Seems to work well for DeBeers.

Besides that since duplicating copyrighted material is trivial, all media companies are running businesses based on artificial scarcity... artificial scarcity backed by IP laws.

You know how I know when someone has a strong belief in something? Its when they get all emotional when you try to talk about it with them. Telling me to fuck off and die as the other guy said or by calling me an asshole as you did.

Your emotions betray you young skywalker.

uh well if you don't think we came about from evolution then what? Some entity created us? Are you sure you're really an atheist?

Yes the New Atheists aren't really much different from fundamentalist christians. There is no central organisation for fundamentalist christians, they don't all believe in the same things, etc. Both the New Atheists and the Fundamentalist Christians are absolutely certain that their belief is correct and that they should attack anyone who disagrees with their beliefs.

And yes Christians have contributed a hell of a lot to science. Of course that doesn't stop atheists from claiming that Christians have throughout all history have destroyed science.

And yeah I think evolution should be taught in schools. What I'm saying is that these belligerent New Atheists are making it less likely it will be taught. When you two groups of fanatics fighting tooth and nail against each other, the sensible people don't want to get involved. Each side gets a small victory now and then, but the collateral damage exceeds any gains that either side has made. The Fundamentalist Christians want religion taught in schools, they get a few mentions of intelligent design in some schools. The Atheist won a ridiculous court case that said the pledge of allegiance shouldn't be in the schools because it contains the word "God". But at the end of day there are teachers that want to avoid the controversy so they don't want to teach evolution. And everyone loses because of that.

So congratulations you get to be smug and feel superior to some idiot christians. But you have to damage the education system so you can have a forum for your petty little debate. If these New Atheists really cared about getting evolution getting taught they stop being rude to Christians. Because as you ourself admit, there are many Christians that agree that evolution should be taught in schools.

Its all very petty. Being certain that there is not God is just as irrational as being certain that there is one. Atheists really need to get off their high horses and accept that their belief is not superior to anyone else's. If the debate is simply between those that want evolution being taught vs. those that don't, then we're on the same side and we're in the majority. But if you make it about the "super smart atheist" vs. "those dumb idiot christians", well then I'm not on your side, and you're in the minority. I want evolution to be taught in school, but I don't want to be on the same side as people that call me stupid simply because I believe in God.

Truth is an absolute. Science is not about finding the truth, thats the domain of philosophy and religion. Are you so starved of religion that you have to insert concepts like Truth into science? Please keep your religion out of my science.

Sorry buddy but science is about making observations, making theories to explain your observations, then make more observations and revising (or sometimes discarding) your theories as necessary. This is not Truth. Truth is something that is absolute, it cannot be revised. I am human. That is a Truth.

If you try to put more meaning into science than what it is then what you're doing is you're trying to make science into a religion. Which personally I find disturbing.

So you've jammed Truth into science, what's next, good and evil? Sin? Souls? Don't get me wrong, its good to think about these things, but just remember that when you do you aren't thinking about science, you're thinking about philosophy and religion.

That just puts him in agreement with Richard Nixon. In today's political climate Nixon would be considered a radical left-wing socialist.

Turn off fox news and read some history books. It's not Obama that is far-left, it is you that are far-right.

you have to spend when the economy is bad, otherwise you end up with another great depression. Yes, if Obama didn't spend all that money we'd be in the middle of another great depression.

ok so you target HTML 5.00 which isn't implemented perfectly. You test it and notice a few problems on a couple of browsers. You do a work around for those browsers.

Then a couple of years from now a developer for one of the glitchy browsers notices a bug in how it renders HTML 5.00. What should he do? if he fixes the bug then your workaround is going make the page be rendered in a way that you didn't intend. A couple of more years later, that browser gets a completely new rewrite of its rendering engine. Now they have to make sure that it will still render HTML 5.00 the same way (the incorrect way) that the old rendering engine did? What if they didn't know that there was a bug that caused HTML 5.00 to be rendered improperly? Thats right, your page isn't going to work right on that browser. You have to go back and make some adjustments.

Thats the thing, no matter what you do, as a web developer you are going to have to make little tweaks to your web pages to make sure they work right on newer versions of all browsers. If the popular browsers do things right you won't have to do this very much. If there is a popular browser that makes big changes to how it renders pages between versions (*cough* IE), then you might have to make a lot of changes with each version. It sucks, but have version numbers on the spec isn't going to change that.

From what I can see the biggest difference between how pages are rendered now is dependent on the browser version, not the HTML version.

And if they do a good job on the spec, they won't have to remove/change how elements get rendered as time goes on. They'll just add new features and keep the existing featureset static. So HTML 5.01 would end up being the same as HTML 5.00, only with a couple of new features added.

The New Atheists weren't around when the law that Scopes broke was repealed either. It wasn't the Atheists that got evolution taught in schools, it was moderate Christians. And now the New Atheists have managed to turn moderate Christians against evolution, and see how that is working out.

You can google for New Atheist.

I realised that the jerks are the ones who think in terms of "them and us".

Not all Christians are like this and neither are Atheists. And neither are most Muslims, Buddhists or Hindus. The problem is it benefits some people at the top to make sure their followers don't get too friendly with the followers of other beliefs. And don't think Atheism is any different. How many of the New Atheist books try to find common ground with the religious? Well they wouldn't want you to be too friendly with Christians because Atheist writers know its this Atheist angst that keeps them buying Atheist books. So they just throw more fuel on the fire. All these Atheist ideas about religion being a virus that affects our memes can be applied to Atheism too.

As far as I know, Christians wanted to stop evolution being taught in schools in the 1920s. But after the Scopes Monkey Trial public opinion changed and people turned against laws preventing the teaching of evolution. And evolution was being taught in more and more schools.

So what changed the trend of evolution being taught in more schools? What shifted public opinion against evolution being taught in schools? It was backlash against Atheists.

See people were annoyed about teachers being told by the religious what they can and can't teach by fundamentalist christians. People found the fundamentalist christians to be annoying. But then a group of people even more annoying than the fundamentalist christians came along: The New Atheists.

At one time if you were an Atheist it just meant that you didn't go to church on sundays and didn't talk about religion. The New Atheist not only wanted to talk about religion, they told all the religious people that they are idiots for believing in God. They wanted it to be illegal to say the pledge of allegiance because it has the word "God" in it. And that kind of thing really annoyed the moderate christians.

Now you have moderate christians feeling like you're attacking their beliefs, and you constantly telling them they're stupid for believing in God, well they aren't likely to help you in any of your causes. Most moderate christians want evolution taught in schools, but they don't want to join a cause thats being led by some assholes who are always saying they're stupid.

So you've made the whole debate into a them vs. us argument. You're either an atheist and want evolution taught in schools or you're a christian and want ID taught in schools. You've equated the Theory of Evolution with atheism. If you want evolution taught in schools then you don't believe in God. Evolution is what Atheist believe in, I mean we can see how angry they get when anyone questions it.

And my belief is that all people are trying to come to a better understanding of the universe. We were made by the universe to ask questions, and that wasn't an accident. After all the universe would be a boring place if there weren't sentient creatures in it. In fact I'd say the universe would be pointless without us. Our purpose is to understand the universe and our understanding gives the universe purpose.

How many Atheists think the theory of evolution is bunk?

Sorry to burst your bubble but people like to know how things came about. Christians have God creating Adam and Eve, a snake in a tree tempting Eve with some fruit, a big flood, etc.

And what do Atheists have? The big bang theory, the theory of evolution, etc. Yes its all based on empirical evidence, but it is an origin story just the same as Adam and Eve is an origin story. And all Atheists, every single one of them believes in it 100%.

And that is why its such a big problem with New Atheists attacking the Christians. It isn't framing things in terms of keeping science separate from belief. Now its the Atheist origin story vs. the Christian origin story. And if the Atheists get their origin story taught in school then why can't Christians have theirs taught in school?

And that is why Atheists should shut up and stay out of the debate. Atheists believe in evolution in the same way that Christians believe in Adam and Eve. So they argue from emotion (see the GP's post above) and not from logic. You may think Christians are stupid but they know what faith is. And they recognise that Atheist have faith in evolution (its the emotional responses that give atheists away). So they recognise that evolution is a competing faith and they think its unfair that someone else's faith gets taught in school and not theirs.

And thats why I say, the Atheists aren't helping in this debate. If you believe in your heart that the theory of evolution is true, thats fine. But don't argue from your belief, because if you do you've already lost. Beliefs should not be taught in school. Don't say that Christians are stupid, because they aren't. They just see something that atheists have, but something all atheists deny: Faith.

The lack of version numbers is just being realistic. No browser is 100% compliant even with HTML 4.01, which has been around for how long now? And when is HTML 4.02 coming out? Seems to me they've abandoned the versions a long time ago. Everyone just uses HTML 4.01.

They can make a HTML 5.00 standard, and have most of the browsers implement 99% of it and then they release 5.01 and the browser makers will get to work implementing that, but totally abandon implementing that last 1% of the HTML 5.00 spec... because they would be too busy implementing 5.01, 5.02, etc. So a Web developer sets a HTML 5.00 doctype, uses a feature that isn't implemented yet hoping that someday browsers may support it. But there is no guarantee they will. So the web developer will just change the doctype to 5.01, 5.02 (or whatever the latest version of the spec is) every time he makes changes to a web page or CMS.

So they're just being realistic. No matter what standard they come up with, it will never be implemented fully by all browsers. Their standard won't be the law, it will be more of a guideline. Having version numbers is pretty pointless when all browsers aren't going to render a HTML 5.01 document exactly the same. Its easier for the web developer to tell the browser that this is a HTML 5 doc and the browser will use its latest code to render the page.

You aren't helping.

The reason that teaching evolution have become controversial is because of the New Atheists. People like you who want to "tell the religious freaks that would have us living in the dark ages to fuck off and die". See that sort of rhetoric makes religious people rightfully feel nervous. They feel like they are under attack by atheists.

And evolution being a core part of New Atheism, is also seen as part of your attack on religion. So the religious see the theory of evolution as an attempt by atheist to turn their children against God.

If you really want evolution taught in schools (I think it should be) then stop throwing insults at the religious. Stop making this issue about "ignorant christians" vs. "intelligent atheists". Because when you try to frame it that way the christians are never going to see your side of things. Calling people ignorant isn't the best way to make them see your point of view.

So you want to know the reason isn't being taught in schools now? Look in the mirror. Maybe putting down other religions makes you feel good about yourself but it sure as hell doesn't help anyone else.

I stopped being a Christian because I saw the whole thing as being a few people at the top telling everyone else what to think for their own personal gain. I stopped being an atheist for the same reason.

You aren't any better than the fundamentalist Christians. You're playing the same game, pissing all over the education system just to mark your turf. The only difference between you and them is that you're on different sides. Some of you believe in God and some of you don't. I wish you'd all just shut the fuck up and let teachers teach science without politicising it.

Democracy is three wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner?

Democracy just isn't just about voting its about human rights too. Otherwise you can simply intimidate a large percentage of the population, kill all members of opposition parties and get elected. Is that still democracy? Well technically, a party that uses these tactics got the most votes, so I guess anything they want to do is all good. Right?

What if the entire media is controlled by allies of the government in power. The news says only bad things about the opposition and only good things about the government. They don't report that the government shut down all media that criticised them.

Too many people have lived all their lives in the developed world and have never seen how democracy works (or doesn't work) in the developing world. You can have all the elections you want but that doesn't mean that people will get the government they want.

Malaysia isn't so bad.