"If an aspect of reality does not follow the rules of evidence and logic, then it doesn't make it through the glasses.""If one takes the position that all of reality is strictly explainable, that reality is deterministic,"
Non sequitur, IMHO. Just my opinion, but as valid as any other (IMHO). Chatic systems, quantum uncertainty, probabalistic physics... I think there's room for an explainable but not predictable universe. If that's not the case, then how would knowledge of it affect anything? After all it's pre-ordained! Deterministic belief (and belief is what it would be) does not, in itself, have any more necessity to drive people to irresponsibility, nor reduce my *subjective* appreciation of beauty, any more than lack of religion makes people amoral murderers.
Science is good stuff and we would be foolish to not use it, that doesn't mean it is the beginning and the end of everything.
I have yet to be convinced there is anything beyond it.
So you're saying that one-off incidences with no evidence aren't easily believed in scientific research.
DUH!
No evidence, not science. Sorry. If you're trying to persuade me that "this type of bird does this stuff" then you'll need evidence. If you're telling it to me as a personal anecdote, I might believe you, but I won't change my view of how the world works based on it.
Science does not only see things that are repeatable. Can we repeat an extinct type of bear feeding on an extinct type of moose? No, but we can look at fossilised bear stomach, we can find moose bones with bear-tooth marks. We need EVIDENCE. otherwise what you have is an assertion. And it just so happens that a hell of a lot of people have been making unfounded and assertions to gain money or power for as long as humans have been around.
EVIDENCE tells us that when people say they have experienced something magical they are usually either delusional or liars.
You basically want people to admit that gods/magic/unicorns exist because you say so, and that science is useless to argue against you. FAIL.
"There is nothing I could point out where you would say "that is outside the reach of blind natural processes."
Nothing in the natural world?
That's rather the point, isn't, it? That everything, absolutely everything we've found so far agrees with evolutionary theory. If there was something you could point out that was out of the reach of these blind natural processes, then we wouldn't be having this discussion.
It may interest you to know that the Archbishop of Canterbury (nominal head of the worldwide Anglican communion) has been heard to say that he doubts, and not just sometimes, but constantly.
He literally said (in a radio interview on the BBC) "I don't know, I hope".
Which is very honest, but to me says he's probably in the wrong job... Especially seeing as many of his subordinates and most of their congregations would probably profess to be far more sure of the matter. But then, IMHO, there are three types of Christians -
1. Never examined their beliefs. Just go along with it. Everyone's doing it, preacher says it's true...
2. Don't really believe but go along because they've had it drilled into them that going to church makes them "a good person". May face social ostracism in their communities if they stopped or thought about it too much.
3. Those that examine it and come to the conclusion it's right for them.
Group 1 are numerous and scary because they don't think. Group 2 are numerous and less scary, but still support the status quo and give money to churches to push their (often questionable) agendas Group 3 are less numerous and I don't understand them at all.
Saying that religious people 'know' that God is a 'lie' casts us all in a very unflattering light and is moreover untrue.
Group 2 are not religious, but would self identify as Christian, I firmly believe it contains a large chunk of the US population.
That the NYT thinks that scientists, science writers and the scientifically minded are venerating Darwin over and above more recent advances and over and above any rational discourse, THAT is what I'm complaining about. I'm complaining because the only people I have *ever* heard espouse the view that the Origin of the Species is some sort of holy book are the fundies.
I disagree with their fundamental tenet that this is even happening, except as a straw-man argument used by fundies on their own sheep.
Indeed they have. This doesn't, however, mean that they respect the rules of debate or any sort of historical precedent. I think it's because the general public, even the religious general public, laugh out loud when they say that dinosaurs are a lie/a test/all fake/a set of species that lived with humans 4K years ago.
They've moved on to evolution in general because it's a complicated issue, and the rhetoric they can use on their congregations becomes simpler - "you don't want to understand what all these egghead sciency guys are saying do you? That would be a lot of effort and you like easy answers! They're all elitist and liberal and stuff! They believe this really complicated thing that I'm going to summarise as them saying there's no God! You believe in God right? Right!?!"
It's not really a debate as such, it's them trying to turn the tide of popular opinion and latching on to whatever they can, whilst trying to persuade people that "we can do science talk too!" and then talking in circles and trying to keep their ideas from too much scrutiny.
I'm pretty sure they used to. There's a whole set of Fundy arguments about the validity of carbon (and other) dating methods, and a load of stock rants on how it's all based on faulty assumptions and circular reasoning.
They tend not to even touch on the fact we have records of humans and human civilisation back before they think the world was created...
Bunch of hateful, wilfully ignorant assholes. Wilful ignorance on this scale should be the greatest sin.
I don't know where the author got his information from, but equating Darwin directly with evolution and setting him up as the absolute authority on evolution and natural select is exactly the straw man argument used by the ID/creation morons.
They try, in their pathetic attempt to debate, to equate "The Origin of the Species" with the bible and insinuate that it is a text that "atheists" (i.e. everyone that doesn't agree with their exact take on biblical inerrancy) hold to be inerrant, holy and the subject of religious fervour. Or that "atheists" hold Darwin to be some sort of messiah, and ascribe that view to belief and faith. This then allows them to knock down their hastily erected straw man by saying "my religion is as valid as yours". It's not only an invalid argument, it's intellectually dishonest, as is the entire ID movement.
That the NYT thinks this is really the case is shocking.
Darwin was a smart guy. He wasn't *the* smart guy, and in fact some others around his time were starting to explore similar ideas. A lot has happened since then, some of his work has been extended, some parts contradicted or corrected.
Not the world's greatest phone by any means, but open hardware (as near as they could get, one or two parts are not) and open software plus all the tools to build your own firmware and flash the device.
Hey, I'm not saying my idea is perfect, but isn't it what we around here like to say about the established movie and music businesses - adapt or die ?
Well anyway, I don't think I'll be buying either a Psystar or a Mac anytime soon, linux use that I am. I'm just interested in unlocking another OS for reasons of... well... geekery really.
And I don't really care one way or another if Apple get hurt, except for in a very minor way - they're giving microsoft a bloody nose.
Oh sure, but if you try and stop them then who knows, they might just conjure up some probable cause. You aren't trying to hide something are you citizen?
1. Again, your statements about this case are asserting that this is the legal case, but we have yet to have that proven in court.
2. The DMCA is a travesty of a law and should be scrapped. The fact that your favourite megacorp are currently utilising it doesn't make it any better.
"And after all that effort, they should be forced to essentially give it away for $130 and sacrifice their hardware business?"
Who's forcing a price on them?
They can charge what they like, surely?
It's the restraint of what is done with it after a sale that is at issue here. If that means that the current $130 is subsidised by hardware sales, then maybe they'll have to look at charging less for hardware and more for new OS versions? Business models have to adjust from time to time, you know. Especially when they are based on artifices like restraint of post-purchase usage which may not be legally enforceable.
Isn't that what got lexmark bitchslapped in the end? They DRM'd their crtridges so the printers would only use genuine ones, sued a competitor under the DMCA and lost.
"Why make it more complicated if the net outcome is supposed to be the same: Apple software is to be run on apple machines only."
And that's what PsyStar are contesting in the courts. Welcome to TFA.
And yet you have far more in the way of random road blocks (to check for drunk drivers, uh-huh) and requirements to carry identification (like whilst driving).
Swings and roundabouts my friend, swings and roundabouts.
Whist tracking down tax avoidance is good, I can't help feeling they could save us a buttload more money by getting rid of all their surveillance crap and cutting deeply into public spending.
Make the UK a genuinely low-taxed capitalist country (as it damn well should be, even with the NHS) and the rich won't feel as much need to evade.
"Yes, any American that might see the historical basis for this kind of policy is automatically the stereotypical xenophobe and can be dismissed as such."
Whilst I was taking a poke at the stereotypical american, it's not xenophobia that I'm implying. It's parochialism and the tendency that even educated americans seem to have in thinking of the US as both the centre of the world and the only important part, and the usual hypocrisy of shouting about justice, equality and freedom for all and then quietly adding "american citizens" at the end.
Anyway, I fear I have wandered off topic here. I know that when these sorts of things happen you yanks at least discuss it in the public arena to some extent, whereas over here it seems to take the form of an announcement about what's going to happen followed by total silence. The end result seems to be much the same though.
"Say what you will about the United States but at least it takes more than a majority vote in the House of Representatives to start taking away our rights. You'd also need a majority vote in the US Senate, the signature of the President (or 2/3'rds vote in the aforementioned chambers), the acquiescence of the 50 States and the Federal judiciary."
Wow, what a load of old cod.
You might need that to do certain things, and do them by the book, but it seems to me that you can get away with what you like so long as you cover it up for a bit and then grant retrospective immunity to everyone involved. And if you think your government, with all it's DHA, TSA and other such stuff isn't keeping a record of everywhere you go, well... I disagree!
Surely the last government proved to you that the US executive can and will do whatever they like?
Also, who cares whether the calls were made to/from overseas places? Is that some sort of strange comfort if you're American? "Shouldna bin talkin' to them furr-ners anyway"?
Loads of britons work abroad, many more than the few contractors that this idiotic furore broke over.
This is just the working class braying for protectionism, again, and turning to xenophobia as a way to shift the blame off themselves or to admit that the wider economy is screwed.
Whilst border control *is* an issue, it's not as big of one as you think. And the workers in question are EU citizens. By all means let's kick them out, then rehouse and re-employ the million or so brits that get kicked out of other EU nations and deal with economic isolation as the EU either kicks us out or disintegrates. Because clearly that would be best for all of us, to restrict international trade and screw up Britons' ability to work abroad.
Which is a good thing, because it means that one tech giant can't control/restrict/ransom this sort of tech, and that the Delaware patents will run out earlier than the apple one would.
I'm sorry, but you'll never convince me that overriding what users with admin privileges can do to their system, silently, is in any way a good thing. It's not.
It's not sharing user's data, it's system-wide server/service configuration. It's not for all users, it's not even for any users!
I do understand it's the windows way, but it's not one myself or my (highly skilled, highly intelligent but admittedly mostly *nix focused) department knew about. Took aaaaages to figure out why the admin making changes to the server config didn't seem to have any effect on the service, which was running under a different system account.
Slashdot Mirror
"If an aspect of reality does not follow the rules of evidence and logic, then it doesn't make it through the glasses.""If one takes the position that all of reality is strictly explainable, that reality is deterministic,"
Non sequitur, IMHO. Just my opinion, but as valid as any other (IMHO). Chatic systems, quantum uncertainty, probabalistic physics... I think there's room for an explainable but not predictable universe. If that's not the case, then how would knowledge of it affect anything? After all it's pre-ordained! Deterministic belief (and belief is what it would be) does not, in itself, have any more necessity to drive people to irresponsibility, nor reduce my *subjective* appreciation of beauty, any more than lack of religion makes people amoral murderers.
Science is good stuff and we would be foolish to not use it, that doesn't mean it is the beginning and the end of everything.
I have yet to be convinced there is anything beyond it.
So you're saying that one-off incidences with no evidence aren't easily believed in scientific research.
DUH!
No evidence, not science. Sorry. If you're trying to persuade me that "this type of bird does this stuff" then you'll need evidence. If you're telling it to me as a personal anecdote, I might believe you, but I won't change my view of how the world works based on it.
Science does not only see things that are repeatable. Can we repeat an extinct type of bear feeding on an extinct type of moose? No, but we can look at fossilised bear stomach, we can find moose bones with bear-tooth marks. We need EVIDENCE. otherwise what you have is an assertion. And it just so happens that a hell of a lot of people have been making unfounded and assertions to gain money or power for as long as humans have been around.
EVIDENCE tells us that when people say they have experienced something magical they are usually either delusional or liars.
You basically want people to admit that gods/magic/unicorns exist because you say so, and that science is useless to argue against you. FAIL.
"There is nothing I could point out where you would say "that is outside the reach of blind natural processes."
Nothing in the natural world?
That's rather the point, isn't, it? That everything, absolutely everything we've found so far agrees with evolutionary theory. If there was something you could point out that was out of the reach of these blind natural processes, then we wouldn't be having this discussion.
It may interest you to know that the Archbishop of Canterbury (nominal head of the worldwide Anglican communion) has been heard to say that he doubts, and not just sometimes, but constantly.
He literally said (in a radio interview on the BBC) "I don't know, I hope".
Which is very honest, but to me says he's probably in the wrong job... Especially seeing as many of his subordinates and most of their congregations would probably profess to be far more sure of the matter. But then, IMHO, there are three types of Christians -
1. Never examined their beliefs. Just go along with it. Everyone's doing it, preacher says it's true...
2. Don't really believe but go along because they've had it drilled into them that going to church makes them "a good person". May face social ostracism in their communities if they stopped or thought about it too much.
3. Those that examine it and come to the conclusion it's right for them.
Group 1 are numerous and scary because they don't think.
Group 2 are numerous and less scary, but still support the status quo and give money to churches to push their (often questionable) agendas
Group 3 are less numerous and I don't understand them at all.
Saying that religious people 'know' that God is a 'lie' casts us all in a very unflattering light and is moreover untrue.
Group 2 are not religious, but would self identify as Christian, I firmly believe it contains a large chunk of the US population.
And you must not have read my post at all, huh?
That the NYT thinks that scientists, science writers and the scientifically minded are venerating Darwin over and above more recent advances and over and above any rational discourse, THAT is what I'm complaining about. I'm complaining because the only people I have *ever* heard espouse the view that the Origin of the Species is some sort of holy book are the fundies.
I disagree with their fundamental tenet that this is even happening, except as a straw-man argument used by fundies on their own sheep.
Indeed they have. This doesn't, however, mean that they respect the rules of debate or any sort of historical precedent. I think it's because the general public, even the religious general public, laugh out loud when they say that dinosaurs are a lie/a test/all fake/a set of species that lived with humans 4K years ago.
They've moved on to evolution in general because it's a complicated issue, and the rhetoric they can use on their congregations becomes simpler - "you don't want to understand what all these egghead sciency guys are saying do you? That would be a lot of effort and you like easy answers! They're all elitist and liberal and stuff! They believe this really complicated thing that I'm going to summarise as them saying there's no God! You believe in God right? Right!?!"
It's not really a debate as such, it's them trying to turn the tide of popular opinion and latching on to whatever they can, whilst trying to persuade people that "we can do science talk too!" and then talking in circles and trying to keep their ideas from too much scrutiny.
"I mean, why aren't they protesting dinosaurs?"
I'm pretty sure they used to. There's a whole set of Fundy arguments about the validity of carbon (and other) dating methods, and a load of stock rants on how it's all based on faulty assumptions and circular reasoning.
They tend not to even touch on the fact we have records of humans and human civilisation back before they think the world was created...
Bunch of hateful, wilfully ignorant assholes. Wilful ignorance on this scale should be the greatest sin.
Absolutely.
I don't know where the author got his information from, but equating Darwin directly with evolution and setting him up as the absolute authority on evolution and natural select is exactly the straw man argument used by the ID/creation morons.
They try, in their pathetic attempt to debate, to equate "The Origin of the Species" with the bible and insinuate that it is a text that "atheists" (i.e. everyone that doesn't agree with their exact take on biblical inerrancy) hold to be inerrant, holy and the subject of religious fervour. Or that "atheists" hold Darwin to be some sort of messiah, and ascribe that view to belief and faith. This then allows them to knock down their hastily erected straw man by saying "my religion is as valid as yours". It's not only an invalid argument, it's intellectually dishonest, as is the entire ID movement.
That the NYT thinks this is really the case is shocking.
Darwin was a smart guy. He wasn't *the* smart guy, and in fact some others around his time were starting to explore similar ideas. A lot has happened since then, some of his work has been extended, some parts contradicted or corrected.
Openmoko
Not the world's greatest phone by any means, but open hardware (as near as they could get, one or two parts are not) and open software plus all the tools to build your own firmware and flash the device.
I run android on mine now.
Hey, I'm not saying my idea is perfect, but isn't it what we around here like to say about the established movie and music businesses - adapt or die ?
Well anyway, I don't think I'll be buying either a Psystar or a Mac anytime soon, linux use that I am. I'm just interested in unlocking another OS for reasons of... well... geekery really.
And I don't really care one way or another if Apple get hurt, except for in a very minor way - they're giving microsoft a bloody nose.
Oh sure, but if you try and stop them then who knows, they might just conjure up some probable cause. You aren't trying to hide something are you citizen?
1. Again, your statements about this case are asserting that this is the legal case, but we have yet to have that proven in court.
2. The DMCA is a travesty of a law and should be scrapped. The fact that your favourite megacorp are currently utilising it doesn't make it any better.
"And after all that effort, they should be forced to essentially give it away for $130 and sacrifice their hardware business?"
Who's forcing a price on them?
They can charge what they like, surely?
It's the restraint of what is done with it after a sale that is at issue here. If that means that the current $130 is subsidised by hardware sales, then maybe they'll have to look at charging less for hardware and more for new OS versions? Business models have to adjust from time to time, you know. Especially when they are based on artifices like restraint of post-purchase usage which may not be legally enforceable.
"Put hardware DRM in the machines or something?"
Isn't that what got lexmark bitchslapped in the end? They DRM'd their crtridges so the printers would only use genuine ones, sued a competitor under the DMCA and lost.
"Why make it more complicated if the net outcome is supposed to be the same: Apple software is to be run on apple machines only."
And that's what PsyStar are contesting in the courts. Welcome to TFA.
And yet you have far more in the way of random road blocks (to check for drunk drivers, uh-huh) and requirements to carry identification (like whilst driving).
Swings and roundabouts my friend, swings and roundabouts.
Whist tracking down tax avoidance is good, I can't help feeling they could save us a buttload more money by getting rid of all their surveillance crap and cutting deeply into public spending.
Make the UK a genuinely low-taxed capitalist country (as it damn well should be, even with the NHS) and the rich won't feel as much need to evade.
"Yes, any American that might see the historical basis for this kind of policy is automatically the stereotypical xenophobe and can be dismissed as such."
Whilst I was taking a poke at the stereotypical american, it's not xenophobia that I'm implying. It's parochialism and the tendency that even educated americans seem to have in thinking of the US as both the centre of the world and the only important part, and the usual hypocrisy of shouting about justice, equality and freedom for all and then quietly adding "american citizens" at the end.
Anyway, I fear I have wandered off topic here. I know that when these sorts of things happen you yanks at least discuss it in the public arena to some extent, whereas over here it seems to take the form of an announcement about what's going to happen followed by total silence. The end result seems to be much the same though.
"Say what you will about the United States but at least it takes more than a majority vote in the House of Representatives to start taking away our rights. You'd also need a majority vote in the US Senate, the signature of the President (or 2/3'rds vote in the aforementioned chambers), the acquiescence of the 50 States and the Federal judiciary."
Wow, what a load of old cod.
You might need that to do certain things, and do them by the book, but it seems to me that you can get away with what you like so long as you cover it up for a bit and then grant retrospective immunity to everyone involved. And if you think your government, with all it's DHA, TSA and other such stuff isn't keeping a record of everywhere you go, well... I disagree!
Surely the last government proved to you that the US executive can and will do whatever they like?
Also, who cares whether the calls were made to/from overseas places? Is that some sort of strange comfort if you're American? "Shouldna bin talkin' to them furr-ners anyway"?
Bullcrap
Loads of britons work abroad, many more than the few contractors that this idiotic furore broke over.
This is just the working class braying for protectionism, again, and turning to xenophobia as a way to shift the blame off themselves or to admit that the wider economy is screwed.
Whilst border control *is* an issue, it's not as big of one as you think. And the workers in question are EU citizens. By all means let's kick them out, then rehouse and re-employ the million or so brits that get kicked out of other EU nations and deal with economic isolation as the EU either kicks us out or disintegrates. Because clearly that would be best for all of us, to restrict international trade and screw up Britons' ability to work abroad.
Great plan.
How's that working out for you?
The US already does much of the stuff the UK does. You have free speech zones, warrantless wiretaps, your homeland security theatre...
The US public is too complacent to revolt, and too "patriotic".
Which is a good thing, because it means that one tech giant can't control/restrict/ransom this sort of tech, and that the Delaware patents will run out earlier than the apple one would.
Hooray!
I'm sorry, but you'll never convince me that overriding what users with admin privileges can do to their system, silently, is in any way a good thing. It's not.
Then why is this "feature" present on win 2k8 too?
I can see your point with Vista, but a server operating system?
Its still broken and wrong,
Well it's no surprise they're on the list. Bunch of cowboys...
Dadum-tishhh /try the veal/
It's not sharing user's data, it's system-wide server/service configuration. It's not for all users, it's not even for any users!
I do understand it's the windows way, but it's not one myself or my (highly skilled, highly intelligent but admittedly mostly *nix focused) department knew about. Took aaaaages to figure out why the admin making changes to the server config didn't seem to have any effect on the service, which was running under a different system account.
I don't think it's an abuse, really.