Well I'm glad you conceited snobs enjoy the embargo while the people of Cuba suffer because of it. The embargo severely cripples the Cuban economy, but hey, let's keep those people in poverty just so a few snobs like yourself can vacation on the Island free of American influences.
As if the American-imposed embargo has no influence in Cuba. You talk about it as if it were a natural disaster. If you are so concerned about the effects of the embargo on the Cuban people, why not call for lifting it?
Access to moral high road: DENIED.
You may love keeping the embargo intact...
His country doesn't embargo Cuba. He is free to travel there. His country trades with Cuba. Unlike you and me, and our country, the co-called "Land of the free" (just so long as you line up with official policy).
It's funny how you dislike Americans so much, yet you're in reality far worse than the average American you despise so much.
If you're a typical American, he has good reason to. You just blamed him for what we've been doing. People usually find cause for offense in that.
Interesting. I made no mention of my opinion of you.
Sure you did. You said all the left-wing blowhards were making it hard for you to get a job, because employers don't like to hire people they perceive as left-wing blowhards, or you don't want to be seen as a left-wing blowhard, or whatever. In any case, the gist of your post was that it's the left-wing blowhards that are responsible for a negative public perception that keeps you unemployable. That must mean that you think your potential employers are making employment decisions based on these things. In my post, the one you replied to, I said "If I were a potential employer of yours...." and that's the connection to your opinion of me. It's a thought-experiment: "If I were your employer, this is how I might react to the opinion you expressed about your potential employers," namely, that they base their hiring decisions on negative stereotypes, thereby rendering you unemployable.
But that seems not to be not what you meant, after all. In your latest post, it seems you actually think most employers base their decisions on other than knee-jerk reactions to left-wing blowhards, and that those who don't are probably not good employment propspects anyway.
So I have to ask, what effect are the left-wing blowhards having on the potential for you to be employed? It seems that you don't really think they are having any effect after all, contrary to your first post on the matter. That was my point in replying to it.
With all of that said, I cannot survive in the industry, if I am viewed as belonging to a group of fanatical left wing blow hards who absolutely refuse to look at the pros of anything that competes with their prize product. It would shut the door for me as professional.
You can't get a job and it's all our fault? Do you read what you write before posting? All your potential employers are knee-jerk reactionaries who make hiring and firing decisions based on stereotypes?
If I were a potential employer of yours, I'd be fairly insulted at your low opinion of me. I think I'd not want to hire you for that reason.
So if the AV service takes off, that's a revenue stream to protect. How do you protect it? Don't fix some of the holes in Windows. Release viruses designed in Redmond. Whatever it takes, but don't jeopardize the subscription revenue stream by changing the OS to that viruses are ineffective.
Privacy as you are thinking of it is a modern concept that arose in Western societies in the 17th century. There have been plenty of civilizations and societies that had no such thing, and they lasted as long as any others. Asimov was brilliant, but this was one of his less-brilliant pronouncements.
Why have you invested so much emotional energy into wanting everyone to love Star Wars? The fact of the matter is that the last two movies hurled green snot globules, and I ain't paying to see the third. Everyone raved about how much better the 2nd one was than the 1st, but I waited until it came out on cable TV and wasn't disappointed that I had waited. What a steaming pile of bird turds. The Yoda/Doodoo fight was ridiculous, yet this is what all the fanboys raved about.
I saw Star Wars the original when I was 14. My parents didn't take me to see it, I rode my bike down to the movies and saw it with my friends. It was $1 matinee. We didn't play with X-Wing fighter toys, that was for 3rd graders.
I await the next as does everyone else here, even those that refuse to admit it.
It left me puzzled as to why there is even a debate.
There are about 4 or 5 persons quoted over and over on that page, and no quute is more than two sentences. This, against more than a century of research and millions of pages of papers, written by hundreds of thousands of scientists. All you offer is some quote mining from a handful of gadflys.
Physics and chemistry are not random. Sure, you put a mole of oxygen in a tank with two moles of hydrogen and each atom will react with a randomly chosen partner. But the end result is water - every time!
I did not commit an ad hominem (not ad homimym as you spelled it), because I did not impugn any idea or proposal based on the character of the person proposing it. I found Plantinga's ideas to be hogwash, hand-waving, which I'll admit I have not supported with any citations here in this thread (I could, however, do just that). But in no way is it an ad hominem. If I said Plantinga's writings are hogwash because Plantinga is a SCO Lawyer, that would be an ad hominem, whether it was true or not that Plantinga is a SCO Lawyer.
You then put me in a position to devise a list of natural philosophers and limit it...
I put you in no such position. You put yourself in that position when you asserted that refutations of Plantinga's work had all failed.
You can also try doing a simple search at your local college library for the original paper and then adding "in response to" as part of your query.
Why should I do your legwork for you? Do you have a list, or not? You made a statement to that effect, I asked you to back it up. Will you, or will you not back it up?
For those who do not know who Alvin Plantinga is, he is The John A. O'Brien Professor of Philosophy at Notre Dame and a sometimes lecturer at Biola, Stanford et al.
For those of you who think Alvin Plantinga is undisputed, Gary Cutting is a fellow of his also at Notre Dame who has done exactly what Hungus claimed no one had: disputed Plantinga's "An Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism".
Gary Gutting, Religious Belief and Religious Skepticism (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1982), pp. 79-92.
Now I gave you what you asked for, even though I carry no burden of proof. That's just my generous character. I never asserted that someone had refuted Plantinga. It was you asserted all who had tried, failed, all I asked was for you to list those who had failed. Will you now give me what I asked for, and fulfil the burden you assumed by asserting that Plantinga's detractors had all failed, and provide me a list of them and their failed critiques?
I have read the "undisputable" article, and it seems like a bunch of hogwash and hand-waving to me. Word games, nothing more. But I am sure that all I have done with this declaration is to convince you that I am not "one of best of natural philisophers." But I would like to see who else has done what I have done. Do you have a list, or not, of the ones who have disputed it?
Logically, you haven't got a leg to stand on. You play word games and think you gave discovered some cosmic knowledge. All you have discovered is that language is imprecise. It is your mindset that is limiting, not logic itself. Logic is a tool, but in the hands of someone with your outlook, it is more like a chipped flint than a precision scalpel.
In any case, this topic has squat to do with science or evolution, and doesn't belong in the science class anymore than home economics belongs in P.E. Perhaps this belongs in mental masturbation class.
Another explanation is misleading clues placed by a god who puts a high value on faith.
More than honesty is valued, apparently. You believe in a trickster god, like Loki. How do you know this god did't create the universe five minutes ago, with fake memories of a lifetime implanted in our brains? How do you know some other trickster god hasn't deceived you?
I see no way to know anything, from your viewpoint. Everything is suspect, unbelieveable.
It takes just as much faith to believe in evolution as it does Intelligent design, more in many people's estimation (Drs Plantinga, Creamer et al).
No it doesn't.
One of the primary reasons is that the very act of evolution requires certain assumptions and that the probability of evolution creating cognative ability approaches null.
What was your control group for this experiment?
It is a very sound argument which as yet the best of natural philisophers have yet to overturn.
Can you name some of the philosophers who have failed? I'd be interested to read them.
You didn't mention the two biggest problems with "intelligent design" theory.
1st big problem: it makes no predictions that can be tested empirically. Even if true, it would not change how biology research is done one bit, because it doesn't say anything about how biology would be different under I.D. than biology guided by evolutionary theory.
2nd big problem: I.D. states that life is too complex to have have arisen from less-complex non-living origins. Well what about the "designer?" It must be more complex than the things it designed, and so by the same argument, the designer must have a designer, too. I.D. proponents must necessarily be polytheistic.
I don't care anymore to find out how Anakin became Darth Vader. So it is really irrelevant how "dark" it is. It's only "dark" if you care about the characters, and the first two "prequels" ruined them. I don't really give a flip.
They are called script kiddies because they just copy and use somebody else's code. It doesn't matter to Windows' DDOS potential if it is "more difficult" to do raw sockets, if the holes that allow rootkits to get into Windows are not closed. All it takes to render Microsoft's half-assed workaround useless, is for a "real hacker" to do the work once - then all the script kiddies will copy it and use it and we're back to square one.
Gibson is a self-serving boob, not a security expert. He's a marketing hack.
How is a newbie going to learn about how Gentoo is put together by watching the text scroll by?
About the same thing they will learn by ignoring it. The point of my first post was that you don't really learn much about how the system is put together by using Gentoo. If the newcomer knows enough about Gentoo to decide that using Knoppix to browse the web while the system builds itself is a good idea, then they already know pretty everything they would have learned by building a Gentoo system, before they begin.
Slashdot Mirror
The original poster apparently enjoys the embargo because it keeps Americans off his vacation island.
Or perhaps he was just trying to get your knickers in a twist.
Well I'm glad you conceited snobs enjoy the embargo while the people of Cuba suffer because of it. The embargo severely cripples the Cuban economy, but hey, let's keep those people in poverty just so a few snobs like yourself can vacation on the Island free of American influences.
As if the American-imposed embargo has no influence in Cuba. You talk about it as if it were a natural disaster. If you are so concerned about the effects of the embargo on the Cuban people, why not call for lifting it?
Access to moral high road: DENIED.
You may love keeping the embargo intact...
His country doesn't embargo Cuba. He is free to travel there. His country trades with Cuba. Unlike you and me, and our country, the co-called "Land of the free" (just so long as you line up with official policy).
It's funny how you dislike Americans so much, yet you're in reality far worse than the average American you despise so much.
If you're a typical American, he has good reason to. You just blamed him for what we've been doing. People usually find cause for offense in that.
Obviously, if 2/3 of the users are pirating the software, the asking price is too high. So the valuations of the losses are way over the top.
Interesting. I made no mention of my opinion of you.
Sure you did. You said all the left-wing blowhards were making it hard for you to get a job, because employers don't like to hire people they perceive as left-wing blowhards, or you don't want to be seen as a left-wing blowhard, or whatever. In any case, the gist of your post was that it's the left-wing blowhards that are responsible for a negative public perception that keeps you unemployable. That must mean that you think your potential employers are making employment decisions based on these things. In my post, the one you replied to, I said "If I were a potential employer of yours...." and that's the connection to your opinion of me. It's a thought-experiment: "If I were your employer, this is how I might react to the opinion you expressed about your potential employers," namely, that they base their hiring decisions on negative stereotypes, thereby rendering you unemployable.
But that seems not to be not what you meant, after all. In your latest post, it seems you actually think most employers base their decisions on other than knee-jerk reactions to left-wing blowhards, and that those who don't are probably not good employment propspects anyway.
So I have to ask, what effect are the left-wing blowhards having on the potential for you to be employed? It seems that you don't really think they are having any effect after all, contrary to your first post on the matter. That was my point in replying to it.
With all of that said, I cannot survive in the industry, if I am viewed as belonging to a group of fanatical left wing blow hards who absolutely refuse to look at the pros of anything that competes with their prize product. It would shut the door for me as professional.
You can't get a job and it's all our fault? Do you read what you write before posting? All your potential employers are knee-jerk reactionaries who make hiring and firing decisions based on stereotypes?
If I were a potential employer of yours, I'd be fairly insulted at your low opinion of me. I think I'd not want to hire you for that reason.
So what's a man to do?
Kill your TV.
So if the AV service takes off, that's a revenue stream to protect. How do you protect it? Don't fix some of the holes in Windows. Release viruses designed in Redmond. Whatever it takes, but don't jeopardize the subscription revenue stream by changing the OS to that viruses are ineffective.
Privacy as you are thinking of it is a modern concept that arose in Western societies in the 17th century. There have been plenty of civilizations and societies that had no such thing, and they lasted as long as any others. Asimov was brilliant, but this was one of his less-brilliant pronouncements.
Why have you invested so much emotional energy into wanting everyone to love Star Wars? The fact of the matter is that the last two movies hurled green snot globules, and I ain't paying to see the third. Everyone raved about how much better the 2nd one was than the 1st, but I waited until it came out on cable TV and wasn't disappointed that I had waited. What a steaming pile of bird turds. The Yoda/Doodoo fight was ridiculous, yet this is what all the fanboys raved about.
I saw Star Wars the original when I was 14. My parents didn't take me to see it, I rode my bike down to the movies and saw it with my friends. It was $1 matinee. We didn't play with X-Wing fighter toys, that was for 3rd graders.
I await the next as does everyone else here, even those that refuse to admit it.
Ah, blow me.
Wow, look how the anti's modded up a whine. That's pretty typical of their debate strategery.
I found this collection of quotations from MANY pro-evolution scientists/believers to be quite interesting...
http://emporium.turnpike.net/C/cs/bias.htm
It left me puzzled as to why there is even a debate.
There are about 4 or 5 persons quoted over and over on that page, and no quute is more than two sentences. This, against more than a century of research and millions of pages of papers, written by hundreds of thousands of scientists. All you offer is some quote mining from a handful of gadflys.
Physics and chemistry are not random. Sure, you put a mole of oxygen in a tank with two moles of hydrogen and each atom will react with a randomly chosen partner. But the end result is water - every time!
The chemistry of DNA is likewise also not random.
I did not commit an ad hominem (not ad homimym as you spelled it), because I did not impugn any idea or proposal based on the character of the person proposing it. I found Plantinga's ideas to be hogwash, hand-waving, which I'll admit I have not supported with any citations here in this thread (I could, however, do just that). But in no way is it an ad hominem. If I said Plantinga's writings are hogwash because Plantinga is a SCO Lawyer, that would be an ad hominem, whether it was true or not that Plantinga is a SCO Lawyer.
...
You then put me in a position to devise a list of natural philosophers and limit it
I put you in no such position. You put yourself in that position when you asserted that refutations of Plantinga's work had all failed.
You can also try doing a simple search at your local college library for the original paper and then adding "in response to" as part of your query.
Why should I do your legwork for you? Do you have a list, or not? You made a statement to that effect, I asked you to back it up. Will you, or will you not back it up?
For those who do not know who Alvin Plantinga is, he is The John A. O'Brien Professor of Philosophy at Notre Dame and a sometimes lecturer at Biola, Stanford et al.
For those of you who think Alvin Plantinga is undisputed, Gary Cutting is a fellow of his also at Notre Dame who has done exactly what Hungus claimed no one had: disputed Plantinga's "An Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism".
Gary Gutting, Religious Belief and Religious Skepticism (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1982), pp. 79-92.
Now I gave you what you asked for, even though I carry no burden of proof. That's just my generous character. I never asserted that someone had refuted Plantinga. It was you asserted all who had tried, failed, all I asked was for you to list those who had failed. Will you now give me what I asked for, and fulfil the burden you assumed by asserting that Plantinga's detractors had all failed, and provide me a list of them and their failed critiques?
I have read the "undisputable" article, and it seems like a bunch of hogwash and hand-waving to me. Word games, nothing more. But I am sure that all I have done with this declaration is to convince you that I am not "one of best of natural philisophers." But I would like to see who else has done what I have done. Do you have a list, or not, of the ones who have disputed it?
Or are you lying?
Logically, you haven't got a leg to stand on. You play word games and think you gave discovered some cosmic knowledge. All you have discovered is that language is imprecise. It is your mindset that is limiting, not logic itself. Logic is a tool, but in the hands of someone with your outlook, it is more like a chipped flint than a precision scalpel.
In any case, this topic has squat to do with science or evolution, and doesn't belong in the science class anymore than home economics belongs in P.E. Perhaps this belongs in mental masturbation class.
Yes, working from logic we discover only that we can know nothing, and even that discovery is suspect.
Well, then I guess you'll be logging off, since we can't know anything about solid state electronics, this communication is impossible.
Nevertheless, this is a tenet of I.D. that complex things require a more complex designer, sound or unsound, that's what they say.
Another explanation is misleading clues placed by a god who puts a high value on faith.
More than honesty is valued, apparently. You believe in a trickster god, like Loki. How do you know this god did't create the universe five minutes ago, with fake memories of a lifetime implanted in our brains? How do you know some other trickster god hasn't deceived you?
I see no way to know anything, from your viewpoint. Everything is suspect, unbelieveable.
It takes just as much faith to believe in evolution as it does Intelligent design, more in many people's estimation (Drs Plantinga, Creamer et al).
No it doesn't.
One of the primary reasons is that the very act of evolution requires certain assumptions and that the probability of evolution creating cognative ability approaches null.
What was your control group for this experiment?
It is a very sound argument which as yet the best of natural philisophers have yet to overturn.
Can you name some of the philosophers who have failed? I'd be interested to read them.
You didn't mention the two biggest problems with "intelligent design" theory.
1st big problem: it makes no predictions that can be tested empirically. Even if true, it would not change how biology research is done one bit, because it doesn't say anything about how biology would be different under I.D. than biology guided by evolutionary theory.
2nd big problem: I.D. states that life is too complex to have have arisen from less-complex non-living origins. Well what about the "designer?" It must be more complex than the things it designed, and so by the same argument, the designer must have a designer, too. I.D. proponents must necessarily be polytheistic.
That all sounds just like true believers' explanations for why God doesn't always answer prayers.
I don't care anymore to find out how Anakin became Darth Vader. So it is really irrelevant how "dark" it is. It's only "dark" if you care about the characters, and the first two "prequels" ruined them. I don't really give a flip.
They are called script kiddies because they just copy and use somebody else's code. It doesn't matter to Windows' DDOS potential if it is "more difficult" to do raw sockets, if the holes that allow rootkits to get into Windows are not closed. All it takes to render Microsoft's half-assed workaround useless, is for a "real hacker" to do the work once - then all the script kiddies will copy it and use it and we're back to square one.
Gibson is a self-serving boob, not a security expert. He's a marketing hack.
How is a newbie going to learn about how Gentoo is put together by watching the text scroll by?
About the same thing they will learn by ignoring it. The point of my first post was that you don't really learn much about how the system is put together by using Gentoo. If the newcomer knows enough about Gentoo to decide that using Knoppix to browse the web while the system builds itself is a good idea, then they already know pretty everything they would have learned by building a Gentoo system, before they begin.
Ah yes - then the newcomers can learn all about how their system is put together while not watching it. Uh-huh.