[snip]
DTrace is hardly crippled, although these modifications are certainly not ideal. Maybe we could actually discuss the real effects, and potential solutions, instead of spewing sensationalist rhetoric? Of course not.
Folks hit the roof over similar issues in Vista, especially when it was discovered it was relatively easy for a root kit to obtain protective status or un-protect "protected" code, modify that code, then hide it again. If you cannot trust your debugger to actually show you what is going on, what is the point of having one? I am an avid Apple user, and I still think this is stupid.
Now back to that quote "trivial changes in drag and drop user interface are not in fact novel enough to warrant a patent". Well the issue if indeed the steps are minor is that drag and drop interfaces are used by a plurality of users in a plurality of places (!). So the field is extremely well worked. A very minor change therefore is critical, it could easily corner the market. Say the change from a static to a dynamic "wait" cursor (egg-timer) - a minor alteration but a very significant one. Now we say such a change is obvious, but we have to assess this question from the time of filing (or more properly the priority date) and from the perspective of the man skilled in the GUI art and in possession of the common knowledge of the GUI field or research. Do citations in the field mean you could produce that inventive step without being inventive. Is it plainly obvious.
In any well worked field it appears to me that it's perfectly reasonable to argue that any small feature that can't be hit for lack of novelty must be inventive as otherwise it would appear in the prior art. That argument can't easily be refuted; though I think it lacks rigour, personally.
The problem is that there is a serious difference between most industry/scientific disciplines and software (and I have worked in both). People don't go through all of the citations in the industry when trying to invent "new" things in software. They look at a few things, sure, but mostly they play around and pull things out of their butts. The thing is that in software it is ridiculously easy to try "new" things and "invent" things because it is so malleable. It would be like making shapes out of polymer clay and trying to patent each thing you could make out of it: look, I invented a polymer clay dog! That's not "innovation". As for a spinning cursor, for instance, movable sprites go back to the earliest of computer games. Applying that concept to a cursor is not a technical feat, it is an aesthetic one. That is why it is so common for a number of people to "invent" the same "technology": once the tools exist, the applications are obvious.
The argument that anything which has not been done must be novel, at least for software, is easily refuted in two ways: One, in that there are so many different possible ways of doing things with software and it is so easy to do that people simply cannot apply all of the obvious concepts at any given time. That does not mean it is any way difficult to do so. The second counter point is related: due to stylistic and HCI guidelines, it may not be a good idea to do so. The options have to be limited and rate of change slowed somewhat in order to keep users sane and allow them to have some clue of how things work. That means changing interface metaphors in (mostly) controlled doses and clear ways. As style changes, different options appear, not always because they are now possible, but because they are now allowable under current fashion. If a fashion designer is not producing bloomers, it is probably because they are not in fashion at the moment, not because they are innovative and technically challenging. The same thing would go for selling hats that look like upended bowls of pasta and shout at random passers-by. There just is not a demand for them at the moment.
It's only a guess, but I'd assume because the trash can is not always in proximity to the drive you're dragging. This seems much more like the 'Ring' of options described above, which would appear when you being to move an object. What they are actually using it for is unknown to me, but it'd be interesting to see it and see if it really is a new or interesting idea.
You don't want it to be always in the vicinity of the item you are attempting to drag. That would be annoying (it would distract from what you really want to do assuming you have your dock set up according to how you normally work) and changing the interface out from under a user tends to be confusing, but this is an HCI and asthetic choice, not in any way a technical one.
Having annoying icons chase your mouse around is easy. I did that to some guy at college (many years ago) when I made the "OK" button in the Logout screen run from his mouse cursor. This was after I set up a little program called "DogCow" to be his Windows Task Manager. My Linux box was a bit harder for him to hack...
The way I would interprert the description of the patent is this: as soon as you start to drag an image, icons for GiMP and a trash can would appear next to the icon you're dragging. As soon as you start to drag a text file, icons for vi and a trash can would appear. And so on. In other words, it doesn't cover any of the things you think it does.
But changing targets based on what you are dragging isn't terribly uncommon either. Right in front of me I can pick up a text file from the OS X Finder and drag it to the trash can to delete it. If I pick up a disk image, the trash can becomes an eject symbol (fixing the old and hideous mixed metaphor of dragging your external hard disk to the "trash"). I know I have seen similar behavior in IRIX and NeXT, but I don't have either handy.
Something else interesting is "spring-loaded" folders and variants, where dragging an object causes a folder to open, recursively if necessary, so you can copy or move a file where you want it. This definitely creates drop targets which did not previously exist and is sensitive to the type of what you are dragging. If I try to drag an application off the dock to a folder, for instance, it will not pop open.
What is important there is not that the exact same thing is being done, but that the idea that changing the interface as a result of a dragging action and in connection to what is being dragged is not new. That makes even a subtly different approach by Yahoo just an obvious application of an existing concept. If I know how to drive nails with a hammer, merely hitting something different with hammer is not innovative. It is also not necessarily a great idea. I think one of the reasons people have been restrained with those kinds of tricks is because changing the interface out from under a user confuses them. Best to use it only in limited and obvious ways.
Even if I did leave my doors and windows unlocked anyone that entered without my person would be doing so illegally and subject to my wrath.
Before I comment I'll say I completely agree with your statement and would probably shoot a trespasser.
The precedence in America has now been set that this is not the case. According to the RIAA by leaving my computer insecure and not changing the default share settings in Kazaa or eMule (or whatever) I am liable for sharing all the files that it detects even though people should know better than to download them.
You want to see something scary? Go to emule and type in "xls" or something.
There is a point where this makes sense. As a business owner, I often had to sign confidentiality agreements. These agreements specified that I not only could not blab my clients' secrets, but I had to take active measures to protect them (locked file cabinets, passwords, encryption, etc.). If I left a file on my desk unprotected and it was stolen, I would be responsible, even if I did not actively publish the information.
Going a step further, if I have an item on consignment at a store and the store owner allows it to be stolen, that owner is at fault because they have a responsibility to take reasonable measures to protect my property while it is in their care.
Going one more step, the argument could be made (whether or not I agree with it) that one has a responsibility to protect copyrighted digital data which belongs to someone else while it is in your care. It does not matter if you are reckless with your own things, but being reckless with other peoples' things is not necessarily a right. I do not know if I buy this argument, but that is where the RIAA is going with it. By extension, you would have to keep your dime-store romance novel under lock and key as well to keep someone from maliciously photocopying, scanning, or photographing any of the pages. There has to be a point where 'reasonable measures' is effectively 'whatever you normally choose to do with your own things' and depends, to some extent, on active prior agreement.
Some people are religious Christians, some people are religious drunks,
The adverb "religiously" as you used it derives only loosely from one aspect of religion, the practice of religious rituals. You are asserting an equality by means of the false implication that the adverb "religiously" [as in regular performance of an action or adherence to a behavior pattern] is more similar -- in fact, identical -- to that subset of habits that are religious rituals. The difference is in the reason for habits, and is not trivial. Scientists practice the habit of quantifying their results, for example, for a good reason. Likewise, on the generous assumption that you habitually brush your teeth, you do so for a good reason, which does not derive from worship of teeth, a high priest with a degree in dental medicine, or a dental deity. One common usage of the sound denoted by that combination of letters "religiously" is as you characterize it, but the similarity in sound does not trump the difference of meaning. The existence of the colloquialism "religiously" to refer to all habits is not sufficient to bridge the gap in meaning between religions, and all habits of all kinds. Outside of religion, many things are done regularly, which you sloppily equate with ritually, in order to conclude the falsehood "religiously," in order to then equate the distinct, unequivalent usage of that adverb with the noun "religion."
No, it is much deeper than that. Not all alcoholics are 'religiously alcoholic' in the same way that not all scientists are dogmatically so. It is a matter of how you define your life and purpose. Many drunks have used drinking to replace purpose and meaning: burying themselves at the bottom of a bottle, feelings of worthlessness, shame, guilt, a fundamental view of a universe that is uncaring or that cares, but in which they themselves are worthless, abandoned. Or possibly a belief in entitlement, that they have a right to the production of others and simply do not have to contribute, are better than everyone else just because. I have met both kinds as well as those who have simply been caught up in habit or addiction.
In the same way, many scientists are wedded to certain views completely outside the view of a rational universe or the pursuit of truth. They believe certain theories to be true because they were taught it and will fight tooth and nail against anyone who opposes the standard model because change threatens to topple the foundations of their world, the patterns around which they have built their life. This is why science often stagnates for long periods until someone who is determined to find truth, explore alternate theories on their merits to accept or discard them, comes along and shakes things up. The punctuated equilibrium of scientific development. This is simplified, but it has a point.
Religion also has similarities in having differences in the way it is approached and practiced. Again, I am not saying that science and religion are the same; they are certainly not. You seemed to have missed that in my post. However, they have at their core, a pursuit of truth, even if vastly different kinds. Religion does not care about causality and repeatability. It does not care if it can be proven. That is not and never has been the point, even if many practitioners lose sight of that. It is about exploring meaning. Some people take up that exploration as their call. Others, just like some scientists, get locked up in particular dogmas and practices, frothing at the mouth about people 'going to hell'. In order to belong to a particular religion, there are core beliefs and practices, but how that is personally applied and what it means to the individual is really the important part. I, for instance, took many years to finally settle on a specific choice of religion; I will be exploring meaning and determining the way I wish to live for my entire life. That never stops
Your dipshit little slogan is exactly what has led to the gross pollution of rivers, lakes and the ocean itself. Next time, consider thinking before spouting ignorant little mantras.
Dogma of any kind is misplaced. This is a learning experience.
Not to you, apparently.
Every single process that humans have undertaking has costs. Every single one of them pollutes. Horse drawn plows pollute. Making solar panels pollutes. Manufacturing bicycles for commuters and replacing their tires pollutes. Tidal and geothermal energy production causes changes in the local ecosystem and geothermal in particular in the water table. The worst impacts occur when *any one process* is used to the point where its particular form of pollution overwhelms the environments ability to absorb it. Using different technologies and causing different kinds of impacts maximizes the environments ability to maintain itself. I have a degree in ecology and experience in simulation to back it up; how about you?
Yea, it's paper made from hemp. Do you have a source for that?:-) I actually have an interest in traditional inks and writing, but cannot find any source for the material of the Constitution. As far as I know it was written on parchment (skin) like many legal documents of the time. I have a friend who makes paper the (really) old fashioned way out of linen rags in the style of Europe, but I know that hemp was a popular fiber here.
If true, isn't it odd we have outlawed an industry the Constitution itself was *written on*?
The problem is that the price of action is well beyond the means of the poor, who are the people most vulnerable in weather situations. The free market is great for most things, but you can't sic it on life giving fundamentals like the food or energy supplies. Then, if you must, give electricity subsidies to the poor, but don't fix the price *of the entire market*. Would you like a Stinger missile to swat that fly?:-)
Except in the case of illness, the poor (and much of the not poor) can just deal with some heat (and yes, I've been there). We have suddenly made something which people did without for millennia into a survival need. It is not (in almost all cases). Many cases of heat exhaustion are caused by people moving from air conditioning set too low to high temperatures outside-- they cannot adapt to a 40+ degree change that quickly. At a re-enactment event at Fort Knox, with blistering heat, we had less people falling over on the field (in armor) than we did un-armored people going from the air-conditioned exhibit hall to the outside. Air-conditioning perpetuates the problem as much as it helps.
making all TV sets powered by threadmills...Seriously, threadmills with a wall-socket
WTF is a threadmill?
A type of spinning machine? Many of them do come with wall-sockets (my wife's is treadle-powered), but I don't know how you power a TV off of that. Maybe the GP is just pulling the wool over our eyes?
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=59639 among other sources. As it points out, newer turbines are much less prone to causing bird deaths, but even old turbines are often less fearful than people predict when they are put in. Wind turbines make *noise* and this drives birds off, unlike flat panes of glass which are a silent/invisible menace.
In many cases where raptors are absent, it is not necessarily because they are killed, but because they do not like being near the turbines and will go elsewhere. Same result as far as the rats go, of course. I don't support the exclusive use of any technology, though: the solution to pollution is dilution. If we use multiple sources of power, the specific impact of that one source may be reduced to the point where the environment can handle it. Otherwise even acres of solar panels affects albedo and thus climate. If we use wind in conjunction with other things, we provide somewhere for the raptors to go. Learning from the experience in your source (I am having trouble confirming the rat problems from other sources), we need to maybe build a buffer zone around wind farms in rat-prone areas where predator species can have a buffet on the fat ones that come from the rat-preservation zone. Importing snakes might not be a bad bet either...
This is one reason I don't bother the falcons around the farm when I am raising chickens. I take some steps to protect my birds, but I know the raptors are useful in their own right. Same with snakes. If I lose a bird now and then, it is worth the trade.
Dogma of any kind is misplaced. This is a learning experience.
The problem is not just generating the power, but also delivering it. This is especially a problem if, for instance, all your power use is downstate and all of your power generation is upstate. Sudden shifts in power usage can overload points in the grid and fry transformers, trunk lines, substations, small plants caught in the cross-fire. That is a big cause of roving black outs. The big black out in upstate New York was not caused by a lack of power, but a difference in phase between two different plants (which can severely damage turbines). A plant had to shut down to avoid damage, which caused the grid to redirect power, which caused...
Anyway, you could conceivably solve the problem by running a lot more, much larger wire and heavier duty transmission infrastructure, but, at the moment the problem is that they don't know where to *do it*. Deregulation and haphazard growth has made a maze of wiring and the electricity takes paths they don't expect. Because of deregulation, no one can agree on whose job it is to fix.
Another decent conservation measure is just to put a display in the house that shows what you are being charged for and how much you are using. Charge more for peak usage and watch the load drop. There have been studies demonstrating that cars can get better mileage with the simple of expedient of displaying the instantaneous gas mileage. Some models now have that as a feature. Even people who are not particularly conservation conscious start acting differently when the information is right in front of them. A lot less Orwellian and lets market dynamics do its work.
You are so close. That is indeed where piholosphy comes in: to answer those why questions. Religion doesn't seek answers to those questions though, it just sits back and declares that it already has them. Religion is essentially just fossilized philosophy; philosophy that comes pre-hobbled with incontrovertible dogma. If you want answers to why questions (and that's a reasonable thing to as for) then by all means turn to philosophy; just leave theology out of it, since it's just bad philosophy ("Intellectual tennis without a net" to quote Dan Dennett), and we can do a lot better if you really want good answers to "why" questions. Existing philosophies: Utilitarianism, Buddhism, Jainism, Social Universalism, Confucianism, Marxism, Fruedianism, etc., etc. all sit back and declare they have the answers. Their followers can become quite dogmatic. The only way your answer makes sense is if you speak of Philosophy in the absolute abstract, neutering it of its history. People are just as free to start new religions: they do every day and sometimes people back up and take completely new looks on old religions (e.g. Reformation/Counter-Reformation, Judaism->Christianity, Hinduism->Buddhism, Judaism->Islam, Gnosticism). My Christianity is personal and unique, shaped by my experience, my wanderings, my contemplation. To say that religion is qualitatively different because it is entirely static is untrue and makes a lot of "philosophies" "religions". People always get uptight about the "why" questions because in the end, that is really what matters to them. They will always fight over it and although we can (and should) constantly work to have a society that accepts discourse, there is nothing anyone can do to really prevent it. Some people will always think that their "why" matters more than life and death, and therefore more than any safeguards society puts in place.
At some point, this is good, since it spurs people to action when society swings too far (e.g. Bonhoeffer, WWII); no civil code matters without the "why". Even ours is based on a concept of inalienable rights "endowed by our Creator". Some of the people that wrote that were not Christian, but Deist, and it has been accepted as a valid basis by many religions/philosophies existing here. It is not perfect, but you have to start somewhere. "Inalienable rights endowed by random molecules formed under enormous pressures inside supernovae" just doesn't have the same ring to it. Even if it is wrong (which I do not believe), as Terry Pratchett says, sometimes you need to believe the little lies in order to buy the big ones: Love, Duty, Honor, Justice. If you don't think those are lies, look around. Part of faith and the human fiber is to believe something is worthwhile, to *make it* worthwhile, when it is so obvious according to every *direct* experience we have that it is not. Believing in the possibility of Good, something defined by no physical law and measured by no ruler, is not something we do to make the world better-- it does not-- it makes us better.
Well, yes and no. Physically, there is no reason that multiple school systems can't be opened. Practically there are some arguments against. The biggest one is the question of what standards the schools are held to. What counts as an 'education'? When someone says they have graduated High School, what does that mean? Does it mean that they have a piece of paper or does it mean that they have attained at least a minimum amount of knowledge in a variety of areas? If anyone that calls themselves a school can set all their own guidelines, then all a graduation becomes is a piece of paper like the ones you can buy from the diploma mills on the internet. And if outside guidelines are going to be imposed on curriculum and testing, then we are back to the original issue and nothing has changed.
Please note, this is very different from having schools provide specialty education. Lots of schools are known for their additional academic programs, or their sports focus, or the amount of technology they integrate. That isn't the same as an educational free-for-all. It should be noted that this problem exists now-- without vouchers. The level of quality difference in schools means that significant resources are spent at the collegiate level teaching kids what they should already know. Vouchers may *improve* this by improving competition. Parents want their kids to be able to get into college, so there is an incentive to standardize.
Second, there are places that have demonstrated solutions. One is to require a standardized core curriculum and allow the school of choice to *add* anything they like to that curriculum. When I grew up in New York state, going to a private school, the school received a certain amount of public funding proportional to the resources devoted to that core curriculum. The small private junior high I went to was the third in the state out of all schools, private or public. It actually caused problems when I went to high school because the school was not well prepared for students who were actually where they were supposed to be or ahead.
Another solution is, of course, tests for capstone courses. Basically, colleges need to know that you have, say, Calculus. So, Colleges decide on a standard Calculus test for students to take. If you can prove knowledge of Calculus, they can assume arithmetic and so forth, no need to test for everything. The AP system already does this for a number of courses. I have rarely seen someone actually get college credit for AP courses, but they almost always fill a requirement. When my home schooled daughter passes the AP exam for three or four courses, I don't think the colleges are going to give it much trouble.
Parent is correct. I even experienced more religous tolerance (education about non-Christian faiths etc) in a Catholic school than I did in public schools. Same here (although I went on to become Protestant:-) ). There were even several Muslims in my Catholic high school; their parents thought it was better for them to have a parochial education in a disciplined environment even though there were no explicitly Muslim schools in the area. They took the required Catholic classes at school and got additional instruction in their own faith at home. I can learn about Hinduism in a private Catholic school, but not in a public school. And yes, I learned about evolution and went on to get an ecology degree.
Take a look at the studies on ethanol - Pimental's, for example. About 90% of the energy involved is for (a) fertilizer, or (b) distillation-process heat, neither of which involve oil! Fertilizer these days is largely petroleum based. Many of the pesticides/herbicides also use oil in their production.
[snip] Moreover, demanding that alternative energy sources make no use of current energy sources is as useful as demanding they turn the moon to green cheese - there is absolutely no economic benefit to cutting an alt-energy business off from the world's infrastructure, so nobody who's running such a business will do it. Insisting they should is no more than a way to ignore their results as "not counting". True, but using more oil than they replace is certainly not good. And being capable of running without oil is a major plus, even if they do not at the moment.
Exactly, nothing is ever proven true. Look at Newtonian mechanics, it was shown to give the correct answer for every test there was for it, it explained every phenomenon that had been observed at the time and there were no situations where it was found to be wrong, it wasn't until later that situations were found where it was shown to be wrong and it was usurped by quantum mechanics. Not wrong, incomplete. Newtonian theory explains the motion of a baseball today just as well as it did 100 years ago. What scientists found was that there were certain facts which were not explained by the theory. They came up with a new theory (Relativity) which encompassed Newtonian physics and explained interactions writ large which were not covered by Newton. They added a new theory (Quantum Mechanics) for interactions writ small. Today, we know that both of those theories are also incomplete and are looking for a new theory that will tie them all together. But the basic idea is that science grows and improves itself over time as new facts are discovered, old theories are adapted, and cruft is removed.
Religion does too in its own way. There are always new theologians who have something different to say, new perspectives on problems or frameworks of morality within a religious context. But there is no rigorous process in religion for directing this change or for judging the utility (e.g. Occam's Razor) of new ideas. There doesn't need to be, though, because religion, unlike science, is not about repeatability. Science says how. Religion says why. Religion needs to stay out of science (though it is often a driving force of *scientists*).
A bad reason is the perceived importance of Iowa in the presidential primaries. Even GW "Big Oil" Bush is pro corn ethanol. No presidential nominee would dare say that we should cut back on corn subsidies. Ron Paul has. That is one of the reasons he was *shocked* he did as well as he did in Iowa.
Religion is more than silly. It's dangerous. Religious people burn "witches"... [snip] Religion is not the only dangerous thing and making religion go away will not solve the problem. People do pretty much all of the things you talk about for politics as well. In a number of communist countries where atheism is enforced, religious people are killed for their beliefs. Science often becomes dogmatic and people are ruined for daring to express a hypothesis or model which differs from the conventionally accepted and rather fossilized one.
Science explains how things work. It expounds theories about how we can make certain things happen consistently. What it does not answer is *why*. That is where religion (or philosophy in general) comes in. Without something to make it meaningful, science is empty and useless. And, before you say, "the quest for truth" or something like that, "Why?" Why does finding out the truth matter outside of a philosophy or religion that makes truth or exploration meaningful? In the end, none of it is rational because we are not merely rational beings. At the same time, religion does a lousy job with "how". We need to recognize that and move on.
Switchgrass gets you more ethanol than corn sure, but that's all you get. Growing corn gets you fuel and food. Growing hemp gets you fuel, food, and fiber. This is a point often lost in small farming. Growing a crop with multiple uses lets you switch trains mid-journey. We do fiber production. If you grow, say, flax, you can use it for fiber (linen), for fodder, for oil (linseed), as a nutritional supplement for humans or livestock (flaxseed, Omega-6), for straw, or for a green manure. No, you can't do all of this at one time (maybe 2-3 uses from one planting), but what you can do is keep track of the market. If, all of a sudden, you cannot sell seed for horse supplements, press it for oil. If you are behind in linen production (have backlog of unprocessed fiber), shift some of your flax to another use. There are a few crops that are just wonderful as hedges against market changes, like certain soybean varieties. Most small farms don't have the cash to grow multiple large crops to diversify their production and don't have the cash to take a hit when they can't sell their products.
The same goes for livestock. Having multi-purpose breeds on small farms allows you to be a bit more nimble. One I am very interested in is the Scottish Highland cattle. It is a good meat/leather producer, hardy and a good grazer, produces decent milk, and can be used for fiber and draft. Not quite as good at any of these as a dedicated breed (although the low-maintenance aspects are nearly unbeatable), but good enough and the ability to switch markets as needed makes up for a lot.
You're right that it's going to end badly. It's only going to take a few pissed off parents and the ACLU will walk in and destroy all of this as completely as was done in Dover. The schools will end up owing millions, the kids will suffer, and the idiots who have fallen liars from the Discovery Institute will largely get off scot-free like they did in Dover. Yep. I am Christian, but religion (as such) doesn't belong in a public school. Science needs to be taught and taught right (starting with scientific *process*, not facts, and why the process matters). Making the school a battleground for dogma is just stupid and hurtful. If you really want to cripple your child's education, teach them privately and leave the other kids out of it. Myself, I do plan on homeschooling my daughter, and she will be taught religion, but she will get a general education, including science and even a grounding in *other* religions. You do no service to your kids by not teaching them how to think and letting them make their own choice in the end: they will anyway, it is just a question of what tools they will have to do it with.
One of the things that would help the debate is getting at the core of the objection. Evolution, the idea that variation exists, is inheritable, and that some variants are more likely to reproduce than others, is not really "theory" as much as just description of observable phenomena at this point. The "theory" part, and what most fundamentalist Christians object to is not Evolution, but abiogenesis, the idea that life just kinda popped into place accidentally. This is just as dogmatic for many scientists (not all) as creationism is for many Christians. There are also alternate scientific theories, like the idea that primordial life was spread by comets. Abiogenesis can never be proven because our own origin is not reproducible. We could show that it might have happened, that it could happen elsewhere, but we cannot prove anything about how we got here. It's just a theory. Even Darwin was not convinced.
Recognize that distinction, and Evolution/Creationism are easily reconcilable. One is a scientific description of a process, another is a religious description of origin and, more importantly, *purpose*. The problem is that *nobody* uses the terms correctly and the issue gets confused. Even framing the argument correctly won't gain traction with the real fanatics (on both sides), but for the extreme Christian literalists, point out that today's species would have had to evolve from the small number of "kinds" saved on the ark, so they have to invoke evolution to support their own version of history:-)
There are similarities in Genesis to other creation myths in geographically and epochally nearby cultures, but... it's point is pretty odd compared to them. Specifically, God did not fight off some other bunch of gods or proto gods or monsters or anything, then reform the world. God, in Genesis, makes the world from nothing by calling it into being. That, by itself, is the point of Genesis. Up until the creation of humans, the rest is pretty much window dressing and the window dressing is not particularly original. The other, theologically significant, point that many people miss is "that it was good." *This* is not window dressing and is repeated because it is an important theme of the story: the world was created as it was, whole and with a purpose: what with one thing and another, with conflict and change, good and evil, it's all *supposed to be there* and will come to a desired end.
The story may bear resemblance. The *theology* is different.
[snip] Martin Luther stood that on its head when he founded his own version of the church (the Protestants) and based it on his own interpretation of the Bible and of the teachings of the church. Over time, other people followed his example, creating the numerous sects of Christianity that we see today. These sects do not consider themselves Catholics, and as such are "cut off" from the historical roots of their teachings. They have cooked up this notion that their teachings are entirely founded in the Bible, when in fact many of them are just leftovers from Catholicism, or new additions made by their various sect-founders along the way. [snip] Martin Luther was seminary educated and just a part of that tradition as any priest at the time. The capital-C Church, at that time, had many, many problems, including rampant corruption and keeping the church teachings out of the hands of the common folk so that it could maintain a stranglehold on faith and therefore remain corrupt. The Reformation, as it opened up the way for the Counter-Reformation, did as much for the Catholic Church as it did for everyone else. You would not have anything resembling a church today without the loud wake-up call of the successful formation of the Protestant churches to end the corruption and dogmatism. Somehow I don't think that paying for indulgences was anywhere in Christ's original teaching, written or unwritten. Nor was boar-hunting and empire-building from the Holy See, official Church brothels in the Vatican, or a lot of other things which needed to be cleaned up, and which Martin Luther risked everything to get away from.
Protestants have the ability to read Thomas Aquinas and Augustine and all of the early church writings as easily as Catholics do. There *is* a resistance to a lot of the Catholic teachings because of past bad blood. I agree to that extent with Dietrich Bonhoeffer (WWII Lutheran martyr) that we threw away some good with the bad. At the same time, the Catholic Church has been slow to recognize that some of the Protestant practices are more true to its own tradition than its own current practice. Thankfully, over time, at least in mainstream churches, sectarian strife has lessened greatly and there is starting to be a lot more back and forth, but centuries of lopping off peoples' heads, razing their villages, and setting them on fire created some unfriendliness.
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Folks hit the roof over similar issues in Vista, especially when it was discovered it was relatively easy for a root kit to obtain protective status or un-protect "protected" code, modify that code, then hide it again. If you cannot trust your debugger to actually show you what is going on, what is the point of having one? I am an avid Apple user, and I still think this is stupid.
Now back to that quote "trivial changes in drag and drop user interface are not in fact novel enough to warrant a patent". Well the issue if indeed the steps are minor is that drag and drop interfaces are used by a plurality of users in a plurality of places (!). So the field is extremely well worked. A very minor change therefore is critical, it could easily corner the market. Say the change from a static to a dynamic "wait" cursor (egg-timer) - a minor alteration but a very significant one. Now we say such a change is obvious, but we have to assess this question from the time of filing (or more properly the priority date) and from the perspective of the man skilled in the GUI art and in possession of the common knowledge of the GUI field or research. Do citations in the field mean you could produce that inventive step without being inventive. Is it plainly obvious.
In any well worked field it appears to me that it's perfectly reasonable to argue that any small feature that can't be hit for lack of novelty must be inventive as otherwise it would appear in the prior art. That argument can't easily be refuted; though I think it lacks rigour, personally.
The problem is that there is a serious difference between most industry/scientific disciplines and software (and I have worked in both). People don't go through all of the citations in the industry when trying to invent "new" things in software. They look at a few things, sure, but mostly they play around and pull things out of their butts. The thing is that in software it is ridiculously easy to try "new" things and "invent" things because it is so malleable. It would be like making shapes out of polymer clay and trying to patent each thing you could make out of it: look, I invented a polymer clay dog! That's not "innovation". As for a spinning cursor, for instance, movable sprites go back to the earliest of computer games. Applying that concept to a cursor is not a technical feat, it is an aesthetic one. That is why it is so common for a number of people to "invent" the same "technology": once the tools exist, the applications are obvious.
The argument that anything which has not been done must be novel, at least for software, is easily refuted in two ways: One, in that there are so many different possible ways of doing things with software and it is so easy to do that people simply cannot apply all of the obvious concepts at any given time. That does not mean it is any way difficult to do so. The second counter point is related: due to stylistic and HCI guidelines, it may not be a good idea to do so. The options have to be limited and rate of change slowed somewhat in order to keep users sane and allow them to have some clue of how things work. That means changing interface metaphors in (mostly) controlled doses and clear ways. As style changes, different options appear, not always because they are now possible, but because they are now allowable under current fashion. If a fashion designer is not producing bloomers, it is probably because they are not in fashion at the moment, not because they are innovative and technically challenging. The same thing would go for selling hats that look like upended bowls of pasta and shout at random passers-by. There just is not a demand for them at the moment.
You don't want it to be always in the vicinity of the item you are attempting to drag. That would be annoying (it would distract from what you really want to do assuming you have your dock set up according to how you normally work) and changing the interface out from under a user tends to be confusing, but this is an HCI and asthetic choice, not in any way a technical one.
Having annoying icons chase your mouse around is easy. I did that to some guy at college (many years ago) when I made the "OK" button in the Logout screen run from his mouse cursor. This was after I set up a little program called "DogCow" to be his Windows Task Manager. My Linux box was a bit harder for him to hack...
The way I would interprert the description of the patent is this: as soon as you start to drag an image, icons for GiMP and a trash can would appear next to the icon you're dragging. As soon as you start to drag a text file, icons for vi and a trash can would appear. And so on. In other words, it doesn't cover any of the things you think it does.
But changing targets based on what you are dragging isn't terribly uncommon either. Right in front of me I can pick up a text file from the OS X Finder and drag it to the trash can to delete it. If I pick up a disk image, the trash can becomes an eject symbol (fixing the old and hideous mixed metaphor of dragging your external hard disk to the "trash"). I know I have seen similar behavior in IRIX and NeXT, but I don't have either handy.
Something else interesting is "spring-loaded" folders and variants, where dragging an object causes a folder to open, recursively if necessary, so you can copy or move a file where you want it. This definitely creates drop targets which did not previously exist and is sensitive to the type of what you are dragging. If I try to drag an application off the dock to a folder, for instance, it will not pop open.
What is important there is not that the exact same thing is being done, but that the idea that changing the interface as a result of a dragging action and in connection to what is being dragged is not new. That makes even a subtly different approach by Yahoo just an obvious application of an existing concept. If I know how to drive nails with a hammer, merely hitting something different with hammer is not innovative. It is also not necessarily a great idea. I think one of the reasons people have been restrained with those kinds of tricks is because changing the interface out from under a user confuses them. Best to use it only in limited and obvious ways.
Before I comment I'll say I completely agree with your statement and would probably shoot a trespasser.
The precedence in America has now been set that this is not the case. According to the RIAA by leaving my computer insecure and not changing the default share settings in Kazaa or eMule (or whatever) I am liable for sharing all the files that it detects even though people should know better than to download them.
You want to see something scary? Go to emule and type in "xls" or something.
There is a point where this makes sense. As a business owner, I often had to sign confidentiality agreements. These agreements specified that I not only could not blab my clients' secrets, but I had to take active measures to protect them (locked file cabinets, passwords, encryption, etc.). If I left a file on my desk unprotected and it was stolen, I would be responsible, even if I did not actively publish the information.
Going a step further, if I have an item on consignment at a store and the store owner allows it to be stolen, that owner is at fault because they have a responsibility to take reasonable measures to protect my property while it is in their care.
Going one more step, the argument could be made (whether or not I agree with it) that one has a responsibility to protect copyrighted digital data which belongs to someone else while it is in your care. It does not matter if you are reckless with your own things, but being reckless with other peoples' things is not necessarily a right. I do not know if I buy this argument, but that is where the RIAA is going with it. By extension, you would have to keep your dime-store romance novel under lock and key as well to keep someone from maliciously photocopying, scanning, or photographing any of the pages. There has to be a point where 'reasonable measures' is effectively 'whatever you normally choose to do with your own things' and depends, to some extent, on active prior agreement.
The adverb "religiously" as you used it derives only loosely from one aspect of religion, the practice of religious rituals. You are asserting an equality by means of the false implication that the adverb "religiously" [as in regular performance of an action or adherence to a behavior pattern] is more similar -- in fact, identical -- to that subset of habits that are religious rituals. The difference is in the reason for habits, and is not trivial. Scientists practice the habit of quantifying their results, for example, for a good reason. Likewise, on the generous assumption that you habitually brush your teeth, you do so for a good reason, which does not derive from worship of teeth, a high priest with a degree in dental medicine, or a dental deity. One common usage of the sound denoted by that combination of letters "religiously" is as you characterize it, but the similarity in sound does not trump the difference of meaning. The existence of the colloquialism "religiously" to refer to all habits is not sufficient to bridge the gap in meaning between religions, and all habits of all kinds. Outside of religion, many things are done regularly, which you sloppily equate with ritually, in order to conclude the falsehood "religiously," in order to then equate the distinct, unequivalent usage of that adverb with the noun "religion."
No, it is much deeper than that. Not all alcoholics are 'religiously alcoholic' in the same way that not all scientists are dogmatically so. It is a matter of how you define your life and purpose. Many drunks have used drinking to replace purpose and meaning: burying themselves at the bottom of a bottle, feelings of worthlessness, shame, guilt, a fundamental view of a universe that is uncaring or that cares, but in which they themselves are worthless, abandoned. Or possibly a belief in entitlement, that they have a right to the production of others and simply do not have to contribute, are better than everyone else just because. I have met both kinds as well as those who have simply been caught up in habit or addiction.
In the same way, many scientists are wedded to certain views completely outside the view of a rational universe or the pursuit of truth. They believe certain theories to be true because they were taught it and will fight tooth and nail against anyone who opposes the standard model because change threatens to topple the foundations of their world, the patterns around which they have built their life. This is why science often stagnates for long periods until someone who is determined to find truth, explore alternate theories on their merits to accept or discard them, comes along and shakes things up. The punctuated equilibrium of scientific development. This is simplified, but it has a point.
Religion also has similarities in having differences in the way it is approached and practiced. Again, I am not saying that science and religion are the same; they are certainly not. You seemed to have missed that in my post. However, they have at their core, a pursuit of truth, even if vastly different kinds. Religion does not care about causality and repeatability. It does not care if it can be proven. That is not and never has been the point, even if many practitioners lose sight of that. It is about exploring meaning. Some people take up that exploration as their call. Others, just like some scientists, get locked up in particular dogmas and practices, frothing at the mouth about people 'going to hell'. In order to belong to a particular religion, there are core beliefs and practices, but how that is personally applied and what it means to the individual is really the important part. I, for instance, took many years to finally settle on a specific choice of religion; I will be exploring meaning and determining the way I wish to live for my entire life. That never stops
Your dipshit little slogan is exactly what has led to the gross pollution of rivers, lakes and the ocean itself. Next time, consider thinking before spouting ignorant little mantras.
Dogma of any kind is misplaced. This is a learning experience.
Not to you, apparently.
Every single process that humans have undertaking has costs. Every single one of them pollutes. Horse drawn plows pollute. Making solar panels pollutes. Manufacturing bicycles for commuters and replacing their tires pollutes. Tidal and geothermal energy production causes changes in the local ecosystem and geothermal in particular in the water table. The worst impacts occur when *any one process* is used to the point where its particular form of pollution overwhelms the environments ability to absorb it. Using different technologies and causing different kinds of impacts maximizes the environments ability to maintain itself. I have a degree in ecology and experience in simulation to back it up; how about you?If true, isn't it odd we have outlawed an industry the Constitution itself was *written on*?
Except in the case of illness, the poor (and much of the not poor) can just deal with some heat (and yes, I've been there). We have suddenly made something which people did without for millennia into a survival need. It is not (in almost all cases). Many cases of heat exhaustion are caused by people moving from air conditioning set too low to high temperatures outside-- they cannot adapt to a 40+ degree change that quickly. At a re-enactment event at Fort Knox, with blistering heat, we had less people falling over on the field (in armor) than we did un-armored people going from the air-conditioned exhibit hall to the outside. Air-conditioning perpetuates the problem as much as it helps.
WTF is a threadmill?
A type of spinning machine? Many of them do come with wall-sockets (my wife's is treadle-powered), but I don't know how you power a TV off of that. Maybe the GP is just pulling the wool over our eyes?
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=59639 among other sources. As it points out, newer turbines are much less prone to causing bird deaths, but even old turbines are often less fearful than people predict when they are put in. Wind turbines make *noise* and this drives birds off, unlike flat panes of glass which are a silent/invisible menace.
In many cases where raptors are absent, it is not necessarily because they are killed, but because they do not like being near the turbines and will go elsewhere. Same result as far as the rats go, of course. I don't support the exclusive use of any technology, though: the solution to pollution is dilution. If we use multiple sources of power, the specific impact of that one source may be reduced to the point where the environment can handle it. Otherwise even acres of solar panels affects albedo and thus climate. If we use wind in conjunction with other things, we provide somewhere for the raptors to go. Learning from the experience in your source (I am having trouble confirming the rat problems from other sources), we need to maybe build a buffer zone around wind farms in rat-prone areas where predator species can have a buffet on the fat ones that come from the rat-preservation zone. Importing snakes might not be a bad bet either...
This is one reason I don't bother the falcons around the farm when I am raising chickens. I take some steps to protect my birds, but I know the raptors are useful in their own right. Same with snakes. If I lose a bird now and then, it is worth the trade.
Dogma of any kind is misplaced. This is a learning experience.
According to this: http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=59639 it will be required to get a building permit, not optional.
The problem is not just generating the power, but also delivering it. This is especially a problem if, for instance, all your power use is downstate and all of your power generation is upstate. Sudden shifts in power usage can overload points in the grid and fry transformers, trunk lines, substations, small plants caught in the cross-fire. That is a big cause of roving black outs. The big black out in upstate New York was not caused by a lack of power, but a difference in phase between two different plants (which can severely damage turbines). A plant had to shut down to avoid damage, which caused the grid to redirect power, which caused...
Anyway, you could conceivably solve the problem by running a lot more, much larger wire and heavier duty transmission infrastructure, but, at the moment the problem is that they don't know where to *do it*. Deregulation and haphazard growth has made a maze of wiring and the electricity takes paths they don't expect. Because of deregulation, no one can agree on whose job it is to fix.
Another decent conservation measure is just to put a display in the house that shows what you are being charged for and how much you are using. Charge more for peak usage and watch the load drop. There have been studies demonstrating that cars can get better mileage with the simple of expedient of displaying the instantaneous gas mileage. Some models now have that as a feature. Even people who are not particularly conservation conscious start acting differently when the information is right in front of them. A lot less Orwellian and lets market dynamics do its work.
At some point, this is good, since it spurs people to action when society swings too far (e.g. Bonhoeffer, WWII); no civil code matters without the "why". Even ours is based on a concept of inalienable rights "endowed by our Creator". Some of the people that wrote that were not Christian, but Deist, and it has been accepted as a valid basis by many religions/philosophies existing here. It is not perfect, but you have to start somewhere. "Inalienable rights endowed by random molecules formed under enormous pressures inside supernovae" just doesn't have the same ring to it. Even if it is wrong (which I do not believe), as Terry Pratchett says, sometimes you need to believe the little lies in order to buy the big ones: Love, Duty, Honor, Justice. If you don't think those are lies, look around. Part of faith and the human fiber is to believe something is worthwhile, to *make it* worthwhile, when it is so obvious according to every *direct* experience we have that it is not. Believing in the possibility of Good, something defined by no physical law and measured by no ruler, is not something we do to make the world better-- it does not-- it makes us better.
Please note, this is very different from having schools provide specialty education. Lots of schools are known for their additional academic programs, or their sports focus, or the amount of technology they integrate. That isn't the same as an educational free-for-all. It should be noted that this problem exists now-- without vouchers. The level of quality difference in schools means that significant resources are spent at the collegiate level teaching kids what they should already know. Vouchers may *improve* this by improving competition. Parents want their kids to be able to get into college, so there is an incentive to standardize.
Second, there are places that have demonstrated solutions. One is to require a standardized core curriculum and allow the school of choice to *add* anything they like to that curriculum. When I grew up in New York state, going to a private school, the school received a certain amount of public funding proportional to the resources devoted to that core curriculum. The small private junior high I went to was the third in the state out of all schools, private or public. It actually caused problems when I went to high school because the school was not well prepared for students who were actually where they were supposed to be or ahead.
Another solution is, of course, tests for capstone courses. Basically, colleges need to know that you have, say, Calculus. So, Colleges decide on a standard Calculus test for students to take. If you can prove knowledge of Calculus, they can assume arithmetic and so forth, no need to test for everything. The AP system already does this for a number of courses. I have rarely seen someone actually get college credit for AP courses, but they almost always fill a requirement. When my home schooled daughter passes the AP exam for three or four courses, I don't think the colleges are going to give it much trouble.
Take a look at the studies on ethanol - Pimental's, for example. About 90% of the energy involved is for (a) fertilizer, or (b) distillation-process heat, neither of which involve oil! Fertilizer these days is largely petroleum based. Many of the pesticides/herbicides also use oil in their production. [snip]
Moreover, demanding that alternative energy sources make no use of current energy sources is as useful as demanding they turn the moon to green cheese - there is absolutely no economic benefit to cutting an alt-energy business off from the world's infrastructure, so nobody who's running such a business will do it. Insisting they should is no more than a way to ignore their results as "not counting". True, but using more oil than they replace is certainly not good. And being capable of running without oil is a major plus, even if they do not at the moment.
Religion does too in its own way. There are always new theologians who have something different to say, new perspectives on problems or frameworks of morality within a religious context. But there is no rigorous process in religion for directing this change or for judging the utility (e.g. Occam's Razor) of new ideas. There doesn't need to be, though, because religion, unlike science, is not about repeatability. Science says how. Religion says why. Religion needs to stay out of science (though it is often a driving force of *scientists*).
A bad reason is the perceived importance of Iowa in the presidential primaries. Even GW "Big Oil" Bush is pro corn ethanol. No presidential nominee would dare say that we should cut back on corn subsidies. Ron Paul has. That is one of the reasons he was *shocked* he did as well as he did in Iowa.
Science explains how things work. It expounds theories about how we can make certain things happen consistently. What it does not answer is *why*. That is where religion (or philosophy in general) comes in. Without something to make it meaningful, science is empty and useless. And, before you say, "the quest for truth" or something like that, "Why?" Why does finding out the truth matter outside of a philosophy or religion that makes truth or exploration meaningful? In the end, none of it is rational because we are not merely rational beings. At the same time, religion does a lousy job with "how". We need to recognize that and move on.
The same goes for livestock. Having multi-purpose breeds on small farms allows you to be a bit more nimble. One I am very interested in is the Scottish Highland cattle. It is a good meat/leather producer, hardy and a good grazer, produces decent milk, and can be used for fiber and draft. Not quite as good at any of these as a dedicated breed (although the low-maintenance aspects are nearly unbeatable), but good enough and the ability to switch markets as needed makes up for a lot.
One of the things that would help the debate is getting at the core of the objection. Evolution, the idea that variation exists, is inheritable, and that some variants are more likely to reproduce than others, is not really "theory" as much as just description of observable phenomena at this point. The "theory" part, and what most fundamentalist Christians object to is not Evolution, but abiogenesis, the idea that life just kinda popped into place accidentally. This is just as dogmatic for many scientists (not all) as creationism is for many Christians. There are also alternate scientific theories, like the idea that primordial life was spread by comets. Abiogenesis can never be proven because our own origin is not reproducible. We could show that it might have happened, that it could happen elsewhere, but we cannot prove anything about how we got here. It's just a theory. Even Darwin was not convinced.
:-)
Recognize that distinction, and Evolution/Creationism are easily reconcilable. One is a scientific description of a process, another is a religious description of origin and, more importantly, *purpose*. The problem is that *nobody* uses the terms correctly and the issue gets confused. Even framing the argument correctly won't gain traction with the real fanatics (on both sides), but for the extreme Christian literalists, point out that today's species would have had to evolve from the small number of "kinds" saved on the ark, so they have to invoke evolution to support their own version of history
There are similarities in Genesis to other creation myths in geographically and epochally nearby cultures, but... it's point is pretty odd compared to them. Specifically, God did not fight off some other bunch of gods or proto gods or monsters or anything, then reform the world. God, in Genesis, makes the world from nothing by calling it into being. That, by itself, is the point of Genesis. Up until the creation of humans, the rest is pretty much window dressing and the window dressing is not particularly original. The other, theologically significant, point that many people miss is "that it was good." *This* is not window dressing and is repeated because it is an important theme of the story: the world was created as it was, whole and with a purpose: what with one thing and another, with conflict and change, good and evil, it's all *supposed to be there* and will come to a desired end.
The story may bear resemblance. The *theology* is different.
Martin Luther stood that on its head when he founded his own version of the church (the Protestants) and based it on his own interpretation of the Bible and of the teachings of the church. Over time, other people followed his example, creating the numerous sects of Christianity that we see today. These sects do not consider themselves Catholics, and as such are "cut off" from the historical roots of their teachings. They have cooked up this notion that their teachings are entirely founded in the Bible, when in fact many of them are just leftovers from Catholicism, or new additions made by their various sect-founders along the way.
[snip] Martin Luther was seminary educated and just a part of that tradition as any priest at the time. The capital-C Church, at that time, had many, many problems, including rampant corruption and keeping the church teachings out of the hands of the common folk so that it could maintain a stranglehold on faith and therefore remain corrupt. The Reformation, as it opened up the way for the Counter-Reformation, did as much for the Catholic Church as it did for everyone else. You would not have anything resembling a church today without the loud wake-up call of the successful formation of the Protestant churches to end the corruption and dogmatism. Somehow I don't think that paying for indulgences was anywhere in Christ's original teaching, written or unwritten. Nor was boar-hunting and empire-building from the Holy See, official Church brothels in the Vatican, or a lot of other things which needed to be cleaned up, and which Martin Luther risked everything to get away from.
Protestants have the ability to read Thomas Aquinas and Augustine and all of the early church writings as easily as Catholics do. There *is* a resistance to a lot of the Catholic teachings because of past bad blood. I agree to that extent with Dietrich Bonhoeffer (WWII Lutheran martyr) that we threw away some good with the bad. At the same time, the Catholic Church has been slow to recognize that some of the Protestant practices are more true to its own tradition than its own current practice. Thankfully, over time, at least in mainstream churches, sectarian strife has lessened greatly and there is starting to be a lot more back and forth, but centuries of lopping off peoples' heads, razing their villages, and setting them on fire created some unfriendliness.