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Comment Re:Free Will != Unpredictability (Score 1) 608

by kintin (#24647173) Attached to: Do Subatomic Particles Have Free Will?

If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck and looks like a duck, it's a duck.

There's a difference between subjectively sensing the "duck" and a duck actually existing. There is a palpable difference between the reality we sense and the reality that actually exists, as has been proven many times by science.

You have to be careful equating our experience of reality with reality itself, because everyone's reality is different... sometimes with gross incompatibilities. Just because you've "seen" or "heard" something, doesn't mean you actually saw or heard it. It means your brain registered it, and there's a pretty big disconnect between that and objective reality. Even worse, it boggles most conceptions of the universe that multiple, valid "realities" are hanging around; either there's an objective reality we perceive imperfectly, or we live in a completely chaotic universe where the only reason we think it makes sense is we "remember it making sense"... as if memory makes sense.

Empiricism seems like a common-sense way to shut up all these nerdo philosophy/physics kids, but empiricism tends to be the enemy of intelligent discourse these days.

GnuCash 2.0.0 Released 282

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the as-long-as-they-have-support-for-very-small-balances dept.
tashanna writes "After a very welcome GTK2 conversion and some additional feature hacking, GnuCash has released version 2.0.0. Other notable changes include: 'OFX DirectConnect which can directly retrieve and import account statements over the Internet, a "Hide account" feature to keep a better overview of your current accounts tabbed window functionality, the ability to create budgets within GnuCash using your account data, support for Accounting Periods, the data file format has been improved with respect to international characters data files with international characters can be transferred to other countries flawlessly, GnuCash Help and Guide are now fully integrated with the GNOME Help system (Yelp).'"

USPTO to Use Peer to Patent Program 124

Posted by Zonk from the just-wish-they'd-started-it-sooner dept.
An anonymous reader writes "DailyTech is reporting that the US Patent and Trademark Office is going to start using the Peer to Patent program. From the article:' The US Patent and Trademark Office has been getting praise for officially launching the Peer to Patent program -- the purpose of Peer to Patent is to find patents that have been issued for already made products or items that don't properly qualify for a patent. Because the USPTO usually does not have the manpower and time to thoroughly check every patent that comes into the office, many are unjustly rubber stamped.' The program will utilize a Wiki, among other tools, to get the job done."

Microsoft's IE7 Search Box Bugs Google 803

Posted by CmdrTaco from the now-wait-a-minute dept.
tessaiga writes "The New York Times reports that Google is crying foul over a new IE7 search box feature that defaults to MSN Search. Although the feature can be modified to use Google or other search engines, Google asserts that "The best way to handle the search box [...] would be to give users a choice when they first start up Internet Explorer 7." Google goes on to assert that the move "limits consumer choice and is reminiscent of the tactics that got Microsoft into antitrust trouble in the late 1990s". I notice that in my version of Firefox the search box defaults to Google, and that the pulldown menu of pre-entered options doesn't even include MSN Search, but Google seems to have been oddly quiet on that front for the many years prior to IE7 that Firefox has made this feature available."

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"And remember: Evil will always prevail, because Good is dumb." -- Spaceballs

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