there's a long history of discrimination that has been held as improper ("Irish need not apply" help wanted signs, real estate deeds preventing sale to Jews, "Whites Only" lunch counters, etc.) But that is exactly the difference I pointed out. I'll agree that wanton discrimination is a different matter. But there's still a difference between explicitly designing your building so that wheelchair users can't enter, or building a flight of stairs there because that's what is most appropriate for that location.
One part, I'm just pissed at the language-abuse these lobby groups intentionally commit. A "barrier" is something erected specifically as a means to stop or hinder someone. And that simply isn't the case in most cases.
And the thing with the web is a bit trickier still. Contrary to a building, I have limited control over what exactly the client accessing my site turns it into. HTML tags are suggestions to the browser, but it can ignore or modify them any way it wants. That includes accessibility. Good software made computers useable to the disabled long before we had laws mandating it.
plus accessible code is better code - it's STANDARDS BASED. Mostly, yes.
However, not everything translates 100% and easy. For example, my game uses graphical maps. The only way to see which direction neighbouring areas are, is by looking at the map. A bit of additional info is also available that way. Translating that for, say, a blind player, is non-trivial.
Honestly (and I know I'm gonna be modded down for this, but let's face it, half of us think this and don't dare say it) I hate these kinds of laws and court cases.
So you have a disability. Sorry for you. Why, exactly, is this my problem? If I want my shop to be accessible (or, in my case, my online game), then I'll invest whatever amount of time and effort it's worth to me. If I don't, then you can shop somewhere else.
Regulations like these are ok when it comes to essential and public services, such as public transport or administration buildings (where, after all, you have to go personally to collect your new passport, file your papers, or whatever).
Zero support from me for regulations of this kind on private business. Even though the lobby of disabled organisations (most of whom, interestingly, are not disabled themselves, figure that) tries to create the impression, this has nothing whatsoever to do with "erecting barriers". Sorry, those four steps on the entrance of my 14th century building aren't something I put there with the purpose of keeping wheelchair users out, you know? They just happened to be there and have been there since before the wheelchair was invented (17th century, btw).
Same with my website. If your browser can't display my website in a way that makes it easy for you to use it, that isn't my fault. It's not as if I'd be writing it specifically in-accessible for you. If you can't read my page, then again, you are free to go somewhere else, there's a couple billion other pages online. And again, if you have a specific problem, you can mail me and maybe I care and change (note: "change", not "fix", it wasn't broken!) the site for you. Actually, I do care and I probably will, if you can tell me or I can find out easily what exactly needs changed. But I very much dislike being told that I have to do it.
Yes, it does consume too much time. I don't have the time to read your sources or dig out mine, and I'd certainly enjoy doing this the whole nine yards, but I simply can't afford it - time-wise. Sorry for that.
And on the other hand, I don't think you're a bad person. I do think you caught something, like people catch a cold sometimes. But we both know there are people out there with much more aggressive views on theism.
Damn, got me there. Even though I should point out that the first 3 entries are about a band, a city and a job page and - you'll love this one - the fourth is the amazon page for Dawkins' book...:-)
That would be true if I claimed that. I claim that there's a book that explains all about how there's only one god and that it provides the stuff I and everyone else needs to know about him.
That's a more complicated way to say it, but not less arrogant. The claim is still that you (or your faith) is right, and everyone else (both currently alive and throughout history) is wrong. And that claim is not based on externally falsifiable fact (falsifiability, not verifiability is the important thing), but on the source of the faith itself. In simplified terms: The faith is true because the faith claims it is true.
That is a self-reinforcing belief system. Quite a well-designed and/or well-evolved one, I can't hide a certain kind of morbid admiration. For example, labeling everything that offers solid proof you are wrong as a "test of faith" is a stroke of genius.
there's nothing sicker then to go around trying to rob people of their hope, just so you can feel smart.
I'm very serious here: I don't do this shit to feel smart. There's lots of other things that give me that feeling in a better way (hey, I am smart, after all).
My opposition to religion is based on two other convictions: One, I believe it is harmful (I've already explained several reasons why) and two I believe people in general would be much better off if they'd stop living in a fantasy world and started properly appreciating the real world. For example: Protecting the environment because you should treasure "god's creation" is all nice and fluffy, but it doesn't have the same sense of urgency as protecting the environment because it's the only damn planet we have right now and there is nobody there to protect us if it goes down the drain.
Whether that hope is true or false, it's more then what you have.
You confuse atheism with nihilism, and that's totally not the same. I marvel at the universe, at the complexity and beauty of all of it from quantum physics to galactic clusters. I have hope - in human intelligence and if that fails I'm fairly sure evolution will bring about another intelligent species. Also, chances are there are other civilizations somewhere in the universe, probably too far away that we'll ever contact them, but then again, who knows?
Except if it's my faith, and I know what it involves.
You certainly cherry-pick what it involves. And as I said before, that's quite typical as far as denial goes. Now for your mormons example, yes and no. The point I was making was, simply, that without christianity, there would be no mormons. Now you can claim that they've evolved away from the core christian faith, but you can't point to mormons that evolved independent of christianity, can you? So there is a link. The discussion is merely whether it's causal, historical or inclusive. The same is true of everything else I mentioned. Sure christians today denounce the crusades (well, most do). Nevertheless, the crusades are unthinkable without christianity. If you re-write the history books and try to keep the crusades in while removing christianity, you will have to do a lot of creative editing.
And that's what I am critising: Your faith is the breeding ground of destruction, mayhem, abuses, fundamentalism and an almost unlimited list of other evils. How can you absolve yourself of all of them by simply saying "oops, didn't mean that" ?
I'm sick, am I? Are your beliefs the cure? How long before you start "treating" people like me?
Yes, you are sick, mentally. No, my beliefs are not a cure. You think this is about switching from one belief system to another, like converting from catholicism to islam. It isn't. It's about thinking about belief systems, i.e. advancing to the meta level. Call me arrogant, I probably am. Then again, there just happens to be a strong correlation between intelligence and religious belief (and not in the direction you'd pr
I sooo hope it happens. That kind of completely over-the-top, ridiculous consequences is exactly what some people in charge need to realize that patent reform is long overdue.
If your Google method of proof holds true, then God certainly exists. Google "God certainly exists". 2.3 Million search results can't be wrong. Can they? That wasn't intended as proof, and I made that clear. It was intended as a starting point, and I didn't say "first page", I said "first few pages". You should look at bit further then #10 and you'll find quite a few articles and journals.
But, since it's fun, two can play that game. "god fiction" yields 16.5 mio. hits. QED.:-)
Can you not see the arrogence when you write this? Sure I can. Can you see the arrogance in the claim that there is only one god and you know all about him?
The very concept of their being a god puts that being significantly above you in terms of morality and intelligence. But, according to your holy book, I was made "in his image". So he can't be that different. Maybe he's got a 500 IQ and no moral faults, but he's not entirely alien - or so you claim.
Also, he's deeply insecure, according to your holy book. I don't need the assurance that people would sacrifice their sons for me, for example.
So in sum, I figure it'll be interesting to meet the dude, but since the chances are roughly the same of that happening and the High Emperor of the Andromeda galaxy landing in my back yards tomorrow, I'm not breaking a sweat over it.
[Jesus Camp] Nice try to avoid the bullet, but like Neo you just aren't quick enough. Sure there are other crazy things. Nevertheless, there can be no "Jesus Camp" without Jesus. The fact that, say, "Mickey Mouse Camp" exists as well doesn't invalidate that fact.
And again, the "misguided" and "fringe" argument. Funny how everything that's dislikeable is always "misguided", "extremist", "fringe", etc. - and still, without the basic christian faith, there would be no "misguided fringe christian faith". You, my friend, are part of the necessary soil from which these "fringes" grow. Religious fundamentalism requires first of all, religion.
Look, the problem here is that your belief system tells you I'm a blind idiot before I even begin typing, Actually, no. I believe you have caught a disease. You are ill, not stupid. Just like other mental patients, many of whom are quite smart, take autists, for example.
I know that the Christians around me have had a positive impact on the world. But now your own argument from above bites you in the behind. Up there, you claimed that "Jesus Camp" is just the work of some evil people, and if it weren't for Jesus, they'd use something else instead. Now, down here, all the good the good people do is suddenly because of their faith.
You can't have it both ways, sorry. Either both good and evil of your faith is because of your faith, or neither is. Anything else is a claim that requires solid proof.
Jesus Camp? Well, that's YOUR country. People seem generally crazier over there. Actually, I'm not from the US. And I'm glad that I'm not, because you are right that people are crazy over there.
For most of these, deleting the article is not a solution but a hack.
Indexing and searching can be solved easily by several methods. Searching can use page-rank or similar algorithms to automatically detect "notability", within Wikipedia. Or instead of deleting articles, they could be "demoted" to some "non-notable" status, where they show last in search results and not at all in lists and timelines.
I do agree for the most part with the "small and uninformative articles" thing, but that's not what this discussion was about. The BattleMaster article, for example, was about 2 pages long and had plenty of information added by more than a dozen people over the course of about a year.
I also agree on verification troubles. However, again this wasn't the topic (and at least my example was easy to verify, just follow a link or two, they were in the article) and again it's a weak solution. Indicating "not yet verified" would be much better, for example it would allow people who know the field to simply add a few links to sources.
Legitimate and well written articles are constantly deleted or merged because they're "not notable" or they're fancruft. I absolutely agree on that. Full disclosure: The reason I found out about it all was because the entry for my game (see.sig) was deleted after a year or so, for "not notable".
I've read all the policies and rules, and I still don't get why they even have that rule. In a paper book, you have limited pages and all, ok. But Wikipedia should have enough storage, that can't really be the problem. What's wrong with having something around that only a few thousand people are interested in? It's not as if it would get in the way of the rest, is it? And when something more notable with the same name shows up, you can do a disambiguation page, or simply move the less well-known thing away and put a one liner of the "this is about X, if you are looking for the Y look _here_" kind.
And I think this is a major problem, because people put work into many of those pages that get deleted, and they just might decide that it's not worth doing that again for other pages. Many of the authors on Wikipedia put their time there exactly because it's a medium where they can share their knowledge. A Wiki should encourage that, not tell them to stuff it.
And thus you give away your own self-reinforcing belief system. Because you believe God to be ficticious, religion has no worth.
Actually, no.
One, it isn't a self-reinforcing belief system. My assumption that god (and let's ignore the tricky question of which god) doesn't exist does not result from the conviction that religion has no worth, but from a look at the world, the claims made by religion, and the simple fact that they don't align.
My conviction about the worth of religion, again, is not a result of god being a fiction. Even with that major problem, religion could still be worthwhile, if it were a good thing. For example, if it would cause people to be more gentle with each other, more caring, or other positive contributions to society. As it is, those contributions are far outweight by the damages done by religion, from the crusades and witch hunts to modern day fundamentalist terrorism, not to mention the massive burden religious special treatment puts on society (example: The catholic church is one of the largest land owners in my country, and pays virtually no taxes).
Finally, I do not believe religion has no worth. I do believe religion has negative worth. That's a difference. If I would believe it has no worth, I wouldn't care one way or the other.
I've read enough of the bible to know it's horribly written and a lot of it would be viewed as, let's say "problematic" by our society today if it weren't protected by irrational respect for religion. I've not read it all, because to be honest it's a piece of shit as far as literature goes, and there are a lot of better books to spend my time on. However, I've read quite a bit of stuff about the bible, including many interesting facts about just how much of it can be considered true, and what kind of definition of "true" you have to use in order for it being so.
but this is NOT an accurate representation of Christianity or it's beliefs.
And that's the funny thing. Christians always claim that about every negative aspect of their faith. And really, it's a cop-out. Can you imagine "Jesus Camp" without Jesus? No? Then "Jesus Camp" is a part of your faith. Probably a part you don't like, but it's there, because it can't be a part of something else. Certainly not, say, ancient greek religion, or Buddhism. If you run "select * from features group by faith" then "Jesus Camp" will show up in the "christianity" group.
Atheism teaches there's oblivion.
No, atheism teaches that there is no god. A-theism - the "a" being greek for "not" and "theos" being greek for "god". Most, but not all, atheists include all supernatural phenomena in the category of fiction.
Atheism certainly rejects your average afterlife, which funnily enough, always seems to be a "members only" feature of its specific religion. That alone should tell you it's a scam.
Personally, I don't like just going away, but so far any and all evidence points to exactly that being the case. Then again, when I think of the atrocities that people commit because they believe in an afterlife, I tend to think oblivion as a perspective would be better. It's not as good as heaven, but it's better than hell, and it sure will reduce the number of suicide bombers quite a lot. You know, it just might make people treasure the life they have more.
You're saying religion is wrong, primarily, [...], because you don't like the idea it could be right.
For christianity to be right, we would have to be living in an odd world indeed. And even if it is right, there are still so many variants that you can't be sure just which one is really right. But heck, I'm not afraid, if your god has any brains at all, he'll welcome free thinking over sheep mentality, and if he doesn't then I don't want anything to do with him anyways.
But the most important points are two: One: What are the chances? As I see it, the
But--and this is one of the problems I see with the approach of most atheists when dealing with theists--you will never gain any traction with people with any real belief in God when citing someone like Richard Dawkins True, that's a problem. If you see a name and know what you should think, instead of looking at the actual argument in question.;-)
Telling people point-blank that one of their most fundamental beliefs is a delusion is really no way to make converts. In all seriousness, I'm not into the converting business. I do honestly believe anyone who is religious needs treatment for a mental condition. Unless you think that a doctor "converts" you to health, you'll have to agree that "conversion" isn't the proper term.
As usual, statistics tell what you want them to tell.
For example, "new user creation is down 30%" means that the number of users is still increasing, but the rate of increase is less. Which also means the rate of the rate of increase is now negative. Hey, how's that for a headline?:-)
Richard Dawkins is far from being anything like an intellegent source on issues of religion or child psychology. He merely happens to be a good scientist who has sources and citations for every claim both inside and outside his personal field of expertise. And yes, I would listen to a sysadmin about medical issues if he can back up his claims with sources.
The example you cite is child abuse - by a person. Not by God, or by the beliefs of any religion, or by the majority of people who believe them and teach them to their kids. Of course it isn't child abuse by god, a fiction can't abuse children. But you can abuse children with fiction, and the image of hell and sinners being tormented there for eternity is straight from mainstream christianity, it's not unusual or extreme. It does have a massive effect on children and other easily impressable people. And it is precisely a horror image because it contains the usual horror elements: There's nothing you can do about it, it is at or beyond the limit of your imagination of bad, it can happen to someone you know and love, even to yourself, and it is something (pain) that you can relate well to.
I'm not speaking merely from book-knowledge. I have had the dubious pleasure of first-hand experience with children who had the bible hammered into them, all nastiness included. I have seen 14 year olds who were completely fucked up emotionally. I doubt a rape would have left them any worse. These kids were done and over with, if I had been in a position of authority I would've asked that they be given psychological treatment and support.
And that are not isolated examples. There was a movie in the cinemas some months back, I think the title was "Jesus Camp". Have you seen it? If you have, I am sure you will agree with me that the only proper term for what happens in those camps is "brainwashing". And the problem is religious because those responsible actually believe they are doing a good thing - because they are religious themselves. That's what I mean by "self-reinforcing belief system". Your faith is good because your faith says that it is good.
And that's exactly what makes religion a mental illness, because those work by the same principle.
You make a very invalid comparison there. Religion isn't one "fact" (aka belief), it is a self-reinforcing set of beliefs with harmful side-effects and, interestingly, actual resemblances of mental disturbance (I have the sources somewhere, but I'm too lazy to dig them out. Google yourself).
Punching your daughter in the mouth or burning your son with cigarette butts is child abuse. Raising them in the religious tradition you believe is necessary for them to enjoy a happy life (and afterward) is not. Richard Dawkins makes a very good argument against this often-used one in his book "The God Delusion". Fact of the matter is that quite a few recorded cases of people who were both indoctrinated religiously and sexually abused recall the religious stuff as the worse part. One example he cites (with source, look it up in the book if you care) is about a women who was abused by the same priest who told her that her best friend who had just died would go to hell because she was in the wrong church. To a 6 year old, sexual abuse is icky and definitely not something she wants again, but it was the image of her best friend burning in hell that gave her nightmares.
These companies, or their representatives, are welcome to offer Dell, et al, deals for loading their OS in place of Windows. I don't get personal often on/. but with all due respect, are you really such a complete moron that you don't get it? No company offering a PC operating system has any chance of survival. They won't even get the venture capital to get going. Thanks to the exclusive OEM deals that MS has made all around, there is simply no way you will ever get enough market share to recoup your initial investment.
This is not about what has more value to the customer, because the customer doesn't ever have that choice. Aside from the tiny minority of geeks we around here represent, every damn computer comes pre-loaded with an OS and your choice boils down to "Vista or XP" now, and "XP or NT/2k" before that, and "98 or ME" before that, and so on.
And I think the "crippling" argument has been slashed, cut, shot, burnt and cremated about 5 years ago, so let's just have a few seconds of silence for the poor straw man.
Churches have a long experience with mental child abuse. They do target the impressible youth quite intentionally, hammering home their message in "summer camps" and what else, so computer games nights are really not a big surprise.
As a society, we'll be grown up when we don't allow people to abuse children like this anymore. We keep them away from sex until way beyond when they're physically ready for it, but we have no problem with them being indoctrinated in a religious faith long before they understand that some things their parents or other authority figures tell them might not be entirely the truth.
That's child abuse, plain and simple, and whether it's "summer camp" or "halo night" really doesn't make that much of a difference.
Unbundling windos is not about Linux. It really isn't.
It's about opening up the market to other competitors. Another Beos? Another OS/2? There is no reason why there should be only two OS available for computers, one of them only managing to still stick around because it's free (in both senses).
There is no operating system market. Unbundling windos is about re-creating that market. Innovation (not only in features!) only happens in a free market. That's what this is all about.
I don't think so. If anyone then Apple sees that the PDA market is all but dead. Everyone I know who used to have a PDA has switched to a smartphone. Apple already has a very good competitor on that market, the iPhone. Why would they try to break into a declining market?
So Microsoft comes around and says, "you know, enough of this, we're going to make the OS stable by preventing unauthorized programs from writing files where it shouldn't" - and everything dies. Dies horribly. Let's not forget that MS is not the innocent victim here, but are the guys who caused all the mess in the first place. FWIW, their own software was among the top offenders for a very long time, and you can only put limited blame on other people who go "ok, this is how MS Office does it on MS Windos, so if we do it the same way that should be fine."
And then there's Apple that shows how it's done. They switched from PPC to Intel and they didn't tell their developers to rewrite or fuck off. And yes, causing your program to not work anymore is one way to say "fuck off". They wrote Rosetta, they came up with the Universal Binary idea. They offered solutions to the developers, instead of problems. And they lauded the developers for moving along, every WWDC has Steve thanking the audience for porting so many programs to Intel and offering them as Universal Binaries.
And that's a lesson MS has lost. They used to be good to developers (the famous "screw the customer, if everyone develops for windos he doesn't have a choice anyways" attitude).
Vista "tries" to be secure, but it lost the bigger picture. Every single piece of it looks like it was developed in isolation, with no regard for the rest (see the network/audio playback issue) or the world outside of Redmond.
And that is why Vista is a failure, because it was developed for the dev team's dream world, not the real world.
Oh please! Microsoft could run in the red for ten years before they had to start thinking about maybe laying someone off if things don't turn around in the next five or ten years. No, they can't. Even more than other publicly traded companies, MS is built on the prospect of continued growth. Its stock price is hugely overvalued for a stagnant company, it only makes sense for a company that continues to grow at an astonishing speed. If that growth stops, then the stock market will correct the price (i.e. the expectations of the future). Once the stock price starts to fall, investors will lose faith, cash out, causing the price to go down even more.
That's a typical pattern on the stock market. Once the price slides a bit, it often crashes a bit.
Since so much of MS is built on the stock price (stock options as payment for employees, for example, or maybe more importantly, what do you think where their investment capital comes from?), MS can not afford to let the stock slide. Last time it was in danger of doing so, the company bought back huge quantities of stock. Doing so will deplete their famous "war chest", especially since to stabilize the price they have to buy at a high point, not like an investor.
50 billion is an unbelievable amount of money to any of us here, but at the stock exchange, it's small change.
Losing the leadership of Bill is actually the devastating blow. Perhaps Vista is the result of his taking a less hands on role over the past year... When you lose the leader you change the face of the company. That's total nonsense. Very few leaders actually shape their companies, and if you've been living under a rock you might not have noticed, but Bill has not suddenly withdrawn, he has been reducing his role in the company gradually for many years now.
And there is the question of the direction of causality, if there is any. Is Vista crap with suck dressing because Bill left - or did Bill leave because even he couldn't stand being associated with that? He wouldn't be the first CEO to step out of the spotlight early enough that nobody blames the company failing on him.
But: I just want to say that I really hate torrents and torrent users. It is because of you that there are GB caps and severe upload restrictions on my internet access. Yes. Evil users. Look, they actually use the bandwidth they pay for!
it is highly unlikely that the ISPs will ever become more generous in what they give the consumer. You need a slap with the cluebat. It isn't a matter of generosity. It's a matter of contract law. You pay for a service. ISP has to deliver service. If I buy a book at Amazon, it's not generosity that makes them deliver it to my house, it's the fact that they have to, because that's the service they offer and collect money for.
Slashdot Mirror
One part, I'm just pissed at the language-abuse these lobby groups intentionally commit. A "barrier" is something erected specifically as a means to stop or hinder someone. And that simply isn't the case in most cases.
And the thing with the web is a bit trickier still. Contrary to a building, I have limited control over what exactly the client accessing my site turns it into. HTML tags are suggestions to the browser, but it can ignore or modify them any way it wants. That includes accessibility. Good software made computers useable to the disabled long before we had laws mandating it.
However, not everything translates 100% and easy. For example, my game uses graphical maps. The only way to see which direction neighbouring areas are, is by looking at the map. A bit of additional info is also available that way. Translating that for, say, a blind player, is non-trivial.
Honestly (and I know I'm gonna be modded down for this, but let's face it, half of us think this and don't dare say it) I hate these kinds of laws and court cases.
So you have a disability. Sorry for you. Why, exactly, is this my problem? If I want my shop to be accessible (or, in my case, my online game), then I'll invest whatever amount of time and effort it's worth to me. If I don't, then you can shop somewhere else.
Regulations like these are ok when it comes to essential and public services, such as public transport or administration buildings (where, after all, you have to go personally to collect your new passport, file your papers, or whatever).
Zero support from me for regulations of this kind on private business. Even though the lobby of disabled organisations (most of whom, interestingly, are not disabled themselves, figure that) tries to create the impression, this has nothing whatsoever to do with "erecting barriers". Sorry, those four steps on the entrance of my 14th century building aren't something I put there with the purpose of keeping wheelchair users out, you know? They just happened to be there and have been there since before the wheelchair was invented (17th century, btw).
Same with my website. If your browser can't display my website in a way that makes it easy for you to use it, that isn't my fault. It's not as if I'd be writing it specifically in-accessible for you. If you can't read my page, then again, you are free to go somewhere else, there's a couple billion other pages online. And again, if you have a specific problem, you can mail me and maybe I care and change (note: "change", not "fix", it wasn't broken!) the site for you. Actually, I do care and I probably will, if you can tell me or I can find out easily what exactly needs changed. But I very much dislike being told that I have to do it.
Ooops, sorry if that turned into a rant.
Yes, it does consume too much time. I don't have the time to read your sources or dig out mine, and I'd certainly enjoy doing this the whole nine yards, but I simply can't afford it - time-wise. Sorry for that.
And on the other hand, I don't think you're a bad person. I do think you caught something, like people catch a cold sometimes. But we both know there are people out there with much more aggressive views on theism.
Damn, got me there. Even though I should point out that the first 3 entries are about a band, a city and a job page and - you'll love this one - the fourth is the amazon page for Dawkins' book... :-)
That would be true if I claimed that. I claim that there's a book that explains all about how there's only one god and that it provides the stuff I and everyone else needs to know about him.
That's a more complicated way to say it, but not less arrogant. The claim is still that you (or your faith) is right, and everyone else (both currently alive and throughout history) is wrong. And that claim is not based on externally falsifiable fact (falsifiability, not verifiability is the important thing), but on the source of the faith itself. In simplified terms: The faith is true because the faith claims it is true.
That is a self-reinforcing belief system. Quite a well-designed and/or well-evolved one, I can't hide a certain kind of morbid admiration. For example, labeling everything that offers solid proof you are wrong as a "test of faith" is a stroke of genius.
there's nothing sicker then to go around trying to rob people of their hope, just so you can feel smart.
I'm very serious here: I don't do this shit to feel smart. There's lots of other things that give me that feeling in a better way (hey, I am smart, after all).
My opposition to religion is based on two other convictions: One, I believe it is harmful (I've already explained several reasons why) and two I believe people in general would be much better off if they'd stop living in a fantasy world and started properly appreciating the real world.
For example: Protecting the environment because you should treasure "god's creation" is all nice and fluffy, but it doesn't have the same sense of urgency as protecting the environment because it's the only damn planet we have right now and there is nobody there to protect us if it goes down the drain.
Whether that hope is true or false, it's more then what you have.
You confuse atheism with nihilism, and that's totally not the same. I marvel at the universe, at the complexity and beauty of all of it from quantum physics to galactic clusters. I have hope - in human intelligence and if that fails I'm fairly sure evolution will bring about another intelligent species. Also, chances are there are other civilizations somewhere in the universe, probably too far away that we'll ever contact them, but then again, who knows?
Except if it's my faith, and I know what it involves.
You certainly cherry-pick what it involves. And as I said before, that's quite typical as far as denial goes.
Now for your mormons example, yes and no. The point I was making was, simply, that without christianity, there would be no mormons. Now you can claim that they've evolved away from the core christian faith, but you can't point to mormons that evolved independent of christianity, can you? So there is a link. The discussion is merely whether it's causal, historical or inclusive.
The same is true of everything else I mentioned. Sure christians today denounce the crusades (well, most do). Nevertheless, the crusades are unthinkable without christianity. If you re-write the history books and try to keep the crusades in while removing christianity, you will have to do a lot of creative editing.
And that's what I am critising: Your faith is the breeding ground of destruction, mayhem, abuses, fundamentalism and an almost unlimited list of other evils. How can you absolve yourself of all of them by simply saying "oops, didn't mean that" ?
I'm sick, am I? Are your beliefs the cure? How long before you start "treating" people like me?
Yes, you are sick, mentally. No, my beliefs are not a cure. You think this is about switching from one belief system to another, like converting from catholicism to islam. It isn't. It's about thinking about belief systems, i.e. advancing to the meta level. Call me arrogant, I probably am. Then again, there just happens to be a strong correlation between intelligence and religious belief (and not in the direction you'd pr
"no god" - 241 mio hits. Beat that. :-)
(sorry for double post, typo in the 1st one. "no go" actually gets you over 2 billion hits...)
I sooo hope it happens. That kind of completely over-the-top, ridiculous consequences is exactly what some people in charge need to realize that patent reform is long overdue.
But, since it's fun, two can play that game. "god fiction" yields 16.5 mio. hits. QED.
Also, he's deeply insecure, according to your holy book. I don't need the assurance that people would sacrifice their sons for me, for example.
So in sum, I figure it'll be interesting to meet the dude, but since the chances are roughly the same of that happening and the High Emperor of the Andromeda galaxy landing in my back yards tomorrow, I'm not breaking a sweat over it.
[Jesus Camp]
Nice try to avoid the bullet, but like Neo you just aren't quick enough. Sure there are other crazy things. Nevertheless, there can be no "Jesus Camp" without Jesus. The fact that, say, "Mickey Mouse Camp" exists as well doesn't invalidate that fact.
And again, the "misguided" and "fringe" argument. Funny how everything that's dislikeable is always "misguided", "extremist", "fringe", etc. - and still, without the basic christian faith, there would be no "misguided fringe christian faith". You, my friend, are part of the necessary soil from which these "fringes" grow. Religious fundamentalism requires first of all, religion. Look, the problem here is that your belief system tells you I'm a blind idiot before I even begin typing, Actually, no. I believe you have caught a disease. You are ill, not stupid. Just like other mental patients, many of whom are quite smart, take autists, for example. I know that the Christians around me have had a positive impact on the world. But now your own argument from above bites you in the behind. Up there, you claimed that "Jesus Camp" is just the work of some evil people, and if it weren't for Jesus, they'd use something else instead. Now, down here, all the good the good people do is suddenly because of their faith.
You can't have it both ways, sorry. Either both good and evil of your faith is because of your faith, or neither is. Anything else is a claim that requires solid proof. Jesus Camp? Well, that's YOUR country. People seem generally crazier over there. Actually, I'm not from the US. And I'm glad that I'm not, because you are right that people are crazy over there.
For most of these, deleting the article is not a solution but a hack.
Indexing and searching can be solved easily by several methods. Searching can use page-rank or similar algorithms to automatically detect "notability", within Wikipedia. Or instead of deleting articles, they could be "demoted" to some "non-notable" status, where they show last in search results and not at all in lists and timelines.
I do agree for the most part with the "small and uninformative articles" thing, but that's not what this discussion was about. The BattleMaster article, for example, was about 2 pages long and had plenty of information added by more than a dozen people over the course of about a year.
I also agree on verification troubles. However, again this wasn't the topic (and at least my example was easy to verify, just follow a link or two, they were in the article) and again it's a weak solution. Indicating "not yet verified" would be much better, for example it would allow people who know the field to simply add a few links to sources.
I've read all the policies and rules, and I still don't get why they even have that rule. In a paper book, you have limited pages and all, ok. But Wikipedia should have enough storage, that can't really be the problem. What's wrong with having something around that only a few thousand people are interested in? It's not as if it would get in the way of the rest, is it? And when something more notable with the same name shows up, you can do a disambiguation page, or simply move the less well-known thing away and put a one liner of the "this is about X, if you are looking for the Y look _here_" kind.
And I think this is a major problem, because people put work into many of those pages that get deleted, and they just might decide that it's not worth doing that again for other pages. Many of the authors on Wikipedia put their time there exactly because it's a medium where they can share their knowledge. A Wiki should encourage that, not tell them to stuff it.
And thus you give away your own self-reinforcing belief system. Because you believe God to be ficticious, religion has no worth.
Actually, no.
One, it isn't a self-reinforcing belief system. My assumption that god (and let's ignore the tricky question of which god) doesn't exist does not result from the conviction that religion has no worth, but from a look at the world, the claims made by religion, and the simple fact that they don't align.
My conviction about the worth of religion, again, is not a result of god being a fiction. Even with that major problem, religion could still be worthwhile, if it were a good thing. For example, if it would cause people to be more gentle with each other, more caring, or other positive contributions to society. As it is, those contributions are far outweight by the damages done by religion, from the crusades and witch hunts to modern day fundamentalist terrorism, not to mention the massive burden religious special treatment puts on society (example: The catholic church is one of the largest land owners in my country, and pays virtually no taxes).
Finally, I do not believe religion has no worth. I do believe religion has negative worth. That's a difference. If I would believe it has no worth, I wouldn't care one way or the other.
I've read enough of the bible to know it's horribly written and a lot of it would be viewed as, let's say "problematic" by our society today if it weren't protected by irrational respect for religion. I've not read it all, because to be honest it's a piece of shit as far as literature goes, and there are a lot of better books to spend my time on. However, I've read quite a bit of stuff about the bible, including many interesting facts about just how much of it can be considered true, and what kind of definition of "true" you have to use in order for it being so.
but this is NOT an accurate representation of Christianity or it's beliefs.
And that's the funny thing. Christians always claim that about every negative aspect of their faith. And really, it's a cop-out. Can you imagine "Jesus Camp" without Jesus? No? Then "Jesus Camp" is a part of your faith. Probably a part you don't like, but it's there, because it can't be a part of something else. Certainly not, say, ancient greek religion, or Buddhism. If you run "select * from features group by faith" then "Jesus Camp" will show up in the "christianity" group.
Atheism teaches there's oblivion.
No, atheism teaches that there is no god. A-theism - the "a" being greek for "not" and "theos" being greek for "god". Most, but not all, atheists include all supernatural phenomena in the category of fiction.
Atheism certainly rejects your average afterlife, which funnily enough, always seems to be a "members only" feature of its specific religion. That alone should tell you it's a scam.
Personally, I don't like just going away, but so far any and all evidence points to exactly that being the case. Then again, when I think of the atrocities that people commit because they believe in an afterlife, I tend to think oblivion as a perspective would be better. It's not as good as heaven, but it's better than hell, and it sure will reduce the number of suicide bombers quite a lot.
You know, it just might make people treasure the life they have more.
You're saying religion is wrong, primarily, [...], because you don't like the idea it could be right.
For christianity to be right, we would have to be living in an odd world indeed. And even if it is right, there are still so many variants that you can't be sure just which one is really right. But heck, I'm not afraid, if your god has any brains at all, he'll welcome free thinking over sheep mentality, and if he doesn't then I don't want anything to do with him anyways.
But the most important points are two:
One: What are the chances? As I see it, the
As usual, statistics tell what you want them to tell.
:-)
For example, "new user creation is down 30%" means that the number of users is still increasing, but the rate of increase is less. Which also means the rate of the rate of increase is now negative. Hey, how's that for a headline?
I'm not speaking merely from book-knowledge. I have had the dubious pleasure of first-hand experience with children who had the bible hammered into them, all nastiness included. I have seen 14 year olds who were completely fucked up emotionally. I doubt a rape would have left them any worse. These kids were done and over with, if I had been in a position of authority I would've asked that they be given psychological treatment and support.
And that are not isolated examples. There was a movie in the cinemas some months back, I think the title was "Jesus Camp". Have you seen it? If you have, I am sure you will agree with me that the only proper term for what happens in those camps is "brainwashing". And the problem is religious because those responsible actually believe they are doing a good thing - because they are religious themselves. That's what I mean by "self-reinforcing belief system". Your faith is good because your faith says that it is good.
And that's exactly what makes religion a mental illness, because those work by the same principle.
Now tell me how that isn't child abuse.
This is not about what has more value to the customer, because the customer doesn't ever have that choice. Aside from the tiny minority of geeks we around here represent, every damn computer comes pre-loaded with an OS and your choice boils down to "Vista or XP" now, and "XP or NT/2k" before that, and "98 or ME" before that, and so on.
And I think the "crippling" argument has been slashed, cut, shot, burnt and cremated about 5 years ago, so let's just have a few seconds of silence for the poor straw man.
Churches have a long experience with mental child abuse. They do target the impressible youth quite intentionally, hammering home their message in "summer camps" and what else, so computer games nights are really not a big surprise.
As a society, we'll be grown up when we don't allow people to abuse children like this anymore. We keep them away from sex until way beyond when they're physically ready for it, but we have no problem with them being indoctrinated in a religious faith long before they understand that some things their parents or other authority figures tell them might not be entirely the truth.
That's child abuse, plain and simple, and whether it's "summer camp" or "halo night" really doesn't make that much of a difference.
Unbundling windos is not about Linux. It really isn't.
It's about opening up the market to other competitors. Another Beos? Another OS/2? There is no reason why there should be only two OS available for computers, one of them only managing to still stick around because it's free (in both senses).
There is no operating system market. Unbundling windos is about re-creating that market. Innovation (not only in features!) only happens in a free market. That's what this is all about.
I don't think so. If anyone then Apple sees that the PDA market is all but dead. Everyone I know who used to have a PDA has switched to a smartphone. Apple already has a very good competitor on that market, the iPhone. Why would they try to break into a declining market?
And then there's Apple that shows how it's done. They switched from PPC to Intel and they didn't tell their developers to rewrite or fuck off. And yes, causing your program to not work anymore is one way to say "fuck off". They wrote Rosetta, they came up with the Universal Binary idea. They offered solutions to the developers, instead of problems. And they lauded the developers for moving along, every WWDC has Steve thanking the audience for porting so many programs to Intel and offering them as Universal Binaries.
And that's a lesson MS has lost. They used to be good to developers (the famous "screw the customer, if everyone develops for windos he doesn't have a choice anyways" attitude).
Vista "tries" to be secure, but it lost the bigger picture. Every single piece of it looks like it was developed in isolation, with no regard for the rest (see the network/audio playback issue) or the world outside of Redmond.
And that is why Vista is a failure, because it was developed for the dev team's dream world, not the real world.
That's a typical pattern on the stock market. Once the price slides a bit, it often crashes a bit.
Since so much of MS is built on the stock price (stock options as payment for employees, for example, or maybe more importantly, what do you think where their investment capital comes from?), MS can not afford to let the stock slide. Last time it was in danger of doing so, the company bought back huge quantities of stock. Doing so will deplete their famous "war chest", especially since to stabilize the price they have to buy at a high point, not like an investor.
50 billion is an unbelievable amount of money to any of us here, but at the stock exchange, it's small change.
And there is the question of the direction of causality, if there is any. Is Vista crap with suck dressing because Bill left - or did Bill leave because even he couldn't stand being associated with that? He wouldn't be the first CEO to step out of the spotlight early enough that nobody blames the company failing on him.