you CAN learn the CLI (and a powerful skill it is) but you really don't NEED to (no more than you need to use the CLI in Windows)
Funny you should say that. Just today I was trying out the new Ubuntu 9.04 in a virtual machine, and for whatever reason the package management was broken. The error message mentioned running this and that apt-get console command to fix it. The commands didn't fix my problems, but that's another story. The point is that whenever something doesn't work, you're likely to have to start Terminal after all. I've encountered it every time I've troubleshooted something on Ubuntu. For instance, when my wireless NIC didn't work, the instructions I googled involved a series of commands I had to enter in the console. I think that's a pretty common scenario. Saying that you can use Ubuntu without needing to become familiar with the console assumes that everything works, and is just not realistic.
I'm not sure how they managed to achieve that, but package management doesn't work with VMware Workstation 6.5. I tried both Ubuntu and Kubuntu 9.04, and I could neither list nor do anything else with packages. It's so strange that I suspect VMware might have actively broken something in the installation. I can't imagine why else would something like packages not work in any virtual machine.
The question of theism is so loaded for some people that speaking against it in any manner would be genuinely offensive. This is the point behind all the "shut up" arguments, that there are some with hair-trigger sensibilities. The point ONLY works to stifle free speech, and is so tired that I'm actually expecting people to let go of it sooner or later when they see that atheists aren't shutting up and that their objections are unsound.
What you described as "your problem" with Dawkins is a pure ad hominem argument, and a rather ridiculous one at that, since philosophy of science doesn't support theistic arguments. If you took the time to drop all these names and terms to look impressive, you might as well have said at least something specific.
I think it's reasonable to assume that scientists are allowed to use colloquial meanings too. Also, look between the covers, will you? That way you'll be able to have a discussion about his actual views, rather than trying to extract them from the title of a book.
He can't answer, because that's a straw man and Dawkins knows full well and has stated repeatedly that you can't disprove a negative. However, you can make a valid argument from ignorance: if God's existence makes any difference to the observable reality at all, you'd expect science to be the best way to detect it, and since it hasn't, it's an argument against the existence of a detectable God. It doesn't mean that there can't be an undetectable one, but in that case the question is completely meaningless, and you might as well consern yourself with invisible pink unicorns.
Also, if you're talking about straw men, that's what this characterization of his argument is. Dawkins says that either the observable world without God would be very different from the world with God, or the question of God's existence is completely irrelevant. This puts it within the purview of science, since it deals with exploring the observable.
Actually, according to biology, no new life is created at conception, all current life has began exactly once about 3.5 billion years ago, and we are all part of an uninterrupted lineage.
No, you're committing the etymological fallacy. The "literal translation" isn't necessarily the same as the meaning of the word. Mob rule is called "ochlocracy", by the way.
There is no contradiction. That's how democracy is supposed to work. It's a safeguard against populism, because the popular decision wouldn't always the best one. In essence, the masses are trusted to elect the government, but not to do the governing themselves, otherwise it would just be mob rule.
Hello there, reporting in from Eastern Europe. Rotary-dial phones have been uncommon here for a long time too. My suggestion would be to take what you see in movies less seriously.
They are not too small, people use them "like a laptop" all the time. I don't know where you got the idea that they can't be used. The point of netbooks is simply to be cheap, small laptops for when you don't want to carry the extra weight and don't want to spend a fortune on, say, an X series ThinkPad or a PowerBook, or any of the other expensive larger laptops. For instance, I tend to have back problems so having a light laptop is important, but I only use it to take notes in lectures, so I wouldn't want to break the bank just for that, therefore I have an Eee PC. It does the job very well, and it wasn't even hard to get accustomed to the keyboard size. I probably type at around 60 WPM on it, and the notes I get are much easier to use.
Wow, that is so smart sounding! Except, let's try an experiment and see how many principles you have left if the price for not breaking them is sufficiently high, like, say, the death of a family member. Guess what, suddenly almost all of your so-called "principles" turn out to be preferences after all. Not so useful a criteria now, eh? Because then you either can't have any principles in non-vital areas of life like IT at all, or you're a crazy zealot that would sacrifice his family for GPL or whatever.
In any case, GET vs POST isn't a security concernâ"both are equally succeptible to exploits.
no, not really, since it's much easier to get people to open GET URLs than POST. with the former, all you need to do is, say, post an [IMG] in a forum somewhere, and people might not even notice it was you. with POST, you need to get them to click on a link or use XSS, which is harder to achieve and more prone to draw attention
What is a bad idea is a link that will add someone as a friend or delete a picture, you get the idea.
no, not necessarily. you could simply add the session ID as one of the necessary GET parameters, and redirect the client afterward, so as to not display the URL with the session ID to her, lest she copies and pastes it to someone. this simplifies development, because you don't need a form to let the user perform actions. also, I think it's safer, because, unless you add a hidden parameter to the form, it's vulnerable to CSRF too. POST just makes it a bit harder to do (e.g., [img] tags in a forum software won't suffice)
The summary is misleading, it should say "Mozilla is planning to develop a[n another] browser for mobile phones by 2010.", because Minimo (Mini Mozilla) has existed for years: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimo
I've even used it on my PPC, but found that it isn't very good, especially compared to Opera Mobile.
Sites do it because they can't just send standards-compliant data, because browsers don't all render it the same.
no, they do it because the webmasters are incompetent. there are more reliable ways to target different rendering engines (for instance, conditional comments for Trident) than UA sniffing
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Funny you should say that. Just today I was trying out the new Ubuntu 9.04 in a virtual machine, and for whatever reason the package management was broken. The error message mentioned running this and that apt-get console command to fix it. The commands didn't fix my problems, but that's another story. The point is that whenever something doesn't work, you're likely to have to start Terminal after all. I've encountered it every time I've troubleshooted something on Ubuntu. For instance, when my wireless NIC didn't work, the instructions I googled involved a series of commands I had to enter in the console. I think that's a pretty common scenario. Saying that you can use Ubuntu without needing to become familiar with the console assumes that everything works, and is just not realistic.
I'm not sure how they managed to achieve that, but package management doesn't work with VMware Workstation 6.5. I tried both Ubuntu and Kubuntu 9.04, and I could neither list nor do anything else with packages. It's so strange that I suspect VMware might have actively broken something in the installation. I can't imagine why else would something like packages not work in any virtual machine.
Wait, are you saying that CentOS or RedHat somehow require root logins and are unstable? Seriously?
The question of theism is so loaded for some people that speaking against it in any manner would be genuinely offensive. This is the point behind all the "shut up" arguments, that there are some with hair-trigger sensibilities. The point ONLY works to stifle free speech, and is so tired that I'm actually expecting people to let go of it sooner or later when they see that atheists aren't shutting up and that their objections are unsound.
What you described as "your problem" with Dawkins is a pure ad hominem argument, and a rather ridiculous one at that, since philosophy of science doesn't support theistic arguments. If you took the time to drop all these names and terms to look impressive, you might as well have said at least something specific.
There are studies about this, and theism doesn't corellate positively with education.
Surprise: if you're not a theist, you're an atheist.
I think it's reasonable to assume that scientists are allowed to use colloquial meanings too. Also, look between the covers, will you? That way you'll be able to have a discussion about his actual views, rather than trying to extract them from the title of a book.
He can't answer, because that's a straw man and Dawkins knows full well and has stated repeatedly that you can't disprove a negative. However, you can make a valid argument from ignorance: if God's existence makes any difference to the observable reality at all, you'd expect science to be the best way to detect it, and since it hasn't, it's an argument against the existence of a detectable God. It doesn't mean that there can't be an undetectable one, but in that case the question is completely meaningless, and you might as well consern yourself with invisible pink unicorns.
Science itself uses induction, so what?
Also, if you're talking about straw men, that's what this characterization of his argument is. Dawkins says that either the observable world without God would be very different from the world with God, or the question of God's existence is completely irrelevant. This puts it within the purview of science, since it deals with exploring the observable.
Actually, according to biology, no new life is created at conception, all current life has began exactly once about 3.5 billion years ago, and we are all part of an uninterrupted lineage.
Why in the world is this modded offtopic...
Okay, I accept that I was wrong. Thanks for correcting me.
No, you're committing the etymological fallacy. The "literal translation" isn't necessarily the same as the meaning of the word. Mob rule is called "ochlocracy", by the way.
There is no contradiction. That's how democracy is supposed to work. It's a safeguard against populism, because the popular decision wouldn't always the best one. In essence, the masses are trusted to elect the government, but not to do the governing themselves, otherwise it would just be mob rule.
I suppose someone blew their mod points by commenting in the same discussion (or you're just seeing things).
Castration would be enough.
Hello there, reporting in from Eastern Europe. Rotary-dial phones have been uncommon here for a long time too. My suggestion would be to take what you see in movies less seriously.
They are not too small, people use them "like a laptop" all the time. I don't know where you got the idea that they can't be used. The point of netbooks is simply to be cheap, small laptops for when you don't want to carry the extra weight and don't want to spend a fortune on, say, an X series ThinkPad or a PowerBook, or any of the other expensive larger laptops. For instance, I tend to have back problems so having a light laptop is important, but I only use it to take notes in lectures, so I wouldn't want to break the bank just for that, therefore I have an Eee PC. It does the job very well, and it wasn't even hard to get accustomed to the keyboard size. I probably type at around 60 WPM on it, and the notes I get are much easier to use.
Or you could just use Google and find out by yourself.
Wow, that is so smart sounding! Except, let's try an experiment and see how many principles you have left if the price for not breaking them is sufficiently high, like, say, the death of a family member. Guess what, suddenly almost all of your so-called "principles" turn out to be preferences after all. Not so useful a criteria now, eh? Because then you either can't have any principles in non-vital areas of life like IT at all, or you're a crazy zealot that would sacrifice his family for GPL or whatever.
no, not really, since it's much easier to get people to open GET URLs than POST. with the former, all you need to do is, say, post an [IMG] in a forum somewhere, and people might not even notice it was you. with POST, you need to get them to click on a link or use XSS, which is harder to achieve and more prone to draw attention
no, not necessarily. you could simply add the session ID as one of the necessary GET parameters, and redirect the client afterward, so as to not display the URL with the session ID to her, lest she copies and pastes it to someone. this simplifies development, because you don't need a form to let the user perform actions. also, I think it's safer, because, unless you add a hidden parameter to the form, it's vulnerable to CSRF too. POST just makes it a bit harder to do (e.g., [img] tags in a forum software won't suffice)
The summary is misleading, it should say "Mozilla is planning to develop a[n another] browser for mobile phones by 2010.", because Minimo (Mini Mozilla) has existed for years: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimo
I've even used it on my PPC, but found that it isn't very good, especially compared to Opera Mobile.
no, they do it because the webmasters are incompetent. there are more reliable ways to target different rendering engines (for instance, conditional comments for Trident) than UA sniffing