A person who loves truth will accept that truth from wherever it comes, be it science, philosophy, experience or scripture.
Which "scripture?" Western protestant Christian bibles? Eastern Christian bibles? Jewish bibles / midrashim / talmud / etc.? Muslims holy books? All of them put together, despite the fact that they contradict each other?
For that matter, why not reject outlandish claims that people make? I might claim I was abducted by aliens, flown to Mars and allowed to have tea with Elvis Presley, who told me that Jesus was an alien born on a space station orbiting Alpha Centauri. Would you believe that? Why not?
In science you accept postulates which can neither be proven nor disproven.
Only one: that we live in a logical and consistent universe. In other words, that if we reproduce the conditions under which a phenomenon was observed, then the phenomenon itself will be reproduced. This is not something that can be definitively proved (the next attempt to reproduce any experiment could always be the one that shows that the universe is not consistent), but if we lived in an inconsistent universe there would be no "truth" to speak of -- things would be true and false at the same time, and any claim that could be made would be true.
Beyond that, however, there is not much in science that goes without proof or evidence. That postulate is all that is needed for scientific experiments to be meaningful, because it allows us to draw conclusions from the phenomena we can observe, and it allows experiments to be reproduced by others.
it is a cardinal violation of science to believe in anything that can't be tested, then why is it acceptable to believe definitive in the inverse?
Except that there is more evidence to suggest that the Christianity's deity is the invention of human beings than that such a deity exists in the real world. The characterization of the Christian deity is dependent on the age of the particular story characterizing that deity, with the new testament painting a very different picture from the old testament, and with elements of the Jesus story being apparent in the mythology of those cultures that Jews had contact with in the early days of Christianity. Not quite enough evidence to say exactly what happened or to build a well-developed theory, but more than has ever been collected to suggest that such a deity actually exists (which is, "none at all").
Interesting hypothesis, so the next and most obvious scientific questions would be: where is the evidence, how was the evidence gathered, and how can I reproduce the experiment?
That is what differentiates most of the world's religions (perhaps even all of them) from science.
He's just saying that he is an example of a Christian who believes in both science and creationism
This, in a nutshell, is the problem: the view that believing scientific claims is in some way relating to religious faith. The entire point of science is to be able to verify claims, which is very much different from believing in the existence of deities that cannot be measured, verified, or tested in any way.
The faith in a creator is not diametrically opposed to accepting science.
You are free to believe anything you want about the universe, and you are free to squeeze your beliefs into the space where science has not yet demonstrated those beliefs to be false. However, faith is irrelevant to discussions about science. Science is a process for determining what is or is not true in a very organized way, which allows people to verify claims; faith is belief regardless of and sometimes in spite of the available evidence.
One of the major problems we have in America is the confusion about science. Science is the product of a particular philosophy, and that philosophy stands in opposition to most of the world's religions. Discussions about science are discussions that are restricted to the philosophy upon which science is built, and there is no room for faith in that philosophy (except, perhaps, faith that we live in a logical, consistent universe). This is the point that is generally lost on Americans: religious faith represents an entirely different way of thinking about the world than science.
...nothing relevant to any discussion of science. Who cares what the bible has to say? It is a bunch of ancient semitic stories, laws, government records, prayers, and poetry, that for some unknown reason was all cobbled together and which excludes a large number of other stories from that period. Maybe the bible is your inspiration to lead a good life, maybe it is your excuse to attack people who do not share your beliefs, or maybe you just like the message it conveys -- none of that has anything to do with science or scientific discovery.
evolution doesn't explain what happened before the beginning of time, or where all the mass in the universe came from in the first place.
Your point being what? The theory of evolution concerns the diversity of and relationship between life forms on this planet, nothing else.
Yeah, it is not as if privacy is a matter of security or something crazy like that. Enforcing a user's privacy preferences is not a matter of computer security at all!
The ironic thing is that you are calling people "moron" while pushing the claim that protecting privacy has nothing to do with security.
More importantly, why are browser makers worried about Google's interests? Google is the adversary as far as user privacy is concerned, and browsers should ship with security against that adversary. Adblocking should be the default. Cookie policies should be strict and should forbid iframes from third party sites from setting or reading cookies. If browser makers actually cared about user privacy, we would not be in this situation.
Frankly, as an approach to a security engineering problem, P3P is pretty bad. You are basically allowing your adversary to declare what the security policy will be, then leaving it up to your adversary to follow that policy.
If browser makers were serious about protecting their users' privacy, they would make adblocking the default, they would have stricter cookies policies, and they would not let a company like Google decide what sort of privacy people will have.
The point is not that it is impossible, but that it is a hindrance to the process. Yes, the break even price could be higher; that could also mean that some people who might have purchased the software will not do so, and may not be able to download the software on their own. It may also be the case that someone with the equipment needed to burn many copies does not have the money to buy all that physical media, and could not simply give these things away at no cost.
This is not just about software patents (which are bad for reasons that have nothing to do with free software); the point is about the no-royalties clause and whether or not FRAND licenses exclude free software or attack the principles of free software.
Except that not everyone who sells free software is doing so as part of a commercial venture; free software may be sold at a break even price by a nonprofit or by volunteers (e.g. as part of a kit for running an installfest). It may also be the case that a mirror of various distributions charges its users for access, where some of the software might be royalty free and some might not be (and now that mirror could be forced to monitor all the software that its users download for compliance purposes). There are generally good reasons that royalties are forbidden by the GPL: royalties encourage a particular distribution infrastructure in which everyone gets their software from a small number of distributors, while the GPL is meant to encourage sharing.
More importantly, why should implementing a standard make it impossible for a developer to choose a commonly used software license?
Well, I will be honest -- at the moment, I cannot think of a particular problem with your suggestion, from the point of view of free software development / distribution. The only issue I see with it is that it creates a nightmare for enforcement on the part of the standards body, since they have no way of knowing whether or not the royalty was paid on any particular copy of the software (since I might sell some free software to you, and you might give it to 10 people, who might sell it at different prices, etc.).
Now, in practical terms, it is incompatible with the GPL, which forbids any sort of royalties. The GPL is not the be-all and end-all of free software, but it is an important license and any royalty scheme discriminates against GPL'd software.
Which is exactly the point. By creating standards that require royalty payments, you are preventing GPL software from implementing the standard. That was the GP's question, and thus the question is answered.
There is nothing in FRAND, that I can see, that prohibits open source software or other open IP
There most certainly is; from the GPL:
You may not impose any further restrictions on the exercise of the rights granted or affirmed under this License. For example, you may not impose a license fee, royalty, or other charge for exercise of rights granted under this License
if you agree to terms that obligate you to collect a royalty for further conveying from those to whom you convey the Program, the only way you could satisfy both those terms and this License would be to refrain entirely from conveying the Program.
How can I have the freedom to redistribute my software at no cost (which is one of the freedoms you have with free software) if I have to pay royalties to some standards body in order to do so, and force anyone who helps in that redistribution (i.e. mirrors, participants in a P2P networks, etc.) to do so?
P3P sounds like a stupid idea anyway. How does it protect user privacy if something as trivial as the attack described above totally defeats it?
If the IE or Safari teams really cared about user privacy, they would be more strict about allowing sites to set or read cookies. This is just an excuse for Microsoft and Apple to publicly bash one of their competitors while continuing to not give two hoots about their users.
Sounds like you are asking the bad guys to cooperate with you. If you want to protect user privacy, do not allow sites to set arbitrary cookies, do not allow iframes to set or read cookies, and so forth. Does anyone really think that Google is going to voluntarily respect privacy, when their entire business is based on tracking people?
We have see proposal after proposal based on the idea that either users should be forced to opt-out of invasions of their privacy, or that the people who want to violate users' privacy will cooperate and not commit such violations. How about giving browsers some teeth, and creating browsers that actually protect user privacy without regard to advertiser profits?
And as far as mankind on mankind action, I'd guess it would amount to throwing small masses at high velocity at each other (throwing rocks in a glass house).
Doubtful -- distances get pretty big pretty fast in space. I would think of something more like "grapeshot," mounted on a radar or laser guided missile with a proximity fuse. Then, once a spacecraft was destroyed, all the other spacecraft would run away to avoid being hit with debris. Expect plenty of electronic warfare, since communicating is going to be even more important when trying to organize battles in space.
I also envision lots of really interesting technologies. Long range communication or radar on arbitrary frequencies (because there is no atmosphere or terrain)? Passive radar using solar radiation? Missiles that use rocket engines to change direction? High powered lasers used for missile guidance? Lasers in the microwave range? Drones that can swarm a spacecraft?
Of course, it may turn out that general space battles are not worth the expense, and that we will see mostly orbital battles, with ground stations providing support. Perhaps orbital battles around the moon too, should military lunar bases be built (in which case you would probably see a lot of ground-to-orbit battles, since the moon itself would be an excellent launching platform for attacks). One thing that I think is clear is that strategies for space combat are going to be a lot different from the strategies using in naval or air combat right now.
I would like to add to this: proximity fuse, and lots of hard objects packed in with the explosives. It is going to be hard to guide a missile to a spacecraft (which can and probably will be moving very fast), so you are going to want to have the missile get close enough to punch lots of holes in the craft's hull. Additionally, you do not actually need to "blow up" a spacecraft, you just need to depressurize it, assuming there are human occupants, or mess with electronics etc.
Another big challenge is going to be avoiding all the debris that would be created during the battle. I expect that the battles will involve moving very quickly away from previously destroyed spacecraft, and so you will see groups of ships moving parallel to each other while deploying whatever weapons they have. Perhaps the battles will be very quick shootouts, with each side retreating from the debris, regrouping, and preparing for the next shootout.
To put things in perspective: a painchip can create a small crater in the space shuttle's wing. Imagine what a ball bearing could do.
Let's now imagine a perfect world in which you create a check that actually takes 15 seconds to complete. They can still do that 5,760 times per day.
The point of this proposal is not to stop spam entirely, but to keep the rate at which spam can be sent down to manageable levels. If a spammer can only send 5760 spam messages per day, that is a big improvement -- right now spammers are limited only by bandwidth, and can send tens of thousands of messages per day.
So far this has not been widely successful, although perhaps it is because it targets the email system rather than the web (where things tend to change faster).
Slashdot Mirror
A person who loves truth will accept that truth from wherever it comes, be it science, philosophy, experience or scripture.
Which "scripture?" Western protestant Christian bibles? Eastern Christian bibles? Jewish bibles / midrashim / talmud / etc.? Muslims holy books? All of them put together, despite the fact that they contradict each other?
For that matter, why not reject outlandish claims that people make? I might claim I was abducted by aliens, flown to Mars and allowed to have tea with Elvis Presley, who told me that Jesus was an alien born on a space station orbiting Alpha Centauri. Would you believe that? Why not?
In science you accept postulates which can neither be proven nor disproven.
Only one: that we live in a logical and consistent universe. In other words, that if we reproduce the conditions under which a phenomenon was observed, then the phenomenon itself will be reproduced. This is not something that can be definitively proved (the next attempt to reproduce any experiment could always be the one that shows that the universe is not consistent), but if we lived in an inconsistent universe there would be no "truth" to speak of -- things would be true and false at the same time, and any claim that could be made would be true.
Beyond that, however, there is not much in science that goes without proof or evidence. That postulate is all that is needed for scientific experiments to be meaningful, because it allows us to draw conclusions from the phenomena we can observe, and it allows experiments to be reproduced by others.
it is a cardinal violation of science to believe in anything that can't be tested, then why is it acceptable to believe definitive in the inverse?
Except that there is more evidence to suggest that the Christianity's deity is the invention of human beings than that such a deity exists in the real world. The characterization of the Christian deity is dependent on the age of the particular story characterizing that deity, with the new testament painting a very different picture from the old testament, and with elements of the Jesus story being apparent in the mythology of those cultures that Jews had contact with in the early days of Christianity. Not quite enough evidence to say exactly what happened or to build a well-developed theory, but more than has ever been collected to suggest that such a deity actually exists (which is, "none at all").
Interesting hypothesis, so the next and most obvious scientific questions would be: where is the evidence, how was the evidence gathered, and how can I reproduce the experiment?
That is what differentiates most of the world's religions (perhaps even all of them) from science.
He's just saying that he is an example of a Christian who believes in both science and creationism
This, in a nutshell, is the problem: the view that believing scientific claims is in some way relating to religious faith. The entire point of science is to be able to verify claims, which is very much different from believing in the existence of deities that cannot be measured, verified, or tested in any way.
The faith in a creator is not diametrically opposed to accepting science.
You are free to believe anything you want about the universe, and you are free to squeeze your beliefs into the space where science has not yet demonstrated those beliefs to be false. However, faith is irrelevant to discussions about science. Science is a process for determining what is or is not true in a very organized way, which allows people to verify claims; faith is belief regardless of and sometimes in spite of the available evidence.
One of the major problems we have in America is the confusion about science. Science is the product of a particular philosophy, and that philosophy stands in opposition to most of the world's religions. Discussions about science are discussions that are restricted to the philosophy upon which science is built, and there is no room for faith in that philosophy (except, perhaps, faith that we live in a logical, consistent universe). This is the point that is generally lost on Americans: religious faith represents an entirely different way of thinking about the world than science.
The Bible says...
evolution doesn't explain what happened before the beginning of time, or where all the mass in the universe came from in the first place.
Your point being what? The theory of evolution concerns the diversity of and relationship between life forms on this planet, nothing else.
Yeah, it is not as if privacy is a matter of security or something crazy like that. Enforcing a user's privacy preferences is not a matter of computer security at all!
The ironic thing is that you are calling people "moron" while pushing the claim that protecting privacy has nothing to do with security.
I do not think anyone would be surprised by the fact that a legal solution to a computer security problem is a complete failure.
Unfortunately, it is unlikely that you will get modded funny. Nobody will RTFA here, not even the moderators!
More importantly, why are browser makers worried about Google's interests? Google is the adversary as far as user privacy is concerned, and browsers should ship with security against that adversary. Adblocking should be the default. Cookie policies should be strict and should forbid iframes from third party sites from setting or reading cookies. If browser makers actually cared about user privacy, we would not be in this situation.
Frankly, as an approach to a security engineering problem, P3P is pretty bad. You are basically allowing your adversary to declare what the security policy will be, then leaving it up to your adversary to follow that policy.
If browser makers were serious about protecting their users' privacy, they would make adblocking the default, they would have stricter cookies policies, and they would not let a company like Google decide what sort of privacy people will have.
The point is not that it is impossible, but that it is a hindrance to the process. Yes, the break even price could be higher; that could also mean that some people who might have purchased the software will not do so, and may not be able to download the software on their own. It may also be the case that someone with the equipment needed to burn many copies does not have the money to buy all that physical media, and could not simply give these things away at no cost.
This is not just about software patents (which are bad for reasons that have nothing to do with free software); the point is about the no-royalties clause and whether or not FRAND licenses exclude free software or attack the principles of free software.
Except that not everyone who sells free software is doing so as part of a commercial venture; free software may be sold at a break even price by a nonprofit or by volunteers (e.g. as part of a kit for running an installfest). It may also be the case that a mirror of various distributions charges its users for access, where some of the software might be royalty free and some might not be (and now that mirror could be forced to monitor all the software that its users download for compliance purposes). There are generally good reasons that royalties are forbidden by the GPL: royalties encourage a particular distribution infrastructure in which everyone gets their software from a small number of distributors, while the GPL is meant to encourage sharing.
More importantly, why should implementing a standard make it impossible for a developer to choose a commonly used software license?
Which is still incompatible with the GPL(2|3). See the GPL sections I posted, or read the relevant licenses yourself:
https://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html
https://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.html
Well, I will be honest -- at the moment, I cannot think of a particular problem with your suggestion, from the point of view of free software development / distribution. The only issue I see with it is that it creates a nightmare for enforcement on the part of the standards body, since they have no way of knowing whether or not the royalty was paid on any particular copy of the software (since I might sell some free software to you, and you might give it to 10 people, who might sell it at different prices, etc.).
Now, in practical terms, it is incompatible with the GPL, which forbids any sort of royalties. The GPL is not the be-all and end-all of free software, but it is an important license and any royalty scheme discriminates against GPL'd software.
Which is exactly the point. By creating standards that require royalty payments, you are preventing GPL software from implementing the standard. That was the GP's question, and thus the question is answered.
There is nothing in FRAND, that I can see, that prohibits open source software or other open IP
There most certainly is; from the GPL:
You may not impose any further restrictions on the exercise of the rights granted or affirmed under this License. For example, you may not impose a license fee, royalty, or other charge for exercise of rights granted under this License
if you agree to terms that obligate you to collect a royalty for further conveying from those to whom you convey the Program, the only way you could satisfy both those terms and this License would be to refrain entirely from conveying the Program.
How can I have the freedom to redistribute my software at no cost (which is one of the freedoms you have with free software) if I have to pay royalties to some standards body in order to do so, and force anyone who helps in that redistribution (i.e. mirrors, participants in a P2P networks, etc.) to do so?
With no revenue, FOSS could freely use and distribute such patented software
Except that part of the freedom that comes with free software is the freedom to sell that software.
P3P sounds like a stupid idea anyway. How does it protect user privacy if something as trivial as the attack described above totally defeats it?
If the IE or Safari teams really cared about user privacy, they would be more strict about allowing sites to set or read cookies. This is just an excuse for Microsoft and Apple to publicly bash one of their competitors while continuing to not give two hoots about their users.
Sounds like you are asking the bad guys to cooperate with you. If you want to protect user privacy, do not allow sites to set arbitrary cookies, do not allow iframes to set or read cookies, and so forth. Does anyone really think that Google is going to voluntarily respect privacy, when their entire business is based on tracking people?
We have see proposal after proposal based on the idea that either users should be forced to opt-out of invasions of their privacy, or that the people who want to violate users' privacy will cooperate and not commit such violations. How about giving browsers some teeth, and creating browsers that actually protect user privacy without regard to advertiser profits?
And as far as mankind on mankind action, I'd guess it would amount to throwing small masses at high velocity at each other (throwing rocks in a glass house).
Doubtful -- distances get pretty big pretty fast in space. I would think of something more like "grapeshot," mounted on a radar or laser guided missile with a proximity fuse. Then, once a spacecraft was destroyed, all the other spacecraft would run away to avoid being hit with debris. Expect plenty of electronic warfare, since communicating is going to be even more important when trying to organize battles in space.
I also envision lots of really interesting technologies. Long range communication or radar on arbitrary frequencies (because there is no atmosphere or terrain)? Passive radar using solar radiation? Missiles that use rocket engines to change direction? High powered lasers used for missile guidance? Lasers in the microwave range? Drones that can swarm a spacecraft?
Of course, it may turn out that general space battles are not worth the expense, and that we will see mostly orbital battles, with ground stations providing support. Perhaps orbital battles around the moon too, should military lunar bases be built (in which case you would probably see a lot of ground-to-orbit battles, since the moon itself would be an excellent launching platform for attacks). One thing that I think is clear is that strategies for space combat are going to be a lot different from the strategies using in naval or air combat right now.
I would like to add to this: proximity fuse, and lots of hard objects packed in with the explosives. It is going to be hard to guide a missile to a spacecraft (which can and probably will be moving very fast), so you are going to want to have the missile get close enough to punch lots of holes in the craft's hull. Additionally, you do not actually need to "blow up" a spacecraft, you just need to depressurize it, assuming there are human occupants, or mess with electronics etc.
Another big challenge is going to be avoiding all the debris that would be created during the battle. I expect that the battles will involve moving very quickly away from previously destroyed spacecraft, and so you will see groups of ships moving parallel to each other while deploying whatever weapons they have. Perhaps the battles will be very quick shootouts, with each side retreating from the debris, regrouping, and preparing for the next shootout.
To put things in perspective: a painchip can create a small crater in the space shuttle's wing. Imagine what a ball bearing could do.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonny_bono
They'll also optimize the code, and parallelize the attack by performing the computation for multiple attempts on multiple CPU cores
Then perhaps you should base the challenge on something from this class of problems:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P-complete
Let's now imagine a perfect world in which you create a check that actually takes 15 seconds to complete. They can still do that 5,760 times per day.
The point of this proposal is not to stop spam entirely, but to keep the rate at which spam can be sent down to manageable levels. If a spammer can only send 5760 spam messages per day, that is a big improvement -- right now spammers are limited only by bandwidth, and can send tens of thousands of messages per day.
This sounds an awful lot like this antispam attempt:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashcash
So far this has not been widely successful, although perhaps it is because it targets the email system rather than the web (where things tend to change faster).