So your god is nothing but an abstract concept which has about the same power to throw your ass into hell as a Riemann integral
Abstract concepts have amazing powers. Take right and wrong, true and false for example. Hell is when you are ignorant of the power of these concepts.
Quote from: Macallan
Quote from: ersi
But it's okay. Even Bertrand Russell, a formidably subtle thinker mostly, fell inescapably back into gross reasoning whenever God was mentioned. He assumed that a giant teapot in the sky sufficiently refutes any notion of God. This from the guy who made a considerable contribution to set theory...
I'll take Missing The Point By A Mile for $1000, Alex.
Russell's argument fails to address the immaterial. Thus missing the point.
Yes... the validity of the arguments, indeed... How much does your God weights? One kilogram? two kilograms? a tonne? can't be weighted? he doesn't exist. The cumulus of "valid" thinking.
How much does God weigh? Hmm, hard to answer taking into consideration the lack of gravity in His habitat.
The concept of immaterial is worth taking seriously. Question about weight is a contradiction of terms when concerning the immaterial world.
Some examples about immaterial are mathematical objects and logic itself. You can't say that these things don't exist. You use them daily and they are indispensable. Therefore they exist. Yet they weigh nothing and can't weigh anything. They have no location, speed, or change of form. They are immaterial.
Everything eternal and logically necessary is immaterial. Such as the concepts of cause and effect - they are just concepts, but you can't take a single breath without them.
But it's okay. Even Bertrand Russell, a formidably subtle thinker mostly, fell inescapably back into gross reasoning whenever God was mentioned. He assumed that a giant teapot in the sky sufficiently refutes any notion of God. This from the guy who made a considerable contribution to set theory...
the highly questionable default user interface setups and looks (that kept changing all the time)
I used Opera since version 7, and it indeed kept changing the UI even then for no good reason. When I got accustomed to the theme being blue, it was turned black in Opera 10.
I somewhat avoided this particular trouble by creating my own interface. I created my own toolbar, menus, and keyboard shortcuts files and moved them from one version to next as I upgraded. This way I could keep pretty much the same custom interface across versions.
Of course I agree that it's wrong in principle to introduce new defaults and force them on users with upgrade. Opera did something like this with pretty much every major version, but it was possible to live with it because until v.11 Opera was generally adding features, not removing them. V.12 is just broken 11, and the Blink versions are just Chrome/ium skin, a different product that should have a different name too, for clarity and honesty.
I have a suspicion Opera might be made into a textbook on how not to do things. Trashing the browser and getting rid of much of the community can't help but make for rough sledding, if not the outright ending, of the browser and the company.
Other textbook cases that can be readily cited are Netscape and Nokia.
So you are actually beginning to like it, j7n? Must be Stockholm syndrome...
Here's some quotes from a rant. I already read its years-old earlier version "The decline of the Opera Web browser" but now the text has been updated to "The death of Opera".
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For years, it cost money. They later gave you the choice to run it for "free" by being subjected to advertisements. Even so, I felt that it was superior to the rest in enough ways to use it. Even with the highly questionable default user interface setups and looks (that kept changing all the time), it was still the browser I preferred over the others. It was anything but perfect, but the miserable competition made it shine like a star. At least this is how I and quite a few others perceived it.
At some point, I guess they got sick of having such an extremely small (relatively) market share and changed their business model yet again... As I understand it, they had already for many years received money for their trashy default bookmarks. That'd be OK if it weren't for the fact that, unless my memory is playing tricks on me, it would sometimes add back the garbage bookmarks when you upgraded, mixed in with your existing bookmarks. Very annoying and an ominous sign of what to come.
I'm not saying that it became worse at rendering pages or noticeably slower than before, or that there weren't any welcome additions and improvements in its last years (because there certainly were) — it was just gradually made more and more obnoxious in a very disturbing manner... There really is no point in listing everything they did wrong. You get the picture. Toward the end, I really starting to dread each update of Opera instead of looking forward to them.
Summary of its death and aftermath
In early 2013, the Opera developers announced that they were dumping their own rendering and JavaScript engines in favour of WebKit and Chromium's V8. They assured everyone that nothing would change and that this would allow them to "focus on making the browser great".
A few months later, there was a new announcement revealing that the new Opera, 15 (they skipped generations 13 and 14), is in fact just a Chrome skin. With no bookmark support. Or mail. Or RSS. Or chat. Or any feature at all that Chrome doesn't already have. In other words, what they said earlier was a lie.
Only after countless useless, unbelievably arrogant blog posts with more bullshit and half-assed "damage control", did they sort of cave in and said they would bring back bookmarks "in some form". However, it's just too late.
For me Opera will be dead as of next year. Let them release the Linux version. I see no reason to install it. Chromes are pointless. We'll see if distro teams upload the thing to their repositories for easy access as the old version has been. Chrome is not there...
For example, IsoBuster offered a choice between Win2000 (my choice) and XP icons (like seen on the toolbar). People can pick either. No big deal.
Opera had a campaign of sorts at version 7.5 or so. Version 7 came with terribly overwhelming and confusing default interface. This was easily remedied by right-clicking and hiding unnecessary buttons, but the campaign offered downloadable skins and "setups" (toolbars and menus - like extensions these days) to make Opera's interface instantly look like IE, FF or something else. This was an absolutely brilliant way to configure it. I think user base grew rapidly at that time. At least the forums membership exploded.
Configurability of the interface was always my favourite feature of Opera. Sad that they never knew how to capitalise on it properly and have now given it up altogether. For me the decline in the interface became evident when they introduced the totally unnecessary O button that was intentionally made different from all other buttons, hard to remove.
Three days later Frenzie keeps on thinking about. This is promising...
Looks like predicting the outcome was easy. Reductionist materialism does not admit logical and conceptual analysis as a valid form of proof. This is the problem of atheism: Simply not interested in the entire realm of existence. If reality remains undefined and unclear, then so there cannot be any proof for or against the reality of God. Neither for or against. All claims that God is unreal are as vain as the opposite claims, as long as reality or existence remain undefined.
Let's try this one then: Any consistent agnostics here?
Surrounded by philosophical statements we find here a denial of philosophy.
Philosophy has clarified many definitions for me. I recommend methodical thinking to everyone plagued by doubts and caught at inconsistencies too often. Philosophy and logic are a matter of practising thought, they are practical.
From what I have seen, you are unfamiliar with the philosophical discourse, so, for a start, I am offering you an opportunity to catch up with logic and terminology. Anyway, no surprise if you are not interested. It's not easy or particularly interesting to make the effort to make sense as much as possible.
If the philosophical discourse you refer to displays the same disdain for accuracy and truth as yours or William Lain Craig's, it will only make sense as long as it's unconstrained by both. Unlike some atheists I certainly don't think that makes it useless, but it means you can often be just as egregiously wrong as a physicist speaking outside of their area of expertise when you confuse your thought experiment for reality. Especially if you consequently make claims about reality based on the results of your thought experiments.
Okay, let's begin
I'm perfectly okay with your insistence to not confuse a thought experiment with reality, but what is missing in this is your definition of reality. Now, here's a thing that may seem subtle, so please pay attention. If you refuse to define reality, then the discussion ends here, because you are unwilling to cooperate. The cooperation is necessary in order to avoid misunderstandings. And it's important to avoid misunderstandings in the ensuing discussion, right?
However, be aware that if you proceed with defining reality, you will be engaging in a pure thought experiment. And I will examine your thought experiment critically so as to determine its relevance, logical consistency, accuracy, applicability. I will do this precisely because by attempting to define reality you undertook a thought experiment that must not be confused with reality itself. In other words, I will be doing with your concepts and definitions exactly the same thing that you said you would do to me.
Then again, no proper science project escapes peer review. And surely you want to think of yourself as rigorously scientific and impeccably logical.
It will get bantayed, if you support Krauss. I won't support Craig. He only serves as a readily available example for you to you get into the philosophical discourse. He is a perfectly legitimate philosopher. There are legitimate religious scientists too. It's just that argument from authority is among my least favourite tactics, so I endorse none of them.
From what I have seen, you are unfamiliar with the philosophical discourse, so, for a start, I am offering you an opportunity to catch up with logic and terminology. Anyway, no surprise if you are not interested. It's not easy or particularly interesting to make the effort to make sense as much as possible.
I don't believe the word "nothing" even means anything in physics.
Indeed, it would not qualify as a proper scientific term, if the physicist would be able to keep purely to his own empirical domain. I remember school physics just fine, even though it was among my least favourite subjects. Atomism (particle physics) never made sense to me, so I clearly remember the pain of being forced to study it.
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tl;dr Scratch everything your straw-physicist says and you're right on target.
One specific specimen of a physicist who has vocally committed himself to the mistake I describe is Lawrence Krauss. He is doing it in this discussion with your idol Dawkins http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eY1pDkP9Qxk and in a more gross form in his debate with religious philosopher William Lane Craig. Krauss quotes others in support of himself, so he is evidently not alone.
Just wanted to say that one can and should consider a third metaphysical category that encompasses both existence and non-existence as well as much more beyond human capacity of reasoning, which is God.
The first hurdle is to get people to admit that conceptual metaphysical categories and distinctions like this are meaningful in the first place. Then we can begin defining the concept of God in mutual consensus. It will be most convincingly right when it makes sense from the beginning to the end.
Logical proof is indispensable when talking about invisible but extant entities. Atheists acknowledge logical inference readily when they theorise a new planet or particle, but when discussing the concept of God, they quickly descend to denial of logic altogether. Quite unfortunate that it often doesn't get past the first hurdle.
I hope this thread won't get bantayed. Thanks for support, Belfrager
The problem with religion is that it's misunderstood. But it's not religion's problem. For example science is also misunderstood. People misunderstand the purpose and scope of science and the same with religion. Big things are not easy to understand.
To me understanding is important. This has led me to religion, because religion helps to understand and cope with more things than science and philosophy combined ever could. Religion is not about faith for me, but about understanding, about knowing. Those who think religion is about faith and believing may well misunderstand me now. It's okay. Big things are not easy to understand. I don't understand religion completely either. For example I honestly don't understand the church-going part, the liturgy, congregational activity. But church-going seems to attract many, so it must be lack of understanding on my part.
I hope honest atheists also acknowledge when they don't understand things. With an honest seeker's attitude, some amazing answers open up.
Here's one insight into philosophy (religion is completely philosophical for me) for those who are interested. There's this word 'nothing'. But there's a serious difference between the physicist's nothing and the philosopher's nothing. The physicist's nothing means 'can't detect anything', but the philosopher's nothing is the true nothing, whose detection is a logical contradiction of terms by definition: 'Nothing' is that which doesn't ontologically exist. Then again, 'nothing' is conceptually there among the metaphysical categories - in the category of non-existence. Existence is another metaphysical category that includes everything that exists.
The difference is subtle, so it needs further clarification: The physicist's nothing exists, but the philosopher's nothing doesn't. The physicist's nothing exists, because he has his instruments somewhere attempting to detect something, but when nothing is detected, the physicist says: "There's nothing there." So, for him, in that place (which exists) there's nothing. For the philosopher, however, if there's nothing, then even the place doesn't exist where to perform the experiment. The philosopher's nothing means true radical non-existence. If the place exists where to perform the experiment, then it's definitely 'something' for the philosopher, even when nothing is detected there.
There are some important corollaries to this. The (non-philosophical) physicist doesn't speak or think about things that don't exist. He only speaks and thinks about things that exist. Among things that exist there is empty space where "there's nothing there". So, the physicist speaks in terms of objects that can be detected. When it cannot be detected, it's 'nothing' for him.
The philosopher, on the other hand, is well aware of the category of non-existence and can freely speak about it. Non-existence is a whole metaphysical category which, by definition, cannot be empirically detected - even more, to talk about such detection is a logical self-contradiction. The other major metaphysical category is the category of existence. In this category, the philosopher places the physicist's nothing as 'things that cannot be detected'. The logically opposite class to this are 'things that can be detected'. Both classes of things exist, but one of them can't be detected.
The physicist, if he is non-philosophical and careless in logic, may easily equate existence with detection and, conversely, non-detection with non-existence. For him existence means the detectable objects. The common sense is on the side of the philosopher here: Yes, there obviously are things we don't know about yet. Among the reasons why we don't know about things we don't know about, non-existence is one, but it's not the only reason. Another reason why we don't know about some things is because we haven't detected them yet, just like a cautious physicist may suspect.
Still, there are more reasons for non-detection. Another reason can be a wrong presupposition. Some things don't exist as objects, yet they definitely exist. For example, there are qualities of things, such as shape or size that can be expressed numerically, but shape, size or numbers themselves do not exist objectively. They cannot be placed in the category of non-existence. They are indispensable in our analysis of detectable objects. In fact, those qualities are so important to us that we have an objective mode of existence for them - language.
So, there are modes of existence. Objective existence is not the entire existence. There are ways to explore the non-objective mode of existence, but this is out of reach of physics. As I observed in the beginning, the philosopher discerns a clear distinction between non-existence and undetectable existence. This distinction is indiscernible for the physicist, if he is not a careful enough thinker, but I suppose I have shown clearly enough how this distinction itself is important.
These kinds of distinctions are arrived at by means of logical and conceptual philosophical analysis. The metaphysical categories is an example of such analysis. It's a way to "detect the undetectable". There are even more ways, but when you are materialistically and atheistically bent, you would not be interested in those ways. Reductionist materialism does not admit logical and conceptual analysis as a valid form of proof. This is the problem of atheism: Simply not interested in the entire realm of existence. "When it can't be detected, it doesn't exist."
I agree with the upmost comment: "Why is it that I can listen to a slightly insane, ex-junkie, comedian/actor, and hear more sense in an eight and a half minute interview than I have heard from any politician in the whole of my life?"
As to the warehouse thing, tomorrow I will send some Xmas parcels and cards to a few friends around the world. I hope the work ants in the mail centres do their job.
If you look at a longer URL it has some useful information, and a lot of gunk, some which is of interest to the site owner and not the user (e.g. which Facebook page that referred to it, or for searches that Opera should get percentages of search income).
Do you mean to say that it's of no interest to the user if he's being tracked or exploited?
I think there is some cleverness unused in this field, but the problem with cleverness is that one day it is going to bite you. One such cleverness would be to take advantage of history, the parts of the URL that change when you go from one page to the next are more likely to be useful than the parts of the URL that don't.
Agreed. The original solution - one complete untouched string - has been the best all along.
But to attribute the statements of Opera developers, certain incongruous details within change logs, or "official" statements by Opera to a conscious process of lying, deliberate deception[snip]
That's not what I'm suggesting, so I probably expressed myself poorly.
I personally suggest precisely this: They are deliberately deceiving and lying. And I effectively said so in my own post in the thread. No reason to put it in stronger words, I was blunt enough.
The deception deserves to be uncovered by the means available to us (within the limits of reason and conscience of course). I personally am not afraid to throw the hooks of their propaganda (which is the synonym for PR) back at their face. Which is what I got my ban threats for - directly catching one employee at a lie that he couldn't admit or spin, and charging another for failing to address the point I had brought up. He gave the answer that I had already dismissed when presenting my question. I don't regret any of this. It went very well because I didn't get banned after all
What Haavard is doing to his blog post, I call it dismantling because he shows that Chropera can do the same as Opera in a way, by means of workarounds, etc. At each strikethrough he links to another blog post where he shows this. I call this dismantling because the strikethroughs leave the impression that he is progressively retracting the original items on the list. Which of course he is, because when this goes on for long enough, the original post will consist mainly of strikethroughs. He is an employee at the company and a proponent of the move to Webkit, directly engaging with users in the comments section. He says that Chropera is Opera too - already now. For me it will never be. So I am diametrically opposed to his standpoint.
I didn't know of Andre Zanghelini's post. It's a good example of the frustration caused by the move to Webkit, but the comments section bears the marks that he is more of an emotional type rather than rational and principled. As an emotional type, he is relieved by mere venting and is then vulnerable to smickering by the highups of the PR artillery. Or maybe I'm mistaken. He could be just playing their own game back at them when he says he would revise and correct his post and could retract this or that. Which is also a tack The best moment on that page for me is the long comment by QuHno. Of course, as PR strategy dictates, he is completely ignored by the rest of discussion, despite being profoundly relevant.
You can invite BS-Harou here, but if he has strong opinions or even a philosophy built around his view on 'user-select:none' (as I suspect he has), there will be dispute. Which is okay. We are a heterogenous group here already.
About plain-text config files - excellent in principle, but implementing it for themes is not indicative of any trend to me. It doesn't remove the Chromeness from Chropera. It's not even a baby step back towards Opera.
Some day I should present some concise statement about what I believe true Opera to be, or what good software is at least. It's horrible to see Haavard gradually dismantling his definitive list that many of us used to refer to http://my.opera.com/haavard/blog/2012/10/19/what-is-opera
With all the DnD that is now going to happen all over Internet, it might be good idea to finally implement "-o-user-select: none " in CSS
I don't like this CSS element (and its variants). I don't like what it does. BS-Harou has been consistent over the years supporting its implementation. You noticed I had a little debate with Pesala recently that involved this element...
Just a revision of events concerning the mysterious case of bcbear86.
1. Chropera allegedly took over .torrent and other file type associations and the normal restoration methods didn't work.
It's implausible that Chropera did it. However, hijacking of file type associations by various programs happens often enough. I know Windows users who complain often enough that some file types important to them, such as .doc and .pdf, don't open any more. I personally dumped Windows at Vista. When on Vista, I was always able to restore and modify file type associations as I pleased. Am I too advanced user (and others therefore too dumb in comparison) or has some freaky development occurred somewhere when moving to 7 and 8?
2. "When Java was updated, it had an option to install Opera and she [daughter] didn't uncheck the box."
That Chropera comes bundled with some Java update like Chrome is plausible, because Opera ASA is in bed with Google now. This cannot be too widely known yet because Chropera is a fresh product. And even when known, this practice cannot be too widely and publicly denounced, because Ask toolbar and Chrome and whatnot have also not been too widely denounced for the same practices. People seem to think that this sneakiness (foistware) is normal.
On the other hand, given that there's some daughter (n00b dumbuser) involved in action, implies that nothing in this report can be taken too literally. The author of the posts may not be much more advanced than the daughter. Maybe the author is the daughter herself or it's just the family cat typing. This is roughly the same point as my comments on event #1 - It's implausible that Chropera did it, even though file type associations get hijacked on Windows often enough.
3. The author of the thread gets banned and the thread disappears from the orbit.
This is like the fifth or sixth time I see it happen in the course of maybe three years. By now it takes a whole lotta convincing to make me believe it's a mere coincidence or a pure accident.
I include below a complete copy of the thread linked by ersi, since someone at Opera appears to have privatized it. [edit]ersi noticed too.[/edit]
Thanks for the information, this looks bad.
I tried to make a joke about it on the forums, but I actually think it's a serious case - again. Some of these alleged autobans just don't smell right. If autoban is really so trigger happy, then why, for example, am I still a member?
All this happened within this year. Isn't this enough to totally demolish the reputation of the company? At least I can't even consider the software any more for ethical reasons...
I notice it says the gold sponsorship ends on 31 December 2013.
Indeed:
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As you know our Platinum sponsorship from Blue Systems came to an end and so will our Gold sponsorship with Opera at the end of this year. Losing our two main sponsors is tough...
My estimates tend towards extremely destitute fate for Opera on desktop. I think it will be out of desktop browser business in max three years, on all desktops, even on Mac and Windows.
Google has eaten the heart out of Opera ASA. If there's still some sense in this world, the rest of the corpse will follow rather sooner than later. Then again, Greece has been in absolute bankruptcy for years, financial, political, and moral, but the official announcement is still delayed. So, admittedly there is no sense in this world. But how to translate nonsense into estimates?
Quote from: Frenzie
I'm not sure if I entertain such hopes exactly, but I had no idea the bookmarks were implemented in plain text. I really meant it when I said that was the best news about Chropera I've heard yet.
Reports hitherto indicated that Chropera's profile was perfectly interchangeable with Chrome's (except for extensions; what a queer quirk...). Bookmarks file was a .db like in Chrome. Either they really changed the format, which would whip up your hopes, or it could be that also Chrome/Chromium can read a plain text file in some mode. Have you tried? I haven't
Now, allegedly Chropera for Linux will be released in March or so. (The official statement I quoted earlier, to take it literally, it would mean we can begin waiting for the Linux version at that time. I personally won't believe until I see it.)
Let's combine these things. I have these questions:
When/If the Linux version of Opera Blink arrives, will it be in the repositories ready to wipe out the Presto version or will it be possible to have it side-by-side with the Presto version?
Will it be sufficiently different from Chrome for anyone of us to use it? Why? (I noticed Frenzie hoping for a sensible Unix-like non-Chromish config&profile files system. I entertain no such hopes.)
Will it be in the repositories at all? I know Chrome is not in the repositories, even though it has packages to suit all the base distros. Then again, Chromium is available and Opera ASA is a gold sponsor of the Linux distro that has been #1 for a year or more on Distrowatch, so...
Damn that disqus, I can't see the comments properly!
Same here. I extracted the link from someone else's post and verified the quote with a console browser which is the only one without any url-filtering and adblocking You can only see Disqus comments when you don't use url-filters and adblocks AT ALL.
Do not expect [the Linux version] for another three months at the earliest.
Meaning, in February or March the Linux version of Chropera might land on us. Does it really take so long for the company to get out of desktop browser business that they even dare to promise a Linux version? Well, I guess the credit they earned under Tetzchner is not so easily wasted after all.
On the subject of Opera itself, or rather Chopera, I've heard criticisms of it although nothing too specific except the Bookmark business (which is a killer for me) but I'd like to have a look.
The other kind of criticism is Chrome-ness. All the criticism that applies to Chrome also applies to Chropera.
Both kinds of criticism have been very specific on the My Opera forums, but of course, go ahead and install it so you can see for yourself. However, if Chrome or Chromium is not for you, then chances are neither is Chropera.
You can only see Disqus comments when you don't use url-filters and adblocks AT ALL.