots of methods in a tight loop isn't ideal, because of that overhead.
Note: you'd only even consider this if you're trying to eek out every last drop of performance... don't screw up your code's maintainability for a gain that no one will notice.
I'm certainly not trying to convert you, and I apologize if I'm coming across as that. I'm just trying to show that there are a lot of people (myself included) who have pretty much your same exact set of doubts, and who manage to find in their religion a faith which is not offensive to their reason. :)
Even if that were a conversion attempt, I could deal with it. You're actually responding to my comments instead of setting up straw men and awkwardly knocking them down. And from what I can tell you're actually interested in following the priciples of the your beliefs. (Bravo!)
I do think there are a lot of good ideas in various religions about how we should interact with our fellow humans... OTOH, the same religions can be so easily twisted into bludgeons (if you try to stop me, you're fighting God's will!) or self-applied blindfolds (why should we even discuss the consequences of these actions? This is what God wants, and He'll protect us!) -- that's the stuff that scares me.
Obviously, most of the 80 or 90% of Americans who associate with some faith aren't dangerous in that way, but I think this is where the rant tendency of some atheists tends to come from (I almost got going there in the previous paragraph)... when someone says "faith", we hear "pig-ignorance" no matter what the speaker is really talking about.
But personally (regarding the sort of faith you're talking about), it still doesn't seem likely to me that there is a god/gods who are so much like we are.
If you can believe there's some force out there that got this ball rolling, try asking yourself: how would the Creator want me to act towards his Creation?
My answer to this sort of question would go into the assumptions inherent in it, i.e. this Creator is a lot like we are. We have instincts to preserve the products of our labor (even babies have a tendency for a while to want to keep their.. um.. solid products - Freud was pretty interested in that). These instincts make it more likely that we'll survive -- by fending off the squirrels from the nuts I gathered, and by driving off the family of skunks from my shelter, I'm now more likely to pass on my genes.
Why would the Creator have that same instinct? If it didn't cost him any effort to build the universe, why would he care what happens to it? Unless he's mortal, why would he worry about the time it would take to recreate it all? Does all that free will stuff really still make sense when God knows exactly what we're all going to do?
Here's the crossroads I find myself at:
1) There really is a single, benevolent God who has many human characteristics in spite of being immortal, omnipotent, and all-knowing. He cares about us, but didn't bother to tell us that for thousands of years.
2) The complex and benevolent God that many people now believe in is the much-evolved and improved version of the scary monsters that our early ancestors believed caused lightning and thunder.
The historical context suggests to me that we are continuously reinventing our spirituality, not receiving it. There is plenty for us all to learn from what a lot of great thinkers have come up with -- but I think we're learning from ourselves, not a higher power.
These are my doubts (summarized). I don't know the "truth" of the matter, obviously, but my assumption is that I'll be better off assuming the most likely option (some would say that's a big assumption..).
If you read the headline correctly, it actually says, "Complaint launched against SCO claims, Red Hat pledges $1MM to create fund to protect Linux"
That's *one million million" -- one heck of a pledge, and more than enough to handle SCO, the slashdotting, and anything else that might come up.
Well, until we find out that they were talking about "penguin dollars", not US currency.
A few quick replies... overall, I'd urge you to try moving towards the attitude of the parent post to yours a bit more. I'm personally an atheist, but I'm very comfortable dealing with "believers" who know what it is they're choosing, and how it relates to science.
I defy anyone to explain to me how one species ever evolves into a completely different species.
What do you mean by "completely different species"? All it means when a different species appears is that members of the new group are different enough that they can't reproduce with the original species anymore. We still have something like 98% of our DNA exactly like that of a chimp... but our reproductive details are different enough that we can't produce a natural hybrid. It's silly to say we're completely different.
Now, suppose I'm right... The Bible talks about a time when everyone answers to God for what they've done.
Where do you fit in the atheist who volunteers for public services, gives to charities, etc.? There are plenty of people out there who don't believe in God but who follow the same ethical rules as you do, for different reasons.
And where do you fit in people who lived before monotheistic religions were even an option? Are they all still in hell? Poor suckers.
Just my thoughts on this... I think you'll find that the average atheist didn't choose that path to "permit" them to break the rules. For me, at least, all of the human religions that I know about just seem... well, really unlikely. The only idea that comes close is the suggestion that there's some force that started the whole ball rolling... but we know nothing about it, and praying to it or worshipping it as about as useful as praying to my own foot.
I'd probably sleep better if I believed that I would move on to some kind of pleasant afterlife after I die, but I'd rather live my life based on the best assumptions I can come up with -- not the most comfortable ones.
I'm just getting a website off the ground that builds on this idea, with online games that students can use to practice basic music theory skills.
Right now the games aren't very exciting... (yeah, yeah; I'm working on it) but they're definitely highly effective. I've had a previous generation of the site running at the college I went to for the past 6 years, and I've gotten a lot of very positive feedback from students and teachers.
Practicing this kind of thing (music theory skills) on paper is *deadly* boring, and most students need a *lot* of practice before they are natural and quick enough to understand written music effectively.
NOTE... I'm talking about drills here, not real FPL (First Person Learner?) games, which are the real focus of this article. I think drills tend to be more effective for just raw practice of very basic skills, but more immersive interactivity would be better than simple drills for helping students understand "big picture" kinds of issues. Assembling an orchestra and learning about how different timbres from different instruments color the overall sound might be neat in a computer game.
Or... maybe almost anything could be taught via a game wherein a mathemetician/ composer/ architect/ accountant/ software engineer/ whatever was murdered, and to understand the clues the student needs to learn these basics....