Looking at it another way, Mandrake at least proved a user-friendly Linux was *possible*. Without that, we may not have had Ubuntu at all. The Linux community is indebted to the trail Mandrake blazed, but its time has long since passed, and all the money is behind Ubuntu now.
I don't mind that, as I like Ubuntu a lot, and have found it a remarkably easy distro to set up and use.
I suppose it's inevitable that Linux distros will be born, reach their peak, decline, and die. Diversity in the Linux ecosystem is a good thing. When (not if!) Ubuntu starts to slack, someone else will step up and replace it with something even better.
Whatever happened to these guys? Mandrake was actually my first foray into Linux. I remember it being quite user-friendly, it was just in the late '90's so driver support was dodgy. I kept it around on one computer or another for years until I finally gave up on it and went to Ubuntu. Just felt like it fell behind the times and was no longer the easiest Linux to use anymore.
Content providers have learned the hard way that the laws they've bought don't amount to much.
Sure, copyright infringement is illegal. Who is out there arresting and locking up infringers? Nobody, really. Only the most egregious offenders ever get busted.
Still, you can go after someone civilly, right? Too bad it's shitty PR to wipe out the life savings of single mothers because their kids downloaded a few songs. And you don't get much money out of it, either.
They'll keep fighting against the inevitable, but a self-policing Internet just isn't going to happen, and copyright infringement isn't going to stop. It is technically unfeasible and not the least bit cost effective.
Advances in technology allow us to do more with the same resources. That's what has been driving economic growth for the last couple centuries, and why that growth accelerated in the latter half of the 20th century. If we ever run up against a brick wall in our technological development, we'll be in deep trouble.
In fact, you can already see this in the world of energy. Our lack of viable alternatives to oil has resulted in volatility in the oil market--too much of our economic engine is dependent on a limited resource, and demand is increasing everywhere. It's not finding more oil that will solve this problem, but rather advances in technology, which are happening, it's just slow going at the moment.
When you hear about "productivity gains" in the average worker, what we're really talking about is technology. An engineer with a computer is orders of magnitude more productive than an engineer with a slide rule and a calculator. A factory worker is immensely more productive with a fleet of robots doing the manual work. The downside, before you point it out, is that low-skilled workers become redundant, which is why we must invest in education and retraining.
Our system is indeed closed in terms of what resources are available to us, however our knowledge is NOT closed or limited--we can always discover new and better ways to use what we have, and that is what drives economic expansion over the long term.
This is exactly why I got off of Sprint and went to DSL. The wireless broadband service was good--pretty quick, usable in most places, and my only gripe about performance would be the relatively high latency. But even watching my usage very closely, I would still hit the cap. I wasn't doing torrents, very rarely did streaming video or audio, and I still managed to hit 5GB. People who are looking to wireless broadband as a solution need to look elsewhere. 5GB might be sufficient for your phone, but it's nowhere near enough for a PC.
I have used nLite (Google it!) to solve exactly this problem, and I had never slipstreamed anything into an XP CD before. It was a remarkably painless process, and I got the SATA drive picked up by the XP setup without issues. I was really dreading the prospect of using a floppy, too, so I was very glad to discover you could slipstream so easily.
Sure, they're permitted to use evidence gained through other means. The important thing to remember about ISP records is that the ISP is going to have data retention policies, procedures for accessing such data, security measures, etc. You can, at least, reasonably determine if the traffic logs you get from an ISP are legitimate.
But a hard drive sent anonymously through the mail, that someone only claims belongs to someone else? That's worth no more than an anonymous phone tip. It's completely unverifiable and you have no idea where it really came from.
Copyright is not absolute. Phone books, for instance, are not copyrighted because they are collections of facts--namely, addresses and phone numbers.
Likewise, he could copy all sorts of factual information about the users on Facebook: their names, contact information, friends, etc. He could likely not get away with copying their photos, status updates, and so forth since those can constitute creative works and are thus copyrighted.
Nevertheless, just because something is online doesn't mean it's automatically copyrighted. Facts themselves are not.
That's most likely why Facebook went after him using the TOS claim rather than a copyright infringement claim.
Seems like it would be easy enough to get around this: set up a site for discussing for elections, and have it hosted outside South Australia. People can post as anonymously or pseudonymously as they like, and it's well outside the reach of the authorities. What an utterly useless law.
This isn't quite true. As noted by another reply, trademarks need not be registered, though doing so affords you extra protections.
However, copyrights do not protect "ideas, methods and invention." They protect a specific expression of an idea, not the idea itself. Methods and inventions are covered by patents, not copyrights.
I can certainly vouch for this.
on
Y2.01K
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
I work for a software company that's been in business since 1978. The product I work on is a real-time pharmacy benefit adjudication system, so it has to be up 24/7. They had one guy do Y2K fixes back in '99, and he retired last summer without telling anyone his Y2K "solution" was to just add 100 to any data containing a year. With the way this software works, that was fine--until 2010. Something tells me the timing of his retirement wasn't coincidental!
It wasn't hard to fix, but some people took really absurd shortcuts fixing Y2K bugs, when there are plenty of ways to do it that are just as simple and won't break after 10 years.
This is one of the "benefits" of having software licensed instead of owned. You didn't buy a game, you bought a license to play it, and EA can modify that license at any time. As others have noted, the box says they'll provide online play for a year, and guarantee nothing past that.
I don't think the problem is with the concept of licensing, but that the publisher can insert pretty much any terms they want. There has to be some common sense here. The publisher wants to be protected from piracy, fine. But the customer should be protected from having the value of what they purchased diminished at the whims of the publisher, too.
I'm not sure what a good legal framework would be, though. You could say any game designed to play exclusively online (such as WoW) would not have to provide the ability to run private servers, but any game that has both online and offline functionality (Madden, et al) would be required to offer the software to run a private server. The downside to this is that EA would just require an Internet connection for any game you could play online, whether you intend to do so or not. Then again, I guess you could go all the way and not have any exceptions at all. If you ever intend to shut down your online service, you have to provide the tools to set up private servers--period. I'm sure this would be fought tooth and nail, but if the online experience is a major selling point, who is the game publisher to forcibly obsolete your software?
The problem with that was cramming a Z80 processor into it. The GBA has a Z80 and an ARM7. The DS has an ARM9 (for DS games) and an ARM7 (for GBA games.) The Z80 is what runs Gameboy and Gameboy Color games. It could be they just couldn't fit a Z80 in there at a reasonable cost in terms of materials and R&D. Or Nintendo just wanted to obsolete the old games, since they no longer make money from them, and have no incentive to prop up sales of used GB/GBC games.
I guess I just don't pay such close attention to the props.
I can understand why they cut the temple scene short. This plot had been going since "Kobol's Last Gleaming," and focusing on exiting the temple would have been anti-climactic to say the least. I'll take it in the interests of moving things forward. But you're right, they could've analyzed the technology, since it was obviously superior to anything they have access to.
Ron Moore has said they made a conscious decision to use modern props and settings instead of sci-fied ones, to better help viewers relate to the BSG universe. Of course, that could be a cynical apology for uncreative production design and cheap props. I try not to let those things bother me.
I watch BSG for the politics, the ongoing plots, and the drama. It's not a perfect show by any means, and they clearly don't have as much money as they'd like, but if you ever read Ron Moore's blog or watch Eick's video blog or listen to the podcasts, you get the impression they really care about the show they're making. That counts for a lot with me. Don't know if it matters to anyone else, but I think their attitude shines through in the show itself.
All I can think of are the frequent re-use of stock effects shots, which are admittedly expensive. The corridor set is also reused extensively, and for people who pay attention to such things, I guess it could be annoying. Personally, I'm usually too interested in the story to notice when a set's been redressed.
You made a lot of good points, but I think some additional information would be useful. Most people don't know why certain drugs are outlawed in the US.
Opium was outlawed because Chinese immigrants in California were making a fortune selling it to Americans. Political elites were terrified by the idea of Chinese immigrants getting rich and having political clout, so it was outlawed. Keep in mind this was during the 1800s, and the very idea of white men and women hanging out with Chinamen just disturbed conservative elements to no end.
The motivation for outlawing "marijuana" was pretty much the same: plain old racism. William Hearst had a lot to do with it. Loads of people smoked "cannabis" at the time. But Hearst's papers started publishing all sorts of propaganda about some evil substance called "marijuana" that Mexicans smoked. It made them lazy and unwilling to work. The prevailing, irrational fear was that black men would smoke it and somehow that would induce them to not only be lazy, but rape white women.
I think if most Americans knew the utterly asinine and racist reasons we outlawed these drugs in the first place, they might be more willing to reconsider their legal status. But for whatever reason, the media won't examine the issue.
Personally, I think the key to judging a law's justness and value lies in evaluating our motives for creating it in the first place. Bad motivations lead to bad laws.
Replacing one religion with another doesn't help a bit. Quantum Mechanics is not predictible, and thus fails at the test of being a science by your own rules.
I'll assume you don't know much about quantum mechanics. QM tells us that while the motion of particles is random at a certain scale, their interactions ARE predictable. In fact, that is what QM does: it describes the interactions of particles. (I'll avoid a tangent discussing the school of thought that there is no such thing as particles, but rather a universe of intricate power-relationships. Google is your friend.)
A lack of intent is as much a theological concept as having intent; logically the two are completely equivalent. They do carry an emotional difference however, which is my theory on why the disparate concepts arose.
Lack of intent is not theological, it is observational. The randomness we have seen implies a lack of intent. If we saw patterns, we might assume intent. But the inputs to evolution are random. More specifically, they are random variations of a pattern. Natural selection culls disadvantageous mutations.
I think the real reason people get so hot and bothered about evolution is that it indicates we're Just Animals. There is no miraculous proof of a Creator. Evolution essentially tells us we aren't special, just lucky and adaptive. Some people can't deal with this, and have to believe in invisible men in the sky to give their lives meaning. I have no problems with people doing that, as long as they don't try to make everyone else believe the same way.
Evolution, as it is now, ignores theistic issues. Is there a God? Is there not a God? Evolution doesn't care, and doesn't attempt to prove it either way. This is the point IDers miss. Apparently, they can't leave well enough alone, but feel injecting a Higher Power into it is necessary. I don't think it is, and neither does most of the scientific community, or the US federal government.
Why would he know how to be a parent any more than the rest of us? That's a pretty big assumption you're making as to the definition of the word God.
I assume you're talking about other than the Judeo-Christian God, then. In which case, I might ask you to define "God" as it pertains to you.
Well, that's the other half that drives natural selection certainly. But that doesn't mean you can get rid of the first half.
I don't understand that statement. Care to clarify?
Neither can you actually observe randomness, since a random spot is indistinguishable from a larger pattern.
That is actually a worthwhile point. The only way we can deal with that is to continue gathering data until we begin to see a pattern. For the time being, though, we don't see one, so we don't assume one. That's science: explain what you can prove, keep looking into what you can't.
Useless because it fails to identify the cause of the change- it's just another theological argument.
What cause have we failed to identify? If you want to talk about causes, then what caused God?
But that's the problem isn't it: it does attempt to prove the lack of existance of one.
No, it doesn't. The only implication is that God is not required to understand the explanation. Do you need God to understand how gravity works? Do you need God to do trigonometry? No. So, why do you need God to explain the evolution of life which, while we like to romanticize it, is essentially the cooperation of numerous chemical machines toward their mutual survival? I know most people like to wax poetic about what life is, but in terms of physics and chemistry, life may be complicated, but it is not impossible to comprehend by any means.
Too bad random mutation is in and of itself a higher entity, or else by occam's razor that would be true.
Only because you seem interested in anthropomorphizing it, which is a mistake. "Intelligence" itself is a construct. You have to get beyond such things.
Isn't that why we have religion and philosophy, then? To explain what science can't? If so, why do some insist on using religion to re-explain what science already has?
The other assumes an Unintelligent Designer instead- Random Chance.
Most mutations are the result of damage caused by disease, radiation, and transcription errors. Combining genes (as in sexual reproduction) can also produce unexpected effects. None of these rely on a designer, and "randomness" is an essential feature of our universe (per quantum mechanics).
And yet, the way it's been taught in the last 50 years- it does rely on one. It relies on random mutation as a driving creator. So does ID by the way- except in that case it's God doing trial and error testing. Without a creator, intelligent or unintelligent, pushing change- both ID and evolution would find a stable state and the changes would simply stop.
Except randomness is not an agent, it's a concept. It implies someone with intent is responsible for our evolution. Natural processes have no intent.
And why would God need to do trial-and-error testing to begin with? I should think He'd already know what to do.
Evolution never stops because the environment is not stable. Natural selection occurs in response to an ever-changing environment. If a group of people were isolated in an environment devoid of any change--in terms of population, knowledge, climate, anything--they would only evolve to optimally survive in that environment, then stop. We do not live in such a world.
Nope- because God is no more complex than the concept of a random and indeterministic universe. The two concepts are equally complex.
But randomness is observed, as we see the lack of a pattern. You can't observe God, which makes the idea useless to science.
Incorrect- without that motivating layer, whether intelligent as in ID or random as in evolution, there's no way for natural selection to happen. Life in the universe as we know it would reach a steady state- and never again evolve.
See my statements above about constantly-changing environments.
Then the idea of a random, indeterministic universe, which is ALSO a monotheistic, or maybe a better word would be ANTI-theistic, dogma, should not be injected into that realm either- in which case you can't teach evolution. The basic theory *does* require a motivator- the only argument is over what that motivator is.
I don't understand how the lack of mention of God makes something anti-theistic. At best, it makes it agnostic--it does not know if a God exists, nor does it attempt to prove one.
The burden of proof is on Intelligent Design to show us why evolution could only have happened with the aid of a Designer. ID proponents have yet to provide such evidence, while evolution has demonstrated amply that random mutation results in natural selection, without the need for a higher entity guiding the process.
As I said before, ID assumes a being with intent. Natural selection does not. And don't confuse random input with random output. The results of evolution are anything but random, which is the whole point of natural selection.
I think the real lesson of evolution is that you can have random input (mutation) that produces orderly output (selection.) But many people seem to have trouble separating the two.
I'm afraid I can't point you directly to any research, but the general idea is that we can predict with some accuracy how a species will adapt to a chance in its environment. It is also something we have witnessed on a limited scale in real-time. One example is moth coloration in response to air pollution. We have actually witnessed and documented phenomena such as this, which demonstrate evolution via natural selection happens on a pretty regular basis, even now.
Here is a (very brief) link, with discussion of the moth phenomenon: http://anthro.palomar.edu/evolve/evolve_2.htm
But ID and evolution are not equivalent. One *assumes* an Intelligent Designer. The other does not. That evolution doesn't *require* such a Designer doesn't mean one doesn't exist, only that the theory does not rely on one.
Your argument actually collapses on itself, because you have essentially said ID does nothing but add a layer of complexity to evolution--a layer that is unnecessary, does not aid our understanding of the evolutionary process, and does not alter observational results.
That is exactly why I oppose ID being taught as an "alternative" or "replacement" for evolution. It is not, it is simply an ill-conceived modification designed to inject monotheistic dogma into a realm where it has no place.
What I find saddest about the ID movement is that they have the wrong-headed idea that evolution rules out an Intelligent Designer. Nothing about evolution implies it is random and undirected. While each generation is certainly full of mutations that have no purpose, over the long run all species evolve traits that assure their survival, a form of genetic "intelligence" itself.
ID proponents would be better served examining how evolution *validates* their viewpoint. Just because evolution doesn't specify an Intelligent Designer doesn't mean there isn't one, just that we can't prove one scientifically. For some reason, being unable to prove something scientifically means, to some people, it just doesn't exist.
I'm not a Christian, and I don't have a firm belief in any kind of God, but ID supporters are clearly looking at evolution the wrong way.
Slashdot Mirror
Looking at it another way, Mandrake at least proved a user-friendly Linux was *possible*. Without that, we may not have had Ubuntu at all. The Linux community is indebted to the trail Mandrake blazed, but its time has long since passed, and all the money is behind Ubuntu now.
I don't mind that, as I like Ubuntu a lot, and have found it a remarkably easy distro to set up and use.
I suppose it's inevitable that Linux distros will be born, reach their peak, decline, and die. Diversity in the Linux ecosystem is a good thing. When (not if!) Ubuntu starts to slack, someone else will step up and replace it with something even better.
Whatever happened to these guys? Mandrake was actually my first foray into Linux. I remember it being quite user-friendly, it was just in the late '90's so driver support was dodgy. I kept it around on one computer or another for years until I finally gave up on it and went to Ubuntu. Just felt like it fell behind the times and was no longer the easiest Linux to use anymore.
Content providers have learned the hard way that the laws they've bought don't amount to much.
Sure, copyright infringement is illegal. Who is out there arresting and locking up infringers? Nobody, really. Only the most egregious offenders ever get busted.
Still, you can go after someone civilly, right? Too bad it's shitty PR to wipe out the life savings of single mothers because their kids downloaded a few songs. And you don't get much money out of it, either.
They'll keep fighting against the inevitable, but a self-policing Internet just isn't going to happen, and copyright infringement isn't going to stop. It is technically unfeasible and not the least bit cost effective.
That's pretty much what Tor does, only it can be used for any kind of traffic, not just searching.
The wild card you're forgetting is technology.
Advances in technology allow us to do more with the same resources. That's what has been driving economic growth for the last couple centuries, and why that growth accelerated in the latter half of the 20th century. If we ever run up against a brick wall in our technological development, we'll be in deep trouble.
In fact, you can already see this in the world of energy. Our lack of viable alternatives to oil has resulted in volatility in the oil market--too much of our economic engine is dependent on a limited resource, and demand is increasing everywhere. It's not finding more oil that will solve this problem, but rather advances in technology, which are happening, it's just slow going at the moment.
When you hear about "productivity gains" in the average worker, what we're really talking about is technology. An engineer with a computer is orders of magnitude more productive than an engineer with a slide rule and a calculator. A factory worker is immensely more productive with a fleet of robots doing the manual work. The downside, before you point it out, is that low-skilled workers become redundant, which is why we must invest in education and retraining.
Our system is indeed closed in terms of what resources are available to us, however our knowledge is NOT closed or limited--we can always discover new and better ways to use what we have, and that is what drives economic expansion over the long term.
This is exactly why I got off of Sprint and went to DSL. The wireless broadband service was good--pretty quick, usable in most places, and my only gripe about performance would be the relatively high latency. But even watching my usage very closely, I would still hit the cap. I wasn't doing torrents, very rarely did streaming video or audio, and I still managed to hit 5GB. People who are looking to wireless broadband as a solution need to look elsewhere. 5GB might be sufficient for your phone, but it's nowhere near enough for a PC.
I have used nLite (Google it!) to solve exactly this problem, and I had never slipstreamed anything into an XP CD before. It was a remarkably painless process, and I got the SATA drive picked up by the XP setup without issues. I was really dreading the prospect of using a floppy, too, so I was very glad to discover you could slipstream so easily.
You forgot about Palm. But then, so did everyone else.... :(
Sure, they're permitted to use evidence gained through other means. The important thing to remember about ISP records is that the ISP is going to have data retention policies, procedures for accessing such data, security measures, etc. You can, at least, reasonably determine if the traffic logs you get from an ISP are legitimate.
But a hard drive sent anonymously through the mail, that someone only claims belongs to someone else? That's worth no more than an anonymous phone tip. It's completely unverifiable and you have no idea where it really came from.
Copyright is not absolute. Phone books, for instance, are not copyrighted because they are collections of facts--namely, addresses and phone numbers.
Likewise, he could copy all sorts of factual information about the users on Facebook: their names, contact information, friends, etc. He could likely not get away with copying their photos, status updates, and so forth since those can constitute creative works and are thus copyrighted.
Nevertheless, just because something is online doesn't mean it's automatically copyrighted. Facts themselves are not.
That's most likely why Facebook went after him using the TOS claim rather than a copyright infringement claim.
Seems like it would be easy enough to get around this: set up a site for discussing for elections, and have it hosted outside South Australia. People can post as anonymously or pseudonymously as they like, and it's well outside the reach of the authorities. What an utterly useless law.
This isn't quite true. As noted by another reply, trademarks need not be registered, though doing so affords you extra protections. However, copyrights do not protect "ideas, methods and invention." They protect a specific expression of an idea, not the idea itself. Methods and inventions are covered by patents, not copyrights.
I work for a software company that's been in business since 1978. The product I work on is a real-time pharmacy benefit adjudication system, so it has to be up 24/7. They had one guy do Y2K fixes back in '99, and he retired last summer without telling anyone his Y2K "solution" was to just add 100 to any data containing a year. With the way this software works, that was fine--until 2010. Something tells me the timing of his retirement wasn't coincidental! It wasn't hard to fix, but some people took really absurd shortcuts fixing Y2K bugs, when there are plenty of ways to do it that are just as simple and won't break after 10 years.
This is one of the "benefits" of having software licensed instead of owned. You didn't buy a game, you bought a license to play it, and EA can modify that license at any time. As others have noted, the box says they'll provide online play for a year, and guarantee nothing past that. I don't think the problem is with the concept of licensing, but that the publisher can insert pretty much any terms they want. There has to be some common sense here. The publisher wants to be protected from piracy, fine. But the customer should be protected from having the value of what they purchased diminished at the whims of the publisher, too. I'm not sure what a good legal framework would be, though. You could say any game designed to play exclusively online (such as WoW) would not have to provide the ability to run private servers, but any game that has both online and offline functionality (Madden, et al) would be required to offer the software to run a private server. The downside to this is that EA would just require an Internet connection for any game you could play online, whether you intend to do so or not. Then again, I guess you could go all the way and not have any exceptions at all. If you ever intend to shut down your online service, you have to provide the tools to set up private servers--period. I'm sure this would be fought tooth and nail, but if the online experience is a major selling point, who is the game publisher to forcibly obsolete your software?
The problem with that was cramming a Z80 processor into it. The GBA has a Z80 and an ARM7. The DS has an ARM9 (for DS games) and an ARM7 (for GBA games.) The Z80 is what runs Gameboy and Gameboy Color games. It could be they just couldn't fit a Z80 in there at a reasonable cost in terms of materials and R&D. Or Nintendo just wanted to obsolete the old games, since they no longer make money from them, and have no incentive to prop up sales of used GB/GBC games.
I guess I just don't pay such close attention to the props.
I can understand why they cut the temple scene short. This plot had been going since "Kobol's Last Gleaming," and focusing on exiting the temple would have been anti-climactic to say the least. I'll take it in the interests of moving things forward. But you're right, they could've analyzed the technology, since it was obviously superior to anything they have access to.
Ron Moore has said they made a conscious decision to use modern props and settings instead of sci-fied ones, to better help viewers relate to the BSG universe. Of course, that could be a cynical apology for uncreative production design and cheap props. I try not to let those things bother me.
I watch BSG for the politics, the ongoing plots, and the drama. It's not a perfect show by any means, and they clearly don't have as much money as they'd like, but if you ever read Ron Moore's blog or watch Eick's video blog or listen to the podcasts, you get the impression they really care about the show they're making. That counts for a lot with me. Don't know if it matters to anyone else, but I think their attitude shines through in the show itself.
All I can think of are the frequent re-use of stock effects shots, which are admittedly expensive. The corridor set is also reused extensively, and for people who pay attention to such things, I guess it could be annoying. Personally, I'm usually too interested in the story to notice when a set's been redressed.
You made a lot of good points, but I think some additional information would be useful. Most people don't know why certain drugs are outlawed in the US.
Opium was outlawed because Chinese immigrants in California were making a fortune selling it to Americans. Political elites were terrified by the idea of Chinese immigrants getting rich and having political clout, so it was outlawed. Keep in mind this was during the 1800s, and the very idea of white men and women hanging out with Chinamen just disturbed conservative elements to no end.
The motivation for outlawing "marijuana" was pretty much the same: plain old racism. William Hearst had a lot to do with it. Loads of people smoked "cannabis" at the time. But Hearst's papers started publishing all sorts of propaganda about some evil substance called "marijuana" that Mexicans smoked. It made them lazy and unwilling to work. The prevailing, irrational fear was that black men would smoke it and somehow that would induce them to not only be lazy, but rape white women.
I think if most Americans knew the utterly asinine and racist reasons we outlawed these drugs in the first place, they might be more willing to reconsider their legal status. But for whatever reason, the media won't examine the issue.
Personally, I think the key to judging a law's justness and value lies in evaluating our motives for creating it in the first place. Bad motivations lead to bad laws.
Replacing one religion with another doesn't help a bit. Quantum Mechanics is not predictible, and thus fails at the test of being a science by your own rules.
I'll assume you don't know much about quantum mechanics. QM tells us that while the motion of particles is random at a certain scale, their interactions ARE predictable. In fact, that is what QM does: it describes the interactions of particles. (I'll avoid a tangent discussing the school of thought that there is no such thing as particles, but rather a universe of intricate power-relationships. Google is your friend.)
A lack of intent is as much a theological concept as having intent; logically the two are completely equivalent. They do carry an emotional difference however, which is my theory on why the disparate concepts arose.
Lack of intent is not theological, it is observational. The randomness we have seen implies a lack of intent. If we saw patterns, we might assume intent. But the inputs to evolution are random. More specifically, they are random variations of a pattern. Natural selection culls disadvantageous mutations.
I think the real reason people get so hot and bothered about evolution is that it indicates we're Just Animals. There is no miraculous proof of a Creator. Evolution essentially tells us we aren't special, just lucky and adaptive. Some people can't deal with this, and have to believe in invisible men in the sky to give their lives meaning. I have no problems with people doing that, as long as they don't try to make everyone else believe the same way.
Evolution, as it is now, ignores theistic issues. Is there a God? Is there not a God? Evolution doesn't care, and doesn't attempt to prove it either way. This is the point IDers miss. Apparently, they can't leave well enough alone, but feel injecting a Higher Power into it is necessary. I don't think it is, and neither does most of the scientific community, or the US federal government.
Why would he know how to be a parent any more than the rest of us? That's a pretty big assumption you're making as to the definition of the word God.
I assume you're talking about other than the Judeo-Christian God, then. In which case, I might ask you to define "God" as it pertains to you.
Well, that's the other half that drives natural selection certainly. But that doesn't mean you can get rid of the first half. I don't understand that statement. Care to clarify?
Neither can you actually observe randomness, since a random spot is indistinguishable from a larger pattern.
That is actually a worthwhile point. The only way we can deal with that is to continue gathering data until we begin to see a pattern. For the time being, though, we don't see one, so we don't assume one. That's science: explain what you can prove, keep looking into what you can't.
Useless because it fails to identify the cause of the change- it's just another theological argument.
What cause have we failed to identify? If you want to talk about causes, then what caused God?
But that's the problem isn't it: it does attempt to prove the lack of existance of one.
No, it doesn't. The only implication is that God is not required to understand the explanation. Do you need God to understand how gravity works? Do you need God to do trigonometry? No. So, why do you need God to explain the evolution of life which, while we like to romanticize it, is essentially the cooperation of numerous chemical machines toward their mutual survival? I know most people like to wax poetic about what life is, but in terms of physics and chemistry, life may be complicated, but it is not impossible to comprehend by any means.
Too bad random mutation is in and of itself a higher entity, or else by occam's razor that would be true.
Only because you seem interested in anthropomorphizing it, which is a mistake. "Intelligence" itself is a construct. You have to get beyond such things.
Isn't that why we have religion and philosophy, then? To explain what science can't? If so, why do some insist on using religion to re-explain what science already has?
The other assumes an Unintelligent Designer instead- Random Chance.
Most mutations are the result of damage caused by disease, radiation, and transcription errors. Combining genes (as in sexual reproduction) can also produce unexpected effects. None of these rely on a designer, and "randomness" is an essential feature of our universe (per quantum mechanics).
And yet, the way it's been taught in the last 50 years- it does rely on one. It relies on random mutation as a driving creator. So does ID by the way- except in that case it's God doing trial and error testing. Without a creator, intelligent or unintelligent, pushing change- both ID and evolution would find a stable state and the changes would simply stop.
Except randomness is not an agent, it's a concept. It implies someone with intent is responsible for our evolution. Natural processes have no intent.
And why would God need to do trial-and-error testing to begin with? I should think He'd already know what to do.
Evolution never stops because the environment is not stable. Natural selection occurs in response to an ever-changing environment. If a group of people were isolated in an environment devoid of any change--in terms of population, knowledge, climate, anything--they would only evolve to optimally survive in that environment, then stop. We do not live in such a world.
Nope- because God is no more complex than the concept of a random and indeterministic universe. The two concepts are equally complex.
But randomness is observed, as we see the lack of a pattern. You can't observe God, which makes the idea useless to science.
Incorrect- without that motivating layer, whether intelligent as in ID or random as in evolution, there's no way for natural selection to happen. Life in the universe as we know it would reach a steady state- and never again evolve.
See my statements above about constantly-changing environments.
Then the idea of a random, indeterministic universe, which is ALSO a monotheistic, or maybe a better word would be ANTI-theistic, dogma, should not be injected into that realm either- in which case you can't teach evolution. The basic theory *does* require a motivator- the only argument is over what that motivator is.
I don't understand how the lack of mention of God makes something anti-theistic. At best, it makes it agnostic--it does not know if a God exists, nor does it attempt to prove one.
The burden of proof is on Intelligent Design to show us why evolution could only have happened with the aid of a Designer. ID proponents have yet to provide such evidence, while evolution has demonstrated amply that random mutation results in natural selection, without the need for a higher entity guiding the process.
As I said before, ID assumes a being with intent. Natural selection does not. And don't confuse random input with random output. The results of evolution are anything but random, which is the whole point of natural selection.
I think the real lesson of evolution is that you can have random input (mutation) that produces orderly output (selection.) But many people seem to have trouble separating the two.
I'm afraid I can't point you directly to any research, but the general idea is that we can predict with some accuracy how a species will adapt to a chance in its environment. It is also something we have witnessed on a limited scale in real-time. One example is moth coloration in response to air pollution. We have actually witnessed and documented phenomena such as this, which demonstrate evolution via natural selection happens on a pretty regular basis, even now. Here is a (very brief) link, with discussion of the moth phenomenon: http://anthro.palomar.edu/evolve/evolve_2.htm
But ID and evolution are not equivalent. One *assumes* an Intelligent Designer. The other does not. That evolution doesn't *require* such a Designer doesn't mean one doesn't exist, only that the theory does not rely on one.
Your argument actually collapses on itself, because you have essentially said ID does nothing but add a layer of complexity to evolution--a layer that is unnecessary, does not aid our understanding of the evolutionary process, and does not alter observational results.
That is exactly why I oppose ID being taught as an "alternative" or "replacement" for evolution. It is not, it is simply an ill-conceived modification designed to inject monotheistic dogma into a realm where it has no place.
What I find saddest about the ID movement is that they have the wrong-headed idea that evolution rules out an Intelligent Designer. Nothing about evolution implies it is random and undirected. While each generation is certainly full of mutations that have no purpose, over the long run all species evolve traits that assure their survival, a form of genetic "intelligence" itself.
ID proponents would be better served examining how evolution *validates* their viewpoint. Just because evolution doesn't specify an Intelligent Designer doesn't mean there isn't one, just that we can't prove one scientifically. For some reason, being unable to prove something scientifically means, to some people, it just doesn't exist.
I'm not a Christian, and I don't have a firm belief in any kind of God, but ID supporters are clearly looking at evolution the wrong way.