The one time pad idea has merit, but there are a number of problems with it. First, there is the logistical nightmare any one time pad system causes. Since each pad can only be used once a new key must be produced for every hard drive on every mission. Securely distributing all these keys brings up the same problems as protecting the data itself.
These problems can be addressed, but a one time pad cannot prevent the problem in the article since it only works for data produced while in flight. It is far more likely that highly classified data is being carried on a plane like this because it is neccessary to complete the mission. In order to access the data you would need to take the key with you and then you're back to square one because the drive containing the key still has to be destroyed in an emergency.
Finally, since the data is so important to the mission, it needs to be stored on media that is resistant to accidental modification. The device described in the article is meant to address the conflict between the robustness needed to survive a mission and the volatility needed to destroy the data in an emergency. This problem also applies to any in-flight encryption technique where a key is needed to read the data. Even if the key is not stored on a hard drive it has to be stored on something that is resistant to accidental loss.
The product sounds ridiculous because no one outside of government is trying to protect their data from an adversary with effectively unlimited resources. The military doesn't have the luxury of assuming their adversary won't take an electron microscope to the drive to recover overwritten data or determine which bits have been switched from their previous state. That's the kind of threat the technique in the article is meant to address.
I always loved the old "Monad" name but I guess they changed it since no one got the joke. According to this page (second answer) the inspiration came from the 17th century philosopher Gottfried Leibniz. Leibniz proposed the concept of a Monad as the fundamental particle of the mental realm much as the atom is the fundamental particle of the physical realm.
Monads are supposedly self contained and closed off from any outside input. This leads to the joke as I understood it. In describing the concept in his Monadology Leibniz says, "Monads have no windows, through which anything could come in or go out," an appropriate quality for a command shell;)
This is what happens when you have the word Ton used to describe:
2000 lbs, a measure of force
1000 kg, a measure of mass, and
as the shortened version of "Tons of TNT", a measure of energy
Can you blame the poster for being a little confused? Physicists need to be more creative when they name their units.
I'm willing to concede that my infinity argument was ill concieved and fatally flawed. It was a spur of the moment thing and I probably wouldn't have spent so much effort defending it if it weren't for the beavis remark. The point about being able to assign probabilities over an infinite sample space is something I am aware of and I really don't know how it slipped my mind.
This does not mean that I accept that you can even assign relative probabilities to the ideas of creationism and evolution. Which brings me to my intended point when I said this:
If you want to claim victory by an infinitely small percent you still have the problem that your strongest argument comes down to, "I say probability A is greater than probability B therefore I'm right, and you're wrong."
The point was that there is still a great deal of subjectivity when you assign your probabilities. You only have one sample to go from and you seem to feel it's safe to assume that the one sample represents the rule and not the exception. For all matters within the system that isn't a problem since the only sample we have is the only sample that's relevant. When you get into matters of metaphysics things are not so clear cut because they are trying to describe the origins of the system itself. Since all available evidence comes from within the system you're stuck trying to apply the rules of the system before the system existed. This is why I said in my first response that you cannot apply science to matters such as these and the reason I will continue to maintain that believing or disbelieving the existence of a higher power is a matter of faith (I'm defining faith as belief in something that cannot be known). I'm certain you will disagree with me on the previous point. It seems we'll just have to acknowledge that neither of us is going to budge from our core beliefs over a discussion on slashdot.
probability is completely relative to your level of knowledge, or lack thereof ("ignorance"), so it absolutely does.
I'll grant that you can come up with a probability in this situation, but that does not make the conclusions you draw from the probabilities correct. It's a good guess, nothing more. This has been my (poorly articulated) central point for this whole discussion: you cannot be certain of your theories. In fact you must admit that there is a chance your conclusions are wrong, especially when they are firmly in the realm of metaphysics (existence of a creator). This is why I found some of your early comments about "theists" and what you'd like to do with them offensive. You have clarified who your position, but at the time it sounded as if you thought anyone who believed in the existence or even the possibility of a god was crazy. I probably overreacted, but had I not gotten that impression I likely would not have responded to your post.
yes. i've shown it far beyond.5 fraction. more like.99999999999999999999999999999999 fraction.
I simply don't see that in what you have shown me. You've said evolution is most likely based on the fact that it has been observed. This argument seems reasonable, but it doesn't justify a probability that high. If there were only two possible answers, I could see it justifying a value infinitesimally larger than 50%. With many possible answers the best you have shown is that the probability of the obsreved answer is greater than the probability of any unobserved answer. To be clear I agree that evolution is very probably an accurate theory. This says nothing about my stance on the existence of a creator. Again this is something that we will probably never agree on.
as far as this 'stuff' around us goes, and any being that could have created it or interacted with it, that being is physical, period. end of story.
God doesn't have to exist within the system to affect the system. Consider a computer and its programmer. Assume for a second th
i can still be overwhealmingly certain that the number they pick will not be divisible by 141192748112501580725300871.
Saying that only one number in every 141192748112501580725300871 is divisible by 141192748112501580725300871 is not the same as saying, "unintelligence is less probable than intelligence."
uh, no beavis. you're pulling this out of the air.
Now now let's not resort to personal attacks. Probability: the ratio of favorable cases to the whole number of all cases.
If the "whole number of all cases" is infintiy, the ratio is zero. You're the one pulling probabilities out of thin air. If you want to claim victory by an infinitely small percent you still have the problem that your strongest argument comes down to, "I say probability A is greater than probability B therefore I'm right, and you're wrong." Maybe you should clarify, do you think you have shown that the probability of a universe existing in which matter is subject to set physical laws and evolution produces intelligence without outside intervention is greater than 50%? All we can know is that the universe we have does exist. Without knowledge of what else exists or could exist how can we know how likely it is? Any answer to that question is going to be based on faith. I have a feeling your answer will be that it's the only one we know to exist so it's the only one we know to have any probability. Ignorance of other possibilities does not make your guesses about probability correct. Saying a known probability is greater than an unknown probability goes too far. The relation between a known and an unknown probability is just unknown. Once again we return to the problem that there are questions not answerable by science.
so my point is simply that non-intelligence is vastly more probable than intelligence, which is obvious
And yet here we are.
it doesn't matter how many possible answers there are, just what fraction of them meet the criteria, in this case "being intelligent"
my dog for instance, will make it to his bowl to eat, even if i put a chair in the way of a different possible path he could take, every day.[...]that's procisely[sic] what intelligence is
So are you saying intelligence is common or uncommon? You say that intelligence is highly improbable, but you define intelligence in a way that most, if not all, life on the planet qualifies for. I'm not arguing the existence of evolution. It seems likely that it was the mechanism that created what we consider intelligence. Now you have to ask, where does evolution come from? How likely is it for human level intelligence to be a survival trait? It seems like physical prowess would be a more direct advantage. What caused the jump from monkey level intelligence to the kind of intelligence that spends time pondering the meaning of its existence and posting futile philosophical discussions on slashdot?
why would an omnipotent being end up intelligent
This argument misses one of the aspects of God as defined by Christians (which I'm only citing because it's the one I'm most aware of): infinity. The Christian answer to this is that he didn't become anything. He always was and always will be. Even if you won't accept that, who's to say omnipotence has to come first? And if an intelligent being can become omnipotent what's to stop it from destroying the universe and starting over?
ask the southern baptists whether they think it's literally true. ask the fundies i'm debating on here who quote bible passages.
Have you seen me defending that? You have a tendency to judge groups by the worst of their members.
the general definition of a god that is omnipotent and intelligent can be scientifically refuted
Maybe you should explain this. Most of the beliefs you're arguing would say that god exists outside of the physical world anyway so u
since the only known explanation we have is natural evolutionary processes, it wins by forfeit, so to speak
So you can show me an obeserved instance of non living material evolving to life? If you haven't seen random collections of raw matreials spontaneously becoming alive then you don't know of either dog ever barking.
if there are possible answers to a question, and answer a is 51% likely to be correct, and answer b is 49% likely to be correct, and a person chooses to "believe" that answer b is correct, then i would condemn him
Your argument would work if it was actually possible to assign numerical values to the answers we are considering. In questions dealing with the whole of our universe it's not possible to do that. We have no way of creating bounds for the domain of possible answers. Can we consider previous universes where we know they happened by chance? Do we know there are no other universes with different laws of physics? Creating an actual probability becomes impossible because the set of possible answers is infinite. All probabilities then approach zero. You can show no evidence that makes random chance more likely than anything else.
no, religions make claims about reality, and truth and falsity. these are the realm of science. religions talk about massive floods, the emergence of life, and the existence of god. these are issues where religion is wrong.
I was by no means trying to say that any religion was literally correct in all circumstances. If you read the context of what you quoted I believe I said that religion had no place in matters of verifiable fact. Lumping the existence of a god in with creation myths was going too far. Even the Catholic church says the creation myths are not to be interpreted as literally true. The people who want to literally interpret the bible are the people I was referring to when I said religion has no place in science. When you try to extend science to the existence of god you overstep science's bounds.
My mistake. You're the one that brought the "p word" into it with your original reply. You claimed to be one of those "anti-religion atheists" and implied that you had disproven (to your satisfaction at least) the existence of God. If I misunderstood I apologize, but you go on to base your belief on how unlikely the existence of God is.
there is no such thing as "ordered".
Perhaps consistent or predictable would have been a better word. You don't think the force of gravity applies to some objects and not others or that it might decide to take Friday off do you?
and who cares how unlikely it is to come about by chance?
The argument was an attempt to apply your own standard to your beliefs. If anything it shows how weak likelihood is as a reason to disbelieve something.
we don't know of anything intelligent that is any more likely to have made it.
We aren't talking about knowledge, we're talking about belief. You yourself don't know God does not exist, you believe God does not exist. Knowledge can be derived from logic. Belief requires a choice to be made by the believer because the idea can be neither proven nor disproven. It doesn't seem fair to condemn people for believing something that may or may not be correct. You seem to think science and religion are contradictory and incompatible. It's more accurate to say they apply to disjoint sets of ideas. Neither requires the other and when people try to make them overstep their bounds they make a mess. When religion tries to dictate biology people get hurt. When science tries to argue religion people get hurt.
why give their irrational beliefs consideration?
Leaving aside the question of rationality, I was not asking you to. I was asking you to allow that the people are not necessarily uneducated or immature. There's nothing wrong with rational discourse, but you need to be arguing the same point. Religion shouldn't argue science and science shouldn't argue religion. Both of those are wastes of breath. You've expressed a hatred for "theists". That's the main thing I was addressing.
I've enjoyed this discussion and it has remained mostly civil, a rarity for slashdot; I want to thank you for that. You've made my Saturday far more interesting than it would have been.
i don't understand why people always want to bring the "p" word into this discussion.
Assuming "possible" is the p word to which you were refering, my reason for bringing possibility into this was a response to your apparent belief that anyone who believes in a higher power is stupid and misguided. I wan't asking you to believe in any kind of god, only hoping that you would acknowledge that those who do believe when there is no contrary evidence (lack of evidence != evidence of lack) might not deserve your hatred. While you think the existence of God is incredibly unlikely, others happen to think the existence of a universe that is as ordered as ours is incredibly unlikely to happen by chance.
Science works very well for the question of how, but falls miles short on the question of why. The exploration of why is where religion and faith become more important. If you're not interested in why that's fine. Just give some consideration to those who are.
Since you seem to enjoy probabilities so much let me ask you this:
Let's say I release a basketball from a height of one meter and you measure the time it takes to hit the ground. Let's say then that I repeat the experiment. Do you expect the second time to match the first?
If you do expect this, why? There are infinitely more outcomes that are different than the first and different from what would be predicted by the "laws of physics." Do you then throw away the work of Newton because it's almost never precisely right? Is physics relegated to a fancy way of describing history? Of course not because improbability is not the same as impossibility.
You seem to think you do not need faith of any kind and those that have faith are irrational. The fact is that even science is based on the assumption that the universe follows a consistent set of rules and will continue to do so. You cannot prove the existence of such rules since they cannot be directly observed. No matter how many trials of an experiment you run your data only shows history; it does not and cannot predict the future. Actually applying the results requires an act of faith that the universe is not lying to you.
Just to be clear, I'm in no way claiming to have proven the existence of God. That's impossible. It's also impossible to disprove God's existence. This quality really removes the concept from the realm of science since scientific theories have to be falsifiable at least. At the same time those who do believe should not try to prove God's existence since knowledge of God's existence leaves no room for faith and a religion without faith is pretty pointless.
But don't take my word for it. Check out David Hume's
work on the problem of induction and Immanuel Kant's The Critique of Pure Reason for more on what can actually be known about the world. It's really surprisingly little.
For the record I don't think Intelligent Design has any place in a science classrom. What is missing is teaching students the importance of doubt and skepticism in all scientific endeavors.
Maybe they didn't think it appropriate for an IBM funded study to consider an IBM operating system?
Leaving it out isn't exactly a positive for AIX since it then has no chance of competing with the others. If they were interested in using this to push AIX they wouldn't have allowed Solaris to be the only proprietary Unix OS in the story. If Solaris comes out ahead it would be a plus for Sun that's not easily translatable to AIX. If Solaris loses, all the proprietary Unixes can be given a bad rap since all the Linux advocates will be saying, "Linux is cheaper than proprietary Unix," after they finish bashing MS.
There were certainly marketing considerations in funding this study, but AIX was not one of them.
IBM also has a substantial interest in selling its own Unix variant AIX. A study that's going to be used as evidence of Linux having lower TCO than MS or Unix is not exactly good for that part of their business.
Not all the runways at Edwards are sand. The runway the shuttle landed on is 15,000 feet of nice solid concrete. There is sand blown onto the runway, but it's nowhere near as bad as landing on an actual dry lakebed. You are correct that landing on a dry lakebed is not great for the shuttle. STS-3 landed on desert at White Sands Missile Range and they haven't done it since because of the damage it caused.
Soyuz hasn't lost a human life since 1971. Can NASA claim such a track record?
That's a little unfair. The shuttle has only been in operation since 1981. The very first Soyuz flight in 1967 killed its entire crew (fortunately only one person) on landing. The Space Shuttle didn't have any in flight fatalities until the crew of Challenger in 1986. That alone seems to suggest that NASA's "overengineering" got it more right the first time.
After the Soyuz 1 accident, the next fatalities for the Soyuz program came four years later in 1971 when the entire crew of Soyuz 11 (three people this time) were asphixiated during reentry. By comparison, after Challenger the Space Shuttle went 17 years without incident until the Colombia broke up in 2003. You are correct that the Soyuz program hasn't lost anyone in the last 34 years, but when you look at the actual track record the two programs have very similar safety records. The shuttle has lost 14 astronauts while the Soyuz program has only lost 4, but both programs had only two failures that were fatal to the crew. When you compare the number of missions and number of people put into space the records become even closer. The Shuttle losses come over 113 missions (not counting the current one) in 14 years. The Soyuz program has had 93 manned missions in 38 years. The two programs' death rates are not significantly different. The only pattern I see is Soyuz putting fewer people at risk in each launch and having fewer overall launches.
1) Four years of one of the most time intensive majors in colleges
If the fact that it's hard or the lower wages now is what stops you from pursuing a CS degree, you probably weren't cut out for it in the first place. If you choose CS because you enjoy problem solving and want a career that will mentally challenge and stimulate you then go for it and none of those points will be a problem. If you actually like CS the classes won't seem unbearable. You'll probably be able to get a couple of good internships which will either make (2) easier or let you avoid it all together when you get offered a full time position. If you like what you do the occaisional deadline crunch will be easier to bare. If you have passion for what you do you will never be too old.
Too many people went into CS because of the dot com boom. Now those people who chose for money have flooded the market and are making it look worse than it really is.
Also, another solution to (2),(3), and (4): Get a job in the Defense industry or Government that requires a security clearance. Your job can never be sent overseas and if you find the right civil service position it's very hard to be fired. The job security in Defense contracting isn't quite as good, but cleared personnel generally command a premium.
The source is the Associated Press. Fox News is just one of many places that reprints the AP's stories.
That said, this just looks like the same story everyone's been printing since the first problems were discovered. If you read the Planetary Society's updates
and blog it sounds like the information about the rocket cutting out 83 seconds into flight is old news that may not be accurate. The Planetary Society hasn't given up yet and there are weak signals that suggest it made it to orbit, they just aren't sure what orbit it made it to.
At this point it looks like there are two possibilities:
1) The Russian Navy report that the first stage cut off early is right, the signals received by the ground stations are false, and the craft is effectively lost.
or 2) That the Planetary society really did receive signals from an orbitting Cosmos 1, the Russian Navy is wrong, and there is still a chance to point the antennae at a different part of the sky and find the craft operating correctly in the wrong place.
I'm hoping for the latter, but Russia's track record seems to suggest the former.
Fry's clerk: "Don't forget your special USB 2.0 cable for your new $40 printer"
Me: "Why does it cost four times as much as this USB 1.1 cable?"
Clerk: "It'll make your printer go faster."
Me: "The printer doesn't say it supports USB 2.0"
Clerk: "Don't worry it's still better"
Me: "It's not going to magically increase the speed of the printer, the computer it's going on doesn't support USB 2.0 anyway, and I'm not adding 50% to the price of a printer for a cable that doesn't do anything the $5 cable doesn't do."
The saddest part is that he'd probably gotten people with that line before.
"I am glad that they didn't mess with the current system of telecommunications- one of my favorite things about Texas is the pretty fast broadband that I have in a pretty rural area."
As a Texan, I will say that you're one of the lucky ones. I live in a not very rural area and I either have to choose between crappy DSL from SBC (384 kbps) and decent cable from Comcast that would force us to buy their cable TV to get a good price. Thats why municipal wireless is so important. SBC has demonstrated that they are satisfied with the service in our area with no intention of upgrading any time soon and the only good deal from comcast requires us to buy the whole package. In a situation like mine the local town council is the only group with any interest in providing a good service. This bill would have made them powerless to do anything about it.
I noticed the similarity, but I think he was just going for "loud Texan". He seemed a bit to boisterous to be doing a straight George W. Bush impression.
So you want every thing with any componnent from outside the country to be more expensive?
The problem isn't the lack of tariffs in the US, it's the presence of tariffs and unfair trade practices in other countries (I'm looking at you China...). Tariffs may be one stick to use on other countries when they don't play nice, but the goal should be to remove them in the end. Free trade is good because it's good for us. Any other benefits are just gravy.
You're right, of course, but is there anything wrong with that? That's the beauty of a free market. As long as people realize there's a choice, companies can be very considerate. The parent of your post has the right idea to support the companies that at least pretend to care about their customers.
Your BBS analogy is flawed. The administrator of a BBS isn't liable because they weren't the ones to post the illegal material. They are providing a service that can be used for any number of purposes. Running a bittorrent tracker is different. A tracker for a copywritten work can only be used to facilitate distribution of said work. If the person running the tracker doesn't have the rights to distribute that work, they would be liable for infringement.
Seriously folks, these are glorified remote controlled cars with shotguns. It's not even that new. Bomb disposal robots that Police departments use have had shotguns for a long time (they use them to set off a suspicious package). The only thing new about this is it's being used against humans in a combat situation. It's still a human controlling it.
The best part of it is that it replaces the "Tunnel Rats" from Vietnam. Instead of sending a human with a pistol to clear a tunnel or cave, you send one of these in.
Probably a bot. Some litigious bastard wrote a script that searched for Nintendo copywrites and "objectional content" then sent threatening emails to the admins of the hits.
At least I hope that's the case. If a sane human being actually read the site, saw the context, and still decided to send the threatening email it doesn't say much for the state of common sense in the world.
As a conservative/libertarian I have two problems with the ACLU: their war on Christianity and the misinformation on the Patriot Act. My problem with their war on Christianity is they're trampling all over other parts of the bill of rights in the process. Read the tenth ammendment some time. If the Supreme Court hadn't decided to ignore it a lot of the arguments about the Ten Commandments and Nativity scenes on public property wouldn't be an issue. When a overwhelmingly christian community can't put up a nativity display because they've got the ACLU breathing down their necks, that's an infringement on their rights. The biggest problem I have with the ACLU is that they're only attacking Christians. They wouldn't dare do this to any other group.
My other problem is the misinformation about the PATRIOT act. For example, the ACLU would have you believe that Ashcroft and Co. can unilaterally break into your house and take information then use it against you with no checks on the process. In reality there are checks on the process, they're just poorly implemented. All of the provisions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveilance Act (the one that allows searches without a normal warrant) that were expanded still require a judge to sign off on them. The problem isn't a lack of checks on the process, it's the fact that the judges on these secret courts don't set a very high standard for the FBI to meet. Check out this article for a decent explination of the changes made in the Patriot Act. The ACLU is really doing a disservice by not accurately explaining the Patriot Act. It's easily the most difficult piece of legislation I've ever read. The cross references and modifications to other laws make it impossible to see all the changes in context. They could make a pretty good case against the reality of the Patriot Act and possibly make a difference, but instead they have decided to resort to fear mongering to just get it overturned.
It's a caricature. It's supposed to be derivative. It distills the accusations of both sides into two 60 seconds of comedy. At least do yourself the favor of watching the whole thing; the overall message of "go vote or let the supreme court decide" is not a bad one. If you don't get the references to the madness of this campaign that's fine, but a lot of people will.
Slashdot Mirror
The one time pad idea has merit, but there are a number of problems with it. First, there is the logistical nightmare any one time pad system causes. Since each pad can only be used once a new key must be produced for every hard drive on every mission. Securely distributing all these keys brings up the same problems as protecting the data itself.
These problems can be addressed, but a one time pad cannot prevent the problem in the article since it only works for data produced while in flight. It is far more likely that highly classified data is being carried on a plane like this because it is neccessary to complete the mission. In order to access the data you would need to take the key with you and then you're back to square one because the drive containing the key still has to be destroyed in an emergency.
Finally, since the data is so important to the mission, it needs to be stored on media that is resistant to accidental modification. The device described in the article is meant to address the conflict between the robustness needed to survive a mission and the volatility needed to destroy the data in an emergency. This problem also applies to any in-flight encryption technique where a key is needed to read the data. Even if the key is not stored on a hard drive it has to be stored on something that is resistant to accidental loss.
The product sounds ridiculous because no one outside of government is trying to protect their data from an adversary with effectively unlimited resources. The military doesn't have the luxury of assuming their adversary won't take an electron microscope to the drive to recover overwritten data or determine which bits have been switched from their previous state. That's the kind of threat the technique in the article is meant to address.
I always loved the old "Monad" name but I guess they changed it since no one got the joke. According to this page (second answer) the inspiration came from the 17th century philosopher Gottfried Leibniz. Leibniz proposed the concept of a Monad as the fundamental particle of the mental realm much as the atom is the fundamental particle of the physical realm.
Monads are supposedly self contained and closed off from any outside input. This leads to the joke as I understood it. In describing the concept in his Monadology Leibniz says, "Monads have no windows, through which anything could come in or go out," an appropriate quality for a command shell ;)
This is what happens when you have the word Ton used to describe:
2000 lbs, a measure of force
1000 kg, a measure of mass, and
as the shortened version of "Tons of TNT", a measure of energy
Can you blame the poster for being a little confused? Physicists need to be more creative when they name their units.
This does not mean that I accept that you can even assign relative probabilities to the ideas of creationism and evolution. Which brings me to my intended point when I said this:
The point was that there is still a great deal of subjectivity when you assign your probabilities. You only have one sample to go from and you seem to feel it's safe to assume that the one sample represents the rule and not the exception. For all matters within the system that isn't a problem since the only sample we have is the only sample that's relevant. When you get into matters of metaphysics things are not so clear cut because they are trying to describe the origins of the system itself. Since all available evidence comes from within the system you're stuck trying to apply the rules of the system before the system existed. This is why I said in my first response that you cannot apply science to matters such as these and the reason I will continue to maintain that believing or disbelieving the existence of a higher power is a matter of faith (I'm defining faith as belief in something that cannot be known). I'm certain you will disagree with me on the previous point. It seems we'll just have to acknowledge that neither of us is going to budge from our core beliefs over a discussion on slashdot.
I'll grant that you can come up with a probability in this situation, but that does not make the conclusions you draw from the probabilities correct. It's a good guess, nothing more. This has been my (poorly articulated) central point for this whole discussion: you cannot be certain of your theories. In fact you must admit that there is a chance your conclusions are wrong, especially when they are firmly in the realm of metaphysics (existence of a creator). This is why I found some of your early comments about "theists" and what you'd like to do with them offensive. You have clarified who your position, but at the time it sounded as if you thought anyone who believed in the existence or even the possibility of a god was crazy. I probably overreacted, but had I not gotten that impression I likely would not have responded to your post.
I simply don't see that in what you have shown me. You've said evolution is most likely based on the fact that it has been observed. This argument seems reasonable, but it doesn't justify a probability that high. If there were only two possible answers, I could see it justifying a value infinitesimally larger than 50%. With many possible answers the best you have shown is that the probability of the obsreved answer is greater than the probability of any unobserved answer. To be clear I agree that evolution is very probably an accurate theory. This says nothing about my stance on the existence of a creator. Again this is something that we will probably never agree on.
God doesn't have to exist within the system to affect the system. Consider a computer and its programmer. Assume for a second th
Saying that only one number in every 141192748112501580725300871 is divisible by 141192748112501580725300871 is not the same as saying, "unintelligence is less probable than intelligence."
Now now let's not resort to personal attacks.
Probability: the ratio of favorable cases to the whole number of all cases.
If the "whole number of all cases" is infintiy, the ratio is zero. You're the one pulling probabilities out of thin air. If you want to claim victory by an infinitely small percent you still have the problem that your strongest argument comes down to, "I say probability A is greater than probability B therefore I'm right, and you're wrong." Maybe you should clarify, do you think you have shown that the probability of a universe existing in which matter is subject to set physical laws and evolution produces intelligence without outside intervention is greater than 50%? All we can know is that the universe we have does exist. Without knowledge of what else exists or could exist how can we know how likely it is? Any answer to that question is going to be based on faith. I have a feeling your answer will be that it's the only one we know to exist so it's the only one we know to have any probability. Ignorance of other possibilities does not make your guesses about probability correct. Saying a known probability is greater than an unknown probability goes too far. The relation between a known and an unknown probability is just unknown. Once again we return to the problem that there are questions not answerable by science.
And yet here we are.
So are you saying intelligence is common or uncommon? You say that intelligence is highly improbable, but you define intelligence in a way that most, if not all, life on the planet qualifies for. I'm not arguing the existence of evolution. It seems likely that it was the mechanism that created what we consider intelligence. Now you have to ask, where does evolution come from? How likely is it for human level intelligence to be a survival trait? It seems like physical prowess would be a more direct advantage. What caused the jump from monkey level intelligence to the kind of intelligence that spends time pondering the meaning of its existence and posting futile philosophical discussions on slashdot?
This argument misses one of the aspects of God as defined by Christians (which I'm only citing because it's the one I'm most aware of): infinity. The Christian answer to this is that he didn't become anything. He always was and always will be. Even if you won't accept that, who's to say omnipotence has to come first? And if an intelligent being can become omnipotent what's to stop it from destroying the universe and starting over?
Have you seen me defending that? You have a tendency to judge groups by the worst of their members.
Maybe you should explain this. Most of the beliefs you're arguing would say that god exists outside of the physical world anyway so u
I've enjoyed this discussion and it has remained mostly civil, a rarity for slashdot; I want to thank you for that. You've made my Saturday far more interesting than it would have been.
Science works very well for the question of how, but falls miles short on the question of why. The exploration of why is where religion and faith become more important. If you're not interested in why that's fine. Just give some consideration to those who are.
Since you seem to enjoy probabilities so much let me ask you this:
Let's say I release a basketball from a height of one meter and you measure the time it takes to hit the ground. Let's say then that I repeat the experiment. Do you expect the second time to match the first?
If you do expect this, why? There are infinitely more outcomes that are different than the first and different from what would be predicted by the "laws of physics." Do you then throw away the work of Newton because it's almost never precisely right? Is physics relegated to a fancy way of describing history? Of course not because improbability is not the same as impossibility.
You seem to think you do not need faith of any kind and those that have faith are irrational. The fact is that even science is based on the assumption that the universe follows a consistent set of rules and will continue to do so. You cannot prove the existence of such rules since they cannot be directly observed. No matter how many trials of an experiment you run your data only shows history; it does not and cannot predict the future. Actually applying the results requires an act of faith that the universe is not lying to you.
Just to be clear, I'm in no way claiming to have proven the existence of God. That's impossible. It's also impossible to disprove God's existence. This quality really removes the concept from the realm of science since scientific theories have to be falsifiable at least. At the same time those who do believe should not try to prove God's existence since knowledge of God's existence leaves no room for faith and a religion without faith is pretty pointless.
But don't take my word for it. Check out David Hume's work on the problem of induction and Immanuel Kant's The Critique of Pure Reason for more on what can actually be known about the world. It's really surprisingly little.
For the record I don't think Intelligent Design has any place in a science classrom. What is missing is teaching students the importance of doubt and skepticism in all scientific endeavors.
Maybe they didn't think it appropriate for an IBM funded study to consider an IBM operating system?
Leaving it out isn't exactly a positive for AIX since it then has no chance of competing with the others. If they were interested in using this to push AIX they wouldn't have allowed Solaris to be the only proprietary Unix OS in the story. If Solaris comes out ahead it would be a plus for Sun that's not easily translatable to AIX. If Solaris loses, all the proprietary Unixes can be given a bad rap since all the Linux advocates will be saying, "Linux is cheaper than proprietary Unix," after they finish bashing MS.
There were certainly marketing considerations in funding this study, but AIX was not one of them.
IBM also has a substantial interest in selling its own Unix variant AIX. A study that's going to be used as evidence of Linux having lower TCO than MS or Unix is not exactly good for that part of their business.
Not all the runways at Edwards are sand. The runway the shuttle landed on is 15,000 feet of nice solid concrete. There is sand blown onto the runway, but it's nowhere near as bad as landing on an actual dry lakebed. You are correct that landing on a dry lakebed is not great for the shuttle. STS-3 landed on desert at White Sands Missile Range and they haven't done it since because of the damage it caused.
Soyuz hasn't lost a human life since 1971. Can NASA claim such a track record?
That's a little unfair. The shuttle has only been in operation since 1981. The very first Soyuz flight in 1967 killed its entire crew (fortunately only one person) on landing. The Space Shuttle didn't have any in flight fatalities until the crew of Challenger in 1986. That alone seems to suggest that NASA's "overengineering" got it more right the first time.
After the Soyuz 1 accident, the next fatalities for the Soyuz program came four years later in 1971 when the entire crew of Soyuz 11 (three people this time) were asphixiated during reentry. By comparison, after Challenger the Space Shuttle went 17 years without incident until the Colombia broke up in 2003. You are correct that the Soyuz program hasn't lost anyone in the last 34 years, but when you look at the actual track record the two programs have very similar safety records. The shuttle has lost 14 astronauts while the Soyuz program has only lost 4, but both programs had only two failures that were fatal to the crew. When you compare the number of missions and number of people put into space the records become even closer. The Shuttle losses come over 113 missions (not counting the current one) in 14 years. The Soyuz program has had 93 manned missions in 38 years. The two programs' death rates are not significantly different. The only pattern I see is Soyuz putting fewer people at risk in each launch and having fewer overall launches.
1) Four years of one of the most time intensive majors in colleges
If the fact that it's hard or the lower wages now is what stops you from pursuing a CS degree, you probably weren't cut out for it in the first place. If you choose CS because you enjoy problem solving and want a career that will mentally challenge and stimulate you then go for it and none of those points will be a problem. If you actually like CS the classes won't seem unbearable. You'll probably be able to get a couple of good internships which will either make (2) easier or let you avoid it all together when you get offered a full time position. If you like what you do the occaisional deadline crunch will be easier to bare. If you have passion for what you do you will never be too old.
Too many people went into CS because of the dot com boom. Now those people who chose for money have flooded the market and are making it look worse than it really is.
Also, another solution to (2),(3), and (4): Get a job in the Defense industry or Government that requires a security clearance. Your job can never be sent overseas and if you find the right civil service position it's very hard to be fired. The job security in Defense contracting isn't quite as good, but cleared personnel generally command a premium.
The source is the Associated Press. Fox News is just one of many places that reprints the AP's stories.
That said, this just looks like the same story everyone's been printing since the first problems were discovered. If you read the Planetary Society's updates and blog it sounds like the information about the rocket cutting out 83 seconds into flight is old news that may not be accurate. The Planetary Society hasn't given up yet and there are weak signals that suggest it made it to orbit, they just aren't sure what orbit it made it to.
At this point it looks like there are two possibilities:
1) The Russian Navy report that the first stage cut off early is right, the signals received by the ground stations are false, and the craft is effectively lost.
or 2) That the Planetary society really did receive signals from an orbitting Cosmos 1, the Russian Navy is wrong, and there is still a chance to point the antennae at a different part of the sky and find the craft operating correctly in the wrong place.
I'm hoping for the latter, but Russia's track record seems to suggest the former.
Fry's clerk: "Don't forget your special USB 2.0 cable for your new $40 printer" Me: "Why does it cost four times as much as this USB 1.1 cable?" Clerk: "It'll make your printer go faster." Me: "The printer doesn't say it supports USB 2.0" Clerk: "Don't worry it's still better" Me: "It's not going to magically increase the speed of the printer, the computer it's going on doesn't support USB 2.0 anyway, and I'm not adding 50% to the price of a printer for a cable that doesn't do anything the $5 cable doesn't do." The saddest part is that he'd probably gotten people with that line before.
I noticed the similarity, but I think he was just going for "loud Texan". He seemed a bit to boisterous to be doing a straight George W. Bush impression.
So you want every thing with any componnent from outside the country to be more expensive?
The problem isn't the lack of tariffs in the US, it's the presence of tariffs and unfair trade practices in other countries (I'm looking at you China...). Tariffs may be one stick to use on other countries when they don't play nice, but the goal should be to remove them in the end. Free trade is good because it's good for us. Any other benefits are just gravy.
You're right, of course, but is there anything wrong with that? That's the beauty of a free market. As long as people realize there's a choice, companies can be very considerate. The parent of your post has the right idea to support the companies that at least pretend to care about their customers.
Your BBS analogy is flawed. The administrator of a BBS isn't liable because they weren't the ones to post the illegal material. They are providing a service that can be used for any number of purposes. Running a bittorrent tracker is different. A tracker for a copywritten work can only be used to facilitate distribution of said work. If the person running the tracker doesn't have the rights to distribute that work, they would be liable for infringement.
Seriously folks, these are glorified remote controlled cars with shotguns. It's not even that new. Bomb disposal robots that Police departments use have had shotguns for a long time (they use them to set off a suspicious package). The only thing new about this is it's being used against humans in a combat situation. It's still a human controlling it.
The best part of it is that it replaces the "Tunnel Rats" from Vietnam. Instead of sending a human with a pistol to clear a tunnel or cave, you send one of these in.
Probably a bot. Some litigious bastard wrote a script that searched for Nintendo copywrites and "objectional content" then sent threatening emails to the admins of the hits.
At least I hope that's the case. If a sane human being actually read the site, saw the context, and still decided to send the threatening email it doesn't say much for the state of common sense in the world.
As a conservative/libertarian I have two problems with the ACLU: their war on Christianity and the misinformation on the Patriot Act. My problem with their war on Christianity is they're trampling all over other parts of the bill of rights in the process. Read the tenth ammendment some time. If the Supreme Court hadn't decided to ignore it a lot of the arguments about the Ten Commandments and Nativity scenes on public property wouldn't be an issue. When a overwhelmingly christian community can't put up a nativity display because they've got the ACLU breathing down their necks, that's an infringement on their rights. The biggest problem I have with the ACLU is that they're only attacking Christians. They wouldn't dare do this to any other group.
My other problem is the misinformation about the PATRIOT act. For example, the ACLU would have you believe that Ashcroft and Co. can unilaterally break into your house and take information then use it against you with no checks on the process. In reality there are checks on the process, they're just poorly implemented. All of the provisions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveilance Act (the one that allows searches without a normal warrant) that were expanded still require a judge to sign off on them. The problem isn't a lack of checks on the process, it's the fact that the judges on these secret courts don't set a very high standard for the FBI to meet. Check out this article for a decent explination of the changes made in the Patriot Act. The ACLU is really doing a disservice by not accurately explaining the Patriot Act. It's easily the most difficult piece of legislation I've ever read. The cross references and modifications to other laws make it impossible to see all the changes in context. They could make a pretty good case against the reality of the Patriot Act and possibly make a difference, but instead they have decided to resort to fear mongering to just get it overturned.
It's a caricature. It's supposed to be derivative. It distills the accusations of both sides into two 60 seconds of comedy. At least do yourself the favor of watching the whole thing; the overall message of "go vote or let the supreme court decide" is not a bad one. If you don't get the references to the madness of this campaign that's fine, but a lot of people will.