.....But doesn't the Accord Hybrid have less storage space due to the battery taking up some room in the trunk?....
My Honda Accord Hybrid has its battery behind the back seat and not in the trunk. Unlike its non-hybrid brothers, the back seat cannot fold down and thereby make a continuous load surface from the trunk. Trunk space per se is not less however. This car is a sedan, not a sports car, but quite a peppy one with 255hp from the combined electric and V6 engine. It gets between 30 to 35mpg. When stopped at a light, the engine stops also. The electric motor really helps it get going quickly again and also helps slow the car when braking.
...... I will roast your little bimbo box hybrid off the line, because I have a hard suspension (no squat) and a close-ratio transmission.....
I think my Accord Hybrid would leave you looking at its tail-lights in any sort of 0to60 test. The combination electric motor and V6 gives it a good push, yet it gets 30-35 mpg in average driving. Find someone with such a car and do the test! Heated leather seats, a satellite radio and its other amenities make it a pretty nice car.
And what makes anyone think such a server will still exist even 25 years, let alone 75+ years from now?
No, the real solution is to outlaw all DRM and allow all copying that does not result in material gain or profit. Coupled with that, lock up anyone who profits with real income, for the duration left yet on the copyrights violated, running consecutively if there are several such copyrights involved. After the culprit(s) has sat in the slammer for a minimum of time, he/she may appeal to the rights holder for mercy and be let out early.
Let the casual Joe public whom the **AA now sues go, but put the ones who cause real loss to the creative artists away for a long time. Confiscating all their assets can also be used. In short, let anyone who copies for profit know it's not worth doing. Someone copying their CDs onto their iPod and the iPods of family members or making a copy of a DVD movie onto their laptop, so they don't have to drag the disk with them should be allowed. It is generally done today anyway, so why not make it legal?
.....run a few RIAA execs up on a tree with a rope.....
A better way would be to write your Congress and tell them they'll be out of office unless they change copyright law. Making copies without the copyright holders permission is illegal, but ONLY for the purpose of producing real money income. All non-profit copying is allowed. Others should not be allowed to PROFIT with real income from someone else's work.
However, if someone got a copy for free from someone, that does NOT mean that person might have gone and bought a copy, if they had not gotten the free copy. That person might really like the free song, like from the radio, and decided to see what else that artist had to sell. As a result, the artist might have sold several copies of other similar material.
Some artists, but not the **AAs have figured ou that this free copying is a good advertising system for them.
......if I believed there should be such a thing as "illegal content.".......
Are you saying that child-porn, for example should be OK? Do you really belive that all content should be available, even to children? How about directions to carry on other illegl activities, such as copyright violations? One job, if not the most important job, of government is to protect its citizens from other citizens. To the extent the government fails to do this, to that extent the people have to do it themselves. If the police no longer respond to my call because there is a burglar in my house, I would just have to deal with him as I see fit.
For a while, around here, the sheriff was underfunded. After a tax initiative failed spectacularly, the sheriff's office tried to "punish" voters by refusing to respond with the exuse that they had cut deputies. Not long after however, a man from an outlying community called in the middle of the night, telling the dispatcher that he and his wife were holding at gunpoint, a burglar caught in his house. Please come and get the crook. The dispatcher said that there were no officers available until morning. So the man replied: " I guess we'll just have to shoot the m**********r". The duty officer said: "No, No, don't, we'll come and get him!". Within a surprisingly short amount of time, TWO patrol vehicles, a sheriff and a state patrol showed up and took the break-in artist into custody. At least the officers were still willing to protect the criminal's life.
....Because you can only sue people that actually did damage.....
Not true! In the US you can sue anybody you want for anything at all. However you're not likely to find a lawyer to take a case unless the defendant has deep pockets and the nature of the complaint has a pretty good chance to persuade the most ignorant members of society that can get impaneled in such a jury.
.....without coming back to congress and getting permission....
That's exactly what they are trying to do. Buy the permission from many corrupt politicians. There are however the content providers and they might be able to buy even more such congress persons. Let's see which camp is able to buy the most.
.....This is why I am against government licensing and regulations....
Yet it is the governmnt that gives these monopolies immunity from what users transmit over their pipes. The government might say: OK guys, we'll let you do whaever you want, just don't expect to get any legal protection from your users activities. The cost of the carriers monitoring and checking every packet for illegal content would quicky overwhelm them all. Someone sent porn over your wire? Too bad, you should have prevented it -- now you're responsible. These carrier companies want it both ways, control what passes over their pipes, but not be held resonsible for anything. I guess they want what software companies enjoy -- immunity from product liability laws.
.....Is this possible proposed policy to establish equity? If so, I'm okay with that.....
I'd be OK with that too if these guys in exchange would lose their common carrier status and could be held liable for every bit of content that ever traveled over their wires. Of course they want to keep that exemption, but still be able to inspect, classify and control content. If they allowed to do that, then they should also be allowed to be held civilly and perhaps even criminally responsible for possibly illegal content. Verizon then could be hauled into court for permitting porn or criminal conspiracies or even (gasp) terrorism planning on their networks.
They want to eat their cake and have it too. If they are not making enough money from their network infrastructure, each company can charge whatever the competition will let them. All the government need to ensure that there is truly open competition between all providers, existing and startups.
....the government would act to make mere possession of something.....
If everybody who is now in locked up because they WERE in posession of contraband would suddenly be set free, our prisons would become rather empty. This would be true even more so, if those who committed a crime in the effort to obtain some contraband were released also. What percentage of thefts are committed by those wanting the money to obtain some "controlled substance" which absent of being "controlled" would be dirt cheap?
Vast numbers of people in the prison industries would be out of work. The elimination of the huge numbers of " you're not allowed to possess" laws would have big consequences on our eceonomy.
.....In Ohio, if you pass out with keys in the ignition, it's a DUI......
I wonder what they would do for someone in some of the new cars with the bluetooth/rfID keys that can be kept in the pocket or purse of any occupant of the vehicle and need not be inserted at all into the "Ignition"? Once the car is "booted" using the "power" button, the person with the key can even leave, but the car will still drive normally until it is shut down. I suppose that if the car computer is "booted" up, that would count as "key in the ignition" and rate a DUI. However, if the "key" is in pocket of a passenger and the car has not been turned on, a DUI charge might not stick on a technicality.
Re:Not just social problems, my friend.
on
Buy Vista or Else
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· Score: 1
...As far as battlefield target go, if Windows is a aircraft carrier, BSD is a paper boat*.....
Who cares WHY other OS are safer today! Who cares WHY thieves don't break into my house! Maybe I have better locks or live in a low crime neighborhood, have a mean sounding dog, or live next to a police station. Maybe they just don't like my stuff as well as others. The bottom line is that my house is safer so far and so are other OS than Windows. If, or when, there is ONE nasty virus for OSX in the wild, that is one tenth as mean as anything seen on Windows so far, maybe , just maybe I might start sleeping a little less soundly, at least until Apple comes out with a solution.
.....I sometimes tell them use OSX instead of XP......
So what will VISTA offer users in the future that the OSX doesn't give you today? I seriously doubt it will be as secure as OSX. For every generation of Windows from Win98 on, MS has promised better security. If anything, it has gotten worse.
It would be interesting for someone who knows, to make a list of VISTA features that are not NOW in OSX. Will VISTA run on most say 3 year old or newer PCs and will it run faster? In OSX, suceeding iterations usually run faster on some of the older hardware it runs on at all. !0.4.3 runs faster on my Ti Powerbook than 10.2.8 did. In Windows the opposite has generally been the case. Win2K runs faster than XP on the same systems, especially if there isn't plenty of RAM.
Will there be an OSX 10.5 by the time VISTA finally shows up? Will VISTA have a cool, easy to use, integrated suite of applications akin to iLife?
How many existing games will still work, especially since games usually require unfettered access to all parts of the computer. wnich means the equivalent of running as root on *NIX systems.
If the new access and security features mentioned in the article will truly be implemented, many existing programs will no longer work. By not releasing updates for the older software MS will certainly force some users to upgrade, but it may also be the impetus for many users to finally abandon the MS ship.
.....If you can prove the assumptions wrong, you win......
It is not neccessry to outright prove an assumption wrong. It is enough to show that it is highly improbable that this assumption will lead to what is being observed. It is highly imrobable that the watch you found on the beach "just happened", but much more probable that it was made by a watchmaker. The same is true of living things.
Few will claim that the watch came into being by any random, unknown process, yet many claim that the wrist that this watch once resided on, being much more complex, came about by chance.
Postulating either that the watch came about by chance or by a watchmaker doesn't prevent you from carefully examining it to determine what makes it tick. When you do take the watch apart, you are doing science, but when you speculate about its origin you are dealing with philosophy or religion based on faith. Science is not really equipped to study origins because the various underlying assumptions that are made cannot be proven by any repeatable experiment, but can only be assigned probabilities.
A simple, inexpensive diode bridge will take care of that easily. There are other considerations that anyone building a device must deal with. A remote controlled oven or any other device possibly could do real physical damage upon malfunction for whatever reasons. Extensive testing can run up quite an R&D bill. This is where computer manufacturers and software vendors usually cut corners. When your Windows system crashes, you might lose some work, but you'll still be unhurt. (mostly anyway -- unless you get so mad you have a stroke)
A simple timer will do most of what the average person would use such an oven for anyway. Put the (whatever) into the oven in the morning and have the dinner baked when you come home in the evening.
.....It's like a lottery where you have a ticket to every possible outcome. You're going to win, aren't you?.....
No, it like a lottery, where there is only one winning combination -- the production of life. However, before you can even have the lottery of life, you first need a place to hold the lottery. First the right conditions and materials for making life have to exist. That in itself is another lottery that has only a very narrow set of right outcomes.
So far, even by carefully DESIGNING the conditions for which it is conjectured life might need to get started by any imaginable process, science has not been successful at making even a simple protein with about a hundred atoms or so, from the 92 elements.
True science is EXPERIMENTAL ie, repeatable initial conditions, procedure and results. We have the results - life -- but we don't know the initial conditions nor the procedure evolution supposedly followed. We can only make conjectures involving either random "tries" or a supreme designer. People choose which of these to BELIEVE, but neither is science.
...If you want to study science, you have to give up miracles as an explanation....
That is true of course, but what we consider a miracle today may not be tomorrow. There is so much about today's physical world we don't know yet. How much less we know about the distant past! Anytime a scientists makes an assumption, that is faith, not science. Evolution makes certain unprovable assumptions and then come to very logical conclusions, based on these assumptions. One of these beliefs is that time and space have always been as we see them and experience them today. IF that belief were correct then evolution certainly has a lot going for it. There is however evidence that things have not always been as we see them today.
.....something as tremendously complex as a cell.....
Even the simplest known protein is too complex to have come into existence from any and all of the 92 elements, by a random or otherwise known process.
.....You're looking at the outcome and saying "it's too hard to get these conditions.....
Exactly right! Random "tries" is like the lottery. So how many tries does it take to make even the simplest protein? What is the greater probability -- you winning EVERY lottery on the planet, EVERY single time or the formation of a protein molecule by such "tries" until one is found the "works"? Doing that kind of math gets you some truly astronomical numbers. Anybody who asserts that random processes can explain the origins of life or of the solar system just has not done the math. A number of monkeys, typing on a number of typewriters for the estimated age of the universe STILL would not produce the works of Shakespeare, even if each subatomic particle were a monkey and a typewriter, each typing as fast as a typewriter can go without melting. There must be another explanation for the origins of the complexities we see, but NOT random "tries".
......Simple, because it is BORING as a scientific theory......
So imagining alternate universes is less boring? Believing or not in God does not affect how the laws of physics work or in our ability to explore them and make use of them. Science can be studied either way. There is no experiment that can prove or disprove anything about origins, of life or anything else, since nobody alive then was there. All we can do is observe what our senses or the extensions thereof tell us in the present. Extrapolating to the past from the present is uncertain and based on many assumptions (faith) that cannot be tested. One such assumtion is the belief that time itself and the clocks we use to measure it (radioactivity is one such clock) have always proceded at the pace we observe today -- throughout all the eons of time. Such assumptions (beliefs) may even be reasonable and make sense, but they are nevertheless assumptions that cannot be checked out. Any science based on assumptions, even reasonable ones, is still faith. Repeatable experiments, where the initial conditions are KNOWN and the outcome is certain is true science. Conjectures about origins, whether God is included or not, are still conjectures based on faith. SOMEHOW, in the primordial ooze a single cell developed after xxx-milion or even billion years is NOT science, but every bit as much faith, as beliving in a God who did the design. Nobody has ever done an experiment making a genuine living, self replicating single cell, DEMONSTRATING in the laboratory the process of how a living thing can come from non-living matter.
....... it's the unnamed one that's going to hit you in the next day/week/month/year......
Maybe it'll hit YOU first and then I'll have time to get my system patched. Just by the fact that OSX has fewer net exposed services running out of the box, makes it safer than Windows. Meanwhile, I won't hold my breath, waiting for the very FIRST Mac nasty to hit the wilds of the Internet, especially since there are THOUSANDS of them for Windows out there.
....... It could be that there are an infinite number of universes,.....
It could also be that there is one eternal, transcendent, intelligent being, GOD, who is self existent and is outside of all universes, including the one we are in. Why is it, strangely, the this "could be" is the one most disliked or fought against and why should this idea of GOD cause so much controversy? I could answer that question, but this forum is not the place for that.
......What is the probability that the universe would be so arranged that a mystical creator would pop out of nowhere and set the constants for human life? Is that probability more or less than that for spontaneous biogenisis?...
There are an estimated 10^80 fundamental particles in the known universe. By random processes it can be calculated that the probability of either of the above happening is less than 10^-120, or at leat 40 orders of magnitude smaller. Perhaps there are other unknown processes that would accomplish this feat, but random chance is not one of them. All the air molecules in an average room, moving randomly would sooner all crowd themselves into a corner, leaving you gasping for air, than the chance of even a single cell coming from non-living matter by any probabilistic process. So there are three postulated means by which things came to be as complex and ordered as we see them to be. 1) It happend by by chance, 2) nobody knows (yet) 3) An independent, pre-existent, transcendent, intelligent designer. I and many others happen to choose number three and there is no way to prove us wrong. It is however a most reasonable choice.
......I see that those with much higher education may just have that much more brainwashing......
A good point! What I never hear proponents of the evolution religion mention is anything about the origin of the interlocking laws of physics and the parameters of the Universe, the solar system and all the other non-living properties that make life possible at all.
Biological evolution is supposedly driven by such things as the "survival of the fittest". What is the mechanism that determined the various parameters on the micro and macro scale that make life even possible at all anywhere and more specifically a planet such as ours?
If it is not just randomness, what determined the fact that, for example, the proton is exactly 1836 times more massive than the electron. What determined that the electron binding energies of the carbon atom should be the ONLY one that is just right for life? Too strong, the long complex molecules like DNA could not unfold and let proteins be coded. Too weak, the large multi-atom molecules would not hold together.
Why is the solar system exactly the way it is? If a star has another similar neighbor closer than about 3.8 light years, neither star could have a planet with an orbit stable enough for life to "evolve" in the first place. Half of all known stars are spaced more closely than this. Why are the masses and spacing of the earth and the sun what it is? Too much variation in any of these precludes the conditions for getting life.
The probability of all the parameters needed to have a place where the CONDITIONS are met for life to happen are absurdly low, if chance is the designer, rather some intelligence who carefully planned and executed His design.
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.....But doesn't the Accord Hybrid have less storage space due to the battery taking up some room in the trunk?....
My Honda Accord Hybrid has its battery behind the back seat and not in the trunk. Unlike its non-hybrid brothers, the back seat cannot fold down and thereby make a continuous load surface from the trunk. Trunk space per se is not less however. This car is a sedan, not a sports car, but quite a peppy one with 255hp from the combined electric and V6 engine. It gets between 30 to 35mpg. When stopped at a light, the engine stops also. The electric motor really helps it get going quickly again and also helps slow the car when braking.
...... I will roast your little bimbo box hybrid off the line, because I have a hard suspension (no squat) and a close-ratio transmission.....
I think my Accord Hybrid would leave you looking at its tail-lights in any sort of 0to60 test. The combination electric motor and V6 gives it a good push, yet it gets 30-35 mpg in average driving. Find someone with such a car and do the test! Heated leather seats, a satellite radio and its other amenities make it a pretty nice car.
...."phone home" to an unimpeachable server ....
And what makes anyone think such a server will still exist even 25 years, let alone 75+ years from now?
No, the real solution is to outlaw all DRM and allow all copying that does not result in material gain or profit. Coupled with that, lock up anyone who profits with real income, for the duration left yet on the copyrights violated, running consecutively if there are several such copyrights involved. After the culprit(s) has sat in the slammer for a minimum of time, he/she may appeal to the rights holder for mercy and be let out early.
Let the casual Joe public whom the **AA now sues go, but put the ones who cause real loss to the creative artists away for a long time. Confiscating all their assets can also be used. In short, let anyone who copies for profit know it's not worth doing. Someone copying their CDs onto their iPod and the iPods of family members or making a copy of a DVD movie onto their laptop, so they don't have to drag the disk with them should be allowed. It is generally done today anyway, so why not make it legal?
.....run a few RIAA execs up on a tree with a rope.....
A better way would be to write your Congress and tell them they'll be out of office unless they change copyright law. Making copies without the copyright holders permission is illegal, but ONLY for the purpose of producing real money income. All non-profit copying is allowed. Others should not be allowed to PROFIT with real income from someone else's work.
However, if someone got a copy for free from someone, that does NOT mean that person might have gone and bought a copy, if they had not gotten the free copy. That person might really like the free song, like from the radio, and decided to see what else that artist had to sell. As a result, the artist might have sold several copies of other similar material.
Some artists, but not the **AAs have figured ou that this free copying is a good advertising system for them.
......if I believed there should be such a thing as "illegal content.".......
Are you saying that child-porn, for example should be OK? Do you really belive that all content should be available, even to children? How about directions to carry on other illegl activities, such as copyright violations? One job, if not the most important job, of government is to protect its citizens from other citizens. To the extent the government fails to do this, to that extent the people have to do it themselves. If the police no longer respond to my call because there is a burglar in my house, I would just have to deal with him as I see fit.
For a while, around here, the sheriff was underfunded. After a tax initiative failed spectacularly, the sheriff's office tried to "punish" voters by refusing to respond with the exuse that they had cut deputies. Not long after however, a man from an outlying community called in the middle of the night, telling the dispatcher that he and his wife were holding at gunpoint, a burglar caught in his house. Please come and get the crook. The dispatcher said that there were no officers available until morning. So the man replied: " I guess we'll just have to shoot the m**********r". The duty officer said: "No, No, don't, we'll come and get him!". Within a surprisingly short amount of time, TWO patrol vehicles, a sheriff and a state patrol showed up and took the break-in artist into custody. At least the officers were still willing to protect the criminal's life.
....Because you can only sue people that actually did damage.....
Not true! In the US you can sue anybody you want for anything at all. However you're not likely to find a lawyer to take a case unless the defendant has deep pockets and the nature of the complaint has a pretty good chance to persuade the most ignorant members of society that can get impaneled in such a jury.
.....without coming back to congress and getting permission....
That's exactly what they are trying to do. Buy the permission from many corrupt politicians. There are however the content providers and they might be able to buy even more such congress persons. Let's see which camp is able to buy the most.
.....This is why I am against government licensing and regulations ....
Yet it is the governmnt that gives these monopolies immunity from what users transmit over their pipes. The government might say: OK guys, we'll let you do whaever you want, just don't expect to get any legal protection from your users activities. The cost of the carriers monitoring and checking every packet for illegal content would quicky overwhelm them all. Someone sent porn over your wire? Too bad, you should have prevented it -- now you're responsible. These carrier companies want it both ways, control what passes over their pipes, but not be held resonsible for anything. I guess they want what software companies enjoy -- immunity from product liability laws.
.....Is this possible proposed policy to establish equity? If so, I'm okay with that.....
I'd be OK with that too if these guys in exchange would lose their common carrier status and could be held liable for every bit of content that ever traveled over their wires. Of course they want to keep that exemption, but still be able to inspect, classify and control content. If they allowed to do that, then they should also be allowed to be held civilly and perhaps even criminally responsible for possibly illegal content. Verizon then could be hauled into court for permitting porn or criminal conspiracies or even (gasp) terrorism planning on their networks.
They want to eat their cake and have it too. If they are not making enough money from their network infrastructure, each company can charge whatever the competition will let them. All the government need to ensure that there is truly open competition between all providers, existing and startups.
....the government would act to make mere possession of something.....
If everybody who is now in locked up because they WERE in posession of contraband would suddenly be set free, our prisons would become rather empty. This would be true even more so, if those who committed a crime in the effort to obtain some contraband were released also. What percentage of thefts are committed by those wanting the money to obtain some "controlled substance" which absent of being "controlled" would be dirt cheap?
Vast numbers of people in the prison industries would be out of work. The elimination of the huge numbers of " you're not allowed to possess" laws would have big consequences on our eceonomy.
.....In Ohio, if you pass out with keys in the ignition, it's a DUI......
I wonder what they would do for someone in some of the new cars with the bluetooth/rfID keys that can be kept in the pocket or purse of any occupant of the vehicle and need not be inserted at all into the "Ignition"? Once the car is "booted" using the "power" button, the person with the key can even leave, but the car will still drive normally until it is shut down. I suppose that if the car computer is "booted" up, that would count as "key in the ignition" and rate a DUI. However, if the "key" is in pocket of a passenger and the car has not been turned on, a DUI charge might not stick on a technicality.
...As far as battlefield target go, if Windows is a aircraft carrier, BSD is a paper boat*.....
Who cares WHY other OS are safer today! Who cares WHY thieves don't break into my house! Maybe I have better locks or live in a low crime neighborhood, have a mean sounding dog, or live next to a police station. Maybe they just don't like my stuff as well as others. The bottom line is that my house is safer so far and so are other OS than Windows. If, or when, there is ONE nasty virus for OSX in the wild, that is one tenth as mean as anything seen on Windows so far, maybe , just maybe I might start sleeping a little less soundly, at least until Apple comes out with a solution.
.....I sometimes tell them use OSX instead of XP. .....
So what will VISTA offer users in the future that the OSX doesn't give you today? I seriously doubt it will be as secure as OSX. For every generation of Windows from Win98 on, MS has promised better security. If anything, it has gotten worse.
It would be interesting for someone who knows, to make a list of VISTA features that are not NOW in OSX. Will VISTA run on most say 3 year old or newer PCs and will it run faster? In OSX, suceeding iterations usually run faster on some of the older hardware it runs on at all. !0.4.3 runs faster on my Ti Powerbook than 10.2.8 did. In Windows the opposite has generally been the case. Win2K runs faster than XP on the same systems, especially if there isn't plenty of RAM.
Will there be an OSX 10.5 by the time VISTA finally shows up? Will VISTA have a cool, easy to use, integrated suite of applications akin to iLife?
How many existing games will still work, especially since games usually require unfettered access to all parts of the computer. wnich means the equivalent of running as root on *NIX systems.
If the new access and security features mentioned in the article will truly be implemented, many existing programs will no longer work. By not releasing updates for the older software MS will certainly force some users to upgrade, but it may also be the impetus for many users to finally abandon the MS ship.
....websites from my school's macs that completely deny mac access.....
Turn on the Safari debug menu and get Safari to lie to the offending website. It may display screwy, but it will get you in every time.
.....If you can prove the assumptions wrong, you win......
It is not neccessry to outright prove an assumption wrong. It is enough to show that it is highly improbable that this assumption will lead to what is being observed. It is highly imrobable that the watch you found on the beach "just happened", but much more probable that it was made by a watchmaker. The same is true of living things.
Few will claim that the watch came into being by any random, unknown process, yet many claim that the wrist that this watch once resided on, being much more complex, came about by chance.
Postulating either that the watch came about by chance or by a watchmaker doesn't prevent you from carefully examining it to determine what makes it tick. When you do take the watch apart, you are doing science, but when you speculate about its origin you are dealing with philosophy or religion based on faith. Science is not really equipped to study origins because the various underlying assumptions that are made cannot be proven by any repeatable experiment, but can only be assigned probabilities.
.....MOSFETs don't play well with AC current.....
A simple, inexpensive diode bridge will take care of that easily. There are other considerations that anyone building a device must deal with. A remote controlled oven or any other device possibly could do real physical damage upon malfunction for whatever reasons. Extensive testing can run up quite an R&D bill. This is where computer manufacturers and software vendors usually cut corners. When your Windows system crashes, you might lose some work, but you'll still be unhurt. (mostly anyway -- unless you get so mad you have a stroke)
A simple timer will do most of what the average person would use such an oven for anyway. Put the (whatever) into the oven in the morning and have the dinner baked when you come home in the evening.
.....It's like a lottery where you have a ticket to every possible outcome. You're going to win, aren't you?.....
No, it like a lottery, where there is only one winning combination -- the production of life. However, before you can even have the lottery of life, you first need a place to hold the lottery. First the right conditions and materials for making life have to exist. That in itself is another lottery that has only a very narrow set of right outcomes.
So far, even by carefully DESIGNING the conditions for which it is conjectured life might need to get started by any imaginable process, science has not been successful at making even a simple protein with about a hundred atoms or so, from the 92 elements.
True science is EXPERIMENTAL ie, repeatable initial conditions, procedure and results. We have the results - life -- but we don't know the initial conditions nor the procedure evolution supposedly followed. We can only make conjectures involving either random "tries" or a supreme designer. People choose which of these to BELIEVE, but neither is science.
...If you want to study science, you have to give up miracles as an explanation....
That is true of course, but what we consider a miracle today may not be tomorrow. There is so much about today's physical world we don't know yet. How much less we know about the distant past! Anytime a scientists makes an assumption, that is faith, not science. Evolution makes certain unprovable assumptions and then come to very logical conclusions, based on these assumptions. One of these beliefs is that time and space have always been as we see them and experience them today. IF that belief were correct then evolution certainly has a lot going for it. There is however evidence that things have not always been as we see them today.
.....something as tremendously complex as a cell .....
Even the simplest known protein is too complex to have come into existence from any and all of the 92 elements, by a random or otherwise known process.
.....You're looking at the outcome and saying "it's too hard to get these conditions.....
Exactly right! Random "tries" is like the lottery. So how many tries does it take to make even the simplest protein? What is the greater probability -- you winning EVERY lottery on the planet, EVERY single time or the formation of a protein molecule by such "tries" until one is found the "works"? Doing that kind of math gets you some truly astronomical numbers. Anybody who asserts that random processes can explain the origins of life or of the solar system just has not done the math. A number of monkeys, typing on a number of typewriters for the estimated age of the universe STILL would not produce the works of Shakespeare, even if each subatomic particle were a monkey and a typewriter, each typing as fast as a typewriter can go without melting. There must be another explanation for the origins of the complexities we see, but NOT random "tries".
......Simple, because it is BORING as a scientific theory......
So imagining alternate universes is less boring? Believing or not in God does not affect how the laws of physics work or in our ability to explore them and make use of them. Science can be studied either way. There is no experiment that can prove or disprove anything about origins, of life or anything else, since nobody alive then was there. All we can do is observe what our senses or the extensions thereof tell us in the present. Extrapolating to the past from the present is uncertain and based on many assumptions (faith) that cannot be tested. One such assumtion is the belief that time itself and the clocks we use to measure it (radioactivity is one such clock) have always proceded at the pace we observe today -- throughout all the eons of time. Such assumptions (beliefs) may even be reasonable and make sense, but they are nevertheless assumptions that cannot be checked out. Any science based on assumptions, even reasonable ones, is still faith. Repeatable experiments, where the initial conditions are KNOWN and the outcome is certain is true science. Conjectures about origins, whether God is included or not, are still conjectures based on faith. SOMEHOW, in the primordial ooze a single cell developed after xxx-milion or even billion years is NOT science, but every bit as much faith, as beliving in a God who did the design. Nobody has ever done an experiment making a genuine living, self replicating single cell, DEMONSTRATING in the laboratory the process of how a living thing can come from non-living matter.
....... it's the unnamed one that's going to hit you in the next day/week/month/year......
Maybe it'll hit YOU first and then I'll have time to get my system patched. Just by the fact that OSX has fewer net exposed services running out of the box, makes it safer than Windows. Meanwhile, I won't hold my breath, waiting for the very FIRST Mac nasty to hit the wilds of the Internet, especially since there are THOUSANDS of them for Windows out there.
....... It could be that there are an infinite number of universes,.....
It could also be that there is one eternal, transcendent, intelligent being, GOD, who is self existent and is outside of all universes, including the one we are in. Why is it, strangely, the this "could be" is the one most disliked or fought against and why should this idea of GOD cause so much controversy? I could answer that question, but this forum is not the place for that.
......What is the probability that the universe would be so arranged that a mystical creator would pop out of nowhere and set the constants for human life? Is that probability more or less than that for spontaneous biogenisis?...
There are an estimated 10^80 fundamental particles in the known universe. By random processes it can be calculated that the probability of either of the above happening is less than 10^-120, or at leat 40 orders of magnitude smaller. Perhaps there are other unknown processes that would accomplish this feat, but random chance is not one of them. All the air molecules in an average room, moving randomly would sooner all crowd themselves into a corner, leaving you gasping for air, than the chance of even a single cell coming from non-living matter by any probabilistic process. So there are three postulated means by which things came to be as complex and ordered as we see them to be. 1) It happend by by chance, 2) nobody knows (yet) 3) An independent, pre-existent, transcendent, intelligent designer. I and many others happen to choose number three and there is no way to prove us wrong. It is however a most reasonable choice.
......I see that those with much higher education may just have that much more brainwashing......
A good point! What I never hear proponents of the evolution religion mention is anything about the origin of the interlocking laws of physics and the parameters of the Universe, the solar system and all the other non-living properties that make life possible at all.
Biological evolution is supposedly driven by such things as the "survival of the fittest". What is the mechanism that determined the various parameters on the micro and macro scale that make life even possible at all anywhere and more specifically a planet such as ours?
If it is not just randomness, what determined the fact that, for example, the proton is exactly 1836 times more massive than the electron. What determined that the electron binding energies of the carbon atom should be the ONLY one that is just right for life? Too strong, the long complex molecules like DNA could not unfold and let proteins be coded. Too weak, the large multi-atom molecules would not hold together.
Why is the solar system exactly the way it is? If a star has another similar neighbor closer than about 3.8 light years, neither star could have a planet with an orbit stable enough for life to "evolve" in the first place. Half of all known stars are spaced more closely than this. Why are the masses and spacing of the earth and the sun what it is? Too much variation in any of these precludes the conditions for getting life.
The probability of all the parameters needed to have a place where the CONDITIONS are met for life to happen are absurdly low, if chance is the designer, rather some intelligence who carefully planned and executed His design.