I stated that the corruption was thorough, which does not imply that we only need to clean out one area to fix things. All corruption is bad so we must clean it all.
I don't see it as a chicken/egg problem. I see it as a select group of people planning very well to take over. The corruption in the US has been at every level simultaneously. It took a lot of logistics and planning to do so, but it's been effective.
You used that word where it wasn't relevant or warranted on my suggestion that you are using "etc." to be able to change goalposts later.
And by my "word", you must be referring to _YOUR_ introduction of Theology as a topic right?
Then you again claim I can move the goal posts and ignore every other definition of "life", including the provided Websters definition. You don't like that "life" is undefined and have claimed that "life is a stupid word". You don't have a better definition and don't discount anything I stated in giving a few examples. You just keep repeating the same statements with invented dialogue while avoiding facts and statements provided.
If you can't amaze us all with a perfect definition of life why would you sit and complain about the definitions given? No, don't answer that question as it's completely rhetorical and used to demonstrate your irrational statements.
Which is what I have been saying - it is not a word deserving of scientific analysis.
Then we can't discuss or analyze gravity either, because we can only describe known properties of gravity and can not provide an exact definition. If you don't see the absurdity in your statement you are blind as well as mentally deficient.
Life may not be something _you_ have interest in studying, however that again is your deficiency. Your deficiency has nothing to do with science or a lack thereof, it has to do with your own ignorance and biases.
I have a word for you, that word is "media". That is why it has been so easy to deceive people, and why I agree with FudRucker that it's not the people's fault. Journalists are supposed to be the biggest check against abuse. While politicians were being bought by a select few with too much money, the media was also being taken over by the same group, as was the eduction system.
If people are deprived of information and intentionally fed false information it should not be a surprise that they are misled. It at least warrants a small amount of sympathy.
The system was designed to scale just fine. What happened is that the system has been corrupted, and that corruption has been very thorough. Remember that the United States is supposed to separate powers and responsibilities. Three separate branches of Government with no ties to keep each other in check. Separate levels of Government with the same branch separations were supposed to keep the Federal level from becoming too powerful.
After a reset, we must remember what Socrates stated. In order for a Republic to succeed the members of the Republic must be highly educated, and that a Political class must be guarded against. People have been deprived of education in Philosophy and Rhetoric. Without those two things, it's very easy for a small group to manipulate them. It's happened over and over again through history, and we are no exception.
I'm glad that you are proud of your handicap, and have no fear of displaying your inability to read and comprehend. You have thoroughly demonstrated that you lack the ability to process very basic information. You have invented text twice now, where no such text exists.
There was no discussion of theology, none at all. In fact I never even hinted at theology. You fabricated a statement that was never made and brought up theology on your own. I discounted theology in the discussion and suggested that you were confusing Theology with Philosophy. You don't understand the difference between the two disciplines.
Further, you agree that I gave no global properties for life. How then can "fire" have global properties? You claim my definition is hand waiving, but my definition is the same thing you will find in the dictionary. the condition that distinguishes animals and plants from inorganic matter, including the capacity for growth, reproduction, functional activity, and continual change preceding death..
There is no "hand waiving" or "moving the goal posts". The definition in the dictionary is rather ambiguous, due to the fact that life is a conceptual definition. It must be, because we don't know what causes life.
If you are smarter than anyone else that ever lived, please enlighten us with a true definition of life. I have no expectation that you could describe your own socks let alone such a complex thing as life, and have no expectation of you doing anything but imagining more statements never made to back some odd delusion you have.
Some drivers believe that the cars have the right of way even when a bike is present. Where you claim someone failed a test, I'm guessing that no bicycle was present in which case the car does have the ability by law to use the lane.
No it does not, because there are no global properties for "life". The properties vary from living thing to living thing.
Claiming I have a "third grade mind" when you fail to grasp that basic statement is laughable. If you so intellectually challenged that you can't grasp the opening statement I can see why you jump so quick to an ad hominem. It's the only way you can feel intellectually superior to anything. Grats on being mentally deficient.
You yourself mentioned movement as a necessity, which most plants show no more than air which you deny has any life.
That is an outright fabrication. I never stated that movement was required for life, go back and read it again and again if you need to do so.
What I stated is that we use numerous properties of a thing when describing "life". I gave the example of "motion", but I also gave an example of defecation. Plant's do neither of those things as we tend to think of them, however someone could argue that plants defecate Oxygen, and it would probably be a good argument. I have seen very rational arguments that plants do move through growth, seeding, flowering, etc...
Following up on your fabrication you ramble in a incoherent fashion, after claiming that one needs to "ramble incoherently about life", and present your conclusion that "life is a stupid word".
I have been in Silicon Valley for 3 years now. Since moving here, I started biking. I bike almost every day to/from work. My health is great because of it, lost 60lbs and blood pressure is down from 140/80 to 110/55 on average. It's a bike friendly place to live, and in most cities there are more pedestrians than I ever saw in Michigan.
That said, I have been hit once and nearly hit dozens of times. The time I was hit was mild, causing a bent tire and no serious damage to me (we both saw what was happening and slammed on the brakes). I have had cars run me out of the bike lane dozens of times because they wanted a turn lane. It's dangerous and risky to ride even in a bike friendly place.
I realize it's a risk, but I take it to save money and improve my health. I'm not mad at drivers most of the time, because I realize how hard it is to see a bike without distractions let alone with. I'm extremely cautious driving in bike areas because of my experiences, but many people have no experiences riding and don't think the same way.
If I was the mayor, there is something I would change. That would be to have more patrols out in the open ticketing people when they act illegally and endanger a biker. Sometimes the signs requires reinforcement for people to believe the law. That said, the risk is mine to take. I could ride on busy streets here with no bike lane if I wanted, and see people do so. To me, that's too much risk. If I know the risks, whats the problem? I won't wear a bubble to ride a bike, and the nanny state should not attempt to make me. Just give people a reason to adhere to current laws and the rest will just happen. We'll never prevent every accident, so no need to try.
In other words we have no clue what exactly life is. We attribute life in varying degrees to whatever is similar in some aspect to ourselves related to what we call life in humans.
We agree with how you start. Your second sentence is absolutely wrong . "Life" is always "live", "living", "alive". There are no "degrees" of life. Something is either alive, or not. Different forms of live can do different things, but it's illogical to say "that's more alive than the other thing" when we don't know what magic element causes "life".
Perhaps you are confusing how we justify ending lives with "life" in your thoughts? There are amoebas that can eat your brain, so it's okay to kill them. We need to eat, so numerous things are fair game (plants, animals, fish, insects). In other words, the moral value we place on a life does not change the fact that it's a living thing.
I don't think you have learnt anything, especially if your description of "life" is as muddled as described above
What? If you agree that we don't know what "life" is, how can anyone have learned what it is? Nobody knows! Yes, that's correct. Nobody. That means not you, not me, not Einstein, not Plato, not Obama, NOBODY.
How do you define something you don't know? You show examples to explain it's properties. Do I have a month to sit on/. and type every known property of life? No! I gave enough properties to make a point. If you don't like those properties write your own after doing a bit of research. "Life" encompasses a huge amount of turf.
Why is fire not life? And why is eucalyptus life? Below you say "mobility" is important for life. Fire is far more mobile than eucalyptus. Eucalyptus doesn't defecate - or if gaseous defecation is allowed then fire does it more readily. Replication and ingestion - both satisfy these conditions.
If you had a 3rd grade science course you would know why "Fire" is not "life". Same with water. They are chemical reactions, and so is acid on your skin. If you really don't understand that, have fun playing with your pet fire.
Then, you give a hint at why the definition of "life" is not something simple to define. Various "living" things have varying properties. For example "life" can be self sufficient. Then you have to discuss eating, replication, hostile environments, and define "aging". "Life" can be mobile, but then you have to define in what way the "life" is mobile. "Life" can require food. What about living things that absorb nutrition as opposed to seeking it out for eating? Notice that all of those statements are "life can", because not everything is required. Again, we don't know what causes life or understand exactly how something "lives". We can show properties of it's life, but not what starts the process or keeps it going.
Ahhh, the eternal "etc.". Used to pretend one knows about something while knowing nothing of it. Especially when everything before "etc." doesn't solve the problem at all, the "etc." gives scope to change goalposts later.
What? You are confusing Theology with Philosophy, so are wrong in your premise. If your premise is wrong then the rest is wrong.
I was not trying to argue, I was trying to offer a different opinion and did so. In other words, your premise is pointless and meaningless.
You have a notion (the supernatural origins and significance of human life) that you are so deeply emotionally attached to that you won't allow truth to get in it's way, and you are _desperately_ trying to carve out some sort of epistemic niche where you can ignore reality and pretend you are right.
Remove the fallacy you inserted and ask the question already, wholly fuck you are so biased I'm amazed you can see your nose in front of your face. That was an argumentative statement, intended and you deserve it.
The question is "Is there a creator or did nothing happen to create the Universe?" Don't talk about Theology, it's not required for the question. This is the question we have struggled with for a known 3,000 years. It's probably the most important question you could ever consider in terms of "Philosophy" because nearly all other questions stem from this one.
I have worked on this for decades, and always come to the same conclusion. Yes, there is a "creator". My vision of a creator does not match a person, or a theology. It's a concept of what's required to start the Universe given everything we know and have observed. "Creator" is probably a bit biased, but I have yet to come up with another term descriptive enough to describe what is required for the Universe to begin.
Take all the fallacy and conjecture from your beliefs and see what you get. Can a Universe just pop into existence with matter, energy, space, and all the laws of physics at any given random moment from _nothing_? I think observing the Universe we live in we see that's very unlikely. What would happen if a new Universe sprung up within our own? Mathematically it would cause a collapse and massive destruction. We have not see it happen in 14-17billion years (or more and depending on who's aging estimates you believe).
Oh, and I don't claim it's impossible. We don't know what caused the Universe to begin, we can only observe what happened after it existed. Given what we know, the most logical conclusion is that it was created by something and not accidental.
Now if you can remove your fallacy and bigotry I would be happy to discuss further. If you are going to start throwing out either, keep to yourself.
So, I'd like to know who these people know to get the jobs.
The simple answer is that you have to be listed in the Government books as a "prime" contractor. In order to get on the list, you have to ass kiss and lobby a whole lot. This is in addition to meeting more sensible criteria, but can at times discount the sensible criteria. Usually "Primes" are chosen for programs based on how much ass kissing they can do. There is some of the "good-ole boy" network going on, but in a few cases there is some logical favoritism.
For example, if General Dynamics is doing well and Northrop has funding shortages that may cause a division closure, work will go to that division to support it. Consider that with ship building, there are very few companies that can build war ships. If one goes under, the US can be screwed if a war broke out. The Government does take logistics into _some_ consideration during contract negotiations.
What I find very odd here is that the DOD requires that all employees and contractors be US Citizens. Since I left DOD about 3 years ago, I have heard rumors that some jobs can now be "green carded" but I won't verify that since it was not that way 3 years ago.
Why would the US ACA work be any different? Why would they pay a Canadian company anything for American Government work to support American Citizens under a Law drafted and required in America? That part makes absolutely no sense to me, and quite frankly should be illegal. I know for a fact that there are numerous companies in Silicon Valley that could have done the work much faster and with better results.
No offense to Canadian people is intended. I would hope that a Canadian would be pissed of if their tax dollars went to support a US company doing work _required_ by the Canadian Government to support Canadian laws and citizens.
I mentioned a few "troll" like types, and while they are present they are not the comments people normally see based on default settings (if you don't ignore -1 that's your problem). Did you miss "While there are a few kids, sock puppets, shills, etc..." or just mad that I did not specifically state the word "troll"?
I agree with your premise that the person you responded to does not know how the service works. It is possible to share files with other customers without giving away personal data. I toyed with SecuriSync and it does similar sharing but requires that the recipient has an account in order to touch "shared" data.
With that out in the open, let me explain why on/. you will receive much venom. You don't have to listen, of course, but as a writer I think you understand the value in knowing your audience.
/. is not like other sites. There are numerous experts in numerous technical fields on this site. It's a stomping ground for an experts to provide opinions in their area of expertise without a "Company Slogan" involved. It also has subjects more political in nature where those same strong opinions abound. While there are a few kids, sock puppets, shills, etc... the majority of the audience here is intelligent. They notice spelling and grammar errors, they recognize common fallacies, and look for details beyond just the articles submitted. Submitters are inspected and critiqued right down to the ads on the page the article appears in. Slashdot is a unique environment, the audience is very detail oriented.
Your "about the author" makes claims that you probably intended as humor, but comes off as being egocentric or arrogant. On a site full of Computer Scientists who have been telling people of the dangers of "The Cloud" since the time it was called "Grid", the article and self description appear to be hypocritical and contradictory. If "Dan Tynan has been writing about Internet privacy for the last 3,247" was a true statement how could they not know about the dangers of "The Cloud"? Has Dan ignored the "experts" during his three thousand years of writing and only knows the corporate spin?
An omission of data is very important to the Slashdot crowd, at least as important as what you submit. Again, I mention that the crows is very detail oriented. You may be encrypting data, but that was not mentioned in the article. If you didn't mention it, it never happened.
I think the article itself backs the claim that experts have been giving for years. "Don't trust Cloud!". That said, the article poses no question as to whether or not that statement is correct. The article does not back the expert opinion in any way. The article appears to be a well articulated rant against box.com. Warranted or not, it's bound to receive lots of venomous comments from people on Slashdot.
Read what I wrote, then read what you wrote. Now ask who is being arrogant. I don't discount any learning, however claiming that my opinion is arrogant is an ad hominem.
Further, if you start with Descartes you would end up reading Spinoza as well as thousands of other Philosophers. Chronology would also make it correct to start with Descartes even if you don't believe in his theories.
I don't agree with Spinoza as my given opinion states. I don't dismiss studying anything in my statement. You however do suggest skipping a century of work to back a belief, and provided a fallacy to do so.
If that is an argument for the existence of free will, it is begging the question.
You remove more than half of the statements and ignore my precursory "I can't summarize that much literature and thought very well here, but I'll give a few points." then claim an extracted sentence is "begging the question"? Really? You can't be that bad at Philosophy can you?
Your assumption is that I am commenting from some position of spite stemming from not having a degree or satisfactory life, but it is incorrect.
Honestly I made no such assumption, and apologize if that was implied somehow. I was stating that the education does have value and gave a simple example of a common failure in the work place (communication).
There is plenty of forced garbage collection at the university too. Any time you learn to solve a particular problem for a test, without learning how or why the solution works, it is just trivia, rubbish.
Since College may have changed a bit since I attended, let me squash most of that but keep this open ended where some things surely change. Someone more recently in school can correct where I'm wrong. I'm only going to use Math here since it's the easiest examples, but this would relate to any degree program.
In order to get into Calc 1, I had to take Trig. You don't learn to plug atan(x) into a calculator in Trig, you have to learn what it really means. In Calc 1 you learn limits, and until you understand limits you don't get into derivation. When you master derivation, you get into integration, then into matrices, then finally differential equations which combine everything to solve very complex problems. There is no "Go here and study for the answer", you have to know and understand the concepts and methods. You don't learn to solve one problem, you learn to solve numerous problems. As long and far as you wish to study, you will keep using those same skills over and over.
Now relate that to CS work. If you know that PI is derived from (4 * atan(1)) then you don't need to understand math.h or know about M_PI when programming math functions. It is feasible for a "programmer" with a CS degree to know about M_PI, but not about the math expression to derive PI. Give them no header or a different length for M_PI and their code does not work and they won't know why. It may seem arbitrary, but in essence it's because what you learn you can relate to what ever you are doing. Most college degrees require at least Calc 1 and Trig.
Now I will say that much of our lower education is garbage collection. Not all, but anything that is rote is immediately suspect in my opinion. One big thing I have against College is that they allow you to substitute history for Philosophy and I believe everyone should learn the basics of rhetoric and critical thinking (that should begin in grade 1 to boot).
The point is, that your requirements in College are not really garbage collection. One could get a degree with a whole lot, but it's not required.
The problem today is that everyone is encouraged to obtain a university degree, really regardless of whether they want one or not, because otherwise it is hard to get a job. These students from a huge population of people who just want a piece of paper with their name on it, and it really does dilute the meaning of that document.
We agree on this point. The other point I gave is also relevant, which is we are no longer using the classical methods of teaching. Probably a much longer talking point, but I could probably convince you that changing back would be beneficial.
I agree on your points about communication, but what good is a geek who communicates well if he can't do the geek well?
Reverse the question and you still have a dilemma. What good is geek that can't communicate? Great, he can slap a board on a wall to keep it from caving in. Can he explain to the architect what the problem was to begin with? Can he offer suggestions for building better walls? Can he teach someone else to fix a wall?
I fully realize that a geek and technical writer are two different positions. Two types of people will fit into the different jobs, and they would not be fully interchangeable. I'm pointing out that each should have a _bit_ of knowledge about each others roles so that they can work together.
I suspect that my comment about "classical" education is not understood or not noticed. The point is to give people a foundation for other knowledge and a common core of knowledge to draw on in further education. For more information, you could study on the Trivium and Quadrivium.
First and foremost, I specifically called that out Society is mostly to blame for the lacks in education. Consider your personal offense to my post in relation to your self perceived intelligence. Either it's unwarranted, or perhaps you are not as good at reading and comprehension as you thought you were.
I made a realistic points, if you choose to take offense that is your issue. If you are not from the US and have to communicate in English (and believe you do so very well) that's awesome. I was not pointing at a foreign person trying to adapt to a new or foreign language, I was pointing at US workers born and raise here that can not communicate effectively. That is a fact of the work place today in the US.
If you skipped school to educate yourself and don't have a well rounded education that _is_ a deficiency. It may not help or hinder your current work, but if you need to be a sales engineer for a huge program you could be a liability to your company. Yes, that's a lot of "could" and I freely admit admit that its a hypothetical. That said, I stated that with a well rounded education you can fit in anywhere.
When it comes to education, do I believe a kid/teen/child can make the best decisions about what they "want" to learn versus what they should be learning? I'll take an education system that's been tried and refined for 2,000 years over an individual's opinion any day.
That's not to claim that there not exceptions to the rule mind you. Einstein was so smart he was bored and quit school for a time before getting back into education at a much higher level.
Consider that in reality there are only Einstein level people every century or so. I have met a few people that think they were that intelligent. A few of them quit and hated education because of they believed they were "that intelligent". None of them were Einsteins by even a long stretch of the imagination.
You seem to start and end at different statements. You start by implying that we have free will and it's not an illusion, then close with "You have very little, if any, free will". Did you really mean what you start with, or what you end with?
From more than 30 years of study it's my opinion that we do have free will. If you want to replicate the learning it's safest to start with Descartes and work out. It is a grand journey in Philosophy, and well worth the trip. I can't summarize that much literature and thought very well here, but I'll give a few points.
We have free will, but that's not imply that someone can not attempt to influence your decisions. The decisions are always yours to make, manipulation or otherwise. We weigh consequences to our actions all the time, and knowledge of rewards and repercussions definitely help to determine the choices we make.
If we had no free will we would have no need for Governments, armies, laws, etc.. The people in power positions would simply change reality so that we did their bidding without any manipulations.
I think the most important consideration is that people holding power have been trying to figure out how to do away with free will for thousands of years. They have learned how to manipulate people very well in that time, but never have they been able to take away people's free will.
At what arbitrary point does a chemical reaction jump from being 'just' a chemical reaction to being a chemical reaction that qualifies as 'life'?
Note that this is fundamentally human-centric question. Life is a word that we made up, there is no intrinsic property of life.
True that we made up the word life, but untrue that it has no property. It's also worth pointing out that we are the only species that can communicate complex concepts, that we know of, so it's not a relevant point to make. For all we know whales could have defined "life" long before us and we don't understand what they are saying, or species that went extinct millions of years ago could have been first to discuss "life".
While I agree that we can't pinpoint a precise definition of "thing" that makes something live we have a laundry list of descriptions of properties of "life", "living", "alive", etc.. We also know that life can end, so we define death as the absence of life in a once living creature. We know life occurs, we can test for numerous properties that indicate something living, but we don't have a magic element we can look at and say when this X is present it's "life".
The difference between a burning match and a grasshopper is one of complexity, not of a fundamental universal natural difference. The word 'life' is like the Fahrenheit scale; it serves to demarcate the world in a way that makes it easier for us to understand at our scale and with our level of understanding.
This is at least an incorrect analogy. If we can't make a claim to know exactly what "life" is, how can you make a claim that it's equivalent to a measurement? Not only is that a false analogy, but it seems to be rather irrational given what we do "know" about the properties of life. I don't mean to imply that you are irrational, as I'm guessing it's just a poor method of trying to explain or rationalize something we have very little knowledge of.
It's a comparison to ourselves. When we say something is 'alive', we mean 'alive like I'm alive'. We are the metric, which is why we do not consider other complex chemical reactions to be alive despite the fact that simpler reactions like fire really do match up with the basic tenets of life.
This also is incorrect. We have learned enough about "life" to realize that things like air, water, and fire are not "life" as we used to believe. That said, we know an amoeba is living and don't need ourselves to make that determination. We use properties of the cell to make that determination such as mobility, replication, ingestion, defecation, etc... As stated, we know numerous properties of a thing being alive but we don't have a clue as to what the magic part is that makes it a living thing.
I have no doubt that should we encounter an alien entity that has slow, deeply nuanced and complicated thoughts on the timescale of the lives of stars, it would consider all of our thrashings to be no more complicated and difficult to understand than basic chemistry. It would not consider our individual selves to be alive any more than you consider a single cell in your body to be independently alive. We would not be 'alive like it' is alive, but that won't change that we feel that we are 'alive like us' alive, because our definition of life has our kind of life at the center of it.
Personally, I see that as a very pessimistic way of looking at yourself and the world. I would think that an Alien would understand more of the magic that makes something "live" and have much more respect for it. They would not have to be reminded as often of how complex and wonderful the human body is and diminish it by comparing it to a single cell which would die without the rest of the system to support it.
I find it sad how many people today dismiss the unknown and claim that they have no purpose except to die a few years after birth, especially when we know so little about "life". That's just me though, if you are happy thinking that way I won't stop you. Just don't try and convince me that I should think that way too.
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I stated that the corruption was thorough, which does not imply that we only need to clean out one area to fix things. All corruption is bad so we must clean it all.
I don't see it as a chicken/egg problem. I see it as a select group of people planning very well to take over. The corruption in the US has been at every level simultaneously. It took a lot of logistics and planning to do so, but it's been effective.
You used that word where it wasn't relevant or warranted on my suggestion that you are using "etc." to be able to change goalposts later.
And by my "word", you must be referring to _YOUR_ introduction of Theology as a topic right?
Then you again claim I can move the goal posts and ignore every other definition of "life", including the provided Websters definition. You don't like that "life" is undefined and have claimed that "life is a stupid word". You don't have a better definition and don't discount anything I stated in giving a few examples. You just keep repeating the same statements with invented dialogue while avoiding facts and statements provided.
If you can't amaze us all with a perfect definition of life why would you sit and complain about the definitions given? No, don't answer that question as it's completely rhetorical and used to demonstrate your irrational statements.
Which is what I have been saying - it is not a word deserving of scientific analysis.
Then we can't discuss or analyze gravity either, because we can only describe known properties of gravity and can not provide an exact definition. If you don't see the absurdity in your statement you are blind as well as mentally deficient.
Life may not be something _you_ have interest in studying, however that again is your deficiency. Your deficiency has nothing to do with science or a lack thereof, it has to do with your own ignorance and biases.
I have a word for you, that word is "media". That is why it has been so easy to deceive people, and why I agree with FudRucker that it's not the people's fault. Journalists are supposed to be the biggest check against abuse. While politicians were being bought by a select few with too much money, the media was also being taken over by the same group, as was the eduction system.
If people are deprived of information and intentionally fed false information it should not be a surprise that they are misled. It at least warrants a small amount of sympathy.
The system was designed to scale just fine. What happened is that the system has been corrupted, and that corruption has been very thorough. Remember that the United States is supposed to separate powers and responsibilities. Three separate branches of Government with no ties to keep each other in check. Separate levels of Government with the same branch separations were supposed to keep the Federal level from becoming too powerful.
After a reset, we must remember what Socrates stated. In order for a Republic to succeed the members of the Republic must be highly educated, and that a Political class must be guarded against. People have been deprived of education in Philosophy and Rhetoric. Without those two things, it's very easy for a small group to manipulate them. It's happened over and over again through history, and we are no exception.
I'm glad that you are proud of your handicap, and have no fear of displaying your inability to read and comprehend. You have thoroughly demonstrated that you lack the ability to process very basic information. You have invented text twice now, where no such text exists.
There was no discussion of theology, none at all. In fact I never even hinted at theology. You fabricated a statement that was never made and brought up theology on your own. I discounted theology in the discussion and suggested that you were confusing Theology with Philosophy. You don't understand the difference between the two disciplines.
Further, you agree that I gave no global properties for life. How then can "fire" have global properties? You claim my definition is hand waiving, but my definition is the same thing you will find in the dictionary. the condition that distinguishes animals and plants from inorganic matter, including the capacity for growth, reproduction, functional activity, and continual change preceding death..
There is no "hand waiving" or "moving the goal posts". The definition in the dictionary is rather ambiguous, due to the fact that life is a conceptual definition. It must be, because we don't know what causes life.
If you are smarter than anyone else that ever lived, please enlighten us with a true definition of life. I have no expectation that you could describe your own socks let alone such a complex thing as life, and have no expectation of you doing anything but imagining more statements never made to back some odd delusion you have.
Some drivers believe that the cars have the right of way even when a bike is present. Where you claim someone failed a test, I'm guessing that no bicycle was present in which case the car does have the ability by law to use the lane.
Fire satisfies all the conditions,
No it does not, because there are no global properties for "life". The properties vary from living thing to living thing.
Claiming I have a "third grade mind" when you fail to grasp that basic statement is laughable. If you so intellectually challenged that you can't grasp the opening statement I can see why you jump so quick to an ad hominem. It's the only way you can feel intellectually superior to anything. Grats on being mentally deficient.
You yourself mentioned movement as a necessity, which most plants show no more than air which you deny has any life.
That is an outright fabrication. I never stated that movement was required for life, go back and read it again and again if you need to do so.
What I stated is that we use numerous properties of a thing when describing "life". I gave the example of "motion", but I also gave an example of defecation. Plant's do neither of those things as we tend to think of them, however someone could argue that plants defecate Oxygen, and it would probably be a good argument. I have seen very rational arguments that plants do move through growth, seeding, flowering, etc...
Following up on your fabrication you ramble in a incoherent fashion, after claiming that one needs to "ramble incoherently about life", and present your conclusion that "life is a stupid word".
Wow, just wow.
I have been in Silicon Valley for 3 years now. Since moving here, I started biking. I bike almost every day to/from work. My health is great because of it, lost 60lbs and blood pressure is down from 140/80 to 110/55 on average. It's a bike friendly place to live, and in most cities there are more pedestrians than I ever saw in Michigan.
That said, I have been hit once and nearly hit dozens of times. The time I was hit was mild, causing a bent tire and no serious damage to me (we both saw what was happening and slammed on the brakes). I have had cars run me out of the bike lane dozens of times because they wanted a turn lane. It's dangerous and risky to ride even in a bike friendly place.
I realize it's a risk, but I take it to save money and improve my health. I'm not mad at drivers most of the time, because I realize how hard it is to see a bike without distractions let alone with. I'm extremely cautious driving in bike areas because of my experiences, but many people have no experiences riding and don't think the same way.
If I was the mayor, there is something I would change. That would be to have more patrols out in the open ticketing people when they act illegally and endanger a biker. Sometimes the signs requires reinforcement for people to believe the law. That said, the risk is mine to take. I could ride on busy streets here with no bike lane if I wanted, and see people do so. To me, that's too much risk. If I know the risks, whats the problem? I won't wear a bubble to ride a bike, and the nanny state should not attempt to make me. Just give people a reason to adhere to current laws and the rest will just happen. We'll never prevent every accident, so no need to try.
In other words we have no clue what exactly life is. We attribute life in varying degrees to whatever is similar in some aspect to ourselves related to what we call life in humans.
We agree with how you start. Your second sentence is absolutely wrong . "Life" is always "live", "living", "alive". There are no "degrees" of life. Something is either alive, or not. Different forms of live can do different things, but it's illogical to say "that's more alive than the other thing" when we don't know what magic element causes "life".
Perhaps you are confusing how we justify ending lives with "life" in your thoughts? There are amoebas that can eat your brain, so it's okay to kill them. We need to eat, so numerous things are fair game (plants, animals, fish, insects). In other words, the moral value we place on a life does not change the fact that it's a living thing.
I don't think you have learnt anything, especially if your description of "life" is as muddled as described above
What? If you agree that we don't know what "life" is, how can anyone have learned what it is? Nobody knows! Yes, that's correct. Nobody. That means not you, not me, not Einstein, not Plato, not Obama, NOBODY.
How do you define something you don't know? You show examples to explain it's properties. Do I have a month to sit on /. and type every known property of life? No! I gave enough properties to make a point. If you don't like those properties write your own after doing a bit of research. "Life" encompasses a huge amount of turf.
Why is fire not life? And why is eucalyptus life? Below you say "mobility" is important for life. Fire is far more mobile than eucalyptus. Eucalyptus doesn't defecate - or if gaseous defecation is allowed then fire does it more readily. Replication and ingestion - both satisfy these conditions.
If you had a 3rd grade science course you would know why "Fire" is not "life". Same with water. They are chemical reactions, and so is acid on your skin. If you really don't understand that, have fun playing with your pet fire.
Then, you give a hint at why the definition of "life" is not something simple to define. Various "living" things have varying properties. For example "life" can be self sufficient. Then you have to discuss eating, replication, hostile environments, and define "aging". "Life" can be mobile, but then you have to define in what way the "life" is mobile. "Life" can require food. What about living things that absorb nutrition as opposed to seeking it out for eating? Notice that all of those statements are "life can", because not everything is required. Again, we don't know what causes life or understand exactly how something "lives". We can show properties of it's life, but not what starts the process or keeps it going.
Ahhh, the eternal "etc.". Used to pretend one knows about something while knowing nothing of it. Especially when everything before "etc." doesn't solve the problem at all, the "etc." gives scope to change goalposts later.
What? You are confusing Theology with Philosophy, so are wrong in your premise. If your premise is wrong then the rest is wrong.
I was not trying to argue, I was trying to offer a different opinion and did so. In other words, your premise is pointless and meaningless.
You have a notion (the supernatural origins and significance of human life) that you are so deeply emotionally attached to that you won't allow truth to get in it's way, and you are _desperately_ trying to carve out some sort of epistemic niche where you can ignore reality and pretend you are right.
Remove the fallacy you inserted and ask the question already, wholly fuck you are so biased I'm amazed you can see your nose in front of your face. That was an argumentative statement, intended and you deserve it.
The question is "Is there a creator or did nothing happen to create the Universe?" Don't talk about Theology, it's not required for the question. This is the question we have struggled with for a known 3,000 years. It's probably the most important question you could ever consider in terms of "Philosophy" because nearly all other questions stem from this one.
I have worked on this for decades, and always come to the same conclusion. Yes, there is a "creator". My vision of a creator does not match a person, or a theology. It's a concept of what's required to start the Universe given everything we know and have observed. "Creator" is probably a bit biased, but I have yet to come up with another term descriptive enough to describe what is required for the Universe to begin.
Take all the fallacy and conjecture from your beliefs and see what you get. Can a Universe just pop into existence with matter, energy, space, and all the laws of physics at any given random moment from _nothing_? I think observing the Universe we live in we see that's very unlikely. What would happen if a new Universe sprung up within our own? Mathematically it would cause a collapse and massive destruction. We have not see it happen in 14-17billion years (or more and depending on who's aging estimates you believe).
Oh, and I don't claim it's impossible. We don't know what caused the Universe to begin, we can only observe what happened after it existed. Given what we know, the most logical conclusion is that it was created by something and not accidental.
Now if you can remove your fallacy and bigotry I would be happy to discuss further. If you are going to start throwing out either, keep to yourself.
So, I'd like to know who these people know to get the jobs.
The simple answer is that you have to be listed in the Government books as a "prime" contractor. In order to get on the list, you have to ass kiss and lobby a whole lot. This is in addition to meeting more sensible criteria, but can at times discount the sensible criteria. Usually "Primes" are chosen for programs based on how much ass kissing they can do. There is some of the "good-ole boy" network going on, but in a few cases there is some logical favoritism.
For example, if General Dynamics is doing well and Northrop has funding shortages that may cause a division closure, work will go to that division to support it. Consider that with ship building, there are very few companies that can build war ships. If one goes under, the US can be screwed if a war broke out. The Government does take logistics into _some_ consideration during contract negotiations.
What I find very odd here is that the DOD requires that all employees and contractors be US Citizens. Since I left DOD about 3 years ago, I have heard rumors that some jobs can now be "green carded" but I won't verify that since it was not that way 3 years ago.
Why would the US ACA work be any different? Why would they pay a Canadian company anything for American Government work to support American Citizens under a Law drafted and required in America? That part makes absolutely no sense to me, and quite frankly should be illegal. I know for a fact that there are numerous companies in Silicon Valley that could have done the work much faster and with better results.
No offense to Canadian people is intended. I would hope that a Canadian would be pissed of if their tax dollars went to support a US company doing work _required_ by the Canadian Government to support Canadian laws and citizens.
I mentioned a few "troll" like types, and while they are present they are not the comments people normally see based on default settings (if you don't ignore -1 that's your problem). Did you miss "While there are a few kids, sock puppets, shills, etc..." or just mad that I did not specifically state the word "troll"?
"crows" = "crowd". Good grief... :/
I agree with your premise that the person you responded to does not know how the service works. It is possible to share files with other customers without giving away personal data. I toyed with SecuriSync and it does similar sharing but requires that the recipient has an account in order to touch "shared" data.
With that out in the open, let me explain why on /. you will receive much venom. You don't have to listen, of course, but as a writer I think you understand the value in knowing your audience.
/. is not like other sites. There are numerous experts in numerous technical fields on this site. It's a stomping ground for an experts to provide opinions in their area of expertise without a "Company Slogan" involved. It also has subjects more political in nature where those same strong opinions abound. While there are a few kids, sock puppets, shills, etc... the majority of the audience here is intelligent. They notice spelling and grammar errors, they recognize common fallacies, and look for details beyond just the articles submitted. Submitters are inspected and critiqued right down to the ads on the page the article appears in. Slashdot is a unique environment, the audience is very detail oriented.
Your "about the author" makes claims that you probably intended as humor, but comes off as being egocentric or arrogant. On a site full of Computer Scientists who have been telling people of the dangers of "The Cloud" since the time it was called "Grid", the article and self description appear to be hypocritical and contradictory. If "Dan Tynan has been writing about Internet privacy for the last 3,247" was a true statement how could they not know about the dangers of "The Cloud"? Has Dan ignored the "experts" during his three thousand years of writing and only knows the corporate spin?
An omission of data is very important to the Slashdot crowd, at least as important as what you submit. Again, I mention that the crows is very detail oriented. You may be encrypting data, but that was not mentioned in the article. If you didn't mention it, it never happened.
I think the article itself backs the claim that experts have been giving for years. "Don't trust Cloud!". That said, the article poses no question as to whether or not that statement is correct. The article does not back the expert opinion in any way. The article appears to be a well articulated rant against box.com. Warranted or not, it's bound to receive lots of venomous comments from people on Slashdot.
I was claiming that your style was arrogant, not your opinion.
That does not change anything I stated, nor does it change your statement.
Read what I wrote, then read what you wrote. Now ask who is being arrogant. I don't discount any learning, however claiming that my opinion is arrogant is an ad hominem.
Further, if you start with Descartes you would end up reading Spinoza as well as thousands of other Philosophers. Chronology would also make it correct to start with Descartes even if you don't believe in his theories.
I don't agree with Spinoza as my given opinion states. I don't dismiss studying anything in my statement. You however do suggest skipping a century of work to back a belief, and provided a fallacy to do so.
If that is an argument for the existence of free will, it is begging the question.
You remove more than half of the statements and ignore my precursory "I can't summarize that much literature and thought very well here, but I'll give a few points." then claim an extracted sentence is "begging the question"? Really? You can't be that bad at Philosophy can you?
Your assumption is that I am commenting from some position of spite stemming from not having a degree or satisfactory life, but it is incorrect.
Honestly I made no such assumption, and apologize if that was implied somehow. I was stating that the education does have value and gave a simple example of a common failure in the work place (communication).
There is plenty of forced garbage collection at the university too. Any time you learn to solve a particular problem for a test, without learning how or why the solution works, it is just trivia, rubbish.
Since College may have changed a bit since I attended, let me squash most of that but keep this open ended where some things surely change. Someone more recently in school can correct where I'm wrong. I'm only going to use Math here since it's the easiest examples, but this would relate to any degree program.
In order to get into Calc 1, I had to take Trig. You don't learn to plug atan(x) into a calculator in Trig, you have to learn what it really means. In Calc 1 you learn limits, and until you understand limits you don't get into derivation. When you master derivation, you get into integration, then into matrices, then finally differential equations which combine everything to solve very complex problems. There is no "Go here and study for the answer", you have to know and understand the concepts and methods. You don't learn to solve one problem, you learn to solve numerous problems. As long and far as you wish to study, you will keep using those same skills over and over.
Now relate that to CS work. If you know that PI is derived from (4 * atan(1)) then you don't need to understand math.h or know about M_PI when programming math functions. It is feasible for a "programmer" with a CS degree to know about M_PI, but not about the math expression to derive PI. Give them no header or a different length for M_PI and their code does not work and they won't know why. It may seem arbitrary, but in essence it's because what you learn you can relate to what ever you are doing. Most college degrees require at least Calc 1 and Trig.
Now I will say that much of our lower education is garbage collection. Not all, but anything that is rote is immediately suspect in my opinion. One big thing I have against College is that they allow you to substitute history for Philosophy and I believe everyone should learn the basics of rhetoric and critical thinking (that should begin in grade 1 to boot).
The point is, that your requirements in College are not really garbage collection. One could get a degree with a whole lot, but it's not required.
The problem today is that everyone is encouraged to obtain a university degree, really regardless of whether they want one or not, because otherwise it is hard to get a job. These students from a huge population of people who just want a piece of paper with their name on it, and it really does dilute the meaning of that document.
We agree on this point. The other point I gave is also relevant, which is we are no longer using the classical methods of teaching. Probably a much longer talking point, but I could probably convince you that changing back would be beneficial.
I agree on your points about communication, but what good is a geek who communicates well if he can't do the geek well?
Reverse the question and you still have a dilemma. What good is geek that can't communicate? Great, he can slap a board on a wall to keep it from caving in. Can he explain to the architect what the problem was to begin with? Can he offer suggestions for building better walls? Can he teach someone else to fix a wall?
I fully realize that a geek and technical writer are two different positions. Two types of people will fit into the different jobs, and they would not be fully interchangeable. I'm pointing out that each should have a _bit_ of knowledge about each others roles so that they can work together.
I suspect that my comment about "classical" education is not understood or not noticed. The point is to give people a foundation for other knowledge and a common core of knowledge to draw on in further education. For more information, you could study on the Trivium and Quadrivium.
First and foremost, I specifically called that out Society is mostly to blame for the lacks in education. Consider your personal offense to my post in relation to your self perceived intelligence. Either it's unwarranted, or perhaps you are not as good at reading and comprehension as you thought you were.
I made a realistic points, if you choose to take offense that is your issue. If you are not from the US and have to communicate in English (and believe you do so very well) that's awesome. I was not pointing at a foreign person trying to adapt to a new or foreign language, I was pointing at US workers born and raise here that can not communicate effectively. That is a fact of the work place today in the US.
If you skipped school to educate yourself and don't have a well rounded education that _is_ a deficiency. It may not help or hinder your current work, but if you need to be a sales engineer for a huge program you could be a liability to your company. Yes, that's a lot of "could" and I freely admit admit that its a hypothetical. That said, I stated that with a well rounded education you can fit in anywhere.
When it comes to education, do I believe a kid/teen/child can make the best decisions about what they "want" to learn versus what they should be learning? I'll take an education system that's been tried and refined for 2,000 years over an individual's opinion any day.
That's not to claim that there not exceptions to the rule mind you. Einstein was so smart he was bored and quit school for a time before getting back into education at a much higher level.
Consider that in reality there are only Einstein level people every century or so. I have met a few people that think they were that intelligent. A few of them quit and hated education because of they believed they were "that intelligent". None of them were Einsteins by even a long stretch of the imagination.
You seem to start and end at different statements. You start by implying that we have free will and it's not an illusion, then close with "You have very little, if any, free will". Did you really mean what you start with, or what you end with?
From more than 30 years of study it's my opinion that we do have free will. If you want to replicate the learning it's safest to start with Descartes and work out. It is a grand journey in Philosophy, and well worth the trip. I can't summarize that much literature and thought very well here, but I'll give a few points.
We have free will, but that's not imply that someone can not attempt to influence your decisions. The decisions are always yours to make, manipulation or otherwise. We weigh consequences to our actions all the time, and knowledge of rewards and repercussions definitely help to determine the choices we make.
If we had no free will we would have no need for Governments, armies, laws, etc.. The people in power positions would simply change reality so that we did their bidding without any manipulations.
I think the most important consideration is that people holding power have been trying to figure out how to do away with free will for thousands of years. They have learned how to manipulate people very well in that time, but never have they been able to take away people's free will.
At what arbitrary point does a chemical reaction jump from being 'just' a chemical reaction to being a chemical reaction that qualifies as 'life'?
Note that this is fundamentally human-centric question. Life is a word that we made up, there is no intrinsic property of life.
True that we made up the word life, but untrue that it has no property. It's also worth pointing out that we are the only species that can communicate complex concepts, that we know of, so it's not a relevant point to make. For all we know whales could have defined "life" long before us and we don't understand what they are saying, or species that went extinct millions of years ago could have been first to discuss "life".
While I agree that we can't pinpoint a precise definition of "thing" that makes something live we have a laundry list of descriptions of properties of "life", "living", "alive", etc.. We also know that life can end, so we define death as the absence of life in a once living creature. We know life occurs, we can test for numerous properties that indicate something living, but we don't have a magic element we can look at and say when this X is present it's "life".
The difference between a burning match and a grasshopper is one of complexity, not of a fundamental universal natural difference. The word 'life' is like the Fahrenheit scale; it serves to demarcate the world in a way that makes it easier for us to understand at our scale and with our level of understanding.
This is at least an incorrect analogy. If we can't make a claim to know exactly what "life" is, how can you make a claim that it's equivalent to a measurement? Not only is that a false analogy, but it seems to be rather irrational given what we do "know" about the properties of life. I don't mean to imply that you are irrational, as I'm guessing it's just a poor method of trying to explain or rationalize something we have very little knowledge of.
It's a comparison to ourselves. When we say something is 'alive', we mean 'alive like I'm alive'. We are the metric, which is why we do not consider other complex chemical reactions to be alive despite the fact that simpler reactions like fire really do match up with the basic tenets of life.
This also is incorrect. We have learned enough about "life" to realize that things like air, water, and fire are not "life" as we used to believe. That said, we know an amoeba is living and don't need ourselves to make that determination. We use properties of the cell to make that determination such as mobility, replication, ingestion, defecation, etc... As stated, we know numerous properties of a thing being alive but we don't have a clue as to what the magic part is that makes it a living thing.
I have no doubt that should we encounter an alien entity that has slow, deeply nuanced and complicated thoughts on the timescale of the lives of stars, it would consider all of our thrashings to be no more complicated and difficult to understand than basic chemistry. It would not consider our individual selves to be alive any more than you consider a single cell in your body to be independently alive. We would not be 'alive like it' is alive, but that won't change that we feel that we are 'alive like us' alive, because our definition of life has our kind of life at the center of it.
Personally, I see that as a very pessimistic way of looking at yourself and the world. I would think that an Alien would understand more of the magic that makes something "live" and have much more respect for it. They would not have to be reminded as often of how complex and wonderful the human body is and diminish it by comparing it to a single cell which would die without the rest of the system to support it.
I find it sad how many people today dismiss the unknown and claim that they have no purpose except to die a few years after birth, especially when we know so little about "life". That's just me though, if you are happy thinking that way I won't stop you. Just don't try and convince me that I should think that way too.
That's the place where you put's an apostrophe on thing's that end in the letter 's ain't it?