However, with a Repulican as president, talk radio has become nothing more than a mouth piece for the white house, much in the same way the media was for Clinton when he was in office.
Uhm, were you awake during the Clinton years? The news did a lot of blasting Clinton, from Whitewater to that stained dress girl. Name one incident on which Bush has been taken to task, from leading our country to war on a country that was no threat to the US whatsoever, based on forged documents; to barely funding the 9/11 investigation (the shuttle accident was funded by an order of magnitude more); to the retconning of the reason we went to war in Iraq in the first place (I heard him say that terrorists brought the war to Iraq, which is true only if Bush, Cheney, Rumsfield, and Wolfowitz are terrorists).
The current crop of news softballs the whole Bush presidency, unlike the way they handled Clinton.
He joins Rather in still believing the story is true even though the documents were fake.
This isn't the first time people have made fools of themselves for backing forged documents. Like, the was the time those people believed Iraq had weapons of mass destruction because of some forged documents, even though all physical evidence pointed to them not having WMD.
I hear we even went to war over that!
So it's not the first time idiots have believed forged documents, even when everyone else knew they were forged.
Okay, why is it that when I come up with a big idea, somebody else comes along with more clout and more money and does it too?
This time, I had the same idea. A "citizens newspaper," written in blogspace, but instead of stuff like, "My cat died and I'm sad!" it would be, "Here is a report on the local town meeting," or, "Last night in Baghdad, seven houses in my neighborhood were raided by US forces, without any search warrants whatsoever, and several people were taken away, never to be heard from again."
That sort of thing.
Damn it. Last time it was the portable PVR device. Before that, it was cold fusion. Before that, it was the space shuttle. and it started off with the wheel.
And it's rather amusing to think that Microsoft had NT ported to a 64bit processor a long time prior to the introduction of the Opteron.
They never did port MS-Windows to 64-bit alpha; it only ran in 32-bit mode. Compaq was involved in the 64-bit port, but announced in 1999 that it was foregoing 64-bit development in favor of IA64.
Dave Cutler *did* get some early versions of 64-bit Win2k to boot on an AlphaServer, but since Compaq lost interest in developing Win2k for the Alpha (both 32-bit and 64-bit versions), MS decided to pull the plug on Win2k for alpha entirely.
This was right at the time (late fall of 1999) that Intel sent out the first of the Itanium chips.
Anyway, MS never did finish development on a 64-bit version of MS-Windows on Alpha.
My definition of decency is probably different from yours. For instance, I believe "decency" means respect for your fellow person; saying "fuck" is not indecent unless it is used disrespectfully. So, "Oh, my fucking Christ with a pogostick!" is not indecent, but "Fuck off, tard!" is, unless the person being talked to *is* a tard, and has been doing something for which he/she should fuck off.
And there is *nothing* indecent about the naked human body. Even gross lookin' folks are not indecent when naked; they are merely gross lookin'.
There seems to be a movement within the US towards some strange version of "decency" that does *not* include the way we treat our fellow person, but has *everything* to do with enforcing a certain religious viewpoint. This is not decency. In fact, the act itself is indecent, as it disrespects other people deserving of respect.
So you might imagine I don't want people deciding for me what is decent or indecent. Our viewpoints are different. I don't believe all viewpoints are equal: I believe I am right. So do the folks who want to censor everything. They believe *they* are right, I mean.
Where was I going with this?
Oh, yeah. Decency is in how we treat our fellow man, not whether Janet's breast was bared. In this, my reading of the Bible tells me even Christ agrees with me. Not that I believe in God, let alone the sacredness of Christ.
After all, I'm just an atheist, and so have no sense of morality.
Standards of conduct are strangely unmentionable these days. I was raised to be polite, although I am not always so. I was raised to respect other people, at least until they do something to lose that respect. I was also raised on the Golden Rule.
Now, I don't believe in the Golden Rule; I would rather poeple would Do Unto Me what I would like done, and not treat me how they would like to be treated. Subtle difference, but important. And evengelical Christian might think they would want to be converted, if they were a hedonistic atheist like me. I'd prefer they didn't try to convert me.
But I digress.
Politeness and "profanity" are orthogonal ideas. You can be polite to people, but still be fuckin' profane. There's nothing impolite about Everclear claiming, "Yes I guess I fucked up again," but I can't play it on the radio, even though Strawberry Burn is a fuckin' excellent song.
If we want people to be more polite, we should be censoring impoliteness on the Big Blue Eye, and not profanity.
And chronically rude people should just get the fuck off my streets, capiche?
The first person view sounds cool, could inspire a new film technique (much like the Matrix's bullet time), but the old fashoned film technique of messing with a well-loved plot seems to be going strong.
You are joking, right? Right?
First person viewpoint, video-game movie: House of the Dead.
Zombie. Rave. Movie.
FP was used extensively during the terrible, terrible moments of the film (just about all of them), when characters were shooting their way through shuffling zombies, or when characters snuffed it. Oh, it's a great MST-like movie. It's right up there with Deep Blue Sea and Reign of Fire for Bad Movie Night (when you drink lots of beer and eat home-made nachos, just 'cause you feel fuckin' terrible about work and life).
FP viewpoint is not a good idea. Not even close. It's been tried. And it's always failed.
Same thing with Office Space. Completely mis-marketted. And Firefly. The *creative* types knew exactly what they were doing. The marketting types were completely head-fucked.
As long as there are limited resources, evolution is not over. At best, we are in a genetic inflationary stage, in which we have a great variety of genotypes floating around.
But, this isn't even true. in much of the world, people live and die in terrible conditions. Despite our best effort, there is still war, famine, and plague. (Okay, we really haven't given our best effort.)
Back the the genotype deviation: the more genetic drift we experience now, the greater the chance the human species will survive the next cataclysm. If we had the genetic diversity of, say, the cheetah, we'd die off the first bad storm, or next real plague. As it is, there are people who are naturally immune to AIDS, for instance. This genetic diversity is a *good* thing, and by no means signals the end to evolution.
In fact, it is merely one important part of evolution.
Oh my God! This could be great! The human-kidney sheep could reproduce *more* human-kidney sheep, and then we'd have a handy store of farm-grown organs just ready for human transplant. That is so cool!
Then I woke up from my dumb-attack, and remembered that Lamarckian evolution is one of those disproven theories.
They are really his stove-top. They have those fancy glowing quartz elements; he can fry up a tasty omellete with mushrooms (you know the kind) and cheese.
Mmmm. Cheese.
He said it was "functional." Nobody stated what it functioned *as*.
Oh, and don't blame the corporations for the broken system.
That's like blaming the handgun, and not the person pulling the trigger.
It's not the lawyers submitting these silly patents (playing with a cat with a laser pointer, fer Christ's sake). It's people. Corporations are encouraging their employees to create and submit patents.
Corporations are the ones paying the lobbyists to pass legislation allowing fucking business patents, so some bank can patent an ATM foyer with plants.
Oh, I blame the corporations, all right. They are evil. Lawyers are also evil. Both together form the Nexus of Hell (tm)(r)(c)(pat. pend.). The lawyers are bottom-feeding scum who live off the blood the corporations leave in the water.
So, which one of the 100,000 you've examined was non-trivial?
Dude, mellow! I was using hyperbole. That's why I included all the nines-- to indicate it was a very large number. It's a legitimate literary device.
I didn't mean to get your dander up. My grandfather held 12 patents before he died. (Many expired before he died, of course.) Most had to do with refinements on various simple tools.
I have invented a couple of things. I can't tell you what they are-- they are super-secret. But I invented them, and I'm going to use them to RULE THE WORLD! HAHAHAHA! And because they are patented, I am the only one who may RULE THE WORLD!
As a short definition of "evil," I submit that "evil" is the "willingness to fuck over other people for your own profit." That provides a quick-and-dirty litmus test for evilness.
The current marketplace encourages evil. Google is a prime example-- they make a big deal about how they don't want to do evil, but then they invest in a company which is designed from the git-go to perform evil.
The reason is simple: if they don't, they will be in a world of pain when everyone else starts using trivial patents as weapons of restraint. (99.999% of all patents are trivial, IMNSHO).
So, either they do evil now and protect themselves, adding to the decay of honest business; or, they take the moral high road, and risk death by a thousand lawsuits.
In an area where thugs rule the streets, only thugs may walk the streets free of worry. Our current system is ruled by thugs. Google is just arming themselves like the rest of the miscreants; but by doing so, they are joining them.
This libertarian version of capitalism slays me. It's really, really funny. It sounds so much like people defending "true" communism, I almost can't tell the difference.
"True" free-market capitalism will not work, just as communism will not work. Both sound great on paper. Capitalism: let the market decide! Communism: everyone contributes equally, everyone shares equally!
Both sound great. Both suffer from one tiny little flaw, like the hanging thread that causes the garment to unravel. Neither can stand up to actual human implementation.
This bit is funny. It turns out we humans are generally greedy, selfish, evil fucks who don't mind screwing over others for our own gain. (That, to me, is the embodiment of evil.) It turns out (and this will make you laugh and laugh) that we are willing to sell out everyone else for our own personal gain. We're even willing to sell the future so long as we get our little slice of the present.
Funny, that. Ha, ha.
But, although free-market capitalism sounds good, it's impossible to work, because we won't let it work.
Take this whole IP hoarding thing. If the government didn't intervene, we wouldn't have IP at all. So the next Louis Norden book comes out, others can simply copy it and redistribute it. That does away with small press: as soon as a small press book looks to succeed, the big publishing houses can maintain their grip by simply stealing the success stories, and out-marketing the small press.
What's that? We have laws protecting copyright? What happened to the removal of government intervention from business?
So, if we require government regulation of copyright, we have the government making laws to regulate business. As soon as that starts happening, it is in the best interest of the business to pay money to influence regulatory legislation. (Essentially, the clusterfuck we have now.)
Here's a Sophie's Choice for you. Pick the unregulated market, in which music will be downloaded off the internet for free, and big book publishing companies can simply steal successful books, and books get downloaded off the internet for free; or, pick government intervention.
In biology, there are organisms that change their environment to suit themselves, often to the detriment of other organisms. Many organisms have so much control of their environment, they can wipe out any potential competitors long before those potentials have fighting chance. Humans are merely the most obvious of this class.
In an unregulated, free-market capitalism, those organisms are the monopolies. Once a single corporation gets to the point where they regulate their environment-- say, by economic control of the lines of distribution, or by controlling limited resources-- they excercise de-facto control of the market itself. Microsoft has proven this, as has Starbucks and Wal*Mart and Standard Oil.
The problem isn't with becoming a monopoly. The problem is the economic and market power that accompanies being a monopoly. Monopolies fill the power void left by lack of government regulation.
Our current situation is so fucked up not because of all the government regulation, but because of some of the government regulation. Government regulation should be stacked for the citizens of the country, not for the corporations of the country. Unfortunately, because corporations wield such economic power, especially when compared with the average group of organized citizens, corporations are able to force government intervention that favors corporations.
"Free-market capitalism" is a pie-in-the-sky dream that is unworkable, at least until we as a society grow up enough to stop fucking over everyone else for our own profit.
Of course, this is just my opinion. I could be wrong.
Well, Incredibles is out now, a Pixar film about retired super heroes. That sounds kinda fun. I haven't seen it yet, of course.
They said they made Incredibles because they wanted to do something different. Lassetter said he didn't want to make the same movie again, like he has with the other films. They know they've just been making the same film, over and over.
So Incredibles is supposed to be different. I think you have written Pixar off too soon.
Science is merely an epistomology based on rationalism. It is by far the most successful epistomogy in widespread use today.
The flaw in science is not the scientific method. Rather, science is flawed in spite of the scientific method. Science if flawed the same way every human endeavor is flawed: it's run by humans.
It's difficult to topple an existing scientific belief, but it happens. The same way quantum physics displaced the prevalent Newtonian physics, evidence for something other than evolution would receive widespread critisism, but as a new generation of scientists replace the old guard, the new evidence (and the accompanying hypothesis) would become accepted as canon.
This study is all cool and everything. But modern science has made up it's mind, so don't fool yourself into thinking you'll hear all sides of evolution/darwinism from religion or science.
Modern science hasn't made up its mind; modern scientists have made up their mind. Incorrect theories will topple as evidence mounts against them. Within science, dogma grows old and dies. New theories replace old all the time. Sometimes it just seems to take a long time-- often, a professional lifetime.
So far, there isn't even a logical hypothesis to compete against evolution via natural selection, so there's very little "mind" to make up. Until there is a logical, scientifically-verifiable counter hypothesis, there's very little room for debate.
Now, within the framework of evolution via natural selection, there's a lot of room for debate.
I never said they weren't wrong, just that there's no point. From a scientist's point of view, you are simply arguing science against someone's fantasies. Why would you work so hard to dispel someone's fantasy land just because it's wrong?
There is a large grass-roots movement within the US to teach "intelligent design" side-by-side with evolution as a competing theory. Although ID makes no direct reference to God, or even to creation, the concept is a dressed-up creationism. (How can you have intelligent design without some form of intelligence?)
Even the ones that need proof so badly are acting on faith, and you can't disprove someone's faith. If you're trying to get them to change their minds, this is the wrong approach.
I agree completely. The idea isn't to change minds, although it would be helpful if people used a modicum of sense in their beliefs. The idea is to politically block the teaching of a non-science in science class.
I think this debate goes a long way to prove the fundamentallist nature of the US. Intelligent Design cannot be disproven, and so isn't even science. Yet there is a huge political push to teach it side-by-side with evolution, as a competing theory. I agree that there are holes in evolution, but the basic concept of evolution by natural selection has withstood every possible test thrown at it.
As natural selection works on phenotype variance within a population (and not on individuals), the holes in evolution are the general mechanism through which the genotype varies. The crude concept of "mutation" covers this variance, but the mechanisms of mutation aren't well-understood. It's not just a matter of stray particles striking a strand of DNA, or random recombination through sexual reproduction.
Because we don't understand it all yet, there is a huge gap in our knowledge that allows people to say, "God does it." Just like ancient maps with "Here be dragons" scrawled across unknown areas, those with religious beliefs apply their belief to everything that is unknown. This pushes many of them to teach everyone else that "God does it." That's fine in a relgious setting, but taught as knowledge, it is unacceptable. To present it as scientific is downright dishonest.
Anyway, that is the point of these scientific exercises. Not only does it add to our body of knowledge, but helps fill in the blanks in which people have previously written in flowing script, "God works here, in mysterious ways."
Automated harassment is no less intimidating than personally-signed harassment. In fact, it is perhaps *more* stifling.
Maybe I'm an oldtimer, but...
on
Java 1.5 vs C#
·
· Score: 4, Funny
C'mon, C# vs. Java? Outside of "RIAA sues 86 year-old grandma", "We hate Bush, let's talk" and "Microsoft patents KDE" there is no better source of inflammatory material in the dorkosphere.
Slashdot Mirror
However, with a Repulican as president, talk radio has become nothing more than a mouth piece for the white house, much in the same way the media was for Clinton when he was in office.
Uhm, were you awake during the Clinton years? The news did a lot of blasting Clinton, from Whitewater to that stained dress girl. Name one incident on which Bush has been taken to task, from leading our country to war on a country that was no threat to the US whatsoever, based on forged documents; to barely funding the 9/11 investigation (the shuttle accident was funded by an order of magnitude more); to the retconning of the reason we went to war in Iraq in the first place (I heard him say that terrorists brought the war to Iraq, which is true only if Bush, Cheney, Rumsfield, and Wolfowitz are terrorists).
The current crop of news softballs the whole Bush presidency, unlike the way they handled Clinton.
He joins Rather in still believing the story is true even though the documents were fake.
This isn't the first time people have made fools of themselves for backing forged documents. Like, the was the time those people believed Iraq had weapons of mass destruction because of some forged documents, even though all physical evidence pointed to them not having WMD.
I hear we even went to war over that!
So it's not the first time idiots have believed forged documents, even when everyone else knew they were forged.
Okay, why is it that when I come up with a big idea, somebody else comes along with more clout and more money and does it too?
This time, I had the same idea. A "citizens newspaper," written in blogspace, but instead of stuff like, "My cat died and I'm sad!" it would be, "Here is a report on the local town meeting," or, "Last night in Baghdad, seven houses in my neighborhood were raided by US forces, without any search warrants whatsoever, and several people were taken away, never to be heard from again."
That sort of thing.
Damn it. Last time it was the portable PVR device. Before that, it was cold fusion. Before that, it was the space shuttle. and it started off with the wheel.
Stop taking my ideas!
The sequel is also excellent: Children of God. It follows the same doubting protagonist, but introduces a more philosophic and hopeful theology.
Both books together are truly great works of literary SF.
And it's rather amusing to think that Microsoft had NT ported to a 64bit processor a long time prior to the introduction of the Opteron.
They never did port MS-Windows to 64-bit alpha; it only ran in 32-bit mode. Compaq was involved in the 64-bit port, but announced in 1999 that it was foregoing 64-bit development in favor of IA64.
Dave Cutler *did* get some early versions of 64-bit Win2k to boot on an AlphaServer, but since Compaq lost interest in developing Win2k for the Alpha (both 32-bit and 64-bit versions), MS decided to pull the plug on Win2k for alpha entirely.
This was right at the time (late fall of 1999) that Intel sent out the first of the Itanium chips.
Anyway, MS never did finish development on a 64-bit version of MS-Windows on Alpha.
My definition of decency is probably different from yours. For instance, I believe "decency" means respect for your fellow person; saying "fuck" is not indecent unless it is used disrespectfully. So, "Oh, my fucking Christ with a pogostick!" is not indecent, but "Fuck off, tard!" is, unless the person being talked to *is* a tard, and has been doing something for which he/she should fuck off.
And there is *nothing* indecent about the naked human body. Even gross lookin' folks are not indecent when naked; they are merely gross lookin'.
There seems to be a movement within the US towards some strange version of "decency" that does *not* include the way we treat our fellow person, but has *everything* to do with enforcing a certain religious viewpoint. This is not decency. In fact, the act itself is indecent, as it disrespects other people deserving of respect.
So you might imagine I don't want people deciding for me what is decent or indecent. Our viewpoints are different. I don't believe all viewpoints are equal: I believe I am right. So do the folks who want to censor everything. They believe *they* are right, I mean.
Where was I going with this?
Oh, yeah. Decency is in how we treat our fellow man, not whether Janet's breast was bared. In this, my reading of the Bible tells me even Christ agrees with me. Not that I believe in God, let alone the sacredness of Christ.
After all, I'm just an atheist, and so have no sense of morality.
Very insightful, Mr. AC.
Standards of conduct are strangely unmentionable these days. I was raised to be polite, although I am not always so. I was raised to respect other people, at least until they do something to lose that respect. I was also raised on the Golden Rule.
Now, I don't believe in the Golden Rule; I would rather poeple would Do Unto Me what I would like done, and not treat me how they would like to be treated. Subtle difference, but important. And evengelical Christian might think they would want to be converted, if they were a hedonistic atheist like me. I'd prefer they didn't try to convert me.
But I digress.
Politeness and "profanity" are orthogonal ideas. You can be polite to people, but still be fuckin' profane. There's nothing impolite about Everclear claiming, "Yes I guess I fucked up again," but I can't play it on the radio, even though Strawberry Burn is a fuckin' excellent song.
If we want people to be more polite, we should be censoring impoliteness on the Big Blue Eye, and not profanity.
And chronically rude people should just get the fuck off my streets, capiche?
The first person view sounds cool, could inspire a new film technique (much like the Matrix's bullet time), but the old fashoned film technique of messing with a well-loved plot seems to be going strong.
You are joking, right? Right?
First person viewpoint, video-game movie: House of the Dead.
Zombie. Rave. Movie.
FP was used extensively during the terrible, terrible moments of the film (just about all of them), when characters were shooting their way through shuffling zombies, or when characters snuffed it. Oh, it's a great MST-like movie. It's right up there with Deep Blue Sea and Reign of Fire for Bad Movie Night (when you drink lots of beer and eat home-made nachos, just 'cause you feel fuckin' terrible about work and life).
FP viewpoint is not a good idea. Not even close. It's been tried. And it's always failed.
Always.
Same thing with Office Space. Completely mis-marketted. And Firefly. The *creative* types knew exactly what they were doing. The marketting types were completely head-fucked.
See, they *were* talking about genetic mixing, and not just transplant
Damnit. Must. Read. Article. Before. Posting.
As long as there are limited resources, evolution is not over. At best, we are in a genetic inflationary stage, in which we have a great variety of genotypes floating around.
But, this isn't even true. in much of the world, people live and die in terrible conditions. Despite our best effort, there is still war, famine, and plague. (Okay, we really haven't given our best effort.)
Back the the genotype deviation: the more genetic drift we experience now, the greater the chance the human species will survive the next cataclysm. If we had the genetic diversity of, say, the cheetah, we'd die off the first bad storm, or next real plague. As it is, there are people who are naturally immune to AIDS, for instance. This genetic diversity is a *good* thing, and by no means signals the end to evolution.
In fact, it is merely one important part of evolution.
How will this affect evolution?
Oh my God! This could be great! The human-kidney sheep could reproduce *more* human-kidney sheep, and then we'd have a handy store of farm-grown organs just ready for human transplant. That is so cool!
Then I woke up from my dumb-attack, and remembered that Lamarckian evolution is one of those disproven theories.
They are really his stove-top. They have those fancy glowing quartz elements; he can fry up a tasty omellete with mushrooms (you know the kind) and cheese.
Mmmm. Cheese.
He said it was "functional." Nobody stated what it functioned *as*.
You don't have to redefine evil. Jesus did it for you already.
True enough. I believe my definition is quicker on the read, though.
Oh, and don't blame the corporations for the broken system.
That's like blaming the handgun, and not the person pulling the trigger.
It's not the lawyers submitting these silly patents (playing with a cat with a laser pointer, fer Christ's sake). It's people. Corporations are encouraging their employees to create and submit patents.
Corporations are the ones paying the lobbyists to pass legislation allowing fucking business patents, so some bank can patent an ATM foyer with plants.
Oh, I blame the corporations, all right. They are evil. Lawyers are also evil. Both together form the Nexus of Hell (tm)(r)(c)(pat. pend.). The lawyers are bottom-feeding scum who live off the blood the corporations leave in the water.
Not that I'm bitter or anything.
So, which one of the 100,000 you've examined was non-trivial?
Dude, mellow! I was using hyperbole. That's why I included all the nines-- to indicate it was a very large number. It's a legitimate literary device.
I didn't mean to get your dander up. My grandfather held 12 patents before he died. (Many expired before he died, of course.) Most had to do with refinements on various simple tools.
I have invented a couple of things. I can't tell you what they are-- they are super-secret. But I invented them, and I'm going to use them to RULE THE WORLD! HAHAHAHA! And because they are patented, I am the only one who may RULE THE WORLD!
Have you thought about the fact that these big companies are 'bankrolling' the new IP only company because they are just trying to protect themselves?
How very noble of them!
Of course, once they have the power, what is to stop them from using it? Oh, that's right! (litigous bastards) corporations don't sue other corporations over intellectual property.
What about the "don't be evil" google motto?
As a short definition of "evil," I submit that "evil" is the "willingness to fuck over other people for your own profit." That provides a quick-and-dirty litmus test for evilness.
The current marketplace encourages evil. Google is a prime example-- they make a big deal about how they don't want to do evil, but then they invest in a company which is designed from the git-go to perform evil.
The reason is simple: if they don't, they will be in a world of pain when everyone else starts using trivial patents as weapons of restraint. (99.999% of all patents are trivial, IMNSHO).
So, either they do evil now and protect themselves, adding to the decay of honest business; or, they take the moral high road, and risk death by a thousand lawsuits.
In an area where thugs rule the streets, only thugs may walk the streets free of worry. Our current system is ruled by thugs. Google is just arming themselves like the rest of the miscreants; but by doing so, they are joining them.
This libertarian version of capitalism slays me. It's really, really funny. It sounds so much like people defending "true" communism, I almost can't tell the difference.
"True" free-market capitalism will not work, just as communism will not work. Both sound great on paper. Capitalism: let the market decide! Communism: everyone contributes equally, everyone shares equally!
Both sound great. Both suffer from one tiny little flaw, like the hanging thread that causes the garment to unravel. Neither can stand up to actual human implementation.
This bit is funny. It turns out we humans are generally greedy, selfish, evil fucks who don't mind screwing over others for our own gain. (That, to me, is the embodiment of evil.) It turns out (and this will make you laugh and laugh) that we are willing to sell out everyone else for our own personal gain. We're even willing to sell the future so long as we get our little slice of the present.
Funny, that. Ha, ha.
But, although free-market capitalism sounds good, it's impossible to work, because we won't let it work.
Take this whole IP hoarding thing. If the government didn't intervene, we wouldn't have IP at all. So the next Louis Norden book comes out, others can simply copy it and redistribute it. That does away with small press: as soon as a small press book looks to succeed, the big publishing houses can maintain their grip by simply stealing the success stories, and out-marketing the small press.
What's that? We have laws protecting copyright? What happened to the removal of government intervention from business?
So, if we require government regulation of copyright, we have the government making laws to regulate business. As soon as that starts happening, it is in the best interest of the business to pay money to influence regulatory legislation. (Essentially, the clusterfuck we have now.)
Here's a Sophie's Choice for you. Pick the unregulated market, in which music will be downloaded off the internet for free, and big book publishing companies can simply steal successful books, and books get downloaded off the internet for free; or, pick government intervention.
In biology, there are organisms that change their environment to suit themselves, often to the detriment of other organisms. Many organisms have so much control of their environment, they can wipe out any potential competitors long before those potentials have fighting chance. Humans are merely the most obvious of this class.
In an unregulated, free-market capitalism, those organisms are the monopolies. Once a single corporation gets to the point where they regulate their environment-- say, by economic control of the lines of distribution, or by controlling limited resources-- they excercise de-facto control of the market itself. Microsoft has proven this, as has Starbucks and Wal*Mart and Standard Oil.
The problem isn't with becoming a monopoly. The problem is the economic and market power that accompanies being a monopoly. Monopolies fill the power void left by lack of government regulation.
Our current situation is so fucked up not because of all the government regulation, but because of some of the government regulation. Government regulation should be stacked for the citizens of the country, not for the corporations of the country. Unfortunately, because corporations wield such economic power, especially when compared with the average group of organized citizens, corporations are able to force government intervention that favors corporations.
"Free-market capitalism" is a pie-in-the-sky dream that is unworkable, at least until we as a society grow up enough to stop fucking over everyone else for our own profit.
Of course, this is just my opinion. I could be wrong.
Well, Incredibles is out now, a Pixar film about retired super heroes. That sounds kinda fun. I haven't seen it yet, of course.
They said they made Incredibles because they wanted to do something different. Lassetter said he didn't want to make the same movie again, like he has with the other films. They know they've just been making the same film, over and over.
So Incredibles is supposed to be different. I think you have written Pixar off too soon.
Science is merely an epistomology based on rationalism. It is by far the most successful epistomogy in widespread use today.
The flaw in science is not the scientific method. Rather, science is flawed in spite of the scientific method. Science if flawed the same way every human endeavor is flawed: it's run by humans.
It's difficult to topple an existing scientific belief, but it happens. The same way quantum physics displaced the prevalent Newtonian physics, evidence for something other than evolution would receive widespread critisism, but as a new generation of scientists replace the old guard, the new evidence (and the accompanying hypothesis) would become accepted as canon.
This study is all cool and everything. But modern science has made up it's mind, so don't fool yourself into thinking you'll hear all sides of evolution/darwinism from religion or science.
Modern science hasn't made up its mind; modern scientists have made up their mind. Incorrect theories will topple as evidence mounts against them. Within science, dogma grows old and dies. New theories replace old all the time. Sometimes it just seems to take a long time-- often, a professional lifetime.
So far, there isn't even a logical hypothesis to compete against evolution via natural selection, so there's very little "mind" to make up. Until there is a logical, scientifically-verifiable counter hypothesis, there's very little room for debate.
Now, within the framework of evolution via natural selection, there's a lot of room for debate.
The nautilus has only a peephole for an eye. It is fundamentally just a camera obscura.
I never said they weren't wrong, just that there's no point. From a scientist's point of view, you are simply arguing science against someone's fantasies. Why would you work so hard to dispel someone's fantasy land just because it's wrong?
There is a large grass-roots movement within the US to teach "intelligent design" side-by-side with evolution as a competing theory. Although ID makes no direct reference to God, or even to creation, the concept is a dressed-up creationism. (How can you have intelligent design without some form of intelligence?)
Even the ones that need proof so badly are acting on faith, and you can't disprove someone's faith. If you're trying to get them to change their minds, this is the wrong approach.
I agree completely. The idea isn't to change minds, although it would be helpful if people used a modicum of sense in their beliefs. The idea is to politically block the teaching of a non-science in science class.
I think this debate goes a long way to prove the fundamentallist nature of the US. Intelligent Design cannot be disproven, and so isn't even science. Yet there is a huge political push to teach it side-by-side with evolution, as a competing theory. I agree that there are holes in evolution, but the basic concept of evolution by natural selection has withstood every possible test thrown at it.
As natural selection works on phenotype variance within a population (and not on individuals), the holes in evolution are the general mechanism through which the genotype varies. The crude concept of "mutation" covers this variance, but the mechanisms of mutation aren't well-understood. It's not just a matter of stray particles striking a strand of DNA, or random recombination through sexual reproduction.
Because we don't understand it all yet, there is a huge gap in our knowledge that allows people to say, "God does it." Just like ancient maps with "Here be dragons" scrawled across unknown areas, those with religious beliefs apply their belief to everything that is unknown. This pushes many of them to teach everyone else that "God does it." That's fine in a relgious setting, but taught as knowledge, it is unacceptable. To present it as scientific is downright dishonest.
Anyway, that is the point of these scientific exercises. Not only does it add to our body of knowledge, but helps fill in the blanks in which people have previously written in flowing script, "God works here, in mysterious ways."
Automated harassment is no less intimidating than personally-signed harassment. In fact, it is perhaps *more* stifling.
C'mon, C# vs. Java? Outside of "RIAA sues 86 year-old grandma", "We hate Bush, let's talk" and "Microsoft patents KDE" there is no better source of inflammatory material in the dorkosphere.
Oh, how I pine for the days of vi vs. Emacs.
- Tony