Even if we assume that your paranoid fantasies are an accurate description of the way computer technology has evolved, what the hell does any of that have to do with the Mars Rover program?
Maybe it's just me but I'd rather see the quality of life improve for millions of people rather than look at another boring shot of a red rocky destitute landscape.
Sadly, it's not just you. There are hundreds of millions of people out there who, like you, fail to realize that forced wealth redistribution always causes more problems than it solves.
To meet this challenge they developed the rule of abrogation, which states that wherever contradictions are found, the later-dated text abrogates the earlier one. To elucidate further the original intention of Mohammed, they referred to traditions (hadith) recording what he himself had said and done. Sadly for the rest of the world, both these methods led Islam away from peace and towards war.
I thought he koran is supposed to only be in one language so that it does not get mis-interpreted and has not been modified (as opposed to the bible) what is your source please?
What does being modified have to do with it? Even without being modified, the Koran is (like the bible) self-contradictory. Read it some time.
I also thought jihad meant struggle and the only true jihad is the inner struggle.
"Jihad" is a word which, like many words, can have multiple meanings. I could explain this to you in my own words, but Mr. Sookhdeo did an excellent job of addressing this fallacy, so I'll let him speak:
Though jihad has a variety of meanings, including a spiritual struggle against sin, Mohammed's own example shows clearly that he frequently interpreted jihad as literal warfare and himself ordered massacre, assassination and torture. From these sources the Islamic scholars developed a detailed theology dividing the world into two parts, Dar al-Harb and Dar al-Islam, with Muslims required to change Dar al-Harb into Dar al-Islam either through warfare or da'wa (mission).
Muslims base all of their morality on the behaviour and commandments of Mohammed. His words and actions play a much bigger part in their belief system than any other words in the Koran. So, considering his conduct, is it any wonder that the majority of Muslims interpret the primary meaning of "Jihad" to be violent warfare?
Just where in the koran does it say to kill infidels? I thought it said to kill the infidels if they attack you (in self fdefence)
O Prophet! strive hard against the unbelievers and the hypocrites and be unyielding to them; and their abode is hell, and evil is the destination.
O you who believe! fight those of the unbelievers who are near to you and let them find in you hardness; and know that Allah is with those who guard
More important than the words, though, is the accepted interpretation in the Islamic world. It is a well established fact that Muslim nations punish Apostasy with death. It is also evident, from numerous examples in the real world, that wherever Muslim's are in the majority, they force Islamic religious rules on everyone, regardless of religion (or lack thereof). Finally, it's been established through numerous polls that even the majority of Muslims in western nations feel that Islamic law takes precedence over the laws of their host nations. That's a hell of a frightening pattern.
Power hungry zealots twist things around to suit their own ends and are helped by peoples fears of things that are different (as you are of muslims) making it easier to portray the people as inhuman, which religion it is is immaterial.
If you run into a Lion in the middle of the plains, you have two options: be afraid and try to protect yourself, or be friendly and try to shake his hand. Regaurdless of whether the lion is hungry right now, only one of those responses is logical.
I also got that you said you weren't religious, it obviously went over your head that hatred is a religion
Ah, I see the problem here: you're quite literally retarded. I'm sorry. I hope you lead a full and happy life, despite your handicap.
Did John Lennon receive death threats for saying the Beatles were more popular than Jesus?
Who cares? Religious people have received death threats for stating their belief that "abortion is murder". Hell, I've received death threats for daring to argue with the "9/11 truth" crowd.
Anonymous cowards don't need much incitement in order to send death threats to others. Religion is a good motivator for them, but hardly the only one. I was discussing instances of actual physical harm, not internet-tough-guy e-mails, or threatening letters. There's a massive difference between the two.
You appear to be no better than the radical muslims you hate, there were plenty of fine arguments as to why the take-down notice might be wrong (at least SEE the film before passing judgment) but to show such intolerance against ALL muslims - just because they are muslims.....
I show intolerance toward a ridiculous belief system which actively seeks to cause harm to others, yes. Just like in WW2 I would have shown intolerance toward Nazis and Shintoists, and just like I'm still intolerant of Marxists and Maoists. While I'm sure there are plenty of nice Nazis, Shintoists, Marxists, Stalinists, and Muslims, there's no escaping the fact that the beliefs which they espouse must either be fought against or submitted to. There's no halfway point. And if you think we should be coddling intolerant ideologists, you need to have your head examined.
Do not argue with the people of the scripture (Jews, Christians, and Muslims) except in the nicest possible manner - unless they transgress - and say, "We believe in what was revealed to us and in what was revealed to you, and our god and your god is one and the same; to Him we are submitters.
Thought you might like that, from the koran (I'm a devout follower of all knowing all powerful GOOGLE).
Yes, you're a typical google-scholar: research a quote, spit it out in a forum, and pretend that you've just settled a 3,000 year old debate.
FYI, a major problem with Islam is that, in order to deal with discrepancies in the Koran, Muslim "scholars" have decided to asses the accuracy of their scriptures based on the order in which they appear, with the more recent portions superseding the older ones. In other words, if earlier in the history of the Koran it said to live in peace with all "people of the scripture", but then later on it says to "kill all infidels or make them submit", then the later phrase wins out. Unfortunately for everyone involved, it's the earlier portions of the Koran which are the peaceful ones, while the latter portions deal with Mohammed's Jihad against everyone and everything.
Being a true infidel myself (one who does not believe in god) unlike you, I believe in compassion, tolerance and forgiveness.
I guess you missed the part of my comment where I said I wasn't religious. Big surprise there - you're obviously only seeing what you want to see.
Judge Not, Lest Ye Be Judged. I think God was referring to the American Idol judges when he/she/it came up with that.
I don't really give a damn what "god" has to say on the subject. If you are unwilling to pass judgement, then you are a fool on whom the gift of a brain was clearly wasted.
Time out there dude.
Lets be clear about something. Most muslims, as in an overwhelming majority, don't want to have anything do do with violence.
Got any stats to back that up, or are you just pulling opinions out of your ass?
Here's a suvey of "moderate", American muslims. If these are the opinions held by Muslims who have lived in, and, theoretically, been further liberalized by exposure to our society, how do you think the rest of the Muslim world would answer these questions?
See, I wouldn't have a problem with his 15 minute film if he pointed out the same problems (which definitely do exist!) in the other two major Abrahamic religions. However, he doesn't. He's flamebaiting people who are as protective of their religion as American Evangelicals are of theirs.
Oh really? How many riots were started over Piss Christ? How many buildings destroyed, and how many people killed?
I'm not religious in the least, BTW, but this moral equivalence bullshit has got to go. Even the worst Christian organizations on this planet are not as violent or radical as "moderate" Muslims.
Like it or not, I believe "humans" are the worst of all monsters. Unlimited potential for evil, and the will to do so at any time.
Talk about pessimism! Listen, any time you want to off yourself and remove a bit of evil from the world, feel free! With an attitude like that, I doubt anyone will miss you.
I just find it interesting that nearly every person responding to you has been an Anonymous Coward. That suggests some troubling things about the maturity level of Slashdot's male readership. You'd think there'd be at least one attempt at humour from an individual using his own name. So, in order to fill the gap:
I, for one, welcome our boob-bearing overlords....
How much is it worth to have an Aircraft carrier parked off-shore, providing food, clean water, and air-transport after a tsunami wipes out a large chunk of your infrastructure?
How much is it worth to have a massive floating hospital visit your shores, treating tens of thousands of people in the course of a few weeks?
... I think you are a little mistaken as to why Ghandi's methods worked. For one, the foe in this cas was not significantly concerned with being humane outside their own island. The British Empire was famously brutal in its handling of occupied lands.
During their expansionist period, sure. However, that was already on the wane by the time that Ghandi had his little uprising. Moreover, I don't think you could say that the brits EVER had the mindset for wholesale slaughter - you certainly wouldn't have heard them talking about wiping out all of India, the way that Palestinians talk about destroying Israel.
A big part of the reason why Ghandi's methods worked is because standing behind Ghandi were a large number of men who would have been perfectly willing to take up arms had the British acted against Ghandi.
Which is a deterrent, sure, but one again hardly an insurmountable one. Lots of armed men are only a problem when you don't have the stomach for fighting.
Why did we spend the lives of so many marines going door to door in Falluja, instead of carpet bombing the city into the ground?... More likely because if we had, instead of facing a city that had risen up against us, we'd have been facing an entire country and not even the Green Zone would have been remotely safe.
Sure, winning "hearts and minds" is one of our goals, but attempting to achieve that is a result of who we are. It's certainly not the most efficient tactic. If we wanted to get medival, we'd just carpet-bomb the country, leave maybe a hundred thousand Iraqis alive to serve as slave labour, and then move our own population in. But that's not how we do business. We're not worried about creating enemies - we're worried about behaving in a manner which is consistent with our laws, our beliefs, and our morals.
Even if they don't like to say that's what they're doing, smart people in the military do actually consider more than just the enemies they will kill; they think about the enemies they're going to create.
How many enemies did the US create when it dropped the A-bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
You're preaching to the choir - I AM in the military, so I understand our tactics quite well, thanks. And you're right, we have no desire to create any enemies if we don't have to. But you're wrong about what kind of actions create enemies. A lot of the time just showing yourself to be weak will create more enemies than any amount of killing you do, ESPECIALLY in ass-backwards societies like what the Palestinians have got going on right now. That's why every time Israel negotiates or pulls back the Palestinians redouble their attacks; they see it as a sign of weakness, so they move in for the kill. The only way to defeat such a culture is to beat the shit out of them so bad that they'll realize the only option they have left is surrender or annihilation - just like you did in Japan.
Of course, none of that has much to do with the original argument, which was that if only those Big Bad Jews would stop fighting, the whole middle east would settle down and peace and justice would reign forever and ever. Now you seem to be an intelligent guy, so I'm going to assume you don't agree with that:) What would YOU consider a viable strategy for peace between Israel and it's neighbours?
You mean the holocaust is due to the Jews not attacking other nations? Do you have a source for that or something?
The Holocaust is what happens when a people try to use non-violence, cooperation, and appeasement, in order to deal with an enemy whose stated goal is their destruction.
Before you start blabbing about Ghandi and the power of non-violent resistance, let's get something clear: there is a MASSIVE difference between fighting a foe who actually cares about being humane, and fighting a foe who'll do anything to achieve your annihilation. Ghandi facing the Brits was the former, which is why it worked. The Jews facing the Nazi's was the latter, which is why it didn't. I'll leave it to you to figure out which camp the Pallies fall into.
Let's get rid of laws that proscribe when, where and under what conditions consenting adults in a free society can have sex.
Damn straight! I've always wanted to have sex in the Prime Ministers office while he's in conference with the Pope. Thank you for trying to make my dreams come true!
No, it won't work.
Killing one passenger every minute wouldn't work, since anyone that would do that pretty much has voided any of my expectations that they would'nt continue to do so or worse once they have the cockpit.
1) It's a natural reaction for most people to cooperate.
2) It can be rather difficult to think rationally while listening to your stewardess gurgle her last breaths through a slit throat, or while hearing a child begging for his/her life.
The fact that you can sit here and talk about what people will do in an emergency as if it were some sort of certainty tells me that you've never really been in any situation more tense than a game of texas hold'em. The one consistent rule about violent situations is that there is no consistency. Even professional soldiers and police officers can panic and act irrationally, so trying to predict how a friggin' pilot will react is a fools errand.
Cheap PSU and case - $45 19" LCD Monitor - $190 Wireless keyboard and laser mouse - $60 (on sale) DVD-RW drive - $45
So add $340 to the original price. I think it's rather unfair to include all those things in the total price, though, since the majority of the times that I've built a system for myself, and pretty much every time anyone's asked me to build them a system, they've already had all the peripherals. Since 1998 I've bought only two monitors, three keyboards, and two mice for myself, but I've gone through 6 different systems in the same time period.
Have you even tried to play Unreal III? It takes far more PC than most people have. and that same problem plagued ID on it's last 2 releases for almost 2 years. Hell I know people that STILL dont have a pc capable of running Doom III at any playable speeds.
What the hell? Unreal 3 runs like a dream on my machine, and here are my component costs, at the time of purchase:
CPU - $90
Motherboard - $140
2 gigs RAM - $80
Graphics card - $160
HD - $120
Grand total? $590. Considering I built this system almost a year ago now, it's safe to say that you could purchase the same components for under $500 today. 5 years ago I couldn't have even bought a basic system for under $1200, let alone one capable of running the most recent games!
As for the "airplane as missile" threat, that is trivially handled: Install a locked, secure, cockpit-door, end of story. It's not as if: "Fly the plane into that building, or I'll kill this passenger" will work. (the pilots would just refuse, it makes no sense to kill everyone, including that passenger to prevent the killing of a passenger)
Maybe not. On the other hand "I'm going to kill one passenger every minute until you open this door" would probably work. Also, "I'm going to set off my bomb if you don't open this door in 30 seconds" is pretty much guaranteed to work.
Besides, I have the same ridicolous restrictions when flying on a 20-seat plane flying say Anda - Bergen, there isn't even a potential target within the RANGE of the airplane. If someone *does* take over the plane, best they could do would be killing everyone aboard
Imagine that - airlines wanting to prevent the unnecessary deaths of 20 passengers, highly valued pilots, and the destruction of a multi-million-dollar aircraft. Silly buggers.
Frankly, if your goal in life is to manage to somehow kill 20 people, there are easier ways. Defending against them all ain't worth it, because any marginal increase in security is more than counterbalanced by MASSIVE losses of freedom.
....
This is why nobody has asked for your opinion.
I at least partly agree with you - I think the best way to stop terrorists and murderers is to pass concealed carry laws and encourage a culture of gun ownership. It's no coincidence that most mass-killings occur in "gun free zones". However, wild gun battles are a bit of a bad idea when you're inside a pressurized fuselage at 30,000 feet. The only logical alternative is to ensure that nobody brings any weapons on board.
if the adiminstration cared about real risk they should start the "war on diabetes" or "war on traffic" or "war on obesity", all of which kill more people a month than terrorism does a decade
Ohhh, I know! Even better, let's have a war on old age! Surely if we get enough hippies protesting against it, we can get old age and death-by-natural-causes to be declared illegal. Then we can have a true utopia, free of all worry!
Heh, yeah. Get lost on Fort Carson in Colorado and just that kind of thing can happen. They are VERY unforgiving of people getting too close to the Aerospace Command centers up on/in Cheyenne Mountain. Almost everyone on base there has a story about something like that
Yeah, the only thing is, most of those stories are exactly that - stories. Military personnel LOVE to exaggerate their tales in order to make them seem more exciting, and civilians who have a tense encounter with the military tend to blow it out of all proportion. That Domino's story sounds typical - probably a small mixup that was resolved in a mundane manner, which, in the process of re-telling evolved from "Shit I had a rifle pointed at me for at least 20 seconds!" to "Holy crap, they blew away my car and dragged me off to Gitmo!".
The question of if scientific knowledge is different than other forms of knowledge, and if so, how and why, is an important one, and is a theoretical and meta-scientific question.
It's neither theoretical nor "meta-scientific" (which is really just another way of saying "non scientific, but we like to pretend"). It's actually quite easily defined: scientific knowledge has a much higher probability of being accurate due to the use of the scientific method, which is completely different than any method which preceded it. If you want further clarification on that, wikipedia has a decent entry, and there are plenty of excellent books on the subject.
First, science hasn't "replaced" philosophy.
As a tool for acquiring knowledge, you bet it has. Philosophizing about the best way to get 500 people airborne isn't going to get you far, but following the scientific method gave us the 747. Philosophy still plays a small role in generating ideas, but nobody takes it seriously as a tool for determining truth. Nobody except philosophers, that is, and they're a little biased.
Secondly, science does depend on consensus.
Yes, but consensus in science is generated through experimentation and can be easily broken if a new experiment generates a contradictory result, whereas in philosophy consensus is based on the popularity of the philosopher, and on some undefined "rightness" of his thoughts. In other words, science is objective, while philosophy is subjective. That's a HUGE difference - in practice it means that consensus in science can be challenged and shattered overnight by a clever college student with a simple experiment, while consensus in philosophy tends to change only due to shifts in popular opinion. As such, philosophy is more akin to art - Beethoven might be considered a musical genius in one generation while being considered a no-talent clown by the next, since the judgement is entirely subjective.
To give an example of science that isn't falsifiable, consider a lot of the work that is done in sociobiology. Someone picks a certain trait or preference that is exhibited in a population, then speculates an evolutionary reason for why that trait might exist. Is that speculation falsifiable? Not really - we can't go back and see if something else is responsible for the trait.
No, but we can study members of the same lineage living in other societies, and see whether they exhibit the same traits. For instance, if we were to notice that most rappers in America tend to be black, we could speculate that blacks are genetically predisposed to create rap music. However, if we were to study black people in, say, Africa, Australia, and China, we might find a completely different type of behaviour, which would falsify our initial theory.
You're right in the sense that some branches of science are highly speculative, with little chance for falsifiability at present. However, these tend to be sciences which are still in their infancy - ones where we do not know enough to be able to prove or disprove most theories with a high degree of certainty. Even so we hold them to the same standards as any other field of scientific research and, as we learn more about them, we develop better methods for testing our hypotheses.
Let's not forget that Evolution, especially with respect to the origin of species, also fails this test. As hard as one might try, postulates about things which happened in the past can't ever be proven false.
Not true. If you were to claim that an hour ago I punched you in the face, that's certainly a theory which is falsifiable. Obviously the farther back in time we go, the more difficult it becomes to prove or disprove an event, but simply occurring "in the past" is not enough to make an event unfalsifiable. Otherwise there'd be no point in having a justice system.
By the way, I think you got gypped by being modded down. Your entire comment is 100% wrong, but it's certainly not flamebait. In fact, if anything, you should have been modded "interesting", since your post has encouraged some excellent commentary from other people.
I welcome the day that happens. If kids had the critical thinking skills necessary to entertain the idea that all of what they're being told should be questioned, it would be the most monumental achievement in the history of public education.
Amen. That statement alone earns you a +5 Insightful. I hope you get it.
And so does every other scientific fact that has ever existed.....
You could go on and on with scientific facts that have been proven wrong. It is impossible to know what evidence might be discovered in the future that will prove any scientific fact to be false.
"Weird_one" already addressed the "man can fly now!" part of your argument, so I didn't bother quoting it - I'm more concerned with your apparent inability to tell the difference between "false" and "falsifiable":
The OP didn't say that "intelligent design" isn't a science because it might be false; he said it's not a science because it's not falsifiable. In other words, it can never be proven to be false. As such it is not a science, it is a religion.
You see, all scientific theories must be falsifiable. What this means is that through experimentation we are able to disprove some theories. The ones which we cannot disprove garner further attention, until either someone is able to disprove them or they become accepted as a rule or a law. In religion on the other hand, no method exists for disproving a given theory. So the key difference between science and religion is that scientific theories can be shown to be wrong, whereas religious theories never can.
After all, Intelligent Design is based upon sound engineering principles. If you consider engineering to be a scientifically based area of study, then Intelligent Design is also a scientifically based area of study.
The two have nothing in common. Engineering is the science of designing physical constructs. If something is poorly engineered, it collapses, falls apart, or explodes, and we learn from it and make it better the next time. Intelligent design, on the other hand, is nothing more than pointing to every object around you and yelling "GOD DID IT!". We don't learn anything from it, we can't use it to predict future results, and we certainly cannot use it to create a better product in the future. Not only is it not a science, it is, quite literally, absolutely useless.
Not to rain on your parade, but while ID in general does fail the test of falsifiability, your assertion that you can objectively determine if a theory is scientific by determining if it is falsifiable isn't in line with the ideas of many modern philosophers of science. It's mainly Karl Popper's idea, who rejected inductive reasoning (which is a hallmark of scientific thinking).
Who cares what philosophers have to say on the subject of science? Philosophy by it's very nature depends on the ability of it's practitioners to make statements which are non-falsifiable. You may as well ask a theologian for HIS definition of "science".
The main reason that science has essentially replaced philosophy as a means of discovering new truths is exactly BECAUSE science is falsifiable, whereas philosophy depends entirely on consensus and popularity.
I'm no philosopher
I'm very glad to hear that. Please don't ever let yourself become vacuous and egotistical enough to be considered a "philosopher".
While an increase in home energy consumption may surprise some, the increase in oil consumption is no surprise; it's exactly what the legislation was intended to do.
Slashdot Mirror
Even if we assume that your paranoid fantasies are an accurate description of the way computer technology has evolved, what the hell does any of that have to do with the Mars Rover program?
To meet this challenge they developed the rule of abrogation, which states that wherever contradictions are found, the later-dated text abrogates the earlier one. To elucidate further the original intention of Mohammed, they referred to traditions (hadith) recording what he himself had said and done. Sadly for the rest of the world, both these methods led Islam away from peace and towards war. What does being modified have to do with it? Even without being modified, the Koran is (like the bible) self-contradictory. Read it some time.
"Jihad" is a word which, like many words, can have multiple meanings. I could explain this to you in my own words, but Mr. Sookhdeo did an excellent job of addressing this fallacy, so I'll let him speak:
Though jihad has a variety of meanings, including a spiritual struggle against sin, Mohammed's own example shows clearly that he frequently interpreted jihad as literal warfare and himself ordered massacre, assassination and torture. From these sources the Islamic scholars developed a detailed theology dividing the world into two parts, Dar al-Harb and Dar al-Islam, with Muslims required to change Dar al-Harb into Dar al-Islam either through warfare or da'wa (mission).
Muslims base all of their morality on the behaviour and commandments of Mohammed. His words and actions play a much bigger part in their belief system than any other words in the Koran. So, considering his conduct, is it any wonder that the majority of Muslims interpret the primary meaning of "Jihad" to be violent warfare?
O Prophet! strive hard against the unbelievers and the hypocrites and be unyielding to them; and their abode is hell, and evil is the destination.
O you who believe! fight those of the unbelievers who are near to you and let them find in you hardness; and know that Allah is with those who guard
More important than the words, though, is the accepted interpretation in the Islamic world. It is a well established fact that Muslim nations punish Apostasy with death. It is also evident, from numerous examples in the real world, that wherever Muslim's are in the majority, they force Islamic religious rules on everyone, regardless of religion (or lack thereof). Finally, it's been established through numerous polls that even the majority of Muslims in western nations feel that Islamic law takes precedence over the laws of their host nations. That's a hell of a frightening pattern.
If you run into a Lion in the middle of the plains, you have two options: be afraid and try to protect yourself, or be friendly and try to shake his hand. Regaurdless of whether the lion is hungry right now, only one of those responses is logical.
Ah, I see the problem here: you're quite literally retarded. I'm sorry. I hope you lead a full and happy life, despite your handicap.
Anonymous cowards don't need much incitement in order to send death threats to others. Religion is a good motivator for them, but hardly the only one. I was discussing instances of actual physical harm, not internet-tough-guy e-mails, or threatening letters. There's a massive difference between the two.
I show intolerance toward a ridiculous belief system which actively seeks to cause harm to others, yes. Just like in WW2 I would have shown intolerance toward Nazis and Shintoists, and just like I'm still intolerant of Marxists and Maoists. While I'm sure there are plenty of nice Nazis, Shintoists, Marxists, Stalinists, and Muslims, there's no escaping the fact that the beliefs which they espouse must either be fought against or submitted to. There's no halfway point. And if you think we should be coddling intolerant ideologists, you need to have your head examined.
Yes, you're a typical google-scholar: research a quote, spit it out in a forum, and pretend that you've just settled a 3,000 year old debate.
FYI, a major problem with Islam is that, in order to deal with discrepancies in the Koran, Muslim "scholars" have decided to asses the accuracy of their scriptures based on the order in which they appear, with the more recent portions superseding the older ones. In other words, if earlier in the history of the Koran it said to live in peace with all "people of the scripture", but then later on it says to "kill all infidels or make them submit", then the later phrase wins out. Unfortunately for everyone involved, it's the earlier portions of the Koran which are the peaceful ones, while the latter portions deal with Mohammed's Jihad against everyone and everything.
I guess you missed the part of my comment where I said I wasn't religious. Big surprise there - you're obviously only seeing what you want to see.
I don't really give a damn what "god" has to say on the subject. If you are unwilling to pass judgement, then you are a fool on whom the gift of a brain was clearly wasted.
Have you asked your doctor if Xanax is right for you?
You mean like this? How many protests were started because of that particular piece of "art"?
Maybe if you pull your head out of your ass, the world won't smell like shit any more.
Got any stats to back that up, or are you just pulling opinions out of your ass?
Here's a suvey of "moderate", American muslims. If these are the opinions held by Muslims who have lived in, and, theoretically, been further liberalized by exposure to our society, how do you think the rest of the Muslim world would answer these questions?
I'm not religious in the least, BTW, but this moral equivalence bullshit has got to go. Even the worst Christian organizations on this planet are not as violent or radical as "moderate" Muslims.
I just find it interesting that nearly every person responding to you has been an Anonymous Coward. That suggests some troubling things about the maturity level of Slashdot's male readership. You'd think there'd be at least one attempt at humour from an individual using his own name. So, in order to fill the gap:
I, for one, welcome our boob-bearing overlords....
How much is it worth to have an Aircraft carrier parked off-shore, providing food, clean water, and air-transport after a tsunami wipes out a large chunk of your infrastructure?
How much is it worth to have a massive floating hospital visit your shores, treating tens of thousands of people in the course of a few weeks?
Which is a deterrent, sure, but one again hardly an insurmountable one. Lots of armed men are only a problem when you don't have the stomach for fighting.
Sure, winning "hearts and minds" is one of our goals, but attempting to achieve that is a result of who we are. It's certainly not the most efficient tactic. If we wanted to get medival, we'd just carpet-bomb the country, leave maybe a hundred thousand Iraqis alive to serve as slave labour, and then move our own population in. But that's not how we do business. We're not worried about creating enemies - we're worried about behaving in a manner which is consistent with our laws, our beliefs, and our morals. How many enemies did the US create when it dropped the A-bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
You're preaching to the choir - I AM in the military, so I understand our tactics quite well, thanks. And you're right, we have no desire to create any enemies if we don't have to. But you're wrong about what kind of actions create enemies. A lot of the time just showing yourself to be weak will create more enemies than any amount of killing you do, ESPECIALLY in ass-backwards societies like what the Palestinians have got going on right now. That's why every time Israel negotiates or pulls back the Palestinians redouble their attacks; they see it as a sign of weakness, so they move in for the kill. The only way to defeat such a culture is to beat the shit out of them so bad that they'll realize the only option they have left is surrender or annihilation - just like you did in Japan.
Of course, none of that has much to do with the original argument, which was that if only those Big Bad Jews would stop fighting, the whole middle east would settle down and peace and justice would reign forever and ever. Now you seem to be an intelligent guy, so I'm going to assume you don't agree with that
You mean the holocaust is due to the Jews not attacking other nations? Do you have a source for that or something? The Holocaust is what happens when a people try to use non-violence, cooperation, and appeasement, in order to deal with an enemy whose stated goal is their destruction.
Before you start blabbing about Ghandi and the power of non-violent resistance, let's get something clear: there is a MASSIVE difference between fighting a foe who actually cares about being humane, and fighting a foe who'll do anything to achieve your annihilation. Ghandi facing the Brits was the former, which is why it worked. The Jews facing the Nazi's was the latter, which is why it didn't. I'll leave it to you to figure out which camp the Pallies fall into.
2) It can be rather difficult to think rationally while listening to your stewardess gurgle her last breaths through a slit throat, or while hearing a child begging for his/her life.
The fact that you can sit here and talk about what people will do in an emergency as if it were some sort of certainty tells me that you've never really been in any situation more tense than a game of texas hold'em. The one consistent rule about violent situations is that there is no consistency. Even professional soldiers and police officers can panic and act irrationally, so trying to predict how a friggin' pilot will react is a fools errand.
Cheap PSU and case - $45
19" LCD Monitor - $190
Wireless keyboard and laser mouse - $60 (on sale)
DVD-RW drive - $45
So add $340 to the original price. I think it's rather unfair to include all those things in the total price, though, since the majority of the times that I've built a system for myself, and pretty much every time anyone's asked me to build them a system, they've already had all the peripherals. Since 1998 I've bought only two monitors, three keyboards, and two mice for myself, but I've gone through 6 different systems in the same time period.
CPU - $90
Motherboard - $140
2 gigs RAM - $80
Graphics card - $160
HD - $120
Grand total? $590. Considering I built this system almost a year ago now, it's safe to say that you could purchase the same components for under $500 today. 5 years ago I couldn't have even bought a basic system for under $1200, let alone one capable of running the most recent games!
Imagine that - airlines wanting to prevent the unnecessary deaths of 20 passengers, highly valued pilots, and the destruction of a multi-million-dollar aircraft. Silly buggers.
This is why nobody has asked for your opinion.
I at least partly agree with you - I think the best way to stop terrorists and murderers is to pass concealed carry laws and encourage a culture of gun ownership. It's no coincidence that most mass-killings occur in "gun free zones". However, wild gun battles are a bit of a bad idea when you're inside a pressurized fuselage at 30,000 feet. The only logical alternative is to ensure that nobody brings any weapons on board.
Ohhh, I know! Even better, let's have a war on old age! Surely if we get enough hippies protesting against it, we can get old age and death-by-natural-causes to be declared illegal. Then we can have a true utopia, free of all worry!
As a tool for acquiring knowledge, you bet it has. Philosophizing about the best way to get 500 people airborne isn't going to get you far, but following the scientific method gave us the 747. Philosophy still plays a small role in generating ideas, but nobody takes it seriously as a tool for determining truth. Nobody except philosophers, that is, and they're a little biased.
Yes, but consensus in science is generated through experimentation and can be easily broken if a new experiment generates a contradictory result, whereas in philosophy consensus is based on the popularity of the philosopher, and on some undefined "rightness" of his thoughts. In other words, science is objective, while philosophy is subjective. That's a HUGE difference - in practice it means that consensus in science can be challenged and shattered overnight by a clever college student with a simple experiment, while consensus in philosophy tends to change only due to shifts in popular opinion. As such, philosophy is more akin to art - Beethoven might be considered a musical genius in one generation while being considered a no-talent clown by the next, since the judgement is entirely subjective.
No, but we can study members of the same lineage living in other societies, and see whether they exhibit the same traits. For instance, if we were to notice that most rappers in America tend to be black, we could speculate that blacks are genetically predisposed to create rap music. However, if we were to study black people in, say, Africa, Australia, and China, we might find a completely different type of behaviour, which would falsify our initial theory.
You're right in the sense that some branches of science are highly speculative, with little chance for falsifiability at present. However, these tend to be sciences which are still in their infancy - ones where we do not know enough to be able to prove or disprove most theories with a high degree of certainty. Even so we hold them to the same standards as any other field of scientific research and, as we learn more about them, we develop better methods for testing our hypotheses.
By the way, I think you got gypped by being modded down. Your entire comment is 100% wrong, but it's certainly not flamebait. In fact, if anything, you should have been modded "interesting", since your post has encouraged some excellent commentary from other people.
The OP didn't say that "intelligent design" isn't a science because it might be false; he said it's not a science because it's not falsifiable. In other words, it can never be proven to be false. As such it is not a science, it is a religion.
You see, all scientific theories must be falsifiable. What this means is that through experimentation we are able to disprove some theories. The ones which we cannot disprove garner further attention, until either someone is able to disprove them or they become accepted as a rule or a law. In religion on the other hand, no method exists for disproving a given theory. So the key difference between science and religion is that scientific theories can be shown to be wrong, whereas religious theories never can.
The two have nothing in common. Engineering is the science of designing physical constructs. If something is poorly engineered, it collapses, falls apart, or explodes, and we learn from it and make it better the next time. Intelligent design, on the other hand, is nothing more than pointing to every object around you and yelling "GOD DID IT!". We don't learn anything from it, we can't use it to predict future results, and we certainly cannot use it to create a better product in the future. Not only is it not a science, it is, quite literally, absolutely useless.
The main reason that science has essentially replaced philosophy as a means of discovering new truths is exactly BECAUSE science is falsifiable, whereas philosophy depends entirely on consensus and popularity.
I'm very glad to hear that. Please don't ever let yourself become vacuous and egotistical enough to be considered a "philosopher".