Not really. Scientific theories are based on observable evidence that anyone can observe. Scientific theories are also constructed so that that, at least in principle, they can be shown to be invalid. Not so for religions.
Really? It seems to be illegal to attempt to show that evolution could be invalid. (I actually, personally, believe that the theory of evolution is the best explanation of what we see in biology today, so I'm not knocking it, but I think we border on the dogmatic when we hold it up as a theory that it is "unscientific" to question or challenge.)
Not really. Lack of belief is not a belief.
I feel like these two posts phrased this well. 14301429 and 14301949.
I am an atheist. I don't believe in supernatural things.
It depends on your definition of a belief. I would define a belief as anything one believes to be true enough that one is willing to act upon it, anything one isn't sure of, but acts upon anyway.
I'm not sure what you're arguing, but atheism is certainly a belief. There's no lack of belief in believing a value is 0 instead of 1. One could say that "one doesn't believe in god" or that "one believes there is no god." That's the same thing. One still holds something to be true, and lives one's life accordingly.
The closest one could get to a lack of a belief would be the form agnosticism where one isn't sure about anything. Such an agnostic may hold no firm convictions, but one still has to base one's life upon some assumptions in order to make decisions. Many such agnostics may claim to have no beliefs, but still live their life as if there was no god. If one sees something in the road and is not sure if it is a person or not, but runs over it anyway, one may claim not to have any beliefs whether or not it is a person or just some other object, but clearly one believed that it was not (or just didn't care if one ran someone over).
Right. Not all religions are equivalent. Just like not all scientific theories are equally valid. Each religion should be evaluated on its own merits. You can't just lump them all under one category, because really, atheism and agnosticism are also beliefs about things one cannot know. It's not the fact that someone believes in something that should be judged, it's what that something is.
I'm sorry, but I'm not sure I understand the concern... Yah, the TPM is built into both AMD and Intel chips, but why can't Linux be programmed to ignore it and not pass it on?
Are people worried that sites won't allow anyone to access their information unless they have it? That seems like an unlikely possibility for a lot of applications, since many people won't adopt the new TPM hardware for quite a while, I imagine.
I can, however, see it happening for perhaps online banking, e-commerce, etc, but is anyone really worried about being anonymous when they log in to their bank account or if they purchase something with their credit card?
But is charging your customers more to be early adopters really what they want to do? The way songs become widely accepted is that many people listen to them and play them for their friends, or recommend them to their friends like that (and also through distribution channels like TV and the radio, where the song is basically played for the listeners for free). Would it really be to their advantage to construct a initial barrier to widestream acceptance?
Out of curiosity, what would be the legal ramifications behind selling repairs of old consoles? And how far can you go and consider it still a repair and not a new console? If the controller ports are busted and you replace them with your own components? The logic board, the power supply? All of the electronics, but keeping the external frame? Why can't you replace the external frame with your own design? Wouldn't selling refurbished things like this be legal? I mean, how much can you replace and still consider it a repair or a refurbishing? Everything that is broken, right? And what's wrong with adding your own modifications, such as wireless controllers and updated video out? How is that different than what Messiah is doing, other than they probably didn't start out with one dead NES for their new ones?
Yea, I read it... and I was referring to his splintering idea.
Say, for instance, the US decides to cut the rest of the world off from its internet altogether. You can't say that there would be no value to Europe in having its own network with which to communicate with itself, or no value to the rest of the world to have a separate internet with which the rest of the world could communicate.
I don't think that's really the same thing. As far as I know, other countries are perfectly able to copy the design of the internet exactly. Nobody took the exact stone wheel from "Ugg," they've just copied the design. This is other countries demanding the same rights to Ugg's one stone wheel, not simply copying his design.
Actually, from the article it seems to only apply to businesses, or home offices, not just any homeowner. Their intention seems to be to prevent theft of credit card information from customers of the business.
I guess I would see value as a somewhat subjective term. I meant the Consider the extra 5% it might cost as an expenditure on cleaner air, privacy rights, rights of workers in sweatshops or what have you, and encourage those who agree with you to do the same. to be directed at the consumer, not the corporation. I would consider cleaner air and etc. part of the product that the corporation is selling.
I think you guys are both right. Being in charge of a corporation doesn't make you exempt from doing the right thing, and on the other side, consumers should be more proactive in supporting companies that try to do so. Consider the extra 5% it might cost as an expenditure on cleaner air, privacy rights, rights of workers in sweatshops or what have you, and encourage those who agree with you to do the same.
What sort of internet sites are there for people who would like to learn more about the ethical practices of different companies? Knowledge of who is doing the right thing is essential to being able to support them.
I'm pretty sure the grandparent post meant that the SSN is used as a Personal Identification Number, in that services require you to give them the last four digits of your SSN in order to verify that you are who you say you are (which is what a PIN does), and for that purpose it is a poor form of personal identification.
I don't think that GP meant it's a bad idea to use your SSN as a PIN number... that's pretty much a given (I hope).
Actually, it seems, my good sir, that it was developed by Gilead Sciences, a Californian company, but is marketed by the Swiss Roche.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oseltamivir
One step, that I haven't really heard much talk about is to give people ways to share their Jabber/XMPP contact info./. has a slot, but most other places do not... (phpbb, and other bulletin boards, for example). I have been running my own Jabber server for a while and have gotten several of my friends on it, but in general, I have few opportunities to communicate that I use Jabber other than just directly telling someone.
I know this can make a difference, for example, facebook.com, which is all the rage with those young college tykes these days, only has a slot for AIM, and none for Yahoo or MSN. This has been a major blow to Yahoo and MSN's market in the college demographic, as even those who have been using MSN or Yahoo for years have to switch so they can talk to all their new facebook friends on AIM... (although, one could say that this just because it is an exceptional point in their lives in which they're suddenly thrown into a brand new social environment, and so are willing to make the switch)...
If the technology ends up built-in to the phone, yes, but if you just have to bring an adapter to connect the phone to the pad, what's the difference? (And would you want the extra space taken up by the built-in adapter?)
Nintendo has a real opportunity this round. It has the right approach, but it has got to carry it out to the full extent. If it can make the Revolution easy and inexpensive to develop for and encourage innovation, it could really save the way the games market is headed. It has a lot of potential, but unfortunately, Nintendo has a history of not making it very easy for third-party developers to share in their innovation.
But, if they play it right, it could be a beautiful thing.
What about a system wherein each individual could choose which pieces of information he or she was willing to have the RFID transmit? Like,
First Name: No
Last Name: Yes
SSN: No
Gender: No
etc?
If a person felt comfortable allowing the government to scan his or her information and thereby clear faster, he or she could do so, but if a person did not feel comfortable with that he or she would still be able to pass through the normal way. Would this be a possible compromise between privacy and security?
Why not just implement some sort of buffer period for changes to be objected to or questioned? That way the pages could still be open for editing by anyone, but ridiculous changes or vandalism could be flagged as such before they have a chance to make it to the page.
Your argument is fair. However, this is not the case in the legal case here. The plantiff original took another company to court over a trademark infringment and the law firm being sued now used the internet archives to see if the company had truly represented themselves as they claimed to.
I agree that an individual has a right to his or her own content. However, if they bring legal action against another party involving such content, the other party and court has a right to see that content in order to defend itself. Perhaps a subpoena should be required to retrieve such information, but it is beneficial to society that such information is permanently recorded on an impartial medium such as the Internet Archive.
Of course. Nothing can be an objective simulation, because no person is objective. Anyone who claims to be is deluding himself or herself. We all have a limited set of knowledge and from that limited set, we make interpretations and extrapolations. These are necessary for us to function as human beings. True objectivity would require omniscience.
Slashdot Mirror
Not really. Scientific theories are based on observable evidence that anyone can observe. Scientific theories are also constructed so that that, at least in principle, they can be shown to be invalid. Not so for religions.
Really? It seems to be illegal to attempt to show that evolution could be invalid. (I actually, personally, believe that the theory of evolution is the best explanation of what we see in biology today, so I'm not knocking it, but I think we border on the dogmatic when we hold it up as a theory that it is "unscientific" to question or challenge.)
Not really. Lack of belief is not a belief.
I feel like these two posts phrased this well. 14301429 and 14301949.
I am an atheist. I don't believe in supernatural things.
Do you believe in free will?
It depends on your definition of a belief. I would define a belief as anything one believes to be true enough that one is willing to act upon it, anything one isn't sure of, but acts upon anyway. I'm not sure what you're arguing, but atheism is certainly a belief. There's no lack of belief in believing a value is 0 instead of 1. One could say that "one doesn't believe in god" or that "one believes there is no god." That's the same thing. One still holds something to be true, and lives one's life accordingly. The closest one could get to a lack of a belief would be the form agnosticism where one isn't sure about anything. Such an agnostic may hold no firm convictions, but one still has to base one's life upon some assumptions in order to make decisions. Many such agnostics may claim to have no beliefs, but still live their life as if there was no god. If one sees something in the road and is not sure if it is a person or not, but runs over it anyway, one may claim not to have any beliefs whether or not it is a person or just some other object, but clearly one believed that it was not (or just didn't care if one ran someone over).
Right. Not all religions are equivalent. Just like not all scientific theories are equally valid. Each religion should be evaluated on its own merits. You can't just lump them all under one category, because really, atheism and agnosticism are also beliefs about things one cannot know. It's not the fact that someone believes in something that should be judged, it's what that something is.
I'm sorry, but I'm not sure I understand the concern... Yah, the TPM is built into both AMD and Intel chips, but why can't Linux be programmed to ignore it and not pass it on?
Are people worried that sites won't allow anyone to access their information unless they have it? That seems like an unlikely possibility for a lot of applications, since many people won't adopt the new TPM hardware for quite a while, I imagine.
I can, however, see it happening for perhaps online banking, e-commerce, etc, but is anyone really worried about being anonymous when they log in to their bank account or if they purchase something with their credit card?
But is charging your customers more to be early adopters really what they want to do? The way songs become widely accepted is that many people listen to them and play them for their friends, or recommend them to their friends like that (and also through distribution channels like TV and the radio, where the song is basically played for the listeners for free). Would it really be to their advantage to construct a initial barrier to widestream acceptance?
Out of curiosity, what would be the legal ramifications behind selling repairs of old consoles? And how far can you go and consider it still a repair and not a new console? If the controller ports are busted and you replace them with your own components? The logic board, the power supply? All of the electronics, but keeping the external frame? Why can't you replace the external frame with your own design? Wouldn't selling refurbished things like this be legal? I mean, how much can you replace and still consider it a repair or a refurbishing? Everything that is broken, right? And what's wrong with adding your own modifications, such as wireless controllers and updated video out? How is that different than what Messiah is doing, other than they probably didn't start out with one dead NES for their new ones?
Yea, I read it... and I was referring to his splintering idea. Say, for instance, the US decides to cut the rest of the world off from its internet altogether. You can't say that there would be no value to Europe in having its own network with which to communicate with itself, or no value to the rest of the world to have a separate internet with which the rest of the world could communicate.
I don't think that's really the same thing. As far as I know, other countries are perfectly able to copy the design of the internet exactly. Nobody took the exact stone wheel from "Ugg," they've just copied the design. This is other countries demanding the same rights to Ugg's one stone wheel, not simply copying his design.
Actually, from the article it seems to only apply to businesses, or home offices, not just any homeowner. Their intention seems to be to prevent theft of credit card information from customers of the business.
I guess I would see value as a somewhat subjective term. I meant the Consider the extra 5% it might cost as an expenditure on cleaner air, privacy rights, rights of workers in sweatshops or what have you, and encourage those who agree with you to do the same. to be directed at the consumer, not the corporation. I would consider cleaner air and etc. part of the product that the corporation is selling.
I think you guys are both right. Being in charge of a corporation doesn't make you exempt from doing the right thing, and on the other side, consumers should be more proactive in supporting companies that try to do so. Consider the extra 5% it might cost as an expenditure on cleaner air, privacy rights, rights of workers in sweatshops or what have you, and encourage those who agree with you to do the same.
What sort of internet sites are there for people who would like to learn more about the ethical practices of different companies? Knowledge of who is doing the right thing is essential to being able to support them.
I'm pretty sure the grandparent post meant that the SSN is used as a Personal Identification Number, in that services require you to give them the last four digits of your SSN in order to verify that you are who you say you are (which is what a PIN does), and for that purpose it is a poor form of personal identification. I don't think that GP meant it's a bad idea to use your SSN as a PIN number... that's pretty much a given (I hope).
This looks like a good start...
Hopefully the number of times he uses the word blogosphere in an entry will go down over time.
Actually, it seems, my good sir, that it was developed by Gilead Sciences, a Californian company, but is marketed by the Swiss Roche. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oseltamivir
The prisoners know what k is?
Also, couldn't the king just call them in less times than the number of prisoners there are?
One step, that I haven't really heard much talk about is to give people ways to share their Jabber/XMPP contact info. /. has a slot, but most other places do not... (phpbb, and other bulletin boards, for example). I have been running my own Jabber server for a while and have gotten several of my friends on it, but in general, I have few opportunities to communicate that I use Jabber other than just directly telling someone.
I know this can make a difference, for example, facebook.com, which is all the rage with those young college tykes these days, only has a slot for AIM, and none for Yahoo or MSN. This has been a major blow to Yahoo and MSN's market in the college demographic, as even those who have been using MSN or Yahoo for years have to switch so they can talk to all their new facebook friends on AIM... (although, one could say that this just because it is an exceptional point in their lives in which they're suddenly thrown into a brand new social environment, and so are willing to make the switch)...
If the technology ends up built-in to the phone, yes, but if you just have to bring an adapter to connect the phone to the pad, what's the difference? (And would you want the extra space taken up by the built-in adapter?)
I figured I'd just point these links out... I immediately went and looked for them, so I figured others might want be curious too...
r dissidents-GB.pdf
Handbook (PDF): http://www.rsf.org/IMG/pdf/handbook_bloggers_cybe
Reporters without Borders (English): http://www.rsf.org/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=20
Nintendo has a real opportunity this round. It has the right approach, but it has got to carry it out to the full extent. If it can make the Revolution easy and inexpensive to develop for and encourage innovation, it could really save the way the games market is headed. It has a lot of potential, but unfortunately, Nintendo has a history of not making it very easy for third-party developers to share in their innovation.
But, if they play it right, it could be a beautiful thing.
What about a system wherein each individual could choose which pieces of information he or she was willing to have the RFID transmit? Like,
First Name: No
Last Name: Yes
SSN: No
Gender: No
etc?
If a person felt comfortable allowing the government to scan his or her information and thereby clear faster, he or she could do so, but if a person did not feel comfortable with that he or she would still be able to pass through the normal way. Would this be a possible compromise between privacy and security?
Why not just implement some sort of buffer period for changes to be objected to or questioned? That way the pages could still be open for editing by anyone, but ridiculous changes or vandalism could be flagged as such before they have a chance to make it to the page.
Yah. The individual software's not so much of problem... It's more about the dependencies...
Your argument is fair. However, this is not the case in the legal case here. The plantiff original took another company to court over a trademark infringment and the law firm being sued now used the internet archives to see if the company had truly represented themselves as they claimed to. I agree that an individual has a right to his or her own content. However, if they bring legal action against another party involving such content, the other party and court has a right to see that content in order to defend itself. Perhaps a subpoena should be required to retrieve such information, but it is beneficial to society that such information is permanently recorded on an impartial medium such as the Internet Archive.
Of course. Nothing can be an objective simulation, because no person is objective. Anyone who claims to be is deluding himself or herself. We all have a limited set of knowledge and from that limited set, we make interpretations and extrapolations. These are necessary for us to function as human beings. True objectivity would require omniscience.