"Putting your own computer together these days with all the options, choices to make, etc. is getting harder than it was 10 years ago."
Hm. Methinks you have 'good old days' syndrome going on. I do seem to remember accidentally purchasing a processor that would not work with the motherboard I had purchased in 1997. The ISA/PCI thing had people confused while the changeover was going on, too.
Putting your own computer together requires a measure of patience, a measure of cash, a measure of research, and the ability to play the 'square peg/round hole' game on a more complex scale.
"Meanwhile, Linux has been getting easier."
Now first off, I'm a linux user, specifically xUbuntu. Ubuntu's mostly great, but it still suffers from the first-install problem; X just isn't always autoconfigged correctly on the first boot. Once you get past that, though, everything's peachy-keen.
Well, until you want to install something that's outside the Ubuntu package repository. Beryl's a good example of this. Sure, it's only like five lines of console, but I can't count how many people seem to have a problem with googling for 'beryl ubuntu install'.
Admittedly, that's a tweaker's problem. Still, the first (pervasively perfect X configuration) problem stands. Get it right, damnit!
But think. There is definitely money in non-upgradable computers - especially in the office desktop market. The cheaper the all-in-one solution, the more often the customer will upgrade the whole shebang.
Example: in my workplace, we have nice-ass Dells which do almost nothing and store all their data on a massive SAN. They're 2.6GHz beasts with a gig of ram, a 160G HD, and a SWEET ATI vid card each. Now, while I personally make use of it all proper-like, most people here could get along with a 1GHZ/512MRAM/16GHD/Onboard video system.
I think Intel/AMD stands to make a lot of money if they were to build an all-in-one-chip computer, ie: CPU, RAM, Video, Sound, Network, and a generous flash drive on a single chip.
Hey, don't get me wrong. I never said the hard science 100% agrees with environmental nutcases. I just said they have enough of it to back them up to seem plausible.
Anyone who does a little research on the subject can smell the fishiness. But that's like most other causes. The dangers are never as great as they're made out to be. They're just deformed to look that way so that Joe Schmo will think, 'Hey, I gotta DO something about this!'
Man, I could have SWORN I coined that one. And I know I don't know you.
Feh. Great - or way too busy - minds must think alike ^_^.
For the record, I crossed from apathism to atheism after reading The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. Figured, I still don't believe there is a God, and I spent enough time reading a book about it that I can't REALLY be apathetic about the questions.
Did you get the impression I was trying to convince you of my belief, lack thereof, or complete apathy towards? Sorry, but I'm pretty far from giving a damn what emotional glitch you've got.
I was stating my position on the topic. Don't agree? Fine. Please don't judge it on the merits of a snarky slashdot comment. In fact, please don't judge it. It's my head, it's my 'soul'. Please keep the peanuts to yourself.
Well, what can I say. So many people are still shitlessly scared by the Cold War and Chernobyl and Three Mile Island. They don't get that new plants are walk-away safe.
Of course, you have the US government who thinks Yucca Mountain is a good idea, won't research breeders or thorium reactors. Is it any wonder people see nuke as unsafe?
Hell, plop a CANDU next to every hot-water uranium reactor and you have the waste problem mitigated. Use a tetrachloride fast-breeder, and you have it solved. Use thorium and you don't HAVE waste to begin with (and a cleaner fuel-mining process).
"You either have to regress infinitely..., or you eventually have to come to something that was not created. We can apply this more broadly. Where did all the matter/energy in the universe come from? Either it is infinite, or at some point it was created."
Which is what makes a Creator less probable: An eternal complex being capable of building the universe is less probable than a large amount of eternal matter and energy. Hell, you could break it further down: if all matter was created by the condensation of energy as the universe initially cooled, then we only have to account for eternal energy.
I mean, at the very least, we can see and interact with matter and energy.
Still, none of it REALLY matters, except in how we proceed. The answer, for research, need not be correct, just more likely.
"Did the algorithms used in genetic programming happen by chance?"
No. They were written to emulate an existing process. The remainder of questions there are irrelevant.
The process, by the way, is the natural extension of any self-replicating matter. One could suggest that a self-replicating amino chain was the only thing in the history of life to come about by chance. Since there were a couple billion years available for that to happen before the advent of life on earth (and to take for long enough to grow more complex), and since SRAs come about pretty frequently in conditions similar to primorial earth, I'm willing to see it as sufficiently probable.
Look, you can argue 'till you're blue in the face, but a Designer just isn't a plausable enough excuse for the universe. Besides, how would science proceed? 'Why is the sky blue? It was designed that way'?? Naw. Sorry, but some of us look for deeper answers.
"There was a cool bloke once, who suggested that the most important thing in life is actually to love thy neighbour..."
Very good point, and quite true. Not the topic, though. I don't argue whether his teachings were valid (nor those of say, Buddha or the Dao). I just question the supernaturalism of it all.
Faith in oneself (and moreover, in the consistency of the universe - the faith without which, you ARE in fact, insane) is a different thing than faith in a deity. One you can't operate without.
Besides, I'm not implying that most of the world is stupid. Just weak-minded. Go ahead, say I'm wrong.
"The science community should not limit the possibilities."
Actually, science does this all the time. It's called 'limiting the scope of investigation'. Generally put, if you're looking for an answer to a problem, you seek out the probability of each solution before investing too much time in it. Those that can easily be dismissed as 'improbable' are set aside until investigation on more probable candidate solutions have been fleshed out.
"How about the possibility of 'created that way'?"
Unfortunately, this one is highly improbable, not to mention logically problematic. First the probability.
If something were created, there would have to be a more complex entity than the creation existent to have created it. Since complex entities, by definition, arrive late in the game, the concept is shown to be very improbable.
As for the logical problem: if there was a complex entity to create this complex universe before it started, what created it? You can't actually answer that without exposing the relationship that intelligent design hold with scripture.
"Many believe there is a creator who put the order in place for things to grow and adapt."
"Leaving creation out of consideration does upset the church leadership..."
That is fine. Religious leadership have generally been angry throughout history.
"... and should upset the scientific community..."
Hm? Why?
"... who are finding a strong correlation between the two accounts."
What on earth are you talking about?
'Course, I should know better than to try and argue with someone who thinks ID is a reasonable avenue of inquiry. As above, including creation - or 'design' as has attempted to get snuck in - in scientific inquiry would be a bit like including electricity in theistic inquiry. It simply doesn't make sense, and is kind of a waste of time.
The most common argument of evidence for design is the makeup of DNA. Couldn't have gotten that way from chance, could it?
Well, no. But here's a task. Look into a bit of genetic 'black box' programming, apply your new understanding to that of natural selection, and get back to me.
Actually Dawkins has a good bit on this, and I rather agree with it, having done my own analysis.
You can't prove the existence or non-existence of a supernatural deity, but you can have a very good idea of His probability. As an atheist, I have examined the effects contributing to that number, and found it to be about 99% against existence.
What do I do in the even there is a God? Well, when I die and am faced with it, I just say, 'Oh well. There just wasn't enough evidence.'
If I burn in hell, so be it. The chances of a hell to burn in are slim enough that I just can't bring myself to care in this life. I've got better things to do.
"If you don't believe me, look at environmentalism, the new urban religion"
I'm sure that there are lots of people who behave like it's a religion. On the other hand, the 'scripture' of environmentalism has hard science to back it up. There's really no need to believe in it; the pressures caused by environmental effect such as global warming will be felt and dealt with.
No, I'm not of the school that there's some mythical 'point of no return'. Even if there is, we'll get close, we'll notice it's a bit too warm out, and we'll fix it. Hell, we're doing that now.
By the way, calling environmentalism a religion is a disservice to low-emissions engineers and environmental scientists everywhere.
"Sounds like a sure way to piss off the religious and atheists alike:]"
I doubt that; atheists KNOW that religion evolved, and that it's kinda of a natural emergence of any community of self-aware beings. Someone's got to be a traffic controller, and when asked for where his rules come from, the 'easiest' - though not necessarily right - explanation is that the Big Guy (who you'll meet after you're dead) said so.
We naturally believe this because, more than a deity, social animals are wired for hierarchy.
As for how Faith could be a survival trait, one need only look towards the Dark Ages and time before. "Don't believe in God? Fine. Lets see how much non-believin' you do without a head."
Yeah. I've heard the pun before. Puns aren't very funny, except in rare conditions. The primary exception is for four year olds, to whom puns are always the funniest thing in the universe. The rest of the AC's statement is more flamebait than amusing.
Though, I may have missed something that is somehow retardedly hilarious, but then, I'm more the Monty Python type than the Borat type.
"This shows that opensores does just not work. It has been a great vision, but now it's time to move on except for some braindead hippies who just refuse to accept the realities."
How do you figure exactly? It looks to me like a number of companies find it to be a profitable endeavor to pay their developers to work on a free and open project. The benefits to, say, IBM, are an increasingly stable server platform they can sell on their hardware. RedHat, for example, runs their business off of supporting Linux - and as a result also has a vested interest in its development.
Honestly, I don't know how you came to the conclusion that 'opensores does just not work' (great English, by the by). I'd say that it's evidence that Open Source not only works, but if your project is useful to a company, they may just hire you to develop it for them.
Slashdot Mirror
"Putting your own computer together these days with all the options, choices to make, etc. is getting harder than it was 10 years ago."
Hm. Methinks you have 'good old days' syndrome going on. I do seem to remember accidentally purchasing a processor that would not work with the motherboard I had purchased in 1997. The ISA/PCI thing had people confused while the changeover was going on, too.
Putting your own computer together requires a measure of patience, a measure of cash, a measure of research, and the ability to play the 'square peg/round hole' game on a more complex scale.
"Meanwhile, Linux has been getting easier."
Now first off, I'm a linux user, specifically xUbuntu. Ubuntu's mostly great, but it still suffers from the first-install problem; X just isn't always autoconfigged correctly on the first boot. Once you get past that, though, everything's peachy-keen.
Well, until you want to install something that's outside the Ubuntu package repository. Beryl's a good example of this. Sure, it's only like five lines of console, but I can't count how many people seem to have a problem with googling for 'beryl ubuntu install'.
Admittedly, that's a tweaker's problem. Still, the first (pervasively perfect X configuration) problem stands. Get it right, damnit!
Here's hoping Feisty does better.
Oh my GOD that needs shot in the face right now! It's a markup language, not a programming language! ...
They should use Javascript instead!
*ducks*
But think. There is definitely money in non-upgradable computers - especially in the office desktop market. The cheaper the all-in-one solution, the more often the customer will upgrade the whole shebang.
Example: in my workplace, we have nice-ass Dells which do almost nothing and store all their data on a massive SAN. They're 2.6GHz beasts with a gig of ram, a 160G HD, and a SWEET ATI vid card each. Now, while I personally make use of it all proper-like, most people here could get along with a 1GHZ/512MRAM/16GHD/Onboard video system.
I think Intel/AMD stands to make a lot of money if they were to build an all-in-one-chip computer, ie: CPU, RAM, Video, Sound, Network, and a generous flash drive on a single chip.
For those that missed the joke, it's pronounced 'homo'.
For those that haven't: I salute you!
Ah, John Dvorak: The Fox News of the tech world.
Hey, don't get me wrong. I never said the hard science 100% agrees with environmental nutcases. I just said they have enough of it to back them up to seem plausible.
Anyone who does a little research on the subject can smell the fishiness. But that's like most other causes. The dangers are never as great as they're made out to be. They're just deformed to look that way so that Joe Schmo will think, 'Hey, I gotta DO something about this!'
Man, I could have SWORN I coined that one. And I know I don't know you.
Feh. Great - or way too busy - minds must think alike ^_^.
For the record, I crossed from apathism to atheism after reading The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. Figured, I still don't believe there is a God, and I spent enough time reading a book about it that I can't REALLY be apathetic about the questions.
Ok, I'm lost. You're not talking about Harkness, are you?
"People who find meaning in life and have moral values without religion are really lucky."
They're called 'Atheists'.
Did you get the impression I was trying to convince you of my belief, lack thereof, or complete apathy towards? Sorry, but I'm pretty far from giving a damn what emotional glitch you've got.
I was stating my position on the topic. Don't agree? Fine. Please don't judge it on the merits of a snarky slashdot comment. In fact, please don't judge it. It's my head, it's my 'soul'. Please keep the peanuts to yourself.
Very cute. I've got better things to do than that, too - which is why it gets little attention.
Some of us have lives, you know.
Well, what can I say. So many people are still shitlessly scared by the Cold War and Chernobyl and Three Mile Island. They don't get that new plants are walk-away safe.
Of course, you have the US government who thinks Yucca Mountain is a good idea, won't research breeders or thorium reactors. Is it any wonder people see nuke as unsafe?
Hell, plop a CANDU next to every hot-water uranium reactor and you have the waste problem mitigated. Use a tetrachloride fast-breeder, and you have it solved. Use thorium and you don't HAVE waste to begin with (and a cleaner fuel-mining process).
"You either have to regress infinitely ..., or you eventually have to come to something that was not created. We can apply this more broadly. Where did all the matter/energy in the universe come from? Either it is infinite, or at some point it was created."
Which is what makes a Creator less probable: An eternal complex being capable of building the universe is less probable than a large amount of eternal matter and energy. Hell, you could break it further down: if all matter was created by the condensation of energy as the universe initially cooled, then we only have to account for eternal energy.
I mean, at the very least, we can see and interact with matter and energy.
Still, none of it REALLY matters, except in how we proceed. The answer, for research, need not be correct, just more likely.
"Did the algorithms used in genetic programming happen by chance?"
No. They were written to emulate an existing process. The remainder of questions there are irrelevant.
The process, by the way, is the natural extension of any self-replicating matter. One could suggest that a self-replicating amino chain was the only thing in the history of life to come about by chance. Since there were a couple billion years available for that to happen before the advent of life on earth (and to take for long enough to grow more complex), and since SRAs come about pretty frequently in conditions similar to primorial earth, I'm willing to see it as sufficiently probable.
Look, you can argue 'till you're blue in the face, but a Designer just isn't a plausable enough excuse for the universe. Besides, how would science proceed? 'Why is the sky blue? It was designed that way'?? Naw. Sorry, but some of us look for deeper answers.
"There was a cool bloke once, who suggested that the most important thing in life is actually to love thy neighbour..."
Very good point, and quite true. Not the topic, though. I don't argue whether his teachings were valid (nor those of say, Buddha or the Dao). I just question the supernaturalism of it all.
Faith in oneself (and moreover, in the consistency of the universe - the faith without which, you ARE in fact, insane) is a different thing than faith in a deity. One you can't operate without.
Besides, I'm not implying that most of the world is stupid. Just weak-minded. Go ahead, say I'm wrong.
Are you crazy?! The methane from composting is far worse than the CO2 from burning. Heretics must be encased in carbonite and buried 100 miles deep!
"The science community should not limit the possibilities."
..."
..."
Actually, science does this all the time. It's called 'limiting the scope of investigation'. Generally put, if you're looking for an answer to a problem, you seek out the probability of each solution before investing too much time in it. Those that can easily be dismissed as 'improbable' are set aside until investigation on more probable candidate solutions have been fleshed out.
"How about the possibility of 'created that way'?"
Unfortunately, this one is highly improbable, not to mention logically problematic. First the probability.
If something were created, there would have to be a more complex entity than the creation existent to have created it. Since complex entities, by definition, arrive late in the game, the concept is shown to be very improbable.
As for the logical problem: if there was a complex entity to create this complex universe before it started, what created it? You can't actually answer that without exposing the relationship that intelligent design hold with scripture.
"Many believe there is a creator who put the order in place for things to grow and adapt."
"Leaving creation out of consideration does upset the church leadership
That is fine. Religious leadership have generally been angry throughout history.
"... and should upset the scientific community
Hm? Why?
"... who are finding a strong correlation between the two accounts."
What on earth are you talking about?
'Course, I should know better than to try and argue with someone who thinks ID is a reasonable avenue of inquiry. As above, including creation - or 'design' as has attempted to get snuck in - in scientific inquiry would be a bit like including electricity in theistic inquiry. It simply doesn't make sense, and is kind of a waste of time.
The most common argument of evidence for design is the makeup of DNA. Couldn't have gotten that way from chance, could it?
Well, no. But here's a task. Look into a bit of genetic 'black box' programming, apply your new understanding to that of natural selection, and get back to me.
Actually Dawkins has a good bit on this, and I rather agree with it, having done my own analysis.
You can't prove the existence or non-existence of a supernatural deity, but you can have a very good idea of His probability. As an atheist, I have examined the effects contributing to that number, and found it to be about 99% against existence.
What do I do in the even there is a God? Well, when I die and am faced with it, I just say, 'Oh well. There just wasn't enough evidence.'
If I burn in hell, so be it. The chances of a hell to burn in are slim enough that I just can't bring myself to care in this life. I've got better things to do.
"If you don't believe me, look at environmentalism, the new urban religion"
I'm sure that there are lots of people who behave like it's a religion. On the other hand, the 'scripture' of environmentalism has hard science to back it up. There's really no need to believe in it; the pressures caused by environmental effect such as global warming will be felt and dealt with.
No, I'm not of the school that there's some mythical 'point of no return'. Even if there is, we'll get close, we'll notice it's a bit too warm out, and we'll fix it. Hell, we're doing that now.
By the way, calling environmentalism a religion is a disservice to low-emissions engineers and environmental scientists everywhere.
"Sounds like a sure way to piss off the religious and atheists alike :]"
I doubt that; atheists KNOW that religion evolved, and that it's kinda of a natural emergence of any community of self-aware beings. Someone's got to be a traffic controller, and when asked for where his rules come from, the 'easiest' - though not necessarily right - explanation is that the Big Guy (who you'll meet after you're dead) said so.
We naturally believe this because, more than a deity, social animals are wired for hierarchy.
As for how Faith could be a survival trait, one need only look towards the Dark Ages and time before. "Don't believe in God? Fine. Lets see how much non-believin' you do without a head."
By the same logic, faith should end when science disproves something that faith is held in.
Of course, it doesn't.
Me, I get my hope and direction wherever I can - except for in faith. There's searching for inspiration, and there's stupid.
Mmm. Useless AC trolling.
Look, if thinking Borat is moronic is wrong, elitist, etc., then I'm wrong.
And if liking Borat is necessary to avoid a firey death, I'm sorry, but I'm just going to have to burn.
Yeah. I've heard the pun before. Puns aren't very funny, except in rare conditions. The primary exception is for four year olds, to whom puns are always the funniest thing in the universe. The rest of the AC's statement is more flamebait than amusing.
Though, I may have missed something that is somehow retardedly hilarious, but then, I'm more the Monty Python type than the Borat type.
Nah. They work more on the integration end of things. And support. They, in my memory, do considerably less work on the Kernel than say, Red Hat.
"This shows that opensores does just not work. It has been a great vision, but now it's time to move on except for some braindead hippies who just refuse to accept the realities."
How do you figure exactly? It looks to me like a number of companies find it to be a profitable endeavor to pay their developers to work on a free and open project. The benefits to, say, IBM, are an increasingly stable server platform they can sell on their hardware. RedHat, for example, runs their business off of supporting Linux - and as a result also has a vested interest in its development.
Honestly, I don't know how you came to the conclusion that 'opensores does just not work' (great English, by the by). I'd say that it's evidence that Open Source not only works, but if your project is useful to a company, they may just hire you to develop it for them.