I never said I didn't believe in God conscience or an afterlife. To deny those things is as ignorant as being absolutely certain of them--both approaches involve untested faith. Personally I choose to believe in an afterlife, but it came after disposing of the concepts in the bible and coming to it on my own.
So what can we actually know?
We can know that the Christian Bible is written by men, as you said, men searching for truth generally (although much of it was also passed-down oral histories that someone decided to finally put down on paper).
We also know that the stories for the bible were chosen based on compatibility with each other and with the goals of the church at the time.
We do not, however, know that it has any relationship with God. There is no evidence whatsoever that it does. This is where faith comes in, and as I said, faith is a truly evil concept.
Show me, without using faith, how the bible has any connection to a God aside from it's own references.
The favorite arguments of christians are the ones that really bother me. They show how bad faith breaks brains.
See what a wonder you are? You must have been created by a god! Now come learn about God through this bible.
If you can't see the complete, glaring flaws in the logic above, "You must be a christian".
He says any car that relies on software to provide security can be circumvented by other software. "Every car has its weak spot," he says.
Sounds like a movie ploy. Software doesn't have to be a weakness, it can be another vulnerability, but doesn't have to be.
If someone were to create two-way encrypted public-key communication between the key and the car, where the car sends a random string, the key encrypts it and sends it back encrypted, then the car decrypts the string, that would be a good chunk of it.
Then you add a few factors like ensuring that each attempt must be at least 1/2 second from the last and after some number it reverts to requiring a manual override on the door panel buttons.
After that, software is pretty secure, but what about hardware? Can you R&R the computer? Is the authentication module physically separate from the computer so that a simple wire-cut is all it would take? Can someone override the computer completely by using traditional keys?
It's a damn hard problem to make a secure car, but it shouldn't be one we have to keep revisiting. The car companies should just buy a handful of hackers to help them design the next system.
The designers create a system, give it to the hackers (with full blueprints and software source-code except for the public/private key pairs) and then let them have at it.
Only by continually thwarting fully-informed attacks will they finally be able to design a truly safe system.
Oh, and don't forget to check for DOS attacks such as invoking a lock-down sequence that makes it so the driver can't get in or start his car.
My comment was RE: art that could be reproduced for free and have a wide audience. If someone is asking you for an original sketch, I'd say it would be very reasonable to pay $50, but what if you could give away your sketches on the web and they were good enough to gain a wide audience?
Well, what would happen is you would probably start to get requests for sketches, and not for $50, if someone liked your stuff AND you were farily widely known, you would probably be getting $hundreds for a sketch.
I guess it's like this: If a sketch is worth $50 to you, you should be happing making 5 photocopies and selling them for $10/ea (if you could). How much must you charge, per sketch, if 100,000 people could have your sketch? It would be around.05 cents each. Not only that, but 100,000 lives are a little bit richer because of you.
As distribution grows, price shrinks until it hits, pretty much, zero. At that point, you can give away your art and still get rich simply by placing an add on your web site or something along those lines.
So, to tie togeter a lot of loosely related concepts: Get your name out there by giving away what you can (like Google did), if it's good your audience will grow. Once you have an audience that likes you, figure out a way that they can make you happy as you make them happy. A $10 one time donation from each of those 100,000 audience members would go a long way and would not be in any way unreasonable in anyone's eyes.
Hording art only hurts everyone, people are starting to figure that out--and some, like me, will simply start shunning protected art for art we can exchange freely with our friends.
Were it not for the cost of living and housing I would work for significantly less. I have a good job as an engineer--it challenges my mind and allows me a good deal of free time.
I don't really deserve to be paid as much as, say, someone who goes out and picks grapes in a field all day.
I would feel even less deserving if I could stay at home and work.
The fact is, the US is messed up. If housing and health-care weren't so damn expensive, you actually could be very happy selling paintings for $50.
On top of that I stand by what I said, I have a painting by the son of someone I used to work with in my house. I really love it. The kid has a case of something very similar to Autism and can't get out much. He paints because he loves to do so, and if someone buys one of his paintings, great.
I would pay $200 for one of his paintings rather than $50 for a portrait done by someone "Doing a job" any day.
If the state paid for your home and insurance, would you still paint? If so, would you sell it for coffee money or would you still insist on getting what you currently think it's worth?
Oh, and by the way, I believe I mentioned in my post that one of the things that has changed is unlimited free reproduction and distribution of some types of art. This means that you could create a song and sell it to millions for pennies each and still make a good profit. Making the parallel with canvas-art that is labour, time and money intensive to produce doesn't make anywhere near as much sense.
Any chance you could do that with your painting? I'm not sure how--Suppose you had a webcam-like service where people could watch your painting evolve over time. Every couple hours their desktops, screen saver or something would be updated with whatever strokes you had created in that time. People love that kind of thing, and the resultant paintings could be sold at a higher price considering the pre-involvement of the audience.
Hey, that's kind of an interesting idea--does it sound good from your POV, or just another of my stupid spur-of-the-moment thoughts?
You appear to be one of those who have taken up the religion of free market as a faith.
The Free Market has some good points and some bad (Hey, Just like the bible!) but to take it blindly is pure folly.
The state is a FANTASTIC way to do certain things. Taking your money from you because your ignorance doesn't allow you to appreciate the advantages of a happier life from all is not in any way a crime; it is, in fact, doing you a huge favor.
I gladly admit that no state is perfect, most are far from it in fact. They tend to be exactly like a large corporation with one exception--where corporations have absolutely no soul save the pursuit of profit, the government has at least some responsibility to answer to the people.
Again, most government functions have been taken over by corporations, but every so-often the citizenry can throw a coup--prop13 or the occasional election of a candidate that is actually "popular" and didn't simply buy all the votes.
With industry this kind of coup is completely impossible. Voting through dollars DOES NOT WORK obviously (if it did, wall-mart would be out of business, eh?) since there are too many idiots willing to buy the bottom $ item regardless of the companies policies.
Please start questioning your faith--Faith is dangerous, no matter where it is placed.
Some people just want to get their work out there.:-)
And to tell you the truth, these are the only people who's art I'm interested in. That's been my real problem with this crap all along.
If you actually can say "I refuse to create art unless I am paid X dollars", I don't want your "Art"
If you say "I want to create the art regardless of pay rate, or being paid at all", then chances are your art is going to end up being amazingly valuable. More often than not I don't mind paying for this at all.
Free Market isn't all that it's made out to be, there are other factors at play. Seriously--and Free Market logic is totally useless when it comes to something that can be replicated for free.
Seriously, what is the justification for keeping huge sections of humanity away from a certian type of art just because that artist hasn't been paid. Art is something to desciminate, to put in lives. It's a privilage to be able to create art for others--getting paid for it's a nice bonus, but it really shouldn't be considered a right.
Actually France has a pretty good plan here. The state pays artists to create. This has been done in one way or another since, well, since the beginning of art.
Might not be bad to have a similar system for Open Source programmers--Just enough money to keep them off the streets and happily coding away. (I know it's not quite THAT easy, but it's not THAT difficult either)
How does God tell us anything? Have you talked to him?
As for what you can really observe, the bible is the word of god is it not?
Where in the bible does it say to question anything? Also, if you are questioning everything, how do you know the bible is the word of god?
In fact, the bible was written by humans and the books were selected by a power-hungry church. The sections chosen were chosen specifically because they had the least conflicts and supported the church the most.
I don't really worry about weather or not those people had their hand guided by God. Maybe, maybe not. If you claim that their hands were guided by god (and therefore the bible was written by god/is his direct word) then you start to take a LOT on faith, and as I said, I don't do that--I question everything.
Ps. They just found the book of Judas. It was excluded by the church because it conflicted a couple other books and was called heresy for a long period where it's thought that every copy was burned (Yes, this is how the church chose what goes into the bible and what didn't). It covered Judas being Jesus' best friend--closer than any of the other apostles--and Jesus asked him to betray him. It's not completely validated, but it was from the right age.
I wasn't going to reply, but it seemed worthwhile to Question this statement. Who is controlled here?
Who is being controlled by faith??? Are you seriously asking?
Okay, Let's see...
Terrorists seeking virgins in the afterlife. Christians voting for Bush. Christians bombing abortion clinics and/or murdering abortion doctors. Any religious followers donating to these filthy-rich preachers. Catholics agreeing to avoid birth control. Catholic priests avoiding sex (added by the church so they wouldn't leave churches they had built to their heirs, a common problem a while ago) The "Holy Wars" The Spanish Inquisition Government abuses (Have faith in your government)
I know you think I'm being broad, but Faith is a very broad concept. If you accept what someone else tells you without questioning it, you are leaving yourself open to all the above.
Faith is an EVIL idea, it's simply a way of hiding what you are doing behind a shroud. It is necessary in religion because there is nothing going on behind the shroud--there is no "Real World" proof of anything, so they say "Have faith" in order to validate any of it.
Letting a concept like Faith into your life also lets in all those other examples because people stop challenging things they are fed. For instance: the bible has a million contradictions, some extremely obvious, some a little more subtle. Faith requires that there are no contradictions. Every time you force these contradictions to "Work" in your mind, you are breaking your brain a little, making it easier for external forces to manipulate it. It's a long process, but it's going on en mass across the world.
Oh, and I'm also a little beyond beliving the whole "It's harmless because he only preaches don't hurt thy neighbor", this Bible is full of horrible stuff, like God telling "His People" to murder "the littl ones of every city" of his enemy.
If you ARE going to believe as a Christian, at least suck it up and face the fact that this is one nasty fellow you're following. Don't let them tell you to take on "faith" that he's all about goodness and light. This god asked for burnt offerings and told you to stone to death your newly married daughter for the crime of not being a virgin.
And don't give me that BS about "Christ put in a good word for us and fixed it" because these things are exactly what god wanted at one point, so that IS what god wants (or are you saying he was just cranky and grew out of it? He decided that the things he asked for were not such a good idea after all? AN OMNISCENT BEING DOESN'T CHANGE HIS OPINION BECAUSE HE KNEW ABOUT FUTURE FACTORS ALL ALONG!)
Re:Environmentalists Are Harming The Environment
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Tilting At Windmills
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Nice long comment.
Forget about RTFA, RTFS, not just the heading!
If you read the summary you must realize that it's not environmentalists objecting to destroying habitat, but rich people playing NIMBY.
Now, please post a similarly long rant about how rich people, even congressmen, need to clearly prioritize and tell us that global warming is far more serious than threats to their neighborhood and praise projects that help prevent global warming EVEN IF THEY DESTROY THE VIEW FROM THEIR YARD.
You can't fight that argument with any type of logic. These transient "Arguments" disapear and they make up others. The arguments do not have to withstand any scrutany and just have to sound good to "Believers".
The concept of "Faith" was a magnificant and powerful creation--a tool that can allow a few people to control millions--and I'd like to meet the amazingly talented P/R man who figured out how to tag such a horrid, evil concept as "Good".
if your kid is spending massive amounts of time playing WoW and you don't know it you're doing something wrong
And since kids (and adults) do spend massive ammounts of time playing WoW (and taking drugs, and...), due to your statement we must assume that something is wrong and the parents are not able to fix it without help, so what's the solution?
It is important to have self-awareness that this is an issue and put hard-line limits on things...
Although I completely agree with you, you left out one point. While adults are often able to make the kind of analysis that you are suggesting, children generally are not.
This is not a perfect world and if someone can take advantage of the imperfections by selling Tobacco, Alcohol, Games, Christianity and drugs to children who are unprepared to recognize their addictive and dangerous effects, they will. Parents are often not in the position to recognize these problems and help their children learn to handle them--just another aspect of this imperfect world.
So although your premise is correct, I have to say that if WOW had been available when I was a kid I would probably be making half what I am now and I'd most likely be miserable.
I'm nervous about what is happening right now to the programmers of the future...
Have the actions of the industry in this country led anyone to believe that they could be trusted with any significant responsibility?
Let's see--Fishing? Well, apparently we have fished out most of the streams and oceans of many of the breeds of fish that we like. "Fish and Chips" fish has changed repeatedly because we keep destroying populations. We discovered huge quantities of "Orange Rufe" and immediately set upon it... Turns out it's amazingly long-lived and slow to breed. Whoops? Who knew (or could be bothered to check)?
How about Forests? Does anyone here doubt that we would be completely out of old-growth forests if we didn't have regulations? It's a fact that we would. They have tried to cut the last few remaining forests again and again. Sure, sustainable foresting may work, I have no doubt, but if so, why do they continue to try for our last few acres of old-growth???
Hmm, how about telephone lines? We deregulated AT&T, now they are trying to set tiered service charges on the net because they see google making money. Why don't they do the same thing with phones, as a company makes more phone calls they should start paying to receive calls in a timely manner?
Does everyone trust industry with our IP? Is Disney going to place Mickey and Winnie the Pooh in the public domain as per our original agreement, or are they going to keep paying to have the agreement re-written to suit their income requirements? Can record companies be trusted to write our copyright laws?
Then (and here's the question) why the HELL would you want to, in any way, trust industry with Nuclear energy??? I don't contend that it CAN be safe, but honestly, will it?
And what's the real advantage? Like cupboard space, if you provide more, it'll get used and more will be required.
I'm not saying there is a simple solution--but actually there may be one. What is wrong with us moving towards small, local energy creation? I'm not saying solar panels, water power, geo-thermal, natural gas, wind power or conservation alone will solve the problem, but maybe some combination thereof (combined with increasing production efficiency) will.
Ask someone who lives in an energy co-op area how they like their prices, generally they are very reasonable without investors skimming all the profits.
Chances are, we could be well on our way to this if it wasn't for the energy industrialists trying to protect their profits. That is the ONE "advantage" to nuclear energy--it can be centralized, controlled and monopolized by industrialists.
Personally, I don't see anything wrong with it technically, but why don't we think before giving yet another responsibility to those who are driven by nothing but financial interests?
Sorry about the late response, but great point. Again, the government protects the existing insulin manufactures (certianly the ones with the money) by denying the ability to flood the market with generics.
I TOTALLY agree, except that since Microsoft funded SCO to do the same thing vs Linux, I really can't feel too sorry for them. It's just payback. Kinda like south park during the "Cripple Fight" episode, the kids just kept saying "I'm staying out of this one"
If you only read the/. summary you can't actually TELL if the study confirmed risks or denied risks, only that the FDA didn't agree with the study.
Did anyone here think that the "Study" may have stated that the risks are minimal, and the FDA was saying "Hey, wait a minute, that's not a very accurate study! There may significantly more risk".
The fact that no reasonable, informed person could have expected that the FDA might have actually been trying to actually "Protect" us instead of corporate interests is a little disturbing to me.
Religious fundamentalism (on the rise in the US) doesn't accept that is possible. It asserts that god formed Adam out of clay and actually used his breath to fill Adam with life. Because the Bible is the Only Truth, no other is possible.
These are the same people (different bodies I suppose) that murdered progressive people who suggested that the earth might be round, or go around the sun.
Just because the times have changed, don't believe for a second that all the people have.
So should they provide such money to any nutcase trying to prove their personal religion?
Just because a lot of uninformed people believe the same thing, does not make it ANY more valid.
The FSM people should get upt there and get a grant to study how we were all formed from the "Great Sauce".
Christians are so damn arrogant, like they are the ONLY other possibility.
In some ways I'd like to see Christians start to win these things. It'd be great to see the ten commandments in the front of a court with a giant brass Budah sitting on them and Vishnu pointing the way to truth with his many hands.
Although from some points of view you are certainly correct, I think there are two points that kind of invalidate your comment (at least for all practical purposes)
1) People are becoming good at overcoming being "Different", and with so many different people, it's as likely that two completely unsuitable candidates will reproduce (Think a couple uneducated, deformed outcasts) as it is for two very suitable subjects. Add in plastic surgery and corrective surgery and there is no way to form a pattern. Yes, our genes could change over time, but the direction is completely unpredictable, so it's more de-evolution (aka DEVO) than evolution.
2) The pace of technology is going so much faster than evolution could hope to. If evolution were allowed to work naturally, it would take thousands (or tens of thousands) of years to make a subtle difference. Within a few hundred years, we will be in complete control of our genes at the rate we are going.
Hey, as long as this is an old O/T thread and nobody else is listening, how about disucssing an interesting point about evolution... I haven't heard this elsewhere, but I think it must be true.
At times evolution MUST work fast. When your pond dries up, all you can do is die or walk out (or lay eggs that last for a few years).
If there is a "Fast" evolution, there must be a mechanism to trigger it.
What would you want to trigger it? Well, a very sharp drop in population would be the only trigger I could imagine. What would be the results of such a drop?
Lots of inbreeding I would think, since your pool of perspective mates has just dropped to your immediate family or close relatives (all of whom are pretty well suited for this new environment since they are still alive)
And what's the result of inbreeding? Mutations.
This seems pretty obvious to me, but you sure don't hear people saying that the genetic mutations caused by impregnating your sister are one of the mechanisms developed by evolution... Nope, you never hear it put that way. Just like you never hear that death is a mechanism for evolution. Hence my original sig (Because if I put one about impregnating your sister, it would draw even more comments, and my purpose was to invoke thought not scorn.)
Exactly, and turtles are one of the earliest-evolved creatures around. I suppose it's the exception that proves the rule. My guess would be that Sharks are similarly long-lived.
Each echo-system is generally bounded by a food or water supply. If there is a food nitch that isn't being used, a small short-lived species will evolve to gobble it up and will become similarly bounded by the availability of this new food supply.
From an evolutionary point of view, why keep old prototypes around gobbling up resources--what would be the point?
If it became necessary or useful for a species to live forever, I'm sure that within a few hundred generation, one would evolve that did just that.
The way "Life" seems to enjoy reproducing, even an infinite environment would get awful crowded (in any portion that is not the outside edge anyway).
Perhaps I should have said "Death is an inevitable side-effect of evolution?"
Another interesting thought that comes from this assumption--Since people are so long lived and are no longer reproducing based on survival of the fittest, I think evolution has left us here to take care of ourselves. We should get to it before the cockroaches, mice and/or wasps end up winning the game.
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I never said I didn't believe in God conscience or an afterlife. To deny those things is as ignorant as being absolutely certain of them--both approaches involve untested faith. Personally I choose to believe in an afterlife, but it came after disposing of the concepts in the bible and coming to it on my own.
So what can we actually know?
We can know that the Christian Bible is written by men, as you said, men searching for truth generally (although much of it was also passed-down oral histories that someone decided to finally put down on paper).
We also know that the stories for the bible were chosen based on compatibility with each other and with the goals of the church at the time.
We do not, however, know that it has any relationship with God. There is no evidence whatsoever that it does. This is where faith comes in, and as I said, faith is a truly evil concept.
Show me, without using faith, how the bible has any connection to a God aside from it's own references.
The favorite arguments of christians are the ones that really bother me. They show how bad faith breaks brains.
See what a wonder you are? You must have been created by a god! Now come learn about God through this bible.
If you can't see the complete, glaring flaws in the logic above, "You must be a christian".
He says any car that relies on software to provide security can be circumvented by other software. "Every car has its weak spot," he says.
Sounds like a movie ploy. Software doesn't have to be a weakness, it can be another vulnerability, but doesn't have to be.
If someone were to create two-way encrypted public-key communication between the key and the car, where the car sends a random string, the key encrypts it and sends it back encrypted, then the car decrypts the string, that would be a good chunk of it.
Then you add a few factors like ensuring that each attempt must be at least 1/2 second from the last and after some number it reverts to requiring a manual override on the door panel buttons.
After that, software is pretty secure, but what about hardware? Can you R&R the computer? Is the authentication module physically separate from the computer so that a simple wire-cut is all it would take? Can someone override the computer completely by using traditional keys?
It's a damn hard problem to make a secure car, but it shouldn't be one we have to keep revisiting. The car companies should just buy a handful of hackers to help them design the next system.
The designers create a system, give it to the hackers (with full blueprints and software source-code except for the public/private key pairs) and then let them have at it.
Only by continually thwarting fully-informed attacks will they finally be able to design a truly safe system.
Oh, and don't forget to check for DOS attacks such as invoking a lock-down sequence that makes it so the driver can't get in or start his car.
The parent has the perfect summary of the problem, I wish I had mod points, but since I don't, please mod it up for me.
My comment was RE: art that could be reproduced for free and have a wide audience. If someone is asking you for an original sketch, I'd say it would be very reasonable to pay $50, but what if you could give away your sketches on the web and they were good enough to gain a wide audience?
.05 cents each. Not only that, but 100,000 lives are a little bit richer because of you.
Well, what would happen is you would probably start to get requests for sketches, and not for $50, if someone liked your stuff AND you were farily widely known, you would probably be getting $hundreds for a sketch.
I guess it's like this: If a sketch is worth $50 to you, you should be happing making 5 photocopies and selling them for $10/ea (if you could). How much must you charge, per sketch, if 100,000 people could have your sketch? It would be around
As distribution grows, price shrinks until it hits, pretty much, zero. At that point, you can give away your art and still get rich simply by placing an add on your web site or something along those lines.
So, to tie togeter a lot of loosely related concepts:
Get your name out there by giving away what you can (like Google did), if it's good your audience will grow. Once you have an audience that likes you, figure out a way that they can make you happy as you make them happy. A $10 one time donation from each of those 100,000 audience members would go a long way and would not be in any way unreasonable in anyone's eyes.
Hording art only hurts everyone, people are starting to figure that out--and some, like me, will simply start shunning protected art for art we can exchange freely with our friends.
Here is BUNCHES of musicians trying this out: http://music.podshow.com/
Were it not for the cost of living and housing I would work for significantly less. I have a good job as an engineer--it challenges my mind and allows me a good deal of free time.
I don't really deserve to be paid as much as, say, someone who goes out and picks grapes in a field all day.
I would feel even less deserving if I could stay at home and work.
The fact is, the US is messed up. If housing and health-care weren't so damn expensive, you actually could be very happy selling paintings for $50.
On top of that I stand by what I said, I have a painting by the son of someone I used to work with in my house. I really love it. The kid has a case of something very similar to Autism and can't get out much. He paints because he loves to do so, and if someone buys one of his paintings, great.
I would pay $200 for one of his paintings rather than $50 for a portrait done by someone "Doing a job" any day.
If the state paid for your home and insurance, would you still paint? If so, would you sell it for coffee money or would you still insist on getting what you currently think it's worth?
Oh, and by the way, I believe I mentioned in my post that one of the things that has changed is unlimited free reproduction and distribution of some types of art. This means that you could create a song and sell it to millions for pennies each and still make a good profit. Making the parallel with canvas-art that is labour, time and money intensive to produce doesn't make anywhere near as much sense.
Any chance you could do that with your painting? I'm not sure how--Suppose you had a webcam-like service where people could watch your painting evolve over time. Every couple hours their desktops, screen saver or something would be updated with whatever strokes you had created in that time. People love that kind of thing, and the resultant paintings could be sold at a higher price considering the pre-involvement of the audience.
Hey, that's kind of an interesting idea--does it sound good from your POV, or just another of my stupid spur-of-the-moment thoughts?
You appear to be one of those who have taken up the religion of free market as a faith.
The Free Market has some good points and some bad (Hey, Just like the bible!) but to take it blindly is pure folly.
The state is a FANTASTIC way to do certain things. Taking your money from you because your ignorance doesn't allow you to appreciate the advantages of a happier life from all is not in any way a crime; it is, in fact, doing you a huge favor.
I gladly admit that no state is perfect, most are far from it in fact. They tend to be exactly like a large corporation with one exception--where corporations have absolutely no soul save the pursuit of profit, the government has at least some responsibility to answer to the people.
Again, most government functions have been taken over by corporations, but every so-often the citizenry can throw a coup--prop13 or the occasional election of a candidate that is actually "popular" and didn't simply buy all the votes.
With industry this kind of coup is completely impossible. Voting through dollars DOES NOT WORK obviously (if it did, wall-mart would be out of business, eh?) since there are too many idiots willing to buy the bottom $ item regardless of the companies policies.
Please start questioning your faith--Faith is dangerous, no matter where it is placed.
Fantastic analysis. Mod parent all the way up--insightful
Some people just want to get their work out there. :-)
And to tell you the truth, these are the only people who's art I'm interested in. That's been my real problem with this crap all along.
If you actually can say "I refuse to create art unless I am paid X dollars", I don't want your "Art"
If you say "I want to create the art regardless of pay rate, or being paid at all", then chances are your art is going to end up being amazingly valuable. More often than not I don't mind paying for this at all.
Free Market isn't all that it's made out to be, there are other factors at play. Seriously--and Free Market logic is totally useless when it comes to something that can be replicated for free.
Seriously, what is the justification for keeping huge sections of humanity away from a certian type of art just because that artist hasn't been paid. Art is something to desciminate, to put in lives. It's a privilage to be able to create art for others--getting paid for it's a nice bonus, but it really shouldn't be considered a right.
Actually France has a pretty good plan here. The state pays artists to create. This has been done in one way or another since, well, since the beginning of art.
Might not be bad to have a similar system for Open Source programmers--Just enough money to keep them off the streets and happily coding away. (I know it's not quite THAT easy, but it's not THAT difficult either)
How does God tell us anything? Have you talked to him?
As for what you can really observe, the bible is the word of god is it not?
Where in the bible does it say to question anything? Also, if you are questioning everything, how do you know the bible is the word of god?
In fact, the bible was written by humans and the books were selected by a power-hungry church. The sections chosen were chosen specifically because they had the least conflicts and supported the church the most.
I don't really worry about weather or not those people had their hand guided by God. Maybe, maybe not. If you claim that their hands were guided by god (and therefore the bible was written by god/is his direct word) then you start to take a LOT on faith, and as I said, I don't do that--I question everything.
Ps. They just found the book of Judas. It was excluded by the church because it conflicted a couple other books and was called heresy for a long period where it's thought that every copy was burned (Yes, this is how the church chose what goes into the bible and what didn't). It covered Judas being Jesus' best friend--closer than any of the other apostles--and Jesus asked him to betray him. It's not completely validated, but it was from the right age.
I wasn't going to reply, but it seemed worthwhile to Question this statement. Who is controlled here?
Who is being controlled by faith??? Are you seriously asking?
Okay, Let's see...
Terrorists seeking virgins in the afterlife.
Christians voting for Bush.
Christians bombing abortion clinics and/or murdering abortion doctors.
Any religious followers donating to these filthy-rich preachers.
Catholics agreeing to avoid birth control.
Catholic priests avoiding sex (added by the church so they wouldn't leave churches they had built to their heirs, a common problem a while ago)
The "Holy Wars"
The Spanish Inquisition
Government abuses (Have faith in your government)
I know you think I'm being broad, but Faith is a very broad concept. If you accept what someone else tells you without questioning it, you are leaving yourself open to all the above.
Faith is an EVIL idea, it's simply a way of hiding what you are doing behind a shroud. It is necessary in religion because there is nothing going on behind the shroud--there is no "Real World" proof of anything, so they say "Have faith" in order to validate any of it.
Letting a concept like Faith into your life also lets in all those other examples because people stop challenging things they are fed. For instance: the bible has a million contradictions, some extremely obvious, some a little more subtle. Faith requires that there are no contradictions. Every time you force these contradictions to "Work" in your mind, you are breaking your brain a little, making it easier for external forces to manipulate it. It's a long process, but it's going on en mass across the world.
Oh, and I'm also a little beyond beliving the whole "It's harmless because he only preaches don't hurt thy neighbor", this Bible is full of horrible stuff, like God telling "His People" to murder "the littl ones of every city" of his enemy.
If you ARE going to believe as a Christian, at least suck it up and face the fact that this is one nasty fellow you're following. Don't let them tell you to take on "faith" that he's all about goodness and light. This god asked for burnt offerings and told you to stone to death your newly married daughter for the crime of not being a virgin.
And don't give me that BS about "Christ put in a good word for us and fixed it" because these things are exactly what god wanted at one point, so that IS what god wants (or are you saying he was just cranky and grew out of it? He decided that the things he asked for were not such a good idea after all? AN OMNISCENT BEING DOESN'T CHANGE HIS OPINION BECAUSE HE KNEW ABOUT FUTURE FACTORS ALL ALONG!)
Nice long comment.
Forget about RTFA, RTFS, not just the heading!
If you read the summary you must realize that it's not environmentalists objecting to destroying habitat, but rich people playing NIMBY.
Now, please post a similarly long rant about how rich people, even congressmen, need to clearly prioritize and tell us that global warming is far more serious than threats to their neighborhood and praise projects that help prevent global warming EVEN IF THEY DESTROY THE VIEW FROM THEIR YARD.
You can't fight that argument with any type of logic. These transient "Arguments" disapear and they make up others. The arguments do not have to withstand any scrutany and just have to sound good to "Believers".
The concept of "Faith" was a magnificant and powerful creation--a tool that can allow a few people to control millions--and I'd like to meet the amazingly talented P/R man who figured out how to tag such a horrid, evil concept as "Good".
Question Everything.
if your kid is spending massive amounts of time playing WoW and you don't know it you're doing something wrong
And since kids (and adults) do spend massive ammounts of time playing WoW (and taking drugs, and...), due to your statement we must assume that something is wrong and the parents are not able to fix it without help, so what's the solution?
It is important to have self-awareness that this is an issue and put hard-line limits on things...
Although I completely agree with you, you left out one point. While adults are often able to make the kind of analysis that you are suggesting, children generally are not.
This is not a perfect world and if someone can take advantage of the imperfections by selling Tobacco, Alcohol, Games, Christianity and drugs to children who are unprepared to recognize their addictive and dangerous effects, they will. Parents are often not in the position to recognize these problems and help their children learn to handle them--just another aspect of this imperfect world.
So although your premise is correct, I have to say that if WOW had been available when I was a kid I would probably be making half what I am now and I'd most likely be miserable.
I'm nervous about what is happening right now to the programmers of the future...
Now THAT sounds more like something Bill Gates would say... Good Job!
Have the actions of the industry in this country led anyone to believe that they could be trusted with any significant responsibility?
Let's see--Fishing?
Well, apparently we have fished out most of the streams and oceans of many of the breeds of fish that we like. "Fish and Chips" fish has changed repeatedly because we keep destroying populations. We discovered huge quantities of "Orange Rufe" and immediately set upon it... Turns out it's amazingly long-lived and slow to breed. Whoops? Who knew (or could be bothered to check)?
How about Forests?
Does anyone here doubt that we would be completely out of old-growth forests if we didn't have regulations? It's a fact that we would. They have tried to cut the last few remaining forests again and again. Sure, sustainable foresting may work, I have no doubt, but if so, why do they continue to try for our last few acres of old-growth???
Hmm, how about telephone lines?
We deregulated AT&T, now they are trying to set tiered service charges on the net because they see google making money. Why don't they do the same thing with phones, as a company makes more phone calls they should start paying to receive calls in a timely manner?
Does everyone trust industry with our IP?
Is Disney going to place Mickey and Winnie the Pooh in the public domain as per our original agreement, or are they going to keep paying to have the agreement re-written to suit their income requirements? Can record companies be trusted to write our copyright laws?
Then (and here's the question) why the HELL would you want to, in any way, trust industry with Nuclear energy??? I don't contend that it CAN be safe, but honestly, will it?
And what's the real advantage? Like cupboard space, if you provide more, it'll get used and more will be required.
I'm not saying there is a simple solution--but actually there may be one. What is wrong with us moving towards small, local energy creation? I'm not saying solar panels, water power, geo-thermal, natural gas, wind power or conservation alone will solve the problem, but maybe some combination thereof (combined with increasing production efficiency) will.
Ask someone who lives in an energy co-op area how they like their prices, generally they are very reasonable without investors skimming all the profits.
Chances are, we could be well on our way to this if it wasn't for the energy industrialists trying to protect their profits. That is the ONE "advantage" to nuclear energy--it can be centralized, controlled and monopolized by industrialists.
Personally, I don't see anything wrong with it technically, but why don't we think before giving yet another responsibility to those who are driven by nothing but financial interests?
Sorry about the late response, but great point. Again, the government protects the existing insulin manufactures (certianly the ones with the money) by denying the ability to flood the market with generics.
Bunch of damn goons--thanks for the data point.
I TOTALLY agree, except that since Microsoft funded SCO to do the same thing vs Linux, I really can't feel too sorry for them. It's just payback. Kinda like south park during the "Cripple Fight" episode, the kids just kept saying "I'm staying out of this one"
I hadn't heard of this study or anything.
/. summary you can't actually TELL if the study confirmed risks or denied risks, only that the FDA didn't agree with the study.
If you only read the
Did anyone here think that the "Study" may have stated that the risks are minimal, and the FDA was saying "Hey, wait a minute, that's not a very accurate study! There may significantly more risk".
The fact that no reasonable, informed person could have expected that the FDA might have actually been trying to actually "Protect" us instead of corporate interests is a little disturbing to me.
Religious fundamentalism (on the rise in the US) doesn't accept that is possible. It asserts that god formed Adam out of clay and actually used his breath to fill Adam with life. Because the Bible is the Only Truth, no other is possible.
These are the same people (different bodies I suppose) that murdered progressive people who suggested that the earth might be round, or go around the sun.
Just because the times have changed, don't believe for a second that all the people have.
So should they provide such money to any nutcase trying to prove their personal religion?
Just because a lot of uninformed people believe the same thing, does not make it ANY more valid.
The FSM people should get upt there and get a grant to study how we were all formed from the "Great Sauce".
Christians are so damn arrogant, like they are the ONLY other possibility.
In some ways I'd like to see Christians start to win these things. It'd be great to see the ten commandments in the front of a court with a giant brass Budah sitting on them and Vishnu pointing the way to truth with his many hands.
"Would a Democratic president be doing anything differently?"
What difference does it matter which branch of the corporate-sponsored ruling party is in office? The issue is still valid!
(What a great general statement, I should make that my new sig!)
Although from some points of view you are certainly correct, I think there are two points that kind of invalidate your comment (at least for all practical purposes)
1) People are becoming good at overcoming being "Different", and with so many different people, it's as likely that two completely unsuitable candidates will reproduce (Think a couple uneducated, deformed outcasts) as it is for two very suitable subjects. Add in plastic surgery and corrective surgery and there is no way to form a pattern. Yes, our genes could change over time, but the direction is completely unpredictable, so it's more de-evolution (aka DEVO) than evolution.
2) The pace of technology is going so much faster than evolution could hope to. If evolution were allowed to work naturally, it would take thousands (or tens of thousands) of years to make a subtle difference. Within a few hundred years, we will be in complete control of our genes at the rate we are going.
Hey, as long as this is an old O/T thread and nobody else is listening, how about disucssing an interesting point about evolution... I haven't heard this elsewhere, but I think it must be true.
At times evolution MUST work fast. When your pond dries up, all you can do is die or walk out (or lay eggs that last for a few years).
If there is a "Fast" evolution, there must be a mechanism to trigger it.
What would you want to trigger it? Well, a very sharp drop in population would be the only trigger I could imagine. What would be the results of such a drop?
Lots of inbreeding I would think, since your pool of perspective mates has just dropped to your immediate family or close relatives (all of whom are pretty well suited for this new environment since they are still alive)
And what's the result of inbreeding? Mutations.
This seems pretty obvious to me, but you sure don't hear people saying that the genetic mutations caused by impregnating your sister are one of the mechanisms developed by evolution... Nope, you never hear it put that way. Just like you never hear that death is a mechanism for evolution. Hence my original sig (Because if I put one about impregnating your sister, it would draw even more comments, and my purpose was to invoke thought not scorn.)
Exactly, and turtles are one of the earliest-evolved creatures around. I suppose it's the exception that proves the rule. My guess would be that Sharks are similarly long-lived.
Each echo-system is generally bounded by a food or water supply. If there is a food nitch that isn't being used, a small short-lived species will evolve to gobble it up and will become similarly bounded by the availability of this new food supply.
From an evolutionary point of view, why keep old prototypes around gobbling up resources--what would be the point?
If it became necessary or useful for a species to live forever, I'm sure that within a few hundred generation, one would evolve that did just that.
The way "Life" seems to enjoy reproducing, even an infinite environment would get awful crowded (in any portion that is not the outside edge anyway).
Perhaps I should have said "Death is an inevitable side-effect of evolution?"
Another interesting thought that comes from this assumption--Since people are so long lived and are no longer reproducing based on survival of the fittest, I think evolution has left us here to take care of ourselves. We should get to it before the cockroaches, mice and/or wasps end up winning the game.