You know that is pretty fucking sick, even for slashdot. Have you thought about getting help. Maybe seeing a doctor.
Child marriage, as repugnant as it is viewed today, wasn't unheard of in Europe in that era, even as young as that. She had three years to get used to the idea, in a society where the mechanics of the process and consequences were readily observable via domestic animals, and probably via the old fscker's senior wives. So, while posed as a countertroll, it was a serious question: is there evidence in the Quran that she was reluctant about the consummation? (It wouldn't surprise me.) Or are you as ignorant about the Q'uran as the "-1 Flamebait" mod suggests?
The Pope, the designated representative of God on Earth, says that contraception is wrong yet most Catholics still use it.
Ah, but that's the fun part about Catholicism: the Sacrament of Confession... which many school boys have been very happy that Catholic Schoolgirls avail themselves of regularly. =)
I happen to know that my married sister, who is happy with her two kids, the oldest now ten; she's gone to confession weekly for years. Hmm. (In college, I merely gave up Catholicism one Lent.) But yes, Christianity is a bit more flexible these days than when they routinely burned heretics at the stake.
By that notion, if the government of the United States launched its missiles tomorrow and glassed all the predominantly Muslim countries in the world, and then followed up with land forces to finish the genocide, until any trace of Islam had been wiped off the Earth, then secularism would be provably a better philosophy than Islam, as evidenced by the fact that Islam would not longer exist.
Well, neglecting the domestic Muslim population, the need to also wipe out all copies of the Quran, and the question of whether we'd survive the Nuclear Autumn that would ensue, it would at least be demonstrably better at surviving.
Of course, as you note evolution is more subtle than that. What contributes to survival in one area may be a drawback in another. However, merely because an idea isn't perfect, doesn't mean it's not useful/advantageous. Pigheaded fanaticsm has some survival value, even when it's wrong. For one thing, it gives you the motive and concentration to kill off all the infidels, and take their resources to put to "better" use... like killing more infidels.
This seems to be a psychological defense mechanism that serves to protect one from the very disturbing feelings of uncertainty that arise in such discussions.
This is the most insightful thing I've heard on Slashdot in months. I wonder if one could develop an experiment to test whether Faith is ultimately rooted in Fear of the unknown?
The destruction of a city's books cannot destroy the total advance of science in a culture that values it.
However, add in knocking the entire country back to subsistence or sub-subsistence level survival, and yeah, priorities tend to shift some. The most important thing everyone wants to know is "WHERE IS MY NEXT MEAL COMING FROM". Without that, science goes down the tubes for priority.
On the other hand, Ghengis & Co. never reached Moorish Spain, nor (I think) the southern Mediterranean. The sack of Baghdad might be a factor, but doesn't seem to stand up as a root cause; compare the destruction of the library at Alexandria.
The scientist wonders—as well he should—why this is the case.
Actually, it's more that he speculates.
Science is fundamentally an idea-system that has grown around a sort of skeleton wire frame--the scientific method. The deliberately cultivated scientific habit of mind is mandatory for successful work in all science and related fields where critical judgment is essential. Scientific progress constantly demands that facts and hypotheses be checked and rechecked, and is unmindful of authority. But there lies the problem: The scientific method is alien to traditional, unreformed religious thought. Only the exceptional individual is able to exercise such a mindset in a society in which absolute authority comes from above, questions are asked only with difficulty, the penalties for disbelief are severe, the intellect is denigrated, and a certainty exists that all answers are already known and must only be discovered.
Science finds every soil barren in which miracles are taken literally and seriously and revelation is considered to provide authentic knowledge of the physical world. If the scientific method is trashed, no amount of resources or loud declarations of intent to develop science can compensate. In those circumstances, scientific research becomes, at best, a kind of cataloging or "butterfly-collecting" activity. It cannot be a creative process of genuine inquiry in which bold hypotheses are made and checked.
Then like many Scientists, of course, he sets out to get himself lynched:
If Muslim societies are to develop technology instead of just using it, the ruthlessly competitive global marketplace will insist on not only high skill levels but also intense social work habits. The latter are not easily reconcilable with religious demands made on a fully observant Muslim's time, energy, and mental concentration: The faithful must participate in five daily congregational prayers, endure a month of fasting that taxes the body, recite daily from the Qur'an, and more. Although such duties orient believers admirably well toward success in the life hereafter, they make worldly success less likely. A more balanced approach will be needed.
Strictly speaking, it seems there ought to be an experimental test suggested for his hypothesis about "Only the exceptional individual is able to exercise such a mindset..." before recommending changes, but that's just a quibble. Since he seems to be based in Pakistan, I wish the article's Author luck in outrunning any mobs.
Science progresses because people are given free rein to express their ideas, protection from persecution if those ideas run counter to the irrational masses, and a license to gather and share ideas.
This part I think you have dead right.
None of that has the least bit to do with democracy.
This, not so much. The idea of Freedom of Speech is somewhat tied up with what is commonly referred to in the west as "Democracy", but more specifically ought to be referred to as "Limited Government"; that is to say, there are some things that the government Does Not Do, as the Magna Carta and Bill of Rights attest. Limited Government usually comes from Democracy, but it's not invariably tied to that; there are also limited Monarchies.
This country isn't especially science friendly; we underfund pure science, and allow commercial science to patent basic processes that could be used by anyone to advance knowledge.
Patents are a compromise; the protection is supposed to be limited, and in exchange for the certainty of knowledge being made widely available for general use after a limited time. Patents spur advancement better than Trade Secrets, but still give private incentives for research. It's the overbroad abuse of what's considered patentable that's the current problem.
The use of patents allows for research not based on public funding, as public funding is generally inefficient and undereffective at the allocation of resources to research. While I agree such public research is underfunded, I'd think public funding should be limited to research in areas where the Marketplace is defective. EG, long-term basic research, the few projects too big for mustering the capital privately, or where the benefit derived will be too thinly and widely dispersed to allow a revenue-based model to recoup the investment.
Which is to say, we're not doing too badly, aside from our excessively pork-barrel politics. Maybe I should apply for a grant to study how to reduce the imperfections of resource allocation due to pork-barreling? Hm....
What Al-Ghazzali did was to balance Islamic teachings with Greek ideas and to prevent the former from being completely eclipsed by the latter.
Unfortunately in the process, he rejected THE single most important idea to be developed arising from the Greek philosophers: the valuation of empirical evidence from the senses over the "revelations" of pure reason (or faith). This seed is THE foundation rock on which all of modern science has been built: observation. As Sir Arthur Conan Doyle observed via Sherlock Holmes, "It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts." Al-Hazzali's rejection of this key tenet bars the main body of the field of scientific endeavor from adherents. Mathematics is the only field where you can advance via a priori knowledge, but the "proofs" risk being flawed, and the picture may be woefully incomplete at best, if not Contradictory. If he had found a way to make Islam compatible with this single idea as Ibn-Rushd attempted, or if Ibn-Rushd's view had prevailed, the Caliphate (or its conceptual descendants) might now rule the Americas. Instead, the lands of the Americas are the legacy of Europe's Principalities.
It is, perhaps sadly, an example of evolution in the realm of ideas. Some ideas are more beneficial than others. Islam has rejected belief adapting from progressive observations via the senses, in favor of certain and unquestionable belief from revealed truth. The latter worldview has some advantages; it allows a individuals with an incredible level of commitment arising from fanatic certainty, that now endangers the survival of the West. However, the former view better facilitates progress, and the Western higher tolerance of diversity means the West still has a few comparably dangerous carriers of fanaticism in its ideological arsenal... who do occasionally rise to preeminence, and get all our available big hammers at their disposal.
Can you say "Mutually Assured Destruction" children? President Dubya might be able to....
Support for security patches and feature upgrades will end April 2009.
Which is one reason why I spent an arm and a leg for a retail copy of Server 2K3.
I've also bought a full retail copy of XP Pro, with the full intention of moving it back and forth between machines until I run out of hardware that will run it... or until Microsoft won't reactivate it. At that point, a class action might be fun.
[...] to remind you that the Net's underlying protocols were designed to survive WWIII.
This is an old canard; stop putting the cart before the horse. The internet was designed to enable effective and economical sharing of computational resources. This necessarily included the capability to share ASCII-Art renderings of Playboy pinups. In order to preserve the capabilities against censors, it had to develop the ability to withstand a potential WWIII nuclear exchange as an inevitable byproduct of the initial design requirement of effective and economical resource sharing. (Nixon really didn't get along well with Hef.)
Where does the berne convention say _anything_ about trackers where people can register to share whether they have a file with a cetain sha1 hash?
Well, actually Berne doesn't say a lot about anything; it sets some very low minimums, and then says nations must give at least the same protection (or stronger) to foreign works as to domestic ones. So it's not what Berne says, but what Swedish law says. Which, no doubt, irritates the MAFIAA.
Now, as I(AmNotALawyer) understand US law, if permission is not obtained first from the copyright holder for an original work, the copyright of any derived work (such as a condensation) goes to the owner of the original copyright. It could be argued that the torrent file itself is a derived work under the US definition, that distributing it is unlawful where not protected by fair use, and that (obviously) facilitating copyright infringement wouldn't qualify. However, we're talking Berne and Sweden here. So, the questions would be, how does Swedish law define a derived work, where do Sweeden's laws place ownership of a derived work, and is the "fair use" an exception? If it's similar to the US, that could be trouble.
I haven't been able to find anything with a a quick internet search, but I don't speak Swedish, and suspect most of the important case law may not be on-line.
My friends who read the WoT series and I always had a theory that he'd written the ending years ago, and that in some strange, literary mockery of Zeno's Paradox, he just wrote the plot half-way there each time he churned out a new book.
Well, he's had it plotted out for years, but he's been making progress, especially since his doctors delivered the news of God's little death threat against him.
The real "Zeno's Paradox" series is GRRM's "Song of Ice and Fire."
I have hardcovers of all four of the books out so far.
All four claim that the next volume will be "A Dance With Dragons".
He's now working on book five... "A Dance With Dragons."
And, as noted at his roast, Chevy Chase made three really funny movies... and another 38 lousy ones.
Chevy had the grace to laugh, especially when the roaster admitted Chevy had three more on the plus side than he did. From all I know of the man, he would have had similar grace — and motivation. Yes, he may have been a hack, but if so, a hack with more writing talent than I've yet mustered.
Like his work or not, he wasn't a bad guy. Arguing about the quality of his books is a better tribute than many get or deserve... and probably as fitting a memorial as any.
Now, they may start suing the artists, for encouraging copyright infringement; then they'll have neither customers nor artists producing music. Countdown to complete industry implosion continues....
The WBM seems to be giving me trouble at the moment, however there is a CSE mirror site here that didn't get the memo I guess.
And that is sufficient info to find some Wayback Machine versions; indicating that any video created prior to the end of 2003 has had copyright renounced. (There may be later versions on another page, too.)
Thank you; you may now resume your gathering of torches and pitchforks....
Wasnt this all forwarded all to that gmail account? isnt it now impossible to delete?
And then mirrored as a torrent, and then the torrent slashdotted... giving rise to an entirely new value of "impossible to delete", comparable to the Linux Kernel.
Slashdot Mirror
You know that is pretty fucking sick, even for slashdot. Have you thought about getting help. Maybe seeing a doctor.
Child marriage, as repugnant as it is viewed today, wasn't unheard of in Europe in that era, even as young as that. She had three years to get used to the idea, in a society where the mechanics of the process and consequences were readily observable via domestic animals, and probably via the old fscker's senior wives. So, while posed as a countertroll, it was a serious question: is there evidence in the Quran that she was reluctant about the consummation? (It wouldn't surprise me.) Or are you as ignorant about the Q'uran as the "-1 Flamebait" mod suggests?
The Pope, the designated representative of God on Earth, says that contraception is wrong yet most Catholics still use it.
Ah, but that's the fun part about Catholicism: the Sacrament of Confession... which many school boys have been very happy that Catholic Schoolgirls avail themselves of regularly. =)
I happen to know that my married sister, who is happy with her two kids, the oldest now ten; she's gone to confession weekly for years. Hmm. (In college, I merely gave up Catholicism one Lent.) But yes, Christianity is a bit more flexible these days than when they routinely burned heretics at the stake.
There is room for more than one way to make sense out of the world around us.
No, there isn't. There is, however, still more than one sensible motive for doing so. This is where religion and philosophy come in.
By that notion, if the government of the United States launched its missiles tomorrow and glassed all the predominantly Muslim countries in the world, and then followed up with land forces to finish the genocide, until any trace of Islam had been wiped off the Earth, then secularism would be provably a better philosophy than Islam, as evidenced by the fact that Islam would not longer exist.
Well, neglecting the domestic Muslim population, the need to also wipe out all copies of the Quran, and the question of whether we'd survive the Nuclear Autumn that would ensue, it would at least be demonstrably better at surviving.
Of course, as you note evolution is more subtle than that. What contributes to survival in one area may be a drawback in another. However, merely because an idea isn't perfect, doesn't mean it's not useful/advantageous. Pigheaded fanaticsm has some survival value, even when it's wrong. For one thing, it gives you the motive and concentration to kill off all the infidels, and take their resources to put to "better" use... like killing more infidels.
This seems to be a psychological defense mechanism that serves to protect one from the very disturbing feelings of uncertainty that arise in such discussions.
This is the most insightful thing I've heard on Slashdot in months. I wonder if one could develop an experiment to test whether Faith is ultimately rooted in Fear of the unknown?
Muhammad didn't rape a six year old child. He married her when she was six. It wasn't until she was 8 or 9 that he raped her.
Since there wasn't any Statute against it at the time, I presume you can demonstrate lack of consent?
The main cause for this is the Qu'ran and the fact that Muslims can ^H^H^H only interpret it literally.
FTFY. (Consider if you will the Christians who accept the creation in Genesis to be a parable about Evolution, versus those who won't.)
Which pagan deity, pray tell, is Mary?
Which Mary? The bible has several. (Mary Magdelene, for example, is most likely Ishtar, the sacred prostitute.)
The destruction of a city's books cannot destroy the total advance of science in a culture that values it.
However, add in knocking the entire country back to subsistence or sub-subsistence level survival, and yeah, priorities tend to shift some. The most important thing everyone wants to know is "WHERE IS MY NEXT MEAL COMING FROM". Without that, science goes down the tubes for priority.
On the other hand, Ghengis & Co. never reached Moorish Spain, nor (I think) the southern Mediterranean. The sack of Baghdad might be a factor, but doesn't seem to stand up as a root cause; compare the destruction of the library at Alexandria.
The scientist wonders—as well he should—why this is the case.
Actually, it's more that he speculates.
Then like many Scientists, of course, he sets out to get himself lynched:
Strictly speaking, it seems there ought to be an experimental test suggested for his hypothesis about "Only the exceptional individual is able to exercise such a mindset..." before recommending changes, but that's just a quibble. Since he seems to be based in Pakistan, I wish the article's Author luck in outrunning any mobs.
Political correctness at its worst... parent was marked as Troll.
Well, it is a troll. It's more insightful than trollish, and largely correct, but it's still a troll.
Science progresses because people are given free rein to express their ideas, protection from persecution if those ideas run counter to the irrational masses, and a license to gather and share ideas.
This part I think you have dead right.
None of that has the least bit to do with democracy.
This, not so much. The idea of Freedom of Speech is somewhat tied up with what is commonly referred to in the west as "Democracy", but more specifically ought to be referred to as "Limited Government"; that is to say, there are some things that the government Does Not Do, as the Magna Carta and Bill of Rights attest. Limited Government usually comes from Democracy, but it's not invariably tied to that; there are also limited Monarchies.
This country isn't especially science friendly; we underfund pure science, and allow commercial science to patent basic processes that could be used by anyone to advance knowledge.
Patents are a compromise; the protection is supposed to be limited, and in exchange for the certainty of knowledge being made widely available for general use after a limited time. Patents spur advancement better than Trade Secrets, but still give private incentives for research. It's the overbroad abuse of what's considered patentable that's the current problem.
The use of patents allows for research not based on public funding, as public funding is generally inefficient and undereffective at the allocation of resources to research. While I agree such public research is underfunded, I'd think public funding should be limited to research in areas where the Marketplace is defective. EG, long-term basic research, the few projects too big for mustering the capital privately, or where the benefit derived will be too thinly and widely dispersed to allow a revenue-based model to recoup the investment.
Which is to say, we're not doing too badly, aside from our excessively pork-barrel politics. Maybe I should apply for a grant to study how to reduce the imperfections of resource allocation due to pork-barreling? Hm....
What Al-Ghazzali did was to balance Islamic teachings with Greek ideas and to prevent the former from being completely eclipsed by the latter.
Unfortunately in the process, he rejected THE single most important idea to be developed arising from the Greek philosophers: the valuation of empirical evidence from the senses over the "revelations" of pure reason (or faith). This seed is THE foundation rock on which all of modern science has been built: observation. As Sir Arthur Conan Doyle observed via Sherlock Holmes, "It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts." Al-Hazzali's rejection of this key tenet bars the main body of the field of scientific endeavor from adherents. Mathematics is the only field where you can advance via a priori knowledge, but the "proofs" risk being flawed, and the picture may be woefully incomplete at best, if not Contradictory. If he had found a way to make Islam compatible with this single idea as Ibn-Rushd attempted, or if Ibn-Rushd's view had prevailed, the Caliphate (or its conceptual descendants) might now rule the Americas. Instead, the lands of the Americas are the legacy of Europe's Principalities.
It is, perhaps sadly, an example of evolution in the realm of ideas. Some ideas are more beneficial than others. Islam has rejected belief adapting from progressive observations via the senses, in favor of certain and unquestionable belief from revealed truth. The latter worldview has some advantages; it allows a individuals with an incredible level of commitment arising from fanatic certainty, that now endangers the survival of the West. However, the former view better facilitates progress, and the Western higher tolerance of diversity means the West still has a few comparably dangerous carriers of fanaticism in its ideological arsenal... who do occasionally rise to preeminence, and get all our available big hammers at their disposal.
Can you say "Mutually Assured Destruction" children? President Dubya might be able to....
Support for security patches and feature upgrades will end April 2009.
Which is one reason why I spent an arm and a leg for a retail copy of Server 2K3.
I've also bought a full retail copy of XP Pro, with the full intention of moving it back and forth between machines until I run out of hardware that will run it... or until Microsoft won't reactivate it. At that point, a class action might be fun.
[...] to remind you that the Net's underlying protocols were designed to survive WWIII.
This is an old canard; stop putting the cart before the horse. The internet was designed to enable effective and economical sharing of computational resources. This necessarily included the capability to share ASCII-Art renderings of Playboy pinups. In order to preserve the capabilities against censors, it had to develop the ability to withstand a potential WWIII nuclear exchange as an inevitable byproduct of the initial design requirement of effective and economical resource sharing. (Nixon really didn't get along well with Hef.)
Also, here is a YouTube video with footage of Hovind himself stating that none of CSE's videos are copyrighted.
Heh; I hope any DMCA counter-notice references it.
Where does the berne convention say _anything_ about trackers where people can register to share whether they have a file with a cetain sha1 hash?
Well, actually Berne doesn't say a lot about anything; it sets some very low minimums, and then says nations must give at least the same protection (or stronger) to foreign works as to domestic ones. So it's not what Berne says, but what Swedish law says. Which, no doubt, irritates the MAFIAA.
Now, as I(AmNotALawyer) understand US law, if permission is not obtained first from the copyright holder for an original work, the copyright of any derived work (such as a condensation) goes to the owner of the original copyright. It could be argued that the torrent file itself is a derived work under the US definition, that distributing it is unlawful where not protected by fair use, and that (obviously) facilitating copyright infringement wouldn't qualify. However, we're talking Berne and Sweden here. So, the questions would be, how does Swedish law define a derived work, where do Sweeden's laws place ownership of a derived work, and is the "fair use" an exception? If it's similar to the US, that could be trouble.
I haven't been able to find anything with a a quick internet search, but I don't speak Swedish, and suspect most of the important case law may not be on-line.
My friends who read the WoT series and I always had a theory that he'd written the ending years ago, and that in some strange, literary mockery of Zeno's Paradox, he just wrote the plot half-way there each time he churned out a new book.
Well, he's had it plotted out for years, but he's been making progress, especially since his doctors delivered the news of God's little death threat against him.
The real "Zeno's Paradox" series is GRRM's "Song of Ice and Fire."
I have hardcovers of all four of the books out so far.
All four claim that the next volume will be "A Dance With Dragons".
He's now working on book five... "A Dance With Dragons."
Mind you, I'm still waiting with cash in hand....
Robert Jordan wrote some great books.
And, as noted at his roast, Chevy Chase made three really funny movies... and another 38 lousy ones.
Chevy had the grace to laugh, especially when the roaster admitted Chevy had three more on the plus side than he did. From all I know of the man, he would have had similar grace — and motivation. Yes, he may have been a hack, but if so, a hack with more writing talent than I've yet mustered.
Like his work or not, he wasn't a bad guy. Arguing about the quality of his books is a better tribute than many get or deserve... and probably as fitting a memorial as any.
Resquiat in pacem, et lux perpetuae.
The only thing that's sacred is nothing.
Not if there's Wiccans around, for Mother Nature a'whores a vacuum.
Now, they may start suing the artists, for encouraging copyright infringement; then they'll have neither customers nor artists producing music. Countdown to complete industry implosion continues....
Yet, I do agree that the use of profanity does show a lack of professionalism.
Moreover, it shows limited imagination and vocabulary.
The WBM seems to be giving me trouble at the moment, however there is a CSE mirror site here that didn't get the memo I guess.
And that is sufficient info to find some Wayback Machine versions; indicating that any video created prior to the end of 2003 has had copyright renounced. (There may be later versions on another page, too.)
Thank you; you may now resume your gathering of torches and pitchforks....
Wasnt this all forwarded all to that gmail account? isnt it now impossible to delete?
And then mirrored as a torrent, and then the torrent slashdotted... giving rise to an entirely new value of "impossible to delete", comparable to the Linux Kernel.
Aldi isn't really a grocery store - they're more like a large convenience store... i.e. supermarket.
Ah -- the German equivalent of a Super Wal-Mart or Target.