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Slashback: New E3, Archimedes Webcast, Dell Wildfires
from the yet-another-lap-close-call dept.
A Victory for Evolution in Kansas. SatanicPuppy writes "Yesterday, elections in Kansas saw four of six pro-Creationism school board members replaced by pro-Evolution candidates in a one issue election. Interestingly, it didn't go by party lines; at least one of the conservative Republicans who supported Creationism failed to make it past their party primary. Ken Willard and John Bacon are the two remaining pro-Creationism incumbents."
Stardust Program Launched. lee1 writes "Anyone with an internet connection now has the the chance to find microscopic grains of dust from beyond the solar system. The project, called Stardust@home, is patterned on projects like SETI@home. But rather than exploiting idle processor time, it will ask volunteers to search through millions of microscope images on their computer screens, exploiting spare time in general as well as ego: 'People get very competitive,' explains the project director. The first volunteer to spot an actual interstellar dust grain will get to name it and will be listed as a co-author on any resulting research papers. The images come from a NASA project called Stardust, whose primary mission was to collect samples of dust from the tail of Comet Wild 2, but might also have captured some interstellar dust that could reveal the physics of the stars that produced it. To minimize false positives and to ensure that all the grains are found, each participant will go through an online training and testing process before starting their search. They will be scored on how well they distinguish real dust grain impacts from fakes."
Lego Mindstorms goes live. MicroBerto writes "As of August 1, 2006, the next generation of Lego Mindstorms is now available for sale in North America. Mindstorms NXT is a robotics toolset that allows you to build and program robots for various purposes. It combines the power of the Lego technic building system and an all new intuitive software environment powered by National Instruments LabVIEW."
Continued backlash on the new E3. Anonymous Howard writes "Angry Gamer reacts badly to the news of the Electronic Entertainment Expo's demise. They see it as a major blow for small game developers who are having enough of a hard time getting noticed by press and retailers as it is. From the article: 'This is a win only for the EAs, Sonys and IGNs of the world. Everyone else has to fend for themselves.' It seems like the days of smaller developers getting noticed by 'drive by traffic' at E3 are over." Relatedly The Escapist Lounge has an interview with the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences president, Joseph Olin, on what is actually happening to E3. As Joseph Olin responds: 'So it's going to take a couple of months until the world knows what the scope of E3 2007 will be, and how it will be structured. The opportunity to make material changes to improve it shouldn't be snap judgments. The rhetorical question I might pose is: "You know you have a problem. You know you need to make changes. How do you make changes and convey it and announce it, and to whom, and when?" There's never a good time. Whenever you make significant change, there's no way to introduce that change without detractors. The challenge is that without being able to announce the exact implementation of change it leaves that gray area for ignorance to fill the void.'"
Archimedes gets a webcast. jd writes "Some time ago, Slashdot covered the story of the rediscovery of several lost writings of Archimedes by means of X-Ray fluorescence. Well, they're still scanning the book and at 11pm GMT (4pm PDT) on August 4th will be putting on a live webcast as they scan and interpret pages not seen by human eyes for over a thousand years."
Another Dell bursts into flame. starwindsurfer writes "A Dell laptop's battery caught on fire in a company's IT department this week, burning a hole right through the casing. Nearby techs used fire extinguishers to put out the blaze. Employee Henrik took pictures to document the affair and uploaded them to the Toms Hardware message boards. From the writeup: 'The police department showed up. The entire lower floor was allowed to leave early and as we stood there in front of the building we simply couldn't resist... we jokingly called the engineer a terrorist as he was being asked a few questions by the friendly officer.'"
An RIAA silver bullet? Chris Fairman writes "TechDirt is running a story about how the RIAA seems to be dropping cases where the defense includes (or hinges on) an IP address as the means to identify the source of criminal activity. Essentially the defense argues that all an IP address can prove is who was paying for the net access at a particular time. Having a wide open WiFi router on your network seems to be currently the most effective means of getting the RIAA to drop all charges. Essentially the activity originating from one IP, only proves that illegal file sharing behavior is coming from one network, and not necessarily from any one specific computer or user. More importantly, it seems that the legal system is beginning to catch on to more complex technology concepts. Such concepts play a large part in how future legal cases are argued, and contribute ultimately to the foundation of complex technology legal precedents."
Wifi Routers not needed. (Score:4, Interesting)
At least the courts are starting to come to their senses ( I hope ). But how does one prove you had open wifi during the time they think you did something wrong? I know personally i have mine wide open for my neighbors, but that still doesnt PROVE it.... ( i sit here now with my macmini with internet sharing going on the airport )
Re:Wifi Routers not needed. (Score:3, Insightful)
If it were a criminal case (as I understand US law) you SHOULDN'T have to prove it was someone else, just introduce the reasonable doubt that it was actually you. A dynamically assigned address and an open wifi introduce a lot of doubt.
It's up to them to prove you did it.
This unfortunately isn't a criminal case (yet!).
Tubes (Score:5, Funny)
PAX (Score:4, Interesting)
I guess there's always the Penny Arcade Expo...
Root of All Evil? (Score:5, Interesting)
One of the most interesting things about it is that he tries to talk with several religious leaders about evolution, and they sistematically avoid any rational discussion and undeniable evidence with the same stupid arguments, equivalent to "my book says this and therefore, it must be true".
He brings forth the question "why can't schools just teach science in SCIENCE class?"
Quite controversial, I recommend it very much.
Re:Root of All Evil? (Score:4, Insightful)
In any group, whether religous or not, you will find nutjobs trying to usurp the group for their own purposes.
The issues with Jews and Arabs would exist even if both groups were the same religon. Anti-arab and anti-semetic feelings exist among just as many non-religous groups.
Groups like the KKK didn't claim Blacks and other non-whites followed the wrong God. They made-up their own secular reasons to justify what they already wanted to do.
Religon is just another scapegoat for bad people that want to do bad things.
The Catholic Church recognizes and supports "The Theory of Evolution", and has repeated condemed "The Hypothesis of Intelligent Design".
Parent
Re:Root of All Evil? (Score:3, Insightful)
Slashdot, where arm chair scientists get shouted down and arm chair theologians get modded up.
Try reading the books of the bible and then study the thoughts of some of the great Christian Apologists over the ages. Perhaps then you can stop repeating the group think of everyone that dislikes Christianity because Pat Robertson and his ilk are assholes. For example only a few small groups (and no main stream denomination) believe in the whole 'only 144000' make it into Heaven thing, even a simple search of
So it's come to Kansas now (Score:3, Insightful)
Straight to the classroom... (Score:5, Insightful)
Novel Scientific Claim > Research > Peer Review > Scientific Concensus > Classroom & Textbook
Intelligent Design proponents are doing the follow;
Intelligent Design "Theory" > Classroom & Textbook
If Intelligent Design supporters are so confident in their research and findings which supposedly vindicate the literal truth of the Bible, why do they skip the most important process in getting their theory accepted?
Meanwhile we have Ken Ham already building a 25 million dollar creation science museum [youtube.com].
Re:I believe in Evolution and God (Score:5, Insightful)
And that, in one sentence, summarizes the fatal flaw in using religion as a means of understanding the world.
Parent
Re:I believe in Evolution and God (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:I believe in Evolution and God (Score:5, Insightful)
no.
religion is a very useful tool for observing some aspects of the world, including human nature and psychology.
it offers no understanding at all.
Parent
Re:I believe in Evolution and God (Score:3, Informative)
Religion is a very useful tool for controling the masses. (like tv reality shows and news groups (esp. but not limited to china))
it offers neither understanding or observation
Re:I believe in Evolution and God (Score:4, Insightful)
It's a shame most religions (or their followers) have lost sight of that point.
Parent
Re:I believe in Evolution and God (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:I believe in Evolution and God (Score:3, Insightful)
So, yes to evolution, and yes to the account of creation given in the first chapter of Genesis, and yes to the account of creation given in the second chapter of Genesis.
... um, mods, how is self-contradiction "interesting"? OK, well I suppose it's interesting in the sense that it's a very, very peculiar way to think. Or rather, I suppose, doublethink, since that is literally what it is.
Even the craziest sentence in this post --
Re:I believe in Evolution and God (Score:5, Insightful)
But there's no re-encoding necessary. The biblical account of creation only has a few crucial claims, IMO:
So far, I've never learned any science that contradicts these fundamentals. Society at large used to think God created each variety of animal ex-nihilo; now the evolutionary process is commonly accepted, even by quite a lot of Christians. This "change" doesn't affect the above tenets.
This is my viewpoint, anyway, and based on what the OP said, it's his, too. I hate to add to the offtopic-ness, but I felt like clarifying.
Parent
Re:I believe in Evolution and God (Score:3, Insightful)
It must be very nice, just happening to be the person who knows which claims are crucial and which ones aren't.
Re:I believe in Evolution and God (Score:3, Interesting)
Regardless - it is not so much of real interest that things were created in a certain order. Certainly our view of the Earth has radically changed in 2,000 years and will continue to change I am sure, as an example.
Classical studies often find that a timeline and factual accounts are far from reality -
Re:I believe in Evolution and God (Score:3, Insightful)
I was going to disagree with your contention that:
Re:I believe in Evolution and God (Score:3, Insightful)
When the information was shared with man on how the universe and world was created, who among us could understand genetics, quantum physics, superstring theory and a host of things we still don't know about?
We understood the concept of god. We understood creating something. We knew simple numbers. We understood simple concepts for measuring time, days, seasons, etc...
If the story of creation were handed down today, I'm positive it would read differently. For one thing, we'd
Re:Archimedes gets a webcast (Score:3, Funny)
Re:RIAA (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Like eating regurgitated food. (Score:3, Insightful)
There are some of us that weren't available in the original discussion and have something to say. So, if you already posted or read something about these topics before, then it's very simple for you not to click in the story and not to produce more ad impressions to the oh-so-greedy editors.
Just ignore them, that works quite better than complaining.
Re:Your one and only friend when it comes to RIAA. (Score:3, Funny)