Git is like XML and violence. If it's not working, use more.
As an aside, I didn't read very carefully, and it looks as though this guy at least needs vhosts, if not a bunch of test and production machines. But I still don't see why there need to be a ton of development machines.
If you're the kind of person who would pirate, it is. I tend to buy games legitimately, but I also focus on multiplayer games, because those present much more of a problem to pirate.
But you're absolutely right -- it could be a reason simply not to play, and I wasn't going to play this game anyway.
It's still easier for me to respond point-by-point, just as it's easier for me to respond with a longer message than a shorter one...
The problem of evil in this world, as well as a book by that title, seems to be a big if not the biggest factor in your conclusion that there is no God.
It is the single reason that led me to that conclusion -- because, as I've described, I had an intense intellectual and emotional reluctance to seriously consider or accept that position.
Now that I have, I see many other arguments -- Occam's Razor is a powerful one, though perhaps not as good as the Problem of Evil.
The Bible hints at the origin of evil, but labels it a mystery to which we have not been given the full answer. It has something to do with how Lucifer an Archangel became proud and rebelled against God.
Here, I'd suggest Milton's Paradise Lost. While it was written by a believer, it makes an interesting case for Lucifer. Until his fall from grace, he's painted not as someone proud, but as someone who dared to question a tyrant's absolute authority.
I am not saying I agree -- given that I don't believe either actually exist.
But I can also define evil in purely secular means, and I can describe very specific instances for which I have not heard a good response. An obvious one is: Why does God allow babies to die in fires?
It seems that the question "why" is the one most often asked by believers and atheists alike.
You'll most often see atheists asking this question rhetorically. When I ask why God won't heal amputees, it is a rhetorical question -- my answer is, god is imaginary, and imaginary beings can't heal anyone. But I ask the question because it's one to which I don't see a good theistic answer, so it is likely to make theists think -- and the fact that there are a few really bad theistic answers, and one very good, simple atheistic one, makes a convincing argument.
I wish I could meet you in person, or at least chat with you for a while on the phone.
That might be interesting, at some point... Feel free to email me when the thread is eventually archived.
At the moment, the main reason I don't want to do that is the amount of other things I have going on in my life. It is easier to fit in time to work on a post than to make a phone call, even if one takes longer.
I was born in Germany, under Hitler, but immigrated with my parents to the United States after World War II. I was 11 years old at that time. Before I go on, I would like to say that I am truly sorry what my people did to your people.
I appreciate it, but I must also say that you are not your people any more than I am my people. I don't think it is a lack of respect for those who dies when I say I do not hold you accountable for what your ancestors did to mine.
I also am going to respond briefly to your story. I will say that I do not doubt your sincerity.
Just like the story of that woman, the evangelist, as a representative of Jesus, was given information about me that no one on earth could have guessed or known.
Without knowing what that was, it's hard for me to say. Even if you told me, it's also difficult to say without a record of everything he talked about...
I will say that we can all be fooled. The easiest way to prove this to yourself is to go to a performance by a good mentalist -- they will tell you things about yourself that no one could know, but with an entirely natural, explainable process.
From your perspective, I expect you are still convinced it was true. It is possible you have enough evidence to discount my possible explanations, though I doubt it.
But understand that from mine, it is simpler to accept that you are dishonest, or that you were knowingly or unknowingly misled by this man, or perhaps your mother was dishonest, or any number of other explanat
I'm amazed -- no one yet seems to have figured out one very obvious possibility:
You don't need development machines. Let them develop on their workstations. They're developers, they'll figure it out.
Use Git. Or, if you must use SVN, use developer-specific branches -- and after using this for awhile, it should be very obvious why you should use Git. The point is that each developer should be checking into version control often, without having to worry about causing problems for other users. Want someone to take a look at your code? Let them merge your code (or just check out your branch) and run it on their local machine.
Then, one staging and one production. Or more, if you need to be testing multiple versions company-wide. VM images to spawn each (so staging can be cloned from production, or vice versa), and Capistrano to deploy.
Granted, this wasn't used with a particularly large team, but we didn't have anything which even hinted at scalability issues down the road.
Now, if your team is so large that you need many test and many production servers, I apologize, but it does look like something of a WTF when you have web developers who can't figure out how to set up a webserver on their machine. I mean, every Mac comes with Ruby On Rails out of the box!
That's getting fairly close to each program requiring an installer, and turning the package manager into a download manager. It can be done obviously, but you start losing the benefits of package management over installers/uninstallers.
You lose a few, but not a lot. For example:
All packages can still be signed by a trusted source. The plugin manager has to duplicate both the mechanism and the work of managing that web of trust.
Automatic updates.
Full-system updates.
Dependency tracking. One plugin can depend on another, for instance.
Reverse-dependency tracking. When a library is no longer used by any programs you actually requested, it is removed.
Scriptable setup. With a copy of/etc and a list of packages, I can rebuild (or duplicate) a system from scratch. There are better solutions (puppet, cfengine, etc), but the good ones end up wrapping package managers at least for the setup stage.
Downloading and unpacking files.
Gracefully starting and restarting services as they are installed, or stopping them when they're uninstalled. For example, when I want to ssh into my laptop, I install openssh-server. When I'm done, I uninstall it.
That's just what I can remember off the top of my head -- and none of these are hurt by well-behaved install scripts. Some of them are actually helped by shared install scripts -- for instance, whenever I install any kernels or kernel modules, the module dependencies are run, an initrd is regenerated, and grub is updated. That's a lot of logic that I don't want to put into each individual package.
Now of course, the right solution here is to fix PHP, not the package manager. Can you come up with a plugin system which would be better implemented as anything more complex than either a single file or a dedicated subdirectory in a predictable place?
I was more referring to having multiple versions installed. There are also times that it's beneficial to install multiple times so permissions can be set differently. (That's kinda a hack.)
I think in that case it is.
I think it sometimes isn't -- for instance, it can sometimes be beneficial to have an old version and a new version of a program available, and it's something I wish package managers handled better. They do handle it, just not as well as they could.
Same thing, yes, but it's still the default approach of users to check the start menu first.
Except for users in the know, who check add/remove programs first.
On an emotional level, I've never used one that hasn't given me problems.
It's a fair criticism, but I've also never had problems with Debian packages, and now under Ubuntu. I had a lot of problems with Portage, to where I got to know it extremely well -- at which point, I appreciated it, even when I was building my own packages...
But that's a criticism of a buggy implementation, not of the idea itself.
Logically, I don't like the centralization of application control,
I do, so I have to ask, why not?
the lag between application release and inclusion in the package database, and the arguable disadvantages of having software modified by a third party,
That's a criticism of the distribution and the repository, not of package management itself.
And I would argue that there are advantages to this. Part of it is when application developers, deliberately or otherwise, shun the conventions of a system -- for instance, when I downloaded Gish, it was an entirely self-contained folder. Your CD key, savegames, high scores, and configuration all lived in the same place as the program executables, libraries, assets, and media.
Which meant that realistically, the only place it could be installed is/home -- and it means it's probably not going to behave very well on Wi
A lot of things come with no refunds. Most Steam games are either cheap enough that I really don't care, or have a demo version, also. So...
I bought batman:AA and it *sucked* to me. Nice idea, achievables make it crap for me, my own personal opinion. I decided this within an hour of playtime
Your fault you didn't play the demo, especially if it was evidence within an hour of playtime.
Think about it from Steam's point of view. It's far cheaper for them to send you a smaller demo, and both cheaper and more convenient if they don't have to deal with refunds all the time.
There's also the piracy aspect -- which is why, according to zorg50, many retailers won't allow you a refund once the game has been opened. Think about it from their perspective -- if you install a game even as old as Starcraft, and activate it with its CD key, tied to some online account, that means if you return it, and they resell it, it's now going to be worth far less to the next person, because they won't be able to activate it in that way.
You wouldn't want to buy a new Blizzard game and be unable to connect to Battle.net, would you?
Now, it may be different for console games, but that only applies to actual discs -- I don't know of any downloadable console games which can be refunded or resold.
2: steam goes down = services go down = you can't play your games.
This is only really a huge issue for single-player games. And I'll give you this one, since I haven't played it recently enough to notice, but I almost never see it go down.
Even from Direct2Drive, whom I prefer by a little, you download the actual CD image/executable and back it up, and have a CD key mailed to you.
Wait, so how's it "Direct 2 Drive" if it's actually direct-to-CD-then-to-drive, after you wait for something in the mail? WTF?
If you're saying you get that in addition to the downloaded version, fine, though not incredibly appealing -- a CD plus a CD key is far less convenient to me than a download and a password.
Oh, and you have refunds.
But, as Minwee says, only for games you haven't played, which means it wouldn't help at all with your Batman problem.
What would help with your Batman problem is to be a little less of an impulse buyer.
I'll chime in with another "me too" -- I like Steam.
I don't prefer it to no-DRM-with-a-service, like Stardock, but from a pure usability standpoint, I prefer it to no DRM at all.
If a game is on Steam and available elsewhere without DRM, I'll buy the non-DRM'd version. I'm just saying, not only is steam not that bad, I actually like it.
Will it send the message that gamers want dedicated servers? Not really. It more sends the message that PC gamers will take any unrelated excuse to pirate,
It's hardly unrelated.
One of the big reasons to get a legit copy of the game is the ability to play multiplayer on legit service. If they're castrating the multiplayer experience, that much less reason to buy.
I suppose this is linked with my reluctance to think of plugins as programs that use their parent application as a dependency. The interaction is fundamentally different since plugins don't merely use their parent application, they modify how it works. E.g. ad-block doesn't do anything on its own but instead modifies how Firefox works.
But the same can be said of many programs, and of things which package management has historically handled -- for instance, Apache modules.
PHP sticks out since you have to modify your config file to include modules.
I believe Debian does this with a post-install script now...
But I'm also not sure it would be terribly difficult for PHP to be configured to slurp a directory of config files, and then to have each module install its own config file in that directory, similar to the way/etc/apt/sources.list.d works.
There are also issues when you have multiple installations of the same application (package management isn't too amenable to this in the first place).
Good package management allows it.
On the other hand, good software wouldn't require it, under most circumstances -- if the goal is to have separate configurations and customizations to the app, good apps can have this done through configuration.
On Windows I have 10/18 programs that have an uninstaller listed in the start menu.
Some programs have both that and an uninstaller in add/remove programs, both of which ultimately do the same thing.
Flash and Java are actually several plugins (IE, Firefox, Opera),
Really? The last I checked, there was a separate Flash installer for Firefox and other browsers which implement the NS Plugin API. The ActiveX Flash, that is, the Flash used by IE, was a separate program.
I suppose part of my resistance to the idea of managing plugins with package managers is because I don't care for package management very much at all.
That's another discussion, though.
And I am very much a fan of package management, though I think there is a lot of room for improvement. I'd be curious to hear a criticism of package management which couldn't be answered by either a feature that you don't know exists, or a new feature that we all really should implement yesterday.
System-wide updates is a concept that I love though.
I'd be curious how system-wide updates could be accomplished without a package manager. Indeed, both Apple's Software Update and Microsoft Update look very much like crippled package managers -- crippled in that they will only manage Apple and Microsoft software, respectively.
It's obvious that the electric force operates over cosmic distances, otherwise we would not receive any electromagnetic radiation from distant objects.
Distance and magnitude, then?
That is, we see plenty of light in the night sky, but its effect on our planet and its movement is minimal.
That we ignore these seems similar, to me, to the fact that we still use Newton's laws when we aren't dealing with relativistic speeds or masses.
actually, atheists have some pretty good arguments, if you accept the assumption (belief) that all of reality, all there is, can be grasped by our senses or the extensions thereof we have developed.
I don't know any atheist who asserts this. Indeed, it'd be foolish, as those extensions can be further developed.
But the point was, rather, that whether or not there are good arguments, Strobel didn't seek them out and doesn't address them.
But then you haven't seen any evidence to the contrary either. At best, you could call yourself an agnostic.
That is a matter of semantics, and I will do my best to explain the conclusion that seems universal among those who call themselves atheists:
Theism or atheism is a statement of belief. Agnosticism or gnosticism is a statement of knowledge.
All "agnosticism" means is that you don't know -- it says nothing about what you believe. You could be an agnostic theist -- you don't know, but you believe anyway.
But if you look at the word atheist, a simply means not. I am not a theist -- I do not believe. That does not automatically imply that I disbelieve.
It is similar to a statement we might make about Santa Clause. You can't prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that he doesn't exist, but you don't believe him. Indeed, if asked, you might find yourself saying "Santa isn't real. He's just pretend, make-believe."
Thus, by this definition, I believe atheism is the sane default.
There is also the concept of "strong" and "weak" atheism, where a weak atheist is one who simply does not believe, while a strong atheist absolutely believes there is no god. There are not many strong atheists.
Now, I happen to be of the opinion that the various god-claims I have heard of do not exist. I could thus be classified a strong atheist. I do not know absolutely for certain, so I could still be classified an agnostic.
That is: I could be wrong. But I really don't think so.
Your life is far more faith-based than you realize. You go to bed at night in the belief that you will wake up in the morning. However you have no guarantee that you will.
You seem to be intelligent. Can you honestly not see the gaping hole in this argument?
I have gone to bed at night every night for several decades, and every morning, I have woken up. I therefore do not have faith, but trust, and evidence to back up that trust.
I have never had evidence presented for the existence of god. It would therefore require faith without evidence, as opposed to trust with evidence.
I understand (and really do enjoy) Hume's attack on inductive reasoning -- that past experience does not prove the future. It is, however, the best we have. Considering that you have woken up every day for the past several decades since you were born, if you were asked to choose, coldly, rationally, and logically, based on the evidence you have, do you think it is more likely that you would wake up tomorrow, or not?
Granted, this kind of thing is usually repeated so often as to become unconscious, but the fact remains -- I do not currently have trust in things that I don't have a good reason to trust. I therefore do not have faith.
Jesus made some rather arrogant statements concerning himself and truth. John 6:35, John 8:12, John 9:12, John 10:9, John 10:14, John 11:25, John 14:6. Unless all these statements are true, Christians have been following a deceiving and decei
inconsistent with the plethora of other Firefox plugins, extensions, and themes. I would understand if Ubuntu managed all of Firefox's add-ons that way, but it doesn't.
It does, however, manage a few other things, like the Developer's Extension.
The UI could be better, but I think you'll agree that the underlying principle is sound.
I also wouldn't consider that to be consistent with the Unix philosophy. Firefox includes a tool that does two things, adds and removes Firefox add-ons.
In other words, it includes a tool into a monolithic program, rather than split it out.
To see this taken to an extreme, look at uzbl. I'm not suggesting that is a viable alternative, but adding a feature to a program that could be implemented as a separate feature is the direct opposite of the Unix philosophy.
That is a different thing than a similar application for Pidgin plugins.
It really isn't.
If a package manager handled all known plugin systems it'd be a massive tool that did hundreds of different things.
Bingo.
Except that all intelligent plugin systems work in roughly the same way -- either put one file, or a group of files, in a particular location which is searched for plugins. That is consistent with how package managers work -- unpack a large number of files to preset locations, and track which physical file belongs to which package.
That's simplified, but not overly, I think.
Pidgin plugins seem to live in/usr/lib/pidgin, as single.so files.
Firefox plugins can be found in a number of places, including/usr/lib/mozilla/plugins, always as single.so files.
Firefox extensions can be found unpacked in/usr/lib/firefox-addons/extensions, each in its own directory (possibly a tree) -- and a directory tree is as trivial to manage as a file, for a package manager.
Kopete plugins are saved as/usr/lib/kde4/kopete_foo.so, where foo is the name of the plugin. AmaroK plugins are similarly found in/usr/lib/kde4/amarok_foo.so.
I could go on.
All of these are ripe candidates for package management. You'll have to think a bit before you can come up with a system that isn't -- and I would argue that it is a poorly designed system, much like a program which cannot be installed with a package manager.
You'd be right about Windows if programmers followed Microsoft's guidelines. Unfortunately, most don't,
Not in my experience.
Plugins are almost never in Add/Remove programs though (Flash and Java sorta are, but I can't think of any other examples).
I can't think of any other plugins I actually use, so you've got me there.
Windows application plugins are generally DLLs dropped into a folder and the only way to remove them is manual deletion or uninstalling the application.
In other words, they generally work as I described, meaning they should be trivial to manage with a package manager, and it'd be a lot of meaningless duplicate code to give each application a plugin manager. On Windows, it still makes sense, just as each program must have its own update manager, many of which run in the background soaking up RAM, CPU, and bandwidth, because there is no general-purpose, universally-accepted package manager for Windows.
But as Linux distros generally do have good package managers, including a per-app plugin manager is as bizarre as including a per-app update manager...
With one exception: Most package managers do not allow for installation to the user's home directory. (A few do; Rubygems is the most obvious example I can think of.) Therefore, Firefox's extension manager suddenly makes sense if you want to install an extension into a profile, rather than into the system, and with
IMHO it's ridiculous to require the use of a third party program to uninstall any plugin. How "easy" it is is irrelevant, it's inconsistent.
It's actually quite consistent, given the Unix philosophy -- each program does one thing and does it well.
Let me put it this way: We used to have something called Netscape Communicator, which became Mozilla. Later, it was split into Firefox and Thunderbird. People like it a lot better this way -- one program handles web, one program handles mail.
Even in the Windows world, this is more or less what you expect -- if I want to uninstall a program, I don't open the program to do so. Instead, I go to "Add/Remove Programs" and uninstall it there.
So, where would I go to install or remove anything on Ubuntu? That's right, the package manager. Maybe it's not where you expect it to be if you only use Firefox, but if you're already using Ubuntu and you've ever installed or uninstalled anything, this should make perfect sense to you.
If nothing else, consider the alternative -- should every collection of programs that could be called a system of plugins, let alone actual programs-supporting-plugins, be forced to implement its own add/remove dialog? I don't think so. Perhaps it could be integrated with the system one, but ultimately, that's what the package manager is for.
I know that mainstream cosmologists largely ignore electricity in the large-scale function of the universe. I believe that is a grave mistake.
I think it largely can be ignored, due to the distances used.
But that isn't the issue question. The question is, since you mention those who advocate for an electrical universe...
That is: If you're suggesting that Mercury could've been moved more by electricity than by gravity, you should be able to find some evidence for that, and a mathematical model to support it, and which can make predictions based on that. It'd help if it was more accurate than relativity currently is.
If not, you're talking about what "could be", rather than what is known to be, to the extent that we can know these things.
It is never any religion I'm talking about, but a living relationship with the person of Jesus Christ that will always change a person for the better.
Missing the point.
Whether or not any religion, including the one you're talking about, can change a person for the better is a completely separate issue from whether it is true or not.
A religion could be true, and not change anyone, or change them for the worse. A religion could be false, and change people for the better all the time.
he is not pretending to speak for atheists, but merely chronicles his journey from atheism to faith in Christ.
I suppose I'd have to track down where I seem to recall him making that claim. But again, in his journey, he picks really bad arguments for atheism, and seems to be actively seeking out theists, not atheists.
There is also a DVD out, based on this book and having the same title.
I might look at it, but from what I've seen of the guy on YouTube, he's fairly underwhelming.
See, one of the side effects of him not interviewing atheists on his journey is that he doesn't seem to have heard many of the responses to those arguments -- many of which seem quite obvious -- and that he hasn't heard many of the good arguments for the atheist position (or more accurately, against the theist position).
that is true, and there are plenty of atheists who are trying to prove their claim.
I don't have to prove my claim. My claim is that I have seen no evidence for a god.
Now, I can respond to claims that a god exists by investigating the evidence presented, but understand, all I have to do is show that this evidence is inconclusive -- the default position is lack of belief.
That is right! The Bible says our relationship with God has to be based on faith.
In other words, God is asking far more of me than any human relationship does. Humans do not often require a leap of faith -- it's a slow, steady process of building a relationship.
There's not one person on this earth that CANNOT believe. It is a matter of WANTING to or not.
See, I care about whether or not my beliefs are true. I want to believe as many true things as possible, and as few false things as possible. (I've stolen that line from Matt Dillahunty.)
Because of this, I do not want to believe something for which I have insufficient evidence to believe is true, and sufficient evidence to suspect is false.
Nor, realistically, could I choose such a belief, any more than I can choose to believe that the wall next to me doesn't exist. I suppose I could delude myself into believing this, and I could run full speed at the wall... only to crack my nose on it, because it does exist.
That's the problem here -- I have no desire to put effort into believing something that isn't true. If you can convince me that your story is true, that Jesus died, rose, loves me, will save me, etc, then I'll have no problem believing. If, on the other hand, you cannot really convince me, but ask me to set aside my critical thinking skills an
Except that Microsoft then didn't change IE once it actually was standard, nor did they work with other browsers to ensure that their implementation is compatible.
Right now, it's just browser makers doing their own proprietary things hoping to make it standard when things are finalized.
That's how it pretty much always has been -- browser makers add a feature, and if it's a good idea, it gets folded into the standard. Very rarely is it the other way around, and for good reason -- you wouldn't want to specify something in the standard which has zero implementations, and may not be possible to implement.
Regardless, there is an HTML5 standard, and it is possible to build websites that conform to that standard, and are viewable without modification on Safari, Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Konqueror, pretty much everywhere except IE.
Not until the standard is ratified, everything is subject to change.
That's a fair complaint -- but it doesn't change any of what I just said. I can build something to conform to this "standard", even if it isn't ratified, and have it work everywhere except IE.
In fact, even if we ignore HTML5, IE has been so bad about other standards that it makes sense, even if only to allow me to use standard CSS, or rely on Javascript actually being fast.
Except that Chrome Frame is doing this via modern standards (HTML5). So it can be used for more than just a single website, and if you don't like Chrome Frame, there's always another browser.
Actually, I hadn't seen them do this before I supported them, and I haven't purchased any hardware at all since then. So I haven't had to choose whether or not to support it with my bucks.
The tiny anomalous aberrations in the orbit of Mercury are interpreted to be due to Einstein's relativity, but this particular aspect of relativity measurement is based on the assumption (belief) that gravity is the ONLY force that affects Mercury's orbit.
Yes, yes, it could be anything. It matches the predictions of relativity.
A number with 36 zeros behind it is unimaginably big, and that is how much more powerful the electric force is than gravity. If there is only a tiny charge imbalance, that is, if the sun and Mercury are not EXACTLY electrically neutral towards each other, such an electrical force could lead us to misinterpret the orbital aberrations.
Except that I have yet to see such an electrical force actually worked out to explain and predict the movements of Mercury, as relativity has. All you've said is it "could".
If you like, go ahead and produce a system of mathematics that uses electromagnetism, and predict where Mercury will be. See how you do compared to relativity.
Yes it does and he did. We know the same way he existed, that we know Julius Caesar, Alexander the great, Aristotle or Confucius or any other historical figure existed.
The difference is, we have independent accounts of each of the other historical figures you mentioned. The only accounts we have of Jesus are the Bible and Josephus, and Josephus looks suspiciously like a forgery -- the parts mentioning Jesus are shoved into a place where they're pretty much irrelevant, they don't match the writing style, etc.
There is an excellent book, which you may get, which was written by a former atheist journalist by the name of Lee Strobel called "The Case for Christ".
Disclaimer: I have not actually read this book.
The problem is, his claim that he was a former atheist, and that he was investigating Christ as he would any other phenomenon... I doubt that. His motivations were not purely curiosity, but a Christian wife who was sad that he was going to Hell.
And from what I have heard, his presentation of the atheist viewpoint is truly pathetic. He sounds much more like a Christian who was angry with God than someone who's actually read the arguments that actual atheists use.
If he really wanted to present this as a "fair and balanced" journalistic endeavor, he'd have interviewed some actual atheists, and asked them if they could refute these "slam-dunk" arguments he got from the apologists. I suspect Dawkins would've been happy to talk to him.
After his wife became a Christian, her personality changed for much the better.
Whether religion can change a person for the better has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not it is true.
After painstaking and exhausting research, because he was an HONEST skeptic,
Again, if he was an honest skeptic, he'd have interviewed the other side, rather than pretending he alone could speak for all atheists.
Go back and read those riveting passages where he starts out angry, and within about three seconds, he's come to accept the apologist's argument. This is not someone who was honestly skeptical -- this is someone who, if he was honest, was simply angry and hadn't thought much about it.
It seems far more likely that he was not honest, and that he was playing the atheist strawman.
That's pretty blatant right here:
Lee, her husband, who was also a lawyer, put his journalistic and legal skills to work to prove that Jesus Christ and the record we have of him are fictitious.
No atheist I know of takes the position that we have proved Jesus Christ to be fictitious. The burden of proof is not on us. The burden of proof is on the person making the claim.
The fact that I can think of that in about three seconds, and Lee never thought of it at all, tells me he wasn't particularly familiar with the common
He did it right in that first he observed and then came up with a mathematical explanation of what he had observed.
That is exactly backwards from the way we know the things we know.
Observation can provide inspiration for a mathematical model, but the test for a model is not only whether it fits current observations, but whether it predicts new observations, which are then confirmed.
For instance, the Big Bang theory predicted the cosmic microwave background radiation, which was then observed. Einstein's theory of relativity was not invented to explain the movements of Mercury, but it does. As for black holes, I wonder if these mean anything to you?
Furthermore, it should be obvious that a thing is true or not -- the order in which humans discover it does not change the truth of a thing, only (perhaps) its likelihood to be true. Even if a logical falsehood is employed in discovering a hypothesis, that hypothesis may be true.
There is no such thing in nature as absolutely nothing.
Fair enough. At least, it's not worth arguing, as humans can certainly come up with concepts which don't apply to the real world, or concepts which, while useful in mathematics -- even in mathematics which have real applications -- are wholly imaginary.
For example:
The ultimate measure of what is real and what isn't, is more philosophical or even religious than science. Jesus Christ gave us a few glimpses into a reality that cannot be measured by our senses or their extensions.
This presupposes that Jesus Christ existed, that the report of his sayings is accurate, and that he was not deluded. There is significant doubt of the first two points, but if they were true, I suspect he was delusional.
I'm sure you've heard the saying about sufficiently advanced technology being indistinguishable from magic or the miraculous.
The point I take from that is that everything that exists can have a natural explanation. Anything that is "supernatural" and actually exists is actually a natural phenomenon that we don't yet understand.
I can say that largely because I am defining it to be that way -- for instance, if miracles and magic do actually exist, I assume they follow some sort of laws of their own, and quite probably interact with existing physical laws we know and understand. But I also believe that the universe does make sense, and that we have the ability to make sense of it.
It is a good and fun mathematical exercise, but...
I agree with you up to this point. I'll justify it with another webcomic.
like black holes, dark matter, dark energy and gravitational waves
But again, we have a fair number of observations which tell us black holes exist, and line up with certain predictions black holes would imply. We have nothing like that for string theory, that I'm aware of. Hawking Radiation is similar. People are working on it.
In my view, science and religion are two sides of the same coin in man's search for truth.
I would argue that the motivation can be the same -- note, can be. Religion is much easier to corrupt than science, since we don't really know what we're doing, whereas in science, anyone can come up with a counterexample.
But despite the similar motivation, they represent wholly different methods.
In particular, science demands that you turn on your brain and think rationally and critically. Religion demands that you turn off your brain and believe on faith. Science can throw out many hypotheses, and admit which of them we don't know, whereas relig
I did say digital, done right, should be able to compensate for this.
I don't think I meant to imply that it should degrade the same way analog does. However, I do believe that in most situations, it could handle better.
Note: IANA Radio Enigneer. However, consider:
Send five, ten, even twenty identical digital signals, all in different chunks of the spectrum. Include checksums. Now, you only need one twentieth of the signal to work at any given time to have a perfect signal -- you select which signal to used based on which one passes its checksum -- or, if multiple signals passed the checksum, the largest identical group. And you're still probably using way less bandwidth than analog.
Slashdot Mirror
In that case, one solution would be to point them all at the same development machine, and simply make the app skinnable.
Git is like XML and violence. If it's not working, use more.
As an aside, I didn't read very carefully, and it looks as though this guy at least needs vhosts, if not a bunch of test and production machines. But I still don't see why there need to be a ton of development machines.
True, but it there any more reason to pirate?
If you're the kind of person who would pirate, it is. I tend to buy games legitimately, but I also focus on multiplayer games, because those present much more of a problem to pirate.
But you're absolutely right -- it could be a reason simply not to play, and I wasn't going to play this game anyway.
It's still easier for me to respond point-by-point, just as it's easier for me to respond with a longer message than a shorter one...
The problem of evil in this world, as well as a book by that title, seems to be a big if not the biggest factor in your conclusion that there is no God.
It is the single reason that led me to that conclusion -- because, as I've described, I had an intense intellectual and emotional reluctance to seriously consider or accept that position.
Now that I have, I see many other arguments -- Occam's Razor is a powerful one, though perhaps not as good as the Problem of Evil.
The Bible hints at the origin of evil, but labels it a mystery to which we have not been given the full answer. It has something to do with how Lucifer an Archangel became proud and rebelled against God.
Here, I'd suggest Milton's Paradise Lost. While it was written by a believer, it makes an interesting case for Lucifer. Until his fall from grace, he's painted not as someone proud, but as someone who dared to question a tyrant's absolute authority.
I am not saying I agree -- given that I don't believe either actually exist.
But I can also define evil in purely secular means, and I can describe very specific instances for which I have not heard a good response. An obvious one is: Why does God allow babies to die in fires?
It seems that the question "why" is the one most often asked by believers and atheists alike.
You'll most often see atheists asking this question rhetorically. When I ask why God won't heal amputees, it is a rhetorical question -- my answer is, god is imaginary, and imaginary beings can't heal anyone. But I ask the question because it's one to which I don't see a good theistic answer, so it is likely to make theists think -- and the fact that there are a few really bad theistic answers, and one very good, simple atheistic one, makes a convincing argument.
I wish I could meet you in person, or at least chat with you for a while on the phone.
That might be interesting, at some point... Feel free to email me when the thread is eventually archived.
At the moment, the main reason I don't want to do that is the amount of other things I have going on in my life. It is easier to fit in time to work on a post than to make a phone call, even if one takes longer.
I was born in Germany, under Hitler, but immigrated with my parents to the United States after World War II. I was 11 years old at that time. Before I go on, I would like to say that I am truly sorry what my people did to your people.
I appreciate it, but I must also say that you are not your people any more than I am my people. I don't think it is a lack of respect for those who dies when I say I do not hold you accountable for what your ancestors did to mine.
I also am going to respond briefly to your story. I will say that I do not doubt your sincerity.
Just like the story of that woman, the evangelist, as a representative of Jesus, was given information about me that no one on earth could have guessed or known.
Without knowing what that was, it's hard for me to say. Even if you told me, it's also difficult to say without a record of everything he talked about...
I will say that we can all be fooled. The easiest way to prove this to yourself is to go to a performance by a good mentalist -- they will tell you things about yourself that no one could know, but with an entirely natural, explainable process.
From your perspective, I expect you are still convinced it was true. It is possible you have enough evidence to discount my possible explanations, though I doubt it.
But understand that from mine, it is simpler to accept that you are dishonest, or that you were knowingly or unknowingly misled by this man, or perhaps your mother was dishonest, or any number of other explanat
I'm amazed -- no one yet seems to have figured out one very obvious possibility:
You don't need development machines. Let them develop on their workstations. They're developers, they'll figure it out.
Use Git. Or, if you must use SVN, use developer-specific branches -- and after using this for awhile, it should be very obvious why you should use Git. The point is that each developer should be checking into version control often, without having to worry about causing problems for other users. Want someone to take a look at your code? Let them merge your code (or just check out your branch) and run it on their local machine.
Then, one staging and one production. Or more, if you need to be testing multiple versions company-wide. VM images to spawn each (so staging can be cloned from production, or vice versa), and Capistrano to deploy.
Granted, this wasn't used with a particularly large team, but we didn't have anything which even hinted at scalability issues down the road.
Now, if your team is so large that you need many test and many production servers, I apologize, but it does look like something of a WTF when you have web developers who can't figure out how to set up a webserver on their machine. I mean, every Mac comes with Ruby On Rails out of the box!
VPN, SSH, SFTP, SCP, SSL'd FTP, DAV in HTTPS, the list goes on.
That's getting fairly close to each program requiring an installer, and turning the package manager into a download manager. It can be done obviously, but you start losing the benefits of package management over installers/uninstallers.
You lose a few, but not a lot. For example:
That's just what I can remember off the top of my head -- and none of these are hurt by well-behaved install scripts. Some of them are actually helped by shared install scripts -- for instance, whenever I install any kernels or kernel modules, the module dependencies are run, an initrd is regenerated, and grub is updated. That's a lot of logic that I don't want to put into each individual package.
Now of course, the right solution here is to fix PHP, not the package manager. Can you come up with a plugin system which would be better implemented as anything more complex than either a single file or a dedicated subdirectory in a predictable place?
I was more referring to having multiple versions installed. There are also times that it's beneficial to install multiple times so permissions can be set differently. (That's kinda a hack.)
I think in that case it is.
I think it sometimes isn't -- for instance, it can sometimes be beneficial to have an old version and a new version of a program available, and it's something I wish package managers handled better. They do handle it, just not as well as they could.
Same thing, yes, but it's still the default approach of users to check the start menu first.
Except for users in the know, who check add/remove programs first.
On an emotional level, I've never used one that hasn't given me problems.
It's a fair criticism, but I've also never had problems with Debian packages, and now under Ubuntu. I had a lot of problems with Portage, to where I got to know it extremely well -- at which point, I appreciated it, even when I was building my own packages...
But that's a criticism of a buggy implementation, not of the idea itself.
Logically, I don't like the centralization of application control,
I do, so I have to ask, why not?
the lag between application release and inclusion in the package database, and the arguable disadvantages of having software modified by a third party,
That's a criticism of the distribution and the repository, not of package management itself.
And I would argue that there are advantages to this. Part of it is when application developers, deliberately or otherwise, shun the conventions of a system -- for instance, when I downloaded Gish, it was an entirely self-contained folder. Your CD key, savegames, high scores, and configuration all lived in the same place as the program executables, libraries, assets, and media.
Which meant that realistically, the only place it could be installed is /home -- and it means it's probably not going to behave very well on Wi
steam policy: no refunds.
A lot of things come with no refunds. Most Steam games are either cheap enough that I really don't care, or have a demo version, also. So...
I bought batman:AA and it *sucked* to me. Nice idea, achievables make it crap for me, my own personal opinion. I decided this within an hour of playtime
Your fault you didn't play the demo, especially if it was evidence within an hour of playtime.
Think about it from Steam's point of view. It's far cheaper for them to send you a smaller demo, and both cheaper and more convenient if they don't have to deal with refunds all the time.
There's also the piracy aspect -- which is why, according to zorg50, many retailers won't allow you a refund once the game has been opened. Think about it from their perspective -- if you install a game even as old as Starcraft, and activate it with its CD key, tied to some online account, that means if you return it, and they resell it, it's now going to be worth far less to the next person, because they won't be able to activate it in that way.
You wouldn't want to buy a new Blizzard game and be unable to connect to Battle.net, would you?
Now, it may be different for console games, but that only applies to actual discs -- I don't know of any downloadable console games which can be refunded or resold.
2: steam goes down = services go down = you can't play your games.
This is only really a huge issue for single-player games. And I'll give you this one, since I haven't played it recently enough to notice, but I almost never see it go down.
Even from Direct2Drive, whom I prefer by a little, you download the actual CD image/executable and back it up, and have a CD key mailed to you.
Wait, so how's it "Direct 2 Drive" if it's actually direct-to-CD-then-to-drive, after you wait for something in the mail? WTF?
If you're saying you get that in addition to the downloaded version, fine, though not incredibly appealing -- a CD plus a CD key is far less convenient to me than a download and a password.
Oh, and you have refunds.
But, as Minwee says, only for games you haven't played, which means it wouldn't help at all with your Batman problem.
What would help with your Batman problem is to be a little less of an impulse buyer.
I'll chime in with another "me too" -- I like Steam.
I don't prefer it to no-DRM-with-a-service, like Stardock, but from a pure usability standpoint, I prefer it to no DRM at all.
If a game is on Steam and available elsewhere without DRM, I'll buy the non-DRM'd version. I'm just saying, not only is steam not that bad, I actually like it.
Will it send the message that gamers want dedicated servers? Not really. It more sends the message that PC gamers will take any unrelated excuse to pirate,
It's hardly unrelated.
One of the big reasons to get a legit copy of the game is the ability to play multiplayer on legit service. If they're castrating the multiplayer experience, that much less reason to buy.
I suppose this is linked with my reluctance to think of plugins as programs that use their parent application as a dependency. The interaction is fundamentally different since plugins don't merely use their parent application, they modify how it works. E.g. ad-block doesn't do anything on its own but instead modifies how Firefox works.
But the same can be said of many programs, and of things which package management has historically handled -- for instance, Apache modules.
PHP sticks out since you have to modify your config file to include modules.
I believe Debian does this with a post-install script now...
But I'm also not sure it would be terribly difficult for PHP to be configured to slurp a directory of config files, and then to have each module install its own config file in that directory, similar to the way /etc/apt/sources.list.d works.
There are also issues when you have multiple installations of the same application (package management isn't too amenable to this in the first place).
Good package management allows it.
On the other hand, good software wouldn't require it, under most circumstances -- if the goal is to have separate configurations and customizations to the app, good apps can have this done through configuration.
On Windows I have 10/18 programs that have an uninstaller listed in the start menu.
Some programs have both that and an uninstaller in add/remove programs, both of which ultimately do the same thing.
Flash and Java are actually several plugins (IE, Firefox, Opera),
Really? The last I checked, there was a separate Flash installer for Firefox and other browsers which implement the NS Plugin API. The ActiveX Flash, that is, the Flash used by IE, was a separate program.
I suppose part of my resistance to the idea of managing plugins with package managers is because I don't care for package management very much at all.
That's another discussion, though.
And I am very much a fan of package management, though I think there is a lot of room for improvement. I'd be curious to hear a criticism of package management which couldn't be answered by either a feature that you don't know exists, or a new feature that we all really should implement yesterday.
System-wide updates is a concept that I love though.
I'd be curious how system-wide updates could be accomplished without a package manager. Indeed, both Apple's Software Update and Microsoft Update look very much like crippled package managers -- crippled in that they will only manage Apple and Microsoft software, respectively.
It's obvious that the electric force operates over cosmic distances, otherwise we would not receive any electromagnetic radiation from distant objects.
Distance and magnitude, then?
That is, we see plenty of light in the night sky, but its effect on our planet and its movement is minimal.
That we ignore these seems similar, to me, to the fact that we still use Newton's laws when we aren't dealing with relativistic speeds or masses.
actually, atheists have some pretty good arguments, if you accept the assumption (belief) that all of reality, all there is, can be grasped by our senses or the extensions thereof we have developed.
I don't know any atheist who asserts this. Indeed, it'd be foolish, as those extensions can be further developed.
But the point was, rather, that whether or not there are good arguments, Strobel didn't seek them out and doesn't address them.
But then you haven't seen any evidence to the contrary either. At best, you could call yourself an agnostic.
That is a matter of semantics, and I will do my best to explain the conclusion that seems universal among those who call themselves atheists:
Theism or atheism is a statement of belief. Agnosticism or gnosticism is a statement of knowledge.
All "agnosticism" means is that you don't know -- it says nothing about what you believe. You could be an agnostic theist -- you don't know, but you believe anyway.
But if you look at the word atheist, a simply means not. I am not a theist -- I do not believe. That does not automatically imply that I disbelieve.
It is similar to a statement we might make about Santa Clause. You can't prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that he doesn't exist, but you don't believe him. Indeed, if asked, you might find yourself saying "Santa isn't real. He's just pretend, make-believe."
Thus, by this definition, I believe atheism is the sane default.
There is also the concept of "strong" and "weak" atheism, where a weak atheist is one who simply does not believe, while a strong atheist absolutely believes there is no god. There are not many strong atheists.
Now, I happen to be of the opinion that the various god-claims I have heard of do not exist. I could thus be classified a strong atheist. I do not know absolutely for certain, so I could still be classified an agnostic.
That is: I could be wrong. But I really don't think so.
Your life is far more faith-based than you realize. You go to bed at night in the belief that you will wake up in the morning. However you have no guarantee that you will.
You seem to be intelligent. Can you honestly not see the gaping hole in this argument?
I have gone to bed at night every night for several decades, and every morning, I have woken up. I therefore do not have faith, but trust, and evidence to back up that trust.
I have never had evidence presented for the existence of god. It would therefore require faith without evidence, as opposed to trust with evidence.
I understand (and really do enjoy) Hume's attack on inductive reasoning -- that past experience does not prove the future. It is, however, the best we have. Considering that you have woken up every day for the past several decades since you were born, if you were asked to choose, coldly, rationally, and logically, based on the evidence you have, do you think it is more likely that you would wake up tomorrow, or not?
Granted, this kind of thing is usually repeated so often as to become unconscious, but the fact remains -- I do not currently have trust in things that I don't have a good reason to trust. I therefore do not have faith.
Jesus made some rather arrogant statements concerning himself and truth.
John 6:35, John 8:12, John 9:12, John 10:9, John 10:14, John 11:25, John 14:6.
Unless all these statements are true, Christians have been following a deceiving and decei
inconsistent with the plethora of other Firefox plugins, extensions, and themes. I would understand if Ubuntu managed all of Firefox's add-ons that way, but it doesn't.
It does, however, manage a few other things, like the Developer's Extension.
The UI could be better, but I think you'll agree that the underlying principle is sound.
I also wouldn't consider that to be consistent with the Unix philosophy. Firefox includes a tool that does two things, adds and removes Firefox add-ons.
In other words, it includes a tool into a monolithic program, rather than split it out.
To see this taken to an extreme, look at uzbl. I'm not suggesting that is a viable alternative, but adding a feature to a program that could be implemented as a separate feature is the direct opposite of the Unix philosophy.
That is a different thing than a similar application for Pidgin plugins.
It really isn't.
If a package manager handled all known plugin systems it'd be a massive tool that did hundreds of different things.
Bingo.
Except that all intelligent plugin systems work in roughly the same way -- either put one file, or a group of files, in a particular location which is searched for plugins. That is consistent with how package managers work -- unpack a large number of files to preset locations, and track which physical file belongs to which package.
That's simplified, but not overly, I think.
Pidgin plugins seem to live in /usr/lib/pidgin, as single .so files.
Firefox plugins can be found in a number of places, including /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins, always as single .so files.
Firefox extensions can be found unpacked in /usr/lib/firefox-addons/extensions, each in its own directory (possibly a tree) -- and a directory tree is as trivial to manage as a file, for a package manager.
Kopete plugins are saved as /usr/lib/kde4/kopete_foo.so, where foo is the name of the plugin. AmaroK plugins are similarly found in /usr/lib/kde4/amarok_foo.so.
I could go on.
All of these are ripe candidates for package management. You'll have to think a bit before you can come up with a system that isn't -- and I would argue that it is a poorly designed system, much like a program which cannot be installed with a package manager.
You'd be right about Windows if programmers followed Microsoft's guidelines. Unfortunately, most don't,
Not in my experience.
Plugins are almost never in Add/Remove programs though (Flash and Java sorta are, but I can't think of any other examples).
I can't think of any other plugins I actually use, so you've got me there.
Windows application plugins are generally DLLs dropped into a folder and the only way to remove them is manual deletion or uninstalling the application.
In other words, they generally work as I described, meaning they should be trivial to manage with a package manager, and it'd be a lot of meaningless duplicate code to give each application a plugin manager. On Windows, it still makes sense, just as each program must have its own update manager, many of which run in the background soaking up RAM, CPU, and bandwidth, because there is no general-purpose, universally-accepted package manager for Windows.
But as Linux distros generally do have good package managers, including a per-app plugin manager is as bizarre as including a per-app update manager...
With one exception: Most package managers do not allow for installation to the user's home directory. (A few do; Rubygems is the most obvious example I can think of.) Therefore, Firefox's extension manager suddenly makes sense if you want to install an extension into a profile, rather than into the system, and with
IMHO it's ridiculous to require the use of a third party program to uninstall any plugin. How "easy" it is is irrelevant, it's inconsistent.
It's actually quite consistent, given the Unix philosophy -- each program does one thing and does it well.
Let me put it this way: We used to have something called Netscape Communicator, which became Mozilla. Later, it was split into Firefox and Thunderbird. People like it a lot better this way -- one program handles web, one program handles mail.
Even in the Windows world, this is more or less what you expect -- if I want to uninstall a program, I don't open the program to do so. Instead, I go to "Add/Remove Programs" and uninstall it there.
So, where would I go to install or remove anything on Ubuntu? That's right, the package manager. Maybe it's not where you expect it to be if you only use Firefox, but if you're already using Ubuntu and you've ever installed or uninstalled anything, this should make perfect sense to you.
If nothing else, consider the alternative -- should every collection of programs that could be called a system of plugins, let alone actual programs-supporting-plugins, be forced to implement its own add/remove dialog? I don't think so. Perhaps it could be integrated with the system one, but ultimately, that's what the package manager is for.
It can, however, be removed via the package manager.
Can the .NET addon be removed at all, without hacking the registry?
No, using the package manager is not even remotely comparable to hacking the registry.
I know that mainstream cosmologists largely ignore electricity in the large-scale function of the universe. I believe that is a grave mistake.
I think it largely can be ignored, due to the distances used.
But that isn't the issue question. The question is, since you mention those who advocate for an electrical universe...
That is: If you're suggesting that Mercury could've been moved more by electricity than by gravity, you should be able to find some evidence for that, and a mathematical model to support it, and which can make predictions based on that. It'd help if it was more accurate than relativity currently is.
If not, you're talking about what "could be", rather than what is known to be, to the extent that we can know these things.
It is never any religion I'm talking about, but a living relationship with the person of Jesus Christ that will always change a person for the better.
Missing the point.
Whether or not any religion, including the one you're talking about, can change a person for the better is a completely separate issue from whether it is true or not.
A religion could be true, and not change anyone, or change them for the worse. A religion could be false, and change people for the better all the time.
he is not pretending to speak for atheists, but merely chronicles his journey from atheism to faith in Christ.
I suppose I'd have to track down where I seem to recall him making that claim. But again, in his journey, he picks really bad arguments for atheism, and seems to be actively seeking out theists, not atheists.
There is also a DVD out, based on this book and having the same title.
I might look at it, but from what I've seen of the guy on YouTube, he's fairly underwhelming.
See, one of the side effects of him not interviewing atheists on his journey is that he doesn't seem to have heard many of the responses to those arguments -- many of which seem quite obvious -- and that he hasn't heard many of the good arguments for the atheist position (or more accurately, against the theist position).
that is true, and there are plenty of atheists who are trying to prove their claim.
I don't have to prove my claim. My claim is that I have seen no evidence for a god.
Now, I can respond to claims that a god exists by investigating the evidence presented, but understand, all I have to do is show that this evidence is inconclusive -- the default position is lack of belief.
That is right! The Bible says our relationship with God has to be based on faith.
In other words, God is asking far more of me than any human relationship does. Humans do not often require a leap of faith -- it's a slow, steady process of building a relationship.
There's not one person on this earth that CANNOT believe. It is a matter of WANTING to or not.
See, I care about whether or not my beliefs are true. I want to believe as many true things as possible, and as few false things as possible. (I've stolen that line from Matt Dillahunty.)
Because of this, I do not want to believe something for which I have insufficient evidence to believe is true, and sufficient evidence to suspect is false.
Nor, realistically, could I choose such a belief, any more than I can choose to believe that the wall next to me doesn't exist. I suppose I could delude myself into believing this, and I could run full speed at the wall... only to crack my nose on it, because it does exist.
That's the problem here -- I have no desire to put effort into believing something that isn't true. If you can convince me that your story is true, that Jesus died, rose, loves me, will save me, etc, then I'll have no problem believing. If, on the other hand, you cannot really convince me, but ask me to set aside my critical thinking skills an
Except that Microsoft then didn't change IE once it actually was standard, nor did they work with other browsers to ensure that their implementation is compatible.
There is no HTML5 standard.
http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/Overview.html
Right now, it's just browser makers doing their own proprietary things hoping to make it standard when things are finalized.
That's how it pretty much always has been -- browser makers add a feature, and if it's a good idea, it gets folded into the standard. Very rarely is it the other way around, and for good reason -- you wouldn't want to specify something in the standard which has zero implementations, and may not be possible to implement.
Regardless, there is an HTML5 standard, and it is possible to build websites that conform to that standard, and are viewable without modification on Safari, Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Konqueror, pretty much everywhere except IE.
Not until the standard is ratified, everything is subject to change.
That's a fair complaint -- but it doesn't change any of what I just said. I can build something to conform to this "standard", even if it isn't ratified, and have it work everywhere except IE.
In fact, even if we ignore HTML5, IE has been so bad about other standards that it makes sense, even if only to allow me to use standard CSS, or rely on Javascript actually being fast.
As opposed to a backwards phone that is nearly two thousand years behind the times and even if it does everything right, you'll kill it?
Except that Chrome Frame is doing this via modern standards (HTML5). So it can be used for more than just a single website, and if you don't like Chrome Frame, there's always another browser.
Actually, I hadn't seen them do this before I supported them, and I haven't purchased any hardware at all since then. So I haven't had to choose whether or not to support it with my bucks.
The tiny anomalous aberrations in the orbit of Mercury are interpreted to be due to Einstein's relativity, but this particular aspect of relativity measurement is based on the assumption (belief) that gravity is the ONLY force that affects Mercury's orbit.
Yes, yes, it could be anything. It matches the predictions of relativity.
A number with 36 zeros behind it is unimaginably big, and that is how much more powerful the electric force is than gravity. If there is only a tiny charge imbalance, that is, if the sun and Mercury are not EXACTLY electrically neutral towards each other, such an electrical force could lead us to misinterpret the orbital aberrations.
Except that I have yet to see such an electrical force actually worked out to explain and predict the movements of Mercury, as relativity has. All you've said is it "could".
If you like, go ahead and produce a system of mathematics that uses electromagnetism, and predict where Mercury will be. See how you do compared to relativity.
Yes it does and he did. We know the same way he existed, that we know Julius Caesar, Alexander the great, Aristotle or Confucius or any other historical figure existed.
The difference is, we have independent accounts of each of the other historical figures you mentioned. The only accounts we have of Jesus are the Bible and Josephus, and Josephus looks suspiciously like a forgery -- the parts mentioning Jesus are shoved into a place where they're pretty much irrelevant, they don't match the writing style, etc.
There is an excellent book, which you may get, which was written by a former atheist journalist by the name of Lee Strobel called "The Case for Christ".
Disclaimer: I have not actually read this book.
The problem is, his claim that he was a former atheist, and that he was investigating Christ as he would any other phenomenon... I doubt that. His motivations were not purely curiosity, but a Christian wife who was sad that he was going to Hell.
And from what I have heard, his presentation of the atheist viewpoint is truly pathetic. He sounds much more like a Christian who was angry with God than someone who's actually read the arguments that actual atheists use.
If he really wanted to present this as a "fair and balanced" journalistic endeavor, he'd have interviewed some actual atheists, and asked them if they could refute these "slam-dunk" arguments he got from the apologists. I suspect Dawkins would've been happy to talk to him.
After his wife became a Christian, her personality changed for much the better.
Whether religion can change a person for the better has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not it is true.
After painstaking and exhausting research, because he was an HONEST skeptic,
Again, if he was an honest skeptic, he'd have interviewed the other side, rather than pretending he alone could speak for all atheists.
Go back and read those riveting passages where he starts out angry, and within about three seconds, he's come to accept the apologist's argument. This is not someone who was honestly skeptical -- this is someone who, if he was honest, was simply angry and hadn't thought much about it.
It seems far more likely that he was not honest, and that he was playing the atheist strawman.
That's pretty blatant right here:
Lee, her husband, who was also a lawyer, put his journalistic and legal skills to work to prove that Jesus Christ and the record we have of him are fictitious.
No atheist I know of takes the position that we have proved Jesus Christ to be fictitious. The burden of proof is not on us. The burden of proof is on the person making the claim.
The fact that I can think of that in about three seconds, and Lee never thought of it at all, tells me he wasn't particularly familiar with the common
He did it right in that first he observed and then came up with a mathematical explanation of what he had observed.
That is exactly backwards from the way we know the things we know.
Observation can provide inspiration for a mathematical model, but the test for a model is not only whether it fits current observations, but whether it predicts new observations, which are then confirmed.
For instance, the Big Bang theory predicted the cosmic microwave background radiation, which was then observed. Einstein's theory of relativity was not invented to explain the movements of Mercury, but it does. As for black holes, I wonder if these mean anything to you?
Furthermore, it should be obvious that a thing is true or not -- the order in which humans discover it does not change the truth of a thing, only (perhaps) its likelihood to be true. Even if a logical falsehood is employed in discovering a hypothesis, that hypothesis may be true.
There is no such thing in nature as absolutely nothing.
Fair enough. At least, it's not worth arguing, as humans can certainly come up with concepts which don't apply to the real world, or concepts which, while useful in mathematics -- even in mathematics which have real applications -- are wholly imaginary.
For example:
The ultimate measure of what is real and what isn't, is more philosophical or even religious than science. Jesus Christ gave us a few glimpses into a reality that cannot be measured by our senses or their extensions.
This presupposes that Jesus Christ existed, that the report of his sayings is accurate, and that he was not deluded. There is significant doubt of the first two points, but if they were true, I suspect he was delusional.
I'm sure you've heard the saying about sufficiently advanced technology being indistinguishable from magic or the miraculous.
The point I take from that is that everything that exists can have a natural explanation. Anything that is "supernatural" and actually exists is actually a natural phenomenon that we don't yet understand.
I can say that largely because I am defining it to be that way -- for instance, if miracles and magic do actually exist, I assume they follow some sort of laws of their own, and quite probably interact with existing physical laws we know and understand. But I also believe that the universe does make sense, and that we have the ability to make sense of it.
I could pretty much sum that up like this.
It is a good and fun mathematical exercise, but...
I agree with you up to this point. I'll justify it with another webcomic.
like black holes, dark matter, dark energy and gravitational waves
But again, we have a fair number of observations which tell us black holes exist, and line up with certain predictions black holes would imply. We have nothing like that for string theory, that I'm aware of. Hawking Radiation is similar. People are working on it.
In my view, science and religion are two sides of the same coin in man's search for truth.
I would argue that the motivation can be the same -- note, can be. Religion is much easier to corrupt than science, since we don't really know what we're doing, whereas in science, anyone can come up with a counterexample.
But despite the similar motivation, they represent wholly different methods.
In particular, science demands that you turn on your brain and think rationally and critically. Religion demands that you turn off your brain and believe on faith. Science can throw out many hypotheses, and admit which of them we don't know, whereas relig
There are digital tapes, but the tapes themselves are way superior and may even use helical scanning to record the same audio in digital format.
Wait, what?
So it's a digital tape that records the same audio in digital format?
Or did you mean for one of those to say "analog"?
If digital takes less space than analog then why I can't have 90 minutes of high quality digital audio recorded onto a regular C90 cassette?
If you mean that it's an analog cassette that stores the same data in a digital format, isn't it doing that already?
it seems that Digital HD takes the same amount of bandwidth as analog SD and digital SD takes about 6 times less bandwidth as analog.
I'd like to see a citation for that...
Sending 20 identical signals is less efficient than a better ECC that takes the same amount of space/bandwidth.
Point is that you can do enough ECC to make digital much more reliable than analog, in most situations.
I did say digital, done right, should be able to compensate for this.
I don't think I meant to imply that it should degrade the same way analog does. However, I do believe that in most situations, it could handle better.
Note: IANA Radio Enigneer. However, consider:
Send five, ten, even twenty identical digital signals, all in different chunks of the spectrum. Include checksums. Now, you only need one twentieth of the signal to work at any given time to have a perfect signal -- you select which signal to used based on which one passes its checksum -- or, if multiple signals passed the checksum, the largest identical group. And you're still probably using way less bandwidth than analog.