well said. science is a search for a coherent set of minimal assumptions with maximum usefulness.
if you want answers, or "the truth" then immerse yourself in a religion. if you ask a question of science then all you get back is a more refined question.
on the other hand, science not only allows but demands constant testing of the applicability of any assumptions or conclusions made. so even if we're only making small steps at least we can tell we're headed in the right direction.
on Lost: people bitched a lot about the end of season 2/start of season 3 era. but it all leads up to the end of season 3 which for me was one of the best television episodes ever.
anyone who didn't like the end and isn't looking forward to the 48 remaining episodes could never have been a fan of the show in the first place.
I agree with the comment about kill/murder - but once again it comes down to defintion of who is a "person". look at the glaring islamic contradiction from the Danish issue "Islam is peaceful, death to anyone who claims otherwise". when you can define infidels as not real people the quote can start making a kind of self-consistent sense. this is not just christianity or religion though - the U.S. defined blacks as worth something like 3/5 of a white person for census purposes, and the existence of slavery itself went against the idea of equality.
I'm also reminded of the Star Trek quote about our concept of "human rights" being intrinsically racist. we won't have to deal with aliens any time soon but hopefully people in the future will be ashamed of our behaviour because they will be even better. just like we are better than the generations before us (not because god favours us but simply because we can learn from their mistakes and successes).
I didn't mean to imply most christians are intolerant of gays. I live in the UK where things are relatively moderate. I'm more talking about the idea of "moral judgement" that is inherent in the very concept of sin.
saying "gays are sinners, but we all are" is FAR better than "gays are sinners and must be punished". but I find the concept of sin itself offensive and I think morality should be about actual pain inflicted in humans (who actually exist and can experience it).
the fact that many christian authorities (and many individuals) are so concerned with what other people do in private with mutual consent and no (demonstratable) harm caused to others is what upsets me.
so why did god create sin if all it does is get in the way of us hooking up with him?
plus, I take issue with your "just love everybody" interpretation - it's nice and it SHOULD be the rule, but it never was for christianity. god said "thou shalf not kill", yet the first thing moses did when he got back was slaughter a couple of thousand people for not believing in HIS god. and when Jesus said "love thy neighbour" he literally meant other Jews who live close to you (and not the "hippie love fest" interpretation) - he wasn't concerned with non-Jews, that was Paul's (the first pope) idea.
back then, they knew not to kill people, they just didn't consider "different people" to be "real people". and how can you blame them? just 100 years ago women, blacks etc. were treated as inferior to "real people" (and still are in some countries), so what chance of tolerance would you expect 2000 years ago?
100 years from now, christianity will probably still be around but watered down even more so that most christians will probably accept gays and look back to today as we look back on the witch burnings etc.
so I have great hope that the future will be better, but by moving AWAY from the ORIGINAL message of christianity which was completely horrific and only honoured today by the "earth created in 6 days, fags burn in hell, and if you deny the existence of the holy ghost you will never ever be forgiven" crowd (btw, I maintain I have nothing to be forgiven for except the pain I cause other people, which is THEIR choice not god's).
>Science/philosophy went through stages of flat Earth
here's a quick clue how (modern) science works: it's not about right or wrong but the consistency of models with observations, and about making the minimum number of approximations to adequately understand a system.
science does not say the flat earth model is wrong, it just qualifies the situations in which it is a good approximation, for example if the characteristic distances involved in the process you are interested in are small in comparison with the radius of the earth. modelling the earh as a sphere is also not "correct", but as an approximation it is more general than the flat earth model. in this sense it is better, but as the cost of involving more complicated equations.
the problem people made in the past was not modelling the earth as flat, but that they didn't realise they were implicitly making assumptions such as the one above about characteristic distances. they therefore weren't able to recognise when those assumptions broke down e.g. things happening "on the horizon" are very far away and the distances assumption is poor. it would also be poor science to *always* take into account the curvature of the earth because it shows you don't really understand what's important and what isn't.
the great think about science is that is progressive. just because we don't know everything and because our models must, be defintion, be simplifications (and therefore "wrong" in some useless absolute sense of the word) doesn't mean we can't know anything and that we can't know more today than we did yesterday.
Newton's laws are "wrong" in that it doesn't handle large velocities etc. correctly. didn't stop us landing on the moon.
nice revisionism, but it seems to contradict some list I heard of that had a load of commands in it, plus the entire freaking history of christianity. unless I've misunderstood you and the reason you claim people are happier worshipping the bible's god is that historically if you didn't you'd be persecuted and/or tortured and/or killed.
religious morality (specifically christianity) is all about what makes god happy. it has never cared about whether humans are happy or not because it claims that we are all just evil sinners anyway.
>I don't think leeching WI-FI is worth a felony conviction
neither do I, but I don't think that happened (if it did then I agree it shouldn't).
but again, the point isn't about connecting accidentally. the cops aren't actively going around checking who's connected to what and charging people for accidental connections. in this particular case they only noticed what was going on because he deliberately did it over and over and over and over and over and over and over and never once bought a coffee.
>It's a big difference between actively breaking into someone's network to cause damage and simply hooking up to someone's network.
yes, and it's a big differnce between your laptop auto-connecting to an unsecured network and the guy deliberately driving to the same spot day after day.
>It's analagous to walking onto unsigned, unfenced private property, though not even that, since WI-FI is running over public spectrum.
not at all. bandwidth costs money. this guy didn't want to pay so he used someone else's. if you want to compare it with land, then think about car parks - there are limited spaces (bandwidth) and it costs the owner money to provide it. so some charge directly with fees to enter the car park. other shops provide "free" car parks for customer use, but get the money back through sales of products, just like the internet bandwidth in the coffee shop. most people realise that car parks that don't have entrance fees isn't the same as "free space" that can be used by non-customers however they like. if non-customers park, they may be clamped or have some other penalty.
>Well, if you take the car then nobody else can use it.
bandwidth IS limited (especially wireless). it also costs money, which is what the guy was intentionally trying to get around.
what if it wasn't bandwidth, but electricity? if you sit in a coffee shop and plug your laptop in while drinking your coffee and they probably won't mind. but come to the shop every single day just to charge your devices and never buy anything, what do you think will happen? try telling them there's more electricity where that came from and see how impressed they are.
how is electricity different from bandwidth IN THIS CASE when we know the guy wasn't "accidentally using it" as people like to keep going on about?
>The problem the GP is pointing out is that there is no technical or legal way to distinguish who is deliberately mooching and who isn't.
except that this particular case is not a grey area at all. it is obvious he was leeching. it's obvious he knew what he was doing, unless he wants to claim he was genuinely too stupid to think that businesses generally provide services for customers.
if he has never seen a sign like "toilets are for customer use only" or similar in his life, then maybe this will be a good lesson for him. he got a small fine and some community service - it's not like they're putting him to death over it. a good outcome imo, and hopefully next time he'll just pay out a couple of dollars for some coffee.
>Well, one problem with WI-FI is that you can be on someone else's network without even knowing.
yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever. he specifically drove to the exact same spot, at the exact same time, every day.
this wasn't him stumbing around blind, or just selecting the wrong network out of multiple choices.
your argument a little like arguing we shouldn't bother courts with murderers because it's possible for people to die accidentally or naturally. it isn't the fact that someone's dead that's the problem, it's the deliberate act. having you wireless device auto-connect when walking past is not the same as specifically standing in the same spot every day with the deliberate intention of not having to buy your own internet connection.
about someone watching your TV from the street: this is not the same as wifi because the guy looking in is not reducing your viewing ability by doing it too. (plus the cafe is a business meaning this is more like a guy standing outside a cinema and watching a film through the door - hey it wasn't locked and the ticket guy had better things to do than constantly guard it so the film must be free right?). with wifi you have the ability to remotely use a limited resource. the special nature of this means there should be some special responsibilities. wifi is a relatively new technology and not well understood.
imagine if teleporters were invented tomorrow, giving you the ability to steal physical objects remotely. it would take a while for people to adapt to the change but that doesn't mean you should be allowed to steal things until people have learned to set up damping fields to stop you.
if he's not smart enough to understand WEP settings, or is just trying to make things as easy as possible for his customers, then you think you have a RIGHT to take advantage of him?
the guy charged didn't have the decency to just buy the occasional cup of coffee and avoid the whole problem in the first place. he's the type of guy who goes around supermarkets just taking the "free bags", goes around cafes just taking the "free condiments". every single day, and not ever spending a single penny.
>how can you know that the AP is not for public use when unsecured like this?
I don't find this argument very convincing.
if you see something not nailed down or deliberately obsfuscated since when do you get to assume it's for public use? do you consistently steal things if you don't think it's being guarded adaquately under the assumption it must be free for all?
"hey, this car has the keys in it! maybe the guy forgot, or there was some sort of emergency... or maybe it's that new public car scheme I've never heard of, yes! "
scared. I hope you never need to defend yourself around me. twice as many bullets flying is bad odds for me and I don't think the pointing of the tube where you want it is the hardest part of sending a piece of metal ripping through major organs of another human being.
even if you were an olympic sharpshooter I wouldn't trust your training enough to knowingly put myself in your range of fire.
if you're not a SWAT-type guy spending most of your time training for high-pressure target-identification scenarios then you can shove your good intentions up your ass and pull the trigger till it goes click.
>And yet you have the Church, still sending the same message it has always sent, since the 70's - AD 70 - that there is a way to eternal life. And it doesn't change every decade. And for those willing to learn, it has a much more sound basis in truth than the scientific method could ever provide.
o rly?
where does the church stand today on the burning of witches? on slavery? on sex with 14 year olds - fine for Mary and Joesph but get called a paedo these days (not that it stops the most devout religious people)? on punishment for adultery - still stoning I assume?
is the Catholic church still accepting payments from people to reduce their time in purgatory? oh no, they're actually talking about getting rid of the whole idea aren't they.
is denying the existence of ghosts still an unforgivable sin? I've denied the existence of ghosts, especially holy ones, many times. so am I screwed even if I accept Jesus or could I still join your church?
>The Tunguska event had the uncanny luck of happening over land and in one of the world's least populated areas. What are the odds of THAT happening again?
that's a very interesting definition of the word "all" you're using there.
if you don't like the iPhone then just say so. don't talk absolute bollocks about how you "have all of those features".
Screen size 3.5" - NO YOU HAVE 2.8" Screen 320 by 480 at 160 ppi - NO YOU HAVE 320 x 240 64k-color QVGA TFT Input method Multi-touch - NO YOU HAVE STANDARD TOUCHSCREEN Storage 4GB or 8GB - NO YOU HAVE 128 MB Internal Flash Camera 2.0 megapixels - NO YOU HAVE 1.3 MP Dimensions 4.5 x 2.4 x 0.46 inches - YOURS IS SAME EXCEPT 2x THICKER Weight 135 grams - NO YOU HAVE 150g
and that's just comparing numbers - nothing to do with design and usability.
no, you have to pay for phone calls but that was already the case. the other guy who replied talks about having to buy an unlimited service plan. but I was thinking of using the iPhone an an ultra-portable laptop anyway - using the wifi rather than phone internet.
I would love to be able to run keynote presentations from it because then when I travel it could do everything I need to take my laptop for.
I'm in the UK so will have to see what the deal ends up as over here anyway.
it's not clear what "runs OS X" means. it would suck if programs need special compilation or settings or anything for the iPhone. but maybe the limited CPU/RAM will force optimised programs anyway. since it can multi-task several wifi and phone connections at once I don't see why skype shouldn't work.
talk of any video conferencing abilities was notably absent though.
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well said. science is a search for a coherent set of minimal assumptions with maximum usefulness.
if you want answers, or "the truth" then immerse yourself in a religion. if you ask a question of science then all you get back is a more refined question.
on the other hand, science not only allows but demands constant testing of the applicability of any assumptions or conclusions made. so even if we're only making small steps at least we can tell we're headed in the right direction.
on Lost: people bitched a lot about the end of season 2 /start of season 3 era. but it all leads up to the end of season 3 which for me was one of the best television episodes ever.
anyone who didn't like the end and isn't looking forward to the 48 remaining episodes could never have been a fan of the show in the first place.
1. Games are £30
2. Mario Strikers is online.
Do you even own a Wii?
cool, I appreciate your comments.
I agree with the comment about kill/murder - but once again it comes down to defintion of who is a "person". look at the glaring islamic contradiction from the Danish issue "Islam is peaceful, death to anyone who claims otherwise". when you can define infidels as not real people the quote can start making a kind of self-consistent sense. this is not just christianity or religion though - the U.S. defined blacks as worth something like 3/5 of a white person for census purposes, and the existence of slavery itself went against the idea of equality.
I'm also reminded of the Star Trek quote about our concept of "human rights" being intrinsically racist. we won't have to deal with aliens any time soon but hopefully people in the future will be ashamed of our behaviour because they will be even better. just like we are better than the generations before us (not because god favours us but simply because we can learn from their mistakes and successes).
I didn't mean to imply most christians are intolerant of gays. I live in the UK where things are relatively moderate. I'm more talking about the idea of "moral judgement" that is inherent in the very concept of sin.
saying "gays are sinners, but we all are" is FAR better than "gays are sinners and must be punished". but I find the concept of sin itself offensive and I think morality should be about actual pain inflicted in humans (who actually exist and can experience it).
the fact that many christian authorities (and many individuals) are so concerned with what other people do in private with mutual consent and no (demonstratable) harm caused to others is what upsets me.
so why did god create sin if all it does is get in the way of us hooking up with him?
plus, I take issue with your "just love everybody" interpretation - it's nice and it SHOULD be the rule, but it never was for christianity. god said "thou shalf not kill", yet the first thing moses did when he got back was slaughter a couple of thousand people for not believing in HIS god. and when Jesus said "love thy neighbour" he literally meant other Jews who live close to you (and not the "hippie love fest" interpretation) - he wasn't concerned with non-Jews, that was Paul's (the first pope) idea.
back then, they knew not to kill people, they just didn't consider "different people" to be "real people". and how can you blame them? just 100 years ago women, blacks etc. were treated as inferior to "real people" (and still are in some countries), so what chance of tolerance would you expect 2000 years ago?
100 years from now, christianity will probably still be around but watered down even more so that most christians will probably accept gays and look back to today as we look back on the witch burnings etc.
so I have great hope that the future will be better, but by moving AWAY from the ORIGINAL message of christianity which was completely horrific and only honoured today by the "earth created in 6 days, fags burn in hell, and if you deny the existence of the holy ghost you will never ever be forgiven" crowd (btw, I maintain I have nothing to be forgiven for except the pain I cause other people, which is THEIR choice not god's).
>Science/philosophy went through stages of flat Earth
here's a quick clue how (modern) science works: it's not about right or wrong but the consistency of models with observations, and about making the minimum number of approximations to adequately understand a system.
science does not say the flat earth model is wrong, it just qualifies the situations in which it is a good approximation, for example if the characteristic distances involved in the process you are interested in are small in comparison with the radius of the earth. modelling the earh as a sphere is also not "correct", but as an approximation it is more general than the flat earth model. in this sense it is better, but as the cost of involving more complicated equations.
the problem people made in the past was not modelling the earth as flat, but that they didn't realise they were implicitly making assumptions such as the one above about characteristic distances. they therefore weren't able to recognise when those assumptions broke down e.g. things happening "on the horizon" are very far away and the distances assumption is poor. it would also be poor science to *always* take into account the curvature of the earth because it shows you don't really understand what's important and what isn't.
the great think about science is that is progressive. just because we don't know everything and because our models must, be defintion, be simplifications (and therefore "wrong" in some useless absolute sense of the word) doesn't mean we can't know anything and that we can't know more today than we did yesterday.
Newton's laws are "wrong" in that it doesn't handle large velocities etc. correctly. didn't stop us landing on the moon.
>...and the bubble of no 0-day exploits on OS X is just waiting to burst.
yeah, and the rapture was supposed to be during the lifetime of the original disciples. so it's guaranteed to happen any moment now!
nice revisionism, but it seems to contradict some list I heard of that had a load of commands in it, plus the entire freaking history of christianity. unless I've misunderstood you and the reason you claim people are happier worshipping the bible's god is that historically if you didn't you'd be persecuted and/or tortured and/or killed.
religious morality (specifically christianity) is all about what makes god happy. it has never cared about whether humans are happy or not because it claims that we are all just evil sinners anyway.
>I don't think leeching WI-FI is worth a felony conviction
neither do I, but I don't think that happened (if it did then I agree it shouldn't).
but again, the point isn't about connecting accidentally. the cops aren't actively going around checking who's connected to what and charging people for accidental connections. in this particular case they only noticed what was going on because he deliberately did it over and over and over and over and over and over and over and never once bought a coffee.
>It's a big difference between actively breaking into someone's network to cause damage and simply hooking up to someone's network.
yes, and it's a big differnce between your laptop auto-connecting to an unsecured network and the guy deliberately driving to the same spot day after day.
>It's analagous to walking onto unsigned, unfenced private property, though not even that, since WI-FI is running over public spectrum.
not at all. bandwidth costs money. this guy didn't want to pay so he used someone else's. if you want to compare it with land, then think about car parks - there are limited spaces (bandwidth) and it costs the owner money to provide it. so some charge directly with fees to enter the car park. other shops provide "free" car parks for customer use, but get the money back through sales of products, just like the internet bandwidth in the coffee shop. most people realise that car parks that don't have entrance fees isn't the same as "free space" that can be used by non-customers however they like. if non-customers park, they may be clamped or have some other penalty.
>Well, if you take the car then nobody else can use it.
bandwidth IS limited (especially wireless). it also costs money, which is what the guy was intentionally trying to get around.
what if it wasn't bandwidth, but electricity? if you sit in a coffee shop and plug your laptop in while drinking your coffee and they probably won't mind. but come to the shop every single day just to charge your devices and never buy anything, what do you think will happen? try telling them there's more electricity where that came from and see how impressed they are.
how is electricity different from bandwidth IN THIS CASE when we know the guy wasn't "accidentally using it" as people like to keep going on about?
>The problem the GP is pointing out is that there is no technical or legal way to distinguish who is deliberately mooching and who isn't.
except that this particular case is not a grey area at all. it is obvious he was leeching. it's obvious he knew what he was doing, unless he wants to claim he was genuinely too stupid to think that businesses generally provide services for customers.
if he has never seen a sign like "toilets are for customer use only" or similar in his life, then maybe this will be a good lesson for him. he got a small fine and some community service - it's not like they're putting him to death over it. a good outcome imo, and hopefully next time he'll just pay out a couple of dollars for some coffee.
>Well, one problem with WI-FI is that you can be on someone else's network without even knowing.
yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever. he specifically drove to the exact same spot, at the exact same time, every day.
this wasn't him stumbing around blind, or just selecting the wrong network out of multiple choices.
your argument a little like arguing we shouldn't bother courts with murderers because it's possible for people to die accidentally or naturally. it isn't the fact that someone's dead that's the problem, it's the deliberate act. having you wireless device auto-connect when walking past is not the same as specifically standing in the same spot every day with the deliberate intention of not having to buy your own internet connection.
no, the analogy works.
about someone watching your TV from the street: this is not the same as wifi because the guy looking in is not reducing your viewing ability by doing it too. (plus the cafe is a business meaning this is more like a guy standing outside a cinema and watching a film through the door - hey it wasn't locked and the ticket guy had better things to do than constantly guard it so the film must be free right?). with wifi you have the ability to remotely use a limited resource. the special nature of this means there should be some special responsibilities. wifi is a relatively new technology and not well understood.
imagine if teleporters were invented tomorrow, giving you the ability to steal physical objects remotely. it would take a while for people to adapt to the change but that doesn't mean you should be allowed to steal things until people have learned to set up damping fields to stop you.
if he's not smart enough to understand WEP settings, or is just trying to make things as easy as possible for his customers, then you think you have a RIGHT to take advantage of him?
the guy charged didn't have the decency to just buy the occasional cup of coffee and avoid the whole problem in the first place. he's the type of guy who goes around supermarkets just taking the "free bags", goes around cafes just taking the "free condiments". every single day, and not ever spending a single penny.
well said.
>how can you know that the AP is not for public use when unsecured like this?
I don't find this argument very convincing.
if you see something not nailed down or deliberately obsfuscated since when do you get to assume it's for public use? do you consistently steal things if you don't think it's being guarded adaquately under the assumption it must be free for all?
"hey, this car has the keys in it! maybe the guy forgot, or there was some sort of emergency... or maybe it's that new public car scheme I've never heard of, yes! "
>How does that make you feel?
scared. I hope you never need to defend yourself around me. twice as many bullets flying is bad odds for me and I don't think the pointing of the tube where you want it is the hardest part of sending a piece of metal ripping through major organs of another human being.
even if you were an olympic sharpshooter I wouldn't trust your training enough to knowingly put myself in your range of fire.
if you're not a SWAT-type guy spending most of your time training for high-pressure target-identification scenarios then you can shove your good intentions up your ass and pull the trigger till it goes click.
>And yet you have the Church, still sending the same message it has always sent, since the 70's - AD 70 - that there is a way to eternal life. And it doesn't change every decade. And for those willing to learn, it has a much more sound basis in truth than the scientific method could ever provide.
o rly?
where does the church stand today on the burning of witches? on slavery? on sex with 14 year olds - fine for Mary and Joesph but get called a paedo these days (not that it stops the most devout religious people)? on punishment for adultery - still stoning I assume?
is the Catholic church still accepting payments from people to reduce their time in purgatory? oh no, they're actually talking about getting rid of the whole idea aren't they.
is denying the existence of ghosts still an unforgivable sin? I've denied the existence of ghosts, especially holy ones, many times. so am I screwed even if I accept Jesus or could I still join your church?
>The Tunguska event had the uncanny luck of happening over land and in one of the world's least populated areas. What are the odds of THAT happening again?
something like (1/45000) * (1/10) ?
>Or am I missing something?
yes, the bar that pops up under the search box and lets you select the search source.
>I have all of those features plus...
that's a very interesting definition of the word "all" you're using there.
if you don't like the iPhone then just say so. don't talk absolute bollocks about how you "have all of those features".
Screen size 3.5" - NO YOU HAVE 2.8"
Screen 320 by 480 at 160 ppi - NO YOU HAVE 320 x 240 64k-color QVGA TFT
Input method Multi-touch - NO YOU HAVE STANDARD TOUCHSCREEN
Storage 4GB or 8GB - NO YOU HAVE 128 MB Internal Flash
Camera 2.0 megapixels - NO YOU HAVE 1.3 MP
Dimensions 4.5 x 2.4 x 0.46 inches - YOURS IS SAME EXCEPT 2x THICKER
Weight 135 grams - NO YOU HAVE 150g
and that's just comparing numbers - nothing to do with design and usability.
>That you get free service for 2 years?
no, you have to pay for phone calls but that was already the case. the other guy who replied talks about having to buy an unlimited service plan. but I was thinking of using the iPhone an an ultra-portable laptop anyway - using the wifi rather than phone internet.
I would love to be able to run keynote presentations from it because then when I travel it could do everything I need to take my laptop for.
I'm in the UK so will have to see what the deal ends up as over here anyway.
>I wonder if you can use Skype on the thing?
it's not clear what "runs OS X" means. it would suck if programs need special compilation or settings or anything for the iPhone. but maybe the limited CPU/RAM will force optimised programs anyway. since it can multi-task several wifi and phone connections at once I don't see why skype shouldn't work.
talk of any video conferencing abilities was notably absent though.
I don't think it has GPS (they didn't mention it). maybe they use the phone network to find position.
but it has bluetooth 2.0 so you can (hopefully) use any receiver you want.
I use my bluetooth GPS on my iBook with Google Earth but it only shows position and uses non-interactive directions.
I think the 40GB is supposed to be more like a cache for stuff streamed from a computer.
it's supposed to be running OS X so hopefully PDF support and the rest. definitely does a good job with web browsing from the pics I've seen.