As a SWAG, lets say there was a fanbase of 10M worldwide. If just one third could be convinced to pony up $1 per episode - that's $3.3M right there. By using the internet and some sort of paypal like system (pay attention to what google is doing in this area, they seem to be thinking right along these lines) they could collect that $1 per episode and put it into an escrow account. When the balance reaches $3.3M production begins. When the episode is completed, it is released to the public domain and the money is released to the production company.
So how do you keep an ad agency from ponying up ALL the money to have the program made, inserting product and/or advertising into it, and then claiming they own the result since they paid for it?
In response to the article, I think it's the general consensus of everyone involved that we invaded Iraq for no good reason. Problem is, now that we've done so, we have to stick it out until Iraq is able to run themselves again.
Yes, but it's important to realize just how big of a mistake it was and how it happened-- else we make one like it again...
Seems to me that much of what is driving the War on Terrorism, is a bunch of ex-cold-war hawks and spooks that had too much free time on their hands...
All you have to do is get a full-featured window manager and graphics/GUI API going using something really fast (which means something that DOESN'T use streams-hamstrung protocols like X11 does, such as DirectFB) to handle the graphics, and KDE and Gnome will start gathering the dust they so richly deserve.
If Google were to do this, the Linux desktop would most definately be in business.
The problem is, while you are correct in that the data does not unconditionally prove the dangers of global warming, neither does it disprove them, and by the time there is enough data to inconclusively demonstrate the dangers it will be too late to avoid them, if it's not already too late.
You have to ask yourself what are the risks vs benefits? If global warming is not a danger, there's still no harm in cutting back emissions. Even if global warming is not a danger, air quality certainly is. Any harm with this approach would be a short-term negative effect on certain industries, which are living on borrowed time anyway due to supply issues. On the other hand, if global warming is a danger, even if it's already too late to avoid significant effects, it may not be too late to mitigate them to at least some extent.
The problem is, we are talking about the oil, coal and lumber industries primarily, which basically have full control over the US government in this regard. Which means that any statement regarding global warming coming from either industry spokesmen OR the goverment policymakers, is suspect due to its conflict of interest. I don't see the same sort of conflict of interest on the other side of the fence, those arguing that perhaps caution is in order in case global warming might be a real problem for future generations. Where's the financial stake in such a position? Do you figure they're all holding short positions in oil company stock, or what?
Perhaps one might conclude that God will sort it out, we don't have to worry. Given how ineffective His global flood was however, I personally, don't think we should rely on such a dependence:-).
Re:Never understand when people say OSS is secure
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Mitnick on OSS
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Actually, Linux is more secure than Windows in spite of the fact that OSS is easier to hack than CSS, for reasons that have very little to do with the difference between OSS and CSS.
I suggest that factoring, i.e., modularity is a far more significant reason that Linux is more secure than Windows. The commercial interest of integrating featurism into the OS is probably the biggest source of security flaws in Windows.
If that turns out to be true, it suggests that OSS is more secure than CSS because the designs of CSS, unduly affected by commercial attempts at lock-in or other nonessential OS features, present a far bigger security hole than OSS does. The less that is actually part of the OS, the more secure the OS is going to be, IMHO.
Which also suggests that Vista, in order to give Linux a run for its security, will have to either resist the tendency to build extraneous features into the OS, or subject the product to a considerably more stringent and time consuming process of vetting new releases in order to insure the creeping featurism doesn't include creeping insecurities as well. Now, I ask you, does that sound like Microsoft?
Still, to say that Microsoft has been focused on security since Windows NT wasn't a good way to start out his answer.:-(
Wasn't that about the time Windows machines started getting hooked up to the internet and internet-bound viruses became an issue? I suppose that "focused" MS on security somewhat, but they had gone so long without it they had no real idea where to begin-- and then old problem of turning the battleship comes into play.
I also thought it was pretty interesting how the first response to a buffer overflow bug was to look for who to blame. That explains a whole lot, actually, suggesting a disfunctional culture of quality-through-insecurity (insecurity in the lack-of-confidence sense). There's this quack theory that low self esteem drives one to work harder to overcome it. And it's somewhat true-- there's no question that it can actually produce superachievers (quite possibly even billionaires), however sociopathic they may be.
There are things that could falsify evolution, but none of those things have been found to exist so far, and a lot of looking has been done, so don't get your hopes up. In fact, many of the arguments creationists have made in the past are falsification attempts, it's just their information about the actual data is incorrect. For example, out-of-place fossils in the fossil record, such as coincident human and dinosaur fossils, evidence of unprecedented or mosaic collection of complex features in an organism, such as a squid-style eye "suddenly" appearing in a mamillian organism (creationists tried to argue the Platypus was such a mosaic, but as usual the details didn't support that). The "complexity" of the eye has been offered as probability evidence, then Dawkins showed that there are currently in nature organisms that exhibit pretty much a full potential progression of intermediate eye forms. Creationists probability arguments are simply laughable, and that includes the ID probability arguments offered by them so far as well.
The funny thing is, to the extent the creationists have actually come up with valid falsification criteria for evolution, the investigation of the criteria has actually resulted in additional evidence in favor of evolution when it was found that the data was in fact, consistent with evolution. Now, so much data as gone "under the bridge" so to speak, that most of the easy falsification criteria has been applied and found that the data doesn't falsify evolution. You have to have two things-- 1) good falsification criteria, and 2) good data based on that criteria that the theory is false. Now and then, creationists and IDers will attach themselves to something that is essentially #1, then cobble together some apologetic concoction and claim it's #2.
Creationists & IDers seem to want to stick to what are essentially probability arguments. Certainly, probability arguments could demonstrate evolution false. But you need the appropriate data, and of course, if evolution isn't false, it won't exist. But in the process creationists have had to avoid any real understanding of basic Statistics 101, as the probability claims they have profferred are hilariously bad in that context, and have to be in order to represent the data as in any way inconsistent with evolution. They conveniently forget that the universe is constantly testing billions of billions (to quote Carl Sagan) chemical reactions in parallel in billions of billions of solar systems throughout the universe. Any apparently "immense" unlikelyhood must be weighed against the truly immense number of chemical "tries" constantly going on throughout the universe, multiplied by the length of time it's been going on. You can't then just say "well, how amazing is it that it would happen right here where we are?", since wherever it would happen would have to be exactly where we would be, even if we are the only planet with life in the universe. Similarly, the idea that the universe could only operate with specific values of cosmic constants, ignores the fact that any universe that might exist under some other combinations of constants might either not exist for long and therefore select themselves out, or perhaps do exist, but like the example above, the place where we are would have to be where the combinations work, not just coincidentally so.
Just like the "complexity" of the eye, things like the "complexity" of other structures they claim to be anti-evolutionary evidence will in fact ultimately be investigated by scientists and will contribute further details to our understanding of how evolution works. That is because creationists are essentially asking "how" does it work (posed as "how can it work"), and when someone finds an answer, our understanding is enhanced. However, in doing so creationists/IDers are not actually doing ID science, they are doing just plain-old science, so there's no point in
The question posed by ID is whether to stop doing science. Really. Say we accepted Behe's arguments back in the 90's, then what should the scientists who subsequently elucidated the detailed evolutionary pathways of those systems done instead? Become bakers?
By now someone must have created a search engine that only indexes sites whose robots.txt tells them not to index. I'm surprised I haven't heard of a particular one. Bet it would raise a few hackles though...
Stick with science for inside of science, but when you get outside of science - you will one day meet your maker and have to answer for the deeds done in your body. For it is appointed unto man once to die and then the judgement.
As Einstein said, if we are only good because we fear punishment or hope for reward, we are a sorry lot indeed. If that's how you see yourself, fine (and thanks for the warning), but I find it rather offensive that you would project your neuroses on me, posturing as if you inhabit a moral higher ground and hold special knowledge. In my opinion, religious faith is the root of all bigotry. You would appear to represent yet another datapoint in support of that particular opinion.
Thank you for clarifying that. I was operating from memory (didn't have time to google it), and I've heard a few different retellings of the story. It seems to exist in more than a few apocryphal versions, usually when it is utilized as an example of how science isn't perfect and "doesn't know it all either," as flimsy apologetic for some voodoo belief system.
-- Sync
If you use the Huxley-coined definition for agnostic, agnostic and atheist are not mutually exclusive. The first is a belief about knowledge, the second about gods, i.e., I am agnostic because I don't believe it is possible to know whether or not God exists, and I am an atheist because I believe he does not.
I too cannot speak for the original poster, but I am an atheist because I've yet to see a coherent, non-self-contradictory definition for God, and, lacking a workable definition I see no reason to consider the existence of something thus undefined...
For example, one characteristic of God that seems to be widely applied is that "he" is omniscient, "all-knowing." However, presumably even God cannot know that which is not possible to know. And, just as we cannot know absolutely whether or not some being exists that is outside of our ability to percieve, a God too, cannot logically prove that there does not exist some being superior to him that exists in a realm that is beyond his ability to percieve. Consequently, a God, even if he exists, could not possibly know that he is the ultimate, even if he is. He cannot know that he is God, though he may think he is God. Perhaps he is merely an inmate of some cosmic sanitarium, deluded into thinking he is the outer extent of all there is.
Consequently, I think the question of whether or not God exists is a meaningless-- no different than asking does "woeigjowie" exist.
Reportedly, years ago a biologist and a physicist met over dinner or something, and the subject came up about the physics of bee flight. Some back of the paper napkin calculations by the physicist didn't work, and they were overheard by someone who reported to the press that "science proves bees can't fly." Of course, everyone knows that bees can fly, so it was seen as a "har har, those silly scientists, they don't know anything." Science gets it wrong, so science is just a bunch of stuffed-shirt eggheads in labs that have convinced themselves they know something when they really don't know anything.
However, it neatly ignored the fact that not too long after that discovery, the question raised actually led to further investigation of the subject and much was learned about insect flight. This story shows much is still being learned from that event.
What really happened in this case, is someone detected an error. Science has a long history of individuals who found errors in our understanding of the universe. In fact, virtually all the famous names of science are famous because they uncovered an error in our understanding. It is simply by the detection of errors that science advances. Science is a philosophy that learns from its mistakes, and in fact, without the discovery of mistakes it really isn't learning much. It's in trying to determine what's going on with a discovered mistake that science moves forward.
Consequently, every time I hear someone claim something to the effect of "oh look, here's where science got it wrong," I point to it and say, "oh look, here's where science learned something. Here's where science made progress."
To the extent that ID is looking for mistakes in science, it will actually improve our understanding of the universe, which includes evolution. Where ID differs from science, is that not only is no one in ID even looking for mistakes in ID, ID isn't even capable of making mistakes, because their explanations would explain any phenomena-- and an explanation that explains everything really doesn't explain anything. Drop an apple and it falls down? It's ID. Drop an apple and it falls up? It's ID. There's no knowledge content to such an explanation.
Any philosophy that is not capable of discovering its mistakes, must be either perfect or error-prone. And, since no human endeavor or understanding can be said to be perfect, I'd say it's pretty clear which it is. Science too is not perfect, but it has one thing the other philosophies do not, and that is at least some ability to detect its errors. Given the choice between a philosophy that can detect at least some of its errors, and one that pretends it can't make any errors, I think the choice should be pretty easy to make.
Some suggest that scientists are in some kind of conspiracy or cover up. Such a suggestion is completely ignorant of how science and scientists operate. While an individual scientist may find it difficult to uncover errors in their own work, scientists are fully aware that careers are made by uncovering an interesting mistake in another scientists work, and would trumpet such a discovery to the high hills instantly. Conspiracy, indeed.
ID proponents only succeed because they are not the only ones ignorant of these basic realities. Unfortunately, science education and interest is so weak that a large piece of the populace is similarly ignorant.
Even those who aren't anti-evolution or particularly religious may believe in things like astrology, for example. But when was the last time anyone was recognized for finding an error in our "understanding" of astrology? Astronomy has a long list of names of those who've uncovered errors in our understanding: Aristotle, Copernicus, Newton, Einstein, etc.., for example, and there are many many more. Where's the list of names that have improved the quality of astrological knowl
If I could just edit the "Microsoft" out of the PC, but still run off-the-shelf made-for-Windows apps, that'd be far better. I'd buy one today if I could do that.
DVD is only dead to the greedy who aren't happy with the deflation in profit margins, due to the huge array of competition from everywhere, including scads of historical movies and TV programs and imported foreign content. They prefer to think it's not due to the competition but to piracy, but they're wrong. When you consider the time required to copy DVDs, its probably actually cheaper to just by a legit copy. Sure, there may be some bootleggers out there who are showing up with counterfits at flea markets, and a few downloaders who will D/L a movie to watch just because they can, not because it's convenient. But not enough to explain the hit big media is taking in the pocketbook, despite their claims.
Big media figures if they start up something newer and better they can get us all to transition to it and spend more $$$. However, while I think it could mean a short term windfall, I'm not convinced that HD gives you enough additional value to make it worth the transition-- most of what I like to watch already exists and isn't in HD format, I have no interest in spending extra $$$ just to see the modern crap that's mostly written by ad executives.
The DVD is not just going to go away, there's a huge amount of content out there that, even if the disks and the players start dying out, we'll be able to back them up on new storage mediums and still preserve them. And, much of the content remains worth watching, in fact, mostly more so than what's targeted for HD.
But let them pull out all the stops. And maybe there'll be suckers who will buy into it, but if I ever do I'll be about the last to do so, after the cost has dropped to about what DVDs are going for now...
They only wish it was dead because while it's alive it's a low-cost content rich alternative to the high-cost content poor HD market...
They don't last long enough to get boring or repetitive. As long as you don't play them over and over like sample loops that is...
Microsoft sounds are pretty identifiable though. We just started using a new telephone conference system at work and I'll bet money that the software was written by Microsoft, as the "tones" they use to signal when to say your name or enter your conference code sound exactly like the windows sound effects...
--That's assuming that the new TPM (trusted) PCs are actually secure against things like custom drivers, custom hardware, etc., that people will actually want to buy them and that Vista won't run on any non-TPM hardware (which includes most all of which currently in use), which I seriously doubt.
All hail the black and white world. Too bad that's not the kind we live in. ScentCone neatly ignores the fact that not everyone is equally equipped or positioned to "complete a solid high school and at least a real vocational education."
ScentCone's solution, rather than to make "competing a high school/vocational education" more accessible is to
instead make the alternative "more unattractive." And by "accessible" I don't mean "dumbing down," I mean spending money to improve the quality and availability of the schools-- smaller class sizes, etc.. The fact is, many schools aren't working very well, yet the prevailing winds seem to think that "teachers just aren't doing their jobs, they must be lazy," is the reason, again in the simple minded black and white world that we don't actually live in. And BTW, the prevailing view of the problem and its associated "solutions" primarily just pisses off many good teachers enough to look for a better job. No doubt SentCone's view of a "good" teacher though, is one that would stick to the job anyhow, even as they are poorly paid and treated like lazy bums, because teaching is a "noble" profession. However, such an attitude may be turning teaching away from the "noble" profession and turning it into a place that only those too lazy to find better jobs are willing to suffer.
If the well-to-do aren't willing to contribute to improve the quality of education, and even the quality-of-life of the bottom rung of society, the well-to-do will ultimately also suffer when the economy nose-dives because there are so many in poverty that our support system is overtaxed-- though I guess you could make using that unattractive too, just letting the poverty stricken die in the streets rather than providing them health care. I trust I need go no further to explore the kind of effects that might have.
The idea that the poverty-stricken merely need to "tighten their belts" and "pull themselves up by their bootstraps" are simplistic stereotypical notions-- sometimes true but often not-- mostly useful when selfishly trying to escape the costs of social responsibility. Poorly educated and poor income individuals are specifically targeted by credit companies, for one example, as they are specifically vunerable to getting in over their head having been sold a bill of goods by our "consumption is king" society. But rather than questioning consumption, or even helping to educate these vulnerables instead we pass laws to make it harder to get out of such traps via bankruptcy.
Apparently, as long as consumption is going strong, it remains the moral high-ground, damn the poor, full speed ahead. They're hooked on that drug TV, force 'em to buy new digital ones. They're hooked on music too, another thing that helps them forget how poor they are. Switch formats to something cheaper to make and/or with limited life-span, and then raise the prices. Then can't pay your bills? Make it more unattractive by taking away bankruptcy options.
So what are you going to do, if (or when) the "well-to-do" have to end up spending extra tax dollars for prisons to keep the unruly poor off the streets? Is that really how you'd rather spend your money?
Yes, it's interesting that they have so little confidence in their belief system that they feel a significant need for the government to shore it up...
Based on Einstein's spacetime universe, any God that might exist would presumably be outside spacetime where the concepts of "before" and "after" and "infinite" time and/or space are meaningless-- and that's pretty hard to get your brain around, independent from any existance or nonexistance of God. I suppose such a God wouldn't experience events serially as we do, and petty emotions like "anger" and "jealousy" of such an entity are merely egotistical anthropomorphising.
Slashdot Mirror
As a SWAG, lets say there was a fanbase of 10M worldwide. If just one third could be convinced to pony up $1 per episode - that's $3.3M right there. By using the internet and some sort of paypal like system (pay attention to what google is doing in this area, they seem to be thinking right along these lines) they could collect that $1 per episode and put it into an escrow account. When the balance reaches $3.3M production begins. When the episode is completed, it is released to the public domain and the money is released to the production company.
So how do you keep an ad agency from ponying up ALL the money to have the program made, inserting product and/or advertising into it, and then claiming they own the result since they paid for it?
In response to the article, I think it's the general consensus of everyone involved that we invaded Iraq for no good reason. Problem is, now that we've done so, we have to stick it out until Iraq is able to run themselves again.
Yes, but it's important to realize just how big of a mistake it was and how it happened-- else we make one like it again...
Seems to me that much of what is driving the War on Terrorism, is a bunch of ex-cold-war hawks and spooks that had too much free time on their hands...
I for one, welcome our new spiritual overlords.
All you have to do is get a full-featured window manager and graphics/GUI API going using something really fast (which means something that DOESN'T use streams-hamstrung protocols like X11 does, such as DirectFB) to handle the graphics, and KDE and Gnome will start gathering the dust they so richly deserve.
If Google were to do this, the Linux desktop would most definately be in business.
The problem is, while you are correct in that the data does not unconditionally prove the dangers of global warming, neither does it disprove them, and by the time there is enough data to inconclusively demonstrate the dangers it will be too late to avoid them, if it's not already too late.
You have to ask yourself what are the risks vs benefits? If global warming is not a danger, there's still no harm in cutting back emissions. Even if global warming is not a danger, air quality certainly is. Any harm with this approach would be a short-term negative effect on certain industries, which are living on borrowed time anyway due to supply issues. On the other hand, if global warming is a danger, even if it's already too late to avoid significant effects, it may not be too late to mitigate them to at least some extent.
The problem is, we are talking about the oil, coal and lumber industries primarily, which basically have full control over the US government in this regard. Which means that any statement regarding global warming coming from either industry spokesmen OR the goverment policymakers, is suspect due to its conflict of interest. I don't see the same sort of conflict of interest on the other side of the fence, those arguing that perhaps caution is in order in case global warming might be a real problem for future generations. Where's the financial stake in such a position? Do you figure they're all holding short positions in oil company stock, or what?
Perhaps one might conclude that God will sort it out, we don't have to worry. Given how ineffective His global flood was however, I personally, don't think we should rely on such a dependence :-).
Actually, Linux is more secure than Windows in spite of the fact that OSS is easier to hack than CSS, for reasons that have very little to do with the difference between OSS and CSS.
I suggest that factoring, i.e., modularity is a far more significant reason that Linux is more secure than Windows. The commercial interest of integrating featurism into the OS is probably the biggest source of security flaws in Windows.
If that turns out to be true, it suggests that OSS is more secure than CSS because the designs of CSS, unduly affected by commercial attempts at lock-in or other nonessential OS features, present a far bigger security hole than OSS does. The less that is actually part of the OS, the more secure the OS is going to be, IMHO.
Which also suggests that Vista, in order to give Linux a run for its security, will have to either resist the tendency to build extraneous features into the OS, or subject the product to a considerably more stringent and time consuming process of vetting new releases in order to insure the creeping featurism doesn't include creeping insecurities as well. Now, I ask you, does that sound like Microsoft?
Still, to say that Microsoft has been focused on security since Windows NT wasn't a good way to start out his answer. :-(
Wasn't that about the time Windows machines started getting hooked up to the internet and internet-bound viruses became an issue? I suppose that "focused" MS on security somewhat, but they had gone so long without it they had no real idea where to begin-- and then old problem of turning the battleship comes into play.
I also thought it was pretty interesting how the first response to a buffer overflow bug was to look for who to blame. That explains a whole lot, actually, suggesting a disfunctional culture of quality-through-insecurity (insecurity in the lack-of-confidence sense). There's this quack theory that low self esteem drives one to work harder to overcome it. And it's somewhat true-- there's no question that it can actually produce superachievers (quite possibly even billionaires), however sociopathic they may be.
There are things that could falsify evolution, but none of those things have been found to exist so far, and a lot of looking has been done, so don't get your hopes up. In fact, many of the arguments creationists have made in the past are falsification attempts, it's just their information about the actual data is incorrect. For example, out-of-place fossils in the fossil record, such as coincident human and dinosaur fossils, evidence of unprecedented or mosaic collection of complex features in an organism, such as a squid-style eye "suddenly" appearing in a mamillian organism (creationists tried to argue the Platypus was such a mosaic, but as usual the details didn't support that). The "complexity" of the eye has been offered as probability evidence, then Dawkins showed that there are currently in nature organisms that exhibit pretty much a full potential progression of intermediate eye forms. Creationists probability arguments are simply laughable, and that includes the ID probability arguments offered by them so far as well.
The funny thing is, to the extent the creationists have actually come up with valid falsification criteria for evolution, the investigation of the criteria has actually resulted in additional evidence in favor of evolution when it was found that the data was in fact, consistent with evolution. Now, so much data as gone "under the bridge" so to speak, that most of the easy falsification criteria has been applied and found that the data doesn't falsify evolution. You have to have two things-- 1) good falsification criteria, and 2) good data based on that criteria that the theory is false. Now and then, creationists and IDers will attach themselves to something that is essentially #1, then cobble together some apologetic concoction and claim it's #2.
Creationists & IDers seem to want to stick to what are essentially probability arguments. Certainly, probability arguments could demonstrate evolution false. But you need the appropriate data, and of course, if evolution isn't false, it won't exist. But in the process creationists have had to avoid any real understanding of basic Statistics 101, as the probability claims they have profferred are hilariously bad in that context, and have to be in order to represent the data as in any way inconsistent with evolution. They conveniently forget that the universe is constantly testing billions of billions (to quote Carl Sagan) chemical reactions in parallel in billions of billions of solar systems throughout the universe. Any apparently "immense" unlikelyhood must be weighed against the truly immense number of chemical "tries" constantly going on throughout the universe, multiplied by the length of time it's been going on. You can't then just say "well, how amazing is it that it would happen right here where we are?", since wherever it would happen would have to be exactly where we would be, even if we are the only planet with life in the universe. Similarly, the idea that the universe could only operate with specific values of cosmic constants, ignores the fact that any universe that might exist under some other combinations of constants might either not exist for long and therefore select themselves out, or perhaps do exist, but like the example above, the place where we are would have to be where the combinations work, not just coincidentally so.
Just like the "complexity" of the eye, things like the "complexity" of other structures they claim to be anti-evolutionary evidence will in fact ultimately be investigated by scientists and will contribute further details to our understanding of how evolution works. That is because creationists are essentially asking "how" does it work (posed as "how can it work"), and when someone finds an answer, our understanding is enhanced. However, in doing so creationists/IDers are not actually doing ID science, they are doing just plain-old science, so there's no point in
The question posed by ID is whether to stop doing science. Really. Say we accepted Behe's arguments back in the 90's, then what should the scientists who subsequently elucidated the detailed evolutionary pathways of those systems done instead? Become bakers?
Priests, no doubt.
By now someone must have created a search engine that only indexes sites whose robots.txt tells them not to index. I'm surprised I haven't heard of a particular one. Bet it would raise a few hackles though...
Based on this Al-Quaeda can just start calling everyone in the US and our government will be completely consumed by their own rampant paranoia...
Who cares about the OS, I just want to use the apps I've already paid for...
Stick with science for inside of science, but when you get outside of science - you will one day meet your maker and have to answer for the deeds done in your body. For it is appointed unto man once to die and then the judgement.
As Einstein said, if we are only good because we fear punishment or hope for reward, we are a sorry lot indeed. If that's how you see yourself, fine (and thanks for the warning), but I find it rather offensive that you would project your neuroses on me, posturing as if you inhabit a moral higher ground and hold special knowledge. In my opinion, religious faith is the root of all bigotry. You would appear to represent yet another datapoint in support of that particular opinion.
-- SyncThank you for clarifying that. I was operating from memory (didn't have time to google it), and I've heard a few different retellings of the story. It seems to exist in more than a few apocryphal versions, usually when it is utilized as an example of how science isn't perfect and "doesn't know it all either," as flimsy apologetic for some voodoo belief system. -- Sync
If you use the Huxley-coined definition for agnostic, agnostic and atheist are not mutually exclusive. The first is a belief about knowledge, the second about gods, i.e., I am agnostic because I don't believe it is possible to know whether or not God exists, and I am an atheist because I believe he does not.
I too cannot speak for the original poster, but I am an atheist because I've yet to see a coherent, non-self-contradictory definition for God, and, lacking a workable definition I see no reason to consider the existence of something thus undefined...
For example, one characteristic of God that seems to be widely applied is that "he" is omniscient, "all-knowing." However, presumably even God cannot know that which is not possible to know. And, just as we cannot know absolutely whether or not some being exists that is outside of our ability to percieve, a God too, cannot logically prove that there does not exist some being superior to him that exists in a realm that is beyond his ability to percieve. Consequently, a God, even if he exists, could not possibly know that he is the ultimate, even if he is. He cannot know that he is God, though he may think he is God. Perhaps he is merely an inmate of some cosmic sanitarium, deluded into thinking he is the outer extent of all there is.
Consequently, I think the question of whether or not God exists is a meaningless-- no different than asking does "woeigjowie" exist.
-- SyncReportedly, years ago a biologist and a physicist met over dinner or something, and the subject came up about the physics of bee flight. Some back of the paper napkin calculations by the physicist didn't work, and they were overheard by someone who reported to the press that "science proves bees can't fly." Of course, everyone knows that bees can fly, so it was seen as a "har har, those silly scientists, they don't know anything." Science gets it wrong, so science is just a bunch of stuffed-shirt eggheads in labs that have convinced themselves they know something when they really don't know anything.
However, it neatly ignored the fact that not too long after that discovery, the question raised actually led to further investigation of the subject and much was learned about insect flight. This story shows much is still being learned from that event.
What really happened in this case, is someone detected an error. Science has a long history of individuals who found errors in our understanding of the universe. In fact, virtually all the famous names of science are famous because they uncovered an error in our understanding. It is simply by the detection of errors that science advances. Science is a philosophy that learns from its mistakes, and in fact, without the discovery of mistakes it really isn't learning much. It's in trying to determine what's going on with a discovered mistake that science moves forward.
Consequently, every time I hear someone claim something to the effect of "oh look, here's where science got it wrong," I point to it and say, "oh look, here's where science learned something. Here's where science made progress."
To the extent that ID is looking for mistakes in science, it will actually improve our understanding of the universe, which includes evolution. Where ID differs from science, is that not only is no one in ID even looking for mistakes in ID, ID isn't even capable of making mistakes, because their explanations would explain any phenomena-- and an explanation that explains everything really doesn't explain anything. Drop an apple and it falls down? It's ID. Drop an apple and it falls up? It's ID. There's no knowledge content to such an explanation.
Any philosophy that is not capable of discovering its mistakes, must be either perfect or error-prone. And, since no human endeavor or understanding can be said to be perfect, I'd say it's pretty clear which it is. Science too is not perfect, but it has one thing the other philosophies do not, and that is at least some ability to detect its errors. Given the choice between a philosophy that can detect at least some of its errors, and one that pretends it can't make any errors, I think the choice should be pretty easy to make.
Some suggest that scientists are in some kind of conspiracy or cover up. Such a suggestion is completely ignorant of how science and scientists operate. While an individual scientist may find it difficult to uncover errors in their own work, scientists are fully aware that careers are made by uncovering an interesting mistake in another scientists work, and would trumpet such a discovery to the high hills instantly. Conspiracy, indeed.
ID proponents only succeed because they are not the only ones ignorant of these basic realities. Unfortunately, science education and interest is so weak that a large piece of the populace is similarly ignorant.
Even those who aren't anti-evolution or particularly religious may believe in things like astrology, for example. But when was the last time anyone was recognized for finding an error in our "understanding" of astrology? Astronomy has a long list of names of those who've uncovered errors in our understanding: Aristotle, Copernicus, Newton, Einstein, etc.., for example, and there are many many more. Where's the list of names that have improved the quality of astrological knowl
If I could just edit the "Microsoft" out of the PC, but still run off-the-shelf made-for-Windows apps, that'd be far better. I'd buy one today if I could do that.
How's Wine doing in that regard?
DVD is only dead to the greedy who aren't happy with the deflation in profit margins, due to the huge array of competition from everywhere, including scads of historical movies and TV programs and imported foreign content. They prefer to think it's not due to the competition but to piracy, but they're wrong. When you consider the time required to copy DVDs, its probably actually cheaper to just by a legit copy. Sure, there may be some bootleggers out there who are showing up with counterfits at flea markets, and a few downloaders who will D/L a movie to watch just because they can, not because it's convenient. But not enough to explain the hit big media is taking in the pocketbook, despite their claims.
Big media figures if they start up something newer and better they can get us all to transition to it and spend more $$$. However, while I think it could mean a short term windfall, I'm not convinced that HD gives you enough additional value to make it worth the transition-- most of what I like to watch already exists and isn't in HD format, I have no interest in spending extra $$$ just to see the modern crap that's mostly written by ad executives.
The DVD is not just going to go away, there's a huge amount of content out there that, even if the disks and the players start dying out, we'll be able to back them up on new storage mediums and still preserve them. And, much of the content remains worth watching, in fact, mostly more so than what's targeted for HD.
But let them pull out all the stops. And maybe there'll be suckers who will buy into it, but if I ever do I'll be about the last to do so, after the cost has dropped to about what DVDs are going for now...
They only wish it was dead because while it's alive it's a low-cost content rich alternative to the high-cost content poor HD market...
They don't last long enough to get boring or repetitive. As long as you don't play them over and over like sample loops that is...
Microsoft sounds are pretty identifiable though. We just started using a new telephone conference system at work and I'll bet money that the software was written by Microsoft, as the "tones" they use to signal when to say your name or enter your conference code sound exactly like the windows sound effects...
Hi Leo!
--That's assuming that the new TPM (trusted) PCs are actually secure against things like custom drivers, custom hardware, etc., that people will actually want to buy them and that Vista won't run on any non-TPM hardware (which includes most all of which currently in use), which I seriously doubt.
All hail the black and white world. Too bad that's not the kind we live in. ScentCone neatly ignores the fact that not everyone is equally equipped or positioned to "complete a solid high school and at least a real vocational education."
ScentCone's solution, rather than to make "competing a high school/vocational education" more accessible is to instead make the alternative "more unattractive." And by "accessible" I don't mean "dumbing down," I mean spending money to improve the quality and availability of the schools-- smaller class sizes, etc.. The fact is, many schools aren't working very well, yet the prevailing winds seem to think that "teachers just aren't doing their jobs, they must be lazy," is the reason, again in the simple minded black and white world that we don't actually live in. And BTW, the prevailing view of the problem and its associated "solutions" primarily just pisses off many good teachers enough to look for a better job. No doubt SentCone's view of a "good" teacher though, is one that would stick to the job anyhow, even as they are poorly paid and treated like lazy bums, because teaching is a "noble" profession. However, such an attitude may be turning teaching away from the "noble" profession and turning it into a place that only those too lazy to find better jobs are willing to suffer.
If the well-to-do aren't willing to contribute to improve the quality of education, and even the quality-of-life of the bottom rung of society, the well-to-do will ultimately also suffer when the economy nose-dives because there are so many in poverty that our support system is overtaxed-- though I guess you could make using that unattractive too, just letting the poverty stricken die in the streets rather than providing them health care. I trust I need go no further to explore the kind of effects that might have.
The idea that the poverty-stricken merely need to "tighten their belts" and "pull themselves up by their bootstraps" are simplistic stereotypical notions-- sometimes true but often not-- mostly useful when selfishly trying to escape the costs of social responsibility. Poorly educated and poor income individuals are specifically targeted by credit companies, for one example, as they are specifically vunerable to getting in over their head having been sold a bill of goods by our "consumption is king" society. But rather than questioning consumption, or even helping to educate these vulnerables instead we pass laws to make it harder to get out of such traps via bankruptcy.
Apparently, as long as consumption is going strong, it remains the moral high-ground, damn the poor, full speed ahead. They're hooked on that drug TV, force 'em to buy new digital ones. They're hooked on music too, another thing that helps them forget how poor they are. Switch formats to something cheaper to make and/or with limited life-span, and then raise the prices. Then can't pay your bills? Make it more unattractive by taking away bankruptcy options.
So what are you going to do, if (or when) the "well-to-do" have to end up spending extra tax dollars for prisons to keep the unruly poor off the streets? Is that really how you'd rather spend your money?
--Sync
Yes, it's interesting that they have so little confidence in their belief system that they feel a significant need for the government to shore it up...
Science is not about teaching the majorities beliefs. If it was we'd still all be taught that the world is flat in science class...
Based on Einstein's spacetime universe, any God that might exist would presumably be outside spacetime where the concepts of "before" and "after" and "infinite" time and/or space are meaningless-- and that's pretty hard to get your brain around, independent from any existance or nonexistance of God. I suppose such a God wouldn't experience events serially as we do, and petty emotions like "anger" and "jealousy" of such an entity are merely egotistical anthropomorphising.