Google De-indexes Talk.Origins, Won't Say Why UPDATED 575
J. J. Ramsey writes "Talk.Origins is an archive with thousands of pages exposing creationist pseudoscience. Rather mysteriously, Google pulled the plug on its search engine, giving only the vague reason: 'No pages from your site are currently included in Google's index due to violations of the webmaster guidelines.' This was apparently triggered by a recent cracking of the site that added 'hidden links to non-topical sites,' but Google won't say just what the violations were. Talk.Origins webmaster Wesley R. Elsberry believes that this Google policy harms honest webmasters." From the article: "My mission, whether I liked it or not, was to find and fix whatever problem the [Talk.Origins Archive] might have, with no guidance as to what the problem was and nothing at all about where to start looking... I was extremely lucky. The damage to my site was limited and in the first place that I happened to look. Other honest webmasters might not be so lucky. They may have to undertake an arduous process of vetting pages, essentially having to second-guess the mind of the cracker in trying to locate a problem that Google knows the exact location of." Thanks to an alert reader who sent in Matt's blog posting about how Google handles hacked sites.
huh? (Score:3, Funny)
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Re:huh? (Score:5, Informative)
And indeed, as of right now (10:35 PM CST) a Google search for "talk.origins" doesn't show any links at all to the Talk.Origins Archive. In fact, the first link that comes up is to a young-Earth creationist site which claims to offer "intellectually honest responses to the claims of evolutionism's proponents, including--but not limited to--the 'Talk.Origins' newsgroup and the 'Talk.Origins Archive' website."
Conclusions about species competing in crowded niches are left as an exercise to the reader.
Re:huh? (Score:4, Funny)
groups are not google. (Score:2)
Hmm (Score:3, Insightful)
While, I have some sympathy for the guy, just because you think your an honest webmaster does not mean that Google should have to vet you and your content. They have a business to run too. At some point a webmaster has to put themselves in a position to recognize and address these sorts of problems BEFORE Google gets involved.
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Its sad to see a great resource like that hacked and delisted; I wish them a speedy recovery.
Google censoring Usenet? Not! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Google refuses to carry some newsgroups because they deem some ... too controversial.
Like alt.binaries.stockings?
Backups? (Score:3, Insightful)
Or even just MD5 sums of all their pages, once a day, with known updates marked as such.
There should be no reason anyone has to even contemplate manually digging through thousands of pages if they've prepared sufficiently beforehand.
Maybe they'll take some very simple & no-cost precautions now that they've been burned.
Re:Backups? (Score:5, Funny)
Whine, Whine, Whine (Score:5, Insightful)
In the webmaster's whining about Google, he complains about the request to be re-indexed containing:
*I believe this site has violated Googles quality guidelines in the past.
* This site no longer violates Googles quality guidelines.
He thinks these are "an admission of guilt", but they dont' say "I violated" they say "the site violated". So, if the site were hacked and did violate their indexing policy, fix it, say you've fixed it and move on. How many hits has he had over the years that came directly from Google? And did they come from Google due to all those people choosing Google to search for his site or it's topics? But now he whines about being delisted for the time it takes him to fix a site he should have kept unhacked in the first place.
Re:Whine, Whine, Whine (Score:4, Funny)
Brin 3:14 "And Google so loved the internet, that he sent his only-born son Larry Page to it so that any who believe in him shall not perish but have ever-lasting life in the Googleplex."
So you see, there *is* a person, Larry Page, who is also the spider that indexes everything and is also the page that serves up results. Only through this holy trinity could results as good as Google's result, thus proving Google's divinity. If the almighty Google has delisted this sinner's page, then we should not be looking at it in the first place, yes? To go against the wishes of Google brings hellfire!
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Slashdotters threw down their pitchforks and torches in like 1999. It's Microsoft! And we're Slashdot.
Half of us have flamethrowers and high energy lasers equipped at all times, while the rest either own MS stock or work there.
Synopsis (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Synopsis (Score:4, Interesting)
Science is based on a single "article of faith", ie: I belive the real world exists as I and others who inhabit said "real world" collectively percieve it. I can only prove with certainty that I exist and furthermore can only prove it to myself. If I do not have faith in the real world then "others" must be a figment of my imagination, a troublesome state of affairs since the imaginary/real others will declare me a psychopath [google.com] and lock me up in a real/imaginary padded room.
Since I and "others" can observe and agree on things in and about the real world we can create testable theories that can be refined to better fit our observations and accurately predict outcomes. ie: We can practice the scientific method and refine our theories until we reach a (possibly non-existant) point where the only "assumption" is that the real world exists, or as I like to put it the Universe "just is".
So regarding a belief in evolution - The only faith required is the faith that the real world exists.
As for religion, it is based on blind faith, blind since I and "others" cannot percieve the same observations, these observations and associated theories fail the "real world" test because they cannot be demonstrated to "others" using their own perceptions. This does not mean religion is pointless or even psuedoscience, it simply means religion is not comprable to science (apples vs oranges). In my mind making such comparisons entirely misses the point of both endevours.
Psuedoscience, litteraly "fake science" is blind faith dressed in a lab coat. Sure creationism is a theory but it's NOT a scientific one, claiming otherwise is by definition, psudoscience.
Finally the lack of a strong scientific theory for the origin of life does not validate creationisim, nor does it invalidate the theory of evolution.
Bias: I suppose you could argue on some deep philosophical level that faith in the "real world" makes me biased toward...um...the real world, I can only wonder if that automatically means psychopath are unbiased? What does "science is a religion" prove? - I'm biased because science has a demonstratably superior track record of explaining and predicting the real world's behaviour whereas blind faith performs no better than random chance. Is that the kind of "bias" we are talking about here? - Because if it is, I am wondering how a non-phycopath can go to bed confident they will awake on the same planet the next morning?
Short cut to scientific enlightenment: Carl Sagan's book "A demon haunted world". It's also serves as an outstanding example of what a skeptic should be.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Wow, you really are entertaining, you say science has found an "intelligent life" molecule?
As to the point you are failing to make on abortion, how is it more/less hypocritical than "praise god and pass the amunition" or "kill 'em all and let god sort it out"? Also how does the moral status of abortion involve science other than th
Re:Synopsis (Score:5, Interesting)
1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause
2. The universe began to exist
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause
What came before the big bang? That question is meaningless, as time did not exist. So you have a few options, only one of them feasible. The first is that the universe is infinitely old and had no beginning. Once a view of atheists, this is no longer scientifically plausible. The second answer is that the universe came into existence from nothing - absolutely nothing. The third, and most reasonable, is that something else caused the universe to be created. This cause must itself be timeless, and spaceless, as time and space began to exist with the big bang.
So the atheist must either claim the absurdity that the universe came from nothing, or he(/she) must acknowledge that there was something that created it. And that *something* is inaccessible from scientific analysis. It is not, however, too far from the reach of philosophy and logic. We can draw reasonable conclusions about this entity.
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That's the difference between science and fairy stories ( aka Christianity etc ), there is no need to make up stories to explain things for which we have no evidence to back up.
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Re:Synopsis (Score:4, Interesting)
What I really find worrying (hello, 1500's are calling) is the method of reasoning by creationists, like yourself.
A: There was a big bang.
B: We currently don't know what was the cause of this.
C: There must be 'some higher being' that created the universe.
Now A and B do not lead to C, no matter how you reason. If you want to have a drop of credibility, you'll have to support your claims. However, you can not, thus your logic is flawed. What created the 'entity' you speak of? What came before it? Why did it create the universe? If you want to play the science game, you should be answering those questions. Science allows questions to be left open, but tries to answer as many as possible by using facts. Creationism is not, and is unlikely to ever be, scientific or logical. You are allowed to believe in the toothfairy for all I care, but unless you have evidence that a mystical entity is willing to pay for your teeth: keep your belief to yourself.
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Yes, the creator of life on Earth could be a space alien for all what I know, and I know ID as an idea includes this scenario as one possibility. However, the overwhelming majority of people advocating ID do so because they want to further their religious creationist cause. (And assuming an extraterrestrial creator only pushes the original problem o
Understandably confused that some is not all (Score:5, Insightful)
Bzzt. The website admin needs to locate one or more problems (== however many the cracker planted), and Google knows the exact location of at least one. "one or more" >= "at least one". If google tells people where their problems are, google will be playing whack a mole for eternity. There are contractors/services that should be able to help them/anyone, google is not one of them.
Caped Hacker (Score:4, Funny)
probably just bad algorithms (Score:5, Insightful)
With the index sizes that are being collected by search engines these days (on the order of 10 billion entries), it's completely naive to think that some humans are sitting at a terminal choosing to delist websites for some policy reason or other. It's also completely naive to think that a human email monkey can do any sort of digging to find out the exact reason that Google's automated algorithm has censored this particular site.
Instead, Google's engineers have automated algorithms which do all the censorship, and the policy is just there as a thin cover for whatever the algorithm happens to be doing today. It's worse of course, because 1) algorithms change every few months and 2) there's simply no comprehensive way to test the quality of the implementation.
Anyone who's programmed a nontrivial algorithm knows that obscure edge cases are a bitch, and with 10 billion websites, any algorithm will have plenty of obscure edge cases which nobody has ever tested, nor ever will. The most likely explanation is that the website in TFA is a false positive of some subsystem, but fixing it will require changes to the algorithms, and Google don't want to risk that, would you? The problem will probably go away in a few months when the algorithms are scheduled to be updated.
Re:probably just bad algorithms (Score:4, Funny)
They really trademarked that? Shit, they don't really leave people much choice than being good these days.
Google Webmaster Tools (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Google Webmaster Tools (Score:4, Interesting)
The sick thing is that I have Google Adwords on that site so each day that Google don't list me, THEY are losing money. I estimate I get 10x the click through business from MSN search than I do from Google. I'd probably make 3x the profit (as would Google) if they'd index.
Talkorigins hacked by porn spammers (Score:5, Informative)
This is a google cache of talkorgins.org [72.14.203.104] showing the porn spam links.
However, I checked on deepx.com [deepx.com] and it is *not* a porn site.
From DeepX.com's about page:
XML provides an open and flexible language for the creation, management and exchange of electronic content. Founded in 2000, deepX has an experienced team of consultants and developers, who specialise in the design and development of solutions using XML and the emerging technologies related to XML.
Also, another link shows www.theoi.com [theoi.com] and it is *not* a porn site, either:
Here's how THEOI used to look via the Wayback machine. [archive.org]
Theoi.com has been banned by Google (no reason given) and forced to close down as a result. There are no plans to re-establish this site in the future.
wu.edu.gh is Valley View University is a Seventh Day Adventist college in Ghana.
Both deepx.com and wu.edu.gh redirect to porn sites.
Unsurprisingly, wu.edu.gh, theoi.com and deepx.com have been de-indexed by google.
I speculate that all these sites that have been de-indexed were tagged by automated processes.
No Free Consulting (Score:4, Insightful)
Only friends and family get free computer help from me, but I'm rethinking that policy since I spent half a day cleaning the malware off my brother's computer during the last family holiday. He probably won't ask me to do it again, though. When he asked how his system got so infected, I answered (in front of the entire family), "You got infected from all those lesbian porn sites you've been visiting."
Welcome to the Real World (Score:4, Insightful)
Google has several billion pages in their index, and a significant portion of them are spam. Their business model relies on them having internal methods of dealing with web spam and it is not feasible or desirable for them to produce a list of violations to each and every person who runs afoul of their algorithms.
This is far from the most popular or important site this has happened to. Wordpress was delisted, as was BMW, Syndic8, and many others. This guy is using the controversial nature of his subject matter in an attempt to draw more attention. Get in line buddy, there is a long list of people whining all over the web about the same thing. Are you more important because the word Christianity is loosely affiliated with your site? Nope.
Do a little googling yourself and you can pretty easily figure out how to resolve the problem. It takes some time, and there are ways to accelerate the process. If you are that reliant on Google, it is time to start participating in some webmaster communities and figure out how to play ball with the Search Engines. Just like everybody else.
Google emailed this site (Score:5, Informative)
evolution (Score:3, Funny)
I suppose he could be a mutant....and his predecessors are all non-cry babies.
Re:Words are Meaningless (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The problem (Score:4, Insightful)
Well I assume (Score:4, Funny)
Weird, eh?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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Re:The problem (Score:4, Informative)
Also, we can't accurately ascertain whether the earth is the center of the universe or not. It's probably not, but the way space time expands gives no reference point for the point of origin. From any point in the universe, it looks like everything is expanding away from you.
But you are correct, the earth is indeed not flat. It's sort of a squashed sphere.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Telling somebody that their position is wrong is not intolerance. And comparing reasonable discussion and argument to the holocaust is more than a bit silly.
Re:Words are Meaningless - Public Utility (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes. And you were wise to ask. What you're missing is that Google gave him no clue/hint/guide/comment/help on why he was delisted. Just tossed him off, left it to him to discover that this had happened in the first place, left it to him to figure out (guess) what the problem might be, and then only relisted him after they got around to it.
Like it or not, Google has essentially become a Public Utility. They also make great claims of their ethical behavior code. If a site is de
Re:Words are Meaningless - Public Utility (Score:5, Insightful)
People may be treating Google as a public utility, but Google (a private company) has absolutely no obligations to any website.
Ultimately, Google* has the right to change the rules when & if they please, in an arbitrary fashion, without consulting anyone.
*When I say "Google" I mean "the guys who own a majority stake in the company and cannot be overruled"
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Google has no such responsibilities just becuse of the way they're treated by users. (And even if you argue that they're a monopoly, they haven't been granted monopoly status by a government.)
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Re:Words are Meaningless - Public Utility (Score:5, Insightful)
It might be good, but my point is that Google doesn't have to... and maybe shouldn't.
To some extent, part of Google's ability to foil bad website behavior relies on security through obscurity. If Google doesn't tell or hint to anyone how the cheat-detecting algorithms work... well, isn't that good for Google?
I could make the argument that since (as you argued) Google is a public company, they have to do what's best for the shareholders by doing what's best for Google. But that is an irrelevant argument, since there's really only three people whose opinions on the subject matter.
If Google ever did do something along the lines of what you're proposing, they'd have to put a lot of time & effort into setting up a system that can't be easily abused by link spammers, is easy to use for idiots, etc etc etc.
That may be more trouble than it is worth, compared to saying "not our problem, deal with it yourself."
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
To some extent, part of Google's ability to foil bad website behavior relies on security through obscurity. If Google doesn't tell or hint to anyone how the cheat-detecting algorithms work... well, isn't that good for Google?
they dont have to tell anyone how they found the problem, just where. if the webmaster of a site is deliberately trying to cheat google, they already know what pages are in offence anyway.
I could make the argument that since (as you argued) Google is a public company, they have to do what's best for the shareholders by doing what's best for Google. But that is an irrelevant argument, since there's really only three people whose opinions on the subject matter.
then why say it.
If Google ever did do something along the lines of what you're proposing, they'd have to put a lot of time & effort into setting up a system that can't be easily abused by link spammers, is easy to use for idiots, etc etc etc.
not really, if they already have a system to detect anyway. and it doesnt have to be that easy to use for idiots.
That may be more trouble than it is worth, compared to saying "not our problem, deal with it yourself."
on a small scale maybe, but a search engine would want to return the most relevant results. helping sites get relisted would be good for google.
Re:Words are Meaningless - Public Utility (Score:4, Insightful)
But if they tell the webmaster, who might be cheating, (remember, a lot of the exploits out there are actually used by the webmaster) where the problem is, then the cheating webmaster only has to get rid of one exploit and gains insight into the detection methods employed by Google. Then he can leave all the others in place. Wouldn't it be fair to say that the people doing evil is, well, the exploitive webmasters?
Don't hit reply yet...I know this guy was honest, but how in the hell could Google possibly tell who is legit and who is not? Google can't hope to be "fair," only just.
Re:Words are Meaningless - Public Utility (Score:5, Insightful)
PG&E is a public company. ComEd is a public company. Verizon is a public company. AT&T is a public company. They're all public utilities. Simply being a publicly traded for profit corporation doesn't mean that you're not a public utility.
Ultimately, Google* has the right to change the rules when & if they please, in an arbitrary fashion, without consulting anyone.
Yes, but there is something called ethics. Google is held to a higher standard than the Ackbar and Jeff's Falafel and Oil Change Hut because of their unique position of being depended on by hunderds of millions of people the worldwide. Also, Google said they should be held to a higher standard with their "Don't be Evil" slogan.
Did Google act wrong in this case? No. But that doesn't mean that your larger point about corporations are beholden to no one is valid.
Ethics: The users are our customers (Score:5, Insightful)
If a site is designed ( or screwed up ) such that it shows as a result to a query when inappropriate, delivers spam, or ranks higher than the content would warrant, and Google still presents it as a search result, then Google has failed their customer.
Webmasters are not their customers, individuals who are searching are. Ethics says that you give your customers what you promised them. Ethics says you live up to what your stockholders expect by doing what you told them you do: Delivering search results that keep your customers coming back ( and serving them up ads each time ).
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Words are Meaningless - Public Utility (Score:5, Informative)
These companies were all given special monopoly privileges by the force of government. They can run wires, pipes, and other items through your property without your consent, by law. They are required to provide service to all persons in their scope of operation by law. No such law exists regarding Google Inc. and they are not a utility.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Um, actually, no they can't. They can run wires, pipes, etc. through a utility right-of-way if it crosses your property (which is usually provided for in your deed), but for any other use they have to get your permission and compensate you accordingly.
Their "public utility" status does not give them any rights of trespass otherwise.
Re:Words are Meaningless - Public Utility (Score:5, Insightful)
Meanings are meaningless around here... (Score:4, Insightful)
It's funny how the Google apologists are always around on Slashdot to defend Google's (a private company) right to screw anyone, ...
It's also funny how the Google haters are also here to throw stones at every little perceived problem with how Google works. It's funny how they also seem to use Google a lot, despite of them. I wonder why that is. Could it be that Google does what they want it to do? And, is it Google's problem that so many sites have come to the conclusion that their very existence is tied to their Google page rank? If you do not like how Google works, don't use them, and use your site's robots.txt file to exclude them from indexing your site. The more people who use other search engines, the less "power" Google (or any other search engine) has over "the market".
In this particular case, Google gave the webmaster sufficient information to discover the problem. If it wasn't enough for "other honest webmasters", then they aren't particularly competent, in my opinion, which would tend to affect how I felt about their information being relevant, too. A lot of people spend a lot of effort trying to scam their way to the top of the page ranks. And it looks like Google is spending a lot of effort to keep the game "honest".
Google has no stake in my using their service, other than wanting to display advertising to me, just like a TV or radio station. Given that the website in question here is not a paid advertiser on Google, I don't see where they have a responsibility to do anything special for them. Their responsibility is to make money for their stockholders, the same as any other corporation. Their "niche" for doing this is to sell advertising that is displayed to people who willingly come to their site. Their way of making people come to their site willingly is to index pages in as "honest" a way as they can figure out to do. Refusing to index a particular site for dishonest links, whether intentional by the owner or not, makes them more desirable to most of their users.
And a few dozen people bitching about it in a front page story on Slashdot doesn't hurt, either.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It would be the same as Microsoft stopping an application from running under windows.
I disagree this is what's happened but that would be what's being implied by the ancestor posts.
Re:Words are Meaningless - Public Utility (Score:5, Insightful)
Which would be an entirely appropriate response if said application was a virus.
Re:Words are Meaningless - Public Utility (Score:5, Insightful)
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With security mechanisms like that, it doesn't take much to get around them if the mechanism provides automated feedback.
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If the site was blacklisted because of spam links on a specific page, they can just say that. They don't need to list every single violation. Once the webmaster checks out that page, he can fix that and fairly easily search his whole site for similar problems. If you have a big site you have no idea what to look for or where to start otherwise. As it happens, the
Re:Words are Meaningless - Public Utility (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Words are Meaningless - Public Utility (Score:5, Insightful)
Google is in an arms race with spammers and blackhat seo firms. How are they supposed to know whether someone is honest or just mining them for information for their scam?
Re:Words are Meaningless - Public Utility (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not for censoring any information, and I am not trying to defend google. But there may be one very good reason why this may be happenning this way.
Google is at war with search engine spammers. When google de-lists somebody for spamming their search engine, if they gave a specific reason why then all the spammers would do is tweak their spam farm and be up and running in a couple of hours.
If they told this guy what was wrong, they would have to spend a huge amount of time and resources telling why everyone is wrong, all the while helping out the spammers.
Google is a good search engine, but if you notice that if you go beyond a couple of pages out of search results, many times you will find nothing but useless "link farms." Unfortunately, spam is no longer limited to email inboxes anymore, it's everywhere.
Re:Words are Meaningless - Public Utility (Score:5, Insightful)
Security through obscurity is no security at all. The spammers already know Google's weaknesses -- that's why there's so much spam everywhere.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Google should whitelist certain sites if they meet a few criteria.
First off, it should be a valid site listed on Google for a "reasonable" period of time. Second, it should come up as a valid result for a "large" number of searches on relevant terms. Please note terms in quotations which Google could set to arbitrary values in order to make the whitelist manageable.
If
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Could you imagine the liability Google would/could face if what they said this was wrong and it wasn't actualy the entire problem? Or maybe they were incorect about were the problem was but because the spider referenced it, you think they think something is wrong were it isn't?
Why would a company want to be responsible for "your lost reven
Re:Words are Meaningless - Public Utility (Score:5, Funny)
password: ******
Incorrect login for user "root". You got the first and fourth characters correct, and one other character was correct but in the wrong place. Please try again and/or make use of one of the following clues/hints.
You can also try one of the following non-root accounts:
1. admin (8 character password)
2. backup (6 character password, all lowercase letters)
3. johndoe (5 character password)
4. maryjane (7 character password)
Failing that, if you can't remember any passwords this server is located at 1234 Main Street, Anywhere, USA. The server rack key is located in the desk drawer on the second floor in the manager's office. You can boot with a Knoppix CD (inside the rack) and reset the password after mounting the hard drive.
Often, helpfulness is at odds with security.
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So wrong. Electric, gas and hardwire local phone companies are public utilities, and regulated as such, because they are monopolies condoned by government. The reason that they are condoned is because it would be completely inefficient to have duplicate infrastructures, which is what a competing company would have to implement. Furthermore, there is no way for a competing company to enter the same market as a public utility, because of the insane cost of bui
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Can't you people see that you ought to get a clue as to what socialism is [geocities.com] before spouting crap like that?
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Instead he explodes with a "OMGosh, Google is dishonest, you g
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He mentions that it's impossible to get any human response,
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Instead he explodes with a "OMGosh, Google is dishonest, you g
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Hence, we must oppose monopoly. (Score:2)
Similarly, AMD, though it is much smaller than Intel, provided the necessary competition in the x86 market. When Intel ignored the market need for a 64-bit version of the x86, AMD quickly met that ne
Re:ahhh i love it (Score:5, Informative)
You love to whine, don't you? (Score:4, Insightful)
"exposing creationist pseudoscience"...
Slashdot is so biased I don't know why I even bother anymore. Bashing Christians is so fashionable these days.
"Creationist" != "Christian", but don't let that stand in the way of your pretending to feel victimized.
*NOTE- There is no "Christian" wordage in article. (Score:2)
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Yes, (Score:2)
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Re:You love to whine, don't you? (Score:4, Funny)
This seems contradictory to me. Man is part of the world. How does your definition of perfect and sinless make any sense, if man (as part of the world) is able to introduce sin? That's like saying Windows '95 is stable just because it hasn't crashed yet, even though it could if you run an ill-behaved program. Or a Unix machine that's on the internet with remote logins available for root, with no root password is secure, just because no one's logged in and done anything malicious yet.
So he made the world, thought it was secure, then man hacked in, jesus realized he fucked it up the first time, so he released a fix? And you worship this dude as being the best? Oh, plus then there's all those little undocumented patches that the church slipstreamed in over the years. Sounds like the christian influence is what ruined the software industry!
Re:ahhh i love it (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds like you blew the cover there, dude.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I'm pretty sure that if you ask an imam [islam.tc] you'll find that Christians aren't the only creationists. And that hair gel is permissible.
Re:ahhh i love it (Score:5, Insightful)
ha ha ha ha. Yes, in ID the creator must only be someone eternally existing with the ability to manipulate all matter in the universe at will.
But diety [sic].... no!
In case you missed it, in ID it must be a deity, or else who created the creator? If life can not come from non-life, then there must be some eternally existing intelligence to kick things off (aka God). So either you don't understand the theory, or you are lying.
You have to love when a theory tries to sound more sane by saying "but... it could be space aliens too!"
Is there anything I'm missing there about ID?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I know this sounds logically weak (as do a lot of topics dealing with religion), but a long time ago it was a belief of science that the solar system was heliocentric and a belief of religion (at least the Catholic Church) that it was geocentric. Now we know it's heliocentric, and it's a concern of neither science nor religion. Similarly, if we can somehow know that there's a Creator, it
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Of course, we can predict and test for the differences between industrial and natural diamond. I'm sure we can do the same for at least some classes of artificially created/managed universes.. but there doesn't seem to be much of that in any of the ID "theory" I've seen. Almost as
Re:ahhh i love it (Score:5, Insightful)
If you say that that's a metaphysical question that cannot be answered, why not just skip the whole designer/creator bit and say that you are not interested in physical modeling of the world. Invoking an extremely improbable super-being to explain the world is very unhelpful. That's what earlier civilizations did: thunder was Thor riding in his carriage in the sky etc
What the ID followers want is a return to that using the logic "I don't understand it so it must be God's work."
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There just being a creator tells us nothing. It doesn't say if it is a Sumerian creator or Greek creator or alien creator and hence it tells us nothing about morality or the "purpose to life". If you want to claim that it is a specific
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The really nice thing about evolution is that unlike the designer hypothesis doesn't end with an infinite regress. The fundamental principle of natural selection is self-explanatory to such a degree that there
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AFAIK all Christians don't buy the pseudoscience but I believe in Newton so I'll stay out of that
however I do think we should change Dec 25 to 'blaim America first' day
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'Cause I fuckin' hate those people.
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Let me put it this way:
An atheist is someone who agrees with Christians that Zeus, Odin, Shiva, and countless other gods don't really exist, but disagrees about the existence of the Christian God.
An agnostic is someone who admits the possibility of any combination of those gods existing, through humility, tolerance, apathy, or any other reason.
The "anti-God" vision of the atheist is just a stereotype. Typical atheists don't have any particular preference for one god over another; they disbelieve in th
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Christians, Muslims and Jews believe in (some interpretations vary) creationism as do countless other religions. I don't want to say that a certain interpretation of the creationistic acco
Re: Some countries consider it hate speech. (Score:4, Insightful)
Can you call our attention to any creationist claims that have ever been made on talk.origins that didn't deserve to be dismissed out of hand?
> This blind faith in popular theories is not just restricted to theoretical physics but also appears in the biological sciences as well. Science is supposed to be a tool for discovery. It is not supposed to supply the meaning of life
Biology is no more concerned with the meaning of life than geology or meteorology is.
It's just that some peoples' world views are threatened by the facts that biology has uncovered.
> or delve into things which are best left to philosophers and theologians given our current state of technology.
I don't know of any question best left to philosophers and theologians. If it's not supported by evidence, it's just someone's opinion.