There are other models. Slashdot could have a slash shop and compete with thinkgeek instead of advertising for them. A subscription model is also possible.
The same is true of news websites.
That said, there are some websites I don't mind the advertising on. Either its interesting, its unobtrusive, or what have you. For instance I have no complaints about hulu.com. I was even annoyed when I found their adserver on my hosts file.
Race isn't even an actual thing. There is no such thing as an actual 'Race' they are poorly defined arbitrary collections of features.
'Religion is a choice.'
So is culture and taste. That doesn't stop people from calling those who believe certain cultures have negative effects or characteristics 'new racists'.
Race and Racism is just a hot button wild-card that utilizes the natural group and herd mentality of man to divide and segment society and distract it from things that matter and sensible divisions. Usually because sensible divisions would make people more difficult to govern/exploit/and or manipulate.
Religion on the other hand exists for pretty much the same purpose. As a side effect, anyone crying too loudly about religion (for or against) OR racism (for or against) is fairly easy to identify as a moron and should probably be tagged so we can line them up against the wall when the revolution comes... right after the politicians.
The truth should not be absolute defense against a charge of libel when confidentiality is at issue.
The problem isn't what they said about him, the problem is that the employee has a right to confidentiality that the company has an obligation to protect and the company violated that confidentiality. A company should not be telling the other staff or other companies anything beyond employment verification. In that case he already divulged that a relationship existed and the company is merely confirming that. The details of the employment relationship are confidential.
exactly. Not only that, but at least in this instance it is just. Employers should be liable to suit if they trash former employees to their other staff or to future employers. Even on a pre-employment call the previous employer should not be saying anything other than whether employment happened, dates, and salary.
In fact, that has been the policy at every major company I've worked with. A company trashing an employee after the fact can literally destroy someone's life. The same is not likely true the other way around.
At one of my previous employers I was promoted twice and given 3 raises on top of that within two years. The month I was laid off I received a performance related bonus. This was a small business and the bosses wife was a ditz. After several extremely positive interviews I discovered a loud silence afterward and couldn't figured out what was going on.
Had my wife call posing as a prospective employer, the first thing she said, is "No he does not work here." My wife pressed to ask if I ever worked there and she said, "Oh yeah, he used to work here." Again, my wife pressed, and asked if they were happy with my work. She said, "Yeah, he was okay." Once more my wife pressed, "Oh, he was just okay?" "He was fine, we never had any trouble with him." Wifey, "Well what happened, did he quit?" "He just had a disagreement with the boss." Wifey, "Ahh, I see, did he have disagreements with the boss often?" "No, they just disagreed about one thing and he quit."
Of course, a real prospective employer would never have pulled those teeth. They probably wouldn't have gotten past "He doesn't work here" and just assumed I gave a false reference. If they had, they would have though my performance was poor simply because the woman at the desk was too dense to be tactful and give a good reference.
Why would we hope that? There is no reason to believe that this would affect public entities or apply in a situation where confidentiality was not at issue.
Companies have no right to trash former employees to their other employees or to future prospective employers.
'Four quad-core Opteron processors, 32 GB of memory, Windows Server 2008, Asus Xonar DX PCI Express sound card, 3Ware 9550SX-8LP SATA 3 Gb/s RAID controller, Two Western Digital 300 GB VelociRaptor hard drives in RAID 1, Two 1 TB Samsung SpinPoint F1s also in RAID 1, and Four 1 TB Samsung SpinPoint F1s in RAID 5. Puget went with MagiCool's Xtreme Nova 1080 radiator, Nine 120 mm fans, Four Koolance CPU blocks, Koolance combined pump and reservoir unit, and Cooler Master Stacker 810 case.'
The specs needed to make windows perform just go up and up eh? Could this handle vista or just the trimmed down server platform?
'However, its only a matter of time before the world will get back to that level again, after all, as long as the world's population continues to rise, so, inevitably, will the world's economy.'
I can't really speak for the economy of the rest of the world two years ago but in the US the real estate and financial market are only symptoms of a 50 year old problem. It's a problem caused by a bogus economic theory in which through a series of convolutions economists have forgotten that the bottom line of the economy at any given moment the true measure of overall economy is the quantity and quality of goods and raw resources, the same is true on an individual level.
I doubt its even possible to get back to a healthy economy. Capitalism doesn't work when you have publicly traded paper companies, it becomes a dog eat dog, cutthroat system in which everyone screws everyone else as much as possible. Capitalism only works correctly with a sense of responsibility on the part of the consumer and pride in service/production on the part of the vendor and an exchange of mutual concern and respect on the part of employees/employers. In today's world, none of those things exist.
'That's one analogy, but not a particularly good one. How about this: A new restaurant is opening in town. The owner of the restaurant wants to get some feedback from the public on how good his food tastes. He invites everyone in town to come to a free dinner, provided they fill out a little feedback card with their name, address, and answers to simple questions about the quality of the food. The only catch is that if you fill out this card, they'll have your home address so you lose a little privacy. He might even sell your physical address to other businesses that want to send you junk mail.
So, you hear about this, and despite your privacy concerns, hey it's a free meal. You go to his restaurant, eat free food all night, then when he comes around at the end of the meal and asks you to fill out the card, you say "No, I'm not going to do it," and walk out the door.'
His analogy was closer. Let me fix your analogy. Restaurant owner, gives a free meal with no strings attached. He makes gives everyone that feedback form with the menu ASSUMING without any agreement on the part of the eater that they will fill out said form.
Nobody agreed to look at the ads on the sites or to watch tv commercials for that matter. If you give out free content with the assumption that they will do something else that makes you a profit then you have nobody but yourself to blame if that business model does not work.
Other examples from the real world, the Microsoft XBoxes sold at a loss. Microsoft made the assumption that they would make profit elsewhere. Nobody has an obligation to buy or use the product as Microsoft hoped just because they bought the console at the price MS offered.
Another example, $1 double cheeseburgers at McDonalds. They assume that people will buy other high markup items along with those burgers. Nobody is actually obligated to do so or doing something wrong if they do not.
Which is the right thing to do. The world is changing in a dramatic way and there are far too many businesses that want to blame the consumers/audience/etc for their business models not working instead of changing their business models to match the realities of the new world.
'Well, if you ever create a website company that is financially dependent on advertising, you'll understand.'
Sympathize sure but that doesn't mean that I (or anyone else) has agreed to view the ads or has any obligation to do so. Even someone who viewing and utilizing the content on the site has no obligation. The content creator/compiler/whatever has chosen to make the content freely available in hopes that it will attract enough attention to garner advertising revenue. Nobody is obligated to make them successful in their business venture.
This is no different than a shoemaker choosing to provide free fittings. The shoemaker is offering free fittings, nobody is obligated to buy anything just because they take him up on that offer. In fact, there might even be people who get fitted there and then use that fitting to buy elsewhere. Maybe it works for the shoemaker, maybe not, but the shoemaker does NOT have a right to be successful in his business. Or if he is initially successful he has no right to continued success (are you listening music industry?).
I don't agree but this is the counter-argument and not a troll.
I pay my internet provider for my access to the internet. Just like I pay my cable provider for my access to cable television.
I have no obligation to view the ads on television or to view them on the internet. It is not my fault that the content creators have chosen a business model that makes the false assumption that I am willing to view advertising.
Since I pay my internet provider for access to all the content on the internet, maybe they should be hitting up internet providers to pay for access to their content. How is that for net neutrality?
It's amazing, if you do something like that people might spend less, actually keep some of their fucking money, save it. Buy their house and car with money instead of credit and only pay the price of these things one time instead of ten and we might have a more balanced economy. More money in the hands of little people and less spending ultimately resulting in money pooling at the top.
I agree with your general point except the part where you claim out economy was booming 2 years ago. We pretended our economy boomed 2 years ago and leaned on positive thinking, fluid cash flow, and a combination of low quality, third world labor, technology improvements, and reduced cost manufacturing to support our illusion. In the US we have been doing this for 50 years or so.
Why the hell would TomTom have explaining to do if they didn't pay MS license fees on a SOFTWARE patent? Sorry but IMHO NOBODY should pay fees for software patents, just give them the respect they deserve and ignore them outright.
There is nothing obvious about it. There are no shortage of highly intelligent and decent people who do not believe 'piracy' (in the sense of digital copyrighted material) is harmful at all. In fact, many of us believe that 'licenses' and copyright in general are actually what is harmful. Right alongside anything else that is done by 20%+ of the population.
This is the first time fusion has been produced and been energy positive in the history of man. This is technology that has been called vaporware for years and considered a pipe dream. Mankind is now harnassing the form of energy that powers the universe.
What does the title of the report a forum of geeks who would appreciate this momentous occasion say? Some shit about a 192nm beam. Shh... don't tell anyone, but the story is about FUCKING FUSION not the damn beam./end rant
Fair market price of gas $4.00/gallon. Today's price $1.85/gallon. I dunno what world you are in, but I'm all for going in and shooting them up in a forthright manner.
Invading for natural resources is like hunting for food and survival. It's definitely more sensible than invading due to alliances, domination, or humanitarian causes.
Atheism is not merely the rejection of belief in a deity, it is the rejection of the possibility of a deity.
The faithful believe in a deity, agnostics do not believe in a deity but believe in the possibility, atheists believe that there is no deity.
Believers and atheists both BELIEVE they know the answer to the question. There isn't actually any evidence to base that belief on either way, therefore ANYONE who chooses to believe they know the answer to the question is doing so based on faith and not reason or logic derived from evidence.
3 - 2 - 1 = 0, 0 is an answer, it is not the lack of a number (in this context), or the rejection of a number, it is a conclusion (poor example since mathematics are self proving but that the point is its a conclusion, not whether it is a correct conclusion). "Black", Zero, Cold, they are all negatives but that does not mean they are 'nothing', they can all mean something. Simply because you believe in a negative does not negate the fact that you are believing; you have chosen a position or stance, you have drawn a conclusion. There is no escaping that. Atheism is not merely not believing in a particular deity or any proposed deity, atheism is believing there is NO (not even an unlikely) possibility that there could be a deity.
I fail to see why people cling so desperately to the atheist label. Is it simply because of the repression caused by judeo-christian culture? Or is it because scientists who actually believe in crazy concepts, like anything not yet observed is possible and the only difference between these things is statistical probability, have mislabeled themselves as atheists for so many years?
'And agnosticism is something else entirely. I doubt most atheists are the retards you are trying to make them out to be'
I've encountered no shortage of people claiming to be atheists who actually merely believed that the most likely answer based on current evidence is that there is no god (creator, etc). These are actually agnostics and include most intelligent people and scientists. This is quite different from actual atheists who have reached the firm conclusion that there is no god without keeping an open mind to evidence to the contrary.
Actual atheists and religious believers can all be safely grouped together as the small and closed minded. Apparently you are in this group so you can save comments about your subjective appraisal of my 'abilities' and 'honesty'.
'Is disbelieving in the existence of Leprechauns actually a belief in and of itself?'
Yes it is the belief that there are leprechauns. You can believe in leprechauns or not believe in leprechauns, some of us choose not to believe we know whether or not there are leprechauns.
Of course you choose leprechauns as your as yet not evidenced belief because leprechauns are generally thought to be ridiculous but certain squids and liquid water on mars were equally evidenced and likely/unlikely two years ago.
Really, there is absolutely no evidence or reason to believe either way on the religion issue (and I'm referring to creation not christianity, we aren't talking about the liklihood of any particular fairytale being true) beyond the fact that its simpler to believe in the Universe by itself than the universe + an intelligence that could create it. The simplest answer is USUALLY correct but the world is plagued with countless examples of exceptions.
You don't so much believe evolution but you DO choose to believe atheism. Atheism is NOT the logical conclusion of evolution, in fact it is no more or less likely because of evolution.
Evolution merely makes some interpretations of creation myths unlikely or obsolete. It certainly has nothing to do with whether or not there is a deity or creator.
Atheism is a CONCLUSION. Religion (in the modern sense of the word) is also a CONCLUSION. Conclusions without conclusive evidence are NOT scientific at all. Atheism might qualify as a hypothesis but someone who holds to the atheism hypothesis would be an agnostic. The term atheist is for those who have reached and BELIEVE said conclusion, not those who simply believe in its likelihood.
'Of course, the other difference is that the religious tend to say "this is THE answer" and dogmatically refuse to budge, whereas scientists should be saying "with the current level of knowledge, this is the MOST LIKELY answer", and are willing to change that opinion over time as the sum of human knowledge grows.'
Exactly and an atheist like a religious believer claims to know the answer. Agnostic is the term for someone who does not claim to know the answer. The religious claim there is a creator and that is final, atheists claim there is not a creator and that is final, agnostics claim none of the above pending actual observations to support a claim.
'The statement, which, by the way, is the only statement that you can guarantee any two atheists will agree upon, is simply "lack of belief in God" or more generally "lack of belief in gods".'
Atheism is the belief that there is no god/gods and that isn't a religion but IS a religious stance. Fortunately most atheists aren't atheists at all but agnostic and actually simply aren't reaching a conclusion until the evidence is in.
Atheism may not be a religion but it IS an unfounded religious stand just like that held by any other form of 'believer'. If belief rather than evidence is the foundation of the stand it doesn't belong in a school.
If Dawkins is being brought in to speak about evolution from an agnostic and scientific standpoint that is one thing but he has no more right to preach his religious stance than any of the other nuts.
Slashdot Mirror
There are other models. Slashdot could have a slash shop and compete with thinkgeek instead of advertising for them. A subscription model is also possible.
The same is true of news websites.
That said, there are some websites I don't mind the advertising on. Either its interesting, its unobtrusive, or what have you. For instance I have no complaints about hulu.com. I was even annoyed when I found their adserver on my hosts file.
Actually, I would think having violated confidentiality would strongly imply the malice that is required by Mass. law.
Libel is a civil matter and is about as firmly a within the purview of the state government (as opposed to the federal gov) as any issue could be.
'"Race" or ethnicity is not.'
Race isn't even an actual thing. There is no such thing as an actual 'Race' they are poorly defined arbitrary collections of features.
'Religion is a choice.'
So is culture and taste. That doesn't stop people from calling those who believe certain cultures have negative effects or characteristics 'new racists'.
Race and Racism is just a hot button wild-card that utilizes the natural group and herd mentality of man to divide and segment society and distract it from things that matter and sensible divisions. Usually because sensible divisions would make people more difficult to govern/exploit/and or manipulate.
Religion on the other hand exists for pretty much the same purpose. As a side effect, anyone crying too loudly about religion (for or against) OR racism (for or against) is fairly easy to identify as a moron and should probably be tagged so we can line them up against the wall when the revolution comes... right after the politicians.
The truth should not be absolute defense against a charge of libel when confidentiality is at issue.
The problem isn't what they said about him, the problem is that the employee has a right to confidentiality that the company has an obligation to protect and the company violated that confidentiality. A company should not be telling the other staff or other companies anything beyond employment verification. In that case he already divulged that a relationship existed and the company is merely confirming that. The details of the employment relationship are confidential.
exactly. Not only that, but at least in this instance it is just. Employers should be liable to suit if they trash former employees to their other staff or to future employers. Even on a pre-employment call the previous employer should not be saying anything other than whether employment happened, dates, and salary.
In fact, that has been the policy at every major company I've worked with. A company trashing an employee after the fact can literally destroy someone's life. The same is not likely true the other way around.
At one of my previous employers I was promoted twice and given 3 raises on top of that within two years. The month I was laid off I received a performance related bonus. This was a small business and the bosses wife was a ditz. After several extremely positive interviews I discovered a loud silence afterward and couldn't figured out what was going on.
Had my wife call posing as a prospective employer, the first thing she said, is "No he does not work here." My wife pressed to ask if I ever worked there and she said, "Oh yeah, he used to work here." Again, my wife pressed, and asked if they were happy with my work. She said, "Yeah, he was okay." Once more my wife pressed, "Oh, he was just okay?" "He was fine, we never had any trouble with him." Wifey, "Well what happened, did he quit?" "He just had a disagreement with the boss." Wifey, "Ahh, I see, did he have disagreements with the boss often?" "No, they just disagreed about one thing and he quit."
Of course, a real prospective employer would never have pulled those teeth. They probably wouldn't have gotten past "He doesn't work here" and just assumed I gave a false reference. If they had, they would have though my performance was poor simply because the woman at the desk was too dense to be tactful and give a good reference.
Why would we hope that? There is no reason to believe that this would affect public entities or apply in a situation where confidentiality was not at issue.
Companies have no right to trash former employees to their other employees or to future prospective employers.
'Four quad-core Opteron processors, 32 GB of memory, Windows Server 2008, Asus Xonar DX PCI Express sound card, 3Ware 9550SX-8LP SATA 3 Gb/s RAID controller, Two Western Digital 300 GB VelociRaptor hard drives in RAID 1, Two 1 TB Samsung SpinPoint F1s also in RAID 1, and Four 1 TB Samsung SpinPoint F1s in RAID 5. Puget went with MagiCool's Xtreme Nova 1080 radiator, Nine 120 mm fans, Four Koolance CPU blocks, Koolance combined pump and reservoir unit, and Cooler Master Stacker 810 case.'
The specs needed to make windows perform just go up and up eh? Could this handle vista or just the trimmed down server platform?
'However, its only a matter of time before the world will get back to that level again, after all, as long as the world's population continues to rise, so, inevitably, will the world's economy.'
I can't really speak for the economy of the rest of the world two years ago but in the US the real estate and financial market are only symptoms of a 50 year old problem. It's a problem caused by a bogus economic theory in which through a series of convolutions economists have forgotten that the bottom line of the economy at any given moment the true measure of overall economy is the quantity and quality of goods and raw resources, the same is true on an individual level.
I doubt its even possible to get back to a healthy economy. Capitalism doesn't work when you have publicly traded paper companies, it becomes a dog eat dog, cutthroat system in which everyone screws everyone else as much as possible. Capitalism only works correctly with a sense of responsibility on the part of the consumer and pride in service/production on the part of the vendor and an exchange of mutual concern and respect on the part of employees/employers. In today's world, none of those things exist.
'That's one analogy, but not a particularly good one. How about this: A new restaurant is opening in town. The owner of the restaurant wants to get some feedback from the public on how good his food tastes. He invites everyone in town to come to a free dinner, provided they fill out a little feedback card with their name, address, and answers to simple questions about the quality of the food. The only catch is that if you fill out this card, they'll have your home address so you lose a little privacy. He might even sell your physical address to other businesses that want to send you junk mail.
So, you hear about this, and despite your privacy concerns, hey it's a free meal. You go to his restaurant, eat free food all night, then when he comes around at the end of the meal and asks you to fill out the card, you say "No, I'm not going to do it," and walk out the door.'
His analogy was closer. Let me fix your analogy. Restaurant owner, gives a free meal with no strings attached. He makes gives everyone that feedback form with the menu ASSUMING without any agreement on the part of the eater that they will fill out said form.
Nobody agreed to look at the ads on the sites or to watch tv commercials for that matter. If you give out free content with the assumption that they will do something else that makes you a profit then you have nobody but yourself to blame if that business model does not work.
Other examples from the real world, the Microsoft XBoxes sold at a loss. Microsoft made the assumption that they would make profit elsewhere. Nobody has an obligation to buy or use the product as Microsoft hoped just because they bought the console at the price MS offered.
Another example, $1 double cheeseburgers at McDonalds. They assume that people will buy other high markup items along with those burgers. Nobody is actually obligated to do so or doing something wrong if they do not.
Which is the right thing to do. The world is changing in a dramatic way and there are far too many businesses that want to blame the consumers/audience/etc for their business models not working instead of changing their business models to match the realities of the new world.
'Well, if you ever create a website company that is financially dependent on advertising, you'll understand.'
Sympathize sure but that doesn't mean that I (or anyone else) has agreed to view the ads or has any obligation to do so. Even someone who viewing and utilizing the content on the site has no obligation. The content creator/compiler/whatever has chosen to make the content freely available in hopes that it will attract enough attention to garner advertising revenue. Nobody is obligated to make them successful in their business venture.
This is no different than a shoemaker choosing to provide free fittings. The shoemaker is offering free fittings, nobody is obligated to buy anything just because they take him up on that offer. In fact, there might even be people who get fitted there and then use that fitting to buy elsewhere. Maybe it works for the shoemaker, maybe not, but the shoemaker does NOT have a right to be successful in his business. Or if he is initially successful he has no right to continued success (are you listening music industry?).
I don't agree but this is the counter-argument and not a troll.
I pay my internet provider for my access to the internet. Just like I pay my cable provider for my access to cable television.
I have no obligation to view the ads on television or to view them on the internet. It is not my fault that the content creators have chosen a business model that makes the false assumption that I am willing to view advertising.
Since I pay my internet provider for access to all the content on the internet, maybe they should be hitting up internet providers to pay for access to their content. How is that for net neutrality?
It's amazing, if you do something like that people might spend less, actually keep some of their fucking money, save it. Buy their house and car with money instead of credit and only pay the price of these things one time instead of ten and we might have a more balanced economy. More money in the hands of little people and less spending ultimately resulting in money pooling at the top.
Set my sig page as your search.
'Our booming world economy 2 years ago'
I agree with your general point except the part where you claim out economy was booming 2 years ago. We pretended our economy boomed 2 years ago and leaned on positive thinking, fluid cash flow, and a combination of low quality, third world labor, technology improvements, and reduced cost manufacturing to support our illusion. In the US we have been doing this for 50 years or so.
Why the hell would TomTom have explaining to do if they didn't pay MS license fees on a SOFTWARE patent? Sorry but IMHO NOBODY should pay fees for software patents, just give them the respect they deserve and ignore them outright.
'This is sarcasm, obviously.'
There is nothing obvious about it. There are no shortage of highly intelligent and decent people who do not believe 'piracy' (in the sense of digital copyrighted material) is harmful at all. In fact, many of us believe that 'licenses' and copyright in general are actually what is harmful. Right alongside anything else that is done by 20%+ of the population.
This is the first time fusion has been produced and been energy positive in the history of man. This is technology that has been called vaporware for years and considered a pipe dream. Mankind is now harnassing the form of energy that powers the universe.
What does the title of the report a forum of geeks who would appreciate this momentous occasion say? Some shit about a 192nm beam. Shh... don't tell anyone, but the story is about FUCKING FUSION not the damn beam. /end rant
Fair market price of gas $4.00/gallon. Today's price $1.85/gallon. I dunno what world you are in, but I'm all for going in and shooting them up in a forthright manner.
Invading for natural resources is like hunting for food and survival. It's definitely more sensible than invading due to alliances, domination, or humanitarian causes.
Atheism is not merely the rejection of belief in a deity, it is the rejection of the possibility of a deity.
The faithful believe in a deity, agnostics do not believe in a deity but believe in the possibility, atheists believe that there is no deity.
Believers and atheists both BELIEVE they know the answer to the question. There isn't actually any evidence to base that belief on either way, therefore ANYONE who chooses to believe they know the answer to the question is doing so based on faith and not reason or logic derived from evidence.
3 - 2 - 1 = 0, 0 is an answer, it is not the lack of a number (in this context), or the rejection of a number, it is a conclusion (poor example since mathematics are self proving but that the point is its a conclusion, not whether it is a correct conclusion). "Black", Zero, Cold, they are all negatives but that does not mean they are 'nothing', they can all mean something. Simply because you believe in a negative does not negate the fact that you are believing; you have chosen a position or stance, you have drawn a conclusion. There is no escaping that. Atheism is not merely not believing in a particular deity or any proposed deity, atheism is believing there is NO (not even an unlikely) possibility that there could be a deity.
I fail to see why people cling so desperately to the atheist label. Is it simply because of the repression caused by judeo-christian culture? Or is it because scientists who actually believe in crazy concepts, like anything not yet observed is possible and the only difference between these things is statistical probability, have mislabeled themselves as atheists for so many years?
minor correction
'Yes it is the belief that there are leprechauns.'
should of course be
'Yes it is the belief that there are no leprechauns.'
'And agnosticism is something else entirely. I doubt most atheists are the retards you are trying to make them out to be'
I've encountered no shortage of people claiming to be atheists who actually merely believed that the most likely answer based on current evidence is that there is no god (creator, etc). These are actually agnostics and include most intelligent people and scientists. This is quite different from actual atheists who have reached the firm conclusion that there is no god without keeping an open mind to evidence to the contrary.
Actual atheists and religious believers can all be safely grouped together as the small and closed minded. Apparently you are in this group so you can save comments about your subjective appraisal of my 'abilities' and 'honesty'.
'Is disbelieving in the existence of Leprechauns actually a belief in and of itself?'
Yes it is the belief that there are leprechauns. You can believe in leprechauns or not believe in leprechauns, some of us choose not to believe we know whether or not there are leprechauns.
Of course you choose leprechauns as your as yet not evidenced belief because leprechauns are generally thought to be ridiculous but certain squids and liquid water on mars were equally evidenced and likely/unlikely two years ago.
Really, there is absolutely no evidence or reason to believe either way on the religion issue (and I'm referring to creation not christianity, we aren't talking about the liklihood of any particular fairytale being true) beyond the fact that its simpler to believe in the Universe by itself than the universe + an intelligence that could create it. The simplest answer is USUALLY correct but the world is plagued with countless examples of exceptions.
'And you don't so much believe evolution either'
You don't so much believe evolution but you DO choose to believe atheism. Atheism is NOT the logical conclusion of evolution, in fact it is no more or less likely because of evolution.
Evolution merely makes some interpretations of creation myths unlikely or obsolete. It certainly has nothing to do with whether or not there is a deity or creator.
Atheism is a CONCLUSION. Religion (in the modern sense of the word) is also a CONCLUSION. Conclusions without conclusive evidence are NOT scientific at all. Atheism might qualify as a hypothesis but someone who holds to the atheism hypothesis would be an agnostic. The term atheist is for those who have reached and BELIEVE said conclusion, not those who simply believe in its likelihood.
'Of course, the other difference is that the religious tend to say "this is THE answer" and dogmatically refuse to budge, whereas scientists should be saying "with the current level of knowledge, this is the MOST LIKELY answer", and are willing to change that opinion over time as the sum of human knowledge grows.'
Exactly and an atheist like a religious believer claims to know the answer. Agnostic is the term for someone who does not claim to know the answer. The religious claim there is a creator and that is final, atheists claim there is not a creator and that is final, agnostics claim none of the above pending actual observations to support a claim.
'The statement, which, by the way, is the only statement that you can guarantee any two atheists will agree upon, is simply "lack of belief in God" or more generally "lack of belief in gods".'
Atheism is the belief that there is no god/gods and that isn't a religion but IS a religious stance. Fortunately most atheists aren't atheists at all but agnostic and actually simply aren't reaching a conclusion until the evidence is in.
Atheism may not be a religion but it IS an unfounded religious stand just like that held by any other form of 'believer'. If belief rather than evidence is the foundation of the stand it doesn't belong in a school.
If Dawkins is being brought in to speak about evolution from an agnostic and scientific standpoint that is one thing but he has no more right to preach his religious stance than any of the other nuts.