If you've got a full meal ahead of you, have a read of The Mind of God by Paul Davies [asu.edu] or Quantum Physics and Theology: An Unexpected Kinship by John Polkinghorne [polkinghorne.net] (Physics).
Let's not and say we did. I helped with HTML for a web page that was in to this kind of stuff. They also had an article saying it's narrow minded to not accept that things can be true and false at the same time, and one suggesting that chaos theory disproves entropy, because it shows that order can arise from chaos. It was briefly amusing, but quickly became depressing.
'To remove the perceived stigma, we would need to have more scientists talking openly about issues of religion, where such issues are particularly relevant to their discipline.'"
Which is where, exactly?
Most of the results were uninteresting, but if we look at the 17th run, you'll see here an effect that I suspect was caused by divine intervention.
My take on this story: Give me six lines by the hand of any honest man and I'll show that he's religious.
I'm not sure exactly what you're saying here, but do you essentially mean that everyone is religious, any anyone who says they're not religious is just lying? If that's essentially what you mean, then do you really believe this, or are you just lying?
The top scientists don't have a problem with religion. The most unscientific don't have a problem with religion. It's only those in the middle, those who think they know science but probably don't, which have a problem, statistically speaking.
Really? Where are the statistics for this? Or do you just think you know about this, but probably don't?
It's possible to be born with both an X and Y chromosome, but have all the physical traits of a female. There's a few ways a Y can be "defective".
It wouldn't be fair to force such people to compete with the men, because they've got the body mass/strength/endurance/etc of typical XX humans despite having a Y.
I'm not questioning the biology here, and this is kind of going on a bit of a tangent, but really whether or not it's fair kind of depends on what you mean by 'fair'. If we consider equal opportunity fair, then it is fair to have men and women compete together. And if we consider equal outcomes fair (which is kind of where gender separation is going, IMHO), then everyone should come equal, including me (who is not blessed with an Olympic physique). In the equal outcomes sense, it wouldn't be fair for me to compete with those Olympic females, since they're an awful lot better than I am. But, then, that's the point of competition, really, isn't it...
I agree, Eiffel would be my choice too. Pascal syntax is nicer to learn programming concepts with than C syntax, IMHO. Students can learn other languages once they've learned the concepts. OTOH, I think it's better to start straight on OO than do procedural programming first and 'work up' to OO, because students will come to OO with a procedural programming mindset. The availability of a nice IDE, GUI toolkit and libraries is just as much of a consideration as the language proper. Eiffel does well on all counts, IMHO.
creationism is very much a minority opinion amongst christians
Perhaps not a minority, but certainly smaller than it once was. Jesus himself applied remarkable contortionism to the Torah, and his followers have faithfully continued this tradition to the present. I dare say current revisionist reinterpretations of scripture are the best yet. The eternal truth has come a long way in 2,000 years.
A less technical way to put it is that the average lobster doesn't give a shit about whether humans suffer, so there is no reason for humans to give a shit about whether lobsters suffer.
My sister-in-law's kids don't seem to give a shit about whether I suffer either, and I would love to rip their intestines out if I could get away with it. Do you think this defence would hold up in court?
Only if you're a lawyer. It seams clear enough to me, I get 'a license from the original licensors, to run, modify and propagate that work', without responsibility for 'enforcing compliance by third parties with this License'
It seems clear?:-/ As an introduction to the GPLv3, you've quoted the first paragraph of Section 10, paraphrased to make it clearer. I think the first paragraph of Section 10, if thus paraphrased, would be an excellent introduction to the GPLv3. However unfortunately it is not worded quite how you worded it, and rather than being at the start of the GPL, it's buried down in Section 10.
There are 242 lines of licensing text (not including the preamble and definitions sections) before the paragraph which you quoted (paraphrased) to demonstrate that the GPLv3 seems clear. What is abundantly clear is that you've not just looked at the GPLv3 for the first time, because no one doing so would, without sarcasm, say "It seems clear."
I disagree with this statement: "Understanding licenses isn't really an Open Source issue." Even for someone who understands the basic idea of the GPL, understanding the finer details of how the licence is intended to achieve this may be difficult, IMHO. For someone who doesn't understand the basic idea (and outside the world of GNU/Linux this is the norm), the GPL is undoubtedly even more confusing.
IMHO, the GPL would be easier to understand if it was arranged to list the rights it allows, and all the responsibilities associated with each right, something like as follows (numbers in braces refer to corresponding sections in the GPLv3):
Preamble 0. Definitions. [0, 1] 1. Receiving a Licence.
1.1. License grant is given upon receiving the Program. [10p0s0, 2p0s0, 11p0-2&7, 3p0]
a. License acceptance is implied by modifying or propagating. [9]
b. No warranty is provided, unless in writing for a fee. [15, 16, 17]
c. Additional liability disclaimers may apply. [7a]
d. Additional publicity restrictions may apply. [7d]
e. License adherence is not excused by other obligations. [12]
f. License termination may result from license breach. [8]
1.2. Additional permissions may apply. [7p0, 7p9s0-1, 14] 2. Using the Program.
2.1 Using the unmodified Program and fair use are unlimited. [2p0s1-3]
2.2 Making and using covered works is permitted. [2p1, 2p2s0] 3. Conveying Source.
3.1. Conveying verbatim copies of source is permitted. [4p0s0, 4p1]
a. Licensing restrictions may not be imposed. [10p0s1&p2, 2p2s1]
b. Patents, if they protect you, must protect everyone. [11p3-6]
c. Technical measures may not be enforced. [3p1]
d. Notices must be retained and made conspicuous. [4p0s0]
e. Additional names and marks terms may apply. [7e]
f. Additional liability indemnification terms may apply. [7f]
g. Transfer of control requires transfer of rights. [10p1]
3.2. Conveying modified source versions is permitted. [5p0s0 parts]
a. Above terms of Section 3.1 apply. [5p0s0 part]
b. Licensing must be available under this License. [5c, 7p1-2, 7p9s2]
c. Notices must be included and prominent. [5abd, 7p10-11]
d. Additional notices terms may apply. [7bc] 4. Conveying non-source forms is permitted. [6p0s0 part]
a. Above terms of Sections 3.1 and 3.2 apply. [6p0s0 part]
b. Source code must be made available. [6p0s0 part, 6p1-6, 6p11]
c. Installation information is required for User Products. [6p7-10] 5. Conveying Non-GPL Works.
5.1. Conveying linked Affero GPL works is permitted. [13]
5.2. Conveying aggregates is permitted. [5p5] How to Apply this License
Patents aren't secret, that's the whole point of them. Inventors divolge ideas to society, and as an incentive for doing so, are allowed exclusive rights to them for a limited time.
The only thing that would be unfair about withdrawing such laws, is that work has been invested with the expectation that these laws would allow income to be generated by that work. Had the laws not been in force, people would not have laboured under this expectation, so would not be wronged.
Plagiarism is the misrepresentation of the origin of material, which is to say it is essentially a form of lying, and not the same thing as patent or copyright infringement. One might use patented or copyrighted material, and acknowledge that use, but not have a license (which would be patent/copyright infringement but not plagiarism), or one might use material that has been licensed, under the terms of that license, but misrepresent the material to some others (for instance examiners) as being one's own (which would be plagiarism, but not patent or copyright infringement).
If all of society could simultaneously use the same property without any risk of damage to it, or interfering with each other's use of it, or even knowing whether or not others were using it, then property would work as an analogy for ideas. On the other hand, if this were the case, there wouldn't have been all those conflicts over property, and there wouldn't be any justification for property laws as they are.
It's one of the few explicit powers of Congress in the Constitution, important enough that the Founders put it right there in Article I, Section 8. It's also an affirmation of a right that has existed for a few thousand years. The "I don't believe in intellectual property (in spite of making my living through its creation)" meme you're espousing is the new one, and yes, it does show just how well brainwashing works.
Take another look:
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
Note my emphasis. Copyrights and patents were not designed to support some fictional 'intellectual property' rights, rather they were designed to give people an incentive to contribute to human knowledge. That's an essential part of the reasoning behind disclosure of patents. People explain how their invention works (their contribution to human knowledge), and, as an incentive for them to do so, they get an exclusive right to it for a limited time.
Notably, copyrights on software entirely fail to achieve this purpose. In the past, copyrighted material would be copied as it was originally written, so the ideas used in the writing would be evident in the copies. With software, source code is written, but only object code is copied. Consequently, people who hold copyright on software get an exclusive right, but never actually contribute to human knowledge, which was the justification for allowing that right in the first place.
In software terms, as an engineer I might have a patent on a method to model the aging of engineered structures. Now some academic approaches me to use my program to look at erosion in Triassic fossil fields. Not seeing a conflict or commercial value, I give him a little GPLed program for his application. Now some other engineer modifies that code to compete in my field, claiming GPL protection from my patent since it's "derivative work" of a piece of GPL code.
I don't understand why you, and the authors of the GPL v3, think licensors should be able to restrict the use of GPLed patents. The GPL doesn't aim to restrict the use of GPLed copyright--in fact quite the opposite. Why the entirely different approach to patents? It doesn't seem in the spirit of the GPL at all. The case you describe sounds to me like it would better suit a shareware license.
Funny, I the same thing about an auntie who became Christian. Four years at University, surrounded by intelligent educated people, made me forget how there are some weird ideas out there.
There's an irony in Microsoft saying there is no such thing as free software, while claiming to compete in a free market, which doesn't exist.
You're right that in a (theoretical ideal) competitive (or free) market, price = marginal cost. Actual markets are like this to greater or lesser extents. The software market is nothing like this.
Companies need to be big enough that marginal cost dominates, before they can compete. In software, marginal cost will never dominate, so fair competition can never occur.
Say, for example, the market for office suites is 90% Microsoft Office, 5% Corel WordPerfect Office, 5% other. Both Microsoft and Corel are creating 1 product, i.e. they both have to do the same amount of work, but Microsoft gets 18x as much income to do this. In order for Corel to compete, they must be 18x more efficient. The market doesn't favour efficiency, it favours market share, so the idea of fair competition is nonsense.
Contrast this to companies making pies, where company A has 90% of the market, company B has 5%, etc. Company A is getting 90% of the income, but must do 90% of the work, i.e. in order for any company to compete, they must be as efficient as their competitors. In this case, the market favours efficiency, so we have competition.
Astrology differs from Judaism, Christianity and Islam in one important way: it never caused anyone to hijack a plane and fly it into a building, or to conduct inquisitions and kill everyone with different beliefs from you, or anyone who doesn't worship your god.
With increased game capabilities, you get increased storage requirements. The Blu-Ray is important in that a standard DVD will no longer hold all the game data for many modern games. So, to squeeze things down to fit onto a DVD, game makers are *already* sacrificing texture quality, number/complexity of levels, and amount of cinematics.
If cinematics are removed from the equation, I don't think this still holds. AFAIK, the capacity of PS3 and XBox 360 graphics engines to render scenes in real-time at decent frame rates for a decent sized game is well matched to what can be stored on a DVD using decent compression. Increasing storage space means the graphics engine becomes the limiting factor.
For cinematics, you're right, I admit. I guess I didn't really think about this, because I hate cinematics with a passion. By being rendered better than in-game graphics, they merely serve to make in-game graphics look bad by comparison (no matter how good in-game graphics might be), making the game seem fake, so destroying suspension of disbelief. In my opinion, anyway. The mark of good special effects in a movie, IMHO, is that they blend seamlessly into the movie, so they don't destroy suspension of disbelief. Cinematics never do this.
For a while Sony's use of a Blu-Ray player in PS3s was considered a blunder. The fact is, Blu-Ray is more important to Sony than the PS3 was. If coming in behind their competitors in this video game generation is what it cost to make Blu-Ray the HD standard, Sony is perfectly happy with that.
Ah, that would explain it. IMHO Blu-ray Disc adds little to the PS3 as a gaming machine, while substantially increasing the price. I am not anti-Sony, I have a PS1 and PS2. And I might have considered a PS3, if it didn't have Blu-ray.
You've misunderstood because you haven't read spengler (and it's quite obvious that you haven't), you have to read spengler to know what he means by "religious conception of knowledge".
Mmmkay. No, you're right, I haven't read Spengler. I read a book given to me by the Jehovah's Witnesses. It was shit. I read two other books given to me by another Christian (who hadn't bothered to read them herself, as it turns out). They were shit too. I read the articles on a Christian web journal for 3 years while I was providing technical assistance. They, also, were shit. I've attended speeches, listened to arguments, and read a variety of other material that people have demanded I read at various times (probably some of which currently slips my mind) including a fair portion of the Christian Bible, which, coincidentally, was also largely shit. But I haven't read Spengler.
I think the whole evolution vs design controversy, is simply about the fear of death and the death of traditional morality and culture, it's not about god, it's not about truth, it's about a way of life and community that's decaying and the old gaurd is reacting to it. Western culture today is a mixed bag when you look at the divorce rate, two-parent families, and the declining birth-rate in north america.
Whatever is declining in North America is not indicative of the West generally, as North America is the most extremely Christian part of the West. However as far as the birth-rate is concerned, it's simply got to decline at some point, otherwise we'll just not have enough space to stack everyone.
Besides, people are always complaining about how society is falling apart. I believe some religious nut said something like "O ye generation of vipers" about two millennia ago, and I recall reading a quote in a local newspaper to the same effect, that had been written a hundred years ago, but sounded like it could have been written yesterday.
I think more slashdotians need to read Oswald Spenglers Decline of the west, he predicted quite a lot and is quite correct that all knowledge is in fact religious in conception, science can't escape the fact that ultimately it is merely a *description* of the universe it doesn't tell us the true nature of the universe or even what 'nature' is.
I would love to see a comparison of the worth of science and religious knowledge. We could set up two societies, one with science and medicine, and the other with theology and faith healing, and see how well each fares.
In my only near death experiences, I saw.... black.... Lots of nothing. There's nothing in the great beyond, because I have no preconceptions to guide my hallucinations.
That's because Jesus is going to obliterate your immortal soul, you filthy atheist! You're so dumb, can't you see that there's absolutely no point at all in living if you don't live forever?! But if you live forever then there's an infinite times as much point as that! Isn't that great?! When will you realise that if you don't worship Yahweh, then you are an evil Satanist who deserves to be burnt alive while maggots eat out your eyes? It must be true, 'cause it says so in the Bible! But if you worship Yahweh, then he will graciously refrain from burning you do death! What a guy, eh?! He killed his son for you, remember? It's not just anyone who'd do that! Us Christians can only aspire to be so virtuous!
Telstra, who use the Big Pond (AKA big pwnd) brand for their ISP business, used to be the government monopoly, but have been sold off by the previous government. This has led to all sorts of craziness, since they own all of the infrastructure and have been forced to lease it to competing companies.
Sounds like the same thing that's happened with Telecom New Zealand. I kind of feel sorry for the owners, really -- they bought an awesome cash cow, but were then forced to provide everyone access to the udder.
They are widely despised by the Australian internet community. Oh for the days when natural monopolies were retained by the state and rented to companies/individuals at fair rates... (I know, I must be a socialist or something, right?)
I don't think this makes you a socialist. I think socialists believe the workers should have control over the means of production (whereas capitalists believe that investors, ie those who raise the capital, should have control over the means of production). This is actually more comparable with communism -- everyone has control (well, ideally, anyway) -- except that you've stipulated only for natural monopolies, which I think makes sense.
Competition is good where it works, but it doesn't make sense to have parallel competing networks. One network is bound to become the monopoly eventually, and even if it were possible to maintain such competition, it would be more efficient to connect the networks into a cohesive network with redundancy and load-balancing. I can't imagine anyone would advocate for parallel competing state-highway systems. Other kinds of competing networks are no less ridiculous, just less visually so.
Actually, according to the Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, creationists are a fruit of FSM's bizzare sense of humor. Or, to put it more bluntly, a sick joke.
That's nothing. According to the Abramic religions, Pastafarians (and people of any other religion) are a horde of evil Satan-worshipping miscreants, a-whoring after false gods (although admittedly it is probably reasonable to say that FSM is a false god). Also according to the Abramic religions, women were created entirely for man's benefit, and black people (those darker than the Jews) are the result of an illicit relationship between a man and his wife's maid servant. Further, according to Christianity, the Jews as a race bear the responsibility for killing Yahweh's son, which is so heinous a crime, as to justify virtually any kind of retribution.
I'd say the FSM has a pretty poor sense of humour.
Slashdot Mirror
Let's not and say we did. I helped with HTML for a web page that was in to this kind of stuff. They also had an article saying it's narrow minded to not accept that things can be true and false at the same time, and one suggesting that chaos theory disproves entropy, because it shows that order can arise from chaos. It was briefly amusing, but quickly became depressing.
Most of the results were uninteresting, but if we look at the 17th run, you'll see here an effect that I suspect was caused by divine intervention.
I'm not sure exactly what you're saying here, but do you essentially mean that everyone is religious, any anyone who says they're not religious is just lying? If that's essentially what you mean, then do you really believe this, or are you just lying?
Really? Where are the statistics for this? Or do you just think you know about this, but probably don't?
I'm not questioning the biology here, and this is kind of going on a bit of a tangent, but really whether or not it's fair kind of depends on what you mean by 'fair'. If we consider equal opportunity fair, then it is fair to have men and women compete together. And if we consider equal outcomes fair (which is kind of where gender separation is going, IMHO), then everyone should come equal, including me (who is not blessed with an Olympic physique). In the equal outcomes sense, it wouldn't be fair for me to compete with those Olympic females, since they're an awful lot better than I am. But, then, that's the point of competition, really, isn't it...
I agree, Eiffel would be my choice too. Pascal syntax is nicer to learn programming concepts with than C syntax, IMHO. Students can learn other languages once they've learned the concepts. OTOH, I think it's better to start straight on OO than do procedural programming first and 'work up' to OO, because students will come to OO with a procedural programming mindset. The availability of a nice IDE, GUI toolkit and libraries is just as much of a consideration as the language proper. Eiffel does well on all counts, IMHO.
Perhaps not a minority, but certainly smaller than it once was. Jesus himself applied remarkable contortionism to the Torah, and his followers have faithfully continued this tradition to the present. I dare say current revisionist reinterpretations of scripture are the best yet. The eternal truth has come a long way in 2,000 years.
A less technical way to put it is that the average lobster doesn't give a shit about whether humans suffer, so there is no reason for humans to give a shit about whether lobsters suffer.
My sister-in-law's kids don't seem to give a shit about whether I suffer either, and I would love to rip their intestines out if I could get away with it. Do you think this defence would hold up in court?
It seems clear? :-/ As an introduction to the GPLv3, you've quoted the first paragraph of Section 10, paraphrased to make it clearer. I think the first paragraph of Section 10, if thus paraphrased, would be an excellent introduction to the GPLv3. However unfortunately it is not worded quite how you worded it, and rather than being at the start of the GPL, it's buried down in Section 10.
There are 242 lines of licensing text (not including the preamble and definitions sections) before the paragraph which you quoted (paraphrased) to demonstrate that the GPLv3 seems clear. What is abundantly clear is that you've not just looked at the GPLv3 for the first time, because no one doing so would, without sarcasm, say "It seems clear."
I disagree with this statement: "Understanding licenses isn't really an Open Source issue." Even for someone who understands the basic idea of the GPL, understanding the finer details of how the licence is intended to achieve this may be difficult, IMHO. For someone who doesn't understand the basic idea (and outside the world of GNU/Linux this is the norm), the GPL is undoubtedly even more confusing.
IMHO, the GPL would be easier to understand if it was arranged to list the rights it allows, and all the responsibilities associated with each right, something like as follows (numbers in braces refer to corresponding sections in the GPLv3):
Preamble
0. Definitions. [0, 1]
1. Receiving a Licence.
1.1. License grant is given upon receiving the Program. [10p0s0, 2p0s0, 11p0-2&7, 3p0]
a. License acceptance is implied by modifying or propagating. [9]
b. No warranty is provided, unless in writing for a fee. [15, 16, 17]
c. Additional liability disclaimers may apply. [7a]
d. Additional publicity restrictions may apply. [7d]
e. License adherence is not excused by other obligations. [12]
f. License termination may result from license breach. [8]
1.2. Additional permissions may apply. [7p0, 7p9s0-1, 14]
2. Using the Program.
2.1 Using the unmodified Program and fair use are unlimited. [2p0s1-3]
2.2 Making and using covered works is permitted. [2p1, 2p2s0]
3. Conveying Source.
3.1. Conveying verbatim copies of source is permitted. [4p0s0, 4p1]
a. Licensing restrictions may not be imposed. [10p0s1&p2, 2p2s1]
b. Patents, if they protect you, must protect everyone. [11p3-6]
c. Technical measures may not be enforced. [3p1]
d. Notices must be retained and made conspicuous. [4p0s0]
e. Additional names and marks terms may apply. [7e]
f. Additional liability indemnification terms may apply. [7f]
g. Transfer of control requires transfer of rights. [10p1]
3.2. Conveying modified source versions is permitted. [5p0s0 parts]
a. Above terms of Section 3.1 apply. [5p0s0 part]
b. Licensing must be available under this License. [5c, 7p1-2, 7p9s2]
c. Notices must be included and prominent. [5abd, 7p10-11]
d. Additional notices terms may apply. [7bc]
4. Conveying non-source forms is permitted. [6p0s0 part]
a. Above terms of Sections 3.1 and 3.2 apply. [6p0s0 part]
b. Source code must be made available. [6p0s0 part, 6p1-6, 6p11]
c. Installation information is required for User Products. [6p7-10]
5. Conveying Non-GPL Works.
5.1. Conveying linked Affero GPL works is permitted. [13]
5.2. Conveying aggregates is permitted. [5p5]
How to Apply this License
Three things:
If all of society could simultaneously use the same property without any risk of damage to it, or interfering with each other's use of it, or even knowing whether or not others were using it, then property would work as an analogy for ideas. On the other hand, if this were the case, there wouldn't have been all those conflicts over property, and there wouldn't be any justification for property laws as they are.
Take another look:
Note my emphasis. Copyrights and patents were not designed to support some fictional 'intellectual property' rights, rather they were designed to give people an incentive to contribute to human knowledge. That's an essential part of the reasoning behind disclosure of patents. People explain how their invention works (their contribution to human knowledge), and, as an incentive for them to do so, they get an exclusive right to it for a limited time.
Notably, copyrights on software entirely fail to achieve this purpose. In the past, copyrighted material would be copied as it was originally written, so the ideas used in the writing would be evident in the copies. With software, source code is written, but only object code is copied. Consequently, people who hold copyright on software get an exclusive right, but never actually contribute to human knowledge, which was the justification for allowing that right in the first place.
I don't understand why you, and the authors of the GPL v3, think licensors should be able to restrict the use of GPLed patents. The GPL doesn't aim to restrict the use of GPLed copyright--in fact quite the opposite. Why the entirely different approach to patents? It doesn't seem in the spirit of the GPL at all. The case you describe sounds to me like it would better suit a shareware license.
Funny, I the same thing about an auntie who became Christian. Four years at University, surrounded by intelligent educated people, made me forget how there are some weird ideas out there.
There's an irony in Microsoft saying there is no such thing as free software, while claiming to compete in a free market, which doesn't exist.
You're right that in a (theoretical ideal) competitive (or free) market, price = marginal cost. Actual markets are like this to greater or lesser extents. The software market is nothing like this.
Companies need to be big enough that marginal cost dominates, before they can compete. In software, marginal cost will never dominate, so fair competition can never occur.
Say, for example, the market for office suites is 90% Microsoft Office, 5% Corel WordPerfect Office, 5% other. Both Microsoft and Corel are creating 1 product, i.e. they both have to do the same amount of work, but Microsoft gets 18x as much income to do this. In order for Corel to compete, they must be 18x more efficient. The market doesn't favour efficiency, it favours market share, so the idea of fair competition is nonsense.
Contrast this to companies making pies, where company A has 90% of the market, company B has 5%, etc. Company A is getting 90% of the income, but must do 90% of the work, i.e. in order for any company to compete, they must be as efficient as their competitors. In this case, the market favours efficiency, so we have competition.
Astrology differs from Judaism, Christianity and Islam in one important way: it never caused anyone to hijack a plane and fly it into a building, or to conduct inquisitions and kill everyone with different beliefs from you, or anyone who doesn't worship your god.
If cinematics are removed from the equation, I don't think this still holds. AFAIK, the capacity of PS3 and XBox 360 graphics engines to render scenes in real-time at decent frame rates for a decent sized game is well matched to what can be stored on a DVD using decent compression. Increasing storage space means the graphics engine becomes the limiting factor.
For cinematics, you're right, I admit. I guess I didn't really think about this, because I hate cinematics with a passion. By being rendered better than in-game graphics, they merely serve to make in-game graphics look bad by comparison (no matter how good in-game graphics might be), making the game seem fake, so destroying suspension of disbelief. In my opinion, anyway. The mark of good special effects in a movie, IMHO, is that they blend seamlessly into the movie, so they don't destroy suspension of disbelief. Cinematics never do this.
Ah, that would explain it. IMHO Blu-ray Disc adds little to the PS3 as a gaming machine, while substantially increasing the price. I am not anti-Sony, I have a PS1 and PS2. And I might have considered a PS3, if it didn't have Blu-ray.
Mmmkay. No, you're right, I haven't read Spengler. I read a book given to me by the Jehovah's Witnesses. It was shit. I read two other books given to me by another Christian (who hadn't bothered to read them herself, as it turns out). They were shit too. I read the articles on a Christian web journal for 3 years while I was providing technical assistance. They, also, were shit. I've attended speeches, listened to arguments, and read a variety of other material that people have demanded I read at various times (probably some of which currently slips my mind) including a fair portion of the Christian Bible, which, coincidentally, was also largely shit. But I haven't read Spengler.
Whatever is declining in North America is not indicative of the West generally, as North America is the most extremely Christian part of the West. However as far as the birth-rate is concerned, it's simply got to decline at some point, otherwise we'll just not have enough space to stack everyone.
Besides, people are always complaining about how society is falling apart. I believe some religious nut said something like "O ye generation of vipers" about two millennia ago, and I recall reading a quote in a local newspaper to the same effect, that had been written a hundred years ago, but sounded like it could have been written yesterday.
I would love to see a comparison of the worth of science and religious knowledge. We could set up two societies, one with science and medicine, and the other with theology and faith healing, and see how well each fares.
JWSmythe wrote:
That's because Jesus is going to obliterate your immortal soul, you filthy atheist! You're so dumb, can't you see that there's absolutely no point at all in living if you don't live forever?! But if you live forever then there's an infinite times as much point as that! Isn't that great?! When will you realise that if you don't worship Yahweh, then you are an evil Satanist who deserves to be burnt alive while maggots eat out your eyes? It must be true, 'cause it says so in the Bible! But if you worship Yahweh, then he will graciously refrain from burning you do death! What a guy, eh?! He killed his son for you, remember? It's not just anyone who'd do that! Us Christians can only aspire to be so virtuous!
P.S. Jesus loves yo mama.
Sounds like the same thing that's happened with Telecom New Zealand. I kind of feel sorry for the owners, really -- they bought an awesome cash cow, but were then forced to provide everyone access to the udder.
I don't think this makes you a socialist. I think socialists believe the workers should have control over the means of production (whereas capitalists believe that investors, ie those who raise the capital, should have control over the means of production). This is actually more comparable with communism -- everyone has control (well, ideally, anyway) -- except that you've stipulated only for natural monopolies, which I think makes sense.
Competition is good where it works, but it doesn't make sense to have parallel competing networks. One network is bound to become the monopoly eventually, and even if it were possible to maintain such competition, it would be more efficient to connect the networks into a cohesive network with redundancy and load-balancing. I can't imagine anyone would advocate for parallel competing state-highway systems. Other kinds of competing networks are no less ridiculous, just less visually so.
That's nothing. According to the Abramic religions, Pastafarians (and people of any other religion) are a horde of evil Satan-worshipping miscreants, a-whoring after false gods (although admittedly it is probably reasonable to say that FSM is a false god). Also according to the Abramic religions, women were created entirely for man's benefit, and black people (those darker than the Jews) are the result of an illicit relationship between a man and his wife's maid servant. Further, according to Christianity, the Jews as a race bear the responsibility for killing Yahweh's son, which is so heinous a crime, as to justify virtually any kind of retribution.
I'd say the FSM has a pretty poor sense of humour.