Indeed. I returned Shrek 2 because it had a sodding unskippable advert for Madagascar. I don't mind trailers but I don't want an unskippable and irritating advert I have to watch every time I watch the disc.
(By the way, I know that it's possible to fast-forward through these 'featurettes'. I just don't see why I should need to)
Heh heh, it's great. I remember seeing one of those audiophile sites explaining that the extra thick insulation reduced EM/RF interference - of course they were talking about optical cables. Still not as much fun as this beauty.
Yeah, Google are pretty good at cleaning up. My blog got hammered by a russian spammer and after some complaints, his sites began to vanish from Google. Good thing really since his host (Everyone's Internet) had no interest in shutting him down - despite the fact that he was using some pretty nasty hidden code on his sites to spam forums and blogs whenever his pages were loaded using IE.
The cloning of popular blogs as been a scourge for a while now, both for manipulating search engines and good old fashioned advertising - using someone else's content to draw visitors in
Ethanol is good for the American corn farmer but bad for the tax payer who is funding an inefficient system of production. If it's important to secure fuel supplies, the money could be funding the growing of crops high a higher conversion ratio.
Subsidies divert spending from areas of the economy that could use the money more effectively, that's why we need to be sure that the subsidies are actually being used well. Otherwise we may as well be paying farmers to plant garden gnomes.
A headless system is normally one run without a monitor - typically machines providing network services. No real need for a 'real video card' in one of them.
There's no conclusive proof that I'm aware of, just assumptions. There is one simple question though.
If I invent an amazing new vacuum cleaner tomorrow and decide to try to market it myself or via a small company, what stops Hoover from just copying the exact design? I can't keep it secret like source code since It'll be available in the shops. Hoover can just pop to the shop, buy one and start designing their own version.
Do I take the risk of allowing others to see my design if I know it can be ripped off. I see it as being similar to copyright. Without knowing that my work is protected by copyright, what is the point in me writing a book and sending it the publisher? They could just swipe the text and pay me nothing for it. If I can't make a living from the stuff I write then it's always going to be a hobby and so I'll produce fewer works.
It's an imperfect system but I don't see any other way for a small inventor to protect their work. James Dyson is an example of a 'little guy' using a patent to stop larger companies from just taking his work and reproducing it.
Warning! Your "Cancel or Allow" prompt may have been altered: "Cancel or Allow"? *Clicks "Allow"* You have lost your network connection You have connected a USB device Warning! Your "Cancel or Allow" prompt may have been altered: "Cancel or Allow"? You have joined a network You seem to be writing a letter, want me to help? Someone just walked past your house *Clicks "Allow"* Warning! Your "Cancel or Allow" prompt may have been altered: "Cancel or Allow"? In a forest 3400 miles away, a tree just fell down You have lost your network connection An alert window has appeared I am an alert window The red light on the front of your laptop that does nothing is flashing Warning! Your "Cancel or Allow" prompt may have been altered: "Cancel or Allow"? *Smashes computer against a brick wall*
He designed the case of the Commodore PET and worked on the Commodore 16 ROM. He enjoyed his time at Commodore so much that, after being fire by Commodore for exposing himself to interns, he formed a band called The Commodores.
1) Create a recording of him saying "Who the fuck do you think you are?". 2) Burn a CD and stick a $30 billion Dollar price tag it. 3) Rip the CD and post it as a torrent with a name like "Britany Speers - toxic' 4) As soon as someone in Canada is detected downloading the torrent, bingo! Your record company has lost $30 billion. 5) Die a little inside each day when you look in the mirror.
I think you make some very good points and argue them well. I honestly can't disagree with most of your assertions.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Perception is relative and all measurements are an abstraction - 10 celsius didn't exist until we invented it. The environment/circumstances that could would allow this measurement to be registered did exist prior to the invention of celcius. Jesus on a tortilla doesn't exist until someone notices it and pieces together the image in their head. Prior to the interpretation, it was just a plain old tasty tortilla.
Your comment about causation and causality is interesting. It's true that there is a certain amount of debate possible when trying to decide what is actually causing the event we're witnessing. Even so, by creating a test and documenting the results, we can provide proof that is acceptable within reason. Science is limited to the observable world, it's like a character in a computer game. The evironment around the character may change at any time if the programmer decides to flick a switch but the character will never know where the change came from, they may even be unaware that such a change was mad. "Are you crazy, of course the sky has always been yellow!"
We have to operate within the observable universe and assume that certain laws and behaviour will occur since they've been observed for enough time to consider them to be constant.
I still don't see that belief in a deity and belief in a scientific law can be on the same footing. Good science cannot say in honesty that there are no gods in the same way that science cannot deny the existence of ghosts. All science can do is provide evidence (or cite lack thereof) and consider such things to be improbable or even beyond science.
If we consider religious belief and belief in a scientific law to be on the same footing, then I can't even say that my own feet exist since I'm having to rely on human senses. It's a very interesting philosophical topic though, probably best done in a decent pub with a few pints of lager. Relative perception (and memory formation) are fascinating to observe and constant reminder of why we can't rely on the memory of a single person or even a crowd.
Although it's possible to quibble about certain elements of religions, whether or not Christians should obey the rules of the old testament for example, there are certain 'truths' that cannot be questioned. A Christian cannot question the existence of God or Jesus. To doubt them
James is an example of this.
"If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him. But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord"
Although people in practice do question their faith, the word of God himself seems to take a stern view on this.
Arguing that everything is faith based brings us to a terrible question. What's the point of doing anything?
There is certainly a difference between believing that gravity will cause a cup to fall to the ground if dropped, or that a man called Jesus died, rose from the grave and ascended in to heaven.
We can take the approach that our senses can't be trusted but if we believe this then science is ultimately pointless and should be ceased. Indeed, everything is pointless. What is the point in me being married since my wife may not actually exist?
Although we can't be absolutely certain that anything really exists, we need to trust our senses to a reasonable level. If I eat, I can feel food in my belly. If measure the temperature of room, I trust my eyes and those of my colleagues to confirm that the thermometer is providing a figure.
Everything is faith-based but to a wide range of degrees. It's not black and white.
No, what you said is perfectly clear: "A religion, or faith to be more precise, is belief in the absence of facts. Science is fact based." This statement implies that science and religions are incompatible, hence my post. [snip] One can however say exactly the same thing substituting different words for "religion" and be equally true, e.g.:
There is no reason why a scientist can't be political as long as they don't allow their political views to influence their results. There is no reason why a scientist can't be paid by a company as long as they don't allow it to influence their results.
Yep, you're totally right that religion is just one of many sources of bias. This is why scientific theories can't really be given much credence unless they can be tested independently and most importantly, they must be disprovable.
Religion, at least the big three, are incompatible with science in the same way that a car and a hamburger are incompatible. They are two different areas of study that can rarely overlap. This doesn't mean that you can't have both though, the problem is in keeping them separate.
Religion has no place in science except perhaps as a case study. The Bible can't teach how, all it can do is provide a philosophical argument for why? Christianity and Islam are not meant to be questioned, this is contrary to the way good science happens. Tomorrow I could make a discovery that renders all of Darwin's work to be horribly wrong. There will be a objectors but the scientific community cannot hide from evidence. The same cannot be said of Islam, for example, as it's faith-based and so does not rely on facts.
I withdraw my question regarding scientific discoveries caused by a specific religion. That question was nonsensical. Religious and atheists alike are equally capable of scientific genius, just as asians and whites can be equally good at chess.
I suppose the key test of any scientist is when the results they find suggest an unpalatable outcome. i.e. God doesn't exist or a certain ethnic group is considerably more prone to anti-social behaviour than other.
Check up on the names I listed above. These are scientists of renown (including a Nobel Prize winner) who obviously believe in the scientific method whilst also being (often devout) Christians.
I think you've misunderstood what I said. There is no reason why a scientist can't be religious, as long as they don't allow their religious views or bias to influence their results. Mendel was certainly religious yet on to something when he started playing around with those peas.
The problems occur when a scientist allows religious views (or any other kind of bias) to override facts or dismiss claims.
Can you suggest any scientific breakthroughs that have come as a direct result of a religion? I don't count Mendel in this since his religion didn't lead directly to an understanding of basic genetics, he just happened to be a monk.
Can you name any Nobel prize winning breakthroughs that are directly attributable to a religion that could not be achieved by other religions or by a simple process of observation?
Personally I think devoutly religious scientists are living a curious double life but certainly one that is possible. A lawyer may believe that a child molester is the scum of the earth but his professional requires that he provide them with the best defence possible. Not everyone is capable of this though - look at pseudo-scientists like Behe and Gish who clearly allow religious belief to override science.
Science is a religion, football, money, whatever you put your faith in can be or become a religion. People place their faith in science and in the facts of science, but we are just scratching the surface. What if what we consider a fact of science one day is disproved by science again later? We in fact (no pun intended) took the original fact on faith until it was disproved otherwise. This happens regularly in science. I read articles regularly showing new data to support the changing of old facts.
I think we'll need to disagree on the 'hand of god'. I see the complete opposite - a dispassionate universe that's come together with no plan in mind. Biology in particular shows that life seems incredibly inefficiently and downright nasty at times. Consider lifeforms that can only survive by killing their hosts. Parasites that cause misery, not to mention carnivores. If there is a supernatural designer, I don't think any of us can determine what he's planning and I think I'd rather not meet someone so unpredictable and powerful.
The fact that scientific laws can be overturned is in fact the greatest strength of science. Science can't disprove the existence of god or other paranormal forces since they are by definition, supernatural. Science concerns itself with the natural world and if it ever proved or disproved the existence of gods, those gods would cease to be supernatural. Lack of evidence for paranormal forces would seem to be a good reason to doubt them until there's proof.
The fact that science has been wrong is no reason to doubt it. As long as we have a testable hypothesis, one that can be reproduced independently, then we have little reason to doubt a scientific theory. Spiritual notions survive based on popularity, scientific ideas survive based on the facts and reasoning behind them. This isn't to say that all scientists propose sensible ideas, but the scientific method has a habit of eventually weeding out the bad ones.
I'm not suggesting that this next example is meant to be you - I think the quality of your responses would suggest that you're a thinking man.
It's interesting that the scientific theories that seem to face the greatest hostility are those that religious extremists consider to be in conflict with their beliefs. While fundies rail against evolution, plate tectonics and geology, they seem happy to accept things like aerodynamics and germ theory.
Personally, I believe science is simply a material extension of the spiritual. I enjoy science and I'm fascinated by it's discoveries, but science is not absolute and in no way affects my personal spiritual beliefs.
Do your spiritual beliefs affect your understanding of science though? What do you do when your spiritual beliefs say that God created man in his current form yet science provides compelling evidence to suggest otherwise?
Science is not a religion, if you believe that then you don't understand what science is about. If science is a religion then so are Algebra and football.
A religion, or faith to be more precise, is belief in the absence of facts. Science is fact based. Don't mistake a passionate belief in the scientific method with blind faith in the supernatural.
Don't really care, it's just a bit predictable and simple-minded to keep using M$. Perhaps it was funny or even meaningful 7 years ago but these days it's about as funny as the soviet russia jokes and as meaningful a statement as "War is, like, soooo wbad".
Hey, if it weren't for people using the term M$, I would never have known that Microsoft were a corporation interested in making money.
Prior to reading ArcherB's excellent post, I thought Microsoft were some kind of charitable foundation devoted to breeding pandas on the moon or something.
Slashdot Mirror
We're all German? Churchill kept that quiet when he was telling us to fight them on the beaches. Sneaky sod.
Indeed. I returned Shrek 2 because it had a sodding unskippable advert for Madagascar. I don't mind trailers but I don't want an unskippable and irritating advert I have to watch every time I watch the disc.
(By the way, I know that it's possible to fast-forward through these 'featurettes'. I just don't see why I should need to)
It's definitely silly to trust the goldfish medium. We need to consult someone who speaks directly to the gods. To the whitehouse!
So not only will my music sound great, I can listen to it while my house is on fire.
Heh heh, it's great. I remember seeing one of those audiophile sites explaining that the extra thick insulation reduced EM/RF interference - of course they were talking about optical cables. Still not as much fun as this beauty.
r ency/GBP/customer_id/PAA0601030507349BIRGFGGBOCEZS PSK/product-The-Silver-Signature-PowerKord-1549.ht m
£1,500 for a power cord. Improves sound quality and probably makes your tea taste better if you use it to plug your kettle in to the power.
http://www.russandrews.com/lookup/1/region/UK/cur
Yeah, Google are pretty good at cleaning up. My blog got hammered by a russian spammer and after some complaints, his sites began to vanish from Google. Good thing really since his host (Everyone's Internet) had no interest in shutting him down - despite the fact that he was using some pretty nasty hidden code on his sites to spam forums and blogs whenever his pages were loaded using IE.
There's actually some pretty decent research here. The site cloning report is a good read.
t tack_by_Website_Clones.htm
http://research.microsoft.com/SearchRanger/Spam_A
The cloning of popular blogs as been a scourge for a while now, both for manipulating search engines and good old fashioned advertising - using someone else's content to draw visitors in
Ethanol is good for the American corn farmer but bad for the tax payer who is funding an inefficient system of production. If it's important to secure fuel supplies, the money could be funding the growing of crops high a higher conversion ratio.
Subsidies divert spending from areas of the economy that could use the money more effectively, that's why we need to be sure that the subsidies are actually being used well. Otherwise we may as well be paying farmers to plant garden gnomes.
A headless system is normally one run without a monitor - typically machines providing network services. No real need for a 'real video card' in one of them.
I won't believe that until Netcraft or Dvorack confirm it.
There's no conclusive proof that I'm aware of, just assumptions. There is one simple question though.
If I invent an amazing new vacuum cleaner tomorrow and decide to try to market it myself or via a small company, what stops Hoover from just copying the exact design? I can't keep it secret like source code since It'll be available in the shops. Hoover can just pop to the shop, buy one and start designing their own version.
Do I take the risk of allowing others to see my design if I know it can be ripped off. I see it as being similar to copyright. Without knowing that my work is protected by copyright, what is the point in me writing a book and sending it the publisher? They could just swipe the text and pay me nothing for it. If I can't make a living from the stuff I write then it's always going to be a hobby and so I'll produce fewer works.
It's an imperfect system but I don't see any other way for a small inventor to protect their work. James Dyson is an example of a 'little guy' using a patent to stop larger companies from just taking his work and reproducing it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Dyson
This isn't conclusive of course. It's possible that Dyson would have gone ahead and invented his vacuum cleaners anyway.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DC01
It's a bit more like this..
Warning! Your "Cancel or Allow" prompt may have been altered: "Cancel or Allow"?
*Clicks "Allow"*
You have lost your network connection
You have connected a USB device
Warning! Your "Cancel or Allow" prompt may have been altered: "Cancel or Allow"?
You have joined a network
You seem to be writing a letter, want me to help?
Someone just walked past your house
*Clicks "Allow"*
Warning! Your "Cancel or Allow" prompt may have been altered: "Cancel or Allow"?
In a forest 3400 miles away, a tree just fell down
You have lost your network connection
An alert window has appeared
I am an alert window
The red light on the front of your laptop that does nothing is flashing
Warning! Your "Cancel or Allow" prompt may have been altered: "Cancel or Allow"?
*Smashes computer against a brick wall*
Directory Opus, VirusX, PowerPacker, Hired Guns and AMOS. Ah, those were the days.
He designed the case of the Commodore PET and worked on the Commodore 16 ROM. He enjoyed his time at Commodore so much that, after being fire by Commodore for exposing himself to interns, he formed a band called The Commodores.
Either that or he came up with a cunning plan.
1) Create a recording of him saying "Who the fuck do you think you are?".
2) Burn a CD and stick a $30 billion Dollar price tag it.
3) Rip the CD and post it as a torrent with a name like "Britany Speers - toxic'
4) As soon as someone in Canada is detected downloading the torrent, bingo! Your record company has lost $30 billion.
5) Die a little inside each day when you look in the mirror.
We don't need mines or the lumber industry. You can buy all the metal and wood you need in shops now.
Personally I chose Moby Dick to be my personal saviour when I read about the assassination prophecies hidden within the text.
http://cs.anu.edu.au/~bdm/dilugim/moby.html
These codes aren't about prophecy, it's shoe-horning. That's why they only seem to reliably predict events that have already happened.
I think you make some very good points and argue them well. I honestly can't disagree with most of your assertions.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Perception is relative and all measurements are an abstraction - 10 celsius didn't exist until we invented it. The environment/circumstances that could would allow this measurement to be registered did exist prior to the invention of celcius. Jesus on a tortilla doesn't exist until someone notices it and pieces together the image in their head. Prior to the interpretation, it was just a plain old tasty tortilla.
Your comment about causation and causality is interesting. It's true that there is a certain amount of debate possible when trying to decide what is actually causing the event we're witnessing. Even so, by creating a test and documenting the results, we can provide proof that is acceptable within reason. Science is limited to the observable world, it's like a character in a computer game. The evironment around the character may change at any time if the programmer decides to flick a switch but the character will never know where the change came from, they may even be unaware that such a change was mad. "Are you crazy, of course the sky has always been yellow!"
We have to operate within the observable universe and assume that certain laws and behaviour will occur since they've been observed for enough time to consider them to be constant.
I still don't see that belief in a deity and belief in a scientific law can be on the same footing. Good science cannot say in honesty that there are no gods in the same way that science cannot deny the existence of ghosts. All science can do is provide evidence (or cite lack thereof) and consider such things to be improbable or even beyond science.
If we consider religious belief and belief in a scientific law to be on the same footing, then I can't even say that my own feet exist since I'm having to rely on human senses. It's a very interesting philosophical topic though, probably best done in a decent pub with a few pints of lager. Relative perception (and memory formation) are fascinating to observe and constant reminder of why we can't rely on the memory of a single person or even a crowd.
Although it's possible to quibble about certain elements of religions, whether or not Christians should obey the rules of the old testament for example, there are certain 'truths' that cannot be questioned. A Christian cannot question the existence of God or Jesus. To doubt them
James is an example of this.
"If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him. But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord"
Although people in practice do question their faith, the word of God himself seems to take a stern view on this.
Arguing that everything is faith based brings us to a terrible question. What's the point of doing anything?
There is certainly a difference between believing that gravity will cause a cup to fall to the ground if dropped, or that a man called Jesus died, rose from the grave and ascended in to heaven.
We can take the approach that our senses can't be trusted but if we believe this then science is ultimately pointless and should be ceased. Indeed, everything is pointless. What is the point in me being married since my wife may not actually exist?
Although we can't be absolutely certain that anything really exists, we need to trust our senses to a reasonable level. If I eat, I can feel food in my belly. If measure the temperature of room, I trust my eyes and those of my colleagues to confirm that the thermometer is providing a figure.
Everything is faith-based but to a wide range of degrees. It's not black and white.
No, what you said is perfectly clear: "A religion, or faith to be more precise, is belief in the absence of facts. Science is fact based." This statement implies that science and religions are incompatible, hence my post.
[snip]
One can however say exactly the same thing substituting different words for "religion" and be equally true, e.g.:
There is no reason why a scientist can't be political as long as they don't allow their political views to influence their results.
There is no reason why a scientist can't be paid by a company as long as they don't allow it to influence their results.
Yep, you're totally right that religion is just one of many sources of bias. This is why scientific theories can't really be given much credence unless they can be tested independently and most importantly, they must be disprovable.
Religion, at least the big three, are incompatible with science in the same way that a car and a hamburger are incompatible. They are two different areas of study that can rarely overlap. This doesn't mean that you can't have both though, the problem is in keeping them separate.
Religion has no place in science except perhaps as a case study. The Bible can't teach how, all it can do is provide a philosophical argument for why? Christianity and Islam are not meant to be questioned, this is contrary to the way good science happens. Tomorrow I could make a discovery that renders all of Darwin's work to be horribly wrong. There will be a objectors but the scientific community cannot hide from evidence. The same cannot be said of Islam, for example, as it's faith-based and so does not rely on facts.
I withdraw my question regarding scientific discoveries caused by a specific religion. That question was nonsensical. Religious and atheists alike are equally capable of scientific genius, just as asians and whites can be equally good at chess.
I suppose the key test of any scientist is when the results they find suggest an unpalatable outcome. i.e. God doesn't exist or a certain ethnic group is considerably more prone to anti-social behaviour than other.
Check up on the names I listed above. These are scientists of renown (including a Nobel Prize winner) who obviously believe in the scientific method whilst also being (often devout) Christians.
I think you've misunderstood what I said. There is no reason why a scientist can't be religious, as long as they don't allow their religious views or bias to influence their results. Mendel was certainly religious yet on to something when he started playing around with those peas.
The problems occur when a scientist allows religious views (or any other kind of bias) to override facts or dismiss claims.
Can you suggest any scientific breakthroughs that have come as a direct result of a religion? I don't count Mendel in this since his religion didn't lead directly to an understanding of basic genetics, he just happened to be a monk.
Can you name any Nobel prize winning breakthroughs that are directly attributable to a religion that could not be achieved by other religions or by a simple process of observation?
Personally I think devoutly religious scientists are living a curious double life but certainly one that is possible. A lawyer may believe that a child molester is the scum of the earth but his professional requires that he provide them with the best defence possible. Not everyone is capable of this though - look at pseudo-scientists like Behe and Gish who clearly allow religious belief to override science.
Science is a religion, football, money, whatever you put your faith in can be or become a religion. People place their faith in science and in the facts of science, but we are just scratching the surface. What if what we consider a fact of science one day is disproved by science again later? We in fact (no pun intended) took the original fact on faith until it was disproved otherwise. This happens regularly in science. I read articles regularly showing new data to support the changing of old facts.
I think we'll need to disagree on the 'hand of god'. I see the complete opposite - a dispassionate universe that's come together with no plan in mind. Biology in particular shows that life seems incredibly inefficiently and downright nasty at times. Consider lifeforms that can only survive by killing their hosts. Parasites that cause misery, not to mention carnivores. If there is a supernatural designer, I don't think any of us can determine what he's planning and I think I'd rather not meet someone so unpredictable and powerful.
The fact that scientific laws can be overturned is in fact the greatest strength of science. Science can't disprove the existence of god or other paranormal forces since they are by definition, supernatural. Science concerns itself with the natural world and if it ever proved or disproved the existence of gods, those gods would cease to be supernatural. Lack of evidence for paranormal forces would seem to be a good reason to doubt them until there's proof.
The fact that science has been wrong is no reason to doubt it. As long as we have a testable hypothesis, one that can be reproduced independently, then we have little reason to doubt a scientific theory. Spiritual notions survive based on popularity, scientific ideas survive based on the facts and reasoning behind them. This isn't to say that all scientists propose sensible ideas, but the scientific method has a habit of eventually weeding out the bad ones.
I'm not suggesting that this next example is meant to be you - I think the quality of your responses would suggest that you're a thinking man.
It's interesting that the scientific theories that seem to face the greatest hostility are those that religious extremists consider to be in conflict with their beliefs. While fundies rail against evolution, plate tectonics and geology, they seem happy to accept things like aerodynamics and germ theory.
Personally, I believe science is simply a material extension of the spiritual. I enjoy science and I'm fascinated by it's discoveries, but science is not absolute and in no way affects my personal spiritual beliefs.
Do your spiritual beliefs affect your understanding of science though? What do you do when your spiritual beliefs say that God created man in his current form yet science provides compelling evidence to suggest otherwise?
Science is not a religion, if you believe that then you don't understand what science is about. If science is a religion then so are Algebra and football.
A religion, or faith to be more precise, is belief in the absence of facts. Science is fact based. Don't mistake a passionate belief in the scientific method with blind faith in the supernatural.
Don't really care, it's just a bit predictable and simple-minded to keep using M$. Perhaps it was funny or even meaningful 7 years ago but these days it's about as funny as the soviet russia jokes and as meaningful a statement as "War is, like, soooo wbad".
Hey, if it weren't for people using the term M$, I would never have known that Microsoft were a corporation interested in making money.
Prior to reading ArcherB's excellent post, I thought Microsoft were some kind of charitable foundation devoted to breeding pandas on the moon or something.