>>Proving specific sanitized instances of ID wrong is one thing, but proving the overall concepts of ID wrong doesn't work because it isn't a scientific theory, it isn't falsifiable, and it invariably changes whenever convenient.
Shrug. People believe a lot of things. It doesn't mean that it's not possible for a rational person to believe in ID.
To me the GP hits right on the head why ID isn't science. Behe and other IDers/Creationists thrive in the gaps of science. We are just beginning to understand the natural world around us and there are certainly gaps in that knowledge. The problem is IDers/Creationists only use those gaps to sow doubt while not adding anything to our understanding of the world around us. The vast majority of the original arguments used to promote ID/creationism and sow doubt have since been resolved. How could reptiles with their four lower jaw bones and one inner ear bone evolve into mammals with one lower jaw bone and our inner ear bones. That was argued to be impossible, saying it would require a non-functional transitional species. Fossil records have since been found which show quite clearly how this occured and it isn't all that complex. Lack of a fossil record showing the transition of whales from land going mammals was also cited as dis-proof of evolution. In the last decade, many such fossils have been found and filled that gap.
This is the problem with ID/Creationism. They will make arguements (some seeming quite reasonable) about the problems with evolution. However, when these arguments are disproven, they just go find another "gap" in our knowledge to wrap themselves in. In science, if the "evidence" for your theory (or actually there isn't really much of a theory its just casting doubt on other theroies) is continually dis-proven you alter your theory and come up with a hypothosis better matching the evidence and then test that. ID/Creationism has nothing to do with science because reguardless of evidence they WONT alter their "theory". If some of thier "evidence" is taken away, they just change the game and find another "gap" in our knowledge to proclaim "We don't understand it so God did it!".
In science you adjust your theories to fit the evidence, with ID/Creationism you adjust your evidence to fit your theories. That is my core problem with it.
Just to clarify. The "one year" is for the Express editions of Visual Studio. The free version of SQL Server has been around for years and is not part of this "one year" thing.
I for one have no plans to use C# for stored procs;-) Lets remember this is just a new OPTION. Standard SQL (or I should say T-SQL) is still there and is what I plan to use. But hey, who knows perhaps there'll be something I need which just cannot be done with T-SQL (assuming I for some reason need it done in a stored proc), then having the ability to write procs with any.NET language and leverage the.NET framework could be a nice option to have.
Philosophers of religion haven't had a problem with this matter for a long time now.
Sounds like ID should stick to religion class then cause science has a pretty big problem with this.
Occam's Razor Test: which is simplier (and thus more likely).
1) On plane of existance A, complex things require an outside creator. However, on plane of existance B complex things don't require creators so a complex thing from plane B must have created everything on plane A
Hard to dispute without knowing what criteria use based these rankings on. What exactly do you mean by "predictive ability"?
To me the "predictive ability" of evolution is pretty amazing. On one hand is idea of common decent. We know "Animal A" exists and we believe it evolved from known "animal C". For this to be true, some unknown "Animal B" would be quite likely as a transitional specices. Some of these hypothosis, and later discovery of fossils which match this expectation shows there is cetainly some pretty decent predictabilty. Now I don't think there has ever been a 100% match to "expected" Animal B, but there would be no reason to ever think such an animal could even roughly be predicted without evolution.
Another example would be genetic diagnosis. If you have genetic marker X then you will have disease Y. Some of these "predictions" based on evolution are 100% while others have a VERY strong corrilation and this will only increase as our knowledge of these topics increase.
I was actually a bit suprised by using just the letter as well. They don't use Hurricane A, Hurricane B, etc they use names using those letters. That is to allow for different names to these storms each year. Now the next time we run out of "normal" names it will just start at Alpha again? So year-to-year the first 21 storms will always get "unique" names, but all storms after that will use the same names? If it makes sense to use a naming convention to have differnt names year-to-year, why have it stop after 21? Just was a bit suprised by it myself and was expecting something else as well. That said, after a bit of thought it did make a bit more sense. What is a name with Alpha? Alpha = A, so we'd just get another hurricane beginning with A. Sure, it may be an ethnically greek name, but still it would be confusing. Which was the first and which was the 22nd?
Is that the number to actually make US landfall? There have actually been 11 storms to reach hurricane level this year. Plus 3 of those reached category 5 (new record as well).
I think more interesting is that the Teleo beta had some basic integration with Outlook. If there is even improved integration with Outlook now, I'd guess with the Outlook install-base you could see this product gain marketshare fairly fast. Have to wait and see though.
I agree Skype is going to be around (I use it and love it), but I think they really need to think about becoming SIP compliant. My biggest grip about Skype is I cannot call friends who use other VOIP clients, but those same friends who use different clients can still call each other because other services are SIP compliant.
Will MS's product be SIP (standards based)? The Teleo beta products was, so I'd assume so but I haven't heard anything for sure and with MS you never really know.
I assume you understand this, but just to be clear ID is not arguing the "what" part of evolution but are arguing the "why". Meaning they concede that living organisims change over time (the core idea of evolution), but they are arguing over "why" this happens. Creationisim was thier attempt to argue that god created us in his image by creating Adam & Eve in the Garden of Eden and we have always been like we are now. Against the mountains of eveidence even ID has had to concede organisims do change but now argue the "why".
The prevailing scientific theory for this is "natural selection" (basically survival of the fittest) where organisims "natrually" adapt to thier enviroment and those that adapt most successfully will survive and those that don't will become extinct. ID's "theory" for why this happens is: "Boy thats pretty complex! I don't think it could just happen naturally. God must have made it happen".
Why did anyone else have to point it out? I pointed it out. Every study like those you are talking about I've seen have been by people like Institute for Family and the Media or some such non-sense. They always have studies about how violent video games increase physiological arousal or aggressive thoughts or some equally useless trait. If you take these same subjects to a baseball game (assuming they are at all fans), you will see the same reactions between boring early innings and late innings in a tight game (probably even more so). It is just a fact of being mentally stimulated. Should we call off every close game because the fans might become too stimulated? Similar observations can be made in students before an important test. Should those be canceled? The observations they make in these tests are generic symptoms of stress. Can physcological stress make you more violent? Maybe. Is there a plan to shield the entire population from all stress? Not that I know of. Whould it be a good thing? I'd sure not think so.
Video games have been around for at least 20 years and there is no proof of anything. Violent games have been around for at least 10 year and there is no proof of anything. During the same periods, crime in general and especially violent crimes have dropped considerably. Does that prove video games lower violence? Of course not, just studies showing some meaningless thing thing like increased arousal could prove games cause increased aggression. There currently are NO studies which show ANYTHING besides how desperate some people are to pass off thier view as being correct.
I'm open to the idea that its possible video games increase violence, but until there is ANY proof I will consider it what it is and that is generic "what about the children" crap people use to pull people to thier cause to increase thier power and influence. Much like I consider it possible I'll get killed in a car crash tomorrow, but I'll still probably be driving into work.
Studies have shown that games do increase aggression in kids.
Why is it that MS funded studies showing lower TCO for MS products it is laughed at and dismissed out of hand, but when "right-wing christian organization" funds a study that says something like games increase aggression in kids its taken at face value? These are all parties paying for studies to support thier views. Why is one rightly ignored while the other is believed? If you can find such a study in a reputable peer-reviewed scientific journal, then we can talk.
Versioning
Headers
Footers
Custom page breaks
Integration with document management/workflow systems (guessing based on SharePoint Portal Server from the article)
Mail Merge
Templates
This is just a quick list that quickly poped into my head. Remember, these guys are doing things a bit more important and complicated than making a groecery list! Could all these things be done with solutions besides MS? Sure. Again, I think there is an assumption because since they went with MS they don't know what they are doing. Sometimes MS actually is the best solution.
That [blog] post is so-fucking-retarded. It is full of a bunch of conjecture, assumptions, and misinformation. Why don't you link to something with some actual information or maybe even a valid arguement?
True the blog just tosses out "what could happen" type info with no facts or evidence to support those ideas. However, it is basically an editorial so what did you expect? There is however some pretty intelligent discussion of the issue in the "comments" area. If you are a fan of ID than you probably won't like the "comments" either. Regardless they are interesting and worth checking out. BTW, if you are a proponent of teaching ID you may want to have a dictionary handy because there are some tricky works in there;-)
how about the guy's completely horrible ability to write coherent sentences, and his awkward phrasings ("feminist bullish reply"), and his obvious rampant sexism?
Completely agree on all counts. I just couldn't care less about the first two. He was able to get his idea across and that is all that should matter (english as a first language or not). It just bothers me to no end when you can see you obviously had a problem with the sexism and chose to respond "Oh yeah, well you cannot spell!!!". I think if you have a problem with a post you should respond point -> counter-point or just rip him a new one for his stance in general. I just find it a complete waste of bandwidth to get a pissy and bitch about spelling. Sure he didn't state his position well, but he got it across. Respond to the point. Call him an ass for his attitude. Just don't fall back on spelling issues if you cannot find anything else to say.
OK spelling Nazi, what are you talking about? There is some strange punctuation and capitalization, but I don't see any spelling issues. There is "yepp", "yupp", and "fuckin" which are commonly used words (or more slang actually), but besides slang words where are the spelling issues?
--
On a mission to get the spelling nazi's to shut the hell up!
Hey AC, what are you talking about? There is some strange punctuation and capitalization, but I don't see any spelling issues. There is "yepp", "yupp", and "fuckin" which are commonly used words (or more slang actually), but besides slang words where are the spelling issues?
I can only assume you didn't like the post and felt the need to bitch, but if that is the case bitch about the ideas presented not about non-existent spelling issues. It really makes you look pretty stupid to bitch about spelling issues where there are none;-)
Yeah, I was referencing the hosting reliablity stats which do basically track network reliablity, sorry not best stat for this case;-)
Also, I certainly wouldn't say Windows is better than Linux/BSD running apache. The post I was replying to just didn't seem very fair from my experience. The issue with mulitple hangs per day just seemed a bit crazy. We had an Apache/Tomcat appliation which had similar issues and of course it was an application issue (related to DB locks). We fixed that and now it runs like a dream. It just seems too often the OS or webserver is blamed for problems in the app it is running. A few years ago, there was a MAJOR disparity in the reliablity of our Unix/Linus boxes and our MS boxes. Over the last year (with up grade to Win2k3) those differences have all but gone away.
Not saying one is better or both don't still have some occasional issues, its just I've never seen (recently) issues like the original post where it was the OS or web server fault. Most of the apps we run I'd call "critical" we run on Linux/Apache, but my feelings about running such systems on MS has certainly improved over the last year.
You should just gain some knowledge. Most likely, these hosting companies are running server farms.
Easy boy!;-) Of course they are running server farms. Of course that goes for the linux/BSD/Solaris sites as well as the MS sites. What is the point? The NetCraft statistics have LOTS of variables and certainly cannot be used to say one is better than the other! There are just too many other variables to use them to draw such a conclusion. They can however be used to get a very general view of reliablity in the wild. I'm just trying to point out that Windows isn't what it used to be (when you would rarely see see a windows site in the top ten let alone being the most used OS in the top ten). Anyway, here is the current version.
MS has made HUGE strides in reliability, but like anything else results will vary depending on who is using it. Netcraft's hosting reliablity stats have had hosters using MS VERY high over the last year. Just checked the lastest and of the top 10 it broke down like this:
5 Windows (2 Win2k, 3 Win2k3) 2 Linux 2 FreeBSD 1 Solaris
We also do large ASP.NET apps on Win2k3 (IIS6) and the server hasn't been touched in almost 4 months (when we did disaster recovery testing). If you are having anything like multiple hangs per day you should REALLY audit your code. It REALLY sounds like it is more the applications fault than IIS's fault.
eh...anything pertaining to the origins of life should clearly be taught as philosophy. there is nowhere near enough proof to teach any one idea as a scientific fact to children.
I think you have a basic misunderstanding of science. There are only around 20 "laws of science". Those are the only things that should be taught as "fact" (even those its always good to question). The VAST majority of science isn't "fact" its more "best guess at this point in time". Should we only teach those 20 or so laws?
for most of the people of the world, the idea of the origin of life is a fundamental axiom of their entire belief system (read: principles, values, morals)
OK, the idea that the Sun circles the Earth used to be "a fundamental axiom of their entire belief system". Should this have disqualified ever teaching that the Earth circles the Sun? Believing the Earth was created in 7 days and is only a few thousand years old also used to be "a fundamental axiom of their entire belief system". Should we "adjust" history and geology classes to reflect that?
Lets look at another more relevant example. Say you are going over the different periods of the Earth and looking at how "humanoids" have changed over time. The average height of us/them is a simple example (though just one of the more minor changes). So you are looking over millions of year and seeing average humanoid height growing fairly drastically (in the scheme of things). A kid asks why that is. Choose your answer from below:
1) Every few thousand years god comes down and stretches everybody.
2) All organisims tend to change over time in ways that are more advantages to them in thier environments. This often happens via the strong more adaptable among the specises surviving and passing on those genetics. This passing on of advantages traits over time can cause changes in the specises and we call that "evolution".
3) Shhhhhh!!!!! We cannot talk about that!!!!
The most annoying things is even those who support ID accept #2 as the answer. They just want to go one step further and mix the most decidedly UNSCIENTIFIC concept of "Well boy, thats pretty complex! I betcha that couldn't just happen. There must be some'um dat made it happen. I ain't got no proof or nutt'n, but we should teach in those science class thingys that maybe god made it happen."
PS.
As someone who voted for Bush the first time (I know, sorry!!!!!) I feel your pain. Originally, when I would see all these retarded statements attributed to him, I would think "No way!". Of course it always turned out to be true. There are still times I hear something and think, "OK seriously, he cannot be THAT retarded". Of course, I'm still always wrong. Now when I hear this rediculous things I tend to just accept them.
However, if I ever heard something intelligent or insightful attributed to him I'd have to do some searching to verify that. Luckily for lazy me, I've never even heard of anyone attributing such things to him so its not a problem.
Well, I was going to post some links but I see a LOT of others have beaten me to it;-) I guess it was you that needed a good thumping with the "clue stick" huh;-)
OK, if they want to go after companies like Grokster fine. I have no problem if they are flagrantly advocating copyright infringment. My problem is with the wording. Why cannot they just say EXACTLY what is illegal?
"It also covers attempting, aiding or abetting and inciting such offenses". What the HELL!!! By that definition they could go after ISPs, PC makers, OS makers, etc, etc, etc, etc...... As you say "any moron can slippery-slope this one". Why not make it so some moron DA (or whatever the EU equivilant is) CANNOT slippery-slope it? Why not just spell out exactly what is illegal?
I remember when it used to be "Its better for 10 guilty men to go free than one innocent man be found guilty". With the "loose" wording of these laws almost everyone COULD be found guilty. It seems more and more like they try to word laws so if they feel like it, they could go after anybody. Then they can just choose who it is they really want to get. Somehow that just doesn't sit right with me.
Slashdot Mirror
>>Proving specific sanitized instances of ID wrong is one thing, but proving the overall concepts of ID wrong doesn't work because it isn't a scientific theory, it isn't falsifiable, and it invariably changes whenever convenient.
Shrug. People believe a lot of things. It doesn't mean that it's not possible for a rational person to believe in ID.
To me the GP hits right on the head why ID isn't science. Behe and other IDers/Creationists thrive in the gaps of science. We are just beginning to understand the natural world around us and there are certainly gaps in that knowledge. The problem is IDers/Creationists only use those gaps to sow doubt while not adding anything to our understanding of the world around us. The vast majority of the original arguments used to promote ID/creationism and sow doubt have since been resolved. How could reptiles with their four lower jaw bones and one inner ear bone evolve into mammals with one lower jaw bone and our inner ear bones. That was argued to be impossible, saying it would require a non-functional transitional species. Fossil records have since been found which show quite clearly how this occured and it isn't all that complex. Lack of a fossil record showing the transition of whales from land going mammals was also cited as dis-proof of evolution. In the last decade, many such fossils have been found and filled that gap.
This is the problem with ID/Creationism. They will make arguements (some seeming quite reasonable) about the problems with evolution. However, when these arguments are disproven, they just go find another "gap" in our knowledge to wrap themselves in. In science, if the "evidence" for your theory (or actually there isn't really much of a theory its just casting doubt on other theroies) is continually dis-proven you alter your theory and come up with a hypothosis better matching the evidence and then test that. ID/Creationism has nothing to do with science because reguardless of evidence they WONT alter their "theory". If some of thier "evidence" is taken away, they just change the game and find another "gap" in our knowledge to proclaim "We don't understand it so God did it!".
In science you adjust your theories to fit the evidence, with ID/Creationism you adjust your evidence to fit your theories. That is my core problem with it.
Just to clarify. The "one year" is for the Express editions of Visual Studio. The free version of SQL Server has been around for years and is not part of this "one year" thing.
but with an apparently more affordable licensing arrangement.
;-) Free with your SQL Server license.
Yes, MUCH more affordable
I for one have no plans to use C# for stored procs ;-) Lets remember this is just a new OPTION. Standard SQL (or I should say T-SQL) is still there and is what I plan to use. But hey, who knows perhaps there'll be something I need which just cannot be done with T-SQL (assuming I for some reason need it done in a stored proc), then having the ability to write procs with any .NET language and leverage the .NET framework could be a nice option to have.
Philosophers of religion haven't had a problem with this matter for a long time now.
Sounds like ID should stick to religion class then cause science has a pretty big problem with this.
Occam's Razor Test: which is simplier (and thus more likely).
1) On plane of existance A, complex things require an outside creator. However, on plane of existance B complex things don't require creators so a complex thing from plane B must have created everything on plane A
2)We exist on plane B.
Hard to dispute without knowing what criteria use based these rankings on. What exactly do you mean by "predictive ability"?
To me the "predictive ability" of evolution is pretty amazing. On one hand is idea of common decent. We know "Animal A" exists and we believe it evolved from known "animal C". For this to be true, some unknown "Animal B" would be quite likely as a transitional specices. Some of these hypothosis, and later discovery of fossils which match this expectation shows there is cetainly some pretty decent predictabilty. Now I don't think there has ever been a 100% match to "expected" Animal B, but there would be no reason to ever think such an animal could even roughly be predicted without evolution.
Another example would be genetic diagnosis. If you have genetic marker X then you will have disease Y. Some of these "predictions" based on evolution are 100% while others have a VERY strong corrilation and this will only increase as our knowledge of these topics increase.
I was actually a bit suprised by using just the letter as well. They don't use Hurricane A, Hurricane B, etc they use names using those letters. That is to allow for different names to these storms each year. Now the next time we run out of "normal" names it will just start at Alpha again? So year-to-year the first 21 storms will always get "unique" names, but all storms after that will use the same names? If it makes sense to use a naming convention to have differnt names year-to-year, why have it stop after 21? Just was a bit suprised by it myself and was expecting something else as well. That said, after a bit of thought it did make a bit more sense. What is a name with Alpha? Alpha = A, so we'd just get another hurricane beginning with A. Sure, it may be an ethnically greek name, but still it would be confusing. Which was the first and which was the 22nd?
5 hurricanes were minimal category 1
Is that the number to actually make US landfall? There have actually been 11 storms to reach hurricane level this year. Plus 3 of those reached category 5 (new record as well).
I think more interesting is that the Teleo beta had some basic integration with Outlook. If there is even improved integration with Outlook now, I'd guess with the Outlook install-base you could see this product gain marketshare fairly fast. Have to wait and see though.
I agree Skype is going to be around (I use it and love it), but I think they really need to think about becoming SIP compliant. My biggest grip about Skype is I cannot call friends who use other VOIP clients, but those same friends who use different clients can still call each other because other services are SIP compliant.
Will MS's product be SIP (standards based)? The Teleo beta products was, so I'd assume so but I haven't heard anything for sure and with MS you never really know.
I assume you understand this, but just to be clear ID is not arguing the "what" part of evolution but are arguing the "why". Meaning they concede that living organisims change over time (the core idea of evolution), but they are arguing over "why" this happens. Creationisim was thier attempt to argue that god created us in his image by creating Adam & Eve in the Garden of Eden and we have always been like we are now. Against the mountains of eveidence even ID has had to concede organisims do change but now argue the "why".
The prevailing scientific theory for this is "natural selection" (basically survival of the fittest) where organisims "natrually" adapt to thier enviroment and those that adapt most successfully will survive and those that don't will become extinct. ID's "theory" for why this happens is: "Boy thats pretty complex! I don't think it could just happen naturally. God must have made it happen".
Why did anyone else have to point it out? I pointed it out. Every study like those you are talking about I've seen have been by people like Institute for Family and the Media or some such non-sense. They always have studies about how violent video games increase physiological arousal or aggressive thoughts or some equally useless trait. If you take these same subjects to a baseball game (assuming they are at all fans), you will see the same reactions between boring early innings and late innings in a tight game (probably even more so). It is just a fact of being mentally stimulated. Should we call off every close game because the fans might become too stimulated? Similar observations can be made in students before an important test. Should those be canceled? The observations they make in these tests are generic symptoms of stress. Can physcological stress make you more violent? Maybe. Is there a plan to shield the entire population from all stress? Not that I know of. Whould it be a good thing? I'd sure not think so.
Video games have been around for at least 20 years and there is no proof of anything. Violent games have been around for at least 10 year and there is no proof of anything. During the same periods, crime in general and especially violent crimes have dropped considerably. Does that prove video games lower violence? Of course not, just studies showing some meaningless thing thing like increased arousal could prove games cause increased aggression. There currently are NO studies which show ANYTHING besides how desperate some people are to pass off thier view as being correct.
I'm open to the idea that its possible video games increase violence, but until there is ANY proof I will consider it what it is and that is generic "what about the children" crap people use to pull people to thier cause to increase thier power and influence. Much like I consider it possible I'll get killed in a car crash tomorrow, but I'll still probably be driving into work.
Studies have shown that games do increase aggression in kids.
Why is it that MS funded studies showing lower TCO for MS products it is laughed at and dismissed out of hand, but when "right-wing christian organization" funds a study that says something like games increase aggression in kids its taken at face value? These are all parties paying for studies to support thier views. Why is one rightly ignored while the other is believed? If you can find such a study in a reputable peer-reviewed scientific journal, then we can talk.
Versioning
Headers
Footers
Custom page breaks
Integration with document management/workflow systems (guessing based on SharePoint Portal Server from the article)
Mail Merge
Templates
This is just a quick list that quickly poped into my head. Remember, these guys are doing things a bit more important and complicated than making a groecery list! Could all these things be done with solutions besides MS? Sure. Again, I think there is an assumption because since they went with MS they don't know what they are doing. Sometimes MS actually is the best solution.
That [blog] post is so-fucking-retarded. It is full of a bunch of conjecture, assumptions, and misinformation. Why don't you link to something with some actual information or maybe even a valid arguement?
;-)
True the blog just tosses out "what could happen" type info with no facts or evidence to support those ideas. However, it is basically an editorial so what did you expect? There is however some pretty intelligent discussion of the issue in the "comments" area. If you are a fan of ID than you probably won't like the "comments" either. Regardless they are interesting and worth checking out. BTW, if you are a proponent of teaching ID you may want to have a dictionary handy because there are some tricky works in there
how about the guy's completely horrible ability to write coherent sentences, and his awkward phrasings ("feminist bullish reply"), and his obvious rampant sexism?
Completely agree on all counts. I just couldn't care less about the first two. He was able to get his idea across and that is all that should matter (english as a first language or not). It just bothers me to no end when you can see you obviously had a problem with the sexism and chose to respond "Oh yeah, well you cannot spell!!!". I think if you have a problem with a post you should respond point -> counter-point or just rip him a new one for his stance in general. I just find it a complete waste of bandwidth to get a pissy and bitch about spelling. Sure he didn't state his position well, but he got it across. Respond to the point. Call him an ass for his attitude. Just don't fall back on spelling issues if you cannot find anything else to say.
OK spelling Nazi, what are you talking about? There is some strange punctuation and capitalization, but I don't see any spelling issues. There is "yepp", "yupp", and "fuckin" which are commonly used words (or more slang actually), but besides slang words where are the spelling issues? -- On a mission to get the spelling nazi's to shut the hell up!
Hey AC, what are you talking about? There is some strange punctuation and capitalization, but I don't see any spelling issues. There is "yepp", "yupp", and "fuckin" which are commonly used words (or more slang actually), but besides slang words where are the spelling issues?
;-)
I can only assume you didn't like the post and felt the need to bitch, but if that is the case bitch about the ideas presented not about non-existent spelling issues. It really makes you look pretty stupid to bitch about spelling issues where there are none
Yeah, I was referencing the hosting reliablity stats which do basically track network reliablity, sorry not best stat for this case ;-)
Also, I certainly wouldn't say Windows is better than Linux/BSD running apache. The post I was replying to just didn't seem very fair from my experience. The issue with mulitple hangs per day just seemed a bit crazy. We had an Apache/Tomcat appliation which had similar issues and of course it was an application issue (related to DB locks). We fixed that and now it runs like a dream. It just seems too often the OS or webserver is blamed for problems in the app it is running. A few years ago, there was a MAJOR disparity in the reliablity of our Unix/Linus boxes and our MS boxes. Over the last year (with up grade to Win2k3) those differences have all but gone away.
Not saying one is better or both don't still have some occasional issues, its just I've never seen (recently) issues like the original post where it was the OS or web server fault. Most of the apps we run I'd call "critical" we run on Linux/Apache, but my feelings about running such systems on MS has certainly improved over the last year.
You should just gain some knowledge. Most likely, these hosting companies are running server farms.
;-) Of course they are running server farms. Of course that goes for the linux/BSD/Solaris sites as well as the MS sites. What is the point? The NetCraft statistics have LOTS of variables and certainly cannot be used to say one is better than the other! There are just too many other variables to use them to draw such a conclusion. They can however be used to get a very general view of reliablity in the wild. I'm just trying to point out that Windows isn't what it used to be (when you would rarely see see a windows site in the top ten let alone being the most used OS in the top ten). Anyway, here is the current version.
Easy boy!
MS has made HUGE strides in reliability, but like anything else results will vary depending on who is using it. Netcraft's hosting reliablity stats have had hosters using MS VERY high over the last year. Just checked the lastest and of the top 10 it broke down like this:
5 Windows (2 Win2k, 3 Win2k3)
2 Linux
2 FreeBSD
1 Solaris
We also do large ASP.NET apps on Win2k3 (IIS6) and the server hasn't been touched in almost 4 months (when we did disaster recovery testing). If you are having anything like multiple hangs per day you should REALLY audit your code. It REALLY sounds like it is more the applications fault than IIS's fault.
eh...anything pertaining to the origins of life should clearly be taught as philosophy. there is nowhere near enough proof to teach any one idea as a scientific fact to children.
I think you have a basic misunderstanding of science. There are only around 20 "laws of science". Those are the only things that should be taught as "fact" (even those its always good to question). The VAST majority of science isn't "fact" its more "best guess at this point in time". Should we only teach those 20 or so laws?
for most of the people of the world, the idea of the origin of life is a fundamental axiom of their entire belief system (read: principles, values, morals)
OK, the idea that the Sun circles the Earth used to be "a fundamental axiom of their entire belief system". Should this have disqualified ever teaching that the Earth circles the Sun? Believing the Earth was created in 7 days and is only a few thousand years old also used to be "a fundamental axiom of their entire belief system". Should we "adjust" history and geology classes to reflect that?
Lets look at another more relevant example. Say you are going over the different periods of the Earth and looking at how "humanoids" have changed over time. The average height of us/them is a simple example (though just one of the more minor changes). So you are looking over millions of year and seeing average humanoid height growing fairly drastically (in the scheme of things). A kid asks why that is. Choose your answer from below:
1) Every few thousand years god comes down and stretches everybody.
2) All organisims tend to change over time in ways that are more advantages to them in thier environments. This often happens via the strong more adaptable among the specises surviving and passing on those genetics. This passing on of advantages traits over time can cause changes in the specises and we call that "evolution".
3) Shhhhhh!!!!! We cannot talk about that!!!!
The most annoying things is even those who support ID accept #2 as the answer. They just want to go one step further and mix the most decidedly UNSCIENTIFIC concept of "Well boy, thats pretty complex! I betcha that couldn't just happen. There must be some'um dat made it happen. I ain't got no proof or nutt'n, but we should teach in those science class thingys that maybe god made it happen."
PS.
As someone who voted for Bush the first time (I know, sorry!!!!!) I feel your pain. Originally, when I would see all these retarded statements attributed to him, I would think "No way!". Of course it always turned out to be true. There are still times I hear something and think, "OK seriously, he cannot be THAT retarded". Of course, I'm still always wrong. Now when I hear this rediculous things I tend to just accept them.
However, if I ever heard something intelligent or insightful attributed to him I'd have to do some searching to verify that. Luckily for lazy me, I've never even heard of anyone attributing such things to him so its not a problem.
Well, I was going to post some links but I see a LOT of others have beaten me to it ;-) I guess it was you that needed a good thumping with the "clue stick" huh ;-)
OK, if they want to go after companies like Grokster fine. I have no problem if they are flagrantly advocating copyright infringment. My problem is with the wording. Why cannot they just say EXACTLY what is illegal?
"It also covers attempting, aiding or abetting and inciting such offenses". What the HELL!!! By that definition they could go after ISPs, PC makers, OS makers, etc, etc, etc, etc...... As you say "any moron can slippery-slope this one". Why not make it so some moron DA (or whatever the EU equivilant is) CANNOT slippery-slope it? Why not just spell out exactly what is illegal?
I remember when it used to be "Its better for 10 guilty men to go free than one innocent man be found guilty". With the "loose" wording of these laws almost everyone COULD be found guilty. It seems more and more like they try to word laws so if they feel like it, they could go after anybody. Then they can just choose who it is they really want to get. Somehow that just doesn't sit right with me.