Intelligent Design propenents need to immediately begin describing their ideas more concisely and subjecting them to peer review and public criticism.
If only there were a way to. We're not supposed to accept religious doctrines on proof, but on faith. (Faith != a superior telling you what to believe. If the Holy Spirit exists in the form you believe it to, it will convince you that you're believing in the right thing.)
However, it's been equally established that the doctrines are provable (just that you can't use that as the basis of your belief). As Jesus said to doubting Thomas, "You believe because you have seen, but blessed are those who believe who have not seen." He didn't say that it was impossible to believe after seeing the proof - but that it's better to have faith.
The ID camp should certainly submit their theses to the scientific community, once they figure out some way so that it both fits the scientific method and that they're only testing a hypothesis - not coming up with new theories. There's nothing directly anti-scientific with this - experiments e.g. those used to prove relativity were designed only to test it, not to come up with a new empirical correlation and see if it fits relativity later. It just takes a lot of effort to phrase it in the right way, so you're satisfying both the religious wish (although proof may exist, believe on faith as the Spirit guides you) and the scientific wish (everything must be provable or disprovable, and we must subject evidence to all tests). If they look like they're forcing their results to fit ID, science won't like it. And if they look like they're deriving some theory that could be ID but also couldn't be, the Church won't like it.
I personally believe, on faith alone, that God did create the heavens and the earth, but that Genesis isn't to be taken literally (if the solar system wasn't created, how is a "day" supposed to mean 24 hours?). However, from all the evidence and moreover theory behind natural selection, I don't see why it shouldn't work.
I like Google and all but come on. I really don't see what the big deal is. You can download all these programs from Google? Whupty-fword.
How many people do you think sought out Folding@Home and ran it (on a home desktop computer), and how many people ran it incidentally because they got the Google Toolbar?
Here is the lesson to be learned: Piss a person off, risk losing valuable relationship with that person.
Piss off your girlfriend, risk losing your girlfriend. Piss off a waiter, get tossed out of restaurant. Piss off university, discover how hard it is to subsequently attend said univerisity.
Really now, why is everyone so upset about this? Freedom of speech does not guarantee freedom from the consequences of such speech. Duh.
You're close until you get to the last sentence. Freedom of speech is nothing other than a freedom of punishment for unpopular speech. However, freedom of speech is only a construct of government. In private matters, you aren't under the control of a single entity*, and your speech does have consequences - which means you are not free to speak. If indeed he believes the professors at Marquette are untolerable, why doesn't he go somewhere else?
And just because you have the right to do something in a political-theory sense doesn't mean it's a good idea to do that according to common sense. Sure, my pastor is free by the first and second amendments to take an AK-47 to the pulpit and scare off anyone who works from the government from attending that church - but how effective of a pastor do you think he would be? Similarly, this person still has the right to criticize the university, but if he shoots off his mouth like that, how much business will he get as a dentist?
*Usually. Sometimes you are, and a just government will enact provisions against this, either addressing the root of the problem (encouraging competition, making contracts fairer) or addressing the symptoms (not giving voters a receipt that they can show their boss, giving special protections to whistleblowers who report a just failure).
George W. Bush was quick to point out that John Kerry had forgotten to list Poland as part of our "Alliance of the Willing"...Many people found this to be hilarious because of Poland's (largely undeserved) poor military reputation.
It's not so much an undeserved poor reputation (that's France) as a nonexistent reputation. When was the last time you heard about the great conquests of the Polish Empire? The last I can remember of Poland is the partitions.
Uh...I don't think BabelFish will help you there. EN-NL-FR-EN "Impression making on! Now am possible I with the young bride of my oversea without Babelfish speaking!"
There's probably some dual-boot Win3.1 and Win95 OSR 2 machine on a 486 in Slovenian that isn't compatible with the patch because they used "Slovenian" on the Win95 boot sector and "Slovene" on the Win3.1 boot sector, and the 486 doesn't have the instructions needed to equate the two, and the software emulation of that feature was only implemented in Windows 98...so the patch won't install, because it can't detect the language for the installer...and since both 3.1 and 95 have WMF formats, both operating systems are vulnerable.
And it's Microsoft's responsibility - since it's an official patch - to make sure it will work on that machine. If they installed Ilfak's patch and it said "WTF.NET!?" then they couldn't complain...but if Microsoft's patch did that, then they could very likely sue if their computer got infected.
(Okay, this is hypothetical because they end-of-lifed Windows 3.1. But you get my point. MS is responsible for ensuring that no machine that can reach Windows Update will be exploited.)
They won't run out of investor buddies any time soon- the investors here are pretty clearly conduits for M$ money. SCO is Microsoft's shill, not an independent corporation.
But can even Microsoft afford to finance this? It's clear it's not having even the slightest effect on Linux (except forcing it to inspect its code and be more attractive for copyright-worried companies), and whatever few $699 licenses they received aren't close to enough to keep SCO afloat.
I'm not sure if they have some hidden proof that they're waiting to reveal (or at least get in a form they can introduce in court). Because it would've been much cheaper and more effective to hire Johnnie Cochran to show whatever good evidence they have and shut down Linux in a day. Throwing lawyers at an empty entity isn't harming Linux any.
Voltaire once said that the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor roman, nor an empire. Could we say that Firefox was neither Firebird, nor Phoenix, nor....
--
Let them eat cookies.
--
It was the best of browsers, it was the worst of browsers, it was the age of compliance, it was the age of popups, it was the era of ACID success, it was the era of ACID 2 failure, it was the summer of CSS, it was the winter of <blink>....
--
At least they didn't contract Apple to create the iFel Tower -- it would be made of white plastic, be the smallest thing in the city, and charge 99 francs admission to everyone.
(hint: it isn't a superlative nor does it simply add emphasis)
Sounds like those people who complain about using the word "really." They conveniently forget about the word "very", which comes from the same root as Latin veritas, "truth", and its English derivatives (e.g., verify).
Very, really, truly, literally (according to the meaning in the words), honestly, indeed (= in deed), etc. all mean rougly the same thing: in actuality. The difference is how acceptable they are when used as an intensifier.
And at least they make some sort of sense (this is so like ___ that it might almost be true!), unlike expletives, which most of the time have absolutely nothing to do with the situation (and if you're pedantic enough to take them literally, no pun intended, they're sometimes humorous).
Would you please quit it with throwing 1984 references everywhere? This is a discussion about getting non-Microsoft PCs into the home (and if anything's good for freedom, it's that) - not about tracking anything. This isn't going to make anything wiretappable that wasn't wiretappable before. If you haven't noticed, your cable box is two-way, so if they want they can track what you're viewing. And if the US wanted, they could rootkit your computer. What does connecting the computer and the TV allow them to tap (of any relevance - not like they need to tap someone's TV to get the Lord of the Rings movies for free)? All your personal info is on your computer.
Winston Smith's TV was worrisome because it contained a camera - an active monitoring device - as opposed to a wiretap - a passive monitoring device, which only forwards what goes through the wire. This doesn't contain a camera, and there's no logic in saying it couldn't be turned off.
Would you hold back technology in the worry it could be used for evil ends? Everything can be perverted. Even the clubs that the cavemen used, the first tools in human society, could have been used to kill other humans.
You should be glad you weren't around to say "zomg Big Brother!" when DARPA was proposing the Internet. Because today, you're posting on it, even though your posts are being tracked.
It would be nice if someone could give Microsoft a real run for the money and break up that unnecessary and damaging monopoly. However, I don't think this is the time, and Google isn't strong enough to do it, either. Therefore, they'd be foolish to attack without the ability to win.
You know who can? Apple. They've got experience selling and supporting entire computer systems (as opposed to Linux distros, who normally just give away the OS). They've got enouch hardware and software (iPod, Final Cut, even the pretty OS) that people are already buying Macs on their own. And now they're moving to Intel, and making no move to stop other OSes from running on their machines.
I think this is the end goal with their Intel strategy. Once they've established enough of a market that they don't commit suicide with clone licenses like last time, they can give Microsoft some competition in the OS world. And if they start porting a project such as WINE using a full-time developer team, then Windows loses its lock on Windows software.
It's not going to happen anytime soon, and this wasn't the stated purpose of the switch (lower heat, lower costs, etc.). But I don't think Apple will mind doing this in 5 or 10 years.
This is true -- and why I've moved entirely to a personal gold standard for currency.
Would someone please explain the gold standard to me? I understand the need for non-fiat currency that has equal value as currency as it would as material, but why gold? It's not a fixed quantity. IIRC one of the reasons for the fall of 1600s Spain was that the colonies discovered gold, thereby reducing the value of their gold-standard currency.
In Atlas Shrugged, the banker owns a gold deposit. Is it just a coincidence that there's gold nearby Galt's Gulch? And what's there to prevent him from refusing to mine gold, or mining more gold, or letting a competitor find gold elsewhere?
Why would a community collaborative project such as Wikipedia even need sponsorship, other than bandwidth fees? (And they don't go through $750K a year in bandwidth fees). There should be little or no administrative overhead, and I've never seen an advertisement for Wikipedia (and don't know a reason why I should expect to).
Buying servers. They get an unholy amount of traffic. As a theoretical (Fermi) example: look at how often Wikipedia is updated - everything on that page, as I look at it, is within the same minute. Try making two changes to an article in quick succession and see if you can get the changes to show up next to each other on recent changes. I counted about 119 changes at 12:52 PM Eastern today - that's about two changes per second.
And now consider that that's only changes - not pageviews, which will be several times more - and that's only from the English Wikipedia (which, although the largest, by no means dwarfs the other Wikipedias). And consider that Wikipedia is constantly growing, so it needs more servers periodically. If you've ever noticed it slow down over a month or so and then get back to normal, it's probably because they added one or two servers to their rotation.
Meta has a nice diagram of their hardware from last April - every pictogram in it represents one server. They have - and need - separate Apache/PHP servers, Squid (cache) servers, MySQL servers, load-balancing servers, etc.
If you want to see the exact numbers, the Wikimedia Foundation has a few budgets on their site, e.g., 2005 budget. They're using over a million dollars a year.
universal port (for your i-pod or PDA)... Sounds like a USB port.
A USB port that connects to what? Either it's a USB power-only port, or it's just a regular AC outlet that's more conveniently positioned for devices than for appliances. I'm having trouble visualizing the hotel as a giant USB host.
Funny how all these posts suddenly go Offtopic when someone with unlimited mod points comes along.
Not all of them. Yours is +5, for example. But one post of mine went offtopic, but it contained a link that I wished to get seen. It's the link to Roland's Slashdot account - which lists submissions.
I'm not going to make an opinion about it (for fear of censorship) but I'll just mention that the page links to a bunch of his recent submissions, and you can decide for yourself whether he's being fair or not.
Slashdot Mirror
Intelligent Design propenents need to immediately begin describing their ideas more concisely and subjecting them to peer review and public criticism.
If only there were a way to. We're not supposed to accept religious doctrines on proof, but on faith. (Faith != a superior telling you what to believe. If the Holy Spirit exists in the form you believe it to, it will convince you that you're believing in the right thing.)
However, it's been equally established that the doctrines are provable (just that you can't use that as the basis of your belief). As Jesus said to doubting Thomas, "You believe because you have seen, but blessed are those who believe who have not seen." He didn't say that it was impossible to believe after seeing the proof - but that it's better to have faith.
The ID camp should certainly submit their theses to the scientific community, once they figure out some way so that it both fits the scientific method and that they're only testing a hypothesis - not coming up with new theories. There's nothing directly anti-scientific with this - experiments e.g. those used to prove relativity were designed only to test it, not to come up with a new empirical correlation and see if it fits relativity later. It just takes a lot of effort to phrase it in the right way, so you're satisfying both the religious wish (although proof may exist, believe on faith as the Spirit guides you) and the scientific wish (everything must be provable or disprovable, and we must subject evidence to all tests). If they look like they're forcing their results to fit ID, science won't like it. And if they look like they're deriving some theory that could be ID but also couldn't be, the Church won't like it.
I personally believe, on faith alone, that God did create the heavens and the earth, but that Genesis isn't to be taken literally (if the solar system wasn't created, how is a "day" supposed to mean 24 hours?). However, from all the evidence and moreover theory behind natural selection, I don't see why it shouldn't work.
I like Google and all but come on. I really don't see what the big deal is. You can download all these programs from Google? Whupty-fword.
How many people do you think sought out Folding@Home and ran it (on a home desktop computer), and how many people ran it incidentally because they got the Google Toolbar?
I already downloaded the Yahoo! Widget Engine. Why do I need Ellen Degeneres and Tom Cruise?
Faster than light speed? With that much Doppler shift, that's definitely a horse of a different color.
Well, why don't they just make an Ariel Sharon's head and feature it on Futurama?
Here is the lesson to be learned: Piss a person off, risk losing valuable relationship with that person.
Piss off your girlfriend, risk losing your girlfriend. Piss off a waiter, get tossed out of restaurant. Piss off university, discover how hard it is to subsequently attend said univerisity.
Really now, why is everyone so upset about this? Freedom of speech does not guarantee freedom from the consequences of such speech. Duh.
You're close until you get to the last sentence. Freedom of speech is nothing other than a freedom of punishment for unpopular speech. However, freedom of speech is only a construct of government. In private matters, you aren't under the control of a single entity*, and your speech does have consequences - which means you are not free to speak. If indeed he believes the professors at Marquette are untolerable, why doesn't he go somewhere else?
And just because you have the right to do something in a political-theory sense doesn't mean it's a good idea to do that according to common sense. Sure, my pastor is free by the first and second amendments to take an AK-47 to the pulpit and scare off anyone who works from the government from attending that church - but how effective of a pastor do you think he would be? Similarly, this person still has the right to criticize the university, but if he shoots off his mouth like that, how much business will he get as a dentist?
*Usually. Sometimes you are, and a just government will enact provisions against this, either addressing the root of the problem (encouraging competition, making contracts fairer) or addressing the symptoms (not giving voters a receipt that they can show their boss, giving special protections to whistleblowers who report a just failure).
George W. Bush was quick to point out that John Kerry had forgotten to list Poland as part of our "Alliance of the Willing"...Many people found this to be hilarious because of Poland's (largely undeserved) poor military reputation.
It's not so much an undeserved poor reputation (that's France) as a nonexistent reputation. When was the last time you heard about the great conquests of the Polish Empire? The last I can remember of Poland is the partitions.
my oversea's bride
Uh...I don't think BabelFish will help you there. EN-NL-FR-EN "Impression making on! Now am possible I with the young bride of my oversea without Babelfish speaking!"
Indeed.
.NET!?" then they couldn't complain...but if Microsoft's patch did that, then they could very likely sue if their computer got infected.
There's probably some dual-boot Win3.1 and Win95 OSR 2 machine on a 486 in Slovenian that isn't compatible with the patch because they used "Slovenian" on the Win95 boot sector and "Slovene" on the Win3.1 boot sector, and the 486 doesn't have the instructions needed to equate the two, and the software emulation of that feature was only implemented in Windows 98...so the patch won't install, because it can't detect the language for the installer...and since both 3.1 and 95 have WMF formats, both operating systems are vulnerable.
And it's Microsoft's responsibility - since it's an official patch - to make sure it will work on that machine. If they installed Ilfak's patch and it said "WTF
(Okay, this is hypothetical because they end-of-lifed Windows 3.1. But you get my point. MS is responsible for ensuring that no machine that can reach Windows Update will be exploited.)
Unisys is also to upgrade the Department of Homeland Security's headquarters facility in Washington.
WMF patch rollout Tuesday.
But it's Unisys. Shouldn't that be a GIF lawsuit rollout Tuesday?
They won't run out of investor buddies any time soon- the investors here are pretty clearly conduits for M$ money. SCO is Microsoft's shill, not an independent corporation.
But can even Microsoft afford to finance this? It's clear it's not having even the slightest effect on Linux (except forcing it to inspect its code and be more attractive for copyright-worried companies), and whatever few $699 licenses they received aren't close to enough to keep SCO afloat.
I'm not sure if they have some hidden proof that they're waiting to reveal (or at least get in a form they can introduce in court). Because it would've been much cheaper and more effective to hire Johnnie Cochran to show whatever good evidence they have and shut down Linux in a day. Throwing lawyers at an empty entity isn't harming Linux any.
Do you realize that this is libel?
Yes. So? It would be a good thing if they sue us for it. Then we can prove in a court of law once and for all that SCO is indeed Microsoft's shill.
How about "loser pays", but the amount is limited to the amount the loser spent. If you lose, it will cost only as much as you spent.
You mean twice what the loser spent, right? Because loser anyway pays for his own lawyer. Your wording is kinda unclear.
Fire ze fox!
But I am le tired.
Okay, take a nap, and then fire ze fox!
--
Voltaire once said that the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor roman, nor an empire. Could we say that Firefox was neither Firebird, nor Phoenix, nor....
--
Let them eat cookies.
--
It was the best of browsers, it was the worst of browsers, it was the age of compliance, it was the age of popups, it was the era of ACID success, it was the era of ACID 2 failure, it was the summer of CSS, it was the winter of <blink>....
--
At least they didn't contract Apple to create the iFel Tower -- it would be made of white plastic, be the smallest thing in the city, and charge 99 francs admission to everyone.
Just don't name your machine "kenny." It's not good to have it crash every episode - even if you can reboot it.
keep their answers somewhat lighthearted instead of so stiff
"I must admit to not having total control over who of our employees are currently single"
How is that not very lighthearted?
(hint: it isn't a superlative nor does it simply add emphasis)
Sounds like those people who complain about using the word "really." They conveniently forget about the word "very", which comes from the same root as Latin veritas, "truth", and its English derivatives (e.g., verify).
Very, really, truly, literally (according to the meaning in the words), honestly, indeed (= in deed), etc. all mean rougly the same thing: in actuality. The difference is how acceptable they are when used as an intensifier.
And at least they make some sort of sense (this is so like ___ that it might almost be true!), unlike expletives, which most of the time have absolutely nothing to do with the situation (and if you're pedantic enough to take them literally, no pun intended, they're sometimes humorous).
== grokster.com ==
#REDIRECT [[whatismyip.com]]
Would you please quit it with throwing 1984 references everywhere? This is a discussion about getting non-Microsoft PCs into the home (and if anything's good for freedom, it's that) - not about tracking anything. This isn't going to make anything wiretappable that wasn't wiretappable before. If you haven't noticed, your cable box is two-way, so if they want they can track what you're viewing. And if the US wanted, they could rootkit your computer. What does connecting the computer and the TV allow them to tap (of any relevance - not like they need to tap someone's TV to get the Lord of the Rings movies for free)? All your personal info is on your computer.
Winston Smith's TV was worrisome because it contained a camera - an active monitoring device - as opposed to a wiretap - a passive monitoring device, which only forwards what goes through the wire. This doesn't contain a camera, and there's no logic in saying it couldn't be turned off.
Would you hold back technology in the worry it could be used for evil ends? Everything can be perverted. Even the clubs that the cavemen used, the first tools in human society, could have been used to kill other humans.
You should be glad you weren't around to say "zomg Big Brother!" when DARPA was proposing the Internet. Because today, you're posting on it, even though your posts are being tracked.
It would be nice if someone could give Microsoft a real run for the money and break up that unnecessary and damaging monopoly. However, I don't think this is the time, and Google isn't strong enough to do it, either. Therefore, they'd be foolish to attack without the ability to win.
You know who can? Apple. They've got experience selling and supporting entire computer systems (as opposed to Linux distros, who normally just give away the OS). They've got enouch hardware and software (iPod, Final Cut, even the pretty OS) that people are already buying Macs on their own. And now they're moving to Intel, and making no move to stop other OSes from running on their machines.
I think this is the end goal with their Intel strategy. Once they've established enough of a market that they don't commit suicide with clone licenses like last time, they can give Microsoft some competition in the OS world. And if they start porting a project such as WINE using a full-time developer team, then Windows loses its lock on Windows software.
It's not going to happen anytime soon, and this wasn't the stated purpose of the switch (lower heat, lower costs, etc.). But I don't think Apple will mind doing this in 5 or 10 years.
the little nubs at the top of the spindle hold it in place
Little nubs? I just had a mental image of a bunch of miniature unskilled FPS players holding down a CD...
This is true -- and why I've moved entirely to a personal gold standard for currency.
Would someone please explain the gold standard to me? I understand the need for non-fiat currency that has equal value as currency as it would as material, but why gold? It's not a fixed quantity. IIRC one of the reasons for the fall of 1600s Spain was that the colonies discovered gold, thereby reducing the value of their gold-standard currency.
In Atlas Shrugged, the banker owns a gold deposit. Is it just a coincidence that there's gold nearby Galt's Gulch? And what's there to prevent him from refusing to mine gold, or mining more gold, or letting a competitor find gold elsewhere?
Why would a community collaborative project such as Wikipedia even need sponsorship, other than bandwidth fees? (And they don't go through $750K a year in bandwidth fees). There should be little or no administrative overhead, and I've never seen an advertisement for Wikipedia (and don't know a reason why I should expect to).
Buying servers. They get an unholy amount of traffic. As a theoretical (Fermi) example: look at how often Wikipedia is updated - everything on that page, as I look at it, is within the same minute. Try making two changes to an article in quick succession and see if you can get the changes to show up next to each other on recent changes. I counted about 119 changes at 12:52 PM Eastern today - that's about two changes per second.
And now consider that that's only changes - not pageviews, which will be several times more - and that's only from the English Wikipedia (which, although the largest, by no means dwarfs the other Wikipedias). And consider that Wikipedia is constantly growing, so it needs more servers periodically. If you've ever noticed it slow down over a month or so and then get back to normal, it's probably because they added one or two servers to their rotation.
Meta has a nice diagram of their hardware from last April - every pictogram in it represents one server. They have - and need - separate Apache/PHP servers, Squid (cache) servers, MySQL servers, load-balancing servers, etc.
If you want to see the exact numbers, the Wikimedia Foundation has a few budgets on their site, e.g., 2005 budget. They're using over a million dollars a year.
universal port (for your i-pod or PDA) ... Sounds like a USB port.
A USB port that connects to what? Either it's a USB power-only port, or it's just a regular AC outlet that's more conveniently positioned for devices than for appliances. I'm having trouble visualizing the hotel as a giant USB host.
Funny how all these posts suddenly go Offtopic when someone with unlimited mod points comes along.
Not all of them. Yours is +5, for example. But one post of mine went offtopic, but it contained a link that I wished to get seen. It's the link to Roland's Slashdot account - which lists submissions.
I'm not going to make an opinion about it (for fear of censorship) but I'll just mention that the page links to a bunch of his recent submissions, and you can decide for yourself whether he's being fair or not.
(And his recent posts, which are amusing.)