Have you ever met someone who renewed?

Science starts from a position of saying you know nothing and works towards knowledge based on a small set of well thought out principles. Science understands that there are things you know, things you don't know and things you cannot know.

Religion starts from a position of claiming to know everything and works towards eradicating anything that contradicts that position.

Religion is a cult of destruction, science is a cult of creation.

It seems some are claiming they won't consider themselves astronauts if the flight doesn't go above a certain height. Given that they add nothing to the mission other than weight, I say they won't be astronauts no matter how high the flight goes...they are just...ballast.

The weak prey on the weakest.

Eurasia is at war with Oceania. Eurasia has always been at war with Oceania.

Minecraft, Lego, Mechano...all branches on the same tree. I don't have children, but if I did I would rather they play Minecraft than CoD Whatever: The Sequelling.

Best of luck to Notch. Hopefully MS are good stewards of the property.

Give them a live boot disk of Ubuntu or whatever Linux you prefer - wipe their hard drive clean and leave it that way. Lock it down and switch off updates. Give them one or more USB keys to save their data (if they have any). You could I suppose give them a locked USB key that is read only. Put your customised desktop stuff on there for them - you know, a home directory, icons, etc. If they ever mess up bad get them to boot from the Live CD with the read-only key in the drive - step them through copying that onto their trashed key. Go from there.

People like this will never learn, best you can do is lock them down to a given distribution and plan for the day they somehow mess it up.

It seems odd for you to start out by saying that everything I say is wrong, but follow up with points that actually agree with and validate my position.

It really doesn't matter if some scientists actually encourage people to mock those of religious beliefs, because that is just their own personal choice and not one that is demanded by science itself. It's orthogonal to science and has no real place in this discussion. If there was a scientific doctrine that required you to mock religious people, that would be different but there isn't any such thing. I have however been to several churches and heard from a great many religious people that they are the one true faith and even others within their wider faith (Christianity) are basically wrong - or worse, as damned as the atheists, because they are worshipping wrong. They will usually try not to make it too pointed, but it is clear that each has believed that only their denomination has the real truth.

I wouldn't marry a Christian woman, but not for any reason other than I prize a person's ability to follow logic and reason, and by definition any person of faith has given up some or all of those two qualities. That, and the likelihood that they would find it their "devoted Christian duty" to "save my soul" and "preach the word of the Lord" to me. I'm simply not willing to take anything on blind faith, certainly not something as important as that at least.

I do know however that many churches and many other faiths urge their followers to not marry outside the congregation. That is an entrenched and dogmatic position of an authority that you are required to respect - you are given no choice in this matter other than to accept dis fellowship or a lowered social standing. Marriages are quite capable of working across faiths, so long as you respect the other person's beliefs. By outright claiming that your own beliefs are the only correct ones, you automatically put yourself into a divisive position. At best, the only thing a person of faith can say is "these are my beliefs". Scientists are willing to admit the things they do not know, it's a primary tenet of science.

I wouldn't mind at all if my children became Christians, if that was the path they wanted to pursue and that was their core belief. I certainly would never try to prevent them from accessing materials about Christianity or attending a church. The same goes for them becoming Hindus, Islamists, Buddhist, Wikkan or any other religion for that matter. I would only seek to teach them compassion for others, and a solid moral foundation for life. Neither of those two things needs religion to be taught or followed and each is compatible with any and all of the world major religions. I would try to steer them away from superstitions and closed-mindedness - and would consider it a win if those were the only things to managed to convey to them.

As for WWII, that wasn't fought in the name of science. No-one stood on a podium and cried out that we must invade Poland to increase our knowledge of physics theory. It was primarily about grabbing greater power and control of resources for the Axis, mixed with a truly horrendous extermination of not only Jews, but the mentally ill, physically disabled, gypsies, minorities, and other disadvantaged types. People were killed to take control of their lands, confiscate their artwork, silverware, and other goods. It has absolutely nothing whatsover to do with science apart from the fact that science was used by both sides to fight the other.

I would never state that science is objectively morally right. In fact, science is frequently put to completely amoral uses. You can't blame the knife for the uses it is put to. The same drug that relieves chronic pain for millions of sufferers also works great for date rape. That's not science dropping it into girl's drinks...it's people.

It's better to die fighting the crowd than to offer either the guests or your pre-pubescent daughters (unmarried girls at the time were generally unmarried because they hadn't had their first period yet) up for gang rape. This tale is morally bankrupt and the only innocents in it are the daughters who were brutally raped.

The angels could have easily intervened. They did nothing even though they instigated the event.

The father did nothing to protect his family, only himself. The mother is equally liable for doing nothing.

I can't see any reason at all why God would have spared Lot. He is as corrupt or more so than the rest of them.

Thanks SlashDot for removing all the text between the < and > signs.

For the record there were

INSERT NAME OF THE GREAT ADVERSARY HERE

and

INSERT NAME OF SCIENCE DENOMINATION HERE

"These people just misuse science as surrogate religion" ...except, one that has less animal sacrifice, doesn't require us to crucify or torture people who spread the word of science, and doesn't generally lead to book burning and pogroms. We don't have to hold forth the idea that the one true textbook written between 2000-3000 years ago is infallible and anything that contradicts it is from sent to deceive us. Science doesn't demand 10% of your income each week and rarely ever holds a cake sale.

Science doesn't demand we marry other people from the same denomination; marriages between a physicist and a biologist are just as sacred. Science doesn't force us into indoctrinating our children into our faith in the one true meaning of Dark Matter.

Nobody has fought a war to eradicate the filthy heretical . It hasn't raped their wives and children then put them to the sword. It hasn't taken control of their lands and forced the remaining...hmm, let's say biologist (unbelievers!) to work as slaves, and indentured their children and their children's children.

So yeh, science, it's just like religion...apart from all that stuff.

Screenshot or it didn't happen.

Despite having a public gmail account since it was invite only I escaped the list. Password managers FTW!

Well played, sir. I tip my hat to you.

Not likely any time soon. The DK2 has a 1080p display, but due to the extreme field of view this looks more like an old 800x600 display with a screen door effect to boot and chromatic aberration. The CV1 is expected to use a 1440p display, which is a nice step up, but still might not be enough to reduce that screen door effect.

Reading delicate text and fonts in a no-go with a Rift. Everything needs to be scaled up to deal with the low pixel / degree of view factor. Colours wash out slightly as well I think, but that might just be subjective.

If you live in a hot climate you're not going to want to be wearing the Rift unless you have some nice air conditioning. Things can get sweaty or foggy in there.

I think we can expect to see some improvement in display density, and more accurate adjustments for the chromatic aberrations and other artefacts over the next few years. I wouldn't expect to be replacing my desktop display any time soon with a VR display.