If you're a player of the game, you might have run across me at some point. I'm TonyV, the creator of the Paragon Wiki web site and current owner and administrator of the Titan Network sites.
I'm really hoping that this won't be the end of the game. I've posted a message on the official forums here (and on the Titan Network forums here discussing what I'm intending to do. It might not work out, in which case four months down the line, we're not going to be any worse off than we are today. But if you're reading this here and don't browse the official forums very often, please drop by. As the game's continued existence will depend on a crowd funding effort, we really need you to stay plugged in over the next few months. I'll post regular updates on our Titan Network forums to let you know how it's going.
You are 100% correct. This guy is undoubtedly seeing dollar signs on his own patent, and if the jury had invalidated Apple's patents, I honestly believe that he thinks it would hurt his ability to monetize his own patent. It's very telling to me that he had an "aha" moment not about what the decision should be, but how to "explain" to other jurors why they should side with Apple. It seems to me that he had already made up his mind which way this trial must go, and he was just trying to figure out a way to convince the other jurors to go along with him.
The thing I'm wondering, though, is does that matter? I mean, once a jury has rendered a verdict, can you actually have it overturned because it's later found out that a juror has ulterior motives? Isn't that why the lawyers have an opportunity to strike jurors before the trial starts? And if so, why the hell didn't Samsung's lawyers ask the jury pool if anyone had any patents? It just seems to me that if I were Samsung, I'd want a jury that doesn't have any patent holders on it. Not that there's anything wrong with patent holders, but I would fear that any patent holder on the jury would be financially motivated to push for a system much more in favor of patents and would rule with Apple on the case to protect their own interests, which I'm convinced is what actually happened in this case.
IANAL though, so I can't answer these questions. Maybe someone else here who is a laywer can weigh in.
The sad truth is that there is pretty much only one way: Make so much money so quickly that you build up a war chest capable of mutually assured destruction if someone sues you. Otherwise, your best bet is to get just big enough to be bought by a megacorp and hope that they give you the leeway to keep working on your project relatively unfettered.
Independent inventors/developers/designers/whatever simply don't have a chance in today's patent environment. Ironically, they are screwed by the very system that was originally set up to protect them.
The problem is that even evolution isn't proven. It's all speculation with a splash of BS. I believe evolution occurs but do I believe Humans came from a single celled organism. No. That is just stupid. If this was the case we would have more inbetween species that bridge the gaps.
So honest question, how many links will it take for you to accept that the theory of evolution is correct, that mankind did, in fact, evolve from single-celled organisms, and even simpler life forms before that? You don't have to give an exact number, though you're welcome to if you want. Just a ballpark figure would work fine so I can get an idea of what your standard of proof is. Because to tell the truth, most Creationists I've met have answered, "There is no number of links or any amount of proof that will convince me that evolution is real and a viable explanation for how we got here," and if that's the case, then there's absolutely no point in trying to convince you otherwise.
Which, incidentally, is why Bill Nye says that it's such a disservice to teach it to kids. Because science isn't about throwing up your hands and chalking explanations up to God or any other supernatural process, it's about seeking answers to questions you don't know the answer to. It's not about throwing away valuable knowledge when inconsistencies are discovered, it's about studying more and refining hypotheses, tweaking theories, to more accurately represent the laws of nature. It's not about forming an end conclusion that must be correct and then looking for evidence to support it, it's about taking what you know and forming rational conclusions about it, even if that is inconvenient to other things you "know" to be true. Creationism is antithetical to all of these goals, and thus has no place in any scientific discussion, including biology class.
Again, the Bible does not say this. If you're a strict interpretationist, as most people pushing Creationism are, then you not supposed to read too much into it. The purpose of the story seems pretty evident to me, to scare the hell--literally--out of kids so that they worship the appropriate god and don't question that authority.
I never took the pillar of salt thing to be a punishment for looking, but rather merely the consequence of looking. It would be as if the angels said, "Whatever you do, don't touch the hot stove with your hand or your hand will be burned." Lot's wife wasn't being punished. That's just what happens when you look directly into the wrath of God.
That's almost reasonable, but I still don't quite buy it. The angels could have warned them, "If you look back at the wrath of God, you'll be turned into salt and die, so this is really important." Or surely God could have done his thing without the nasty side effect of onlookers being turned into salt. It still strikes me a deliberately cruel and petty. Shoot, the angels struck the people who came to rape them the night before blind, why couldn't they have just temporarily blinded Lot and his family as they traveled out of town?
You're right about Job. As I re-read the Bible as an adult, I found a lot of stories in it that reflecting upon now older, had me thinking, "Damn, why would anyone want to follow this religion?" No wonder Christianity took off like it did, what with Jesus telling everyone, "Meh, that Old Testament stuff, don't worry about it so much. God is more like a caring dad, not an evil omnipotent twisted demon from hell who delights in torturing people." Much more palatable.
How do you know that? I don't see it explained in the Bible that way. We're not told what was going through her head, what she was thinking. Maybe it helps you rationalize it by thinking that she must have been internally celebrating past transgressions, clinging to a life of sin, but if you believe the Bible to be literally true, which is what folks who believe in creationism believe, this isn't some allegory or metaphor for embracing sin. We don't know what was going through her head. If the story were literally true, I'm sure the whole family would have been thinking about what they were leaving behind. We're talking about a woman whose only sin at that time that we know of was physically turning around. That's it. Not refusing to leave, not gathering up remembrances of her sinful past, not even so much as saying, "Gosh, I don't know about this, are you sure we have to pick up and leave everything we know behind?"
All we know--all the Bible tells us--is that she turned around and looked back at the city where she had probably spent her entire life, where her friends and family lived, burning to the ground and everything she knew being destroyed. I'm sorry, but it still seems remarkably petty and vindictive for God to punish her at all, especially by killing her like that.
Funny you should mention Sodom and the tone of the Bible, as having grown up firmly indoctrinated in the Christian church, the story of Lot and his wife were instrumental in me realizing that 1) a lot of it (no pun intended) is hooey, and 2) even if it's not, I don't want to follow this god.
For those who don't know, Lot and his wife were told to flee Sodom and Gamorrah before it was destroyed by God for being so wicked. They were told to not even look back at it by angels sent to help. On their way out, though, Lot's wife turned back and looked, and was instantly turned into a pillar of salt.
Obviously, the moral is not to screw around with God. If he tells you not to turn around and look at something, you'd better damn well not turn around and look or else the consequences could be severe. Practically speaking, though, I was never able to get past how insanely petty this was. This woman presumably had family and friends left in the city. There's presumably a lot of hoopla and chaos happening. Why did she turn around? Was it because she couldn't bear the thought of her family and friends suffering? Was it because she wanted to make sure that the rest of her family was going to make it out alive? Was it just a loud noise that caught her attention? Who knows? Maybe she thought the angels didn't literally mean don't look back, kind of like how even today we say, "I left my home and never looked back." In most cases you don't literally mean that you didn't turn around and catch one last glimpse of it, you just metaphorically mean that you moved on with your life.
At any rate, we have a woman who was probably just an average schmo, likely not particularly evil, else the angels wouldn't have bothered rescuing her. Her crime was taking one last glimpse of the family, friends, home, and life that she would never return to again. She was obviously a loyal follower of God, as she simply picked up and left based on the word of two strangers saying they were angels and her husband who, incidentally, offered two virgin daughters to the wicked men of Sodom intent on raping Lot's guests. So if you're keeping score, Lot offers up his two virgin daughters to be gang raped and gets to live a happy, productive life. Lot's wife commits the cardinal sin of turning around to see everything she knows destroyed by fire, and does she get any measure of sympathy or mercy? Oh hell no, she's killed (or worse, she wasn't and is eternally suffering, being forced to look back at the destroyed city) for something that anybody in their right mind should understand and would probably do.
Anyway, I empathize with Lot's wife, and like I said, this story made me realize that I don't want to follow a god that is so petty and vindictive that he would do such a heinous thing. If that means I'm going to hell, then so be it. Spending eternity slavishly following such a spiteful creature seems like just another definition of hell.
Yet here I am, thousands of years later, and people following this crap are teaching their kids to doubt science, that if the Bible is interpreted as A and science says B, you'd better go with A. After all, if God would punish an innocent woman by turning her into a pillar of salt, you don't want to fathom what he'd do to you if you believe in evolution. Bill Nye is right, teaching creationism to kids as anything other than a fanciful myth is crazy and a disservice to them, their community, and mankind as a whole.
You don't see Apple suing Amazon over the Kindle Fire, or Nokia over the Lumia.
...yet. Now that they've won against Samsung, if the verdict stands, do you honestly think they won't start going after other companies? Mark my words, if this verdict stands, Samsung was just the first and we can look forward to a whole new slew of "trade dress" and patent lawsuits.
In fact, I'll even go so far as to predict that if this verdict stands, Apple will have basically hung themselves. Now, every Tom, Dick, and Harry who has ever built anything will be looking to patent the crap out of it all because it's clearly not acceptable any more to have something that cosmetically looks and vaguely works like something else any more. And when Tom, Dick, and Harry go looking for people to sue because hey, that thing has a triangle on it and my thing has a triangle on it, so they owe me a kazillion dollars!, who do you think they're going to go after? The companies with the deepest pockets, of course.
As has been pointed out a lot in these threads, a lot of Apple's products look almost identical to products that came before. Sure, Apple has endured some lawsuits, but nothing on the order of what they've just put Samsung through, and most people--especially large corporations who want to coexist with them--were content to just leave them alone. Not any more, though. The "thermonuclear war" of patent lawsuits among the big players is now starting, and this is inevitably going to do as much harm, if not more, to Apple as it is going to everyone else.
Also, I have to point out that I honestly believe that we had a so-called "runaway juror" running things. In an interview, the jury foreman told the local newspaper that he owns a patent. If you look up that patent, it is for a TiVo-like device that he patented several years after the TiVo was released. With such a large verdict, this opens the door for him to sue over his patent and get a crapton of money from it. Why Samsung didn't strike him from the jury is beyond me, but I wasn't there so I don't know. Other potential jurors may have been worse. At any rate, he is on the record that he wanted to "send a message," "we wanted something more than a slap on the wrist." This is in spite of the judge's instruction that damages shouldn't be assessed to punish the defendant. Other jurors have said that they were influenced by this guy. "He owned patents himself... so he took us through his experience. After that it was easier." Yeah, I'll bet it was.
I hope for the sake of everyone--including Apple--that this verdict is overturned and overturned quickly. As someone who grew up geeky and who loves technology, it scares me and angers me that we have gotten to the point where "it kind of looks and works like an X, but with these features and innovations" is the standard by which billion dollar-plus awards are given for "copying." I can't think of any modern device that we enjoy that hasn't come about by iterative innovation by multiple people and companies.
I own some Samsung devices, and I didn't buy them because they were "copies" of iDevices. If I wanted an iDevice, I'd buy an iDevice. If you present any iDevice and any Samsung device in front of me, I will immediately be able to tell you which is which. If you hold them up fifteen feet away, it might take me a second, but I could still do it. If you turn the device on, I could probably tell you which is which from 20 or more feet away, even on phones with relatively tiny screens. To someone who's not as familiar with mobile technology, maybe they couldn't at a quick glance, but within a minute or two, I could show them enough that they'd be able to tell you what the differences are between them, including advantages and disadvantages of each device. No one is going into stores wanting an iDevice and walking out with a Galaxy Whatever.
To be honest, I don't understand why Microsoft doesn't just give away Windows for free as a loss leader. It sounds like they're headed toward selling software via the Microsoft store a la Apple's app store and Google Play, in which case they'll be getting a cut of all software sales. I can understand selling some kind of "business connectivity" package that contains the domain connectivity bits that companies require at a premium. They're even getting into the hardware retail business, as well as hammering hard on search (thus data mining and advertising), online services, console gaming, etc.
With their main operating system competitors a company that sells its OS as part of its hardware package (Apple) and a loose conglomerate developers that give away their operating system--and most of their productivity software--completely free (as in speech and beer), it just seems like it would be a smart move by Microsoft to completely embrace its alternative revenue streams and make a play to get legal copies of its core OS--and its connectivity to its software store where the real money is now--on every desktop, laptop, and tablet in the world. How many users, presented with the option of buying the MacOS upgrades for $20 or $25 a pop, would be mighty tempted to install Windows 8 on their Macs for free instead, especially if they know they won't have to pay for any more MacOS or Windows upgrades down the line? Microsoft could very well steal a chunk of market share from Apple on their own hardware.
The most frequent justification I see from Linux users (myself included) for using Linux is, "You never have to pay for upgrades to get the latest and greatest version again." Yeah, the free software is nice, but you can get free software (many times the exact same software--Firefox, LibreOffice, GIMP, Audacity, etc.) for Windows. Yeah, the principles behind open source are admirable--and make no mistake, I would continue to support them--but most average schmoes really couldn't care less that they can download and compile their own OS source code, and wouldn't have a clue how to go about it even if they did care.
From a purely business standpoint, I really think that giving Windows away for free is the best long-term strategy for Microsoft, and it would be perceived as a bold and welcome move by the industry as well as draw in a bunch more users who would then earn Microsoft money via software sales, advertising, and online services.
Nobody credible is trying to prevent anyone from worshiping the god of their choice. Plenty of people would love to prevent everyone from worshiping the god of your choice, depending on exactly which god that is.
You know that sinking feeling you get when you realize that your keys are in the car as you're closing the car door, but it's too late to stop the momentum of your arm to catch it? It's the same as that feeling I get when I click Submit and as the little spinner is spinning and the text is uploading, I realize, "Noooo!!! That's not what I meant!"
Please remember that when people talk about a "war" on religion, this is the kind of stuff they're referring to. Nobody credible is trying to prevent anyone from worshiping the god of your choice. However, there is a sizable contingent of religious people out there who think that religious "freedom" means the freedom for everyone to be Christian, and anything that interferes with that goal is (or should) violate the First Amendment.
I never cease to be frustrated at people who wave the Constitution around and cry about how our freedom is being oppressed when it suits their ideological viewpoint, but then they pull stuff like this without seeing how much worse a violation of our liberty it is.
Jefferson is still right. Separation of church and state, it's the only reasonable way to ensure our freedom. That includes keeping creationism in churches where it belongs and out of our schools.
I'd gladly give up any channels that don't want to be part of Google Fiber for the gigabit connectivity. In fact, today I watch almost all television via Hulu, which doesn't include those channels, even CBS, so I simply don't want CBS television shows. Their loss.
I'm really tired of these network playing games with providers. They already make a killing off of advertising, and now they want to make a killing off of subscription fees, while simultaneously pushing hard for exclusive broadcast contracts and whatnot to shut people out of alternative ways of getting programming. I say screw 'em. If they don't want me to watch their channels, I will happily oblige.
And I know this is going to sound a bit idealist, but Disney has become one of the most evil companies out there when it comes to content providers. Please don't indoctrinate your kids into becoming dependent on that company for entertainment, especially when there is so much other quality entertainment out there.
Meanwhile, hey Google, I can't move to Kansas City right now. Please expand the Google fiber offering into more markets!
She certainly does seem unhinged. I can't imagine that this won't end up being some sort of mistrial and tried again.
Her behavior through this whole trial has disgusted me. This stuff is really damn important. Why are the companies being so limited in the amount of time they can have witnesses on the stand? In such a case with such a long history and of such importance, shouldn't the jury be allowed to hear all evidence that is relevant that the two sides want to produce? I mean, I can understand not want to drag it out over six months, and if the lawyers started putting completely irrelevant witnesses on the stand just to try to filibuster the trial, I can understand her wanting to crack down on them. But this is ridiculous.
At this point, if I were a lawyer for either side, it would be awful hard to care which way this trial goes because it just seems obvious to me that whatever the jury decides is going to be pretty unimportant once this trial is overturned and the next one begins.
It really is starting to strongly sound to me like Judge Koh is more concerned with her own ego and power trip than in being an impartial judge conducting a fair trial.
You must have missed the "for free" part. Skype charges for calls to POTS lines, and Google Voice doesn't allow you to make outgoing calls directly from the tablet, though it will allow you to call a phone where you are and then dial from that phone out to your contacts.
You can argue that this might not be earth-shattering news, but it's not like what the article is about is something that is as intuitively obvious as you're trying to make it out to be.
No, I was responding to the claim that just because Samsung made some phones that looked iPhone-ish after the iPhone was introduced, they must have ripped off the iPhone.
However, I most certainly am saying that just because Samsung makes phones that look like iPhones, it doesn't mean that those phones are "copies" of the iPhone, and it most certainly doesn't mean that Samsung owes them anything. Like I said, companies go where the market pushes, and right now, the market is pushing to flat touchscreen devices. There shouldn't be, and I believe there isn't, anything illegal about that. If this case is won by Apple, I believe that it will be severely detrimental to innovation, and if you think the patent trolls are bad now, you ain't seen nothing yet.
...thus proving my point yet again. After the iPhone, Samsung continued making a lot of different types of devices, just like they always have. Have iPhone-like devices been popular? Sure, I won't deny that. Do a lot of their devices look vague iPhone-ish? Sure, because that's where consumers are driving the market. Most cars look pretty much the same today, too--and much different from what cars looked like in the 1970s. But that doesn't mean that Samsung started making all of their phones to be "iPhone rip-offs."
I disagree. What you're not seeing is the complete list of devices that Samsung released before and after the announcement of the iPhone. There were devices before the iPhone that looked iPhone-ish, but Apple isn't going to show you those. And there have been a lot of devices after the iPhone that don't look anything like an iPhone, but Apple isn't going to show you those either. The only thing that is certain is that Samsung has released a lot of different devices over the years, and some of them have looked iPhone-ish. Because Apple makes only one style of device, they naturally assume that Samsung must have ripped them off when, in fact, it's just not true.
Or put another way, imagine if I started a car company and decided that I wanted all of my cars to look exactly like a 2005 Nissan Altima because I'd decided that was the height of style and function. Then later, I sued Nissan for ripping off my design. In court, I put forth "evidence", slides showing various models of Nissans--the Sentra, the 200SX, maybe even some old Altimas that used a different design, then slides showing the 2006 Nissan Altima, 2007 Nissan Altima, 2008 Nissan Altima, etc. To a layperson, it would look very much like Nissan ripped off my design, when in fact at best, we came up with the designs independently (and at worst, Nissan could compellingly argue that I ripped off their design).
Unfortunately, Samsung won't be able to show the jury some of the evidence of this happening, as a result of Judge Koh's ruling earlier. I still hope they are able to win this case, because otherwise, whether you like or hate Apple, you can bet that there are going to be a lot more cases coming forward dealing with design patents. Every company out there is going to see "rip-offs" of their products and sue, no matter how incidental it is to the actual workings of the product.
It's also unfortunate, because if Apple wins, it's going to also severely limit companies' ability to innovate in the future. Until very, very recently, it wasn't unusual for companies to regularly take the best ideas from other companies and people, mix them up in new ways, improve on features that were weak, and release new products to advance the industry. Apple has benefited from this themselves: they didn't invent the GUI; they got the idea from another company, improved it, and drove GUI operating system technology forward while also making it popular. They didn't invent MP3 players; they took the best of what was out there, splashed their own design and software ideas on it, and completely revived their company.
But now, god forbid someone else uses some of their ideas--ideas that they got from other places--to try to push the technology forward even further. And if I were an Apple fan, that level of protectionism would greatly concern me. To me, it says clearly that Apple is afraid that Samsung can (and quite possibly is) out-Appling Apple when it comes to design and functionality.
I mean, let's be brutally honest. How many people are going to go in a store wanting an iPhone, get confused, and come out with a Galaxy instead? Nobody. I can almost guarantee you that no one has ever gotten home and thought, "Hey waaaait a minute... This isn't an iPhone!" I will admit that there are some slick features that the iPhone and Galaxy phones share that I really like, but when I got my Galaxy Nexus, it wasn't because it was an iPhone rip-off. If I wanted an iPhone, I would have bought an iPhone, I had one prior to the Galaxy Nexus. I deliberately bought an Android phone because of features such as widgets on my phone's home screens, the ability to use third-party software that isn't in the Google Play store, the bigger screen and an aspect ratio that I like better, etc.
Of course, there are rumors now that the next generation of iPhone will have a taller screen with a 16:9 aspect ratio. Does Apple cons
Creepy or not, it's not new. In the presidential election of 2004, I remember seeing a web site mentioned in an article where you could go and look up who gave how much to which campaigns for any address. I remember wondering how many people know that the information was so readily available. If anything, this will be a good thing in educating people how easy the information is to access.
That doesn't matter. The fact is that if someone approached me and paid a wad of cash for doing something, unless there were some really weird circumstances at work, I'd probably do my best to please them--or at least, to not piss them off--even if they paid me up front and there were "no strings attached." Plus, if you're the company performing this study, you'd have to consider the possibility that the Wikimedia Foundation might want more studies done in the future, if the results you come up with are beneficial to them.
I've seen this in politics and in corporate studies as well. If at first you don't get a result you agree with, kill the messenger and find someone else to do another study that gives you more favorable results. Bury the first ones and hype the one you like.
While I'm sure there are some organizations and/or corporations who genuinely want completely impartial results, and there are likewise some companies that generate only completely impartial results, I honestly think that it's the exception, not the rule. Any study should be considered extremely suspect that is directly funded by a company or organization it could benefit.
Can you produce multiple peer reviewed studies which show definitively a strong or even medium correlation between higher OVERALL murder/violence rates and assault weapons or even guns in general?.
I could, but I have been down this road too many times with the "guns shouldn't be restricted at all" nuts. I won't do any good, it's like arguing with a Creationist. You've already made up your mind based purely on dogma and it doesn't matter what evidence there is. I've been in arguments like this before, where I waste hours of my time digging through the research to produce to someone like you, just for it to be handwaved away with, "That doesn't count because [insert bogus made-up excuse here]." It wasn't conducted by the right people, or there's some lame reason it doesn't apply here, or that doesn't count because it was done during such-and-such a time period, or for whatever bullshit reason you can make up, I know the outcome: no study that contradicts your opinion would apply. You've already done it in the post above, I have no reason to think you won't do it again.
Been there, done that, don't feel like wasting my time yet again. I don't have anything to prove to you, I've seen the studies. Look them up your own damn self if you actually care (though I'm pretty sure you don't).
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If you're a player of the game, you might have run across me at some point. I'm TonyV, the creator of the Paragon Wiki web site and current owner and administrator of the Titan Network sites.
I'm really hoping that this won't be the end of the game. I've posted a message on the official forums here (and on the Titan Network forums here discussing what I'm intending to do. It might not work out, in which case four months down the line, we're not going to be any worse off than we are today. But if you're reading this here and don't browse the official forums very often, please drop by. As the game's continued existence will depend on a crowd funding effort, we really need you to stay plugged in over the next few months. I'll post regular updates on our Titan Network forums to let you know how it's going.
You are 100% correct. This guy is undoubtedly seeing dollar signs on his own patent, and if the jury had invalidated Apple's patents, I honestly believe that he thinks it would hurt his ability to monetize his own patent. It's very telling to me that he had an "aha" moment not about what the decision should be, but how to "explain" to other jurors why they should side with Apple. It seems to me that he had already made up his mind which way this trial must go, and he was just trying to figure out a way to convince the other jurors to go along with him.
The thing I'm wondering, though, is does that matter? I mean, once a jury has rendered a verdict, can you actually have it overturned because it's later found out that a juror has ulterior motives? Isn't that why the lawyers have an opportunity to strike jurors before the trial starts? And if so, why the hell didn't Samsung's lawyers ask the jury pool if anyone had any patents? It just seems to me that if I were Samsung, I'd want a jury that doesn't have any patent holders on it. Not that there's anything wrong with patent holders, but I would fear that any patent holder on the jury would be financially motivated to push for a system much more in favor of patents and would rule with Apple on the case to protect their own interests, which I'm convinced is what actually happened in this case.
IANAL though, so I can't answer these questions. Maybe someone else here who is a laywer can weigh in.
It most certainly has, and it's most certainly working. :(
The sad truth is that there is pretty much only one way: Make so much money so quickly that you build up a war chest capable of mutually assured destruction if someone sues you. Otherwise, your best bet is to get just big enough to be bought by a megacorp and hope that they give you the leeway to keep working on your project relatively unfettered.
Independent inventors/developers/designers/whatever simply don't have a chance in today's patent environment. Ironically, they are screwed by the very system that was originally set up to protect them.
The problem is that even evolution isn't proven. It's all speculation with a splash of BS. I believe evolution occurs but do I believe Humans came from a single celled organism. No. That is just stupid. If this was the case we would have more inbetween species that bridge the gaps.
So honest question, how many links will it take for you to accept that the theory of evolution is correct, that mankind did, in fact, evolve from single-celled organisms, and even simpler life forms before that? You don't have to give an exact number, though you're welcome to if you want. Just a ballpark figure would work fine so I can get an idea of what your standard of proof is. Because to tell the truth, most Creationists I've met have answered, "There is no number of links or any amount of proof that will convince me that evolution is real and a viable explanation for how we got here," and if that's the case, then there's absolutely no point in trying to convince you otherwise.
Which, incidentally, is why Bill Nye says that it's such a disservice to teach it to kids. Because science isn't about throwing up your hands and chalking explanations up to God or any other supernatural process, it's about seeking answers to questions you don't know the answer to. It's not about throwing away valuable knowledge when inconsistencies are discovered, it's about studying more and refining hypotheses, tweaking theories, to more accurately represent the laws of nature. It's not about forming an end conclusion that must be correct and then looking for evidence to support it, it's about taking what you know and forming rational conclusions about it, even if that is inconvenient to other things you "know" to be true. Creationism is antithetical to all of these goals, and thus has no place in any scientific discussion, including biology class.
Again, the Bible does not say this. If you're a strict interpretationist, as most people pushing Creationism are, then you not supposed to read too much into it. The purpose of the story seems pretty evident to me, to scare the hell--literally--out of kids so that they worship the appropriate god and don't question that authority.
I never took the pillar of salt thing to be a punishment for looking, but rather merely the consequence of looking. It would be as if the angels said, "Whatever you do, don't touch the hot stove with your hand or your hand will be burned." Lot's wife wasn't being punished. That's just what happens when you look directly into the wrath of God.
That's almost reasonable, but I still don't quite buy it. The angels could have warned them, "If you look back at the wrath of God, you'll be turned into salt and die, so this is really important." Or surely God could have done his thing without the nasty side effect of onlookers being turned into salt. It still strikes me a deliberately cruel and petty. Shoot, the angels struck the people who came to rape them the night before blind, why couldn't they have just temporarily blinded Lot and his family as they traveled out of town?
You're right about Job. As I re-read the Bible as an adult, I found a lot of stories in it that reflecting upon now older, had me thinking, "Damn, why would anyone want to follow this religion?" No wonder Christianity took off like it did, what with Jesus telling everyone, "Meh, that Old Testament stuff, don't worry about it so much. God is more like a caring dad, not an evil omnipotent twisted demon from hell who delights in torturing people." Much more palatable.
How do you know that? I don't see it explained in the Bible that way. We're not told what was going through her head, what she was thinking. Maybe it helps you rationalize it by thinking that she must have been internally celebrating past transgressions, clinging to a life of sin, but if you believe the Bible to be literally true, which is what folks who believe in creationism believe, this isn't some allegory or metaphor for embracing sin. We don't know what was going through her head. If the story were literally true, I'm sure the whole family would have been thinking about what they were leaving behind. We're talking about a woman whose only sin at that time that we know of was physically turning around. That's it. Not refusing to leave, not gathering up remembrances of her sinful past, not even so much as saying, "Gosh, I don't know about this, are you sure we have to pick up and leave everything we know behind?"
All we know--all the Bible tells us--is that she turned around and looked back at the city where she had probably spent her entire life, where her friends and family lived, burning to the ground and everything she knew being destroyed. I'm sorry, but it still seems remarkably petty and vindictive for God to punish her at all, especially by killing her like that.
Funny you should mention Sodom and the tone of the Bible, as having grown up firmly indoctrinated in the Christian church, the story of Lot and his wife were instrumental in me realizing that 1) a lot of it (no pun intended) is hooey, and 2) even if it's not, I don't want to follow this god.
For those who don't know, Lot and his wife were told to flee Sodom and Gamorrah before it was destroyed by God for being so wicked. They were told to not even look back at it by angels sent to help. On their way out, though, Lot's wife turned back and looked, and was instantly turned into a pillar of salt.
Obviously, the moral is not to screw around with God. If he tells you not to turn around and look at something, you'd better damn well not turn around and look or else the consequences could be severe. Practically speaking, though, I was never able to get past how insanely petty this was. This woman presumably had family and friends left in the city. There's presumably a lot of hoopla and chaos happening. Why did she turn around? Was it because she couldn't bear the thought of her family and friends suffering? Was it because she wanted to make sure that the rest of her family was going to make it out alive? Was it just a loud noise that caught her attention? Who knows? Maybe she thought the angels didn't literally mean don't look back, kind of like how even today we say, "I left my home and never looked back." In most cases you don't literally mean that you didn't turn around and catch one last glimpse of it, you just metaphorically mean that you moved on with your life.
At any rate, we have a woman who was probably just an average schmo, likely not particularly evil, else the angels wouldn't have bothered rescuing her. Her crime was taking one last glimpse of the family, friends, home, and life that she would never return to again. She was obviously a loyal follower of God, as she simply picked up and left based on the word of two strangers saying they were angels and her husband who, incidentally, offered two virgin daughters to the wicked men of Sodom intent on raping Lot's guests. So if you're keeping score, Lot offers up his two virgin daughters to be gang raped and gets to live a happy, productive life. Lot's wife commits the cardinal sin of turning around to see everything she knows destroyed by fire, and does she get any measure of sympathy or mercy? Oh hell no, she's killed (or worse, she wasn't and is eternally suffering, being forced to look back at the destroyed city) for something that anybody in their right mind should understand and would probably do.
Anyway, I empathize with Lot's wife, and like I said, this story made me realize that I don't want to follow a god that is so petty and vindictive that he would do such a heinous thing. If that means I'm going to hell, then so be it. Spending eternity slavishly following such a spiteful creature seems like just another definition of hell.
Yet here I am, thousands of years later, and people following this crap are teaching their kids to doubt science, that if the Bible is interpreted as A and science says B, you'd better go with A. After all, if God would punish an innocent woman by turning her into a pillar of salt, you don't want to fathom what he'd do to you if you believe in evolution. Bill Nye is right, teaching creationism to kids as anything other than a fanciful myth is crazy and a disservice to them, their community, and mankind as a whole.
You don't see Apple suing Amazon over the Kindle Fire, or Nokia over the Lumia.
...yet. Now that they've won against Samsung, if the verdict stands, do you honestly think they won't start going after other companies? Mark my words, if this verdict stands, Samsung was just the first and we can look forward to a whole new slew of "trade dress" and patent lawsuits.
In fact, I'll even go so far as to predict that if this verdict stands, Apple will have basically hung themselves. Now, every Tom, Dick, and Harry who has ever built anything will be looking to patent the crap out of it all because it's clearly not acceptable any more to have something that cosmetically looks and vaguely works like something else any more. And when Tom, Dick, and Harry go looking for people to sue because hey, that thing has a triangle on it and my thing has a triangle on it, so they owe me a kazillion dollars!, who do you think they're going to go after? The companies with the deepest pockets, of course.
As has been pointed out a lot in these threads, a lot of Apple's products look almost identical to products that came before. Sure, Apple has endured some lawsuits, but nothing on the order of what they've just put Samsung through, and most people--especially large corporations who want to coexist with them--were content to just leave them alone. Not any more, though. The "thermonuclear war" of patent lawsuits among the big players is now starting, and this is inevitably going to do as much harm, if not more, to Apple as it is going to everyone else.
Also, I have to point out that I honestly believe that we had a so-called "runaway juror" running things. In an interview, the jury foreman told the local newspaper that he owns a patent. If you look up that patent, it is for a TiVo-like device that he patented several years after the TiVo was released. With such a large verdict, this opens the door for him to sue over his patent and get a crapton of money from it. Why Samsung didn't strike him from the jury is beyond me, but I wasn't there so I don't know. Other potential jurors may have been worse. At any rate, he is on the record that he wanted to "send a message," "we wanted something more than a slap on the wrist." This is in spite of the judge's instruction that damages shouldn't be assessed to punish the defendant. Other jurors have said that they were influenced by this guy. "He owned patents himself... so he took us through his experience. After that it was easier." Yeah, I'll bet it was.
I hope for the sake of everyone--including Apple--that this verdict is overturned and overturned quickly. As someone who grew up geeky and who loves technology, it scares me and angers me that we have gotten to the point where "it kind of looks and works like an X, but with these features and innovations" is the standard by which billion dollar-plus awards are given for "copying." I can't think of any modern device that we enjoy that hasn't come about by iterative innovation by multiple people and companies.
I own some Samsung devices, and I didn't buy them because they were "copies" of iDevices. If I wanted an iDevice, I'd buy an iDevice. If you present any iDevice and any Samsung device in front of me, I will immediately be able to tell you which is which. If you hold them up fifteen feet away, it might take me a second, but I could still do it. If you turn the device on, I could probably tell you which is which from 20 or more feet away, even on phones with relatively tiny screens. To someone who's not as familiar with mobile technology, maybe they couldn't at a quick glance, but within a minute or two, I could show them enough that they'd be able to tell you what the differences are between them, including advantages and disadvantages of each device. No one is going into stores wanting an iDevice and walking out with a Galaxy Whatever.
To be honest, I don't understand why Microsoft doesn't just give away Windows for free as a loss leader. It sounds like they're headed toward selling software via the Microsoft store a la Apple's app store and Google Play, in which case they'll be getting a cut of all software sales. I can understand selling some kind of "business connectivity" package that contains the domain connectivity bits that companies require at a premium. They're even getting into the hardware retail business, as well as hammering hard on search (thus data mining and advertising), online services, console gaming, etc.
With their main operating system competitors a company that sells its OS as part of its hardware package (Apple) and a loose conglomerate developers that give away their operating system--and most of their productivity software--completely free (as in speech and beer), it just seems like it would be a smart move by Microsoft to completely embrace its alternative revenue streams and make a play to get legal copies of its core OS--and its connectivity to its software store where the real money is now--on every desktop, laptop, and tablet in the world. How many users, presented with the option of buying the MacOS upgrades for $20 or $25 a pop, would be mighty tempted to install Windows 8 on their Macs for free instead, especially if they know they won't have to pay for any more MacOS or Windows upgrades down the line? Microsoft could very well steal a chunk of market share from Apple on their own hardware.
The most frequent justification I see from Linux users (myself included) for using Linux is, "You never have to pay for upgrades to get the latest and greatest version again." Yeah, the free software is nice, but you can get free software (many times the exact same software--Firefox, LibreOffice, GIMP, Audacity, etc.) for Windows. Yeah, the principles behind open source are admirable--and make no mistake, I would continue to support them--but most average schmoes really couldn't care less that they can download and compile their own OS source code, and wouldn't have a clue how to go about it even if they did care.
From a purely business standpoint, I really think that giving Windows away for free is the best long-term strategy for Microsoft, and it would be perceived as a bold and welcome move by the industry as well as draw in a bunch more users who would then earn Microsoft money via software sales, advertising, and online services.
Nobody credible is trying to prevent anyone from worshiping the god of their choice. Plenty of people would love to prevent everyone from worshiping the god of your choice, depending on exactly which god that is.
You know that sinking feeling you get when you realize that your keys are in the car as you're closing the car door, but it's too late to stop the momentum of your arm to catch it? It's the same as that feeling I get when I click Submit and as the little spinner is spinning and the text is uploading, I realize, "Noooo!!! That's not what I meant!"
Please remember that when people talk about a "war" on religion, this is the kind of stuff they're referring to. Nobody credible is trying to prevent anyone from worshiping the god of your choice. However, there is a sizable contingent of religious people out there who think that religious "freedom" means the freedom for everyone to be Christian, and anything that interferes with that goal is (or should) violate the First Amendment.
I never cease to be frustrated at people who wave the Constitution around and cry about how our freedom is being oppressed when it suits their ideological viewpoint, but then they pull stuff like this without seeing how much worse a violation of our liberty it is.
Jefferson is still right. Separation of church and state, it's the only reasonable way to ensure our freedom. That includes keeping creationism in churches where it belongs and out of our schools.
I'd gladly give up any channels that don't want to be part of Google Fiber for the gigabit connectivity. In fact, today I watch almost all television via Hulu, which doesn't include those channels, even CBS, so I simply don't want CBS television shows. Their loss.
I'm really tired of these network playing games with providers. They already make a killing off of advertising, and now they want to make a killing off of subscription fees, while simultaneously pushing hard for exclusive broadcast contracts and whatnot to shut people out of alternative ways of getting programming. I say screw 'em. If they don't want me to watch their channels, I will happily oblige.
And I know this is going to sound a bit idealist, but Disney has become one of the most evil companies out there when it comes to content providers. Please don't indoctrinate your kids into becoming dependent on that company for entertainment, especially when there is so much other quality entertainment out there.
Meanwhile, hey Google, I can't move to Kansas City right now. Please expand the Google fiber offering into more markets!
She certainly does seem unhinged. I can't imagine that this won't end up being some sort of mistrial and tried again.
Her behavior through this whole trial has disgusted me. This stuff is really damn important. Why are the companies being so limited in the amount of time they can have witnesses on the stand? In such a case with such a long history and of such importance, shouldn't the jury be allowed to hear all evidence that is relevant that the two sides want to produce? I mean, I can understand not want to drag it out over six months, and if the lawyers started putting completely irrelevant witnesses on the stand just to try to filibuster the trial, I can understand her wanting to crack down on them. But this is ridiculous.
At this point, if I were a lawyer for either side, it would be awful hard to care which way this trial goes because it just seems obvious to me that whatever the jury decides is going to be pretty unimportant once this trial is overturned and the next one begins.
It really is starting to strongly sound to me like Judge Koh is more concerned with her own ego and power trip than in being an impartial judge conducting a fair trial.
You must have missed the "for free" part. Skype charges for calls to POTS lines, and Google Voice doesn't allow you to make outgoing calls directly from the tablet, though it will allow you to call a phone where you are and then dial from that phone out to your contacts.
You can argue that this might not be earth-shattering news, but it's not like what the article is about is something that is as intuitively obvious as you're trying to make it out to be.
No, I was responding to the claim that just because Samsung made some phones that looked iPhone-ish after the iPhone was introduced, they must have ripped off the iPhone.
However, I most certainly am saying that just because Samsung makes phones that look like iPhones, it doesn't mean that those phones are "copies" of the iPhone, and it most certainly doesn't mean that Samsung owes them anything. Like I said, companies go where the market pushes, and right now, the market is pushing to flat touchscreen devices. There shouldn't be, and I believe there isn't, anything illegal about that. If this case is won by Apple, I believe that it will be severely detrimental to innovation, and if you think the patent trolls are bad now, you ain't seen nothing yet.
...thus proving my point yet again. After the iPhone, Samsung continued making a lot of different types of devices, just like they always have. Have iPhone-like devices been popular? Sure, I won't deny that. Do a lot of their devices look vague iPhone-ish? Sure, because that's where consumers are driving the market. Most cars look pretty much the same today, too--and much different from what cars looked like in the 1970s. But that doesn't mean that Samsung started making all of their phones to be "iPhone rip-offs."
Exhibit A
...and so on.
Exhibit B
Exhibit C
Exhibit D
Exhibit E
Of course, Apple won't include those in their pictures.
I disagree. What you're not seeing is the complete list of devices that Samsung released before and after the announcement of the iPhone. There were devices before the iPhone that looked iPhone-ish, but Apple isn't going to show you those. And there have been a lot of devices after the iPhone that don't look anything like an iPhone, but Apple isn't going to show you those either. The only thing that is certain is that Samsung has released a lot of different devices over the years, and some of them have looked iPhone-ish. Because Apple makes only one style of device, they naturally assume that Samsung must have ripped them off when, in fact, it's just not true.
Or put another way, imagine if I started a car company and decided that I wanted all of my cars to look exactly like a 2005 Nissan Altima because I'd decided that was the height of style and function. Then later, I sued Nissan for ripping off my design. In court, I put forth "evidence", slides showing various models of Nissans--the Sentra, the 200SX, maybe even some old Altimas that used a different design, then slides showing the 2006 Nissan Altima, 2007 Nissan Altima, 2008 Nissan Altima, etc. To a layperson, it would look very much like Nissan ripped off my design, when in fact at best, we came up with the designs independently (and at worst, Nissan could compellingly argue that I ripped off their design).
Unfortunately, Samsung won't be able to show the jury some of the evidence of this happening, as a result of Judge Koh's ruling earlier. I still hope they are able to win this case, because otherwise, whether you like or hate Apple, you can bet that there are going to be a lot more cases coming forward dealing with design patents. Every company out there is going to see "rip-offs" of their products and sue, no matter how incidental it is to the actual workings of the product.
It's also unfortunate, because if Apple wins, it's going to also severely limit companies' ability to innovate in the future. Until very, very recently, it wasn't unusual for companies to regularly take the best ideas from other companies and people, mix them up in new ways, improve on features that were weak, and release new products to advance the industry. Apple has benefited from this themselves: they didn't invent the GUI; they got the idea from another company, improved it, and drove GUI operating system technology forward while also making it popular. They didn't invent MP3 players; they took the best of what was out there, splashed their own design and software ideas on it, and completely revived their company.
But now, god forbid someone else uses some of their ideas--ideas that they got from other places--to try to push the technology forward even further. And if I were an Apple fan, that level of protectionism would greatly concern me. To me, it says clearly that Apple is afraid that Samsung can (and quite possibly is) out-Appling Apple when it comes to design and functionality.
I mean, let's be brutally honest. How many people are going to go in a store wanting an iPhone, get confused, and come out with a Galaxy instead? Nobody. I can almost guarantee you that no one has ever gotten home and thought, "Hey waaaait a minute... This isn't an iPhone!" I will admit that there are some slick features that the iPhone and Galaxy phones share that I really like, but when I got my Galaxy Nexus, it wasn't because it was an iPhone rip-off. If I wanted an iPhone, I would have bought an iPhone, I had one prior to the Galaxy Nexus. I deliberately bought an Android phone because of features such as widgets on my phone's home screens, the ability to use third-party software that isn't in the Google Play store, the bigger screen and an aspect ratio that I like better, etc.
Of course, there are rumors now that the next generation of iPhone will have a taller screen with a 16:9 aspect ratio. Does Apple cons
It's good to be the king^H^H^H^HU.S. Government!
And since I'm on Verizon and they now need to remove the $20 per month tethering charge I will be tethering everything.
Removing the tethering charge does not apply to people on unlimited data plans. It's either/or. Either you get on one of their bandwidth-cap plans and have free tethering, or you continue to pay the fee for tethering. I'm not passing judgment on whether that's fair or not, just pointing it out.
Creepy or not, it's not new. In the presidential election of 2004, I remember seeing a web site mentioned in an article where you could go and look up who gave how much to which campaigns for any address. I remember wondering how many people know that the information was so readily available. If anything, this will be a good thing in educating people how easy the information is to access.
It took me a minute, but yeah, I literally laughed out loud. A little awkward since I'm at work, but it was worth it.
That doesn't matter. The fact is that if someone approached me and paid a wad of cash for doing something, unless there were some really weird circumstances at work, I'd probably do my best to please them--or at least, to not piss them off--even if they paid me up front and there were "no strings attached." Plus, if you're the company performing this study, you'd have to consider the possibility that the Wikimedia Foundation might want more studies done in the future, if the results you come up with are beneficial to them.
I've seen this in politics and in corporate studies as well. If at first you don't get a result you agree with, kill the messenger and find someone else to do another study that gives you more favorable results. Bury the first ones and hype the one you like.
While I'm sure there are some organizations and/or corporations who genuinely want completely impartial results, and there are likewise some companies that generate only completely impartial results, I honestly think that it's the exception, not the rule. Any study should be considered extremely suspect that is directly funded by a company or organization it could benefit.
Can you produce multiple peer reviewed studies which show definitively a strong or even medium correlation between higher OVERALL murder/violence rates and assault weapons or even guns in general?.
I could, but I have been down this road too many times with the "guns shouldn't be restricted at all" nuts. I won't do any good, it's like arguing with a Creationist. You've already made up your mind based purely on dogma and it doesn't matter what evidence there is. I've been in arguments like this before, where I waste hours of my time digging through the research to produce to someone like you, just for it to be handwaved away with, "That doesn't count because [insert bogus made-up excuse here]." It wasn't conducted by the right people, or there's some lame reason it doesn't apply here, or that doesn't count because it was done during such-and-such a time period, or for whatever bullshit reason you can make up, I know the outcome: no study that contradicts your opinion would apply. You've already done it in the post above, I have no reason to think you won't do it again.
Been there, done that, don't feel like wasting my time yet again. I don't have anything to prove to you, I've seen the studies. Look them up your own damn self if you actually care (though I'm pretty sure you don't).