It's an article on how understanding how a gene that once caused birds to have teeth could help fight baldness!?
Baldness Specialist: Here you go sir. Bald Guy: What's that. Baldness Specialist: No big deal. It's just a GM retro virus. Bald Guy: Retrovirus? Baldness Specialist: Yea. It contains a gene that once caused birds to grow teeth. Bald Buy: Birds that grow teeth? Baldness Specialist: Don't worry sir they did 5 years of bird teeth replacement trials before working on hair growth. Bald Guy: Bird teeth replacement trials? Baldness Specialist: Please sir, just be still. Bald Guy: When hens have teeth! Doh!
I have found that often the cheapest long term solution is also the best for the environment. Now I'm going to get bombarded with examples conflicting with this thought but think it through. More often than not, if a product is not protected in some way ie has a government influence that shields it (think oil or other industries that get serious subsidies and EPA exemptions) the cheaper long term solution will be the best for the environment. Yes, there are many examples of how this doesn't work but it is a good starting point especially in complex situations like this.
Can you prepare yourself for the job market without a personal laptop? How much extra work would it require? How much better prepared would you be with a personal laptop? How do you work/play/communicate using a personal laptop and not using one. What is the total cost of your education (don't just think tuition)? Find the answers to these questions and you'll be closer to your answer than if you start with how much paper you save. That argument was a BS excuse to get some committee to sign off on this policy.
It seems that many of the honey nets that the average hobbyist would run are built to attract a lesser cracker. What I mean is that ports are left open that normally would not be left open. Services are running that normally should not, etc. I that that a really smart fish would see this as nothing but a cheap lure and refuse the bait. Do you think it's possible to fool the really smart fish? Is is possible to bait with something enticing enough without tipping off the big fish? Does publication of your work make this task more difficult?
RAM sellers suck. I don't know where the exact problem is, but it's treated as a commodity, and it's wrong.
In business, "Commodity" typically means an item that is not differentiated from others and sold purely for what it is, without regard for who made it. Price is the only thing that matters when buying a commodity and only the producers that can sell for the lowest price survive. It's typically considered a bad thing when you let your product become so plain that it's considered a commodity. Did you meant to say commodity because that would typically be a good thing for consumers?
Here's why. With all the DMCA, Super DMCA and software patent legislation floating around it would be nice to have some open source laws on the books. Maybe some conflicts in legislation might help some law makers to see how these laws impact open source. "What do you mean we can't use our XYZ software anymore?" "What do you mean we can only get an update for XYZ software from a foreign FTP site?"
I've used both Pair and HE and had great experiences with both. My only complaint is that they never had exactly what I needed. For example I wanted to run one of the open source shopping carts at HE. The cart only ran on a very recent Perl version and HE wasn't about to upgrade just for me. I can't really fault any provider for something like this. Their job is to be as stable as possible for all of their customers. I eventually just upgraded our connection and ran on a box in-house but our bandwidth requirements are pretty tiny.
Anyway I found Pair and HE service to be quite good at a fair price. Plus they both support open source by providing advertising dollars to publications like Linux Journal and providing high speed mirrors.
When will the python version be released or the perl version and don't forget ruby? This reminds me of Script-Fu for Gimp. Lots of people didn't want to work in Scheme so a number of other scripting languages were plugged in. Most didn't do very much but Gimp:Perl is now quite robust. I wonder if this will fire up a flame war over scripting languages for interfacing with the Linux kernel.
You know what else enables terrorist states? Sunny skies and clean air. I picture them just soaking it up, those damn terrorists. What we need is a gooood lonnng nuclear winter.
I know I have seen something like this but does anyone know if work has been done on a spam trap that displays random bogus addresses for the crawlers (web component) to reap while making a blacklist of servers (SMTP server component) that actually mail to these bogus addresses?
I want to attract more frogs to Antarctica. Do you have any thoughts? Anyone want to help?
Seriously, I'm all for encouraging women to enter whatever field they want to pursue but maybe there _is_ a genetic component to being a geek. Should strong women be firefighters? Sure. Should geeky women be programmers. Sure. Should there be support networks for women in geeky fields. Most likely. Should we recruit non-geeky women for geeky professions. Maybe not.
The DMCA is so broken that it _is_ very possible to use it against itself. The concept that information wants to be free fits much better with the framework of the US legal and legislative systems than the DMCA. I think it would be an interesting exercise to dream up as many examples like question #9 as possible. In other words dream up a DMCA violation and then dream up a DMCA method for hiding or protecting the original violation. I bet some awesome examples exist. I bet that this might be the best way to demonstrate how broken the DMCA really is. I suppose Freenet is an example. What would it take from a legal standpoint to prevent the cracking of Freenet under the DMCA? What part of the law takes presidence in these cases?
The first thing you should do is start composting your poop as seen on Slashdot. No but seriously composting in the traditional sense is quite an important part of gardening. If you're talking about a window box then it isn't very practical, however.
For the personal data I would encrypt it all. The ISP can waste all the money they want to decrypt it.
For everything else this won't work anyway since most of what travels across their lines is not owned by the people accepting the contracts. Most ISP traffic is of the download variety. This means that all those pages, gifs, jpegs, movies, songs, etc are not available to these customers to give. In most countries you can't give or sell what you don't already own.
This seems like a wildly stupid CYA type of move. It seems that claiming ownership to whatever travels your lines could get you in big trouble. Who wants to lay claim to illegal content? It seems safer to claim no responsibility.
1 - Learn about pregnancy and child birth. If you are a geek and truly like knowing how things work then this will blow you away. My wife and I took one of the natural child birth classes. She did deliver naturally but that doesn't really matter so much. What was best about it was that we were very well educated and always knew what was happening and what to expect next. This is not the norm. Most couples that I spoke to were completely ignorant and completely scared about child birth.
2 - Kids like a routine. Think about it. Everything that a young child experiences is new. Their little minds are searching for patterns. Sometime a little routine can go a long way.
3 - Get sleep when you can. I made the mistake of taking on an extra programming project thinking it would be good since I could do it from home. As a result I worked when our baby slept. I never slept. Sleep deprivation can ruin the great experience of having a baby. Some sleep deprivation is unavoidable but don't let your gaming, programming, surfing habits get in the way of some quality sleep. Oh yea, don't be fooled into thinking you can get much of anything done while your baby is awake. It doesn't work. Focus on the baby or focus on work. You will be much happier and effective that way.
4 - Exercise. I can't tell you how much it helps to get out and clear your head. Having kids requires a lot of energy. Exercise goes a long way towards cultivating this energy.
5 - Know that your life will change. Your priorities will change. Some of this will be difficult if you aren't ready for it. If you are a busy person already then you will give something up - maybe a lot. Accept it and move on. It's so worth it but you may not always feel that way.
6 - Someone before me mentioned the importance of maintaining your marriage. I can't stress this enough. You and your wife have to make time for each other and work hard at appreciating each other. It's all too easy to get totally focused on the baby and forget everything else. You need each other. The baby especially needs you both. Find out what makes your spouse feel happy, loved, romantic, etc. and do it often. You have to work at it - both of you. I have seen way too many friends split up lately because the stress of kids made them loose focus of what is truly important.
enterprise-level customers (banks, for instance) have vast resources and talent at their disposal. They can simply edit the source and fix the problem themselves. Oh wait..
I guess it all depends on your ethics. I know a guy that returns his home cordless phone to Ultimate Electronics every 11.5 months and purchases a new service plan for $10.
I, who swore I would never buy a service agreement for the obvious reasons listed above, bought a $15 service plan on my Archos mp3 player because Comp USA has a satisfaction guarantee. If I decide that I'm unhappy then I can return it within the service agreement period. I think that I'll be unhappy right about the time the next generation players start shipping. Then again I also think that something like an mp3 player has a pretty high failure rate. Laptops are the same way. I don't think I have ever had a laptop that didn't fail somehow within 2 years.
My favorite docs are at the PHP Site. What I like is that they are first and foremost very complete and well organized but what I also have grown to really appreciate is the notes that are made within each section. It's very easy to document bugs or unexpected bahavior in that system. That said, I suspect that a lot of time and effort went into the PHP documentation. I would bet that a wiki system would work as long as a developer starts with a comprehensive outline and a developer or trusted individual combs the docs regularly to correct poor and inacurate information and to consolidte ideas. Actually what I think would be the ultimate system would be a Wiki with restricted access along with an unrestricted attached message board (like php.net). This would allow the people who really want to get involved to have access to the the entire system and allow casual users to contribute and discuss issues without breaking the core.
Maybe because hydrogen is fairly expensive to make. It's extremely expensive and dangerous to transport. Plus it's neither dense nor compact.
It's this kind of thinking (or not thinking) that's dangerous. Sure hydrogen will likely be one of the many viable alternative energy storage devices (not source) for the future but it's not the only one. This is one of those articles that people rally behind because it's simple and sounds somewhat perfect. The reality is that solutions to big problems are most likely complex. The article is full of holes and wherever a hole exists the author says to just add money. That might work to some degree but setting a goal like "energy independence" would be better. It's less limiting and more likely to have a solution. The whole hydrogen thing is nothing but a tidy package for people to rally behind and get excited about. It's not so likely to work as a comprehensive approach.
I work for a company that sells to one of the worlds largest retailers. This retailer recently held a meeting with all suppliers in the division and stated that RFIDs will be used on all pallets entering the DC this year and all products sold within a couple years. The benefits such as walking past the checkout and knowing exactly what's in your cart was discussed. Inventory management is the really big benefit though. Concerns such as thieves potentially knowing what's in your cart as you walk to your car were also discussed. Someone also voiced the concern that thieves with proper equipment could know exactly what's sitting in your car. It seems like the retailers know what the risks are. They are seriously trying to reduce those risks but the benefits are far too great for them to ignore. We're just hoping that the price comes down. The tags cost half as much as our product.
OK, OK, wait a minute. First, you're asking me to defend religion which I'm not really willing or able to do. Second, this started as a means of "resolving" the evolution/creation debate in schools. Note that when I say "resolving" what I really mean is making some rules and playing nice. Third, you're looking at this from the perspective of a scientist. In order to get somewhere with the creation/evolution debate you have to take a step back and see a bigger picture.
So, take a step back. Hmmm... take another step back. There, now look at this again. You had stated:
I would go further (than your statement above) and say that human knowledge can only exist as a probability. All assumptions we make about our surroundings could be incorrect if we were to discover our senses are not "real". But that is further down the rabbit hole.
I think that in order to arrive at some livable arrangement we need to start way down the rabbit hole because this is where it all starts. If I stick my head into the world of science (usually where my head is anyway) then all your arguments make sense. If I stick my head into the world of religion (pick one) then your arguments may not work anymore.
"What!, don't work anymore? What about X, Y and Z!"
But that doesn't work here either because I can always trump your argument with, "... because my god made it that way." and you can't prove me wrong. At the very least you can't prove to me that thinking in this wildly twisted and convoluted (from a worldly, scientific standpoint) way won't land me into some superb and wonderful heaven in my afterlife. So I think I can safely say that the validity of one's faith wholely depends on one's perspective.
At the same time everyone here is telling me that science isn't a belief system (or faith) at all. Oh yea? Try this.
I happen to believe that some time after I go to sleep tonight I will awake to a new day. Why? Because I have all kinds of evidence that tells me that this is how my world works and until someone proves otherwise I'm sticking to it. However, the only way for me to _know_ that tomorrow I will awake to a new day is for me to have faith that this is so. It's so inate that I don't ever really question it. Is it possible that my universe will compress to the size of a pea and all life will cease to exist while I sleep? Is it possible that I will awake in some science fiction type setting only to discover that my "life" was nothing but a false reality created for my amusement in some other dimension? I can't say for certain that I will awake to a new day, in my bed, on Earth but I believe that I will and the more convinced I am of that the stronger my faith. I'm pretty certain that the same type of thing can be said about any scientific theory or for that matter the scientific method. Do I know that this apple will fall when I drop it? Do I know that past results are predictive in any way? Yes. Because I believe it to be true.
So, now I return to my original request which is: when in bible school, don't bring up evolution and when in science class, don't bring up creationism. Sort of like, we don't swim in your toilets so please don't pee in our pool.
Finally you stated:
There are no required dogmas, teachings or moral requirements in belief in science, no doctrine to follow. No creed, No worship, no prayer. Ones belief in science requires no other prerequisites. It begins and ends with the scientific process, and even that can and will be refined if we discover a "better" method of finding truth.
I think that this is not quite true. In theory faith in the scientific method is all that is required. However in practice there are all kinds of rites and creeds and hierarchies and even worship within the practice of science. Look at the phd process. Look at the status that scientists achieve. Look at how people like Einstein and Hawking are practically worshiped. Actually I think science is the most modern and adapting religion out there.;-)
I really like Mandrake. It's easy to install. It contains all kinds of really great stuff that works right out of the box. Contrary to popular belief, it makes a really nice server. Mandrake even does a spectacular job when it comes to security.
What others have stated already, however, is that their business model sucks. Running a business like a charity does not work. I like the Mandrake Club idea but I think they need to expand it. For example, Ximian does a far better job updating Mandrake (Red Carpet) than Mandrake does. The Mandrake mirrors in the US mostly suck. Mandrake should have a premium service that allows users to update their systems quickly, securely and easily. I personally think that Mandrake should give their CDs away in stores like AOL. It would save a ton of bandwidth and attract thousands of new users but to make this work, they have to have a real incentive to join Mandrake Club. That is where they need to focus their efforts right now. I happen to be a member of Mandrake Club and I have purchased a half dozen boxed sets over the years but I don't think that others are so compelled to pay for something that is essentially free. This is especially true if by some miracle they become wildly successfull.
First, understand that I agree with you. It's the point that you make about the "possibility that we are wrong" that I am talking about. Science can only show us the probability of something. Does that mean that I should not put my faith in science?. There are plenty of things that science can't address yet. Does that mean that disciplines such as philosophy and theology should be ignored? If something can't be explained scientifically, does that mean that it does not exist? Face it, your faith (and mine) in science is no more real than the next guy's faith in God. It may appear more practical and useful but it's no more real. Because of this the evolution/creation debate will never be resolved fully. I suggest that we who believe that we are well served by the scientific method recognize that it is our faith that makes it "real". I suggest that we tell our kids what the scientific method is and is not. That's the only way that it won't be just another religion destined to clash with other religions.
Slashdot Mirror
It's an article on how understanding how a gene that once caused birds to have teeth could help fight baldness!?
Baldness Specialist: Here you go sir.
Bald Guy: What's that.
Baldness Specialist: No big deal. It's just a GM retro virus.
Bald Guy: Retrovirus?
Baldness Specialist: Yea. It contains a gene that once caused birds to grow teeth.
Bald Buy: Birds that grow teeth?
Baldness Specialist: Don't worry sir they did 5 years of bird teeth replacement trials before working on hair growth.
Bald Guy: Bird teeth replacement trials?
Baldness Specialist: Please sir, just be still.
Bald Guy: When hens have teeth! Doh!
I have found that often the cheapest long term solution is also the best for the environment. Now I'm going to get bombarded with examples conflicting with this thought but think it through. More often than not, if a product is not protected in some way ie has a government influence that shields it (think oil or other industries that get serious subsidies and EPA exemptions) the cheaper long term solution will be the best for the environment. Yes, there are many examples of how this doesn't work but it is a good starting point especially in complex situations like this.
Can you prepare yourself for the job market without a personal laptop? How much extra work would it require? How much better prepared would you be with a personal laptop? How do you work/play/communicate using a personal laptop and not using one. What is the total cost of your education (don't just think tuition)? Find the answers to these questions and you'll be closer to your answer than if you start with how much paper you save. That argument was a BS excuse to get some committee to sign off on this policy.
It seems that many of the honey nets that the average hobbyist would run are built to attract a lesser cracker. What I mean is that ports are left open that normally would not be left open. Services are running that normally should not, etc. I that that a really smart fish would see this as nothing but a cheap lure and refuse the bait. Do you think it's possible to fool the really smart fish? Is is possible to bait with something enticing enough without tipping off the big fish? Does publication of your work make this task more difficult?
RAM sellers suck. I don't know where the exact problem is, but it's treated as a commodity, and it's wrong.
In business, "Commodity" typically means an item that is not differentiated from others and sold purely for what it is, without regard for who made it. Price is the only thing that matters when buying a commodity and only the producers that can sell for the lowest price survive. It's typically considered a bad thing when you let your product become so plain that it's considered a commodity. Did you meant to say commodity because that would typically be a good thing for consumers?
Here's why. With all the DMCA, Super DMCA and software patent legislation floating around it would be nice to have some open source laws on the books. Maybe some conflicts in legislation might help some law makers to see how these laws impact open source. "What do you mean we can't use our XYZ software anymore?" "What do you mean we can only get an update for XYZ software from a foreign FTP site?"
I've used both Pair and HE and had great experiences with both. My only complaint is that they never had exactly what I needed. For example I wanted to run one of the open source shopping carts at HE. The cart only ran on a very recent Perl version and HE wasn't about to upgrade just for me. I can't really fault any provider for something like this. Their job is to be as stable as possible for all of their customers. I eventually just upgraded our connection and ran on a box in-house but our bandwidth requirements are pretty tiny.
Anyway I found Pair and HE service to be quite good at a fair price. Plus they both support open source by providing advertising dollars to publications like Linux Journal and providing high speed mirrors.
When will the python version be released or the perl version and don't forget ruby? This reminds me of Script-Fu for Gimp. Lots of people didn't want to work in Scheme so a number of other scripting languages were plugged in. Most didn't do very much but Gimp:Perl is now quite robust. I wonder if this will fire up a flame war over scripting languages for interfacing with the Linux kernel.
You know what else enables terrorist states? Sunny skies and clean air. I picture them just soaking it up, those damn terrorists. What we need is a gooood lonnng nuclear winter.
I know I have seen something like this but does anyone know if work has been done on a spam trap that displays random bogus addresses for the crawlers (web component) to reap while making a blacklist of servers (SMTP server component) that actually mail to these bogus addresses?
I want to attract more frogs to Antarctica. Do you have any thoughts? Anyone want to help?
Seriously, I'm all for encouraging women to enter whatever field they want to pursue but maybe there _is_ a genetic component to being a geek. Should strong women be firefighters? Sure. Should geeky women be programmers. Sure. Should there be support networks for women in geeky fields. Most likely. Should we recruit non-geeky women for geeky professions. Maybe not.
Better yet, can the DMCA be used against the Patriot Act?
The DMCA is so broken that it _is_ very possible to use it against itself. The concept that information wants to be free fits much better with the framework of the US legal and legislative systems than the DMCA. I think it would be an interesting exercise to dream up as many examples like question #9 as possible. In other words dream up a DMCA violation and then dream up a DMCA method for hiding or protecting the original violation. I bet some awesome examples exist. I bet that this might be the best way to demonstrate how broken the DMCA really is. I suppose Freenet is an example. What would it take from a legal standpoint to prevent the cracking of Freenet under the DMCA? What part of the law takes presidence in these cases?
The first thing you should do is start composting your poop as seen on Slashdot. No but seriously composting in the traditional sense is quite an important part of gardening. If you're talking about a window box then it isn't very practical, however.
For the personal data I would encrypt it all. The ISP can waste all the money they want to decrypt it.
For everything else this won't work anyway since most of what travels across their lines is not owned by the people accepting the contracts. Most ISP traffic is of the download variety. This means that all those pages, gifs, jpegs, movies, songs, etc are not available to these customers to give. In most countries you can't give or sell what you don't already own.
This seems like a wildly stupid CYA type of move. It seems that claiming ownership to whatever travels your lines could get you in big trouble. Who wants to lay claim to illegal content? It seems safer to claim no responsibility.
1 - Learn about pregnancy and child birth. If you are a geek and truly like knowing how things work then this will blow you away. My wife and I took one of the natural child birth classes. She did deliver naturally but that doesn't really matter so much. What was best about it was that we were very well educated and always knew what was happening and what to expect next. This is not the norm. Most couples that I spoke to were completely ignorant and completely scared about child birth.
2 - Kids like a routine. Think about it. Everything that a young child experiences is new. Their little minds are searching for patterns. Sometime a little routine can go a long way.
3 - Get sleep when you can. I made the mistake of taking on an extra programming project thinking it would be good since I could do it from home. As a result I worked when our baby slept. I never slept. Sleep deprivation can ruin the great experience of having a baby. Some sleep deprivation is unavoidable but don't let your gaming, programming, surfing habits get in the way of some quality sleep. Oh yea, don't be fooled into thinking you can get much of anything done while your baby is awake. It doesn't work. Focus on the baby or focus on work. You will be much happier and effective that way.
4 - Exercise. I can't tell you how much it helps to get out and clear your head. Having kids requires a lot of energy. Exercise goes a long way towards cultivating this energy.
5 - Know that your life will change. Your priorities will change. Some of this will be difficult if you aren't ready for it. If you are a busy person already then you will give something up - maybe a lot. Accept it and move on. It's so worth it but you may not always feel that way.
6 - Someone before me mentioned the importance of maintaining your marriage. I can't stress this enough. You and your wife have to make time for each other and work hard at appreciating each other. It's all too easy to get totally focused on the baby and forget everything else. You need each other. The baby especially needs you both. Find out what makes your spouse feel happy, loved, romantic, etc. and do it often. You have to work at it - both of you. I have seen way too many friends split up lately because the stress of kids made them loose focus of what is truly important.
If you used free Qt for a project and later wanted to fork I'm sure Trolltech would sell you a commercial license.
enterprise-level customers (banks, for instance) have vast resources and talent at their disposal. They can simply edit the source and fix the problem themselves. Oh wait..
I guess it all depends on your ethics. I know a guy that returns his home cordless phone to Ultimate Electronics every 11.5 months and purchases a new service plan for $10.
I, who swore I would never buy a service agreement for the obvious reasons listed above, bought a $15 service plan on my Archos mp3 player because Comp USA has a satisfaction guarantee. If I decide that I'm unhappy then I can return it within the service agreement period. I think that I'll be unhappy right about the time the next generation players start shipping. Then again I also think that something like an mp3 player has a pretty high failure rate. Laptops are the same way. I don't think I have ever had a laptop that didn't fail somehow within 2 years.
My favorite docs are at the PHP Site. What I like is that they are first and foremost very complete and well organized but what I also have grown to really appreciate is the notes that are made within each section. It's very easy to document bugs or unexpected bahavior in that system. That said, I suspect that a lot of time and effort went into the PHP documentation. I would bet that a wiki system would work as long as a developer starts with a comprehensive outline and a developer or trusted individual combs the docs regularly to correct poor and inacurate information and to consolidte ideas. Actually what I think would be the ultimate system would be a Wiki with restricted access along with an unrestricted attached message board (like php.net). This would allow the people who really want to get involved to have access to the the entire system and allow casual users to contribute and discuss issues without breaking the core.
Why didn't I think of this?
Maybe because hydrogen is fairly expensive to make. It's extremely expensive and dangerous to transport. Plus it's neither dense nor compact.
It's this kind of thinking (or not thinking) that's dangerous. Sure hydrogen will likely be one of the many viable alternative energy storage devices (not source) for the future but it's not the only one. This is one of those articles that people rally behind because it's simple and sounds somewhat perfect. The reality is that solutions to big problems are most likely complex. The article is full of holes and wherever a hole exists the author says to just add money. That might work to some degree but setting a goal like "energy independence" would be better. It's less limiting and more likely to have a solution. The whole hydrogen thing is nothing but a tidy package for people to rally behind and get excited about. It's not so likely to work as a comprehensive approach.
Avalanche.org. Don't leave home without it.
I work for a company that sells to one of the worlds largest retailers. This retailer recently held a meeting with all suppliers in the division and stated that RFIDs will be used on all pallets entering the DC this year and all products sold within a couple years. The benefits such as walking past the checkout and knowing exactly what's in your cart was discussed. Inventory management is the really big benefit though. Concerns such as thieves potentially knowing what's in your cart as you walk to your car were also discussed. Someone also voiced the concern that thieves with proper equipment could know exactly what's sitting in your car. It seems like the retailers know what the risks are. They are seriously trying to reduce those risks but the benefits are far too great for them to ignore. We're just hoping that the price comes down. The tags cost half as much as our product.
OK, OK, wait a minute. First, you're asking me to defend religion which I'm not really willing or able to do. Second, this started as a means of "resolving" the evolution/creation debate in schools. Note that when I say "resolving" what I really mean is making some rules and playing nice. Third, you're looking at this from the perspective of a scientist. In order to get somewhere with the creation/evolution debate you have to take a step back and see a bigger picture.
;-)
So, take a step back. Hmmm... take another step back. There, now look at this again. You had stated:
I would go further (than your statement above) and say that human knowledge can only exist as a probability. All assumptions we make about our surroundings could be incorrect if we were to discover our senses are not "real". But that is further down the rabbit hole.
I think that in order to arrive at some livable arrangement we need to start way down the rabbit hole because this is where it all starts. If I stick my head into the world of science (usually where my head is anyway) then all your arguments make sense. If I stick my head into the world of religion (pick one) then your arguments may not work anymore.
"What!, don't work anymore? What about X, Y and Z!"
But that doesn't work here either because I can always trump your argument with, "... because my god made it that way." and you can't prove me wrong. At the very least you can't prove to me that thinking in this wildly twisted and convoluted (from a worldly, scientific standpoint) way won't land me into some superb and wonderful heaven in my afterlife. So I think I can safely say that the validity of one's faith wholely depends on one's perspective.
At the same time everyone here is telling me that science isn't a belief system (or faith) at all. Oh yea? Try this.
I happen to believe that some time after I go to sleep tonight I will awake to a new day. Why? Because I have all kinds of evidence that tells me that this is how my world works and until someone proves otherwise I'm sticking to it. However, the only way for me to _know_ that tomorrow I will awake to a new day is for me to have faith that this is so. It's so inate that I don't ever really question it. Is it possible that my universe will compress to the size of a pea and all life will cease to exist while I sleep? Is it possible that I will awake in some science fiction type setting only to discover that my "life" was nothing but a false reality created for my amusement in some other dimension? I can't say for certain that I will awake to a new day, in my bed, on Earth but I believe that I will and the more convinced I am of that the stronger my faith. I'm pretty certain that the same type of thing can be said about any scientific theory or for that matter the scientific method. Do I know that this apple will fall when I drop it? Do I know that past results are predictive in any way? Yes. Because I believe it to be true.
So, now I return to my original request which is: when in bible school, don't bring up evolution and when in science class, don't bring up creationism. Sort of like, we don't swim in your toilets so please don't pee in our pool.
Finally you stated:
There are no required dogmas, teachings or moral requirements in belief in science, no doctrine to follow. No creed, No worship, no prayer. Ones belief in science requires no other prerequisites. It begins and ends with the scientific process, and even that can and will be refined if we discover a "better" method of finding truth.
I think that this is not quite true. In theory faith in the scientific method is all that is required. However in practice there are all kinds of rites and creeds and hierarchies and even worship within the practice of science. Look at the phd process. Look at the status that scientists achieve. Look at how people like Einstein and Hawking are practically worshiped. Actually I think science is the most modern and adapting religion out there.
I really like Mandrake. It's easy to install. It contains all kinds of really great stuff that works right out of the box. Contrary to popular belief, it makes a really nice server. Mandrake even does a spectacular job when it comes to security.
What others have stated already, however, is that their business model sucks. Running a business like a charity does not work. I like the Mandrake Club idea but I think they need to expand it. For example, Ximian does a far better job updating Mandrake (Red Carpet) than Mandrake does. The Mandrake mirrors in the US mostly suck. Mandrake should have a premium service that allows users to update their systems quickly, securely and easily. I personally think that Mandrake should give their CDs away in stores like AOL. It would save a ton of bandwidth and attract thousands of new users but to make this work, they have to have a real incentive to join Mandrake Club. That is where they need to focus their efforts right now. I happen to be a member of Mandrake Club and I have purchased a half dozen boxed sets over the years but I don't think that others are so compelled to pay for something that is essentially free. This is especially true if by some miracle they become wildly successfull.
First, understand that I agree with you. It's the point that you make about the "possibility that we are wrong" that I am talking about. Science can only show us the probability of something. Does that mean that I should not put my faith in science?. There are plenty of things that science can't address yet. Does that mean that disciplines such as philosophy and theology should be ignored? If something can't be explained scientifically, does that mean that it does not exist? Face it, your faith (and mine) in science is no more real than the next guy's faith in God. It may appear more practical and useful but it's no more real. Because of this the evolution/creation debate will never be resolved fully. I suggest that we who believe that we are well served by the scientific method recognize that it is our faith that makes it "real". I suggest that we tell our kids what the scientific method is and is not. That's the only way that it won't be just another religion destined to clash with other religions.