Great way to make yourself irrelevant.
As a voter, I'm all for that as it gives me a proportionally greater say in how the future will be shaped.
Thank you for your non-participation.
As a pack rat, I kept all my old computers, and had a few dozen, not to mention hundreds of old cards, monitors, scanners, drives, etc, most working.
The way I got rid of my stuff was to let Hurricane Katrina blow it right out of my attic.
I thought I might someday donate it to a Linux museum, but the lesson is let someone make use of what may still work now, before some disaster strikes and you find yourself dealing with real junk.
A quick look at long term trends for "science", "mathematics", "biology", "chemistry", "engineering", all trending downward, perhaps with a Y intercept of zero in about the year 2100.
On the other hand, "games" on the increase, with "facebook" showing exponential growth.
Watch as billions of facebook users heat up the planet.
Judging from the crew of lobbyists directing his campaign to provide him leadership, we can expect:
1) more war in Iraq at the expense of investment in broadband and other technologies here at home
2) more funds for various dictators around the world, such as Jonas Sabimbi, who hacked off children's arms if they didn't accept forced recruitment into his children's army
3) more support for bankers, like Charles Keating, who are interested in gaming the system. Note that he actually supports Bernake's move at the Fed to allow Morgan Stanley to take out essentially no-interest loans, so that they can buy up oil futures contracts, making them now the number one holder of heating oil in New England, since the Fed opened the spigot (but not the window of transparency) for investment banks to essentially get all the cash they need printed on demand, while the dollar continues to tank.
4) allow the broadband companies to tier their service and put on caps to allow them to surcharge for downloads above size limits they set for themselves.
5) support massive H1B visa allowances so that jobs can continue to flow to foreign nationals
6) support for a continuance of the "Enron regulatory loophole" allowinng unregulated entry into investment banking by foreign controled hedge-funds and commodity traders (paid attention to the hearings on US energy regulations and their role in spurring speculation in the energy markets?). McCane actuallyfighting change to exisitng Bush/Grahm (his advisors) law that allows energy traders in Dubai can regulate US energy market exchange, without any other regulations, except imposed by Dubai regulators. If you feel comforatable with Dubai regulators making sure your gasoline prices are low, McCane is your guy. We all know how well this is working.
7) further support of his lobbyists among homland security firms to insure that all internet phone conversations, emails, and survailance at all public places, will be fully monitored but the full force and trust of the US government (and likely be sold to those who might be able to make use of this information in new secondary information markets, leading to the development of an entire new growth area in our economy, KGB-style oversight of citizens 24/7.
If you like leadership by delegation to corporate insiders, McCane is definitely your man. Its the Bush policies on steroids.
Vote McCane for a strong, well-corporate regulated Internet/America, where profit is for some is assurred and were alll who might complain can be closely monitored!
Given that it is not the interest of individual companies to take on the burden of maintaining genetic diversity in food stocks, this condition needs to be IMPOSED upon producers for the safety of humanity. This could easily be accomplished by a small tax on each and every company that sells bananas, markets or ships bananas and resells bananas, since they too benefit from the banana market. It should not be borne solely by the growers, but rather spread as broadly as possible. Ultimately, the public will pay, but the price of insuring the ultimate preservation and safety of the food source would be worth paying. It might add a tenth of a cent to each bunch of banas sold.
The funds could then be used to totally sequence the banana genome and develop new ways to introduce new useful variation into the cloned lines. It could also be used to study the genome of the various wilting diseases to understand how they destroy bananas.
Obviously, there are great diffrences between Windows and Linux. The relative value of these differences ultimately comes down to what you are going to do with either.
I have moved to a Dell M1330 and have been running windows of late, primarily to run some software that permits me to run various programs and share windows-based data files with others, and to try Vista, which I find a mixed bag. In the past I ran almost exclusively Linux, which I prefer in many respects.
Recently, I have been taking advantage of the many different external USB hard drives that are inexpensively available for PC's these days.
I would be eager to learn if others have ported Linux onto such drives to make it easy to run both Linux or Windows as one desires.
Any pitfalls, experiences, comments out there from others who may have gone this route?
The Fish-McCane-Bush strategy with respect to tech privacy and policies are come down to little more than "We will decide what we plan to do to you, we will determine what constitutes your privacy, and what of your on-line lives we will pry into or manipulate for our political adgenda. If you are part of our team, we will share the spoils with you. If you aren't well, you are s___ out of luck."
Such a policy is essential for these folks, as this has been their big lever on power for a long time now. Take that away and what is left? They must support spying on their political opponents and Americans in general just to keep up with developments taking place elsewhere. It is the only tool they have to deal with the fallout of failing policies, so its not suprising they feel they can't live without it. They offer no leadership, just pablum and empty promises they have no intention of keeping.
Until we get rid of the current republican poliltical paternal mentality of "we know best what you need to do and think", technological innovation will either continue to be stuck in a rut, dragged down by failed economic and foreign policies, or likely to take place elsewhere. Todays backtracking on Telecom immunity is just symptomatic of what we can expect in a McCane administration, just more of the McSameOLD.
Its gotten so bad that now, we even outsource extremely sensitive military technology.
Four more years of Bush/McCane and whatever technological leadership we once have had, will be hard to get back, if it will be possible to get it back at all. Its better to remove the cancer now rather than let it ravage the body politic for another four years. Who want's gas prices at $25/gal anyway, besides these guys and thier Saudi puppet masters?
I've been a Sun shareholder for about 7 years now. I hate to admit how much this has cost me, not to mention my retirement funds.
The question I would like to ask CEO executives, is when are they going to stop selling hype and start selling proudcts that sell and make the company some money? As it is now, they only seem to be able to generate hype and and more stock options for executives. Otherwise, I see little reason to expect Sun will exist much longer. After all, any new startup can generate hype, which is very much in oversupply these days.
Frankly, I can't understand why I should continue to hold this worthless stock and my best best for "making" any money seems to be selling the stock (now down 99.9% from where I bought it for a loss so that I can defray other tax liabilities. Sun stock seems to make the dollar look sound.
Next time you interview the CEO, perhaps you can ask him this question. In the long run, strip away the hype and its the only one that matters for SUN, which appears to be continue to set as I speak.
Yes, Gauss's Fundamental Theorem of Algebra does appear to be relevant, its just that the complex analysis required
at the inflection points near the of roots positional integrands that define the bounded Reimannian surface produce a computationally expensive solution given the short duration of the party.
You hit the nail on the head. They want massive support for federal subsidies. Unfortunately, for us we will have a hard time emmulating Japan. It is a nation of savers. We are a nation of debtors. While our government probably will subsidize big commpanies, who will then charge us more for it and make their usual double dip. Our problem is that we will have to print money to do it, which will mean giving up something else, probably health care or children's lunch programs, the usual stuff that would otherwise go to people who have no political clout.
The article says ATT plans to spend 19B$ on infrastructure. Preumably, its in faster switches, routers, and lines (fiber optic).
Whose equipment are they buying? Cisco, Juniper, Cienna, others? These are some of the big names in IP plumbing on the big pipe end. What class of equipment and what do they see as the next step?
Even so, it would be nice to see the math. The only place I have seen such equations solved is in Feynman's Physics volumes, which unfortunately I lost to Katrina.
What is the error estimate on the precise trajectory of the asteroid and its velocity? How can they arrive at a 400 m window, when they don't even have a good tracking of all the space junk in orbit? How many satelites were taken into consideration in reaching the 1:450 number? Can these really be ignored if the trajectory is to be computed this precisely? Have all the calculations taken into account numerical precision associated with floating point representation? Have the gravitational effects of the other planets been adequately accounted for? With what precision?
Just questions it would be interesting to look at to assess how these figures are arrived at. It wouold be instructive to see what figures NASA or the German schoolboy used in their equations.
Yes, as our consitutional rights diminish and armed police drones hover at every street corner dictating what we can and can not do, where we can and can not go, who we can and can not meet. We will be "safe" alright, but not from our "overlords".
Five questions?
1. Why is it that when a story of significant implications appears on/. and other similar websites the first few reponses are invariably a goofy, thoughtless joke that deflects serious communal thinking of the consequences of the story into the looney bin, suggesting that American political dialog is now all about gossip and images on Faux News rather than discourse that actually influences political outcomes?
2. Having sucessfully fought off the totalitarian Nazi Third Reich during World War II and the rise of soviet totalitarian communism in the 40 years that followed, why have Americans become so eager to rush to embrace with fervor the very concepts of totalitarianism as rules of governance that we once so vehemently despised in the name of "national security" simply to protect ourselves from a relatively few, much less well armed religious wackos?
3. Have American youth become so enthralled with video games that they now think real life must emmulate video games, in which increasingly, defence contractors design and produce the games and they are compelled to play rather than video games emmulating real life, where finding ones way through the sublime ambiguities of life is essential for survival, when simply blowing everything up is not really an option to get the girl and have offspring, who themselves will have a hopeful future?
4. Exactly, how much will having a safety drone, complete with missles, electric machine guns, and hookas equipped with portable nipples able to dispense the mandatory kool-aide, on every street corner actually going to cost us?
5. What will be America's future and what role will you play in First and Only Life?
"Instead of relying on people wanting to use their platform, they try to trap them into it..."
As a MS Vista/Linux user I know what you mean, but in a larger perspective, one in which the Minister is operating this is beside the point, since it will always be the business of business to make money.
The Minister is spot on in that a country like South Africa is burdened by widespread poverty, lack of educational opportunities for technical advancement and must largely rely software that delivers the greatest efficiency for the least cost. They clearly have no choice but to seek to promote a software-creation playing field that lowers the cost of participation. They can hardly fund their own pension systems, much less that of Bill Gates, not that Mr. Gates has not donated significant personal funds to fight AIDS in South Africa.
While it might be said that the US and hence its corporations like MS would benefit from continuing to pursue a stranglehold on patents and insisting increased prominence in patents in international trade deals, this approach actually overlooks a fundamental vulnerability the US has in that to pursue this approach tends to increase poverty and hopelessness in countries such as South Africa and consequently, slowly but surely adds to political instability and political realignments. Yes, some would argue that we should get our profits out first at all costs before we concern ourselves with such issues. However, in the long haul we actually have more to gain in seeing a prosperous South Africa that is disposed toward good relations with American corporations than one that is resentful of it. The sad truth is that it is precisely this kind of neglect that is increasing the role of the People's Republic of China and Europe as South Africa's business partners to the detriment of longterm US interests.
When MS declines to accept an open standard only to create a "standard of their own" in an attempt to continue their control over the process of business to business, business to government/government to business, and government to government computerized communication of data, it only serves to further destabilize a country that can not afford to pay for the use of such "standards". This undermines the broader interests of the United States, which is more than just making sure its corporations make extra money whenever possible (Although, admittedly it would be hard to tell by only looking at so many of our politicans eagerly accepting kickbacks and perks for doing so).
No doubt the current adminisration or its extension (vis a vis McCain or Clinton) will fail to recognize this, just as they see staying in Iraq, because it benefits our defence contractors and corporate oil titans, as somehow good for America. I suspect this will be just another step in the long steady march toward America shrinking into the sunset. By failing to take a more open stance toward software development, Microsoft is only setting itself up for ultimamte failure. You can already see this in other countries such as India, who have rejected MS's "standard". Soon, only the US will use such "standards" and "patents" and we will be the ones paying more than everyone else for the privilege these types of inter-institutional kinds of data "regulated/standardized" kinds of exchange and software. At that point innovation and leadership will have migrated elsewhere.
Better let up on his guy or you'll explode his world view. He's a modern day Martin Luther, who made it clear that "reason must be banished". He's obviously more intererested in bearing false witness than actually attempting to understand current scientific facts and explanation. If he were, he would have already read the very conclusive work on shape of beak shape in Darwin's finch. The number of examples are far to numerous to spend much time pointing them out to the willfully ignorant. One must be content to point them out to others who recognize the value of rationality.
Dawkins may well be correct that much of this controversy stems from the "faithful" needing to control the process of indoctrination of children at an age when their critical thinking skills have yet to form, lest their entire business model crumble.
You have obviously missed the entire point. The point in science class is to become educated about science, not belief systems. You seem to have the incorrect notion that science is about "beliving in" in one or the other alternate hypotheses ("theories" in the colloquial but not scientific sense of the term). Nothing could be further from the truth. Science is about a way of KNOWING, not believing.
You say that "not believing exactly what you're told to, especially when what I was told about evolution 20 years ago is different than now.". Its what and how it has changed that is relevant, not the simply the fact that some things have changed. If you take the time to read about the origins of species in the various animal and plant groups, you will learn that even as far back as Darwin, many of the relationships among organisms were "known" much in the manner they are "known" now. Humans are more closely related to other apes and other primates than they are to rodents and all are more closely related than cephalochordates, the most recent common ancestors of all vertebrates. This is a scientific fact that remains unchanged, even though we now know a great deal more about exactly how this has taken place as a result of evolution.
Most kids don't have parents that are scientists. Do you really want the US competing with the rest of the world in the 21st century, when the entire basis of current civilication is nearly ENTIRELY based on the cummulative impact of product of science. If only about 2 percent of the entire populations has any idea what science is, we as a nation don't stand a chance. If you do, I suggest you consider moving your family to southern Afganistan. The people there seem eager to continue to live in the 6th century. These people feel threatend by science. Do we really want to become like them? If so, how will we win he war on terror?
Dawkins does have a point. Why must we bow to the hobgoblins of myth and superstition and inappropriate belief and religious dogma, simply because we learned them from our parents when we were young, when we can use reason instead? Science is the ultimate manifestation of reason. I say teach science, not non-science (belief) in the science class room.
As for the "legions of evolutionary jackasses" its good that they have their discussion in the daylight of public discourse, that way the other less educated jackasses can overhear their converstations and perhaps learn something.
No not at all. You could go so far as to say this, but you would be WRONG, just like teaching ID in a science class room. You could do it, but it wouldn't be science, nor would it make it true.
There is no contradiction simply because relatively primitive forms may still exist in nature.
Also, note that monkeys are not "intermediate life forms". They are valid scientific taxa that have a biology, just like (remarkably like in many respects) you or I and represent a different lineage of primates, albeit related to our own. While unlike us, they do show a variety of traits that were likely present in our most recent common ancestor that we no longer prossess due to evolution that has taken place among the hominid linneage of primates (ie extensive hair over their entire bodies and more strongly ridged brows, "knucle-walking", prehensile tails, at least in New World monkeys etc.), they have subsequently evolved in other ways that would differentiate them from our most recent common ancestor, just as we have done with respect to other characteristics (larger frontal cortex, more upright gait, development of language and tool use, like chimps and gorillas, etc).
Those who would advocate non-science instruction in our class rooms are advocating putting US students at a disadvantage to Russian and Chinese students, who are not taught non-scientific, dogma as a substitute for science. In a sense they are a bit like terrorists, trying to undermine what actually makes America strong, the search for the truth. It would be better if they simply took the commandment "Thou shall not bear false witness" to heart, instead of ignoring it.
If they REALLY want to seek the truth, they might also want to reflect on why they look a lot like their parents (at all levels of organization, even at the level of their DNA), and why their parents were a lot like their grandparents, and.... why their anscestors looked a lot like the ancestors of other apes.
However, if I had to guess, they won't as the "leaders" of the religious community pushing this "alternate science" nonsense really hate to see their business model tampered with. For them its monkey (ape) see monkey (ape) do (put money in the collection plate), other monkeys (ape) put money in the collection plate and with a little kick-back to the political monkeys (apes) they keep their business model alive (and tax-exempt), of course at the expense of scientific truth, if necessary. It is no wonder that commandment about "thou shall not bearing false witness" is about as popular today as the Gospel according to Judas. Their religion has simply evolved to keep the business model alive; not to provide any semblance of the truth!
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Great way to make yourself irrelevant. As a voter, I'm all for that as it gives me a proportionally greater say in how the future will be shaped. Thank you for your non-participation.
Seriously, how was such accuracy was determined and to what precision can depth "measurements" be made?.
As a pack rat, I kept all my old computers, and had a few dozen, not to mention hundreds of old cards, monitors, scanners, drives, etc, most working. The way I got rid of my stuff was to let Hurricane Katrina blow it right out of my attic. I thought I might someday donate it to a Linux museum, but the lesson is let someone make use of what may still work now, before some disaster strikes and you find yourself dealing with real junk.
Give a man a fish, and he'll eat for a day.
Teach a man to fish, and he'll feed himself for years.
Teach a man to fish and he will create a fishery that will soon be depleted.
Is John McCane a sponsor of this legislation? I'm sure he and other politicians are eager to have it in place to silence their critics.
A quick look at long term trends for "science", "mathematics", "biology", "chemistry", "engineering", all trending downward, perhaps with a Y intercept of zero in about the year 2100.
On the other hand, "games" on the increase, with "facebook" showing exponential growth.
Watch as billions of facebook users heat up the planet.
Did a quick trend on "science", "mathematics", "biology", "chemistry", all trending steadily downward.
On the other hand, if you look for trends in "games", the trend is steadily upward.
Judging from the crew of lobbyists directing his campaign to provide him leadership, we can expect:
1) more war in Iraq at the expense of investment in broadband and other technologies here at home
2) more funds for various dictators around the world, such as Jonas Sabimbi, who hacked off children's arms if they didn't accept forced recruitment into his children's army
3) more support for bankers, like Charles Keating, who are interested in gaming the system. Note that he actually supports Bernake's move at the Fed to allow Morgan Stanley to take out essentially no-interest loans, so that they can buy up oil futures contracts, making them now the number one holder of heating oil in New England, since the Fed opened the spigot (but not the window of transparency) for investment banks to essentially get all the cash they need printed on demand, while the dollar continues to tank.
4) allow the broadband companies to tier their service and put on caps to allow them to surcharge for downloads above size limits they set for themselves.
5) support massive H1B visa allowances so that jobs can continue to flow to foreign nationals
6) support for a continuance of the "Enron regulatory loophole" allowinng unregulated entry into investment banking by foreign controled hedge-funds and commodity traders (paid attention to the hearings on US energy regulations and their role in spurring speculation in the energy markets?). McCane actuallyfighting change to exisitng Bush/Grahm (his advisors) law that allows energy traders in Dubai can regulate US energy market exchange, without any other regulations, except imposed by Dubai regulators. If you feel comforatable with Dubai regulators making sure your gasoline prices are low, McCane is your guy. We all know how well this is working.
7) further support of his lobbyists among homland security firms to insure that all internet phone conversations, emails, and survailance at all public places, will be fully monitored but the full force and trust of the US government (and likely be sold to those who might be able to make use of this information in new secondary information markets, leading to the development of an entire new growth area in our economy, KGB-style oversight of citizens 24/7.
If you like leadership by delegation to corporate insiders, McCane is definitely your man. Its the Bush policies on steroids.
Vote McCane for a strong, well-corporate regulated Internet/America, where profit is for some is assurred and were alll who might complain can be closely monitored!
Given that it is not the interest of individual companies to take on the burden of maintaining genetic diversity in food stocks, this condition needs to be IMPOSED upon producers for the safety of humanity. This could easily be accomplished by a small tax on each and every company that sells bananas, markets or ships bananas and resells bananas, since they too benefit from the banana market. It should not be borne solely by the growers, but rather spread as broadly as possible. Ultimately, the public will pay, but the price of insuring the ultimate preservation and safety of the food source would be worth paying. It might add a tenth of a cent to each bunch of banas sold.
The funds could then be used to totally sequence the banana genome and develop new ways to introduce new useful variation into the cloned lines. It could also be used to study the genome of the various wilting diseases to understand how they destroy bananas.
Obviously, there are great diffrences between Windows and Linux. The relative value of these differences ultimately comes down to what you are going to do with either. I have moved to a Dell M1330 and have been running windows of late, primarily to run some software that permits me to run various programs and share windows-based data files with others, and to try Vista, which I find a mixed bag. In the past I ran almost exclusively Linux, which I prefer in many respects. Recently, I have been taking advantage of the many different external USB hard drives that are inexpensively available for PC's these days. I would be eager to learn if others have ported Linux onto such drives to make it easy to run both Linux or Windows as one desires. Any pitfalls, experiences, comments out there from others who may have gone this route?
The Fish-McCane-Bush strategy with respect to tech privacy and policies are come down to little more than "We will decide what we plan to do to you, we will determine what constitutes your privacy, and what of your on-line lives we will pry into or manipulate for our political adgenda. If you are part of our team, we will share the spoils with you. If you aren't well, you are s___ out of luck."
Such a policy is essential for these folks, as this has been their big lever on power for a long time now. Take that away and what is left? They must support spying on their political opponents and Americans in general just to keep up with developments taking place elsewhere. It is the only tool they have to deal with the fallout of failing policies, so its not suprising they feel they can't live without it. They offer no leadership, just pablum and empty promises they have no intention of keeping.
Until we get rid of the current republican poliltical paternal mentality of "we know best what you need to do and think", technological innovation will either continue to be stuck in a rut, dragged down by failed economic and foreign policies, or likely to take place elsewhere. Todays backtracking on Telecom immunity is just symptomatic of what we can expect in a McCane administration, just more of the McSameOLD.
Its gotten so bad that now, we even outsource extremely sensitive military technology.
Four more years of Bush/McCane and whatever technological leadership we once have had, will be hard to get back, if it will be possible to get it back at all. Its better to remove the cancer now rather than let it ravage the body politic for another four years. Who want's gas prices at $25/gal anyway, besides these guys and thier Saudi puppet masters?
Too bad. I'm always eager to learn more about what those in physics think is important, even though I can not always understand it.
I've been a Sun shareholder for about 7 years now. I hate to admit how much this has cost me, not to mention my retirement funds.
The question I would like to ask CEO executives, is when are they going to stop selling hype and start selling proudcts that sell and make the company some money? As it is now, they only seem to be able to generate hype and and more stock options for executives. Otherwise, I see little reason to expect Sun will exist much longer. After all, any new startup can generate hype, which is very much in oversupply these days.
Frankly, I can't understand why I should continue to hold this worthless stock and my best best for "making" any money seems to be selling the stock (now down 99.9% from where I bought it for a loss so that I can defray other tax liabilities.
Sun stock seems to make the dollar look sound.
Next time you interview the CEO, perhaps you can ask him this question. In the long run, strip away the hype and its the only one that matters for SUN, which appears to be continue to set as I speak.
A party at which I attended had samples of beer made by various mathematicians.
You need not be a square, but you must be unitary.
Yes, Gauss's Fundamental Theorem of Algebra does appear to be relevant, its just that the complex analysis required at the inflection points near the of roots positional integrands that define the bounded Reimannian surface produce a computationally expensive solution given the short duration of the party.
You hit the nail on the head. They want massive support for federal subsidies. Unfortunately, for us we will have a hard time emmulating Japan. It is a nation of savers. We are a nation of debtors. While our government probably will subsidize big commpanies, who will then charge us more for it and make their usual double dip. Our problem is that we will have to print money to do it, which will mean giving up something else, probably health care or children's lunch programs, the usual stuff that would otherwise go to people who have no political clout.
The article says ATT plans to spend 19B$ on infrastructure. Preumably, its in faster switches, routers, and lines (fiber optic). Whose equipment are they buying? Cisco, Juniper, Cienna, others? These are some of the big names in IP plumbing on the big pipe end. What class of equipment and what do they see as the next step?
Thanks for the free add.
Even so, it would be nice to see the math. The only place I have seen such equations solved is in Feynman's Physics volumes, which unfortunately I lost to Katrina.
What is the error estimate on the precise trajectory of the asteroid and its velocity? How can they arrive at a 400 m window, when they don't even have a good tracking of all the space junk in orbit? How many satelites were taken into consideration in reaching the 1:450 number? Can these really be ignored if the trajectory is to be computed this precisely? Have all the calculations taken into account numerical precision associated with floating point representation? Have the gravitational effects of the other planets been adequately accounted for? With what precision?
Just questions it would be interesting to look at to assess how these figures are arrived at.
It wouold be instructive to see what figures NASA or the German schoolboy used in their equations.
Yes, as our consitutional rights diminish and armed police drones hover at every street corner dictating what we can and can not do, where we can and can not go, who we can and can not meet. We will be "safe" alright, but not from our "overlords".
/. and other similar websites the first few reponses are invariably a goofy, thoughtless joke that deflects serious communal thinking of the consequences of the story into the looney bin, suggesting that American political dialog is now all about gossip and images on Faux News rather than discourse that actually influences political outcomes?
Five questions?
1. Why is it that when a story of significant implications appears on
2. Having sucessfully fought off the totalitarian Nazi Third Reich during World War II and the rise of soviet totalitarian communism in the 40 years that followed, why have Americans become so eager to rush to embrace with fervor the very concepts of totalitarianism as rules of governance that we once so vehemently despised in the name of "national security" simply to protect ourselves from a relatively few, much less well armed religious wackos?
3. Have American youth become so enthralled with video games that they now think real life must emmulate video games, in which increasingly, defence contractors design and produce the games and they are compelled to play rather than video games emmulating real life, where finding ones way through the sublime ambiguities of life is essential for survival, when simply blowing everything up is not really an option to get the girl and have offspring, who themselves will have a hopeful future?
4. Exactly, how much will having a safety drone, complete with missles, electric machine guns, and hookas equipped with portable nipples able to dispense the mandatory kool-aide, on every street corner actually going to cost us?
5. What will be America's future and what role will you play in First and Only Life?
"Instead of relying on people wanting to use their platform, they try to trap them into it..."
As a MS Vista/Linux user I know what you mean, but in a larger perspective, one in which the Minister is operating this is beside the point, since it will always be the business of business to make money.
The Minister is spot on in that a country like South Africa is burdened by widespread poverty, lack of educational opportunities for technical advancement and must largely rely software that delivers the greatest efficiency for the least cost. They clearly have no choice but to seek to promote a software-creation playing field that lowers the cost of participation. They can hardly fund their own pension systems, much less that of Bill Gates, not that Mr. Gates has not donated significant personal funds to fight AIDS in South Africa.
While it might be said that the US and hence its corporations like MS would benefit from continuing to pursue a stranglehold on patents and insisting increased prominence in patents in international trade deals, this approach actually overlooks a fundamental vulnerability the US has in that to pursue this approach tends to increase poverty and hopelessness in countries such as South Africa and consequently, slowly but surely adds to political instability and political realignments. Yes, some would argue that we should get our profits out first at all costs before we concern ourselves with such issues. However, in the long haul we actually have more to gain in seeing a prosperous South Africa that is disposed toward good relations with American corporations than one that is resentful of it. The sad truth is that it is precisely this kind of neglect that is increasing the role of the People's Republic of China and Europe as South Africa's business partners to the detriment of longterm US interests.
When MS declines to accept an open standard only to create a "standard of their own" in an attempt to continue their control over the process of business to business, business to government/government to business, and government to government computerized communication of data, it only serves to further destabilize a country that can not afford to pay for the use of such "standards". This undermines the broader interests of the United States, which is more than just making sure its corporations make extra money whenever possible (Although, admittedly it would be hard to tell by only looking at so many of our politicans eagerly accepting kickbacks and perks for doing so).
No doubt the current adminisration or its extension (vis a vis McCain or Clinton) will fail to recognize this, just as they see staying in Iraq, because it benefits our defence contractors and corporate oil titans, as somehow good for America. I suspect this will be just another step in the long steady march toward America shrinking into the sunset. By failing to take a more open stance toward software development, Microsoft is only setting itself up for ultimamte failure. You can already see this in other countries such as India, who have rejected MS's "standard". Soon, only the US will use such "standards" and "patents" and we will be the ones paying more than everyone else for the privilege these types of inter-institutional kinds of data "regulated/standardized" kinds of exchange and software. At that point innovation and leadership will have migrated elsewhere.
Better let up on his guy or you'll explode his world view. He's a modern day Martin Luther, who made it clear that "reason must be banished". He's obviously more intererested in bearing false witness than actually attempting to understand current scientific facts and explanation. If he were, he would have already read the very conclusive work on shape of beak shape in Darwin's finch. The number of examples are far to numerous to spend much time pointing them out to the willfully ignorant. One must be content to point them out to others who recognize the value of rationality.
Dawkins may well be correct that much of this controversy stems from the "faithful" needing to control the process of indoctrination of children at an age when their critical thinking skills have yet to form, lest their entire business model crumble.
You have obviously missed the entire point. The point in science class is to become educated about science, not belief systems. You seem to have the incorrect notion that science is about "beliving in" in one or the other alternate hypotheses ("theories" in the colloquial but not scientific sense of the term). Nothing could be further from the truth. Science is about a way of KNOWING, not believing.
You say that "not believing exactly what you're told to, especially when what I was told about evolution 20 years ago is different than now.". Its what and how it has changed that is relevant, not the simply the fact that some things have changed. If you take the time to read about the origins of species in the various animal and plant groups, you will learn that even as far back as Darwin, many of the relationships among organisms were "known" much in the manner they are "known" now. Humans are more closely related to other apes and other primates than they are to rodents and all are more closely related than cephalochordates, the most recent common ancestors of all vertebrates. This is a scientific fact that remains unchanged, even though we now know a great deal more about exactly how this has taken place as a result of evolution.
Most kids don't have parents that are scientists. Do you really want the US competing with the rest of the world in the 21st century, when the entire basis of current civilication is nearly ENTIRELY based on the cummulative impact of product of science. If only about 2 percent of the entire populations has any idea what science is, we as a nation don't stand a chance. If you do, I suggest you consider moving your family to southern Afganistan. The people there seem eager to continue to live in the 6th century. These people feel threatend by science. Do we really want to become like them? If so, how will we win he war on terror?
Dawkins does have a point. Why must we bow to the hobgoblins of myth and superstition and inappropriate belief and religious dogma, simply because we learned them from our parents when we were young, when we can use reason instead? Science is the ultimate manifestation of reason. I say teach science, not non-science (belief) in the science class room.
As for the "legions of evolutionary jackasses" its good that they have their discussion in the daylight of public discourse, that way the other less educated jackasses can overhear their converstations and perhaps learn something.
No not at all. You could go so far as to say this, but you would be WRONG, just like teaching ID in a science class room. You could do it, but it wouldn't be science, nor would it make it true.
.... why their anscestors looked a lot like the ancestors of other apes.
There is no contradiction simply because relatively primitive forms may still exist in nature.
Also, note that monkeys are not "intermediate life forms". They are valid scientific taxa that have a biology, just like (remarkably like in many respects) you or I and represent a different lineage of primates, albeit related to our own. While unlike us, they do show a variety of traits that were likely present in our most recent common ancestor that we no longer prossess due to evolution that has taken place among the hominid linneage of primates (ie extensive hair over their entire bodies and more strongly ridged brows, "knucle-walking", prehensile tails, at least in New World monkeys etc.), they have subsequently evolved in other ways that would differentiate them from our most recent common ancestor, just as we have done with respect to other characteristics (larger frontal cortex, more upright gait, development of language and tool use, like chimps and gorillas, etc).
Those who would advocate non-science instruction in our class rooms are advocating putting US students at a disadvantage to Russian and Chinese students, who are not taught non-scientific, dogma as a substitute for science. In a sense they are a bit like terrorists, trying to undermine what actually makes America strong, the search for the truth. It would be better if they simply took the commandment "Thou shall not bear false witness" to heart, instead of ignoring it.
If they REALLY want to seek the truth, they might also want to reflect on why they look a lot like their parents (at all levels of organization, even at the level of their DNA), and why their parents were a lot like their grandparents, and
However, if I had to guess, they won't as the "leaders" of the religious community pushing this "alternate science" nonsense really hate to see their business model tampered with. For them its monkey (ape) see monkey (ape) do (put money in the collection plate), other monkeys (ape) put money in the collection plate and with a little kick-back to the political monkeys (apes) they keep their business model alive (and tax-exempt), of course at the expense of scientific truth, if necessary. It is no wonder that commandment about "thou shall not bearing false witness" is about as popular today as the Gospel according to Judas. Their religion has simply evolved to keep the business model alive; not to provide any semblance of the truth!