"In addition, it would give credence to it being someway an acceptable life choice - poisoning one's self for recreation."
It is acceptable. In the sense that it is not your right or my right to determine what is and is not acceptable for another. Even the health risks are a floating issue. For an example look to marijuana (easy example because so much work has been put into making the case for legalization). Almost every piece of negative health related information that was previously released has been found to be false or drastically less significant for one reason or another. Actually the only one left is tar and although it contains more than tobacco, far far less of the substance is smoked (1 marijuana cigerette typically contains 1/4 the material of 1 tobacco cigerette and an average smoker would consume 2/day or less compared with 20-40/day with tobacco). More substantial is that there are other means of consumption that do not require inhaling smoke. Numerous health benefits have also been shown.
"I don't think we should be throwing people in jail for pot use, but it's naive of you to think drug crime would go away if it were legal. It would still be hard to buy and some people would still steal to fill their addiction."
Why would it be hard to buy? If legalized there is no reason you shouldn't be able to purchase marijuana at every gas station. Per acre marijuana is one of the highest yielding plants and if production were legal marijuana prices would be far less than the prices of cigerettes today. Even with the severe tax hikes and lawsuit payouts that cigerette prohibitionists have pushed for cigerettes are inexpensive enough that there is little theft to pay for them.
"It would still be hard to buy and some people would still steal to fill their addiction."
Marijuana is not an addictive substance. Okay, technically everything is addictive to one degree or another. Studies have shown marijuana to be no more habit forming than table salt.
"I'm strongly in favour of restricting access to alcohol and more importantly cigarettes. The age requirements for alcohol is already sufficient to indicate to most people that it's not to be taken lightly, but the message hasn't gotten through to smokers yet it seems, so we should put more emphasis on enforcing the age restrictions that exist, and get rid of public smoking in a lot more jurisdictions."
How about we take the funds, effort, and manhours that would be put into this program and spend them finding and eliminating laws that restrict the actions of citizens. Lets stop regulating every action and choice people make and start figuring out how to put a little more free back in freedom.
I am an ex-smoker and nobdy can tell you better than I can what a filthy habit it is. The addiction is terrible and as strong or stronger than that of any other substance. People will literally pick up filthy cig butts off the pavement and smoke them when desperate for a fix. With that said, who the hell are you to tell anyone they have no right to smoke? Alcohol is another substance that doesn't make much sense to me, but the same applies.
The truth is that reducing regulation of substances and outright legalizing many substances (marijuana is a good example) would probably reduce the overall healthcare burden. It would completely eliminate almost all drug related violance and abolish the presence of drug cartels in the United States in one swoop. Marijuana stops being a gateway drug when you can get it from the gas station instead of having to approach the deviant who also sells crack to get it.
"It really is true that money spent on cigarettes alone could see dozens of space initiatives realized."
You of course realize that the bulk of the purchase price of cigarettes is tax money and may very well be funding space exploration already? You realize those tax revenues would increase if people were no longer jailed for excercising their right to do whatever they please in the privacy of their own home. You realize that everything we do not outlaw simply because it isn't good for us generates additional tax revenue?
Skype is not a monopoly, they can do whatever they want. Intel IS a monopoly (according to AMD) and making agreements with third parties to smash competition is illegal for the monopoly not the third party. AMD not only should, but IS suing Intel.
Apparently you didn't read the recent article about the defense department inserting a chip into the brain of a shark to directly control it via radio. Animals of all kinds are no more less than biological machines.
Too bad the headaches of ethics get in the way. Most of the lowest common denominator in terms of intellect congregate on Sundays. We could take em all out and improve the voting (and gene) pool dramatically.
"Why doesn't Microsoft get sued for every piece of software it makes that doesn't run on Linux?"
Because that division of Microsoft isn't a monopoly; the monopoly is used to try to establish app monopolies, not the other way around. According to AMD, Intel is a monopoly and this is anti-competative behavior.
As for the motive, intel already made an announcement that more or less admits they have no advantage in voip processing and this was the result of a marketing agreement.
Congress did not officially declare war because they did not have the votes. Further, they did not want to give the president the wartime powers in the constitution. The president has taken it upon himself to assume them anyway.
An act of war is not the same as an officially declared war. We lauch black ops that could be construed as acts of war on a fairly routine basis, but that doesn't mean we declare war in every case.
Because Skype wrote it that ways as the term of a marketing agreement with intel (this has already been admitted). That is anti-competative behavior and has undoubtedly cost AMD a big chunk of change.
"In this case it's not specifically copy or content protection software that's being circumvented, but a feature designed to maintain (potentially) a marketing agreement, if in fact that's what this turns out to be."
Exactly which is why the DMCA does not apply. The DMCA is very explicit in saying that it is only illegal to reverse engineer or crack encryption for the purpose of circumventing a copy protection scheme.
"Bulk soybean oil (about the cheapest vegetable oil you can get) is a little over $2/gallon last time I checked."
Probably so. Of course waste oil would also be used since it is cheap to refine. You offset these costs by selling the significant glycerin produced as a waste product in the production of biodiesel. You also must remember that when bio-diesel is being produced in significant quantities more and more farms will begin producing oil or ramp up their production of oil and this will increase the supply. In fact new farms may well spring up for the purpose of producing the oil. There are millions of empty acres of US territory that could probably be used to produce some sort of vegtable crop that could in turn be used to produce oil.
Get in on the game early, buy up jungle in south america in massive swaths and grow peanuts that you will then convert to oil and bio-diesel. Stark stockpiling you and you can really make a mint.
Nonesense. A war requires a declaration of congress. But a strike does not. The president is the head of the military and can order pretty much anything he wants, but if he wants money that is not already in the defense budget then he needs congress.
In the case of Iraq congress voted to give funds but has not issued an official constitutional declaration of war. Probably because there was no evidence to support any kind of action in Iraq and they couldn't have gotten the numbers required for a declaration of war without the democrats. Unfortunately for the president, the wartime authorities given him by the constitution do not apply without a formal declaration of war.
"Does a dog have the same choice? Did dogs get to vote on whether they were "draftable"?"
Of course not and neither did I. Perhaps being Canadian is your excuse for this but the draft was not something the public was given a chance to vote on. The public does not vote on issues here, they vote on officials. The officials run for election claiming the views they believe will gain them the most ground and then do whatever they choose in office. Last I checked, the draft was instituted without the public even electing an official known to support it.
"Can a dog pack up and move out of a state that uses dogs for military purposes?"
Last I checked, a dog can up and walk anywhere it pleases unless stopped, just like humans.
"The only thing in the military that compares to the way non-human animals are used is equipment. Soldiers take pretty good care of their M-16s and their boots too."
Yes and if you had been in the US military you would know that soldiers themselves are treated as equipment by officers and handled in the same manner. They are fed and watered like a gun is oiled. They are rationed much like bullets and you can bet they are weighed against more scarce and valuable equipment.
This is all sensible enough; after all, human and non-human animals are no more or less than biological machines. In fact, it could be said that we are no more than complex chemical devices.
bi-lingual is beneficial without a doubt. But simply teaching in a foreign language to prevent the need to learn the second language is not. This is the United States and all citizens whether children or adult should be required to learn English and use it in public interactions.
"Humans go to war for a variety of reasons, all of which benefit humans."
I fail to see the difference between me going to war against my will to benefit OTHER humans and a dog doing the same. Regardless of honors bestowed. Perhaps we should solve this problem by banning the sending of humans to war. Only those who actually want the war and directly benefit from the war or the war's outcome will be allowed to participate.
"They don't give a shit about invaders or resources."
Last I checked being teratorial to one degree or another and defending food are base instincts common to most animals and instincts.
"If I were such an animal, I sure wouldn't trade my normal life in the wild for a life of captivity (well-treated or otherwise) and incomprehensible danger."
Hate to break it to you, but you ARE an animal; just like the rest of us. If you aren't in the military you have chosen as stated. If you were drafted or a sucker scooped up from the national guard (nobody in the guard signed up intending to do more than stand straight and do weekend training), then you weren't given a choice and are no different than the animals themselves. You are held in captivity and if you attempt ot escape during time of war the penalty is death. At least non-humans aren't killed if they try to flee.
Natural selection is true without question. Changes in environment cause extinction. Therefore those less suited to an environment are selected for extinction.
As for macro-evolution it is also obvious. Macro organisms are composed of micro-organisms and micro-organisms evolve fast enough that we have watched the entire process again and again. This point has been clearly settled with the proof that virii are no less organism than single celled life. Since the macro-organism is merely a sum of its mico-organisms evolution in the micro effects an evolution in the macro.
As for squirrels not being squirrels there is no need for any such non-sense. Squirrels were always squirrels because a squirrel is not a factual thing, it is simply a label we have given to a grouping of characteristics. If something mutated in a way that caused a vast change in those characteristics we would not classify it as a changed squirrel, we would classify it where the characteristics best fit or call it a new species. If squirrels are an evolutionary decendant of something else we clearly would call the something else by a different name more suited to its characteristics. For instance, if squirrels evolved from something we would call a bat, we would have called it a bat and would call any old skeletons of it that we found bats.
Fortunately we have now sequenced the DNA of many lifeforms and conclusively proven that there are common roots.
It is a lot easier to think these things out if you try to remember what is fact, and that nothing needs to resolve a conflict in classification systems we made up to be true. Most questions of philosophy have arisen in this manner. For instance, morals and ethics. Both are constructs that have been made up to provide direction for intelligence not universal truths with which the universe must be reconciled.
Sometimes it seems like I'm the only one who does not have these questions anymore. The questions seem to stem from believing that there is a cosmic right or wrong or that one needs to reconcile such a thing. However there is nothing to support this idea.
There is no right or wrong to evolution. Evolution does not have the goal of making the fittest survive, that is merely a side effect. If you rinse a glass with alcohol you have changed its environment, the things most fit in that environment will continue to be, and other things will change form as a result of interacting with the alcohol. Neither was stronger, one simply was resistant to change. Which is better, to be static or to change? The answer is that there simply is no better. Was it wrong to put in the alcohol? No. Was it right? No.
Put some yeast in sugar water and the yeast will first destroy the sugar, producing alcohol (nature evolved the sugar into alcohol, see)the alcohol in turn kills the yeast. None of this is wrong. If the alcohol developed consciousness and killed yeast where it would save sugar from conversion or avoiding killing yeast and pooled on one side of the tub this would not be wrong either.
The first illusion to dispel is right and wrong. There is merely cause and effect, no effect is any better than another unless you supply a 'goal' or 'motivation'. Of course there is no cosmic 'goal' or 'motivation'. If there were, we would all have the same goals, motivations, morals, and so forth. Fortunately there is no particular reason we need to imagine there being one.
The next illusion is the separation of man from the rest of nature. Man is just another animal, like all others he has a set of characteristics and there are numerous complex organisms that function in a similar way to us. Harming a cow would be no more right than a man. See the first illusion if you are still wondering about how wrong harming a man is (this is why I am not a vegetarian).
The question then is how far can we take that illusion? The great question of where do you draw the line? The answer is that you do not draw a line. The universe is composed of a constant flux and changing of states of energy. Matter is merely a subgroup of energy in states that remain stable in certain ways that allows us to interact with it (being composed largely of this sort of energy ourselves). If you follow this to its conclusion then you quickly realize that the distinction between living and non-living can not be defined because it is also an illusion. All matter is merely a pattern of energy in a subgroup of states whether regardless of what the human brain classifies it as.
The human brain works by classifying and sub classifying all things around us. We never "know" anything, we merely label it, develop a model to describe our observations. We develop labels and classifications for behaviors we witness also and combine them to form the models. None of this is cosmic truth. It does however reveal why the above illusions exist. They exist because humans need labels like good and bad, right and wrong. Intelligence is the act of ordering. The first thing classified is self. Philosophy discovered this with "i think therefore I am". After classifying itself an intelligence must then classify characteristics of self. The very act of classifying the chaotic universe of "what is" requires artificial constructs like "right" and "wrong". How could one successfully order something that is not orderly without INVENTING patterns in the chaos?
Master yourself. Realize that intelligence needs goals to drive it, master yourself by choosing those goals consciously instead of pretending they are chosen by cosmic consequence or innate morality.
In summary, evolution is a side effect of the fact that nature is constant change of energy states. A change of energy in one state is a change of environment that results in the change of states of still more energy. Evolution can not be stopped or started, it can not be wronged because IT DOES NOT HAVE AN EN
Viruses on the other hand are far far simpler than cells and according to the article have been shown to have an evolutionary history. At some point it is likely that viruses could self-replicate and they can still readily adapt. We have seen evolution occur in viruses.
There is far more in the article itself to refute your statement. Perhaps you should read it.
Non-sense. Viruses as a precusor to life is a theory. There is evidence to support this theory, further there are predictions that can be derived from this theory and it can be disproven. ID is not a theory, it is pure conjecture. There are no predictions that can be derived from ID. ID can never be disproven, whatever evidence turns up, regardless of nature can be explained as having been caused by the intelligent designer.
If it is not possible to predict conditions based upon the model your "speculation" resulted in, and/or no advance in science or technology could ever allow one to test your conclusions then they are not science.
"is the cost of Windows so much that it trumps the pains of introducing a student population of 25,000 or so to a completely foreign computer system? How does this support education?"
Students haven't been taught a system yet so whether you introduce them to windows or linux it is a foreign system. As for supporting education, the last time I checked you educate by showing alternative ideas and introducing new ideas. Not by repeating the same old ideas and supressing diversity.
Quite frankly I find it to be horrible for educational bodies to standardize on a monopoly product, brainwashing our children into using that product. If you learn on just one system then that system becomes the norm against which everything else is abnormal. If you introduce students to diverse systems then no interface will be the 'norm' that limits them in life.
If you want an example of this look at video games, because there are is no standard interface gamers adapt to entirely new and alien interfaces in seconds. The more standardized and typical something becomes the more difficult it becomes to adapt to something new.
"Hell, I'm all for ripping up the Constitution, and start over. It's already been bastardized and made a living thing by the Supreme Court over the years."
You do realize that is exactly what the constitution empowers the judicial branch to do. The supreme court is supposed to determine if any law enacted by congress violates the spirit or the letter of the highest law in the land. Democrats and Republicans alike prefer to speak of the supreme court as a check on the executive branch when its greatest power is as a check on unjust laws passed by the legislative. If discarding acts of congress that are against the principles or letter of the constitution is legislating from the bench then that is exactly what the supreme court is supposed to do. If the supreme court has had to toss out an increasing number of laws it is the legislative who is trampling the constitution by passing them in the first place.
The president was quick to rip up the constitution when wiretapping citizens without warrants as well. He claims the constitution gives him wartime powers, but whether this falls under wartime powers ro not is irrelevant, congress authorized funding WITHOUT a constitutional declaration of war. Constitutionally speaking we are not at war. He also claims the authorization to invade iraq gave him permission. But congress does not have the authority to do so. Only an amendment to the constitution can bypass the constitutional requirement of a warrant for searches.
128kbit MP3 sounds much better than 128kbit WMA, the higher the bitrate, the larger the gap until about that 320kbit mark.
"so what the hell are you on about"
Ignoring all further comments from anyone who thinks they must demonsrate their frustration with inane statements like that one. Others have ears and are entitled to their own opinions. Your opinion of random AC's on Slashdot are not the cosmic truth.
Nonesense, Dell only supports the OS the machine ships with. Every OEM does the same thing. If you load Pro on a box that came with Home vendors will not support software issues, let alone 2000.
Slashdot Mirror
"In addition, it would give credence to it being someway an acceptable life choice - poisoning one's self for recreation."
It is acceptable. In the sense that it is not your right or my right to determine what is and is not acceptable for another. Even the health risks are a floating issue. For an example look to marijuana (easy example because so much work has been put into making the case for legalization). Almost every piece of negative health related information that was previously released has been found to be false or drastically less significant for one reason or another. Actually the only one left is tar and although it contains more than tobacco, far far less of the substance is smoked (1 marijuana cigerette typically contains 1/4 the material of 1 tobacco cigerette and an average smoker would consume 2/day or less compared with 20-40/day with tobacco). More substantial is that there are other means of consumption that do not require inhaling smoke. Numerous health benefits have also been shown.
"I don't think we should be throwing people in jail for pot use, but it's naive of you to think drug crime would go away if it were legal. It would still be hard to buy and some people would still steal to fill their addiction."
Why would it be hard to buy? If legalized there is no reason you shouldn't be able to purchase marijuana at every gas station. Per acre marijuana is one of the highest yielding plants and if production were legal marijuana prices would be far less than the prices of cigerettes today. Even with the severe tax hikes and lawsuit payouts that cigerette prohibitionists have pushed for cigerettes are inexpensive enough that there is little theft to pay for them.
"It would still be hard to buy and some people would still steal to fill their addiction."
Marijuana is not an addictive substance. Okay, technically everything is addictive to one degree or another. Studies have shown marijuana to be no more habit forming than table salt.
"I'm strongly in favour of restricting access to alcohol and more importantly cigarettes. The age requirements for alcohol is already sufficient to indicate to most people that it's not to be taken lightly, but the message hasn't gotten through to smokers yet it seems, so we should put more emphasis on enforcing the age restrictions that exist, and get rid of public smoking in a lot more jurisdictions."
How about we take the funds, effort, and manhours that would be put into this program and spend them finding and eliminating laws that restrict the actions of citizens. Lets stop regulating every action and choice people make and start figuring out how to put a little more free back in freedom.
I am an ex-smoker and nobdy can tell you better than I can what a filthy habit it is. The addiction is terrible and as strong or stronger than that of any other substance. People will literally pick up filthy cig butts off the pavement and smoke them when desperate for a fix. With that said, who the hell are you to tell anyone they have no right to smoke? Alcohol is another substance that doesn't make much sense to me, but the same applies.
The truth is that reducing regulation of substances and outright legalizing many substances (marijuana is a good example) would probably reduce the overall healthcare burden. It would completely eliminate almost all drug related violance and abolish the presence of drug cartels in the United States in one swoop. Marijuana stops being a gateway drug when you can get it from the gas station instead of having to approach the deviant who also sells crack to get it.
"It really is true that money spent on cigarettes alone could see dozens of space initiatives realized."
You of course realize that the bulk of the purchase price of cigarettes is tax money and may very well be funding space exploration already? You realize those tax revenues would increase if people were no longer jailed for excercising their right to do whatever they please in the privacy of their own home. You realize that everything we do not outlaw simply because it isn't good for us generates additional tax revenue?
Skype is not a monopoly, they can do whatever they want. Intel IS a monopoly (according to AMD) and making agreements with third parties to smash competition is illegal for the monopoly not the third party. AMD not only should, but IS suing Intel.
We really should be looking to improve small scale nuclear power sources.
Apparently you didn't read the recent article about the defense department inserting a chip into the brain of a shark to directly control it via radio. Animals of all kinds are no more less than biological machines.
Too bad the headaches of ethics get in the way. Most of the lowest common denominator in terms of intellect congregate on Sundays. We could take em all out and improve the voting (and gene) pool dramatically.
"Why doesn't Microsoft get sued for every piece of software it makes that doesn't run on Linux?"
Because that division of Microsoft isn't a monopoly; the monopoly is used to try to establish app monopolies, not the other way around. According to AMD, Intel is a monopoly and this is anti-competative behavior.
As for the motive, intel already made an announcement that more or less admits they have no advantage in voip processing and this was the result of a marketing agreement.
Congress did not officially declare war because they did not have the votes. Further, they did not want to give the president the wartime powers in the constitution. The president has taken it upon himself to assume them anyway.
An act of war is not the same as an officially declared war. We lauch black ops that could be construed as acts of war on a fairly routine basis, but that doesn't mean we declare war in every case.
Because Skype wrote it that ways as the term of a marketing agreement with intel (this has already been admitted). That is anti-competative behavior and has undoubtedly cost AMD a big chunk of change.
"In this case it's not specifically copy or content protection software that's being circumvented, but a feature designed to maintain (potentially) a marketing agreement, if in fact that's what this turns out to be."
Exactly which is why the DMCA does not apply. The DMCA is very explicit in saying that it is only illegal to reverse engineer or crack encryption for the purpose of circumventing a copy protection scheme.
Not to mention that the DMCA was enacted under Clinton.
"Bulk soybean oil (about the cheapest vegetable oil you can get) is a little over $2/gallon last time I checked."
Probably so. Of course waste oil would also be used since it is cheap to refine. You offset these costs by selling the significant glycerin produced as a waste product in the production of biodiesel. You also must remember that when bio-diesel is being produced in significant quantities more and more farms will begin producing oil or ramp up their production of oil and this will increase the supply. In fact new farms may well spring up for the purpose of producing the oil. There are millions of empty acres of US territory that could probably be used to produce some sort of vegtable crop that could in turn be used to produce oil.
Get in on the game early, buy up jungle in south america in massive swaths and grow peanuts that you will then convert to oil and bio-diesel. Stark stockpiling you and you can really make a mint.
Nonesense. A war requires a declaration of congress. But a strike does not. The president is the head of the military and can order pretty much anything he wants, but if he wants money that is not already in the defense budget then he needs congress.
In the case of Iraq congress voted to give funds but has not issued an official constitutional declaration of war. Probably because there was no evidence to support any kind of action in Iraq and they couldn't have gotten the numbers required for a declaration of war without the democrats. Unfortunately for the president, the wartime authorities given him by the constitution do not apply without a formal declaration of war.
"Does a dog have the same choice? Did dogs get to vote on whether they were "draftable"?"
Of course not and neither did I. Perhaps being Canadian is your excuse for this but the draft was not something the public was given a chance to vote on. The public does not vote on issues here, they vote on officials. The officials run for election claiming the views they believe will gain them the most ground and then do whatever they choose in office. Last I checked, the draft was instituted without the public even electing an official known to support it.
"Can a dog pack up and move out of a state that uses dogs for military purposes?"
Last I checked, a dog can up and walk anywhere it pleases unless stopped, just like humans.
"The only thing in the military that compares to the way non-human animals are used is equipment. Soldiers take pretty good care of their M-16s and their boots too."
Yes and if you had been in the US military you would know that soldiers themselves are treated as equipment by officers and handled in the same manner. They are fed and watered like a gun is oiled. They are rationed much like bullets and you can bet they are weighed against more scarce and valuable equipment.
This is all sensible enough; after all, human and non-human animals are no more or less than biological machines. In fact, it could be said that we are no more than complex chemical devices.
bi-lingual is beneficial without a doubt. But simply teaching in a foreign language to prevent the need to learn the second language is not. This is the United States and all citizens whether children or adult should be required to learn English and use it in public interactions.
"Humans go to war for a variety of reasons, all of which benefit humans."
I fail to see the difference between me going to war against my will to benefit OTHER humans and a dog doing the same. Regardless of honors bestowed. Perhaps we should solve this problem by banning the sending of humans to war. Only those who actually want the war and directly benefit from the war or the war's outcome will be allowed to participate.
"They don't give a shit about invaders or resources."
Last I checked being teratorial to one degree or another and defending food are base instincts common to most animals and instincts.
"If I were such an animal, I sure wouldn't trade my normal life in the wild for a life of captivity (well-treated or otherwise) and incomprehensible danger."
Hate to break it to you, but you ARE an animal; just like the rest of us. If you aren't in the military you have chosen as stated. If you were drafted or a sucker scooped up from the national guard (nobody in the guard signed up intending to do more than stand straight and do weekend training), then you weren't given a choice and are no different than the animals themselves. You are held in captivity and if you attempt ot escape during time of war the penalty is death. At least non-humans aren't killed if they try to flee.
Natural selection is true without question. Changes in environment cause extinction. Therefore those less suited to an environment are selected for extinction.
As for macro-evolution it is also obvious. Macro organisms are composed of micro-organisms and micro-organisms evolve fast enough that we have watched the entire process again and again. This point has been clearly settled with the proof that virii are no less organism than single celled life. Since the macro-organism is merely a sum of its mico-organisms evolution in the micro effects an evolution in the macro.
As for squirrels not being squirrels there is no need for any such non-sense. Squirrels were always squirrels because a squirrel is not a factual thing, it is simply a label we have given to a grouping of characteristics. If something mutated in a way that caused a vast change in those characteristics we would not classify it as a changed squirrel, we would classify it where the characteristics best fit or call it a new species. If squirrels are an evolutionary decendant of something else we clearly would call the something else by a different name more suited to its characteristics. For instance, if squirrels evolved from something we would call a bat, we would have called it a bat and would call any old skeletons of it that we found bats.
Fortunately we have now sequenced the DNA of many lifeforms and conclusively proven that there are common roots.
It is a lot easier to think these things out if you try to remember what is fact, and that nothing needs to resolve a conflict in classification systems we made up to be true. Most questions of philosophy have arisen in this manner. For instance, morals and ethics. Both are constructs that have been made up to provide direction for intelligence not universal truths with which the universe must be reconciled.
Sometimes it seems like I'm the only one who does not have these questions anymore. The questions seem to stem from believing that there is a cosmic right or wrong or that one needs to reconcile such a thing. However there is nothing to support this idea.
There is no right or wrong to evolution. Evolution does not have the goal of making the fittest survive, that is merely a side effect. If you rinse a glass with alcohol you have changed its environment, the things most fit in that environment will continue to be, and other things will change form as a result of interacting with the alcohol. Neither was stronger, one simply was resistant to change. Which is better, to be static or to change? The answer is that there simply is no better. Was it wrong to put in the alcohol? No. Was it right? No.
Put some yeast in sugar water and the yeast will first destroy the sugar, producing alcohol (nature evolved the sugar into alcohol, see)the alcohol in turn kills the yeast. None of this is wrong. If the alcohol developed consciousness and killed yeast where it would save sugar from conversion or avoiding killing yeast and pooled on one side of the tub this would not be wrong either.
The first illusion to dispel is right and wrong. There is merely cause and effect, no effect is any better than another unless you supply a 'goal' or 'motivation'. Of course there is no cosmic 'goal' or 'motivation'. If there were, we would all have the same goals, motivations, morals, and so forth. Fortunately there is no particular reason we need to imagine there being one.
The next illusion is the separation of man from the rest of nature. Man is just another animal, like all others he has a set of characteristics and there are numerous complex organisms that function in a similar way to us. Harming a cow would be no more right than a man. See the first illusion if you are still wondering about how wrong harming a man is (this is why I am not a vegetarian).
The question then is how far can we take that illusion? The great question of where do you draw the line? The answer is that you do not draw a line. The universe is composed of a constant flux and changing of states of energy. Matter is merely a subgroup of energy in states that remain stable in certain ways that allows us to interact with it (being composed largely of this sort of energy ourselves). If you follow this to its conclusion then you quickly realize that the distinction between living and non-living can not be defined because it is also an illusion. All matter is merely a pattern of energy in a subgroup of states whether regardless of what the human brain classifies it as.
The human brain works by classifying and sub classifying all things around us. We never "know" anything, we merely label it, develop a model to describe our observations. We develop labels and classifications for behaviors we witness also and combine them to form the models. None of this is cosmic truth. It does however reveal why the above illusions exist. They exist because humans need labels like good and bad, right and wrong. Intelligence is the act of ordering. The first thing classified is self. Philosophy discovered this with "i think therefore I am". After classifying itself an intelligence must then classify characteristics of self. The very act of classifying the chaotic universe of "what is" requires artificial constructs like "right" and "wrong". How could one successfully order something that is not orderly without INVENTING patterns in the chaos?
Master yourself. Realize that intelligence needs goals to drive it, master yourself by choosing those goals consciously instead of pretending they are chosen by cosmic consequence or innate morality.
In summary, evolution is a side effect of the fact that nature is constant change of energy states. A change of energy in one state is a change of environment that results in the change of states of still more energy. Evolution can not be stopped or started, it can not be wronged because IT DOES NOT HAVE AN EN
Viruses on the other hand are far far simpler than cells and according to the article have been shown to have an evolutionary history. At some point it is likely that viruses could self-replicate and they can still readily adapt. We have seen evolution occur in viruses.
There is far more in the article itself to refute your statement. Perhaps you should read it.
Non-sense. Viruses as a precusor to life is a theory. There is evidence to support this theory, further there are predictions that can be derived from this theory and it can be disproven. ID is not a theory, it is pure conjecture. There are no predictions that can be derived from ID. ID can never be disproven, whatever evidence turns up, regardless of nature can be explained as having been caused by the intelligent designer.
If it is not possible to predict conditions based upon the model your "speculation" resulted in, and/or no advance in science or technology could ever allow one to test your conclusions then they are not science.
"is the cost of Windows so much that it trumps the pains of introducing a student population of 25,000 or so to a completely foreign computer system? How does this support education?"
Students haven't been taught a system yet so whether you introduce them to windows or linux it is a foreign system. As for supporting education, the last time I checked you educate by showing alternative ideas and introducing new ideas. Not by repeating the same old ideas and supressing diversity.
Quite frankly I find it to be horrible for educational bodies to standardize on a monopoly product, brainwashing our children into using that product. If you learn on just one system then that system becomes the norm against which everything else is abnormal. If you introduce students to diverse systems then no interface will be the 'norm' that limits them in life.
If you want an example of this look at video games, because there are is no standard interface gamers adapt to entirely new and alien interfaces in seconds. The more standardized and typical something becomes the more difficult it becomes to adapt to something new.
Unless of course the "bosses" arrested are scapegoats and the slips are intentional.
"Hell, I'm all for ripping up the Constitution, and start over. It's already been bastardized and made a living thing by the Supreme Court over the years."
You do realize that is exactly what the constitution empowers the judicial branch to do. The supreme court is supposed to determine if any law enacted by congress violates the spirit or the letter of the highest law in the land. Democrats and Republicans alike prefer to speak of the supreme court as a check on the executive branch when its greatest power is as a check on unjust laws passed by the legislative. If discarding acts of congress that are against the principles or letter of the constitution is legislating from the bench then that is exactly what the supreme court is supposed to do. If the supreme court has had to toss out an increasing number of laws it is the legislative who is trampling the constitution by passing them in the first place.
The president was quick to rip up the constitution when wiretapping citizens without warrants as well. He claims the constitution gives him wartime powers, but whether this falls under wartime powers ro not is irrelevant, congress authorized funding WITHOUT a constitutional declaration of war. Constitutionally speaking we are not at war. He also claims the authorization to invade iraq gave him permission. But congress does not have the authority to do so. Only an amendment to the constitution can bypass the constitutional requirement of a warrant for searches.
128kbit MP3 sounds much better than 128kbit WMA, the higher the bitrate, the larger the gap until about that 320kbit mark.
"so what the hell are you on about"
Ignoring all further comments from anyone who thinks they must demonsrate their frustration with inane statements like that one. Others have ears and are entitled to their own opinions. Your opinion of random AC's on Slashdot are not the cosmic truth.
Nonesense, Dell only supports the OS the machine ships with. Every OEM does the same thing. If you load Pro on a box that came with Home vendors will not support software issues, let alone 2000.