How about I post evidence that people infected with HIV don't die of AIDS? You can start with the movie The Other Side of AIDS.
Oh, please. This is just like "proving" someone that 9/11 was an inside job by telling that person to watch Loose Change. Citing a bad documentary film as evidence is only proof of you belonging to a group of people with a certain mindset.
Here's a paper by Duesberg and Rasnick
While the question Duesberg poses (whether the current definition of AIDS is a reliable one) is interesting, his answer to this question is less so. From the little I've read (I'm not even a medical student, and I don't know more about AIDS and its causes than an average person does), his hypothesis that AIDS is several different things lumped together doesn't really hold water -- probably because it's based on cherry-picking facts and ignoring others that are related to them.
(Don't forget to mod me down - I said something bad)
No. You just said something that most intelligent people consider stupid, knowing that most Slashdotters (who, in all honesty, are not really as smart as they think they are) will consider it stupid as well. That's why you got modded down.
So what difference does it make what they believe?
Actually, it makes a huge difference. Modern education isn't based on just learning a bunch of facts. It's not meant to produce trivia champions of Wheel of Fortune players. School is supposed to teach you thing systematically (no educational system is flawless, though). The theory of evolution is an essential part of that system. An essential part of the world view. If you take this bit away (and replace it with Intelligent Design or Flying Spaghetti Monster theory), some other things (most of Biology, but not only) will turn out to be a lot more difficult to explain. You'll end up with a bunch of confused kids.
If you really think all the world's problems could be solved just by getting rid of this one man (and maybe the rest of his administration), then you're a fool.
One should, in my opinion, remember to knock the artist/writer on the head with a stick - before they destroy their own work.
You're assuming that it's easy for them to do this. In my experience, destroying your own work is about the hardest thing you can do -- even if you know it's crap. It's much worse than being being hit with a stick.
After trying to destroy the manuscript of an unfinished novel of his, a writer was once forced to admit that manuscripts don't burn*. Even if they're destroyed, they'll still live on in the memories of other people, or maybe as references or quotations in other works. Many great works of literature have gone missing, yet we still know they existed and we also know what they were about.
* A decade later, a Russian philosopher proved him wrong by smoking the manuscript of his work on Bildungsroman. He had made two copies of it, but one of these went missing in the early months of the German invasion; he used the other one as cigarette papers.
...how can anyone really get a feel for the importance of this discovery if they don't post some of the translated texts? Oh, I forgot- We're supposed to accept the fact that it's important because they say so- We don't have to bother reading any of the actual text and evaluate its value for ourselves...
1) Hasn't it occurred to you that perhaps they haven't been translated yet? It's one thing to do a cursory reading of a text to understand what it's about but translating it is a totally different process.
2) The newly discovered text is obviously important to historians and historians of Mathematics. There could be other people interested in it as well. But what else is there to this discovery to the "public" (ie people like you and me), other than the cool factor?
Meh. I knew I should've RTFA before posting a comment. Now that I have, I almost regret posting it.
Anyway, I still think the writings of Archimedes were erased from ignorance (ie they simply didn't care about Archimedes), not because someone found that it didn't conform with his world view.
And besides as far as most were concerned at the time, this is old stuff from a dead civilization, make room for our new more modern method.
More likely, he simply didn't understand what was written there. The monks might have been better educated than most of the other folks, yet not that many of them knew Greek. Things get forgotten pretty fast if noone understands them.
I've been reading Slashdot for, what, four years now, yet I still don't quite get why people want an open submission queue. The only reason I can see (it's also the only one I've ever been given) is "Kuro5hin/Digg has one". But this is hardly an argument! Hasn't it occurred to any of you that there's several ways to run a news site and the Kuro5hin (or Digg) way is not the only one? </offtopic>
Clothes yes, but armor? I have seen a few collections of Medieval armor, and most suits of armor appear to be for men who were somewhat shorter than today's average height.
You should keep in mind that many (if not most) of the Medieval suits of armor we can see in museums today are later-age replicas, deliberately made smaller than real suits of armor as the real things would have taken up too much space. Then you should also keep in mind that suits of armor were made not only for "towering knights" but also for young men (who hadn't grown up yet) and even children. So the height of the suits doesn't really reflect the average height of the men and women living in that era. It's quite the contrary: on average, modern humans aren't much taller than the medieval ones.
If we wanted to read these comments wouldn't we... go read them in the thread?
I've been left with the impression that the majority of Slashdotters don't actually read the comments. But if the informed (YMMV) comments are the main advantage Slashdot has over, say, Digg, then why not try and bring them to the attention of those who don't normally read the comments?
"there is increasingly a distinction between 'normal' authors and 'high-end' authors who are explicitly trying to get their articles 'featured'."
Wikipedia, just like many other community sites, has some elements of a game. This can be both a good and a bad thing. The good thing is, this sort of rewards usually encourage more people to participate in the site by creating new content. The bad thing is, more and more people will eventually come to realize that it's just a game, and start taking advantage of this -- and of other people -- in order to 'win' (on Slashdot, this could mean Karma or Friend whoring). This, I think, can seriously hinder them from reaching (or even working towards) their goal of creating an encyclopedia "of the highest possible quality". We won't see more incorrect information because of this, but we might start seeing (or not seeing) more and more behind-the-scenes fighting, which could eventually lead to many people leaving the 'game'.
I really don't understand this whole 'backslash' deal. Sure it summarizes some of the better comments, but isn't that what the moderation system is for?
IIRC, then it was Taco who once said that of all Slashdot users, only about 30% read the comments (the number of those who write comments was even smaller). The comments, however, seem to be one of Slashdot's advantages over other tech news sites (like Digg). Being in a competition with Digg, they're probably trying to capitalize on this advantage and bring the comments to the attention of those Slashdotters that wouldn't normally read them.
Slashdot Mirror
How about I post evidence that people infected with HIV don't die of AIDS? You can start with the movie The Other Side of AIDS.
Oh, please. This is just like "proving" someone that 9/11 was an inside job by telling that person to watch Loose Change. Citing a bad documentary film as evidence is only proof of you belonging to a group of people with a certain mindset.
Here's a paper by Duesberg and Rasnick
While the question Duesberg poses (whether the current definition of AIDS is a reliable one) is interesting, his answer to this question is less so. From the little I've read (I'm not even a medical student, and I don't know more about AIDS and its causes than an average person does), his hypothesis that AIDS is several different things lumped together doesn't really hold water -- probably because it's based on cherry-picking facts and ignoring others that are related to them.
(Don't forget to mod me down - I said something bad)
No. You just said something that most intelligent people consider stupid, knowing that most Slashdotters (who, in all honesty, are not really as smart as they think they are) will consider it stupid as well. That's why you got modded down.
It would be nice if someone did a control first to see if people infected with HIV actually die.
To this date, noone has managed to live forever (i.e. not die). Please post evidence that people infected with HIV life forever.
According to the tinfoil crowd, it's the AIDS medicines that cause it.
So what difference does it make what they believe?
Actually, it makes a huge difference. Modern education isn't based on just learning a bunch of facts. It's not meant to produce trivia champions of Wheel of Fortune players. School is supposed to teach you thing systematically (no educational system is flawless, though). The theory of evolution is an essential part of that system. An essential part of the world view. If you take this bit away (and replace it with Intelligent Design or Flying Spaghetti Monster theory), some other things (most of Biology, but not only) will turn out to be a lot more difficult to explain. You'll end up with a bunch of confused kids.
If you really think all the world's problems could be solved just by getting rid of this one man (and maybe the rest of his administration), then you're a fool.
What, it was a joke? And here I thought you were just being sarcastic.
Worrying about Bird Flu is so 2005.
Ceiling Cat is watching you masturbate!
The mods must be on crack again. The parent poster is a well-known troll.
...and then there's Chacham.
If you have to choose between the state of war and the state of constant fear, then you cannot possibly lose, can you?
The cool thing about corporations is that it takes them longer to produce new bugs and set them loose in the wild.
One should, in my opinion, remember to knock the artist/writer on the head with a stick - before they destroy their own work.
You're assuming that it's easy for them to do this. In my experience, destroying your own work is about the hardest thing you can do -- even if you know it's crap. It's much worse than being being hit with a stick.
After trying to destroy the manuscript of an unfinished novel of his, a writer was once forced to admit that manuscripts don't burn*. Even if they're destroyed, they'll still live on in the memories of other people, or maybe as references or quotations in other works. Many great works of literature have gone missing, yet we still know they existed and we also know what they were about.
* A decade later, a Russian philosopher proved him wrong by smoking the manuscript of his work on Bildungsroman. He had made two copies of it, but one of these went missing in the early months of the German invasion; he used the other one as cigarette papers.
1) Hasn't it occurred to you that perhaps they haven't been translated yet? It's one thing to do a cursory reading of a text to understand what it's about but translating it is a totally different process.
2) The newly discovered text is obviously important to historians and historians of Mathematics. There could be other people interested in it as well. But what else is there to this discovery to the "public" (ie people like you and me), other than the cool factor?
Meh. I knew I should've RTFA before posting a comment. Now that I have, I almost regret posting it.
Anyway, I still think the writings of Archimedes were erased from ignorance (ie they simply didn't care about Archimedes), not because someone found that it didn't conform with his world view.
Mod parent down. I hadn't RTFA before writing that comment and it seems that I was mistaken.
And besides as far as most were concerned at the time, this is old stuff from a dead civilization, make room for our new more modern method.
More likely, he simply didn't understand what was written there. The monks might have been better educated than most of the other folks, yet not that many of them knew Greek. Things get forgotten pretty fast if noone understands them.
I've been reading Slashdot for, what, four years now, yet I still don't quite get why people want an open submission queue. The only reason I can see (it's also the only one I've ever been given) is "Kuro5hin/Digg has one". But this is hardly an argument! Hasn't it occurred to any of you that there's several ways to run a news site and the Kuro5hin (or Digg) way is not the only one?
</offtopic>
Yeah. It must be pretty bad if not even the trolls read Slashdot anymore.
Clothes yes, but armor? I have seen a few collections of Medieval armor, and most suits of armor appear to be for men who were somewhat shorter than today's average height.
You should keep in mind that many (if not most) of the Medieval suits of armor we can see in museums today are later-age replicas, deliberately made smaller than real suits of armor as the real things would have taken up too much space. Then you should also keep in mind that suits of armor were made not only for "towering knights" but also for young men (who hadn't grown up yet) and even children. So the height of the suits doesn't really reflect the average height of the men and women living in that era. It's quite the contrary: on average, modern humans aren't much taller than the medieval ones.
Thanks for feeding the troll. I got a good laugh out of the responses to your post :7
If we wanted to read these comments wouldn't we... go read them in the thread?
I've been left with the impression that the majority of Slashdotters don't actually read the comments. But if the informed (YMMV) comments are the main advantage Slashdot has over, say, Digg, then why not try and bring them to the attention of those who don't normally read the comments?
"there is increasingly a distinction between 'normal' authors and 'high-end' authors who are explicitly trying to get their articles 'featured'."
Wikipedia, just like many other community sites, has some elements of a game. This can be both a good and a bad thing. The good thing is, this sort of rewards usually encourage more people to participate in the site by creating new content. The bad thing is, more and more people will eventually come to realize that it's just a game, and start taking advantage of this -- and of other people -- in order to 'win' (on Slashdot, this could mean Karma or Friend whoring). This, I think, can seriously hinder them from reaching (or even working towards) their goal of creating an encyclopedia "of the highest possible quality". We won't see more incorrect information because of this, but we might start seeing (or not seeing) more and more behind-the-scenes fighting, which could eventually lead to many people leaving the 'game'.
I really don't understand this whole 'backslash' deal. Sure it summarizes some of the better comments, but isn't that what the moderation system is for?
IIRC, then it was Taco who once said that of all Slashdot users, only about 30% read the comments (the number of those who write comments was even smaller). The comments, however, seem to be one of Slashdot's advantages over other tech news sites (like Digg). Being in a competition with Digg, they're probably trying to capitalize on this advantage and bring the comments to the attention of those Slashdotters that wouldn't normally read them.