There is a nearly universal skepticism in Academia (and, well, the world at large) for things that have no evidenciary support.
Although I agree with most of what you said, I reject your idea that the "world at large" rejects things "that have no evidenciary support". I'm fairly certain that the majority of the world's 6 billion plus people believes in one faith or another. Correct me if I'm wrong on this...
Although I agree that I.D. as a theory is unfalsifiable, the claim that I.D. is not religiously inspired (as made by many of its supporters) is falsifiable - i.e., through letters, e-mails, etc.
Additionally, I'm not sure that he ever said that he was out to "debunk" intelligent design, that's just the headline, and you know how accurate/. headlines are...
While we're on the subject of the Theory of Relativity, I think that teachers shouldn't be allowed to teach the theory of relativity without stressing that it's just a theory. Similarly, alternative theories (quantum loop theory and string theory) should be given equal time. In fact, I don't think you could even find one scientist that even believes the general theory of relativity since it clearly breaks down at the quantum level!
OK, maybe that's a bad metaphor since what I've just posted actually makes a lot more sense than teaching Intelligent Design. But could you imagine teaching String Theory or Quantum Loop Theory to high school students who haven't even been exposed to Bessel functions or Legendre polynomials yet?
But the statistic that's most relevant to traffic is the number of drivers who are yakking on their cell phones. Good drivers are less likely to be responsible for traffic problems.;)
Yeah, I know - in theory it's possible that the people using the cell phones aren't driving. But, what percentage of the time have you seen someone on the cell phone in a car who is not driving that car? That, and the unfortunate fact that most cars are carrying only the driver.:(
This would no doubt be simultaneous for all reference frames traveling less than, or equal to, the speed of light. If I spend more than a few seconds doing a task at point A and someone else is doing a task at point B at the same time from my reference frame, then it is true that for all reference frames that are traveling less than, or equal to, the speed of light we are doing these tasks as the same time - as long as points A and B are both located on Earth.
Of course I'm belaboring the original point now, but hey, this is slashdot.
Actually, if I'm making a mistake it's in assuming that a "top health official" (FTFA) is not a politician, which might, in fact, be a mistake. Anyways, your point is well taken.
I know that I don't. I agree with your sentiment, btw, except that I'm not sure that the bird flu doesn't rise to the level of violating patent law. I think you might be right, but I suspect they know more about the possible pandemic than you do.
The analogy I've seen is to New Orleans. By the time the flood hit, it was too late to fix the levys. Similarly, if the bird flu pandemic does hit humans, at that point it might be too late to begin producing these drugs.
I never claimed to understand copyright law! Nor would I ever attempt to completely defend it, although I can appreciate the need for artists/authors to get paid.
We could post statements on the copy machines letting people know what are and what are violations of copyright law. This is already done at many, if not most, major universities. It is legal to copy articles for your own use. As a professor, however, you are limited in what you can make copies of to distribute to your class. As far as I can remember, these posted statements have been on copy machines since at least the 80's at Georgia Tech.
The comment I replied to stated that the person who wrote Dracula "probably didn't even know which continent Romania is on". If this doesn't imply American, then it's hard to imagine what would without actually saying something like "begins with an 'A' and ends with 'merican'". Sure, there are people in Europe who don't know what continent Romania is on, just like there are people in the US who don't know that New Mexico is one of our states. Nevertheless, it seems fairly clear to me what the implication was.
That is an interesting tidbit on the bats, though. Did vampire bats get their name before Bram Stoker's story or was the naming partly due to its influence?
The story of Dracula was written by Bram Stoker, who was born in Dublin (that's in Ireland, btw) on November 8, 1847. Your insulting attitude towards Americans is completely uncalled for and most likely stems from a self-fulfilling prophecy - "That person just made a comment I think is ignorant, so he must be American, which just reinforces my belief that all Americans are ignorant." If you want to ignore my comment, feel free this time to use the fact that I am in fact just an American.:p
I'm not a big fan of hunting myself, but it sounds like your logic would also apply to keeping people out of nature altogether. While we're at it should we shut down the Appalachian trail, close down swimming holes, etc.?
I choose not to believe that. I don't credit anyone with that much foresight. I think that, as usual, MS was just catering to the lowest common denominator ("No one ever went broke or lost a campaign by overestimating the public's stupidity"), and the side "benefits" you mentioned just happened by chance (well, not exactly chance, but you know what I mean). Sure, you can blame them for contributing to the glut of poorly written HTML, on at least two different levels, but I refuse to believe that their choice to render poor html was part of some vast Microsoft-wing conspiracy.;)
Now if you want to use the actual OS for something then perhaps someone could set up a cluster to run simulations of oscillations under various conditions and designs. Anyone want to sine on for the project?
OK, I can somewhat defend the good intentions behind rendering poor html, but I'm going to have to go ahead and give you a rousing "Amen, brother!" on the FrontPage point.
The specific application (and its derivatives) mentioned in the patent application. This is probably what you meant by "the application", but I just wanted to make sure everyone else understood the added distinction.
I can't believe how many people are talking about it as if they actually own patents on the genes themselves. A few of them were definitely funny, but there are way too many.
Actually, I think that if IE became more strict it would require them to learn a little more about how HTML is designed to work. It should make them more employable, not less. Of course, this is similar to Nietzsche's "That which does not kill me, makes me stronger" and it's corrollary, "Yeah, but that which does kill me..."
No, actually my pinky finger slipped and hit the "l" instead of the ";". I won't even try to explain how such a slip is possible as my other finger should have been in the way. I think I'm gonna blame quantum tunneling.
And the phrase for self-replicating viruses was "gossip". Unfortunately, the viruses would occasionally replicate with mutations, but this only made them stronger.
In the past, I've been of mixed feelings with IE correctly rendering the "intent" of a web-designer when the web-designer has created buggy HTML - this includes such things as omitting terminating tags (e.g., <l\li>) as well as a few other things. The result of IE doing this was that some web pages look good in IE that didn't look good in other browsers - thus encouraging more people to use IE. As HTML was being used more and more by the masses, there seemed some logic to this. Of course, one of the problems with this idea is that the designers were looking at their web-pages in IE to see if their code was written correctly.
This story just goes to emphasize the importance of calling buggy HTML code what it is, and not trying to infer the intent of the HTML coder. Samy cleverly found a way to make "buggy code" that would get past MySpace's filter, but that would be rendered the way he intended by the browser with the majority market share.
Slashdot Mirror
Although I agree with most of what you said, I reject your idea that the "world at large" rejects things "that have no evidenciary support". I'm fairly certain that the majority of the world's 6 billion plus people believes in one faith or another. Correct me if I'm wrong on this...
Although I agree that I.D. as a theory is unfalsifiable, the claim that I.D. is not religiously inspired (as made by many of its supporters) is falsifiable - i.e., through letters, e-mails, etc.
Additionally, I'm not sure that he ever said that he was out to "debunk" intelligent design, that's just the headline, and you know how accurate /. headlines are...
It's unfortunate that one hast to actually RTFA to figure that out.
While we're on the subject of the Theory of Relativity, I think that teachers shouldn't be allowed to teach the theory of relativity without stressing that it's just a theory. Similarly, alternative theories (quantum loop theory and string theory) should be given equal time. In fact, I don't think you could even find one scientist that even believes the general theory of relativity since it clearly breaks down at the quantum level!
OK, maybe that's a bad metaphor since what I've just posted actually makes a lot more sense than teaching Intelligent Design. But could you imagine teaching String Theory or Quantum Loop Theory to high school students who haven't even been exposed to Bessel functions or Legendre polynomials yet?
But the statistic that's most relevant to traffic is the number of drivers who are yakking on their cell phones. Good drivers are less likely to be responsible for traffic problems. ;)
Yeah, I know - in theory it's possible that the people using the cell phones aren't driving. But, what percentage of the time have you seen someone on the cell phone in a car who is not driving that car? That, and the unfortunate fact that most cars are carrying only the driver. :(
This would no doubt be simultaneous for all reference frames traveling less than, or equal to, the speed of light. If I spend more than a few seconds doing a task at point A and someone else is doing a task at point B at the same time from my reference frame, then it is true that for all reference frames that are traveling less than, or equal to, the speed of light we are doing these tasks as the same time - as long as points A and B are both located on Earth.
Of course I'm belaboring the original point now, but hey, this is slashdot.
Actually, if I'm making a mistake it's in assuming that a "top health official" (FTFA) is not a politician, which might, in fact, be a mistake. Anyways, your point is well taken.
I know that I don't. I agree with your sentiment, btw, except that I'm not sure that the bird flu doesn't rise to the level of violating patent law. I think you might be right, but I suspect they know more about the possible pandemic than you do.
The analogy I've seen is to New Orleans. By the time the flood hit, it was too late to fix the levys. Similarly, if the bird flu pandemic does hit humans, at that point it might be too late to begin producing these drugs.
That's only about 10^{-8} parsecs, though.
I never claimed to understand copyright law! Nor would I ever attempt to completely defend it, although I can appreciate the need for artists/authors to get paid.
We could post statements on the copy machines letting people know what are and what are violations of copyright law. This is already done at many, if not most, major universities. It is legal to copy articles for your own use. As a professor, however, you are limited in what you can make copies of to distribute to your class. As far as I can remember, these posted statements have been on copy machines since at least the 80's at Georgia Tech.
The comment I replied to stated that the person who wrote Dracula "probably didn't even know which continent Romania is on". If this doesn't imply American, then it's hard to imagine what would without actually saying something like "begins with an 'A' and ends with 'merican'". Sure, there are people in Europe who don't know what continent Romania is on, just like there are people in the US who don't know that New Mexico is one of our states. Nevertheless, it seems fairly clear to me what the implication was.
That is an interesting tidbit on the bats, though. Did vampire bats get their name before Bram Stoker's story or was the naming partly due to its influence?
The story of Dracula was written by Bram Stoker, who was born in Dublin (that's in Ireland, btw) on November 8, 1847. Your insulting attitude towards Americans is completely uncalled for and most likely stems from a self-fulfilling prophecy - "That person just made a comment I think is ignorant, so he must be American, which just reinforces my belief that all Americans are ignorant." If you want to ignore my comment, feel free this time to use the fact that I am in fact just an American. :p
It led me to this page as well as to a rather unfortunate article from the KKK.
I'm not a big fan of hunting myself, but it sounds like your logic would also apply to keeping people out of nature altogether. While we're at it should we shut down the Appalachian trail, close down swimming holes, etc.?
I choose not to believe that. I don't credit anyone with that much foresight. I think that, as usual, MS was just catering to the lowest common denominator ("No one ever went broke or lost a campaign by overestimating the public's stupidity"), and the side "benefits" you mentioned just happened by chance (well, not exactly chance, but you know what I mean). Sure, you can blame them for contributing to the glut of poorly written HTML, on at least two different levels, but I refuse to believe that their choice to render poor html was part of some vast Microsoft-wing conspiracy. ;)
OK, I can somewhat defend the good intentions behind rendering poor html, but I'm going to have to go ahead and give you a rousing "Amen, brother!" on the FrontPage point.
The specific application (and its derivatives) mentioned in the patent application. This is probably what you meant by "the application", but I just wanted to make sure everyone else understood the added distinction.
I can't believe how many people are talking about it as if they actually own patents on the genes themselves. A few of them were definitely funny, but there are way too many.
Disclaimer: MSNBC is a joint project with Microsoft or some such nonsense.
Well, yeah. Um, about that. You see, well, it oughta. It just oughta.
But seriously, I think there are other examples where IE does allow incorrect HTML, but now my credibility is just shot. :P
Actually, I think that if IE became more strict it would require them to learn a little more about how HTML is designed to work. It should make them more employable, not less. Of course, this is similar to Nietzsche's "That which does not kill me, makes me stronger" and it's corrollary, "Yeah, but that which does kill me..."
No, actually my pinky finger slipped and hit the "l" instead of the ";". I won't even try to explain how such a slip is possible as my other finger should have been in the way. I think I'm gonna blame quantum tunneling.
And the phrase for self-replicating viruses was "gossip". Unfortunately, the viruses would occasionally replicate with mutations, but this only made them stronger.
In the past, I've been of mixed feelings with IE correctly rendering the "intent" of a web-designer when the web-designer has created buggy HTML - this includes such things as omitting terminating tags (e.g., <l\li>) as well as a few other things. The result of IE doing this was that some web pages look good in IE that didn't look good in other browsers - thus encouraging more people to use IE. As HTML was being used more and more by the masses, there seemed some logic to this. Of course, one of the problems with this idea is that the designers were looking at their web-pages in IE to see if their code was written correctly.
This story just goes to emphasize the importance of calling buggy HTML code what it is, and not trying to infer the intent of the HTML coder. Samy cleverly found a way to make "buggy code" that would get past MySpace's filter, but that would be rendered the way he intended by the browser with the majority market share.