The Christian allegory is unmistakeable as well. Aslan = Jesus is pretty obvious. Being a Christian myself, I had no problems with that. But the typical more secular slashdotter might not enjoy the movie if they don't ignore the religious parallels.
I'm sorry, but I'm just not seeing what everone else is seeing on this one? Is is just because he's raised from the dead or something? I don't get it.
When I originally read the novels many, many moons ago this connection never struck me, and I'm still finding the connection dubious to this day. maybe I just don't want a piece of my childhood used to ensare kids into believeing intelligent design.
Now ordinarily the parent would simply be regarded as a troll, but all you have to do is look through a few Slashdot journals to see examples of quality submissions that have been rejected. The fact that a search engine spammer's articles get preference really explains this kind of frustration.
I'd like to hear some kind of explanation from the editor(s). I'd like to think that this is simply some kind of failure of process rather than something fundamentally wrong with Slashdot itself. It would be nice if the next Slashback dealt with these issues in some way.
Today's submissions that were rejected include a new digital imaging chip from the folks at Univ of Rochester and the Gnope.Org release (PHP GTK Toolkit).
Are the editors, trying to bury the site?! I'm a geek. I want to read about stuff like this? Those writeups have better have been awful.
Are you trying to say that a software program is analogous to the result of a mathematical equation? If I know that the answer to X+10=20 is "10", and I make you pay me to tell you the answer, and don't allow you to tell anybody else, then I am restricting the flow of information. But, as far as I know there is no equation for which the answer would be the machine code for a word processing program.
Not mathematical equations as such. All software is essentially mathematical algorithims. Dijkstra once remarked that computer programmers are all applied mathematicians, and I think there's a large degree of truth in that.
An there is in fact an algorithm whose output was the machine code for the word processing program. It was the compiler that compiled and assembled it!
Then explain to your kids that the reason you can't feed them is because of this "mystical" piracy thing.
Naahh. The real reason is because you tried to base a business on selling sets of numbers to people that cost next to nothing to duplicate. It's like... well, it's like trying to sell the result of a mathematical calculation to someone then demanding that anyone else who wants to know will have to pay you money. Calling the guy that tells someone else the answer a pirate doesn't seem very reasonable.
For an example of how to establish a profitable software house that does not rely on this principle, see RedHat.
I must have missed the concession in the Magna Carta about cell phone tracking. I also missed any precedent in the intervening 800 or so years that indicates an agent of the police cannot follow an individual in public without a court order.
It would seem I will have to spell this out.
Yes the police can "follow" people, but you'll find in all these cases they haven't actually "followed" anyone. They've obtained personal data on these people from a third party, namely the telcoms companies. You've suggested they should be allowed to do so without a court order.
So the police are allowed to follow me. Then what's wrong with a state wide citizen monitoring program, a la 1984? No problem with that? Except that their kind of is. It's legality is questionable as the police would eventually end up monitoring people with absolutely no probable cause.
If the police can't do this then they must obtain this data from a third party, the phone companies. Now when customers signed up for a cell phone, they signed up to make and recieve calls, not to be tracked 24/7 and then have this data available to anyone who comes looking at a moments notice. So the police have to get this data. You suggest this should be done without a warrant. Would you also suggest that any data on anyone whatsoever be available to the police without a warrant? What makes cell phone position data so different? Should the police in fact, have unlimited access to any and all information on any person held by anyone without a court order?
Are you advocating either one of these positions? Have you stopped to think that cell phone position is monitored in both public and private places? Did it occur to you that the cellular phone network was never designed with this in mind and that a great many people would consider a carte blanc access to this data by the police as an abuse of this position? Do you know the reasons why the police must obtain warrants for information, searches and seisures?
I apologise if I've offended you with my grammatical errors. I'm afraid I was so stunned by your ignorance of State-Citizen relations that I could hardly pause to proof read my posts. I'd suggest you read up on the terms, police state, gestapo, authoritarianism, rule of law, anonymity, Watergate and in fact, most of the rest of the Guide.
I'm being called ignorent by someone who suggested that the police should be allowed to track you without obtaining a warrent, as "It's only the same standard required before they get a search warrant". Do you think the police should be allowed to search your house without a warrent as "It's only the same standard required before they get a search warrant"?
That sounds like "unsubstanstiated belief" to me. It certainly isn't science. Can you suggest an experiment to falsify your theory? If not, then I say that it's on a par with intelligent design, scientifically speaking.
Of course I can. Kill someone, anyone. Did the universe cease to exist? If we destroy the earth will the Universe cease to exist? Well, it is, however infeasible, at least possible. Therefore my theory is testable. Unlike Intelligent design, which proposes no experiments at all.
The benefits that religion provides are now taken for granted. You may be interested to know that science is actually quite solidly founded on principles from Western religion. These include absolutism, which tells us that the laws of the Universe are the same everywhere, and that nothing can be both true and not true at the same time.
You've mistaken logic for religion. These principles were present in ancient Greece, long before modern western religions even existed. In fact, I'd wager all these heading come under the definition of common sense. And to add an aditional footnote, in quantum mechanics, something can be both true and false at the same time.
They also describe the world as the operation of a machine built by God, rather than the direct actions of God, meaning that it was possible to analyse and experiment.
No. Science describes the world through logical mathematical models, verifyable by experiment. God or gods do not enter into any equation. Some spoke of a divine clockwork, but most professionals speak in terms of what they've got, which is a collecton of models.
This is deeply contrasted to the God of the Bible (not Allah, or merely the Old Testament, but the Trinity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit). God does not change - He is the same yesterday, today, tomorrow, and forever.
How come you keep reffering to God in the masculine? God could just as easily be a "she" or an "it". If fact, God, if such a being exists is best referred to as an "it", so show some respect.
Sure, we have Christ saying things like, "you have heard it has been said, 'do not committ adultery' but I say unto you, anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart,"
In the words of Nanny Ogg "You mean you don't know!?"[The difference between thinking and doing]. It sounds like you've got some personal difficulties with your own body and its functions. A student of the "You're a naughty child and that's concentrated evil coming out the back of you" school of thought? Every man looks at women lustfully, just as every woman looks at men lustfully. We've evolved to be that way. There's nothing wrong about that. it's when you choose to act on your urges that you may or may not do something wrong. like when you punish blameless women for "tempting" you, when in fact it was your own thoughts all along.
The mathematical calculations for even the most basic link of ammino acids to make a single protein to occur at random are staggering (on the order of 1x10^several thousands), let alone lining those proteins up to eventually create a single cell organism! And this is taught as truth? Macro-evolution boils down to magic, and is just another myth of history trying to explain existence apart from the sovereign work of God.
Do you have any idea how large 10^(several thousands) actually is? That would be far, far greater than the number of atoms in the known universe. You've made it up, or have been exaggerating. If you want evidence of macroevolution, play catch with your dog, and realise that in less than 5000 years, humans have shaped the evolution of wolflike proto-dogs into hundreds of different breeds of dog, some of which have already gone past the point of practical natural reproduction.
Or, just for kicks, go dig up some dinosaur bones and try and explain how those got there.
Yup. Until you can come up with some verifyable evidence to the contrary, Mirecki and any attacks on it have about as much validity as the castle at Camelot.
I probably disagree with what you believe to be true about the origins of Life, the Universe and Everything, but I strongly support your right to pass those beliefs on to your children. I hope you will show others the same courtesy.
So a pedophile for example should be allowed to raise his or her children to believe that sex with pre pubescent children is OK?
And if you think that's a straw man argument, you should take a look at some of the thing s children ARE being taught in this country. Slavery is OK, women are unclean, heathens are inferior, heratics should be killed, the world was created in seven days... the list goes on and on.
I posted a story to slashdot which was rejected in five minutes (usually it takes longer than that) and then turned around and submitted it to digg.com. After about 15 minutes, it had about 100 digs
You see! Completely unbiased! Even the great stories can get rejected!
What rubbish. You're a human being, and even if you don't know it, you matter. Even this little interaction has served a purpose.
Matter to who? Myself? Everyone? The Universe? The Universe will not stop existing is I cease to be. My life or death, like this entire planet, is largely an inconsequential occurance. This interaction does not have purpose except that which we ascribe to it.
Of course, that's a belief of mine; science and (oooh, aaah) chaos theory cannot begin to support it. I can't say that I feel a particular need to bring you around to my beliefs, but I will say that I find religion preferable to the road you're headed down.
In what sense? In what possible way does religion benefit society over science? What result from following religion will emerge that cannot emerge from thinking rationally and objectively? Religion does not have a very good track record in regard to its benefit to society.
Think it through. Science is actually an excellent place to start, but is shouldn't be where your thinking ends.
Yes it should. It most certainly should. When you abandon science and the thinking of the Enlightenment, you turn the clock back 300 years to unsubstanstiated belief, irrationality and obstinate ignorance. Do you thin that the intelligent designers are just some freak occurance? They are an inevitability of religious thought. Eventually they will declare that 2+2=5, or at least that Pi=4. The logic of their position demands it.
I'm not complaining about rejected submissions, but surely the ongoing success of digg.com has a lot to do with the fact that they don't just toss you out on your ass if you don't post a story that the editors don't like.
Read up on the facts man! The Slashdot Random Story Submission Selection System [SRSSSS] is completely unbiased. It just needs a shuffle rather than a random feature.
What exactly is the problem with allowing the police to use cellphone tracking with probable cause? It's only the same standard required before they get a search warrant, and still a few steps short of your oh-so-precisely-defined poilce state.
Let's change a few words and see if this sentance still makes sense.
What exactly is the problem with allowing people to fly with simple knowladge of how to do so. It's only the same standard required before they get a pilots license, and still a few steps short of your oh-so-precisely-defined air traffic chaos.
If you look under your feet you will find the greatest pice of evidence that the earth is over 6000 years old. We are standing on the earth's crust, which cooled over millions of years, and whose interior is still cooling. This process, according to even the most basic of models would take at least 400 million years to cool. This is of course without taking into account nuclear fission taking place in the core, which when taken into account gives a figure of roughly 4.3 billion years for the earth to have cooled to its present state.
I have faith that I am not any sort of Turing machine, because I'm certain that I have free will. This, to me, is evidence for the existence of God, since it indicates that there is more to reality than that which can be measured and studied scientifically.
I have faith that whatever I am, I will remain so no matter how many arguments or experiments anyone comes up with.
I like science. I especially like its ability to explain the happenings of the world rationally, and in paticular with mathematical laws. If you descend into metaphysics and begin to argue that science can never explain "exactly what we are", I'm not going to follow you. The reason being that you have descended into philosophy, and have abandoned the experiment, and this is one step away from abandoning rational thought altogether.
Whenever people choose to persue this line of though and keep on saying that "science doesn't know everything" or some other such rubbish, I can nowadays simply point to Chaos Theory, which shows how minor variations in initial conditions leads to complex emergent behaviour. Chaos theory is one of the most solid metaphysical arguments for several reasons. It has evidence, and it does not require the existence of any superflous higher beings.
I just wonder who's going to get the blame, IT or the software vendor?
Most likely the user will get all the blame. It's like when a plane crashes. AAALLWAYS pilot error. Could NEVER have been the manufactrer or air traffic control. Sometimes it is the pilot, but come on. People don't make screw ups this big all by themselves.
Coming from a background in comic books, this is easy to answer.
The typical male reader/viewer/player will identify with male characters and be interested in female characters.
Hang on. That would mean that most men identify with muscled vigilanties that have deep seated personal issues but use their supressed rage to impose their individual brand of justice on the world?
Slashdot Mirror
Who has the deck?
Oh, I'm afraid there's more than a few jokers missing out of this pack.
The Christian allegory is unmistakeable as well. Aslan = Jesus is pretty obvious. Being a Christian myself, I had no problems with that. But the typical more secular slashdotter might not enjoy the movie if they don't ignore the religious parallels.
I'm sorry, but I'm just not seeing what everone else is seeing on this one? Is is just because he's raised from the dead or something? I don't get it.
When I originally read the novels many, many moons ago this connection never struck me, and I'm still finding the connection dubious to this day. maybe I just don't want a piece of my childhood used to ensare kids into believeing intelligent design.
Now ordinarily the parent would simply be regarded as a troll, but all you have to do is look through a few Slashdot journals to see examples of quality submissions that have been rejected. The fact that a search engine spammer's articles get preference really explains this kind of frustration.
I'd like to hear some kind of explanation from the editor(s). I'd like to think that this is simply some kind of failure of process rather than something fundamentally wrong with Slashdot itself. It would be nice if the next Slashback dealt with these issues in some way.
Today's submissions that were rejected include a new digital imaging chip from the folks at Univ of Rochester and the Gnope.Org release (PHP GTK Toolkit).
Are the editors, trying to bury the site?! I'm a geek. I want to read about stuff like this? Those writeups have better have been awful.
On the other hand, they're certainly not telling us, despite numerous comments asking what's going on attached to every **BB story.
What? When have the Slashdot eds ever told us ANYTHING?!
Or is it starting to look like ScuttleMonkey is getting kickbacks from **Beatles-Beatles?
In the words of Napoleon: "Never ascribe to malice, that which can be explained by incompetence."
Remember that the temporary monopoly provided by software (or any kind of) patents is the incentive to create in the first place.
Software is just a mathematical algorithim. Mathematics flourished for centuries before copyright was even a twinkle in the Voltaire's eye.
Are you trying to say that a software program is analogous to the result of a mathematical equation? If I know that the answer to X+10=20 is "10", and I make you pay me to tell you the answer, and don't allow you to tell anybody else, then I am restricting the flow of information. But, as far as I know there is no equation for which the answer would be the machine code for a word processing program.
Not mathematical equations as such. All software is essentially mathematical algorithims. Dijkstra once remarked that computer programmers are all applied mathematicians, and I think there's a large degree of truth in that.
An there is in fact an algorithm whose output was the machine code for the word processing program. It was the compiler that compiled and assembled it!
Then explain to your kids that the reason you can't feed them is because of this "mystical" piracy thing.
Naahh. The real reason is because you tried to base a business on selling sets of numbers to people that cost next to nothing to duplicate. It's like... well, it's like trying to sell the result of a mathematical calculation to someone then demanding that anyone else who wants to know will have to pay you money. Calling the guy that tells someone else the answer a pirate doesn't seem very reasonable.
For an example of how to establish a profitable software house that does not rely on this principle, see RedHat.
I must have missed the concession in the Magna Carta about cell phone tracking. I also missed any precedent in the intervening 800 or so years that indicates an agent of the police cannot follow an individual in public without a court order.
It would seem I will have to spell this out.
Yes the police can "follow" people, but you'll find in all these cases they haven't actually "followed" anyone. They've obtained personal data on these people from a third party, namely the telcoms companies. You've suggested they should be allowed to do so without a court order.
So the police are allowed to follow me. Then what's wrong with a state wide citizen monitoring program, a la 1984? No problem with that? Except that their kind of is. It's legality is questionable as the police would eventually end up monitoring people with absolutely no probable cause.
If the police can't do this then they must obtain this data from a third party, the phone companies. Now when customers signed up for a cell phone, they signed up to make and recieve calls, not to be tracked 24/7 and then have this data available to anyone who comes looking at a moments notice. So the police have to get this data. You suggest this should be done without a warrant. Would you also suggest that any data on anyone whatsoever be available to the police without a warrant? What makes cell phone position data so different? Should the police in fact, have unlimited access to any and all information on any person held by anyone without a court order?
Are you advocating either one of these positions? Have you stopped to think that cell phone position is monitored in both public and private places? Did it occur to you that the cellular phone network was never designed with this in mind and that a great many people would consider a carte blanc access to this data by the police as an abuse of this position? Do you know the reasons why the police must obtain warrants for information, searches and seisures?
I apologise if I've offended you with my grammatical errors. I'm afraid I was so stunned by your ignorance of State-Citizen relations that I could hardly pause to proof read my posts. I'd suggest you read up on the terms, police state, gestapo, authoritarianism, rule of law, anonymity, Watergate and in fact, most of the rest of the Guide.
I'm being called ignorent by someone who suggested that the police should be allowed to track you without obtaining a warrent, as "It's only the same standard required before they get a search warrant". Do you think the police should be allowed to search your house without a warrent as "It's only the same standard required before they get a search warrant"?
Please google for "Magna Carta". Good day.
That sounds like "unsubstanstiated belief" to me. It certainly isn't science. Can you suggest an experiment to falsify your theory? If not, then I say that it's on a par with intelligent design, scientifically speaking.
Of course I can. Kill someone, anyone. Did the universe cease to exist? If we destroy the earth will the Universe cease to exist? Well, it is, however infeasible, at least possible. Therefore my theory is testable. Unlike Intelligent design, which proposes no experiments at all.
The benefits that religion provides are now taken for granted. You may be interested to know that science is actually quite solidly founded on principles from Western religion. These include absolutism, which tells us that the laws of the Universe are the same everywhere, and that nothing can be both true and not true at the same time.
You've mistaken logic for religion. These principles were present in ancient Greece, long before modern western religions even existed. In fact, I'd wager all these heading come under the definition of common sense. And to add an aditional footnote, in quantum mechanics, something can be both true and false at the same time.
They also describe the world as the operation of a machine built by God, rather than the direct actions of God, meaning that it was possible to analyse and experiment.
No. Science describes the world through logical mathematical models, verifyable by experiment. God or gods do not enter into any equation. Some spoke of a divine clockwork, but most professionals speak in terms of what they've got, which is a collecton of models.
Not all religious people are fundamentalists.
Not all crack addicts are dealers.
This is deeply contrasted to the God of the Bible (not Allah, or merely the Old Testament, but the Trinity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit). God does not change - He is the same yesterday, today, tomorrow, and forever.
How come you keep reffering to God in the masculine? God could just as easily be a "she" or an "it". If fact, God, if such a being exists is best referred to as an "it", so show some respect.
Sure, we have Christ saying things like, "you have heard it has been said, 'do not committ adultery' but I say unto you, anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart,"
In the words of Nanny Ogg "You mean you don't know!?"[The difference between thinking and doing]. It sounds like you've got some personal difficulties with your own body and its functions. A student of the "You're a naughty child and that's concentrated evil coming out the back of you" school of thought? Every man looks at women lustfully, just as every woman looks at men lustfully. We've evolved to be that way. There's nothing wrong about that. it's when you choose to act on your urges that you may or may not do something wrong. like when you punish blameless women for "tempting" you, when in fact it was your own thoughts all along.
The mathematical calculations for even the most basic link of ammino acids to make a single protein to occur at random are staggering (on the order of 1x10^several thousands), let alone lining those proteins up to eventually create a single cell organism! And this is taught as truth? Macro-evolution boils down to magic, and is just another myth of history trying to explain existence apart from the sovereign work of God.
Do you have any idea how large 10^(several thousands) actually is? That would be far, far greater than the number of atoms in the known universe. You've made it up, or have been exaggerating. If you want evidence of macroevolution, play catch with your dog, and realise that in less than 5000 years, humans have shaped the evolution of wolflike proto-dogs into hundreds of different breeds of dog, some of which have already gone past the point of practical natural reproduction.
Or, just for kicks, go dig up some dinosaur bones and try and explain how those got there.
Yup. Until you can come up with some verifyable evidence to the contrary, Mirecki and any attacks on it have about as much validity as the castle at Camelot.
I probably disagree with what you believe to be true about the origins of Life, the Universe and Everything, but I strongly support your right to pass those beliefs on to your children. I hope you will show others the same courtesy.
So a pedophile for example should be allowed to raise his or her children to believe that sex with pre pubescent children is OK?
And if you think that's a straw man argument, you should take a look at some of the thing s children ARE being taught in this country. Slavery is OK, women are unclean, heathens are inferior, heratics should be killed, the world was created in seven days... the list goes on and on.
I can change words (and spell them correctly!), too, so what's your point?
That you have no clear understanding of jurisprudence.
I posted a story to slashdot which was rejected in five minutes (usually it takes longer than that) and then turned around and submitted it to digg.com. After about 15 minutes, it had about 100 digs
You see! Completely unbiased! Even the great stories can get rejected!
What rubbish. You're a human being, and even if you don't know it, you matter. Even this little interaction has served a purpose.
Matter to who? Myself? Everyone? The Universe? The Universe will not stop existing is I cease to be. My life or death, like this entire planet, is largely an inconsequential occurance. This interaction does not have purpose except that which we ascribe to it.
Of course, that's a belief of mine; science and (oooh, aaah) chaos theory cannot begin to support it. I can't say that I feel a particular need to bring you around to my beliefs, but I will say that I find religion preferable to the road you're headed down.
In what sense? In what possible way does religion benefit society over science? What result from following religion will emerge that cannot emerge from thinking rationally and objectively? Religion does not have a very good track record in regard to its benefit to society.
Think it through. Science is actually an excellent place to start, but is shouldn't be where your thinking ends.
Yes it should. It most certainly should. When you abandon science and the thinking of the Enlightenment, you turn the clock back 300 years to unsubstanstiated belief, irrationality and obstinate ignorance. Do you thin that the intelligent designers are just some freak occurance? They are an inevitability of religious thought. Eventually they will declare that 2+2=5, or at least that Pi=4. The logic of their position demands it.
I'm not complaining about rejected submissions, but surely the ongoing success of digg.com has a lot to do with the fact that they don't just toss you out on your ass if you don't post a story that the editors don't like.
Read up on the facts man! The Slashdot Random Story Submission Selection System [SRSSSS] is completely unbiased. It just needs a shuffle rather than a random feature.
What exactly is the problem with allowing the police to use cellphone tracking with probable cause? It's only the same standard required before they get a search warrant, and still a few steps short of your oh-so-precisely-defined poilce state.
Let's change a few words and see if this sentance still makes sense.
What exactly is the problem with allowing people to fly with simple knowladge of how to do so. It's only the same standard required before they get a pilots license, and still a few steps short of your oh-so-precisely-defined air traffic chaos.
If you look under your feet you will find the greatest pice of evidence that the earth is over 6000 years old. We are standing on the earth's crust, which cooled over millions of years, and whose interior is still cooling. This process, according to even the most basic of models would take at least 400 million years to cool. This is of course without taking into account nuclear fission taking place in the core, which when taken into account gives a figure of roughly 4.3 billion years for the earth to have cooled to its present state.
I have faith that I am not any sort of Turing machine, because I'm certain that I have free will. This, to me, is evidence for the existence of God, since it indicates that there is more to reality than that which can be measured and studied scientifically.
I have faith that whatever I am, I will remain so no matter how many arguments or experiments anyone comes up with.
I like science. I especially like its ability to explain the happenings of the world rationally, and in paticular with mathematical laws. If you descend into metaphysics and begin to argue that science can never explain "exactly what we are", I'm not going to follow you. The reason being that you have descended into philosophy, and have abandoned the experiment, and this is one step away from abandoning rational thought altogether.
Whenever people choose to persue this line of though and keep on saying that "science doesn't know everything" or some other such rubbish, I can nowadays simply point to Chaos Theory, which shows how minor variations in initial conditions leads to complex emergent behaviour. Chaos theory is one of the most solid metaphysical arguments for several reasons. It has evidence, and it does not require the existence of any superflous higher beings.
I just wonder who's going to get the blame, IT or the software vendor?
Most likely the user will get all the blame. It's like when a plane crashes. AAALLWAYS pilot error. Could NEVER have been the manufactrer or air traffic control. Sometimes it is the pilot, but come on. People don't make screw ups this big all by themselves.
Coming from a background in comic books, this is easy to answer.
The typical male reader/viewer/player will identify with male characters and be interested in female characters.
Hang on. That would mean that most men identify with muscled vigilanties that have deep seated personal issues but use their supressed rage to impose their individual brand of justice on the world?
Oh wait...
which part of "a PC DVD-ROM can't read those[original discs]" was hard for you to comprehend?
The part where the PC HD-DVD ROM drive becomes available in eighteen months time was right about where I figured this ISO wasn't exactly big news.