Posts by Mark 3397 publicly visible posts • joined 5 Oct 2007
"it's worth being careful with the Flying Spaghetti Monster: I've seen many an anti-religious poster use it as a way to illustrate the idiocy of religion. It may serve that function if pushed, but that wasn't the purpose it was designed for."
I have talked like a pirate on the 19th Sept.
I did so in my part to help stop global warming.
I DO know why the FSM was created, but such is His Noodliness, he can stretch to cover much more plate^Wground than that.
Pasta Be Upon Him.
Science (and the humans that come up with the ideas) can be challenged, tested and proven (false or true).
God can't.
And if you could, what could you do? Science you come up with another explanation (no aether? maybe electromagnetism and Maxwell's theory will work). God, you. Um. Er.
So Dawkins and his books are a lot less of a problem than fundies, 'cos they just keep breeding and you're no more likely to get a smart one than in the old days.
He could die (never heard of the Christian God being susceptible to that, though most other religions allow it). He could be proven wrong. He could be denied mention (try denying christianity from being given airtime! Dawkins would just pout and scream but you WOULD be allowed to ban him mass media airtime).
Prove God doesn't exist.
Can't.
What would you replace him with if you found your God was the wrong one (if you DID manage to prove yours wasn't The Real God, just a god with a bunch of false noses)? Vishnu? Brahma? Thor? FSM? You need a reason to pick one of those, a reason why the proof you just got doesn't apply to them.
"Dawkin's evolutionary fundamentalism is no different to the religious fanatics on the other side."
Yes it is. In quite a fundamental way.
You can call Dawkins a crackpot and if he's right you're just silly.
You call God a crackpot and if he exists, you're roasting in hell.
If you call Dawkins wrong, people that think him right will argue with you.
If you call God a fiction, people who believe in him will hate you.
If you come up with a better theory, you can replace Dawkins.
You can never prove God doesn't exist and replace it.
He's selling his Books.
That's why he's gotten more and more strident. Not because he's getting more polarised. He's using those who have no sense of proportion to generate noise about his writing and thereby selling more.
If you don't like the change, ignore him. Don't argue and don't complain. Rob him of the airtime your complaints give him.
And if you REALLY believe in God, let God handle him when Dawkins dies.
Or don't you trust your God?
Yes it is information.
"Heads I win, Tails I lose".
After the result, you know whether I've won or not.
Read up on Shannon theory. It's fairly basic maths. Not science, so you won't get sent to hell for questioning the big beard.
"Bird Flu - Guess what, it's still a virus - hence not evolution."
Uh, it affects birds. There's a cow virus that doesn't affect humans. It was used to prevent smallpox. It never changed to "human cowpox".
Bird flu did.
So? That's what science DOES.
But, unless you're researching the boundaries of that science, you shouldn't be making shit up to say "it's wrong". If you're that interested, become a researcher.
If such a fossil were found, there'd be at least three groups of scientists trying to FIND the truth:
a) It's in the wrong place, so how did it get there?
b) It's genuine, so what does that mean to adaptive speciation?
c) It's a fake, so how do we find out?
Martin, random information CAN add information.
If I toss a dice, you will, once it has stopped, know whether I tossed heads or tails.
Information.
Meaning is gained when evolution by adaptive mutation causes those random changes to spread or die out.
"On the basis of _actual_ science. Prove me wrong, demonstrate Evolution."
Yup. Here it is.
Bird Flu Deaths in Humans.
Humans aren't birds.
There IS a way to get new information into the genome.
Random mutation that can
a) be beneficial
b) be harmful
c) not pass on
Each random change adds information to the genome. Each culling out adds significant information to the gene pool.
How would your sky fairy put information into the gene pool? Scribing error?
No, a man SAYS he was inspired by God.
Other people have written holy script from Bhudda. The information therein doesn't match what your scriptures say but is supposed to be the words dictated by their God.
So having it written down as "Inspired by God" doesn't and cannot prove it was the word of god. Unless he's yanking your chain or insane.
2Timothy 3:16.
That was written by a man, wasn't it? One of the scriptures. I.e. written down by man.
Man is not God. Even for those who believe Man is made in God's own image (for which I agree with Hobbes: God must have a weird sense of humour were that the case).
Failed again my blinkered friend.
As to your other missive to badger, you have not yet shown you know ANYTHING AT ALL about science. All you've displayed so far is misinformation about science.
And that statement you quoted said nothing about people who aren't atheists cannot become scientists. It was (if you can read English rather than Aramaic) that non atheists worked and produced science too. People whose belief as to what God did, what reason for life there is and why it came about are not the ones that YOUR belief accepts. So Science is more accepting of believers and religious people than your religion (as you espouse it, because you ARE NOT the world and in a very major minority [or trolling. badly] of those people who believe in the christian god).
And this is why we keep getting NuLab put in power.
So you don't trust either? Churn.
Sack this lot and get the Tories in.
Tories suck so sack them and get Nu Lab in.
They suck, so sack them and get the Tories in.
Even if you keep ping-ponging them, they will be unable to get ANYTHING done. People in positions of power will get no acknowledgement of that power. Rich figures will not court their attention and they'll not be able to pass legislation for their mates in time.
And without power, those who are politicians for the power will leave and we'll get people who want to help left.
Or nobody, which is just as good.
So, rather than go "Ooooh! Tories!!! SCARY!!!!" and ensure the complete fuckwits we have here now continue to shit over everyone without the cash to be important, vote them out.
And keep voting the incumbents out until they get the message.
THEY work for US.
"I do think that the religion of the parents should be respected and not demeaned because someone does not agree with it"
But why must it be respected IN A SCIENCE CLASS???
By trying to get it shoved in there, are not these people disrespecting and demeaning SCIENCE? How come that's right and the return shot not?
How about an RE class where each mythology is taken and discussed. The real life examples of how belief can change based on merely "taking on faith" rather than critical thinking can produce a story with
a) so many points in common
b) so many contradictions
c) so many points in direct oppositions
Would be a good place to show critical thinking.
But I suspect that the religious won't like a place where kids are taught critical thinking ***against the bible***. Worse, the option of giving the children following a different religion or taking an a la carte proposition to religious belief! That would be worse than "no religion at all"...
Uh, if that's true, how does the evolution of MRSA result from reading a book? Does it have to be a specific book? I mean, if I read "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" will that cause a new flu virus, but if I read "The Cat In The Hat" a new biotic will appear, leading to a cancer treatment?
No, no more than Steven did by proclaiming that he wasn't paid bu Big Oil in his missives against AGW.
Doggy,
No, this is a text only site. Error bars are hard to draw.
And nope, you weren't there if you thought it was "the scientists" and "the govenment" because I was there and you can even read still the original paper (note the singular) and the newspapers (note the plural).
In denying climate change. 'cos he'd have to pay for it when it's only some foreign darkie kids in fifty years that will have to pay for his inaction.
If you're going to mete out scorn for having a vested interest, look at your own vested interest in your result first.
NOTE: I don't get paid for climate work. I'm IT support.
It already IS open source.
If you don't like the way Google have obeyed the GPL then your code should be released under the AGPLv3. Lots of people don't like that license because it has "more restrictions" but they fit with what you want Google to do, so you should like it.
PS the adverts ARE open: you can display adverts from the same people Google do and get paid the same rate of clickthrough.
And with Flash that makes five.
But one of them is not like the others. One of those solutions is not quite the same. One of those things is doing its own thing.
Now it's time to play our game.
Flash is the only one where you must be approved to create interoperable programs. Flash is the only one that will not work on x64. Flash is the only one that will not run on any CPU with the power to decode fast enough.
Patents on software (or maths) is not universal. Ergo there being patents does not make open sourcing flash a patent problem. It may in some jurisdictions but not all. Do what FFMPEG et al do: let the end user download as per allowance of law the codecs separately. Private use of a patent is allowed in the US.
And how do Adobe do the free player in any case? They can't control sales (unless flash has spyware in it) and so cannot remit payment according to license use. If Adobe is already paying for everyone to use that codec then Adobe can keep paying (they have no loss in revenue because they already pay) and the patents become moot even in a paid-for distribution in the US.
I have seen someone survive a fall which should have killed them.
They were an atheist and they didn't see God.
Wayne, you understand nothing about science nor who is allowed to persue their proofs. I.e. EVERYONE. Science doesn't have heretics, unbelievers and people that need to be converted by the sword. Unlike your religion.
And as to "stop trolling", shit man! Look at the dog-collar trolling going on here!
Aye, and when loopy judges from Italy do this sort of stuff, they get reamed here on El Reg. If they are British: reamed. Swedish: reamed.
You aren't breaking shit to us. We know.
It's only the oversensitive who see only the attacks against "their" people and miss the similar attacks on just about everyone else too.
So just sue the individual who has taken the domains and does not have a legitimate use for the site name. Do it in another state (Say, Virginia) and if the bloke doesn't turn up, you win by default.
Then have him deported to the state to stand trial for theft, fraud and avoidance of fines.
Better yet, do it in another country. If the US ever ratify their side of the treaty, do it in the UK and get this simian dimwit extradited to the UK to face criminal penalties.
The jury decided facts. The Judge judged law and punishment.
If the Judgement was wrong, then the appeal should only be on the $1.5Bn damages. MS ***did*** infringe on Alcatel's patents. The worth of them may be appealed to be "$500" rather than $1.5Bn.
But, this was an american court, MS are an american company and Alcatel foreign.
So like with BT's valid Hyperlink patent which was quashed (because BT is foreign and they were suing a US company), and unlike RIM/Blackberry (where the company with the patents was a US company and the one "infringing" Canadian, so find for the patent holder).
We really need a Janus icon for the two-faced stories' comments.
Yup, I noticed that immediately too.
I suspect that the Lizard Invaders are planting hallucinogens in these black cabs so that, although running away in terror, any footage left will show happy smiling people. The LI will use this as propoganda if they can't delete all of it and show how happy everyone is now that our Lizard Overlords are making us work in their Mud Mines.
Be afraid.
Be VERY afraid.
Could be sorted by making MS assert enough information to get WINE working 100% (or as near 100% as genuine MS Windows gets). Ergo, if you try a Windows app under WINE and it doesn't work, either
a) MS have not disclosed properly
b) The application is not compliant (and so can be returned under merchantability laws)
In the case of (a) MS can blame and prove non-compliance of the application and in the case of (b), the application provider can blame MS and prove that. How? By running the program on genuine Windows. If it breaks, the app is wrong, if it works, MS is.
Nobody wants to pay to find out whether this is a problem, nobody wants to take the issue on to find out what they could do and there's no money or prestige for the numbnuts in charge to risk making a decision on their own bat.
Just ask them which country they belong to, sink the boat (after taking the contents that are worth something) or take the boat to impound it. Then take the pirates back to their home.
If they say "no home" then they either sink on the ship or get impounded with it.
However right that is, if the police were to use it as a defense of their breech of copyright, how much more acceptable is it for the defense of the very crime they are prosecuting on the citizens?
Jammie paid $220,000 for 24 tracks. That's enough to pay for 10,000 infringers. And they are STILL going after any infringement on P2P of these tracks, whether they have already been paid for or not.
If treble dipping is reason to ignore copyright law, how much more relevant is 10,000-times-dipping???
But it IS the law that copyright infringement is illegal.
Such infringement being playing music in a public place without license.
And BitTorrent users arrested would be fine too if they had paid a distribution license for the music shared over BT. Are the police going to drop the charges for that, because the BT users didn't know if the would or could pay the licensing costs?
Yes? No?
STFU yourself, RIAA puppet.
The could have put a movie Super-Bit style on a DVD with full HiDef resolution with the new compression techniques. DVI and ordinary upscaling DVD players already "output" HiDef.
So there was NO *technical* need for Blu Ray or HD-DVD.
The reason for it was to put tighter controls on users using their DVD in "non-approved" ways. Like, oh, making a DVD copy of the kids' disney movie so that THAT gets scratched, not the individual (ensuring there's never a bargain-bin Disney DVD). To ensure that region encoding cannot this time be bypassed (so fixing prices in a region).
DVDs no longer gave them the control over what you bought.
So they had to have new hardware that gave them that control.
Unfortunately for sales, this extra control only benefits the studios and costs the customer.
Hence the slow uptake.
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