It is neither possible nor desirable to prevent the archiving part, but it is easy and simple to put restrictions on wholesale republishing, and to enforce them.
Chuckle! Snort! It would indeed be easy and simple to "put restrictions" on things as you say. Enforcement is another matter altogether. Do words like Tor, Gnutella, and "overseas hosting" mean anything? Even without such technologies, law enforcement is only going to go out of its way in such cases when the rich and powerful have been offended. Since publically excoriating the utterances of such people is on of the few checks and balances on them, I'd be highly reluctant to give them yet more tools of unaccountability.
If you say something in public then it is out there. Period. If the public forum in question is part of a worldwide network that crosses almost every jurisdictional boundry then that goes double. Even in the most ideal of societies, there is no such thing as public speech without consequence.
No, I'm not willing to have every word I ever said available for quoting out of context. If you don't understand why, then you don't understand how conversations, debate, and free speech work.
You can specify "verbatim" terms in a copyright license. However, enforcement will be up to you and various types of "fair use" will still apply. You seem to want the ability to speak publically then control all uses to which those utterances are put. It simply isn't going to happen. I understand "conversations", "debate", and "free speech". I arguably understand the last better than you do: Public speech is an action and all actions have consequences. There is also "human nature" to consider: The things you say publically will reflect on you and some will cast them in the blackest possible light. It boggles my mind that anyone thinks yet another law will prevent that. We can't even stop it on playgrounds for crying out loud.
I used to use nynms based on my real name. Having a stable career and a family to think of changed my mind on that score.
And that's precisely why we should think about stopping republishing of archived materials in the way that the Internet Archive is doing.
I wasn't thinking of the secret police busting my door down when I said that. If things in our society go seriously south then that could happen but I'm NOT censoring myself because of a possible Stasi-to-be. I make a little money doing IT work on the side. Prospective customers could google me and not hire me because of something I said. That isn't an infringement of my free speech; it is a valid consequence of it. I can either shut up about the things I care about or I can be anonymous. Provided things like libel aren't involved that is perfectly valid. Of course, some statements are more powerful with a real name behind them. That power comes from the conviction to face what others will think and do because you've put your name to what you've said.
I'm also thinking of the fact that at least some of my opinions aren't popular. Yet I have to live and work in a community. People without families to support are better able to behave like firebrands. All the laws in the world won't prevent others from forming negative opinions of your words and acting on them. Since I'm not the only one who is affected by the consequences of running my mouth then I'm careful about how I run it. An aspect of that care is the realization that the Internet is world-wide and as public as anything can possibly be.
What you seem to want is both self-contradictory and in opposition to principles of accountability. Yes, someone can google you holding forth in a blog and refuse to hire you because of it. But then things like the memoryhole and the Internet Archive also allow us to catch the rich and powerful rewriting history to their convenience. You can't have it both ways.
Perhaps I'm being naive here but it seems to me that a "long distance passive RFID reader" could be cobbled together utilizing a fancy-schmancy high tech piece of gear known as a "directional antenna".
I think we should re-think whether permanent archiving and full republishing of web pages should be permitted at all. Not only does it arguably conflict with copyright law, I think it also has a chilling effect on on-line discussions and free exchange of information.
How do you intend to prevent such a thing? Yeah, I suppose more dumbshit laws can be passed but it won't alter basic realities. I've long considered ANYTHING I put online to be permanently available for all time. If you cannot stand behind what you're willing to say in public then don't say it. That goes double for those who choose for whatever reason to use their real names rather than nyms. I used to use nynms based on my real name. Having a stable career and a family to think of changed my mind on that score. I'll not have my family suffer because someone who didn't like what I have to say traced it back to me. I most certainly won't count on copyright law or any other sort of law to prevent that from happening.
If you are concerned about privacy, by all means, do not use myspace. Privacy is not such a bad thing and Americans do need to be better at observing the TMI rule (Too Much Information)
Agreed. When I was a youngin, people had much more of a "That's NONE of YOUR business!" attitude. And it is high time for the return of that mentality.
When I was younger I did a lot of stupid things that I'm not proud of. But then, I didn't have something like MySpace to chronicle them on. These 13-17 year olds (hell maybe even older) kids don't realize that what they think is important will change and it will change sooner than they think. The 16-year old knocking over mailboxes today, pounding beer bongs, and bragging about it online will looking for work at age 22. As a 22 year old, he would never dream of smacking mailboxes with a ball bat but the sins of his 16 year old self will be held against him if he was foolish enough to parade them in front of the world.
It's bad enough to cringe over 10 year old USENET posts. It's a pity that many of today's youth will be cringing over old stupidities well into old age. Ah well, it is the same as anything else I suppose. The stupid ones will weed themselves out. I wouldn't dream of forbidding young hooligans to chronicle themselves online but I advise them against it.
We can't observe the hole itself but we can observe the effect it has on matter that hasn't fallen into it's event horizon. Matter will not fall straight into a hole; it will spiral in. As it is spiraling in, it will emit X-rays as a sort of death cry. Also black holes have magnetic fields and spin. A black hole actively feeding will ionize matter and some of this charged matter can be caught in the holes magnetic field and ejected from its poles as bright jets. It is a misconception to think of a black hole as a sort of cosmic vacuum cleaner that will suck down everything. A black hole has no more gravity than the mass that gave birth to it. A black hole can be safely orbited for instance. But the mass of a hole is so intensely concentrated that very exotic tidal effects are caused closer in to the hole. Get too close and yes even light will not escape. Get almost too close and very very weird (but predictable and observable) things happen.
Since there can never truly be such a thing as a true vacuum black holes can even evaporate. Since absolute zero can only be approached (but never reached) any given volume of space has a quantity of energy available within it. This energy can give rise to pairs of particles once thresholds are reached. The particles are formed in pairs because properties like spin and charge are conserved. This matter does not come from nothing! It is formed at the expense of available energy in the vicinity. If a pair of particles forms in the vicinity of a black hole's event horizon then one of the pair can fall into the hole while the other sluggishly makes it's way away from the hole. This happens at the expense of the energy of the hole itself so if the black hole isn't being fed with other sources then it will shrink a trifle. Large black holes have event horizons that appear barely curved at subatomic scales; this means that large black holes lose mass very slowly in this way. Even a hole with a few times the sun's mass will last far longer than the universe has existed to date. Smaller holes have more curvature on local scales and lose energy very very quickly. This is why the prospect of forming a hole in a particle accelerator isn't particularly scary.
I doubt they do as such but if you are going for "bug for bug" compatibility then you may manage it every now and again. "Bug for bug" compatibility is a different animal from "implementing a specification". The Mozilla people have been coding things that don't make sense for years simply because there is lot of website code written for such products.
I'm sure it's easy to design a test that would fool an audiophile, as there are so many variables that contribute to the quality of the sound reproduction, starting with the microphones in the studio. With many older recordings, e.g. on the audiophile staple Dark Side of the Moon, the quality of the analogue master tapes is already noticeably below what is now capable of being reproduced digitally.
An old, old joke that has been pulled on tweakophiles many times to put an "experimental" piece of gear behind a curtain and have a high end piece of gear as a "base reference". Once the tweak agrees that yes the "experimental" gear is much better than the tube amp with oxygen free wire, hand rolled capacitors, and magic pixie dust the curtain is removed to show off the $200 SoundDesign from Wal-Mart. As long as the volume level is moderate, a piece of cheap gear can be EQed to sound like expensive gear. The one major catch is the volume level must not be touched and kept low enough that the cheap piece o crap doesn't run out of headroom.
Most any high end stereo shop has a bunch of jaded salesmen with at least one hardened tweak among them. This gag is usually pulled by everyone else to stop the guy from bragging about his Golden Ears........
The path of least resistance is to switch pure functionality servers first. Things that provide services like DNS, DHCP, and NTP. The Linux machines can also hold the file shares even if Windows is still serving the directory. Anyhoo, you start simple and work up slowly on those.
On the desktops, deploy FOSS apps one at a time as dependencies allow. Even Office is tough if a lot of bespoke apps laying around use it as a development environment. Sneak up on that as long as you can too. Once the users are broken in on FOSS app replacements, begin switching the OS for those users you've managed to get using purely FOSS apps. Move up through the users from there. The last and most difficult cases can be handled with virtual machines and terminal servers.
If things are done this way rather than in one fell swoop then you avoid a user rebellions with great missing chunks of missing functionality amidst the kludges. You can also try things out first with the users who have a bit of clue and build up experience within the organization. Most of the negative Linux organization switch stories I've heard involved either the Fell Swoop approach or not having sufficient Linux/BSD/UNIX admin talent on hand.
No, what I want is freedom, but freedom without relearning every god damn thing. I want it for me, and I want it for that 95% of the public, too. We should ALL want that.
Your only other choice is to throw money at ReactOS. It's either that or start learning. Vista point upgrade that it is will even require you to learn a few things. Freedom entails responsibility for your choices. You either live with the choices you have or do the hard work of creating the choices you don't have. Others have exercised their freedom and did much of the hard work for you. If that isn't enough then do something constructive. There is a vast difference between freedom and a free lunch.
Big Mike was more than happy to pay since he got an expansive license to run his mouth AND sound like he knows what he's talking about. Linux will have more than 300 million dollars of damage done to it on account of this deal. That Novell profited is hardly any consolation.
I'll spare you debate about Linux UIs then. If MS was going to do such a thing, they'd use a BSD. The license permits and encourages it. That be as it may be, SuSe's UI mainly comes from KDE and GNOME and most of THAT code isn't BSD. It is mostly GPL and LGPL. MS knows this so that couldn't be what they are up to.
MS IS hedging their bets but not in the way you think. The Novell deal gives MS a way to collect a toll on each copy of SuSE sold. This in turn will be used to legitimize "Linux-contains-our-IP" FUD.
Anyway XPDE is one project to almost exactly duplicate XP's interface in Linux. It never attracted much developer OR user attention. Nor has it attracted much in the way of money from commercial Linux distributors. I suspect that exactly copying Windows isn't the path to success you think it is. What you really seem to want is Windows with the irritations removed. Pestering MS to fix their products or buying a Mac may be better choices for you.
Novell has aided Microsoft in making it seem as though the hard work of others belongs to Microsoft. Novell is attempting to profit by disparaging the legal integrity of their suppliers. Novell has deliberately worked to undermine and circumvent the GPL.
To be successful, one thing you need is the 'Freedom to make mistakes'.
Sure! But that only applies when there is action to correct those mistakes. Novell has yet to address the damage their mistake has done. They tried to put a positive spin on it. It isn't the same thing.
There is a difference between saying "You should believe in Jesus because he loves you." and "You should believe in Jesus otherwise you will BURN IN HELL SINNER!!!!"
The first is positive persuasion. The second is damn close to child abuse. Anyway, you speak of "an atheist society" which in these United States just isn't true. Most people in the US subscribe to some form of Christianity. Nonetheless, even Christians disagree among themselves and we do have religions other that Christianity in this country. This is why there should be separation of church and state. It is not for someone in a position of power to tell anybody else what sort of faith they should have.
Do you repeat each and every one of those tests when you perform your own work? Say, for example, when you need to incorporate gravity in an equation somewhere, do you go out and measure the earth's gravitational pull? Do you go out and re-test Newton's work? If yes, then, well it's amazing you get anything done at all. If no, then you are placing your trust somewhere. The likelyhood of your trust faltering may be very low because of the work of others but it still cannot be anything other than trust, which in essense, is placing faith into something.
No, I employ a common heuristic: If the knowledge/fact/theorem seems to work then I employ it unless circumstances suggest that I should change my mind.
Then what is it? It cannot be whole and whole fact.
Ultimately you are making a leap somewhere, irregardless of how small or large that leap is.
You don't seem to want to call that faith, but I'm not going to argue semantics with you.
I think we're arguing from unstated assumptions and premises. In my original post, I distinguished between common sorts of everyday faith like trust in friends and tenets of religious faith like "Jesus died for your sins." I am not on some kind of mission to destroy all "faith" once and for all for all time. But I am taking exception to a common apologist sophistry: "All knowledge, belief, and ways of knowing can be boiled down to religious faith. Since all things must ultimately be taken on faith then how can you criticize tenets of my belief or anyone else's belief for that matter?" I don't mean to offend you personally but that little chestnut comes up often enough to at least be a little frustrating. If you yourself aren't doing that then I apologize. Nonetheless, distinctions between things like "facts", "laws", "natural laws", "theories", and "tenets" are useful. If you have a helpful personal philosophy that makes it helpful to take all of those on some sort of "faith" then fine. However, not everybody copes with those distinctions in the same way and most arguments about them are ultimately....useless.
And the more reasonable scientist doesn't say that Newton is a wacko and not a scientist because he believed in God. The ultimate scientist could not speak on whether God is real or not on scientific terms because he cannot speak on it by definition of the scientific method!
I have no desire to trade point for point rebuttals with you but I will point out that I didn't say anything like that. Most religious people aren't whackos but the one who are whackos are doing a lot of damage. And I agree with you that God cannot be spoken of in scientific terms. I think I even said that God is an appropriate object of religious faith because HE isn't subject to objective processes. No scientific discovery will ever disprove the notion of God. I have no problem with that. Scientific discoveries can threaten certain notions people have about God like the lightning bolts or the germ theory of disease. All I meant was that some religious ideas are in fact subject to observation and test. It is these ideas that cause most friction. That is all I was trying to get at.
I DO have a problem when politically motivated faith obstructs constructive endeavors. I have little doubt that most people who work in the life sciences want to waste time debating creationists. They are attempting the hard work of understanding their world and some people who are personally threatened by it want to make that work even harder. Some of these extreme religious types would also muzzle physicists and earth scientists uncovering discomfiting things involving the age of the universe. Since you bill yourself a scientist, don't the ones like that bother you too?
You're incorrectly drawing lines dividing religious faith and the more general sense of faith or belief.
The two are not as different as you would believe.
Then why bother to distinguish at all? It's all just faith right? You might at as well say we can never know anything at all. I was only pointing out that belief based on verifiable fact and reasonable expectations isn't faith, that's knowledge.
Again, what are you constructing those models, observations, et al. on? Laws from those who stood before you, the accuracy of your observations, your own intellect, etc, etc. Ultimately it boils down to trust, faith.
Those models and observations are largely based on organized distrust. What we call "laws" in science have withstood multiple stringent tests designed to disprove them. There is very little trust in believing say the Three Laws of Thermodynamics. I can believe deeply and fervently that if I step out of a window that I can fly. A little knowledge on the other hand means I should know better than to do a foolish thing that will lead to serious injury. It isn't a snarky example either. Tecumseh's brother told the warriors to attack nearby Fort Harrison and that the bullets would not be able to harm them. A little knowledge..... Believe what you want. Trust in whatever you like. Some facts are just facts.
I simply cannot agree with you on this. Knowledge can be more or less certain. Having slight creedence for uncertain knowledge isn't faith. Any number of things just aren't. I could say that arrogant people want to make all knowledge "faith" so that all of knowledge and human experience will fit exclusively into their world view which all others are then obligated to subscribe. Arrogance isn't a good word to throw around. The quality isn't limited to nonbelievers.
Science has a belief there are only more laws beyond the laws we currently know. Both are things based on faith. Both are things you cannot completely prove.
Conflating all forms of learning and knowing with religious faith is bad argument. The general strategy is to perform this conflation and then use it to prove arguments against religious faith facetious. For instance, I have a reasonable belief that the sun will rise tomorrow based on my experience that it has done so every day of my life. If for some reason the sun didn't rise then I would have to change my mind. If had religious faith that the sun will rise tomorrow and it didn't then I might suppose my God had good reasons for bringing this about. I wouldn't necessarily have to revise my beliefs faced with a change in circumstance. Generally, not changing your mind no matter what is considered a virtue when the belief is based on religious faith. And not all faith is religious. I have faith that certain friends and family members can be counted and that they can count on me. Science is based on constructing models and then using observation and experiment to reject, confirm, or refine the model. Clearly, all forms of knowledge and seeking it DO NOT boil down to religious faith.
Religious faith isn't a problem when the object of that faith is something that is outside human observation and testing. We cannot directly observe or experiment on a God outside our universe for instance. When the object of faith IS something subject to objective testing and reasoning, that is when the howling starts. For instance, until recently it was held that lightning bolts were something thrown by God down from the Heavens. A smartass named Ben Franklin tied it to the electrical phenomena being so keenly investigated in his day. These investigations led directly to the invention of the lightning rod. Lightning rods were held by some clergy as an attempt to defy the will of God. So now we have the spectacle of the church steeple (often the highest structure in town) being a target of lightning bolts while the lightning rod protected town brothel continues to do business. Of course, more reasonable congregations just put up lightning rods as well. The evolution/creationism debate is yet another manifestation of badly placed religious faith.
What science actually says is "It has proven useful to suppose an observer can see the same models apply no matter where in the universe he might be. We'll continue to build and refine these models unless and until it is no longer useful to do so." That isn't religious faith either.
I'd rather not be burned at the stake. If they believed in god they were in fact theologians or philosophers attempting to explain the world in terms of god, not scientists. The fact that their belief isn't in the bible doesn't stop it being belief and based on theology.
If their findings stand up to skeptical peer review then their personal philosophies are irrelevant. Religion may not have much to contribute to science but it doesn't have to get in the way. I have no problem with religious belief when it isn't doing harm to positive endeavors. And no, it is not axiomatic that religion ALWAYS does harm.
BTW, when you poke people in their most deeply held sensibilities they get defensive and take anything you have to say as a personal attack. My problem with much organized atheism and skepticism is the message is "You believe in invisible men who live in the sky and that means you SUCK!!!!" when it should be "Nonbelievers are humans too." Atheists like you give the rest of us a bad name. While I'm pricking balloons, I'll do another: Holding up a flag for what you DON'T believe in is stupid. I don't particularly care for what most religions want me to believe so I don't. But this doesn't mean that I have to pick a fight with every theist I see. There is a little thing called being adult and recognizing there is more than one kind of person in this world.
That doesn't make any sense. He's too stupid to create something to create something, so he creates the second something directly, proving how dumb he is!
That isn't so hard to get your head around. Writing very general code that in turn generates more code is generally more difficult than simply doing printf("output"). The first way is more flexible and done correctly means less overall work as after awhile programming resembles delegating work rather than doing every last detail of it yourself. In the same way, a truly omniscient God doesn't have make every last bird, insect, and subatomic particle. Since he is all knowing and all powerful, such a God need only specify the initial conditions and then watch the show. Also, if said God is competent with his omniscience he doesn't have to continually intervene with miracles and the like; the created universe will perform to spec on its own.
If God is held to be something less than all knowing and all powerful then you have a deity who has to do more of the heavy lifting himself and furthermore has to continually intervene lest his universe suffer a gratuitous existence failure. That avoids a God who knows everything and can do anything yet is somehow fundamentally incompetent; on the other hand such a God is less satisfying for many people so they cleave to the all-powerful-and-particularly-interested-in-you version.
What I think actually happens is omniscience and omnipotence are qualities that are commonly assigned to deities without thinking through what omniscience and omnipotence naturally give rise to. "Of course my God is all-knowing and all-powerful!!!!" The deists did a decent job of thinking it through but got a religion that isn't very satisfying emotionally......
Slashdot Mirror
Sure. It wasn't preachy at all. The plot of that episode actually involved plopping a giant ice cube in the ocean, completely ridiculous.
The previous poster was jokingly making Futurama references. Perhaps it is your undies in a wad.
It is neither possible nor desirable to prevent the archiving part, but it is easy and simple to put restrictions on wholesale republishing, and to enforce them.
Chuckle! Snort! It would indeed be easy and simple to "put restrictions" on things as you say. Enforcement is another matter altogether. Do words like Tor, Gnutella, and "overseas hosting" mean anything? Even without such technologies, law enforcement is only going to go out of its way in such cases when the rich and powerful have been offended. Since publically excoriating the utterances of such people is on of the few checks and balances on them, I'd be highly reluctant to give them yet more tools of unaccountability.
If you say something in public then it is out there. Period. If the public forum in question is part of a worldwide network that crosses almost every jurisdictional boundry then that goes double. Even in the most ideal of societies, there is no such thing as public speech without consequence.
No, I'm not willing to have every word I ever said available for quoting out of context. If you don't understand why, then you don't understand how conversations, debate, and free speech work.
You can specify "verbatim" terms in a copyright license. However, enforcement will be up to you and various types of "fair use" will still apply. You seem to want the ability to speak publically then control all uses to which those utterances are put. It simply isn't going to happen. I understand "conversations", "debate", and "free speech". I arguably understand the last better than you do: Public speech is an action and all actions have consequences. There is also "human nature" to consider: The things you say publically will reflect on you and some will cast them in the blackest possible light. It boggles my mind that anyone thinks yet another law will prevent that. We can't even stop it on playgrounds for crying out loud.
I used to use nynms based on my real name. Having a stable career and a family to think of changed my mind on that score.
And that's precisely why we should think about stopping republishing of archived materials in the way that the Internet Archive is doing.
I wasn't thinking of the secret police busting my door down when I said that. If things in our society go seriously south then that could happen but I'm NOT censoring myself because of a possible Stasi-to-be. I make a little money doing IT work on the side. Prospective customers could google me and not hire me because of something I said. That isn't an infringement of my free speech; it is a valid consequence of it. I can either shut up about the things I care about or I can be anonymous. Provided things like libel aren't involved that is perfectly valid. Of course, some statements are more powerful with a real name behind them. That power comes from the conviction to face what others will think and do because you've put your name to what you've said.
I'm also thinking of the fact that at least some of my opinions aren't popular. Yet I have to live and work in a community. People without families to support are better able to behave like firebrands. All the laws in the world won't prevent others from forming negative opinions of your words and acting on them. Since I'm not the only one who is affected by the consequences of running my mouth then I'm careful about how I run it. An aspect of that care is the realization that the Internet is world-wide and as public as anything can possibly be.
What you seem to want is both self-contradictory and in opposition to principles of accountability. Yes, someone can google you holding forth in a blog and refuse to hire you because of it. But then things like the memoryhole and the Internet Archive also allow us to catch the rich and powerful rewriting history to their convenience. You can't have it both ways.
Perhaps I'm being naive here but it seems to me that a "long distance passive RFID reader" could be cobbled together utilizing a fancy-schmancy high tech piece of gear known as a "directional antenna".
I think we should re-think whether permanent archiving and full republishing of web pages should be permitted at all. Not only does it arguably conflict with copyright law, I think it also has a chilling effect on on-line discussions and free exchange of information.
How do you intend to prevent such a thing? Yeah, I suppose more dumbshit laws can be passed but it won't alter basic realities. I've long considered ANYTHING I put online to be permanently available for all time. If you cannot stand behind what you're willing to say in public then don't say it. That goes double for those who choose for whatever reason to use their real names rather than nyms. I used to use nynms based on my real name. Having a stable career and a family to think of changed my mind on that score. I'll not have my family suffer because someone who didn't like what I have to say traced it back to me. I most certainly won't count on copyright law or any other sort of law to prevent that from happening.
If you are concerned about privacy, by all means, do not use myspace. Privacy is not such a bad thing and Americans do need to be better at observing the TMI rule (Too Much Information)
Agreed. When I was a youngin, people had much more of a "That's NONE of YOUR business!" attitude. And it is high time for the return of that mentality.
When I was younger I did a lot of stupid things that I'm not proud of. But then, I didn't have something like MySpace to chronicle them on. These 13-17 year olds (hell maybe even older) kids don't realize that what they think is important will change and it will change sooner than they think. The 16-year old knocking over mailboxes today, pounding beer bongs, and bragging about it online will looking for work at age 22. As a 22 year old, he would never dream of smacking mailboxes with a ball bat but the sins of his 16 year old self will be held against him if he was foolish enough to parade them in front of the world.
It's bad enough to cringe over 10 year old USENET posts. It's a pity that many of today's youth will be cringing over old stupidities well into old age. Ah well, it is the same as anything else I suppose. The stupid ones will weed themselves out. I wouldn't dream of forbidding young hooligans to chronicle themselves online but I advise them against it.
That sounds like Megamania. http://www.atariage.com/software_page.html?Softwar eLabelID=297
We can't observe the hole itself but we can observe the effect it has on matter that hasn't fallen into it's event horizon. Matter will not fall straight into a hole; it will spiral in. As it is spiraling in, it will emit X-rays as a sort of death cry. Also black holes have magnetic fields and spin. A black hole actively feeding will ionize matter and some of this charged matter can be caught in the holes magnetic field and ejected from its poles as bright jets. It is a misconception to think of a black hole as a sort of cosmic vacuum cleaner that will suck down everything. A black hole has no more gravity than the mass that gave birth to it. A black hole can be safely orbited for instance. But the mass of a hole is so intensely concentrated that very exotic tidal effects are caused closer in to the hole. Get too close and yes even light will not escape. Get almost too close and very very weird (but predictable and observable) things happen.
Since there can never truly be such a thing as a true vacuum black holes can even evaporate. Since absolute zero can only be approached (but never reached) any given volume of space has a quantity of energy available within it. This energy can give rise to pairs of particles once thresholds are reached. The particles are formed in pairs because properties like spin and charge are conserved. This matter does not come from nothing! It is formed at the expense of available energy in the vicinity. If a pair of particles forms in the vicinity of a black hole's event horizon then one of the pair can fall into the hole while the other sluggishly makes it's way away from the hole. This happens at the expense of the energy of the hole itself so if the black hole isn't being fed with other sources then it will shrink a trifle. Large black holes have event horizons that appear barely curved at subatomic scales; this means that large black holes lose mass very slowly in this way. Even a hole with a few times the sun's mass will last far longer than the universe has existed to date. Smaller holes have more curvature on local scales and lose energy very very quickly. This is why the prospect of forming a hole in a particle accelerator isn't particularly scary.
But I want to be just like Alabama Man! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Alv120454wk
Um, we want to replicate the vulnerabilities too?
I doubt they do as such but if you are going for "bug for bug" compatibility then you may manage it every now and again. "Bug for bug" compatibility is a different animal from "implementing a specification". The Mozilla people have been coding things that don't make sense for years simply because there is lot of website code written for such products.
I'm sure it's easy to design a test that would fool an audiophile, as there are so many variables that contribute to the quality of the sound reproduction, starting with the microphones in the studio. With many older recordings, e.g. on the audiophile staple Dark Side of the Moon, the quality of the analogue master tapes is already noticeably below what is now capable of being reproduced digitally.
An old, old joke that has been pulled on tweakophiles many times to put an "experimental" piece of gear behind a curtain and have a high end piece of gear as a "base reference". Once the tweak agrees that yes the "experimental" gear is much better than the tube amp with oxygen free wire, hand rolled capacitors, and magic pixie dust the curtain is removed to show off the $200 SoundDesign from Wal-Mart. As long as the volume level is moderate, a piece of cheap gear can be EQed to sound like expensive gear. The one major catch is the volume level must not be touched and kept low enough that the cheap piece o crap doesn't run out of headroom.Most any high end stereo shop has a bunch of jaded salesmen with at least one hardened tweak among them. This gag is usually pulled by everyone else to stop the guy from bragging about his Golden Ears........
The path of least resistance is to switch pure functionality servers first. Things that provide services like DNS, DHCP, and NTP. The Linux machines can also hold the file shares even if Windows is still serving the directory. Anyhoo, you start simple and work up slowly on those.
On the desktops, deploy FOSS apps one at a time as dependencies allow. Even Office is tough if a lot of bespoke apps laying around use it as a development environment. Sneak up on that as long as you can too. Once the users are broken in on FOSS app replacements, begin switching the OS for those users you've managed to get using purely FOSS apps. Move up through the users from there. The last and most difficult cases can be handled with virtual machines and terminal servers.
If things are done this way rather than in one fell swoop then you avoid a user rebellions with great missing chunks of missing functionality amidst the kludges. You can also try things out first with the users who have a bit of clue and build up experience within the organization. Most of the negative Linux organization switch stories I've heard involved either the Fell Swoop approach or not having sufficient Linux/BSD/UNIX admin talent on hand.
No, what I want is freedom, but freedom without relearning every god damn thing. I want it for me, and I want it for that 95% of the public, too. We should ALL want that.
Your only other choice is to throw money at ReactOS. It's either that or start learning. Vista point upgrade that it is will even require you to learn a few things. Freedom entails responsibility for your choices. You either live with the choices you have or do the hard work of creating the choices you don't have. Others have exercised their freedom and did much of the hard work for you. If that isn't enough then do something constructive. There is a vast difference between freedom and a free lunch.Big Mike was more than happy to pay since he got an expansive license to run his mouth AND sound like he knows what he's talking about. Linux will have more than 300 million dollars of damage done to it on account of this deal. That Novell profited is hardly any consolation.
I'll spare you debate about Linux UIs then. If MS was going to do such a thing, they'd use a BSD. The license permits and encourages it. That be as it may be, SuSe's UI mainly comes from KDE and GNOME and most of THAT code isn't BSD. It is mostly GPL and LGPL. MS knows this so that couldn't be what they are up to.
MS IS hedging their bets but not in the way you think. The Novell deal gives MS a way to collect a toll on each copy of SuSE sold. This in turn will be used to legitimize "Linux-contains-our-IP" FUD.
Anyway XPDE is one project to almost exactly duplicate XP's interface in Linux. It never attracted much developer OR user attention. Nor has it attracted much in the way of money from commercial Linux distributors. I suspect that exactly copying Windows isn't the path to success you think it is. What you really seem to want is Windows with the irritations removed. Pestering MS to fix their products or buying a Mac may be better choices for you.
Novell has aided Microsoft in making it seem as though the hard work of others belongs to Microsoft. Novell is attempting to profit by disparaging the legal integrity of their suppliers. Novell has deliberately worked to undermine and circumvent the GPL.
Novell f*cked up. Period.
To be successful, one thing you need is the 'Freedom to make mistakes'.
Sure! But that only applies when there is action to correct those mistakes. Novell has yet to address the damage their mistake has done. They tried to put a positive spin on it. It isn't the same thing.There is a difference between saying "You should believe in Jesus because he loves you." and "You should believe in Jesus otherwise you will BURN IN HELL SINNER!!!!"
The first is positive persuasion. The second is damn close to child abuse. Anyway, you speak of "an atheist society" which in these United States just isn't true. Most people in the US subscribe to some form of Christianity. Nonetheless, even Christians disagree among themselves and we do have religions other that Christianity in this country. This is why there should be separation of church and state. It is not for someone in a position of power to tell anybody else what sort of faith they should have.
Do you repeat each and every one of those tests when you perform your own work? Say, for example, when you need to incorporate gravity in an equation somewhere, do you go out and measure the earth's gravitational pull? Do you go out and re-test Newton's work? If yes, then, well it's amazing you get anything done at all. If no, then you are placing your trust somewhere. The likelyhood of your trust faltering may be very low because of the work of others but it still cannot be anything other than trust, which in essense, is placing faith into something.
No, I employ a common heuristic: If the knowledge/fact/theorem seems to work then I employ it unless circumstances suggest that I should change my mind.Then what is it? It cannot be whole and whole fact. Ultimately you are making a leap somewhere, irregardless of how small or large that leap is. You don't seem to want to call that faith, but I'm not going to argue semantics with you.
I think we're arguing from unstated assumptions and premises. In my original post, I distinguished between common sorts of everyday faith like trust in friends and tenets of religious faith like "Jesus died for your sins." I am not on some kind of mission to destroy all "faith" once and for all for all time. But I am taking exception to a common apologist sophistry: "All knowledge, belief, and ways of knowing can be boiled down to religious faith. Since all things must ultimately be taken on faith then how can you criticize tenets of my belief or anyone else's belief for that matter?" I don't mean to offend you personally but that little chestnut comes up often enough to at least be a little frustrating. If you yourself aren't doing that then I apologize. Nonetheless, distinctions between things like "facts", "laws", "natural laws", "theories", and "tenets" are useful. If you have a helpful personal philosophy that makes it helpful to take all of those on some sort of "faith" then fine. However, not everybody copes with those distinctions in the same way and most arguments about them are ultimately....useless.
And the more reasonable scientist doesn't say that Newton is a wacko and not a scientist because he believed in God. The ultimate scientist could not speak on whether God is real or not on scientific terms because he cannot speak on it by definition of the scientific method!
I have no desire to trade point for point rebuttals with you but I will point out that I didn't say anything like that. Most religious people aren't whackos but the one who are whackos are doing a lot of damage. And I agree with you that God cannot be spoken of in scientific terms. I think I even said that God is an appropriate object of religious faith because HE isn't subject to objective processes. No scientific discovery will ever disprove the notion of God. I have no problem with that. Scientific discoveries can threaten certain notions people have about God like the lightning bolts or the germ theory of disease. All I meant was that some religious ideas are in fact subject to observation and test. It is these ideas that cause most friction. That is all I was trying to get at.I DO have a problem when politically motivated faith obstructs constructive endeavors. I have little doubt that most people who work in the life sciences want to waste time debating creationists. They are attempting the hard work of understanding their world and some people who are personally threatened by it want to make that work even harder. Some of these extreme religious types would also muzzle physicists and earth scientists uncovering discomfiting things involving the age of the universe. Since you bill yourself a scientist, don't the ones like that bother you too?
You're incorrectly drawing lines dividing religious faith and the more general sense of faith or belief. The two are not as different as you would believe.
Then why bother to distinguish at all? It's all just faith right? You might at as well say we can never know anything at all. I was only pointing out that belief based on verifiable fact and reasonable expectations isn't faith, that's knowledge.
Again, what are you constructing those models, observations, et al. on? Laws from those who stood before you, the accuracy of your observations, your own intellect, etc, etc. Ultimately it boils down to trust, faith.
Those models and observations are largely based on organized distrust. What we call "laws" in science have withstood multiple stringent tests designed to disprove them. There is very little trust in believing say the Three Laws of Thermodynamics. I can believe deeply and fervently that if I step out of a window that I can fly. A little knowledge on the other hand means I should know better than to do a foolish thing that will lead to serious injury. It isn't a snarky example either. Tecumseh's brother told the warriors to attack nearby Fort Harrison and that the bullets would not be able to harm them. A little knowledge..... Believe what you want. Trust in whatever you like. Some facts are just facts.
I simply cannot agree with you on this. Knowledge can be more or less certain. Having slight creedence for uncertain knowledge isn't faith. Any number of things just aren't. I could say that arrogant people want to make all knowledge "faith" so that all of knowledge and human experience will fit exclusively into their world view which all others are then obligated to subscribe. Arrogance isn't a good word to throw around. The quality isn't limited to nonbelievers.
I think perhaps people need to be more tolerant, and that goes both ways.
As South Park succinctly put it: "Tolerance just means you'll put up with it. You can still get pissed off about it."Science has a belief there are only more laws beyond the laws we currently know. Both are things based on faith. Both are things you cannot completely prove.
Conflating all forms of learning and knowing with religious faith is bad argument. The general strategy is to perform this conflation and then use it to prove arguments against religious faith facetious. For instance, I have a reasonable belief that the sun will rise tomorrow based on my experience that it has done so every day of my life. If for some reason the sun didn't rise then I would have to change my mind. If had religious faith that the sun will rise tomorrow and it didn't then I might suppose my God had good reasons for bringing this about. I wouldn't necessarily have to revise my beliefs faced with a change in circumstance. Generally, not changing your mind no matter what is considered a virtue when the belief is based on religious faith. And not all faith is religious. I have faith that certain friends and family members can be counted and that they can count on me. Science is based on constructing models and then using observation and experiment to reject, confirm, or refine the model. Clearly, all forms of knowledge and seeking it DO NOT boil down to religious faith.Religious faith isn't a problem when the object of that faith is something that is outside human observation and testing. We cannot directly observe or experiment on a God outside our universe for instance. When the object of faith IS something subject to objective testing and reasoning, that is when the howling starts. For instance, until recently it was held that lightning bolts were something thrown by God down from the Heavens. A smartass named Ben Franklin tied it to the electrical phenomena being so keenly investigated in his day. These investigations led directly to the invention of the lightning rod. Lightning rods were held by some clergy as an attempt to defy the will of God. So now we have the spectacle of the church steeple (often the highest structure in town) being a target of lightning bolts while the lightning rod protected town brothel continues to do business. Of course, more reasonable congregations just put up lightning rods as well. The evolution/creationism debate is yet another manifestation of badly placed religious faith.
What science actually says is "It has proven useful to suppose an observer can see the same models apply no matter where in the universe he might be. We'll continue to build and refine these models unless and until it is no longer useful to do so." That isn't religious faith either.
I'd rather not be burned at the stake. If they believed in god they were in fact theologians or philosophers attempting to explain the world in terms of god, not scientists. The fact that their belief isn't in the bible doesn't stop it being belief and based on theology.
If their findings stand up to skeptical peer review then their personal philosophies are irrelevant. Religion may not have much to contribute to science but it doesn't have to get in the way. I have no problem with religious belief when it isn't doing harm to positive endeavors. And no, it is not axiomatic that religion ALWAYS does harm.BTW, when you poke people in their most deeply held sensibilities they get defensive and take anything you have to say as a personal attack. My problem with much organized atheism and skepticism is the message is "You believe in invisible men who live in the sky and that means you SUCK!!!!" when it should be "Nonbelievers are humans too." Atheists like you give the rest of us a bad name. While I'm pricking balloons, I'll do another: Holding up a flag for what you DON'T believe in is stupid. I don't particularly care for what most religions want me to believe so I don't. But this doesn't mean that I have to pick a fight with every theist I see. There is a little thing called being adult and recognizing there is more than one kind of person in this world.
That doesn't make any sense. He's too stupid to create something to create something, so he creates the second something directly, proving how dumb he is!
That isn't so hard to get your head around. Writing very general code that in turn generates more code is generally more difficult than simply doing printf("output"). The first way is more flexible and done correctly means less overall work as after awhile programming resembles delegating work rather than doing every last detail of it yourself. In the same way, a truly omniscient God doesn't have make every last bird, insect, and subatomic particle. Since he is all knowing and all powerful, such a God need only specify the initial conditions and then watch the show. Also, if said God is competent with his omniscience he doesn't have to continually intervene with miracles and the like; the created universe will perform to spec on its own.If God is held to be something less than all knowing and all powerful then you have a deity who has to do more of the heavy lifting himself and furthermore has to continually intervene lest his universe suffer a gratuitous existence failure. That avoids a God who knows everything and can do anything yet is somehow fundamentally incompetent; on the other hand such a God is less satisfying for many people so they cleave to the all-powerful-and-particularly-interested-in-you version.
What I think actually happens is omniscience and omnipotence are qualities that are commonly assigned to deities without thinking through what omniscience and omnipotence naturally give rise to. "Of course my God is all-knowing and all-powerful!!!!" The deists did a decent job of thinking it through but got a religion that isn't very satisfying emotionally......