Forgot your password?

typodupeerror

Comment: Re:God's experiment in free will (Score 1) 1137

Why would a "God" need to perform an experiment, when He already knows the outcome?

I've seen a rabbi asked about reconciling the notion of human free will with the idea that God is omniscient about the future. His response was, "Where does it say that God is omniscient?". The concept of a "perfect" (omniscient and omnipotent) God is, I believe, a Greek idea that eventually made it in to Christianity (and much later, in to Judaism as well)

Comment: Re:Simple solution (Score 1) 429

by Dragonslicer (#40066553) Attached to: Ultra-Orthodox Jews Rally For a More Kosher Internet

Under threat of being labelled racist or anti-semitic, most businesses would bend over backwards or even take a loss under threat of that particular label.

I'd be interested in seeing an example of a food manufacturer being called racist or anti-semitic because they don't have their products certified as kosher. Granted, I've always been part of pretty liberal Jewish communities, but the worst I've seen is "Oh, that's too bad" or occasionally some mild complaining.

Comment: Re:They'd better not discover Reddit (Score 1) 429

by Dragonslicer (#40066515) Attached to: Ultra-Orthodox Jews Rally For a More Kosher Internet

Judaism prohibits eating pork. I don't know whether or not it would prohibit washing with it (unless you like eating soap.)

Depending on who you ask, it might be okay, but the major problem would be the fact that it would be on your hands, which you often use to eat. I had one rabbi that explained it pretty well by simply saying, "Kashrut only applies to food." I don't know what she would say about bacon soap, though.

Comment: Re:I'm torn (Score 1) 429

by Dragonslicer (#40066397) Attached to: Ultra-Orthodox Jews Rally For a More Kosher Internet

Your superstition guarantees you paradise if you obey, so nothing you to other than religious obedience matters. Your physical life is nothing at all compared to eternity so you have no reason the cherish it.

I'm not sure what version of Judaism you're looking at, but clearly it's one that Jews don't know about. Judaism has practically no concept of an afterlife. There are brief mentions of the possibility in later writings, but that's about it. Jewish law is almost entirely concerned with your actions in your "physical life". Any instance of something in the Torah that we would call a "thought crime" tends to draw a lot of commentary because it's so rare. Other than the death penalty, the punishment for most serious crimes is to be separated from the community. There is never any crime that is punished by being sent to Hell.

Comment: Re:AI Chip (Score 1) 325

by Dragonslicer (#40043011) Attached to: 'Inexact' Chips Save Power By Fudging the Math

At a higher level, it's an estimate of depth perception vs. how fast you think you can walk (or run) across that street. No math involved, just spatial guesstimates of that brain of yours.

You mean comparing a perceived distance and speed of an object to the distance you think you can travel in the amount of time it would take for that object to travel the perceived distance at its perceived speed? Because that sounds a little like math.

Comment: Re:generally good news, but not entirely (Score 1) 46

10% by page count of a work fewer than 10 chapters, or up to one full chapter for a work with 10 or more chapters. Does this still hold if presses start deliberately putting out books with a ton of really short chapters?

Contrary to popular opinion here on Slashdot, judges generally aren't stupid. They also generally hate being screwed with. If it was obvious that a publisher was trying to abuse the rule for works with more than 10 chapters, it's highly likely that a judge would simply refuse to apply that rule.

Comment: Re:You can automate totals, not faxts. (Score 1) 101

by Dragonslicer (#39980865) Attached to: Could a Computer Write This Story?

You can't make a computer make the decision whether the play was a hit by the batter or an error by the fielder yet.

This sentence seems to be implying that the newspaper reporter is the one that decides whether to score a play a hit or an error. The article is about automated generation of newspaper articles, not computer-refereed sports.

Talking about music is like dancing about architecture. -- Laurie Anderson

Working...