Intellectual property isn't actually property. If I write a program (or a book, or a symphony), I don't actually own it. What I do have is a temporary, government-granted monopoly on copying and distributing it. The purpose of this monopoly is to encourage production of other creative works, not to protect any rights I may have. If it were really my property, it would forever remain my property (or my heirs') unless I sold it or gave it away. No one can take my property without my permission (except the government, and even then they're supposed to give me fair market value for it). This principle has been establisted by centuries of common law. The fact that "intellectual property" eventually becomes public domain proves that it's not really property at all.
Also, learn ed. You may need it someday. On my system (FreeBSD 4.6), ed is installed as/bin/ed, and vi is installed as/usr/bin/vi. If something disastrous happens, and/usr will no longer mount, I have to be able to use ed. (Plus, it'll make the local MCSE's head explode if he sees you using it.)
Are you sure about that? I seem to remember reading an account from a former MS programmer that said Billg wouldn't let them use assembler in Windows because he intended for Windows to run on a bunch of different platforms and he wanted to maximize portability. Am I misremembering?
I tried "Unix Printing" under 2000. It would only print plain text with no left or top margins. (Then again, I was using plain lpd rather than CUPS, and I may have missed some configuration options.) If anyone else has successfully printed more than just plain text to Windows 2000 using Unix Printing, I'd like to hear about how you got it working.
Even if Jesus did perform miracles... Uri Geller has performed miracles too, on television. Does this imply that we should believe everything that Geller says? Of course not.
Interesting argument, but I doubt Uri Gellar ever did anything as impressive as raise a man from the dead after he had already started to decompose. (See John 11:1-45.)
"(1) X performed miracles. (2) X said he was empowered to do so by God. (3) Therefore God exists." is not a valid argument. X could have been mistaken. That's a logical possibility, isn't it? Your argument needs to be fleshed out some more if it is to be logical.
You have a valid point here, and I'm not sure I'm going to be able to answer it to your satisfaction, but I'll try anyway.
I doubt we'll ever be able to completely prove God. Some things can be proven completely, like A=pi*r^2, or 2H[2] + O[2] = 2H[2]0, but other things can't be proven so easily. If a man commits a murder, and there are no eyewitnesses, it may not be possible to prove he did it with 100% certainty, but it may be possible to obtain enough evidence to convict him anyway. In the same way, it may not be possible to prove 100% the existence of God, but considering all the evidence (the miracles of Jesus, the miracles since Jesus, the rather startling changes wrought in so many people who have turned to God), many people -- even some dedicated atheists -- choose to believe.
There are other people who can explain the evidence for God much more completely than I can. If you're interested, I'd advise you to read The Case for Christ, by Lee Strobel. The author is a former newspaper reporter who used to be a devoted athiest. He wanted to get the truth about Jesus, so he interviewed a dozen experts and asked them various questions about the life and records of Jesus. His research ended up convincing him of the truth of the Gospel, and he became a Christian. If a man like that can be convinced of the reality of God just by examining the bare facts, that says a lot for the available evidence.
Wow, thank you for that logical and well-reasoned rebuttal. I wish I could be as eloquent as you are.
So you reject eyewitness accounts as evidence? Your history teachers must have had trouble with you, because eyewitness accounts are the only evidence we have of any historical events that took place before the invention of audio and video recording. So, do you also reject the assassination of Caesar? The Trojan horse? The fall of the Roman empire? The Norman conquest of England? Or do you only accept eyewitness accounts that don't disagree with your preconceived worldview? (And some people accuse Christians of being inconsistent and illogical!)
I defy you to produce even one item of objective and compelling evidence demonstrating the existence of God.
The life of Jesus. Jesus, during his three-year ministry, performed quite a few miracles (walking on water, healing people with incurable diseases, raising the dead), most of which had quite a lot of eyewitnesses. Three days after he was executed, he rose from the dead and was subsequently seen by hundreds of people. Some of those people wrote down their experiences, while others compiled testimony from lots of other people. Since these accounts dealt with religious matters, people who copied them made darn sure to copy and preserve them accurately. As a result, there's a lot more evidence for the acts of Jesus than there is for the lives and acts of Caesar, Plato, Aristotle, and various other ancients, who were famous but not religiously revered, so their words probably weren't checksummed as thoroughly.
I would give you quite a lot of contemporary (as in 20th century) examples of God's intervention in human affairs, but I don't have time, since have to go to class now. Guideposts magazine has a monthly column called His Mysterious Ways, in which they publish stories of modern-day miracles. (Unfortunately, the archives of this column aren't available online for free.) Some of them are rather dull, but others are astonishing. Guideposts has published at least three volumes of these columns. They make for interesting reading. More important, though, they provide undeniable evidence that God is still active in the world.
Speaking of BSD, is it possible to get Quake III to run under FreeBSD? I tried it and got a framerate of about one frame per second. I haven't tried again because it was always easier just to boot into Windows. My video card is an onboard Intel i810. (Hey, it came with the computer, and it works well enough.)
The book I linked to mentions this experiment frequently. A few points:
The experiment produced only about half the amino acids that are necessary for life. Other aminos, just as necessary, have never been produced randomly.
The amino acids produced couldn't be used to construct useful proteins. Non-organic reactions always produce left-handed and right-handed molecules in (roughly) equal amounts. However, only left-handed amino acids can be used in living cells. Left-handed and right-handed molecules can be separated, but it's quite a complex process, and if left alone, the molecules remix themselves.
The experiment succeeded in producing amino acids, but scientists have never been able to produce any more complex organic molecules in the lab. No DNA (not even fragments), no RNA, and certainly no proteins. (Do you have any idea how incredibly complex proteins are? They're made up of lots and lots and lots of left-handed amino acids all chained together in exactly the right order. And once a protein is formed, it must be folded in exactly the right way (out of millions of possible foldings) in order to function correctly.)
Even if a protein managed to form, it would have broken down while it was waiting for another one to form. Organic molecules tend to break down over time. This process is accelarated by water (didn't life supposedly form in the ocean?) and heat.
Come back when you've got another argument, and I'll see if I can knock that one down too. But first I'd advise you to at least skim the book I linked to. It just might prove interesting.
I still have at least one floppy that's infected with ANTICMOS. I got hit with it back in 1994 or so, and we scanned and cleaned our computer and all the floppies we could remember using, but there's one floppy I never did scan because I never used it again, and I'm quite sure it's still infected.
Except of course for the fact that facial recognition simply doesn't work. Either it's too sensitive and it picks up everyone and his dog, or it's not sensitive enough and it doesn't even pick up the Elephant Man. Slashdot had an article about this a while back; unfortunately, I don't remember where or when it was.
That won't work forever. I have a 75 MHz pentium that's practically useless. It takes forever to do anything in Win95, and even Linux is unacceptably slow. (As for KDE or GNOME, I can just forget about those.) The only way I get an acceptably fast response is if I don't run X at all. It's still good for low-volume file serving and Web serving, but as a desktop machine, it's pretty much useless. If we all stop buying new processors, we can keep our old computers going for a while with more memory and other upgrades, but eventually the time will come when we have to upgrade the processor, and by that time there may not be any non-DRM processors left.
This could be a good way for smaller chipmakers to break into the market. If they refuse to quit selling non-DRM processors, they'll guarentee themselves plenty of geek customers.
When was the last time you actually heard a telephone RING? With an actual brass bell that went "ding-a-ling-a-ling?"
I have a phone that actually has a metal bell in it. It's one of those phones with a transparent body and brightly colored components. I can hear it ring from anywhere in the house. It does have a few extra features like redial and such, but those can be ignored.
Take remote controls. I do not have a problem with them. For my father in law however, there should be a thing with only volume control, stations up and down and one button for remote powercontrol of his TV set.
I actually saw a remote like this in a catalog fairly recently. It had six buttons. Power, volume up/down, channel up/down, and I don't remember what the other one was. It was dirt cheap. Unfortunately, I have no idea in the world what catalog that was in.
Blackmail can really come in handy here. Find a photo of the boss, find a photo of a horse, work some magic with PhotoShop or GIMP, and you'll never again have to worry about unemployment.:-)
Changing your keymap might be a good idea if you're going to be permanently one-handed, but this guy is only going to be disabled for a few weeks. Seems like an awful lot of trouble to switch keymaps just for a few weeks.
Actually, if you sit through the end credits, they play the original theme after the regular theme finishes. I walked into the theater right at the end of the previous showing and got to hear the original theme.
Control-H (written as ^H) is the backspace character. So, in the example "FreeBSD XP^H^H4.5", imagine the person typing it wrote "FreeBSD XP", then backspaced twice and typed 4.5. It's basically the ASCII equivalent of strikethrough.
Sending two copies of the same message, one in plain text and the other with tons of markup seems a bit ridiculous to me.
On the other hand, it's better than getting a message that can only be read in HTML. (On the gripping hand, multipart/alternative can be abused. I've gotten messages whose text-only portion said "This email can only be viewed in HTML." Gee, if you wanted me to view the message in HTML, why didn't you just send it as HTML only?)
Slashdot Mirror
Intellectual property isn't actually property. If I write a program (or a book, or a symphony), I don't actually own it. What I do have is a temporary, government-granted monopoly on copying and distributing it. The purpose of this monopoly is to encourage production of other creative works, not to protect any rights I may have. If it were really my property, it would forever remain my property (or my heirs') unless I sold it or gave it away. No one can take my property without my permission (except the government, and even then they're supposed to give me fair market value for it). This principle has been establisted by centuries of common law. The fact that "intellectual property" eventually becomes public domain proves that it's not really property at all.
Also, learn ed. You may need it someday. On my system (FreeBSD 4.6), ed is installed as /bin/ed, and vi is installed as /usr/bin/vi. If something disastrous happens, and /usr will no longer mount, I have to be able to use ed. (Plus, it'll make the local MCSE's head explode if he sees you using it.)
Are you sure about that? I seem to remember reading an account from a former MS programmer that said Billg wouldn't let them use assembler in Windows because he intended for Windows to run on a bunch of different platforms and he wanted to maximize portability. Am I misremembering?
I tried "Unix Printing" under 2000. It would only print plain text with no left or top margins. (Then again, I was using plain lpd rather than CUPS, and I may have missed some configuration options.) If anyone else has successfully printed more than just plain text to Windows 2000 using Unix Printing, I'd like to hear about how you got it working.
Interesting argument, but I doubt Uri Gellar ever did anything as impressive as raise a man from the dead after he had already started to decompose. (See John 11:1-45.)
"(1) X performed miracles. (2) X said he was empowered to do so by God. (3) Therefore God exists." is not a valid argument. X could have been mistaken. That's a logical possibility, isn't it? Your argument needs to be fleshed out some more if it is to be logical.
You have a valid point here, and I'm not sure I'm going to be able to answer it to your satisfaction, but I'll try anyway.
I doubt we'll ever be able to completely prove God. Some things can be proven completely, like A=pi*r^2, or 2H[2] + O[2] = 2H[2]0, but other things can't be proven so easily. If a man commits a murder, and there are no eyewitnesses, it may not be possible to prove he did it with 100% certainty, but it may be possible to obtain enough evidence to convict him anyway. In the same way, it may not be possible to prove 100% the existence of God, but considering all the evidence (the miracles of Jesus, the miracles since Jesus, the rather startling changes wrought in so many people who have turned to God), many people -- even some dedicated atheists -- choose to believe.
There are other people who can explain the evidence for God much more completely than I can. If you're interested, I'd advise you to read The Case for Christ, by Lee Strobel. The author is a former newspaper reporter who used to be a devoted athiest. He wanted to get the truth about Jesus, so he interviewed a dozen experts and asked them various questions about the life and records of Jesus. His research ended up convincing him of the truth of the Gospel, and he became a Christian. If a man like that can be convinced of the reality of God just by examining the bare facts, that says a lot for the available evidence.
So you reject eyewitness accounts as evidence? Your history teachers must have had trouble with you, because eyewitness accounts are the only evidence we have of any historical events that took place before the invention of audio and video recording. So, do you also reject the assassination of Caesar? The Trojan horse? The fall of the Roman empire? The Norman conquest of England? Or do you only accept eyewitness accounts that don't disagree with your preconceived worldview? (And some people accuse Christians of being inconsistent and illogical!)
The life of Jesus. Jesus, during his three-year ministry, performed quite a few miracles (walking on water, healing people with incurable diseases, raising the dead), most of which had quite a lot of eyewitnesses. Three days after he was executed, he rose from the dead and was subsequently seen by hundreds of people. Some of those people wrote down their experiences, while others compiled testimony from lots of other people. Since these accounts dealt with religious matters, people who copied them made darn sure to copy and preserve them accurately. As a result, there's a lot more evidence for the acts of Jesus than there is for the lives and acts of Caesar, Plato, Aristotle, and various other ancients, who were famous but not religiously revered, so their words probably weren't checksummed as thoroughly.
I would give you quite a lot of contemporary (as in 20th century) examples of God's intervention in human affairs, but I don't have time, since have to go to class now. Guideposts magazine has a monthly column called His Mysterious Ways, in which they publish stories of modern-day miracles. (Unfortunately, the archives of this column aren't available online for free.) Some of them are rather dull, but others are astonishing. Guideposts has published at least three volumes of these columns. They make for interesting reading. More important, though, they provide undeniable evidence that God is still active in the world.
Speaking of BSD, is it possible to get Quake III to run under FreeBSD? I tried it and got a framerate of about one frame per second. I haven't tried again because it was always easier just to boot into Windows. My video card is an onboard Intel i810. (Hey, it came with the computer, and it works well enough.)
Come back when you've got another argument, and I'll see if I can knock that one down too. But first I'd advise you to at least skim the book I linked to. It just might prove interesting.
I still have at least one floppy that's infected with ANTICMOS. I got hit with it back in 1994 or so, and we scanned and cleaned our computer and all the floppies we could remember using, but there's one floppy I never did scan because I never used it again, and I'm quite sure it's still infected.
Lucky. I only got one copy of Nimda, and I've never gotten any other email viruses. Nobody loves me enough to send me viruses. :-(
Except of course for the fact that facial recognition simply doesn't work. Either it's too sensitive and it picks up everyone and his dog, or it's not sensitive enough and it doesn't even pick up the Elephant Man. Slashdot had an article about this a while back; unfortunately, I don't remember where or when it was.
This could be a good way for smaller chipmakers to break into the market. If they refuse to quit selling non-DRM processors, they'll guarentee themselves plenty of geek customers.
I have a phone that actually has a metal bell in it. It's one of those phones with a transparent body and brightly colored components. I can hear it ring from anywhere in the house. It does have a few extra features like redial and such, but those can be ignored.
I actually saw a remote like this in a catalog fairly recently. It had six buttons. Power, volume up/down, channel up/down, and I don't remember what the other one was. It was dirt cheap. Unfortunately, I have no idea in the world what catalog that was in.
Blackmail can really come in handy here. Find a photo of the boss, find a photo of a horse, work some magic with PhotoShop or GIMP, and you'll never again have to worry about unemployment. :-)
Changing your keymap might be a good idea if you're going to be permanently one-handed, but this guy is only going to be disabled for a few weeks. Seems like an awful lot of trouble to switch keymaps just for a few weeks.
-- The Ghostbusters explain why not to buy or use any Microsoft products.
Actually, if you sit through the end credits, they play the original theme after the regular theme finishes. I walked into the theater right at the end of the previous showing and got to hear the original theme.
A fun rumor, but not a true one. http://www.snopes.com/science/nobel.htm
Not without Solaris libraries, which you'd need to get from an actual Solaris system. You can't just take the binary and run it in isolation.
Control-H (written as ^H) is the backspace character. So, in the example "FreeBSD XP^H^H4.5", imagine the person typing it wrote "FreeBSD XP", then backspaced twice and typed 4.5. It's basically the ASCII equivalent of strikethrough.
On the other hand, it's better than getting a message that can only be read in HTML. (On the gripping hand, multipart/alternative can be abused. I've gotten messages whose text-only portion said "This email can only be viewed in HTML." Gee, if you wanted me to view the message in HTML, why didn't you just send it as HTML only?)
What, csh and vi aren't good enough for you??
Seriously, both KDE and Gnome are available for OpenBSD. I haven't used KOffice or the Gnome office suite, but they'll probably work fairly well.
QUIET!! Don't say that out loud, or some big company might actually try it!