Has there ever been a case, anywhere, where someone was sued because of some defect found in freely available software. Such a case would make headlines (and maybe even make SCO look like a slightly lighter shade of complete black).
There was a time when the very real fear that if Microsoft achieve total dominance on the client that they could (and would) leverage that influence to the server by coupling new extension that only work with IE/IIS combination. The WWW would become the WMW:(
So this increasing market share of Firefox is good news. The threat of a single client achieving complete dominance is past now, I believe - a bullet dodged.
As an aside. I have a customer that was concerned about this several years ago and she wanted to do her part so she requested a special mod to her shopping cart that recognizes the browser and gives a "Mozilla Users Discount" for the kindred users.
Dawkins is an arrogant media-hungry loser of science.
Was Thomas Huxley an arrogant media-hunger loser of science?
In the fight against the fundamentalists (be they Christian, Mulsim, Hindu, etc) I prefer to have a Churchill instead of Chamberlain in the fray.
The subject of the existence and nature of God is perhaps the most important question of all time. Dawkins forcefully and articulately advocates stripping away the historical baggage that clouds many people's worldview and religious positions.
It is high time to reconsider: the implicit goodness of unfounded faith, the archaic views of bronze-age gods, failure of religions to enlighten, the morality of brainwashing children with religious views. Sam Harris has put it concerning the scientific worldview "there is new wine (slowly) being poured. Why not catch it with a clean glass?"
Oh and BTW, I am sure Dawkin's contribution to science are pale and insignificant to your own eh? and your arguments are so convincing.
The high-level languages include "Ada, C, C++, C#, COBOL, ColdFusion, Common Lisp, Delphi, Fortran, Java, Object Pascal, SmallTalk, Visual Basic, and Visual Basic.NET".
I guess now I am forced to to port all of my FORTRAN AJAX apps over to Perl:)
Everyone's a sheep. Modern neuroscience pretty much confirms that most of us run on autopilot most of the time.
Sheep != Autopilot
The fact that the mind can perform autonomous functions without conscious input does not equate to sheep like behavior when it comes to philosophical beliefs.
is anyone else disturbed that unwavering belief in the theory of evolution has become a litmus test for intelligence?
I don't think it has and you exaggerate this assertion.
However, a belief that the creator of the magnificent universe would muddy itself and act in way of a tribal warlord (ie the lord is man of war) or command genocide and child rape, is in my mind, yes an indicator of either lack of intelligence or at least susceptibility to brain washing.
A belief that the world was flooded at short time ago when there is abundant geological evidence that it did not, proves something of ones intelligence or lack of critical thinking ability.
A belief that the creator of the great and small would feel threatened by a bronze age culture building a tall tower is... well indicator of someone who needs to believe in a bronze age god.
If you would read the Bible more carefully, you would realize that the word "species" is never mentioned.
Not surprising since the concept did not exist at the time of writing.
It is a fact that all of the world's dogs, for example, can be bread from two generic dogs, over not all that many centuries.
Dogs are a species! No one is suggesting that the Ark contained the Boston Terriers and Siberian Huskies.
There are over 300,000 different species of beetles! If the Ark only contained a pair of beetles and all of today's beetles originated from that pair you would have some very very rapid.... get ready for it.... Evolution.
Most people, you being one, criticize the Bible, having never read it, let alone carefully studied it with an open mind. If you had, you would read passages like:
Sure like:
Deuteronomy "As you approach a town to attack it, first offer its people terms for peace. If they accept your terms and open the gates to you, then all the people inside will serve you in forced labor. But if they refuse to make peace and prepare to fight, you must attack the town. When the LORD your God hands it over to you, kill every man in the town. But you may keep for yourselves all the women, children, livestock, and other plunder. You may enjoy the spoils of your enemies that the LORD your God has given you."
In this neat little passage we have slavery, genocide and rape by command of the god of the OT.
Here is something to describes the character of the god of the OT...
Exodus "The LORD is a man of war: the LORD is his name."
And here is some more OT god mercy and graciousness and long-suffering. Obviously the love and mercy did not apply to young virgin children girls.
Numbers "They warred against Midian, as YAHWEH commanded Moses, and killed every male. They killed the kings of Midian with the rest of their slain... and they also slew Balaam the son of Beor with the sword. And the people of Israel took captive the women of Midian and their little ones; and they took as booty all their cattle, their flocks, and all their goods. All their cities in the places where they dwelt, and all their encampments, they burned with fire... Moses was enraged... 'So you spared the women... kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has had sexual intercourse with a man but keep the virgins for yourselves... divide them up evenly.'"
Now here we have clearly child rape. Keeping in mind that the Midians were pure evil (the standard apologetic response to the above passage) just how young do think these virgin children were? Does not your OT gods grace apply to them?
God hates evil, but loves people.
Is that why whenever the "spirit of the lord" moves within Sampson he goes out to kill people. Yup the love of people just is quite clear in the above passages.
In my experience biblical illiteracy is widespread among bible believers.
Finally the flood did come.
No it did not! The flood is a not only a myth but a borrowed myth. Check the story of Gilgamesh, of which sources predate any OT sources. Try to read something other than Christian Apologetics.
Further the proof the flood does not exists is clearly and abundantly obvious in Geology. Get out into the field take a book or surface geological map and look around and will encounter geological formations that deny the flood.
The biblical record states that the animals come to Noah.
The Noachian flood is falsifiable on so many different levels - it really only takes a few minutes of unbiased thinking.
Just how did these baby polar bears, kola bears, blind cave fish and blind mole rats make the oceanic journey and arrive in the Middle East.
Or better yet on the other end. Why is there *strong* geographic patterns of species distribution. For example, how did the marsupials almost exclusively arrive in Australia?). Biogeography, is only one of many different conclusive evidences that discount the Flood story.
Such little animals would eat much less and eventually grow up to reproduce.
I dunno I would not want to feed, baby elephants or grizzly bears, let alone baby Sauropods.
The arrogance just may be in your court! Thinking you know full well Gods position on this - you don't but that does not stop you from spouting nonsense and assuming some imagined morally superior position.
Species hopping seems so odd to me as a concept even after billions of years because you would see these traits no matter how remote in the genetic strain.As for a flood theory, there is evidence among world wide culture there was a flood. It would make sense if animals had procreated beyond their original set pool and variations had happened, then larger species for the most part would have died and climatic changes would have happened as well.
Wow! No doubt about it that block of text is impervious to rebuttal - are you on ecstasy or something? You insert the ole global theory like it fits with the rest of the nonsense.
Psst... other cultures have flood myths because as humans transitioned from hunter-gathering to agriculture they settle in rich river valleys, and as we all know river valleys tend to flood on occasions.
This is true with all federal government research. Windows is increasing becoming the only tool approved and it is getting harder to use non-windows tools. Take for example the wide ranging Navy Marine contract that specifies essentially the same solution for the receptionist desktop as on the scientist/engineering desktop. All applications have to be on the "approved" list which eliminates many instances of great open source and freeware software. It is a sad trend - they may as well nationalize Microsoft.
Evolution might lead to aggressiveness among males to get access to the women, for reproduction, but they sure as hell wouldn't need to love them afterwards, or take the time to make a traditional home.
First if men wish to see their children grow up and have offspring off their own it sure helps to hang around. Please note there are many animals that are more magnanimous than humans.
Traditional home? Why not a traditional home that is described in the OT - you know with multiple wifes, concubines, and young virgin children taken as "wifes" in form of war booty fully endorsed and codified by the dark miniature vision of the "LORD God".
Your vision of god has to accommodate the impossible belief that the God of love and mercy would also command like...
"When the LORD your God hands it over to you, kill every man in the town. But you may keep for yourselves all the women, children, livestock, and other plunder. You may enjoy the spoils of your enemies that the LORD your God has given you."
or
"Now kill all the boys and all the women who have slept with a man. Only the young girls who are virgins may live; you may keep them for yourselves."
And you think the scientist have a cold, cynical, bitter and narrow view of the world.
Evolution might lead to a superstrain of women who choose their men only based on the car they drive, their money, their circumstances and their genes, but that wouldn't explain why they miss their husbands while they are off on business trips, and it wouldn't explain why poor women don't spend all their time looking for a replacement for their husbands, prepared to abandon their kids at a moment's notice, in order to raise a new crop with a better mate.
Evolution doesn't explain the thrill and exhileration of riding a motorcycle, or of the wind in your hair, or the enjoyment of warm sunlight on a cool day. It doesn't explain the sense of enjoyment from writing software, or horseback riding, or flying in an airplane. It doesn't explain the sense of satisfaction that comes from solving a riddle, or a puzzle.
You are arguing from incredulity, not very satisfying or convincing.
You really need to read some more on this issue and get into touch with your inner ape (ie EO Wilson, Robert Wright, Van der walls, Dawkins, the true prophets of the day). A lot of human behavior can be explained in terms of a evolutionary standpoint. Many of the things you mention are effects, either side-effects or direct-effects, of our large brain which is a sexually selected body part not too much unlike the peacocks tail or the anglers of Irish elk.
In addition, many of the attributes you admire are found in more primitive forms in other animals. Altruism both within and between species, self-sacrifice, empathy, sadness, etc have been identified and described in the animal kingdom, they are not the exclusive domain of humans.
Well, let's see, there's a group of "scientists" who have been consistently working under the [irrational] assumption that all human behavior can and must be explained in evolutionary terms.
But you give no reasons for this being an irrational assumption. It is completely a rational assumption and coherent with the same scientific method that explains rainbows as a diffraction of white light and not a promise or demonstrates that earth is a sphere and orbits the sun.
What it gives in return is a smug, cynical and bitter sense of understanding, and that made even colder by the absense of faith in God, in genuine love and in human goodwill, etc.
Maybe smug, cynical and bitter to you. Nonetheless, the truth is better than a lie or fairy tale.
I find a certain comfort to learn that life operating at a fundamental level of self interest tends to develop life forms that promote goodwill, love and altruism. That is, as the complexity of life increases, so do the value of nonzero sum transactions which leads towards the attributes you cherish and associate with the divine. Maybe the divine is in the machine.
Faith must be given to the LORD
Faith in the LORD has never cured the sick, replaced a missing limb, fed the hungry, or provided shelter, let alone moved a mountain. Faith of this form is worthless and a hindrance to humanity.
In case anyone just crawled out from under rock with respect to this issue, Mr Marriot, IBM legal council, summarizes it well in the FA...
Now, Your Honor with respect to misuse, briefly again, the facts here are simple. They claimed rights to more than a million lines of code in Linux. At the end of the day, there's 326 lines of code in which they have rights, and they have sought to exert the supposed monopoly they have and copyrights they claim to have over technology plainly owned by others.
If you read IBM lawyers remarks to the court they relatively easy to understand as a layman. However, I try to read the SCO responses to the court and I can not understand why the hell they are try to say.
Slashdot Mirror
Has there ever been a case, anywhere, where someone was sued because of some defect found in freely available software. Such a case would make headlines (and maybe even make SCO look like a slightly lighter shade of complete black).
It seems to me to be a bit paranoid.
All I can say is that Al Gore better get a good lawyer....
There was a time when the very real fear that if Microsoft achieve total dominance on the client that they could (and would) leverage that influence to the server by coupling new extension that only work with IE/IIS combination. The WWW would become the WMW :(
So this increasing market share of Firefox is good news. The threat of a single client achieving complete dominance is past now, I believe - a bullet dodged.
As an aside. I have a customer that was concerned about this several years ago and she wanted to do her part so she requested a special mod to her shopping cart that recognizes the browser and gives a "Mozilla Users Discount" for the kindred users.
Interesting to see that it still works Sam McGees Hot Sauce"
OK this place is really going down hill? Whatever is happening to good taste and decorum these days?
This sounds like some badly written erotic literature.
I, for one, welcome our new edible and delicious overloads (hmmm extra crispy or original recipe ....)
God made mud.
...
God got lonesome.
So God said to some of the mud, 'Sit up!'
'See all I've made,' said God, 'the hills, the sea, the sky, the stars.'
And I was some of the mud that got to sit up and look around.
Lucky me, lucky mud.
I, mud, sat up and saw what a nice job God had done.
Nice going, God!
Now God said, I want mud to believe some impossible things.
And if mud cannot, then mud must burn and suffer eternal torment.
And mud thought and asked why.
And God said because I am good.
And mud wished he had never sat-up
Apologies to Kurt who is in Heaven
Now we would all be a lot more impressed if they cooled a glass of Guinness down to the requisite 5 degrees Celsius.
A functional laser operated beer cooler... now that would be a patent i wouldn't complain about.
Was Thomas Huxley an arrogant media-hunger loser of science?
In the fight against the fundamentalists (be they Christian, Mulsim, Hindu, etc) I prefer to have a Churchill instead of Chamberlain in the fray.
The subject of the existence and nature of God is perhaps the most important question of all time.
Dawkins forcefully and articulately advocates stripping away the historical baggage that clouds many people's worldview and religious positions.
It is high time to reconsider: the implicit goodness of unfounded faith, the archaic views of bronze-age gods, failure of religions to enlighten, the morality of brainwashing children with religious views. Sam Harris has put it concerning the scientific worldview "there is new wine (slowly) being poured. Why not catch it with a clean glass?"
Oh and BTW, I am sure Dawkin's contribution to science are pale and insignificant to your own eh? and your arguments are so convincing.
I guess now I am forced to to port all of my FORTRAN AJAX apps over to Perl
Sheep != Autopilot
The fact that the mind can perform autonomous functions without conscious input does not equate to sheep like behavior when it comes to philosophical beliefs.
I don't think it has and you exaggerate this assertion.
However, a belief that the creator of the magnificent universe would muddy itself and act in way of a tribal warlord (ie the lord is man of war) or command genocide and child rape, is in my mind, yes an indicator of either lack of intelligence or at least susceptibility to brain washing.
A belief that the world was flooded at short time ago when there is abundant geological evidence that it did not, proves something of ones intelligence or lack of critical thinking ability.
A belief that the creator of the great and small would feel threatened by a bronze age culture building a tall tower is... well indicator of someone who needs to believe in a bronze age god.
First prostate trouble typically happen in late midlife after the period where a male can have and raise children.
Second evolution, just like a large software development program, has to make do with a bad decision made early in the formative design process.
I am imagining that just before failure the fellow at the controls was muttering...
... She canna take much more of this, Captain"
"I'm Giving Her All She's Got, Captain
That audible wroooshing sound you hear is the joke going over your head :)
Not surprising since the concept did not exist at the time of writing.
Dogs are a species! No one is suggesting that the Ark contained the Boston Terriers and Siberian Huskies.
There are over 300,000 different species of beetles! If the Ark only contained a pair of beetles and all of today's beetles originated from that pair you would have some very very rapid
Sure like:
Deuteronomy
"As you approach a town to attack it, first offer its people terms for peace. If they accept your terms and open the gates to you, then all the people inside will serve you in forced labor. But if they refuse to make peace and prepare to fight, you must attack the town. When the LORD your God hands it over to you, kill every man in the town. But you may keep for yourselves all the women, children, livestock, and other plunder. You may enjoy the spoils of your enemies that the LORD your God has given you."
In this neat little passage we have slavery, genocide and rape by command of the god of the OT.
Here is something to describes the character of the god of the OT...
Exodus
"The LORD is a man of war: the LORD is his name."
And here is some more OT god mercy and graciousness and long-suffering. Obviously the love and mercy did not apply to young virgin children girls.
Numbers
"They warred against Midian, as YAHWEH commanded Moses, and killed every male. They killed the kings of Midian with the rest of their slain
Now here we have clearly child rape. Keeping in mind that the Midians were pure evil (the standard apologetic response to the above passage) just how young do think these virgin children were? Does not your OT gods grace apply to them?
Is that why whenever the "spirit of the lord" moves within Sampson he goes out to kill people. Yup the love of people just is quite clear in the above passages.
In my experience biblical illiteracy is widespread among bible believers.
No it did not! The flood is a not only a myth but a borrowed myth. Check the story of Gilgamesh, of which sources predate any OT sources. Try to read something other than Christian Apologetics.
Further the proof the flood does not exists is clearly and abundantly obvious in Geology. Get out into the field take a book or surface geological map and look around and will encounter geological formations that deny the flood.
The Noachian flood is falsifiable on so many different levels - it really only takes a few minutes of unbiased thinking.
Just how did these baby polar bears, kola bears, blind cave fish and blind mole rats make the oceanic journey and arrive in the Middle East.
Or better yet on the other end. Why is there *strong* geographic patterns of species distribution. For example, how did the marsupials almost exclusively arrive in Australia?). Biogeography, is only one of many different conclusive evidences that discount the Flood story.
I dunno I would not want to feed, baby elephants or grizzly bears, let alone baby Sauropods.
Wow! No doubt about it that block of text is impervious to rebuttal - are you on ecstasy or something? You insert the ole global theory like it fits with the rest of the nonsense.
Psst... other cultures have flood myths because as humans transitioned from hunter-gathering to agriculture they settle in rich river valleys, and as we all know river valleys tend to flood on occasions.
This is true with all federal government research. Windows is increasing becoming the only tool approved and it is getting harder to use non-windows tools. Take for example the wide ranging Navy Marine contract that specifies essentially the same solution for the receptionist desktop as on the scientist/engineering desktop. All applications have to be on the "approved" list which eliminates many instances of great open source and freeware software. It is a sad trend - they may as well nationalize Microsoft.
First if men wish to see their children grow up and have offspring off their own it sure helps to hang around. Please note there are many animals that are more magnanimous than humans.
Traditional home? Why not a traditional home that is described in the OT - you know with multiple wifes, concubines, and young virgin children taken as "wifes" in form of war booty fully endorsed and codified by the dark miniature vision of the "LORD God".
Your vision of god has to accommodate the impossible belief that the God of love and mercy would also command like...
"When the LORD your God hands it over to you, kill every man in the town. But you may keep for yourselves all the women, children, livestock, and other plunder. You may enjoy the spoils of your enemies that the LORD your God has given you."
or
"Now kill all the boys and all the women who have slept with a man. Only the young girls who are virgins may live; you may keep them for yourselves."
And you think the scientist have a cold, cynical, bitter and narrow view of the world.
You are arguing from incredulity, not very satisfying or convincing.
You really need to read some more on this issue and get into touch with your inner ape (ie EO Wilson, Robert Wright, Van der walls, Dawkins, the true prophets of the day). A lot of human behavior can be explained in terms of a evolutionary standpoint. Many of the things you mention are effects, either side-effects or direct-effects, of our large brain which is a sexually selected body part not too much unlike the peacocks tail or the anglers of Irish elk.
In addition, many of the attributes you admire are found in more primitive forms in other animals. Altruism both within and between species, self-sacrifice, empathy, sadness, etc have been identified and described in the animal kingdom, they are not the exclusive domain of humans.
Zebra adjusts volume on belt controller....
"10 yards for Illegal Procedure by the offense, replay first down"
That could be marketed as Off-site Backup that is out of this world!
I notice one thing....
If you read IBM lawyers remarks to the court they relatively easy to understand as a layman. However, I try to read the SCO responses to the court and I can not understand why the hell they are try to say.