No, your post answers my question. Although probably not in the way that you intended.
My question was a rethorical one, prompted by your earlier statement that "some theological or philosophical systems are more true than others".
Now, here's my deconstruction of your answer:
> If it were that easy, philosophy and theology wouldn't be much fun, would it? We're talking about an infinite God and the meaning of life. These things can't be distilled down to a Slashdot post. The most important thing to know is that the pursuit of truth is a journey. Any finite human being who says that he has all the answers is either deluded or lying. You must keep seeking the truth your whole life. It is too easy to give up and claim that there is no such thing.
You seem to agree that neither philosophy nor theology provides objective truth. That was my point.
> was an atheist until I saw Star Wars
Most atheists I know would not change their convictions on the basis of a SciFi movie. Maybe you meant Agnostic?
As an aside, purely for its entertainment value, with no ill intent whatsover, I offer the following quote: "Popcorn pictures have always ruled. Why do people go see them? Why is the public so stupid? That's not my fault." -- George Lucas on 'Star Wars'
> My plan was to investigate the major world religions, but I soon became convinced that the Bible was a supernatural book with a message from God. Although there were objective reasons for me to believe the credibility of the Bible
Would you mind sharing the "objective reasons" for the Bible's credibility? Be aware that invoking the word "objective" in a discussion about science, you explicitly invite criticism (a.k.a "peer review"). Are you confident that your arguments will withstand it?
> there was also a deep subjective knowledge of its truth.
I am sorry but there is no such thing as "subjective truth". Beliefs are subjective, so are values and morals. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, truth is not.
>... Bible-fundamentalism... Calvinism... Eastern Orthodox, Anglican, and Roman Catholic
You seem to be jumping from one set of beliefs to another, getting hooked then disenchanted. Is it just you or does it point to a deeper flaw in Christianity (or perhaps in religion in general)?
> Through all of my searching, the person of Jesus Christ has become more and more important. It really has been a process of getting to know Him personally. It makes sense, because He did say that He is the truth.
I detect circular reasoning here.
> So now my primary criteria for evaluating theological and philosophical systems is if they will help me, or others, grow in our knowledge of Jesus Christ.
Sounds like a self-imposed limitation. Why not evaluate non-Christian beliefs as well. Judaism ans Islam, while monotheistic and superficially similar are quite different if you care to dig deeper. Then there is Hinduism, Budhish, Taoism... There are people that would lay their lives for the sake of almost every religion.
Now let me provide an alternative to the statement in your post that started this dialogue:
Science strives to arrive at objective truths. However, the number of question that objective truths can answer is relatively small. Science, as we know it, cannot answer the question "how should I live my life". For that, people turn to philosophy (and some to religion).
>I agree that these seven rules are useful for judging bogus science, but I reject the implication that if it's not scientific, it is not true. Just because someone cannot point to a scientific reason, doesn't mean that various herbal or eastern medicines don't work. There is much about the workings of the human body that scientists cannot explain, so I'm not surprised that there are centuries-old non-scientific medical practices that cure millions of people every year.
Even if science cannot explain why "herbal or eastern medicines" work, it may be used to test whether they do.
A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled test with a big enough group is a wonderful scientific tool that could validate those claims. Funny that such experiments are rarely performed.
> In the same way, science is unable to deal with any reality that is not observable or verifiable. Theology and metaphysics are by definition unscientific, but that doesn't mean that they don't deal with truth; it just shows the limitations of science.
You seem to be confusing "truth" with "dealing with truth". Theology and metaphysics "deal with truth" but are not "truth" (if you claim otherwise, please tell me which one of the incompatible religions and conflicting philosophies is true).
There are a lot more Christians than privacy-aware people. If you want to convince Joe Average that privacy compromising is bad, comparing universal IDs to "the number of the name of the beast" may be just the ticket.
Anyone knows any preacher that we can be converted to the cause?
I regisetered my domain with eNom via one of their resellers - PolarDomains. (Note that eNom does most of its business through resellers. While their advertised prices are quite high, the resellers offer the same packages for much lower prices, sometimes less than $9.
> John Ashcroft is the first person I've ever had spawn the words "Fascist Fuck" spontaneously in my head when seeing his image on sites like this. Normally I am a pretty level-headed guy. I think if you measured my autonomic responses, I would register more of a reaction to Ashcroft for than Saddam.
What, the same John D. Ashcroft who wrote the following?
"The protections of the Fourth Amendment are clear. The right to protection from unlawful searches is an indivisible American value. Two hundred years of court decisions have stood in defense of this fundamental right." - Writing in The Washington Times in 1997 in opposition to Clinton administration plans to eavesdrop on international e-mail.
> Sucks don't it, well never vote for a moral bastard and ALWAYS vote.
Voting does not accomplish anything. The system is set up such that an informed person's vote carries the same weight as the vote of a brain-washed sheep who believes the propaganda he or she is spoon fed by the media. Unfortunately, the sheep outnumber the people. The law of the pyramid applies.
You want to change something? Go out and persuade other people to join you in doing the right thing(TM). One vote is a joke, a thousand geek votes are a drop in the ocean, think BIG!
Unfortunately, if you're successful, one of two things will happen. You will either be perceived as a threat to the regime and dealt with faster than you can say "John Ashcroft" or you'll persuaded to join the system.
Speaking of the devil,
"The protections of the Fourth Amendment are clear. The right to protection from unlawful searches is an indivisible American value. Two hundred years of court decisions have stood in defense of this fundamental right." John D. Ashcroft, Writing in The Washington Times in 1997 in opposition to Clinton administration plans to eavesdrop on international e-mail.
>> Odd that Microsoft is simultaneously trying to stop spam sent to Hotmail users, and to make sure that it can send unsolicited commercial email without penalties.
> No, it's not. Laws that apply to everyone but you are very handy.
When I think about this, the fact that this post was modded as "insightful" by someone is perhaps the most frightening thing I've seen in a long time.
Stop being so damn literal!
The "insightful" moderation need not apply only to the content of a post. It may apply, as I believe was this case, to the fact that it was posted in this context. Sort of "meta insightful".
What does the fact that the parent post got moderated +4 Informative (to a total of +5), without adding one iota of information to the AC post it followed, say about the SlashDot moderators?
Google limits your queries to 10 words or less, does not have wildcards (letter, not word) or stemming and its boolean options are limited to phrase, OR and "word wildcards".
When I (admittedly rarely) hit those limits, I turn to AltaVista.
They intentionally write code to your boot sector (that, in certain cases, will damage your computer to the point of not booting), hide the fact, then try to hide behind a EULA.
IMO, the best way of stopping such practices in the future is establishing a legal precedent.
Sue the bastards for damages. Either a nice, juicy class-actiuon or a lot of individual ones. Preferrably in a jurisdiction that does not allow blanket disclaimers.
EULAs must die!
I really hope that some US govenment agency installs it on their computers and nails the bastards under:
(5) (A) knowingly causes the transmission of a program, information, code, or command, and as a result of such conduct, intentionally causes damage without authorization, to a protected computer;
(B) intentionally accesses a protected computer without authorization, and as a result of such conduct, recklessly causes damage; or
(C) intentionally accesses a protected computer without authorization, and as a result of such conduct, causes damage;
osgeek: It's still stealing. The Wing Lover: Oh, I never said it wasn't. I just don't feel bad about it.
Confusing theft with copyright violation seems to be trendy.
One possible explanations is that everybody knows that stealing is wrong but some copyright violations are not so clear-cut. So people use the incorrect but more emotionally charged label to invoke the desired response.
In this case, I suggest calling it "Terrorism" instead. More in the spirit of the 21st century.
The world's longest name officially used by a person is "Adolph Blaine Charles David Earl Frederick Gerald Hubert Irvin John Kenneth Lloyd Martin Nero Oliver Paul Quincy Randolph Sherman Thomas Uncas Victor William Xerxes Yancy Zeus Wolfeschlegelsteinhausenbergerdorft Senior" which is composed of 28 words or 192 letters.
1) Manage to patent something obvious. 2) Find out which of your senators/congresscritters/legislators/judges/whate ver violate it. 3) Sue them. 4) If they contact you, explain that you really have nothing against them personally. You're only defending your intellectual property rights. Casually mention that it seems to be a valid business model. Do not tell them your true motivation, let them think you are just a common greedy bastard. 5) Either take it to court, settle or get your patent repealed. 6) Let them realize that the current patent system is thoroughly fucked-up and that they should do something about it. 7) Repeat.
(I know, I know. I left out the ubiquitous "profit" step. Use your imagination)
First, Google supports limited boolean operators, consisting of exclusion (using '-'), forced-inclusion of stopwords (using '+'), phrases (words in double quotes or separated by other punctuation marks) and ORing (using 'OR' or '|').
It also supports "wildcard words", which lets you approximate a "NEAR" search.
However, when their their 10-word limit is combined with the absence of stemming, real wildcards and real boolean expressions, you may want to check the competition.
AnandTech, one of the more reputable review sites, explains the differences between Intel's and AMD'S cache implementations here.
All caches are not created equal and thus you should not expect AMD to benefit as much as Intel did from going to a 512KB L2 cache. Intel follows a much more conventional L1/L2 cache architecture that uses what is known as the inclusive principle; the inclusive principle states that the contents of the L1 cache are also included in the L2 cache. The obvious downside to this is that the L2 cache contains some data that is redundant that the CPU will never use (if it needs it, it will get it from the faster L1 cache). From the CPU's point of view, an inclusive cache just means it has less room to store its much needed data in, but from the standpoint of the rest of the system an inclusive cache does provide one advantage - if data is updated in main memory (e.g. through DMA), the memory controller only has to check the L2 cache to update data, and there is no need to check L1 for coherency. This is a small but important benefit to an inclusive cache architecture.
The opposite, obviously, is a cache subsystem that follows the exclusive principle - such as the Athlon XP's cache. In this case, the contents of the L1 cache are not duplicated in the L2 cache, thus favoring cache size over the added latency of checking for two levels of cache coherency in DMA situations. The exclusive approach makes much more sense for AMD, considering the Athlon XP has an extremely large 128KB L1 cache that would be very costly to duplicate in L2 (compared to Intel's 8KB L1 Data cache that is easily duplicated in L2).
Basically, the Althon does not duplicate the contents of its L1 cache in the L2 cache. So it does have a 640KB cache in total (128K of which is faster than rest...)
You have to tweak a memory management setting in the registry to take advantage of your L2 cache anyway. Look here...
Straight from the horse's mouth (regarding Win2K & up):
Do not change the SecondLevelDataCache entry
Some third-party sources have erroneously reported that modifying the SecondLevelDataCache registry entry in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \System \CurrentControlSet \Control \Session Manager\Memory Management can enhance system performance. The second level (L2) cache is recognized by the operating system and is fully utilized regardless of the setting of this parameter.
Only if you're running an older WinNT system, they recommend:
Getting the Most from Your Cache
By default, the NT HAL tries to recognize the amount of L2 cache on your motherboard. Sometimes it succeeds, and sometimes it fails. You can make sure that the HAL knows how much cache you have installed by checking the value of the SecondLevelDataCache REG_DWORD value under the HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management key.
When this value is 0, that tells the HAL that you have 256Kb of L2 cache. If you have a different amount installed, set SecondLevelDataCache to the amount, in Kb, of cache you've actually got. For example, if you have a 512Kb cache, set the value to be a decimal value of 512 or a hex value of 0x200. If you get this wrong, your machine may be unstable, so make sure to enter the right value in the right base.
Zeinfeld wrote: Unfortunately the notable standout is the failure in the Whitehouse who is a level-2 leader if that. Bush meets none of Collin's leadership criteria. It is all do as I say, not do as I do. Prime example, you go off and fight a war, I dodged service in Vietnam by getting Daddy to pull strings, then went AWOL. Secondary examples you keep your treaty commitments, I will unilaterally break the test ban treaty, ignore the security council, withdraw from Kyoto and basically ignore any treaty I consider inconvenient.
DNS-and-BIND wrote: And this is different from Clinton HOW exactly? At least the current occupant of the White House hasn't been disbarred or impeached. He didn't smoke pot, either, though he was a champion drinker.
Absolutely correct, there is no difference whatsoever. By design.
And here, ladies and gentlemen, lies the crux of the matter: The US democracy is for show. The two-party system gives the american people the illusion of a democratic process. The truth is, no matter if you vote Democrat or Republican, the same group of people (or, at east, the same kind of people) stay in power. Whether it is large corporations, media magnates, the CIA or any other group is irrelevant but left as an excercise to the reader for extra credit.
Slashdot Mirror
> This is probably not what you wanted
... Bible-fundamentalism ... Calvinism ... Eastern Orthodox, Anglican, and Roman Catholic
No, your post answers my question. Although probably not in the way that you intended.
My question was a rethorical one, prompted by your earlier statement that "some theological or philosophical systems are more true than others".
Now, here's my deconstruction of your answer:
> If it were that easy, philosophy and theology wouldn't be much fun, would it? We're talking about an infinite God and the meaning of life. These things can't be distilled down to a Slashdot post. The most important thing to know is that the pursuit of truth is a journey. Any finite human being who says that he has all the answers is either deluded or lying. You must keep seeking the truth your whole life. It is too easy to give up and claim that there is no such thing.
You seem to agree that neither philosophy nor theology provides objective truth. That was my point.
> was an atheist until I saw Star Wars
Most atheists I know would not change their convictions on the basis of a SciFi movie. Maybe you meant Agnostic?
As an aside, purely for its entertainment value, with no ill intent whatsover, I offer the following quote:
"Popcorn pictures have always ruled. Why do people go see them? Why is the public so stupid? That's not my fault."
-- George Lucas on 'Star Wars'
> My plan was to investigate the major world religions, but I soon became convinced that the Bible was a supernatural book with a message from God. Although there were objective reasons for me to believe the credibility of the Bible
Would you mind sharing the "objective reasons" for the Bible's credibility?
Be aware that invoking the word "objective" in a discussion about science, you explicitly invite criticism (a.k.a "peer review"). Are you confident that your arguments will withstand it?
> there was also a deep subjective knowledge of its truth.
I am sorry but there is no such thing as "subjective truth". Beliefs are subjective, so are values and morals. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, truth is not.
>
You seem to be jumping from one set of beliefs to another, getting hooked then disenchanted. Is it just you or does it point to a deeper flaw in Christianity (or perhaps in religion in general)?
> Through all of my searching, the person of Jesus Christ has become more and more important. It really has been a process of getting to know Him personally. It makes sense, because He did say that He is the truth.
I detect circular reasoning here.
> So now my primary criteria for evaluating theological and philosophical systems is if they will help me, or others, grow in our knowledge of Jesus Christ.
Sounds like a self-imposed limitation. Why not evaluate non-Christian beliefs as well. Judaism ans Islam, while monotheistic and superficially similar are quite different if you care to dig deeper. Then there is Hinduism, Budhish, Taoism... There are people that would lay their lives for the sake of almost every religion.
Now let me provide an alternative to the statement in your post that started this dialogue:
Science strives to arrive at objective truths. However, the number of question that objective truths can answer is relatively small. Science, as we know it, cannot answer the question "how should I live my life". For that, people turn to philosophy (and some to religion).
> There is not one true theological or philosophical system, although some are more true than others.
Fair enough. Please answer these two questions:
1. Which theological or philosophical systems are more true than the others?
2. What objective criteria was used to arrive at that conclusion.
>I agree that these seven rules are useful for judging bogus science, but I reject the implication that if it's not scientific, it is not true. Just because someone cannot point to a scientific reason, doesn't mean that various herbal or eastern medicines don't work. There is much about the workings of the human body that scientists cannot explain, so I'm not surprised that there are centuries-old non-scientific medical practices that cure millions of people every year.
Even if science cannot explain why "herbal or eastern medicines" work, it may be used to test whether they do.
A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled test with a big enough group is a wonderful scientific tool that could validate those claims. Funny that such experiments are rarely performed.
> In the same way, science is unable to deal with any reality that is not observable or verifiable. Theology and metaphysics are by definition unscientific, but that doesn't mean that they don't deal with truth; it just shows the limitations of science.
You seem to be confusing "truth" with "dealing with truth". Theology and metaphysics "deal with truth" but are not "truth" (if you claim otherwise, please tell me which one of the incompatible religions and conflicting philosophies is true).
> So who exactly was Max Planck's collaborator?
Several, in fact.
There are a lot more Christians than privacy-aware people.
If you want to convince Joe Average that privacy compromising is bad, comparing universal IDs to "the number of the name of the beast" may be just the ticket.
Anyone knows any preacher that we can be converted to the cause?
I regisetered my domain with eNom via one of their resellers - PolarDomains.
(Note that eNom does most of its business through resellers. While their advertised prices are quite high, the resellers offer the same packages for much lower prices, sometimes less than $9.
Here is a a list of services included in the base price. Plus, they recently added free Dynamic DNS services.
> John Ashcroft is the first person I've ever had spawn the words "Fascist Fuck" spontaneously in my head when seeing his image on sites like this. Normally I am a pretty level-headed guy. I think if you measured my autonomic responses, I would register more of a reaction to Ashcroft for than Saddam.
What, the same John D. Ashcroft who wrote the following?
"The protections of the Fourth Amendment are clear. The right to protection from unlawful searches is an indivisible American value. Two hundred years of court decisions have stood in defense of this fundamental right."
- Writing in The Washington Times in 1997 in opposition to Clinton administration plans to eavesdrop on international e-mail.
> Sucks don't it, well never vote for a moral bastard and ALWAYS vote.
Voting does not accomplish anything. The system is set up such that an informed person's vote carries the same weight as the vote of a brain-washed sheep who believes the propaganda he or she is spoon fed by the media. Unfortunately, the sheep outnumber the people. The law of the pyramid applies.
You want to change something? Go out and persuade other people to join you in doing the right thing(TM). One vote is a joke, a thousand geek votes are a drop in the ocean, think BIG!
Unfortunately, if you're successful, one of two things will happen. You will either be perceived as a threat to the regime and dealt with faster than you can say "John Ashcroft" or you'll persuaded to join the system.
Speaking of the devil,
"The protections of the Fourth Amendment are clear. The right to protection from unlawful searches is an indivisible American value. Two hundred years of court decisions have stood in defense of this fundamental right."
John D. Ashcroft, Writing in The Washington Times in 1997 in opposition to Clinton administration plans to eavesdrop on international e-mail.
> IMHO: Suicide is legal. Abortion is not.
You are not a woman, I presume.
>> Odd that Microsoft is simultaneously trying to stop spam sent to Hotmail users, and to make sure that it can send unsolicited commercial email without penalties.
> No, it's not. Laws that apply to everyone but you are very handy.
Or maybe he just got a short attention spam.
> Yes, actually... That was the point of the message. Reading the parent should explain it.
/.ers as well as those having short attention span.
Quoting relevant parts of parent posts helps eliminate confusion.
One has to accomodate lazy
>Personally, I am for some kind of IP
So am I.
When I think about this, the fact that this post was modded as "insightful" by someone is perhaps the most frightening thing I've seen in a long time.
Stop being so damn literal!
The "insightful" moderation need not apply only to the content of a post. It may apply, as I believe was this case, to the fact that it was posted in this context. Sort of "meta insightful".
What does the fact that the parent post got moderated +4 Informative (to a total of +5), without adding one iota of information to the AC post it followed, say about the SlashDot moderators?
Google limits your queries to 10 words or less, does not have wildcards (letter, not word) or stemming and its boolean options are limited to phrase, OR and "word wildcards".
When I (admittedly rarely) hit those limits, I turn to AltaVista.
arrange the words cake, eat, can't have, you, and, it & your into a well known phrase...
... then, only then, a Jedi will you be.
And your cake you have. Eat it you cannot.
They intentionally write code to your boot sector (that, in certain cases, will damage your computer to the point of not booting), hide the fact, then try to hide behind a EULA.
IMO, the best way of stopping such practices in the future is establishing a legal precedent.
Sue the bastards for damages. Either a nice, juicy class-actiuon or a lot of individual ones. Preferrably in a jurisdiction that does not allow blanket disclaimers.
EULAs must die!
I really hope that some US govenment agency installs it on their computers and nails the bastards under:
US Criminal code, TITLE 18, PART I, CHAPTER 47, Sec. 1030
Fraud and related activity in connection with computers
(a) Whoever -
[...]
(5) (A) knowingly causes the transmission of a program, information, code, or command, and as a result of such conduct, intentionally causes damage without authorization, to a protected computer;
(B) intentionally accesses a protected computer without authorization, and as a result of such conduct, recklessly causes damage; or
(C) intentionally accesses a protected computer without authorization, and as a result of such conduct, causes damage;
Why not just use one of *several* NT password recovery disks?
Will they work if the registry is locaten on an encrypted partition?
osgeek: It's still stealing.
The Wing Lover: Oh, I never said it wasn't. I just don't feel bad about it.
Confusing theft with copyright violation seems to be trendy.
One possible explanations is that everybody knows that stealing is wrong but some copyright violations are not so clear-cut.
So people use the incorrect but more emotionally charged label to invoke the desired response.
In this case, I suggest calling it "Terrorism" instead. More in the spirit of the 21st century.
The world's longest name officially used by a person is "Adolph Blaine Charles David Earl Frederick Gerald Hubert Irvin John Kenneth Lloyd Martin Nero Oliver Paul Quincy Randolph Sherman Thomas Uncas Victor William Xerxes Yancy Zeus Wolfeschlegelsteinhausenbergerdorft Senior" which is composed of 28 words or 192 letters.
Google it!
You fight fire with fire.
e ver violate it.
1) Manage to patent something obvious.
2) Find out which of your senators/congresscritters/legislators/judges/what
3) Sue them.
4) If they contact you, explain that you really have nothing against them personally. You're only defending your intellectual property rights. Casually mention that it seems to be a valid business model. Do not tell them your true motivation, let them think you are just a common greedy bastard.
5) Either take it to court, settle or get your patent repealed.
6) Let them realize that the current patent system is thoroughly fucked-up and that they should do something about it.
7) Repeat.
(I know, I know. I left out the ubiquitous "profit" step. Use your imagination)
That's because Google doesn't do boolean searches. It will ignore the or (too common a word) and ends up treating it like an and search.
I sincerely hope that whever moderated the parent "informative" will get what they deserve.
First, Google supports limited boolean operators, consisting of exclusion (using '-'), forced-inclusion of stopwords (using '+'), phrases (words in double quotes or separated by other punctuation marks) and ORing (using 'OR' or '|').
It also supports "wildcard words", which lets you approximate a "NEAR" search.
Finally, more customization is available using documented and undocumented (julian date and phonebook - residential and business) operators.
However, when their their 10-word limit is combined with the absence of stemming, real wildcards and real boolean expressions, you may want to check the competition.
AnandTech, one of the more reputable review sites, explains the differences between Intel's and AMD'S cache implementations here.
Basically, the Althon does not duplicate the contents of its L1 cache in the L2 cache. So it does have a 640KB cache in total (128K of which is faster than rest...)
Straight from the horse's mouth (regarding Win2K & up):
Only if you're running an older WinNT system, they recommend:
Zeinfeld wrote:
Unfortunately the notable standout is the failure in the Whitehouse who is a level-2 leader if that. Bush meets none of Collin's leadership criteria. It is all do as I say, not do as I do. Prime example, you go off and fight a war, I dodged service in Vietnam by getting Daddy to pull strings, then went AWOL. Secondary examples you keep your treaty commitments, I will unilaterally break the test ban treaty, ignore the security council, withdraw from Kyoto and basically ignore any treaty I consider inconvenient.
DNS-and-BIND wrote:
And this is different from Clinton HOW exactly? At least the current occupant of the White House hasn't been disbarred or impeached. He didn't smoke pot, either, though he was a champion drinker.
Absolutely correct, there is no difference whatsoever. By design.
And here, ladies and gentlemen, lies the crux of the matter: The US democracy is for show. The two-party system gives the american people the illusion of a democratic process. The truth is, no matter if you vote Democrat or Republican, the same group of people (or, at east, the same kind of people) stay in power. Whether it is large corporations, media magnates, the CIA or any other group is irrelevant but left as an excercise to the reader for extra credit.