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Comment Yet another religous apologist? (Score 1) 1123

by gunne (#32391324) Attached to: What Scientists Really Think About Religion

So, what's Elaine Ecklund's religion?

Religion has absolutely no place in science. When religion gets the chance, as has been shown again and again, it tries to tell us unscientific facts about the world.
To say that religion doesn't make any claims about the physical world is either false, or produces a religion with nothing in it.

Can't we just outgrow fairy tales as a way to explain the world already?
Earth

Officials Sue Couple Who Removed Their Lawn 819

Posted by kdawson from the revenge-of-the-lawn dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "The LA Times reports that Orange County officials are locked in a legal battle with a couple accused of violating city ordinances for replacing the grass on their lawn with wood chips and drought-tolerant plants, reducing their water usage from 299,221 gallons in 2007 to 58,348 gallons in 2009. The dispute began two years ago, when Quan and Angelina Ha tore out the grass in their front yard. In drought-plagued Southern California, the couple said, the lush grass had been soaking up tens of thousands of gallons of water — and hundreds of dollars — each year. 'We've got a newborn, so we want to start worrying about her future,' said Quan Ha, an information technology manager for Kelley Blue Book. But city officials told the Has they were violating several city laws that require that 40% of residential yards to be landscaped predominantly with live plants. Last summer, the couple tried to appease the city by building a fence around the yard and planting drought-tolerant greenery — lavender, rosemary, horsetail, and pittosporum, among others. But according to the city, their landscaping still did not comply with city standards. At the end of January, the Has received a letter saying they had been charged with a misdemeanor violation and must appear in court. The couple could face a maximum penalty of six months in jail and a $1,000 fine for their grass-free, eco-friendly landscaping scheme. 'It's just funny that we pay our taxes to the city and the city is now prosecuting us with our own money,' says Quan Ha."

Comment Re:Subset of logic, debate (Score 1) 1142

by gunne (#31072422) Attached to: If Everyone Had To Pass A Particular 101 Course, It Should Be About...

Debate is in no way a subset of logic.
You could call it a subset of rhetoric (from wikipedia: Rhetoric normally explains the three arts of using language as a means to persuade.), though.

I wonder if the debate classes usually taught in US schools actually harms students' logical and skeptical thinking? A winner of a debate need in no way have the facts on his/her side, he/she just needs to be more persuasive and a better speaker.
Android

Google's Nexus One, a Steal At $49 Unlocked? 311

Posted by kdawson from the such-a-deal dept.
gjt writes "I initially posted a piece ragging on the Nexus One. But then a commenter pointed out a problem with my initial logic, and after doing some math I concluded that the $529 unlocked/unsubsidized Google Nexus One gPhone is much cheaper than it appears to be. In fact it's only $49 over two years — and that's unlocked! Google likes to say that the Nexus One represents 'Our new approach to buying a mobile phone.' But it actually seems as though T-Mobile deserves most of the credit by providing a $20/month discount to customers who purchase an unsubsidized phone, a fact that didn't seem to get much attention when T-Mobile created the plan last October."
Movies

Columnist Fired For Reviewing Pirated Movie 466

Posted by CmdrTaco from the don't-mess-with-rupert dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "Roger Friedman, an entertainment columnist for FoxNews.com, discovered over the weekend just what Rupert Murdoch means by 'zero tolerance' when it comes to movie piracy. On Friday, the film studio 20th Century Fox — owned by the News Corporation, the media conglomerate ruled by Mr. Murdoch — became angry after reading Friedman's latest column, a review of 'X-Men Origins: Wolverine,' a big-budget movie that was leaked in unfinished form on the Web last week. Friedman posted a mini-review, adding, 'It took really less than seconds to start playing it all right onto my computer.' The film studio, which enlisted the FBI to hunt the pirate, put out a statement calling Friedman's column 'reprehensible' while News Corporation weighed in with its own statement, saying it had asked Fox News to remove the column from its Web site. 'When we advised Fox News of the facts,' the statement said, 'they promptly terminated Mr. Friedman.'"
Programming

Evolution of Mona Lisa Via Genetic Programming 326

Posted by kdawson from the but-the-target-was-given dept.
mhelander writes "In his weblog Roger Alsing describes how he used genetic programming to arrive at a remarkably good approximation of Mona Lisa using only 50 semi-transparent polygons. His blog entry includes a set of pictures that let you see how 'Poly Lisa' evolved over roughly a million generations. Both beautiful to look at and a striking way to get a feel for the power of evolutionary algorithms."
The Internet

Wikimedia Simplifies By Moving To Ubuntu 215

Posted by kdawson from the all-eggs-one-basket dept.
David Gerard writes "Wikimedia, the organization that runs Wikipedia and associated sites, has moved its server infrastructure entirely to Ubuntu 8.04 from a hodge-podge of Ubuntu, Red Hat, and various Fedora versions. 400 servers were involved and the project has been going on for 2 years. (There's also a small amount of OpenSolaris on the backend. All open source!)"
Education

Royal Society and Creationism In Science Classes 892

Posted by kdawson from the less-than-intelligently-designed-proposal dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The Reverend Professor Michael Reiss, a biologist and Anglican priest, is the education director for the Royal Society, the venerable British science institution. He recently called for creationism to be discussed in science classes, not just in religion or philosophy classes. Science journals reacted with a world of 'WTF' and the Royal Society backpedaled furiously. Now Nobel laureates are gathering to get him fired: 'The thing the Royal Society does not appreciate is the true nature of the forces arrayed against it and the Enlightenment for which the Royal Society should be the last champion.' The blogs, of course, are loving it."
User Journal

Journal Journal: Oracle's Second Bid for BEA Succeeds

Journal by jdray
On the heels of news that Sun has acquired MySQL, it seems that Oracle has succeeded in its efforts to slurp up middleware maker BEA for US$8.5 billion, or $19.375 per share. What this means for rival IBM and its WebSphere product is unclear, as is the impact that this merger will have on the future of enterprise computing. Oracle has been on a march in recent years to acquire more a
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft bought Swedens ISO vote on OOXML ?

Submitted by a_n_d_e_r_s
a_n_d_e_r_s writes: The vote on OOXML looked fairly secured for a No vote in Sweden. Most in the Working Group In Sweden was against the vote to approve OOXML. Suddenly on the day of the vote more companies showed up at the door, some 20 more companies — each one payed about $2500 to be allowed to vote — and vote they did. Most of the new companies was strangely enough partners from Microsoft who suddenly out of the blue joined the working group, payed membership fees and voted yes for approval.

From being a fairly negative group the working group suddely had a huge majority of yay-sayers who voted for Sweden to approve OOXML as an ISO standard.

For those that want to buy the Swedish vote on an ISO standard — it only cost about $50 000 — its not too much money for anyone that want there own bought and payed for ISO standard.

This has started to brew in Sweden and the newspapers are right now starting to write about the coup against the SIS — Swedens Standards Institute http://www.sis.se/ . The workings groups position can be changed if the power to be at SIS wants to — so its not over yet.

OS2World writes about it:

http://www.os2world.com/content/view/14868/1/

Patrik Fältströms blogg about it:

http://stupid.domain.name/node/382

Feed Note To Self: Don't Store Top Secret Military Data In Porn Folder (techdirt.com)

From feed by techdirtfeed
While the US gov't may have trouble keeping track of important computers with sensitive information, there's just something extra special about the way top secret information leaks in Japan. There were, of course, the nuclear secrets leaked via a file sharing program, after an outside contractor was allowed to use his personal computer to store the documents. The latest seems almost as bizarre. Apparently top secret information on Aegis destroyers were passed among a few petty officers in Japan's Maritime Self-Defense Force, after one such officer copied the porn directory from a colleague's computer. This raises all sorts of questions, but the biggest one has to be: what person thinks that they'll hide top secret military documents in a porn folder and assume that that's the least likely place that people will end up looking?

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