But, if the topic is the Church or more generally religion being at odds with science, then the Church's acceptance of Galileo's science would seem to refute that. The house arrest was all politics.
Bruno was burned as a heretic, not because his science was wrong (the stuff based on Copernicus), but because he wouldn't recant that man was not made in God's image nor was he unique.
Finally, in still sticking with religion and science being opposed to each other, DaVinci, kept his faith till the very end and somehow was still able to do "science."
The whole issue of science and religion being opposed was not in the middle ages, but until the age of enlightenment in the 19 century. It was from that point forward that this rift has occurred. Hence, 200 years.
Galileo was politics, not about scientific theory (the church actually agreed with his science). Bruno, expanded up Copernicus, but what got him in trouble was proclaiming life on other worlds and that man is not unique. Now, while it is quite possible that there is life on other planets, even quite probable, there is yet no scientific proof of it. And, Bruno, was turned in by his peers, not the church going after him -- of course, once the church got a hold of him, things went very poorly for him (like burning at the stake as a heretic). Finally, DaVinci was a life long Catholic and even in his will, made arrangements for masses to be said on his behalf.
To keep the record straight, the Catholic Church didn't disagree with Galileo's science. His was a political power struggle, not a scientific one. You last comment (the BTW) doesn't make sense. Since scripture was never meant to be a science book, but more of a philosphy book, scientific theories or proofs aren't contradictory. Although, there does seem to be a big coincidence in the mono-theistic scriptures between "Let there be light" and the big bang. The whole creation out of nothing thing. As for keeping the churches out of the biological sciences - where does modern morality and ethics come from? Regardless of one's belief in God or not, in western society, judeo-christian values are what we live by. Since, the church is involved with things like morality and ethics, then why should they be excluded from the discussion? Putting a political spin on it, it would be like saying democrats shouldn't listen to republicans and vice versa, just because they have different ideas.
I would not rely on wikipedia for that information. For instance, it lists all evangelicals, regardless of type at 432M world wide. Roman catholics are 1,166M worldwide (not counting the eastern catholic churches). The roman catholic entry says that the catholic population is 17.4% of the world population. If that is correct, then the 432M evangelicals, regardless of church, would be 3.7%. Still not the same as the article, but a lot closer to the 2%. Also, in referring to US scientists, does that mean born and bred in the US or any scientist working in the US. If the latter, then using US ratios would be inconsistent. For instance, many neuro-scientists come to this country from India. Since India has a very different ratio of ethnic groups and religions as compared to the US, at least in that category neuroscience, one would expect a different ratio of believer/non-believers and denominations.
That is not to say that one should base the evaluation against world populations. That would skew things, too. Instead of drawing any type of parallel between the scientists surveyed and the population of any given country (US or otherwise), I think the important part of the article is that the majority of the scientists are not atheists as one would have expected.
Evangelical Christianity for example is a much smaller percentage then one would get from a representative sample of theists.
Actual Evangelicals are a pretty small part of the world wide christian population, so why wouldn't they be a small part of any sample. That doesn't mean that in the USA, they aren't a vocal group, but in terms of actual membership as compared to the mainstream christian churches, they are minimal.
Science and religion are diametrically opposed in one specific thing - religion insists on telling us "it is so", while science will treat us like adults and tell us "we don't know - here is our best guess so far".
Ummm, it's only been the last couple hundred years that science and religion are diametrically opposed. Prior to that, science and religion worked together. Why do you think all of those moon craters are named after Jesuits? Plus, it was a Jesuit that first came up with the big bang based on Einstein's research.
If science and religion are diametrically opposed, then it is because today's science goes out of it's way to oppose religion. When, in reality, they both serve different purposes. Science tries to explain the "How," while religion focuses on the "Why."
It's amazing! The one person who actually read the article only gets modded to a 3 for being insightful. The rest of the people who just typed what ever they thought the article was about from the poorly worded title get modded to a 5. Maybe slashdot should try some of that "truth, transparency and credibility" that the pope called for.
Do people not think that AT&T doesn't know where you are with your iphone? Or that Apple doesn't know what apps you downloaded from the app store?
It might not be fun to think about, but the cell phone companies know where you are calling from, who you are calling and how long you talk to everyone.
Come to think of it, so do the land line companies.
As for smart phones, particularly if you have loaded apps for local weather, news, movies, food, etc. Exactly how is it supposed to work without the company knowing your location?
I guess, Palm and Sprint could have notified their customers, although it does seem to be common sense. Then again, the credit card companies don't notify people that they are selling lists of what you purchase and where, too.
The moral of the story--if you want to be in a connected society, live with it.
Yes, that is correct. Since 2008 in the United States only the IRS, employers, banks, and very few specific institutions are still allowed to require you to submit your SSN. Even a landlord cannot legally ask people for their SSNs anymore and if he turns you down because you refuse to give it to him, you can report him. As an attorney it is a mystery to me that so many people are still not informed about the law and let companies get away with asking for SSNs. They should simply ask people for a reasonable deposit and not risk getting reported or sued.
Actually, the FTC issued a report in December 2008 advising Congress to restrict who can collect Social Security numbers and what steps must be taken, etc., etc. However, while some institutions are required to collect the information, it is not illegal for others to ask for it. You as an individual, in one of these cases, have the right to refuse to give them your SSN and they have the right to refuse doing business with you. There is no "reporting or suing" involved.
No shoes, no shirt, no SSN - no service, plain and simple.
The New Palm Pre does this now, just not across a large distance. The Pre has the alternate charger that you just place your Pre on (no wires to hook up or plug in to the Pre itself) and it charges through the back of the phone. Pretty cool, actually.
Actually, the last four digits by themself are not very useful as they are not unique. Many SSNs share the last four digits. Sprint, and other companies that use it must combine it with other information if they are to use it for tracking purposes or profiling. That is unless they only have 10,000 users. From a vendor's perspective, it is probably easier for a customer to remember their last four digits of their SSN than a randomly assigned number.
They collect your ssn, btw, the same reason a bank does. You are signing a legal contract with them and it is your federal identification number. If you were a corporation, then they wouldn't want your ssn, but your fein.
As for your concerns with profiling--do you mean that they can then use this information to see where you are shopping and going on the web, etc.? I guess they could, if you are doing that from your phone. But why would they bother, they know specifically which phone is yours and where it's at. If they were really sneaky, they could use the locater service to find out what stores you drive to.
So, since they have other and probably better ways to get this same information, we're back to why would they want somebody's SSN in the first place? The only real answer is that it is required because you are entering into a legal and binding agreement with Sprint (or any other carrier).
ps. your credit card company also has your SSN. How do you think all of that info get's to one's credit report? It's all done by SSN.
Is there a cellphone provider that doesn't require you to provide your SSN before signing up for a contract?
Exactly! Sprint isn't requiring an SSN to purchase a Palm Pre. If you already have service with them, you do not need to provide an SSN as you are simply upgrading your phone and extending your existing contract. However, switching from a different carrier is a different story. A new contract with Sprint will require your SSN (as it will with most carriers). There is no difference if switching to Sprint and you want a Palm Pre, a Blackberry, or even one of their give-away phones.
A new contract for a new customer requires the SSN, not getting the phone itself.
In the spirit of full disclosure, this is being posted by a former Blackberry user who is now a Palm Pre user.
I, too, have a small pickup that gets 16.5mpg. I only drive it when I have to haul something or once every couple of weeks to keep it in good working order. I switched to driving my 1972 Volkswagen Beetle every day. It's getting 27mpg in town and 33mpg on the highway.
No, he's actually stating that he would be willing to adjust Ubuntu's release cycle to go along with the consensus of the players. What it appears to be a request for is coordinating at least the next 2 or 3 years worth of release cycles. It appears that Ubuntu still wants to release every six months, but that would not mean the others would have to. But if they could agree that to release annually every May, for instance, then Ubuntu would adjust it's six month schedule accordingly.
Ubuntu, being one of the big players in the field, could have taken the approach that "We release every April and October, the rest of you should release in those months, too." Instead, they are saying "Look, it would be great if we could coordinate our release schedules so we could all benefit for these reasons. It would be such a benefit the linux community as a whole, that I'm willing to change Ubuntu's release schedule to accommodate the rest of you if that would help in getting this going."
So to paraphrase Neil Armstrong, this is actually just a small step for Ubuntu, but a giant leap for the Linux Community.
Not to discredit your relatives who are doctors and pharmacists, but I imagine if you were to ask them seriously, they look up much more than you imagine. Sure your uncle in the ER with the cardiac arrest knows what to do, so probably would a pediatrician, because although it sounds complicated to a lay person, it's pretty straight forward while the patient is in arrest.
However, ask your uncle what he would do if a patient presents partial paralysis and a MRI or CT scan show negative? Chances are he won't look it up in a manual, but will seek a consult from a specialist.
Or your aunt the dermatologist, if whatever condition she is treating in a patient isn't responding, there's a good chance that she is going to have to look up something for an alternative course of action.
Even your pharmacist sister, if you start to ask her about the safety of taking multiple medications, particularly if one or more are not common, she, too, will probably look it up (although most pharmacies do that automatically on computer when the prescription is filled).
Furthermore, all of them, I am sure, keep updated in their fields by constant journals and research papers. Kind of like reading the manual before the patient presents.
Again, this is not meant as any disrespect for your relatives, but just to point out that as much knowledge as they have in their fields, what they have memorized is what they need and use daily, just like the rest of us. Granted, they may need more, in their selected fields, but those fields are much larger, too (which is why, for instance their are specialists to narrow the scope). However, there is much more in their fields that they don't have memorized and for that they do look it up (or call for a consult).
I said with modern science and cloning, not growing out of the grout in your shower. It's very much possible. Actually you referred to "jacking-off" in the shower creating a holocaust. I didn't see a connection between that and modern science and/or cloning.
n such a case, yes it is killing a limited intelligence but like I said, the issue is "can we force someone to care for another person" even against their will? The answer is "no," but we can punish those who do not. If parents endanger the lives of their children, they (the parents) go to prison. Likewise, the courts can remove the children from the parents and place elsewhere to protect the children. So on one level you are correct, we cannot force someone to care for another person. Likewise, we cannot force someone to not drive their vehicle through a crowd of people.
A hundred years ago these premature babies didn't stand a chance. Now they do. Nothing ethical has changed, we're still humans. Technology has changed and our ignorant, ancient religious books never planned on these things. I wasn't using religion in my argument, only acknowledging that there are those that do believe in soul. However, changes in technology are also irrelevant. It's true that 100 years ago, most premature babies did not survive, but abortions were also not legal, either, and stem cells were unknown. So to even have the discussion wasn't possible. However, today, premature babies are viable and it is an issue today. The only real difference in the future will be that the window of viability will move to an earlier point during gestation without severe complications.
You can't force a woman to remain pregnant any more than you can force me to allow my paraplegic uncle to live in my house. You can say that's wrong, that's your right to disagree. That doesn't matter though since only humans decide what is right, not some skydaddy. If you think otherwise, prove it in a court of law and maybe God will show up to testify on your behalf. Actually, many countries don't allow third trimester abortions, so what you should say is "In the United States, you can't force a woman to remain pregnant...." As for forcing you to allow your paraplegic uncle to live in your house, you are correct. Of course if he is living there and you mistreat him and abuse him, then you go to prison.
You keep bringing up a deity in this discussion, assuming I am arguing from that point of view. I assure you I am not. However, it does seem as if your real issue is with religion and not with a woman's right to privacy and the impact of her decision on the viable child in her womb. (Again, leaving all of the first trimester when life begins stuff to others and focusing on third trimester issues).
So, I still stand by my previous post, that based on what you said, it's alright for the mother of the 8 month old fetus to terminate the life of the fetus but somehow isn't alright for her to do the same to the newborn 1month premature baby. In both cases she is providing total care and support. The only difference is the location of the child. If I have misunderstood your reasoning and there is some other difference, let me know.
Who is moderating today. I could see this as being moderated as funny, but as insightful? Get real! Of course I could also see it being moderated as flame-bait, too. And moderating as 5 insightful only makes it seem more so.
So, I ask again, who is moderating these things today?
If the word "potential" is entering your mind, consider this. Thanks to modern science and cloning, every cell on your body is capable of turning into a complete human. Everytime you scratch an itch or jerk off in the shower you are committing a virtual holocaust. Not to pick nits, but what you are depositing in the shower is not capable of turning into a complete human being as it only has half the chromosomes needed to do so.
Blastocysts have 150 cells, a fly's brain has over 100,000. There is no brain, there is nothing recognizable. If you think this spec of cells has a soul already then how do you explain when it splits and make twins? Is it 1 soul in 2 bodies, half a soul in each? Or is it obvious that this metaphysics of souls in a petri dish is kind of silly? If you are using the concept of a soul for your argument, you should be careful as it disproves your point. Religions that hold to the concept of a soul hold that twins both have an individual soul - the second one being infused when the cells separate to form the twin. Geography wouldn't make a difference as to that infusion - whether the twinning occurred in the womb or in a petri dish. So actually the proposition of one soul in two bodies is the silly proposition.
Anyone putting enough thought into it realizes there are no hard and fast rules on morality and the only thing that makes sense in today's world is to allow the person keeping the fetus alive to make the choice. This last statement is negated by your previous blastocyst and brain arguments. Maybe the 150 cell blastocyst doesn't have a brain, but the fetus does. While people who are brain dead are buried or cremated, people with measurable brain waves are not. Usually, if they are not capable of caring for them self, they are cared for and protected by the state.
Finally, if one really puts thought into it, the actual supreme court case on abortion was not about morality but instead was about ethics. It wasn't about life issues, but instead was about privacy issues. That's why the abortion issue is still a hot topic. It pits a woman's right to privacy against the fetus' right to exist. Regardless of whether one believes that life begins at conception or not, at some point during the nine month gestation a fetus becomes viable to live outside the womb, but the court decision ruled that the woman's right to privacy rules until the fetus is totally out of the womb, no ifs ands or buts.
People will argue till the end of the world about whether life begins at conception and whether it is moral to abort an embryo. However, in the US anyway, abortion is legal through the ninth month. When you ask people to defend aborting a viable fetus, one where the "person keeping the fetus alive" is just a very temporary situation, then all of those emotional arguments fall away and we are left with the question of what's the real difference between a child born a month premature and one still in the womb? Both are viable. Both have to rely on someone else for all the necessities of life. The only real difference is location.
So in reality, what you are stating is that it's not the person keeping the child alive that should make the choice (because the mother of the newborn also does this), but instead the location of the child to determine whether the person keeping it alive should be allowed to make the choice or not.
Instead of buying OSS companies to kill them off, most likely Microsoft would be looking for OSS companies with patents that have been used by other OSS projects, particularly Linux. Once Microsoft owns the company, it can enforce the patent. Forking won't help with a patent violation, particularly if the patent is question is in use by other projects.
That's why the majority of people in the US still travel by rail and use AT&T phone service, right?
1. The Pennsylvania Railroad (or insert your favorite) is a very large, very well known company. They will be around for a very long time to support any of their formats (passenger and freight service).
2. They create a lot of jobs
3. Most government offices travel by rail (or they did), so rail travel is the best format to use since the government is already integrated with their products.
That would still probably hold true if the government didn't look at the monopolistic like power of the railroads after WWII and encourage alternative travel methods by building highways and airports to encourage growth and even more jobs.
The same could be argued for phone service from AT&T at one time everybody had them, so using the same logic, we should all still have them, since we were already integrated with their products and system. Again, the government stepped in and recognized that a monopoly wasn't the best solution for growth and now there are even more jobs and choices.
In Massachusetts, it was the monopoly that stepped in and realized that choice was not in the best interest for its own growth and changed the political process.
Maybe these specific Linux distributions have patents or rights to something that Microsoft is infringing on. Microsoft could care a less about a few linux distros, even Suse. However, if, in these agreements, it is getting protection from it's own infringement, well, then that's a whole different story.
Record profits in the last year were not because of Vista or their OS division. As for fastest selling OS in history, would depend on how you measure it. Even if the 40M is true, what is that as a percentage of installed computers, since the larger installed base would mean more upgrades and replacements, too. It's like saying a movie is record breaking, however there are 4 times the screens today than 20 years ago. So how do you compare?
To really check the impact of Vista, one only has to track Microsoft's stock price, which is the true value of the company. While up, it's nothing spectacular which would indicate that Vista isn't doing as well as Microsoft is trying to make everyone believe. Investors don't buy hype, they look at results and if the results aren't there, the stock price shows it.
Based on stock prices, it's not really getting much better for them, at least the investors don't seem to thinks so (at least not to the extent that Microsoft's marketing department likes to paint).
If the 40M numbers are correct and the 78% figure is correct for the premium version, then most of those must be new computer sales as many of the premium features won't work on dated hardware. So, that would mean that somewhere between 31M and 40M new computers have been purchased in the last 100 days. And yet, I wonder why the hardware manufactures aren't reporting these record sales? Maybe it's because they don't exist!
Microsoft has the habit of including licenses shipped to manufactures, even if they haven't been sold, along with the free upgrades for those who purchased computers with XP and all the corporate sales with Vista installed that were wiped and had XP reinstalled. In other words, their numbers are meaningless.
Microsoft is just trying to convince people that Vista is doing well. However, all one has to do is track their stock price over the last 100 days to see that it is not the case (taking into account the blips whenever they make an announcement like this and then the price settles back to where it was pre-announcement). The financial analysts who buy major blocks of stock aren't swayed by these kinds of reports. They look at data that can be substantiated.
Microsoft can report whatever they want in press releases, maybe they really are selling 40M new copies of Vista, however, if they are, it hasn't added much to the worth of the company's stock. Microsoft's numbers might be suspect, but the stock value is a pretty good indicator of what the real impact of Vista has had.
Then again, maybe Microsoft was using Vista to tabulate the data and just discovered a new math bug. But really, if people want to believe the numbers that Microsoft puts out in press releases, well all I can say is that I have this bridge for sale in Brooklyn, if anyone is interested.
I'm not a psychologist, but from my understanding if you leave 'innocent' children unsupervised and isolated from the outside world they will naturally turn violent towards each other.
Actually, in all cultures that have been studied, if you leave "innocent" children unsupervised, they may get into "spats" but they also work them out. Innocent children are naturally empathetic towards each other and once one is hurt the others come to their aid. It's programmed into our genes.
However, if you leave innocent children unsupervised and isolated from the outside world, they most likely will not know how to fend for themselves and die of starvation or complications from malnutrition. While they may be naturally empathetic, they have very little survival instinct. That is a learned trait passed on by experience.
So, it is not really human nature to be violent, selfish and evil, but it could be said that it is human nature to learn to become to be violent, selfish and evil.
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But, if the topic is the Church or more generally religion being at odds with science, then the Church's acceptance of Galileo's science would seem to refute that. The house arrest was all politics.
Bruno was burned as a heretic, not because his science was wrong (the stuff based on Copernicus), but because he wouldn't recant that man was not made in God's image nor was he unique.
Finally, in still sticking with religion and science being opposed to each other, DaVinci, kept his faith till the very end and somehow was still able to do "science."
The whole issue of science and religion being opposed was not in the middle ages, but until the age of enlightenment in the 19 century. It was from that point forward that this rift has occurred. Hence, 200 years.
Galileo was politics, not about scientific theory (the church actually agreed with his science). Bruno, expanded up Copernicus, but what got him in trouble was proclaiming life on other worlds and that man is not unique. Now, while it is quite possible that there is life on other planets, even quite probable, there is yet no scientific proof of it. And, Bruno, was turned in by his peers, not the church going after him -- of course, once the church got a hold of him, things went very poorly for him (like burning at the stake as a heretic). Finally, DaVinci was a life long Catholic and even in his will, made arrangements for masses to be said on his behalf.
To keep the record straight, the Catholic Church didn't disagree with Galileo's science. His was a political power struggle, not a scientific one. You last comment (the BTW) doesn't make sense. Since scripture was never meant to be a science book, but more of a philosphy book, scientific theories or proofs aren't contradictory. Although, there does seem to be a big coincidence in the mono-theistic scriptures between "Let there be light" and the big bang. The whole creation out of nothing thing. As for keeping the churches out of the biological sciences - where does modern morality and ethics come from? Regardless of one's belief in God or not, in western society, judeo-christian values are what we live by. Since, the church is involved with things like morality and ethics, then why should they be excluded from the discussion? Putting a political spin on it, it would be like saying democrats shouldn't listen to republicans and vice versa, just because they have different ideas.
I would not rely on wikipedia for that information. For instance, it lists all evangelicals, regardless of type at 432M world wide. Roman catholics are 1,166M worldwide (not counting the eastern catholic churches). The roman catholic entry says that the catholic population is 17.4% of the world population. If that is correct, then the 432M evangelicals, regardless of church, would be 3.7%. Still not the same as the article, but a lot closer to the 2%. Also, in referring to US scientists, does that mean born and bred in the US or any scientist working in the US. If the latter, then using US ratios would be inconsistent. For instance, many neuro-scientists come to this country from India. Since India has a very different ratio of ethnic groups and religions as compared to the US, at least in that category neuroscience, one would expect a different ratio of believer/non-believers and denominations.
That is not to say that one should base the evaluation against world populations. That would skew things, too. Instead of drawing any type of parallel between the scientists surveyed and the population of any given country (US or otherwise), I think the important part of the article is that the majority of the scientists are not atheists as one would have expected.
Actual Evangelicals are a pretty small part of the world wide christian population, so why wouldn't they be a small part of any sample. That doesn't mean that in the USA, they aren't a vocal group, but in terms of actual membership as compared to the mainstream christian churches, they are minimal.
Ummm, it's only been the last couple hundred years that science and religion are diametrically opposed. Prior to that, science and religion worked together. Why do you think all of those moon craters are named after Jesuits? Plus, it was a Jesuit that first came up with the big bang based on Einstein's research.
If science and religion are diametrically opposed, then it is because today's science goes out of it's way to oppose religion. When, in reality, they both serve different purposes. Science tries to explain the "How," while religion focuses on the "Why."
It's amazing! The one person who actually read the article only gets modded to a 3 for being insightful. The rest of the people who just typed what ever they thought the article was about from the poorly worded title get modded to a 5. Maybe slashdot should try some of that "truth, transparency and credibility" that the pope called for.
Maybe they meant that email on the mainframe is dead?
Do people not think that AT&T doesn't know where you are with your iphone? Or that Apple doesn't know what apps you downloaded from the app store?
It might not be fun to think about, but the cell phone companies know where you are calling from, who you are calling and how long you talk to everyone.
Come to think of it, so do the land line companies.
As for smart phones, particularly if you have loaded apps for local weather, news, movies, food, etc. Exactly how is it supposed to work without the company knowing your location?
I guess, Palm and Sprint could have notified their customers, although it does seem to be common sense. Then again, the credit card companies don't notify people that they are selling lists of what you purchase and where, too.
The moral of the story--if you want to be in a connected society, live with it.
Yes, that is correct. Since 2008 in the United States only the IRS, employers, banks, and very few specific institutions are still allowed to require you to submit your SSN. Even a landlord cannot legally ask people for their SSNs anymore and if he turns you down because you refuse to give it to him, you can report him. As an attorney it is a mystery to me that so many people are still not informed about the law and let companies get away with asking for SSNs. They should simply ask people for a reasonable deposit and not risk getting reported or sued.
Actually, the FTC issued a report in December 2008 advising Congress to restrict who can collect Social Security numbers and what steps must be taken, etc., etc. However, while some institutions are required to collect the information, it is not illegal for others to ask for it. You as an individual, in one of these cases, have the right to refuse to give them your SSN and they have the right to refuse doing business with you. There is no "reporting or suing" involved.
No shoes, no shirt, no SSN - no service, plain and simple.
The New Palm Pre does this now, just not across a large distance. The Pre has the alternate charger that you just place your Pre on (no wires to hook up or plug in to the Pre itself) and it charges through the back of the phone. Pretty cool, actually.
Actually, the last four digits by themself are not very useful as they are not unique. Many SSNs share the last four digits. Sprint, and other companies that use it must combine it with other information if they are to use it for tracking purposes or profiling. That is unless they only have 10,000 users. From a vendor's perspective, it is probably easier for a customer to remember their last four digits of their SSN than a randomly assigned number.
They collect your ssn, btw, the same reason a bank does. You are signing a legal contract with them and it is your federal identification number. If you were a corporation, then they wouldn't want your ssn, but your fein.
As for your concerns with profiling--do you mean that they can then use this information to see where you are shopping and going on the web, etc.? I guess they could, if you are doing that from your phone. But why would they bother, they know specifically which phone is yours and where it's at. If they were really sneaky, they could use the locater service to find out what stores you drive to.
So, since they have other and probably better ways to get this same information, we're back to why would they want somebody's SSN in the first place? The only real answer is that it is required because you are entering into a legal and binding agreement with Sprint (or any other carrier).
ps. your credit card company also has your SSN. How do you think all of that info get's to one's credit report? It's all done by SSN.
Is there a cellphone provider that doesn't require you to provide your SSN before signing up for a contract?
Exactly! Sprint isn't requiring an SSN to purchase a Palm Pre. If you already have service with them, you do not need to provide an SSN as you are simply upgrading your phone and extending your existing contract. However, switching from a different carrier is a different story. A new contract with Sprint will require your SSN (as it will with most carriers). There is no difference if switching to Sprint and you want a Palm Pre, a Blackberry, or even one of their give-away phones.
A new contract for a new customer requires the SSN, not getting the phone itself.
In the spirit of full disclosure, this is being posted by a former Blackberry user who is now a Palm Pre user.
I, too, have a small pickup that gets 16.5mpg. I only drive it when I have to haul something or once every couple of weeks to keep it in good working order. I switched to driving my 1972 Volkswagen Beetle every day. It's getting 27mpg in town and 33mpg on the highway.
No, he's actually stating that he would be willing to adjust Ubuntu's release cycle to go along with the consensus of the players. What it appears to be a request for is coordinating at least the next 2 or 3 years worth of release cycles. It appears that Ubuntu still wants to release every six months, but that would not mean the others would have to. But if they could agree that to release annually every May, for instance, then Ubuntu would adjust it's six month schedule accordingly.
Ubuntu, being one of the big players in the field, could have taken the approach that "We release every April and October, the rest of you should release in those months, too." Instead, they are saying "Look, it would be great if we could coordinate our release schedules so we could all benefit for these reasons. It would be such a benefit the linux community as a whole, that I'm willing to change Ubuntu's release schedule to accommodate the rest of you if that would help in getting this going."
So to paraphrase Neil Armstrong, this is actually just a small step for Ubuntu, but a giant leap for the Linux Community.
Not to discredit your relatives who are doctors and pharmacists, but I imagine if you were to ask them seriously, they look up much more than you imagine. Sure your uncle in the ER with the cardiac arrest knows what to do, so probably would a pediatrician, because although it sounds complicated to a lay person, it's pretty straight forward while the patient is in arrest.
However, ask your uncle what he would do if a patient presents partial paralysis and a MRI or CT scan show negative? Chances are he won't look it up in a manual, but will seek a consult from a specialist.
Or your aunt the dermatologist, if whatever condition she is treating in a patient isn't responding, there's a good chance that she is going to have to look up something for an alternative course of action.
Even your pharmacist sister, if you start to ask her about the safety of taking multiple medications, particularly if one or more are not common, she, too, will probably look it up (although most pharmacies do that automatically on computer when the prescription is filled).
Furthermore, all of them, I am sure, keep updated in their fields by constant journals and research papers. Kind of like reading the manual before the patient presents.
Again, this is not meant as any disrespect for your relatives, but just to point out that as much knowledge as they have in their fields, what they have memorized is what they need and use daily, just like the rest of us. Granted, they may need more, in their selected fields, but those fields are much larger, too (which is why, for instance their are specialists to narrow the scope). However, there is much more in their fields that they don't have memorized and for that they do look it up (or call for a consult).
You keep bringing up a deity in this discussion, assuming I am arguing from that point of view. I assure you I am not. However, it does seem as if your real issue is with religion and not with a woman's right to privacy and the impact of her decision on the viable child in her womb. (Again, leaving all of the first trimester when life begins stuff to others and focusing on third trimester issues).
So, I still stand by my previous post, that based on what you said, it's alright for the mother of the 8 month old fetus to terminate the life of the fetus but somehow isn't alright for her to do the same to the newborn 1month premature baby. In both cases she is providing total care and support. The only difference is the location of the child. If I have misunderstood your reasoning and there is some other difference, let me know.
Who is moderating today. I could see this as being moderated as funny, but as insightful? Get real! Of course I could also see it being moderated as flame-bait, too. And moderating as 5 insightful only makes it seem more so.
So, I ask again, who is moderating these things today?
Finally, if one really puts thought into it, the actual supreme court case on abortion was not about morality but instead was about ethics. It wasn't about life issues, but instead was about privacy issues. That's why the abortion issue is still a hot topic. It pits a woman's right to privacy against the fetus' right to exist. Regardless of whether one believes that life begins at conception or not, at some point during the nine month gestation a fetus becomes viable to live outside the womb, but the court decision ruled that the woman's right to privacy rules until the fetus is totally out of the womb, no ifs ands or buts.
People will argue till the end of the world about whether life begins at conception and whether it is moral to abort an embryo. However, in the US anyway, abortion is legal through the ninth month. When you ask people to defend aborting a viable fetus, one where the "person keeping the fetus alive" is just a very temporary situation, then all of those emotional arguments fall away and we are left with the question of what's the real difference between a child born a month premature and one still in the womb? Both are viable. Both have to rely on someone else for all the necessities of life. The only real difference is location.
So in reality, what you are stating is that it's not the person keeping the child alive that should make the choice (because the mother of the newborn also does this), but instead the location of the child to determine whether the person keeping it alive should be allowed to make the choice or not.
Instead of buying OSS companies to kill them off, most likely Microsoft would be looking for OSS companies with patents that have been used by other OSS projects, particularly Linux. Once Microsoft owns the company, it can enforce the patent. Forking won't help with a patent violation, particularly if the patent is question is in use by other projects.
That's why the majority of people in the US still travel by rail and use AT&T phone service, right?
1. The Pennsylvania Railroad (or insert your favorite) is a very large, very well known company. They will be around for a very long time to support any of their formats (passenger and freight service).
2. They create a lot of jobs
3. Most government offices travel by rail (or they did), so rail travel is the best format to use since the government is already integrated with their products.
That would still probably hold true if the government didn't look at the monopolistic like power of the railroads after WWII and encourage alternative travel methods by building highways and airports to encourage growth and even more jobs.
The same could be argued for phone service from AT&T at one time everybody had them, so using the same logic, we should all still have them, since we were already integrated with their products and system. Again, the government stepped in and recognized that a monopoly wasn't the best solution for growth and now there are even more jobs and choices.
In Massachusetts, it was the monopoly that stepped in and realized that choice was not in the best interest for its own growth and changed the political process.
Maybe these specific Linux distributions have patents or rights to something that Microsoft is infringing on. Microsoft could care a less about a few linux distros, even Suse. However, if, in these agreements, it is getting protection from it's own infringement, well, then that's a whole different story.
Record profits in the last year were not because of Vista or their OS division. As for fastest selling OS in history, would depend on how you measure it. Even if the 40M is true, what is that as a percentage of installed computers, since the larger installed base would mean more upgrades and replacements, too. It's like saying a movie is record breaking, however there are 4 times the screens today than 20 years ago. So how do you compare?
To really check the impact of Vista, one only has to track Microsoft's stock price, which is the true value of the company. While up, it's nothing spectacular which would indicate that Vista isn't doing as well as Microsoft is trying to make everyone believe. Investors don't buy hype, they look at results and if the results aren't there, the stock price shows it.
Based on stock prices, it's not really getting much better for them, at least the investors don't seem to thinks so (at least not to the extent that Microsoft's marketing department likes to paint).
If the 40M numbers are correct and the 78% figure is correct for the premium version, then most of those must be new computer sales as many of the premium features won't work on dated hardware. So, that would mean that somewhere between 31M and 40M new computers have been purchased in the last 100 days. And yet, I wonder why the hardware manufactures aren't reporting these record sales? Maybe it's because they don't exist!
Microsoft has the habit of including licenses shipped to manufactures, even if they haven't been sold, along with the free upgrades for those who purchased computers with XP and all the corporate sales with Vista installed that were wiped and had XP reinstalled. In other words, their numbers are meaningless.
Microsoft is just trying to convince people that Vista is doing well. However, all one has to do is track their stock price over the last 100 days to see that it is not the case (taking into account the blips whenever they make an announcement like this and then the price settles back to where it was pre-announcement). The financial analysts who buy major blocks of stock aren't swayed by these kinds of reports. They look at data that can be substantiated.
Microsoft can report whatever they want in press releases, maybe they really are selling 40M new copies of Vista, however, if they are, it hasn't added much to the worth of the company's stock. Microsoft's numbers might be suspect, but the stock value is a pretty good indicator of what the real impact of Vista has had.
Then again, maybe Microsoft was using Vista to tabulate the data and just discovered a new math bug. But really, if people want to believe the numbers that Microsoft puts out in press releases, well all I can say is that I have this bridge for sale in Brooklyn, if anyone is interested.
I'm not a psychologist, but from my understanding if you leave 'innocent' children unsupervised and isolated from the outside world they will naturally turn violent towards each other.
Actually, in all cultures that have been studied, if you leave "innocent" children unsupervised, they may get into "spats" but they also work them out. Innocent children are naturally empathetic towards each other and once one is hurt the others come to their aid. It's programmed into our genes.
However, if you leave innocent children unsupervised and isolated from the outside world, they most likely will not know how to fend for themselves and die of starvation or complications from malnutrition. While they may be naturally empathetic, they have very little survival instinct. That is a learned trait passed on by experience.
So, it is not really human nature to be violent, selfish and evil, but it could be said that it is human nature to learn to become to be violent, selfish and evil.