So an omnipotent and omniscient being's intent is undone by mere mortals. Good to know we're that powerful. Why didn't The Holy Spirit just take over the body of the writer and make it all perfect and then simply stop anyone from altering those words? I mean, you are infinitely powerful but that's too much effort?

Really? I bet if you described to them that there was something out among the stars that was capable of destroying everything they knew in the blink of an eye without any care or concern or remorse, they would be a lot more interested in it than the moon.

Is not advancing medicine a moral good? I'm sorry, do religious texts not contain medical advise?

Really?! Is that why there's so many versus on what you can and can't eat and what is clean and unclean? Take Leviticus 13:2-5 for example:

So God is going to tell us how to quarantine but not how to use make and use soap? That above passage is about morality and not put in there to save lives?

Really? Surely as a paleontologist, you must realize that we are but a blink in time compared to the Earth's age let alone our Universe's age. Take, for the purpose of discussion, the Christian creation story written by God through man. So Saint Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, etc proposed that the six days of creation were merely a loose framework for what actually happened in the creation of where we are now. How is it that you dig up these fossils of massive beasts easily more impressive than humans in every feature save the brain and yet you never wonder why God didn't tell whoever wrote the Book of Genesis about this amazing history of the Earth and Universe? Why was everything described only the present day stuff in a seemingly random order? Why weren't things that would advance medicine like viruses and bacteria described by God instead of the obvious stuff? Why was something as trivial as the moon described as one of "the two great lights" in Genesis 1:16 while something as important as black holes, dinosaur killing asteroids, super nova, etc didn't even deserve a foot note? Doesn't this vex you endlessly? That an all powerful all knowing being decided to serve us up the stuff we already knew in His codex of life and then to give us a convoluted framework? The skeptic in me feels like you could pull a random paragraph from a Sears magazine and it would do an equally good job of providing a framework creation story for our actual creation.

Lethal force is only okay in very specific scenarios -- usually when lethal force is first presented by the attacker. Could you explain what the New York Times did that warranted the use of hacking? Did the New York Times hack the Chinese government? Did the New York Times even threaten to hack the Chinese government?

Actually, I can think of a good deal many things that are worse than having my leader's integrity challenged. Truth be told, I quite enjoy my leader's integrity being challenged -- especially if there is fact behind it. The Western world enjoys this over-scrutiny of our leaders. Here's a worse scenario than your leader's integrity being challenged: your leader actually is corrupt and nobody's able to investigate it!

The only favor they're doing us by hacking the New York Times is showing the world that they believe their control of the media transcends their national borders. By paying petty lip service to their own laws (which are often subjective and which they feel they are above), the Chinese government is telling the foreign presses that they better fall in step with their mouthpieces or they will be hacked.

It's quite sickening and I find no way at all to view this as acceptable. This is an international attack on our constitutional values -- most notably freedom of speech.

Sorry I should have been more clear. What you're talking about is the permission culture (you need permission to use our code). I was making the argument under the assumption that by committing unlicensed code not everyone needs permission to use it. From the article:

Therefore my discussion was formed using the pre-1976 defaults. Which the article also covered:

So yeah you're right the current premise is post 1976 Copyright Act but I was talking about what it would be like without using an OSS license and pre-1976 like the article presupposes.

Am I missing something? From the article via Twitter:

Ah, yes, eloquently stated. And, you know, it's totally okay to do that but let's assume that you've "fucked" the license and governance and your code is great and popular. Now, what stops a company from taking your code and making massive changes to it and shipping that code for mad moneys? What forces them to give back their changes that might make that code better? What did you and the community gain by contributing to that company's revenue? What if I just took your code and put it on a CD and started selling it with no credit to you and no link or reference to the source code? Wouldn't that rub you the wrong way? Just a little? Well, what if that company then claimed that your code was an unlicensed version of their code and moved to have it remove?

And that's why we have open source licenses. So those are out there and if you're lazy or whatever you can just download this file (or the corresponding OSS license you like) and put it in the root directory of your source tree. Are you really too lazy to include a simple txt file in your source tree? At the possible expense of your $MOST_HATED_COMPANY turning the screws on you?

This article seems to focus on just the "hey browski, I heard you liked code, here's my code" hippy hacker mentality and grievously ignores the "did Facebook just use an altered version of my library to track its mobile users?" possibilities.

To follow the analogy started by the twitter post: OSS licenses are like a condoms. Stop being lazy and just use one.

Slashdot followed briefly a seemingly miraculous device that was almost too good to be true. Have you yourself heard of Rossi's E-Cat machine? Does your foundation also track the physics side of unbelievable things? What is your personal opinion of this device? Does it have all the hallmarks of a fraud?

Sometimes when I see tabloids and crap at grocery stores I wonder if humanity is really making progress in the skepticism department. I think there are more people today that are skeptical of all things paranormal than there were years ago but I believe that only because the population has been increasing. Percentage-wise, I fear we may still be at the level humanity has been at throughout history. You can find writings dating way back of people who were "in the know" about what was fake and what was real. As science has increased our realm of knowledge, it seems that paranormal seekers have just found it in other mediums. So what is your opinion on humanity's track record for belief in the paranormal versus skepticism? Have we made progress? Are we forever doomed to deal with a percentage of the population who want to believe?

Well, as a fellow atheist to another atheist, I recommend you add a few evaluation factors when comparing religions and faiths: power structure, transparency, material cost, financial cost, temporal cost, preservation of individual sovereignty including right to leave and preservation of inalienable rights ... to name just a few.

At least some allow us to document said unethical acts ... hell, the Church's response to child molestation charges against priests was a primary motivator to me leaving organized religion permanently. And, you know, it was super easy to get out of Catholicism ... you should talk to the lucky few who escape Scientology.

Something that bothers me about the singularity is the complete removal of conflict. Okay, we've cheated death eternally, we are merged with machines, nationality is a distant memory and Earth is completely terraformed to be computing space for our vast artificial intelligences. There will no longer be man vs man or man vs environment. Where is the conflict? What causes us to strive for anything? It sounds like a veritable utopia and I should just kick back and let it happen. How will progress be made without conflict?

I've read that you're not worried about climate change as you believe transhumanism will prevail and we will shed this 'natural' world like a used husk by 2045.

So what happens if we don't actually achieve the lofty heights that futurism promises us? What happens if those extrapolations I've seen actually reach a dead end instead of allowing us to last forever and there is no distinction between man and machine? What if we ultimately turn out to be forever mortal individuals and now depend on a decrepit husk we left for ourselves? What then?

I assume that the occurrence of Human Enhancement Technologies (HETs) needs to accelerate for us to hit the singularity in 2045 as you predict. While we cover a lot of them on Slashdot, they either feel like vaporware or just a small improvement on an existing HET. Of the existing technologies in actual use they all seem a decade or more old. So where is the acceleration of HETs and their proliferation? Why am I not seeing more normal humans using HETs or at least more original HET options arising? Can you explain what I'm missing?

I have seen the graphic showing your countdown to the singularity and something I've always wondered is how you picked these events and what makes the significant? For example, your list seems to be made of things that would prolong our existence but entries like "Human ancestors walk upright" and "art, early cities" are confusing in that I don't understand how they can be marked as epic achievements. Are you saying that if we had never learned to walk upright we would not have developed intelligence? Are you saying that early cities were somehow superior to ant colonies? Didn't they help spread disease and cause sanitation problems? Can you convince me that this list isn't just arbitrary things that fit into a line?

Editors of Wikipedia have taken enough care to meticulously log your predictions. Are there any that you regret making? Are there any that you think people overlook because now it's painfully obvious but wasn't at the time?

Yes, hear hear! They are liberating us. But there was something odd from the summary:

Ah, so the "information wants to be free" right up until it's you who has access to the information. We have been liberated from being manipulated "sheep" of the US government and are now part of a flock shepherded by anonymous individuals? And ... uh ... that has gained us what exactly? Out of the frying pan into the fire? If I can't trust the US Government and I can name their members, how can I trust Anonymous whom I cannot name?

Right so that's why whenever Americans appear in a very popular Vietnamese movie the Americans murder and rape everyone? Because it's not like the My Lai Massacre never happened.

All I meant was there are more blatant "all Muslims are bad" productions in American culture than Jabba's Sail Barge. I'm not saying Muslim based terrorism never happened. I'm not saying all Muslims are good. I'm not saying none of them launder money. I'm saying that the most prominent representations of them in movies and TV happen to be solely bad guys. But you can go ahead and list off all those Muslim turban wearing hero movies that Hollywood puts out every year. That'll show me. Hell, name one Hollywood male lead actor who's Muslim.