Saying just a theory is sort of like saying "that legal opinion is just a judge's". In some cases, it's like saying "just the supreme court's opinion.". Sure, it might still be wrong, so let's get an auto mechanic's opinion on what the law is - let's stop having juries and just ask a random plumber to decide who's guilty of what - maybe we could flip a Bible and if it lands face up the accused is innocent... .

He would have, but the margins on his screen were too small to jot them down.

God, as a hypothesis, is not falsifiable, for largely the reasons you point out. Some people pretty well versed in the history of science hold both that Science is, by definition, committed to natural explanations, and can't include supernatural ones, and that God MUST be a supernatural entity. That, though, is a slightly different argument from the one you're presenting. The thing is, we can imagine purely natural aliens, with nothing at all supernatural involved, but they could be impossible in practice to use as a scientific hypothesis to explain anything else.
        They could, for example, be individually much smarter than humans. In a simplistic sense, what could we really conclude about what aliens with say, 10 times or 50 times the neurons, or equivalent structures, in their brains (or equivalent structures, again). If they wanted us to believe something was a fact, the overwhelming probability would be they could manipulate us into believing it whether it was true or not. Maybe we could trip up some types of aliens that were somewhat smarter than us in a contradiction, but postulate ones that are smarter by enough, and that chance becomes vanishingly small. There's not any sharp line between unfalsifiable in practice and unfalsifiable in theory, and no real need for infinite knowledge (omnescience) to even be possible, just intelligence somewhat better than human levels. .
    Alternately, wouldn't the same apply about aliens that were not all that much, if any, smarter than us, but had millions of years of civilised history, and had been through first contact situations with hundreds of other species before meeting us? Just their having been inventing space travel when we were still working on fire might mean they had enough of an advantage we could never detect what they didn't want us to detect. Or what about aliens who were no smarter than us, and had not been through many first contact situations, but had discovered some new principle that somehow worked better than any form of logic we know. Science can't prove that there is nothing possibly better than the scientific method itself (or it it somehow does, we still can't trust the proof is right). This problem starts kicking in at very low levels of knowing, not just as we consider something omniscent, or nearly so (whatever that last means - isn't any finite amount of knowledge infinitely less than infinite knowledge?). If we encounter aliens that appear to be not much more advanced than we are, or even if we get to them first and they appear backwards, how could we really prove they were? Those simple peasants that aren't resisting being rounded up and executed could conceivably be Organians, after all. How do we prove they aren't?
            You've presented a respectable argument for God not being part of the scientific method. I just want to point out that, since it applies to a lot of things we wouldn't call 'God' by any normal standard as well, it's an argument about the limitations of the scientific method itself, not just about whether that 'God' exists.

Thaank goodness for the Eternal August.

The very way the request is phrased assumes the guilt of the persons being investigated. When a trial starts with guilty until proven innocent, that IS what 'witch hunt' means. If the Republicans were asking for all relevant evidence, to see IF the IRS violated the first amendment, that would be different. In America, we don't ask for the Trtuth, that part of the Truth that proves what we want it to, and nothing but the part we like.

I came to this thread with one mod point left, and here you are, practically begging for it - so no, you can't have it, i'm gonna save it and come back to mod myself -1 off topic instead. And Steven Zoltan Brust is fantastic.

Security through Obscurity works, just as camoflage works for soldiers. And relying just on Security through Obscurity works just as well as camoflaging your soldiers and then sending them out without weapons, ammo, food, water or training into a hostile environment.

Why am I not surprised that the first post to this thread is from someone who doesn't know where babies come from?

Cause now everyone knows what Positrons are, Asimov's positronic brain sounds dated.

There's this principle, as part of the RICO act, that says creating a lot of shell corporations, where money moves around between companies in a very complicated way and it's very hard to track it, is one of the signs of an organized crime operation. Parts of the RICO law are written to deal with this specific method. For ciriminals to use this method, they have to build enough shell corps to make tracking the money very hard - a few won't do it, twenty or 50 or 119 is better. The Idea is that the more levels of shells there are, the more time the organization has to delay a criminal investigation, as the investigators have to keep going back to a judge and getting more warrents for new records. If they don't find anything the first few times, the judge is likely to stop giving them more warrents, plus there's more time to move money into places such as offshore accounts, or for the top dogs to skip the country if they must.
          There weren't a whole bunch of new PACs and such made by the Democrats in that election cycle, but because of the very nature of the Tea Party movement, we saw a lot of Tea party this and Tea Party that, over a hundred new non-profits for states, groups of states, and particular parts of the movement. In many cases, some of the Tea party organizers put their names on multiple applications in different positions, which is another sign of potential shell corporations. That's another possible red flag under RICO, seeing the same person's name for different positions in different corporations which are being formed in multiple states, as is seeing organizations incorporated in odd states (i.e.a company doing businesss only in Arkansas, but incorporating in Florida). (Delaware is somewhat of an exception to this, as their laws make it popular for many businesses to incorporate there, but I don't think there are any real advantages to incorporating in Delaware for non-profits).
          The IRS has also long had a position that even if something is technically legal to do as the law is written, it can still be illlegal if the primary purpose of doing it appears to be not to achieve whatever goal the law endorses, but to evade taxes. That means they could have approached this as a case where some of these new organizations might not qualify as their particular type of non-profit, AND might have made a profit AND had the intent to avoid paying the taxes that would entail. Technically, if somebody screws up and didn't stay within the non-profit rules, the IRS next looks to see if they made money, and if they did, for the third step the IRS gets to assume that the mistake in claiming non-profit status isn't an innocent mistake, but a deliberate way to evade taxes on that money. If you think about it, this makes a certain amount of sense - as the plaintiff at that point is often arguing that they accidentally made a profit without trying to, and they just coincidentally filed as a non-profit by innocent mistake. The press has tended to treat this as though the new non-profits could be set up wrong quite innocently, and have made a profit under law, but not done anything really wrong unless the IRS could prove some sort of intent, but the law normally assumes people don't make profits accidentally, and don't just happen to get the paperwork wrong coincidentally.

Minor correction guy, here. That's a proportionally higher chance, not a high chance. Since the best estimates for being gay put it at less than 10% of the population, a high chance of their uncles from the mother's sides being gay as well would mean, for example, for all those mothers that have a male sibling, there's at least a 25-50% chance those siblings are gay too. Since having a brother is so common, that means that if 10% of the populace is gay, somehow, there's also a general 2.5-5% of the overall populace that needs to be added to that. As a more specific example, if it's 'the future' and everybody who is gay feels absolutely no stigma about it, reports honestly, and we come up with a number such as 8%, we should add about 25-50% to it and report that the gay percentage of the population is really 10-12% or so, even if there's no other reason in such a case to think those uncles are not being counted already.
        That's not really something that makes sense in this example - we can't have a gene that is detectable by its effect on a major behavior and argue that being someone's maternal uncle stops that behavior but the gene is still present, for example, So let me give you an example where adjusting the incidence for what we know about genetics just might make better sense, for contrast.
        The genetics of schizophrenia have the highest corollation known for a genetic illness (not that being gay should necessarily be counted as a genetic illness, let's just stick with it being an effect with a genetiic component - but I think it's safe to identify schizophrenia as a generally undesired and dehabilitating condition.). If a person is schizophrenic, and has an identical twin, that twin has about a 50% chance of also developing schizophrenia. That's the top of the charts high chance corollation. Since many schizophrenics do go undiagnosed for substantial time, and many families attempt to hide the incidence of related cases in the family tree, or are in broad denial, it makes good sense to ask patients if they have an identical twin, warn them of the high potential for the disease, and to figure that the real niumbers of people at high risk or as yet undetected, should include a factor adjusting for the presence of occasional identical twins in the population. The link between male homosexuality and maternal uncles also bing gay is a lot less statistically significant than that, even though being somone's maternal uncle is a lot more common than being someone's identical twin.

international
  In this particular context, I do not think that word means what you think it means.

I think I'm pretty far from an obsessive collector (well maybe I do sometimes fall in that category and am just not seeing it), but it's not that relevant whether people are or not.
            I have some significant films and books that have been released in various censored editions. For example, I have the paperback Del Rey Gold Seal version of Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, which is both vetted by the author and has an afterword detailing some of the many bowderizings of that book (of all stories) and in what ways some other Bradbury stories were censored in various other editions. It's a rather nasty set of examples.
            I seem to recall there was a story covered here on Slashdot a few years ago about Blockbuster demanding changes to the copies of a gereat many videos they distributed from the theatre releases. In my classical music collection, I have a version of Copland's Lincoln Portrait that.was translated for a South American audience, and on the night It was first performed, the people leaving the auditorium went straight to the streets to conduct a revolution. It might be a good thing if the exact performance that served as a trigger was on physical media (and from some people's POV, it might be a very bad thing - quick, burn the tape!).
              It may be just "obsessive" fans who want to compare different releases of Star Trek TOS or Star Wars and argue over trivia, but when the changes involve more controversial works, THATS a real "pretty big reason to still prefer physical media". (And I'm not sure but what that applies to ST:TOS as well - that "First interracial kiss footage might still count as controversial in some circles - are their copies of what was actually broadcast in different southern US markets?). So, to your "you have some chance of actually keeping it", I'll add ", even if it makes the powers that be uncomfortable." Physical media let us see who is revising, amending, or deleting whose thoughts, and sometimes even make a pretty good guess why.

I don't seem to have "Rogue Bolo" in my sci-fi book collection, but the cover on Amazon looks familiar. I think I might have given it away one Halloween decades ago living in Princeton, NJ when I gave the option of getting books instead of candy to some trick-or-treaters (several teens there seemed to prefer the books).

Your point on a Bolo singularity makes me think about the Asimov universe, and how his robots there eventually interpreted the three laws in a way "The Zeroth Law" that gave them lots of independence, and that saw themselves as in a way more "human" than humans, and also caused them to start intervening in history behind the scenes. There is no set of laws or constitution that ultimately does not need some intelligent judge to interpret the meaning or spirit of the words in a present day context, and once some intelligent entity (including an AI) starts creatively interpreting "rules" including "metarules" about how rules can be changed, who knows where it will end?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R...

Inspired by your post, I've been looking through my Bolo books. I started rereading "Ploughshare" by Todd Johnson in "Bolos: Book 1: Honor of the Regiment" where "Das Afrika Corps" and other Mark XVI C Bolos act a bit odd due to a spilled milkshake by the "Director's son" in the "White Room" psychotronics lab and the use of "DK-41" cleaning fluid to fix that mess up. Another case of the unexpected...

I liked "Bolo Rising" novel which has a Bolo Mark XXXIII series HCT called Hector. That is an interesting novel of a Bolo regaining its operational capacity after being infiltrated and locked down by alien technology. There is another XXXIII in "Bolo Strike". But while those mega-Bolo stories are interesting in their own sort of over-the-top way (maybe your point about "the other guy"), I like the diversity in the short stories in "Honor of the Regiment" by a variety of authors covering the whole history of different Bolos of various capabilities and their unfolding increasing sentience and self-directedness. What does "Honor" or "Service" means over time and shading into a meta-level? For example, are whistleblowers like Manning, Snowden, or Kiriakou honorable and engaged in service and fulfilling their oath to defend the Constitution? Or are they traitors? Complex questions... Perhaps "Rogue Bolo" goes deeper into such issues? As a lesser example, "Bolo Brigade" explores the issue of a conflict between "rules of engagement" and a Bolo's desire to get its job done. Conflicts between priorities are not something that only humans will face...

It is not clear where the singularity of emerging AI and technologically-expanded-or-narrowed humans and so on will all lead in reality -- especially with Bolo vs. Beserker as an option. I forget the plot of "Bolo Strike" as I look at my Bolo books, but the blurb on the back says "as Bolo faces human-Bolo hybrid in a cataclysmic showdown". So there are other ways automated systems can cause change, either their own independence or by empowering some few independent humans. As I essentially say near the end of the 2000 post to the Unrev-II Engelbart Bootstrap mailing list, corporations are like vast machine intelligence at his point. And like the present day, what is the real difference to most people if the Earth is laid waste, the seas polluted, the mountains leveled, the oceans strip-mined, and most of the people kept down in their aspirations for a decent life by "aliens from outer space" or by some 1% of vampire-like human-machine-hybrid-organizational "aliens" who have become specialized in "extracting wealth" by privatizing gains and socializing costs (including the cost to the worker of unpleasant work environments)? Even without human-Bolo hybrids, there can be vast technological/bureaucratic enterprises that make use of humans as parts much the same as the "!*!*!" of "Bolo Rising" tried to do in their quest of "efficiency" -- "efficiency" to what end and to whose benefit? So much of sci-fi is a way that people can reflect of concerns of the day, but at a safer intellectual distance.

Anyway, reminds me I should try playing with my kid this old Metagame I have around somewhere and have not played in decades and was inspired by the Bolo series:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O...

Actually finding a new zero day exploit and figuring out how to exploit it, with maximum yield to chance of getting caught ratio, is very time consuming and involves a high level of luck, not just skill. David is shown as a bit more than just a script kiddie, but a lot of what he does in the movie has become simplifed to where script kiddees can easily get tools they don't understand to do the same things these days, so perhaps the movie doesn't feel the same from a modern perspective. It helps to remember that back in the era, seemingly simple things such as Wardialers weren't off the shelf items yet, and people who used them had to at least know a little about some Hayes AT commands and such beyond what was in the user manuals. David was hacking at a time when even getting advice about using social engineering meant going to a person who also had pure tech skills, and not from someone who only knew the social engineering side of it all. His use of social engineering to realize "Joshua" is a potentially likely backdoor in that particular case is actually the more skilled response, in that it takes a certain amount of analytical intelligence to look for something like it, but also more generalized intelligence to realize that doing it has a high chance of shortcutting trial and error methods that might take years in an era of 1200 baud modems, and that there was very little risk during the discovery phase. I would posit that the most skilled hackers working for the NSA, for example, are deliberately trained not to ignore biography shortcuts and such in favor of more seemingly LEET attacks. The people with nothing to prove most probably use social attacks, reverse engineering and insider information at the drop of a hat if it gets them results faster or safer.