You are putting agnostics and atheists into one basket which makes as much sense as putting you in a basket with the fundies (you sound like a reasonable person). Even if you can't prove a negative, the onus is on the religious to provide infallible proof.
You're not going to find irrefutable proof either for or against the claims of (for the sake of discussion) Christianity. You're going to have to gather information as best you can, and make a judgment call. If you really care about getting to the truth of some matter, there's no shortcut around doing your own thinking.
Start a corporation, pay yourself a big enough salary (we ARE assuming you are significantly profitable, right?), and then when you are sued, have your corporation declare bankruptcy and release the software as open source. All your money will be protected and you'll be rich.
There are a lot of schemes like this, be sure to consult with a lawyer once you start raking in the dough. Also, don't ask me to feel sorry for you, once you're a millionaire. I won't.
Good point! Now I'm totally going to start commercializing my ideas!
The risk of being sued for patent infringement is sufficiently high to prevent me from bothering. I wonder how unique I am in this regard.
Not very. I have five patent plaques on the wall behind me. For me, the risk is not being able to collect for infringement because of high litigation costs.
Bigger risk is if something I invented actually became significantly profitable. Then any well-funded corporation or troll with an overly broad patent could come after me, and I couldn't afford to defend myself.
And, if you could persuade a patent troll that your patent applied, I expect you'd be tempted to let them buy it from you so they could come after me.
... you can really patent something that basically reads, "Using a feature to help in set classification"?
About ready to say scrap the entire patent system - at least when it comes to software. It's not like it protects the actual inventors any more at all.
Are you kidding? This is proof that the patent system rocks. It will generate law-firm billable hours, licensing revenue, and patent filing fees. Talk about growing the economy!
As a card-carrying don't-know-which-religion-if-any-is-true member, I'm always eager for time to do some reading that might help me make up my mind on the matter.
Planes are a great time to work through my pile of books on the subject.
I signed one of my kids up for FLL ( http://www.firstlegoleague.org/ ), and it's worked well. The cost was something like $70 for one season. They use Mindstorms.
Pros: - Kids develop teamwork skills as well as robotics skills - More social for the kids than just working at home - Each season kids are provided with some reasonable motivating problems. Even though the kids won't really solve them with Lego Mindstorms, it could give some kids a sense of the real good they can do if they pursue S&T careers.
Cons: - Have to drive kids to the meeting every week, sometimes twice/week as end-of-year competition gets close. - Kids can't totally choose their own problems, and won't have access to the equipment except during meeting times (probably).
That might be the way it's modeled from a user's perspective. But I expect the real challenge is coming up with an automated way to maintain such lists.
And if I'm right, the fact that JavaScript is Turing-complete is a serious problem to automating this, especially because many advertisers are unscrupulous.
I'd like separate options for suppressing: - Pop-unders - Pop-overs - Ads emitting sound without being clicked on - Ads that start playing video without being clicked on - Ads that are sneaky (single-pixel, etc.) - etc.
It's the ultimate weapon against drone aircraft. They flood the control frequencies with Jerry Springer and UFO Conspiracy documentaries, causing the controller to become too stupid to continue flying the aircraft.
Gnome 3 has nasty visual artifacts on Ubuntu 11.10 with my notebook's ATI chip.
I appreciate all Shuttleworth has done for the Linux community, but he's really got to take quality more seriously if he wants to win me back to Ubuntu.
But does warfare against industrial sites count as terrorism, where the primary intent is to damage that site's abilities rather than instill fear of death in the general population, really count as terrorism?
If the answer to your question is no, then 9/11 was not a terrorist attack.
Oh, and the answer to your question is no. Attacking infrastructure is not terrorism.
Do you really see the WTC as an attack on industrial infrastructure? That makes little or no sense to me. Attacking whatever Raytheon factory makes Tomahawk missiles would qualify in my mind as an industrial attack to take out a capability related to our wars in that region, but the WTC?
I guess it could be seen as an attack on our overall economy, because of the massive ripple effect it had. But even an attack on the economy doesn't seem like terrorism to me, because its goal is to effect change by damaging our capabilities, rather than effecting change by making us fear for our lives.
But does warfare against industrial sites count as terrorism, where the primary intent is to damage that site's abilities rather than instill fear of death in the general population, really count as terrorism?
American revolutionaries are considered heroes today. But they were looked at as terrorists by the British at the time. It's a shame our representatives today have little knowledge or understanding of history.
I don't think American Revolutionaries fit the traditionally, pre-9/11-label-everything-as-terrorism definition of terrorism. AFAIK, the American Revolutionaries made no attempt to induce mortal fear (i.e., terror) into the general British population.
Slashdot Mirror
You are putting agnostics and atheists into one basket which makes as much sense as putting you in a basket with the fundies (you sound like a reasonable person). Even if you can't prove a negative, the onus is on the religious to provide infallible proof.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
You're not going to find irrefutable proof either for or against the claims of (for the sake of discussion) Christianity. You're going to have to gather information as best you can, and make a judgment call. If you really care about getting to the truth of some matter, there's no shortcut around doing your own thinking.
I'm disappointed that the parent hasn't been modded into oblivion as Flamebait, Troll, or Off-topic.
Not because the fundamental concerns expressed are unworthy of discussion, but because the post is mostly a prolonged invective.
Start a corporation, pay yourself a big enough salary (we ARE assuming you are significantly profitable, right?), and then when you are sued, have your corporation declare bankruptcy and release the software as open source. All your money will be protected and you'll be rich.
There are a lot of schemes like this, be sure to consult with a lawyer once you start raking in the dough. Also, don't ask me to feel sorry for you, once you're a millionaire. I won't.
Good point! Now I'm totally going to start commercializing my ideas!
The risk of being sued for patent infringement is sufficiently high to prevent me from bothering. I wonder how unique I am in this regard.
Not very. I have five patent plaques on the wall behind me. For me, the risk is not being able to collect for infringement because of high litigation costs.
Bigger risk is if something I invented actually became significantly profitable. Then any well-funded corporation or troll with an overly broad patent could come after me, and I couldn't afford to defend myself.
And, if you could persuade a patent troll that your patent applied, I expect you'd be tempted to let them buy it from you so they could come after me.
The risk of being sued for patent infringement is sufficiently high to prevent me from bothering. I wonder how unique I am in this regard.
... you can really patent something that basically reads, "Using a feature to help in set classification"?
About ready to say scrap the entire patent system - at least when it comes to software. It's not like it protects the actual inventors any more at all.
Are you kidding? This is proof that the patent system rocks. It will generate law-firm billable hours, licensing revenue, and patent filing fees. Talk about growing the economy!
Citation needed.
Sorry, "Programmers from Canada are fine, eh?"
Thanks
Awesome! Thanks
As a card-carrying don't-know-which-religion-if-any-is-true member, I'm always eager for time to do some reading that might help me make up my mind on the matter.
Planes are a great time to work through my pile of books on the subject.
I signed one of my kids up for FLL ( http://www.firstlegoleague.org/ ), and it's worked well. The cost was something like $70 for one season. They use Mindstorms.
Pros:
- Kids develop teamwork skills as well as robotics skills
- More social for the kids than just working at home
- Each season kids are provided with some reasonable motivating problems. Even though the kids won't really solve them with Lego Mindstorms, it could give some kids a sense of the real good they can do if they pursue S&T careers.
Cons:
- Have to drive kids to the meeting every week, sometimes twice/week as end-of-year competition gets close.
- Kids can't totally choose their own problems, and won't have access to the equipment except during meeting times (probably).
And it sucks hard.
Too bad it's in the red-shift district.
That might be the way it's modeled from a user's perspective. But I expect the real challenge is coming up with an automated way to maintain such lists.
And if I'm right, the fact that JavaScript is Turing-complete is a serious problem to automating this, especially because many advertisers are unscrupulous.
I'd like separate options for suppressing:
- Pop-unders
- Pop-overs
- Ads emitting sound without being clicked on
- Ads that start playing video without being clicked on
- Ads that are sneaky (single-pixel, etc.)
- etc.
Don't taunt him. According to his login, he's a member of Anonymous!
They have anti-aircraft TV shows? We're screwed.
It's the ultimate weapon against drone aircraft. They flood the control frequencies with Jerry Springer and UFO Conspiracy documentaries, causing the controller to become too stupid to continue flying the aircraft.
Wow, someone finally out-Foxed us!
They have anti-aircraft TV shows? We're screwed.
Thanks for the tip. Maybe I'll try that out. Can the open-source driver do video okay?
Also, how do you tell Ubuntu to stop using the proprietary driver?
Gnome 3 has nasty visual artifacts on Ubuntu 11.10 with my notebook's ATI chip.
I appreciate all Shuttleworth has done for the Linux community, but he's really got to take quality more seriously if he wants to win me back to Ubuntu.
So, um, does the winning team happen to be hiring?
Your point sounds reasonable.
But does warfare against industrial sites count as terrorism, where the primary intent is to damage that site's abilities rather than instill fear of death in the general population, really count as terrorism?
If the answer to your question is no, then 9/11 was not a terrorist attack.
Oh, and the answer to your question is no. Attacking infrastructure is not terrorism.
Do you really see the WTC as an attack on industrial infrastructure? That makes little or no sense to me. Attacking whatever Raytheon factory makes Tomahawk missiles would qualify in my mind as an industrial attack to take out a capability related to our wars in that region, but the WTC?
I guess it could be seen as an attack on our overall economy, because of the massive ripple effect it had. But even an attack on the economy doesn't seem like terrorism to me, because its goal is to effect change by damaging our capabilities, rather than effecting change by making us fear for our lives.
Please, enlighten me. But please also stop posting anonymously.
But does warfare against industrial sites count as terrorism, where the primary intent is to damage that site's abilities rather than instill fear of death in the general population, really count as terrorism?
American revolutionaries are considered heroes today. But they were looked at as terrorists by the British at the time. It's a shame our representatives today have little knowledge or understanding of history.
I don't think American Revolutionaries fit the traditionally, pre-9/11-label-everything-as-terrorism definition of terrorism. AFAIK, the American Revolutionaries made no attempt to induce mortal fear (i.e., terror) into the general British population.