alt.atheism	re about the bible quiz answers in article healta saturn wwc edu healta saturn wwc edu tammy r healy writes the cheribums are on the ark of the covenant when god said make no graven image he was refering to idols which were created to be worshipped the ark of the covenant wasn t wrodhipped and only the high priest could enter the holy of holies where it was kept once a year on the day of atonement i am not familiar with or knowledgeable about the original language but i believe there is a word for idol and that the translator would have used the word idol instead of graven image had the original said idol so i think you re wrong here but then again i could be too i just suggesting a way to determine whether the interpretation you offer is correct dean kaflowitz
alt.atheism	re amusing atheists and agnostics in article timmbake mcl timmbake mcl ucsb edu clam bake timmons writes fallacy atheism is a faith lo i hear the faq beckoning once again wonderful rule deleted you re correct you didn t say anything about a conspiracy correction hard atheism is a faith yes rule don t mix apples with oranges how can you say that the extermination by the mongols was worse than stalin khan conquered people unsympathetic to his cause that was atrocious but stalin killed millions of his own people who loved and worshipped him and his atheist state how can anyone be worse than that i will not explain this to you again stalin did nothing in the name of atheism whethe he was or was not an atheist is irrelevant get a grip man the stalin example was brought up not as an indictment of atheism but merely as another example of how people will kill others under any name that s fit for the occasion no look again while you never said it the implication is pretty clear i m sorry but i can only respond to your words not your true meaning usenet is a slippery medium deleted wrt the burden of proof so hard atheism has nothing to prove then how does it justify that god does not exist i know there s the faq etc but guess what if those justifications were so compelling why aren t people flocking to hard atheism they re not and they won t i for one will discourage people from hard atheism by pointing out those very sources as reliable statements on hard atheism look i m not supporting any dogmatic position i d be a fool to say that in the large group of people that are atheists no people exist who wish to proselytize in the same fashion as religion how many hard atheists do you see posting here anyway maybe i mm just not looking hard enough second what makes you think i m defending any given religion i m merely recognizing hard atheism for what it is a faith i never meant to do so although i understand where you might get that idea i was merely using the bible example as an allegory to illustrate my point and yes by we i am referring to every reader of the post where is the evidence that the poster stated that he relied upon evidence for what who i think i may have lost this thread why theists are arrogant deleted because they say such and such is absolutely unalterably true because my dogma says it is true i am not prepared to issue blanket statements indicting all theists of arrogance as you are wont to do with atheists bzzt by virtue of your innocent little pronoun they you ve just issued a blanket statement at least i will apologize by qualifying my original statement with hard atheist in place of atheist would you call john the baptist arrogant who boasted of one greater than he that s what many christians do today how is that in itself arrogant guilty as charged what i meant to say was the theists who are arrogant are this way because they say other than that i thought my meaning was clear enough any position that claims itself as superior to another with no supporting evidence is arrogant thanks for your apology btw i m not worthy only seriously misinformed with your sophisticated put down of they the theists your serious misinformation shines through explained above bake timmons iii there s nothing higher stronger more wholesome and more useful in life than some good memory alyosha in brothers karamazov dostoevsky
alt.atheism	re yet more rushdie re islamic law jaeger buphy bu edu gregg jaeger writes in article vice ico tek com bobbe vice ico tek com robert beauchaine writes bennett neil how bcci adapted the koran rules of banking the times august so let s see if some guy writes a piece with a title that implies something is the case then it must be so is that it gregg you haven t provided even a title of an article to support your contention this is how you support a position if you intend to have anyone respect it gregg any questions and i even managed to include the above reference with my head firmly engaged in my ass what s your excuse this supports nothing i have no reason to believe that this is piece is anything other than another anti islamic slander job you also have no reason to believe it is an anti islamic slander job apart from your own prejudices i have no respect for titles only for real content i can look up this article if i want true but i can tell you bcci was not an islamic bank why yes what s a mere report in the times stating that bcci followed islamic banking rules gregg knows islam is good and he knows bcci were bad therefore bcci cannot have been islamic anyone who says otherwise is obviously spreading slanderous propaganda if someone wants to discuss the issue more seriously then i d be glad to have a real discussion providing references etc i see if someone wants to provide references to articles you agree with you will also respond with references to articles you agree with mmm yes that would be a very intellectually stimulating debate doubtless that s how you spend your time in soc culture islam i ve got a special place for you in my kill file right next to bobby want to join him the more you post the more i become convinced that it is simply a waste of time to try and reason with moslems is that what you are hoping to achieve mathew
alt.atheism	re christian morality is in article vice ico tek com bobbe vice ico tek com robert beauchaine writes yet i am still not a believer is god not concerned with my disposition why is it beneath him to provide me with the evidence i would require to believe the evidence that my personality given to me by this god would find compelling the fact is god could cause you to believe anything he wants you to but think about it for a minute would you rather have someone love you because you made them love you or because they wanted to love you the responsibility is on you to love god and take a step toward him he promises to be there for you but you have to look for yourself those who doubt this or dispute it have not givin it a sincere effort simple logic arguments are folly if you read the bible you will see that jesus made fools of those who tried to trick him with logic our ability to reason is just a spec of creation yet some think it is the ultimate if you rely simply on your reason then you will never know more than you do now to learn you must accept that which you don t know
alt.atheism	re after years can we say that christian morality is in article t rusnews w w mantis co uk mathew mantis co uk mathew writes mccullou snake cs wisc edu mark mccullough writes in article ursa bear com halat pooh bears jim halat writes atoms are not objective they aren t even real what scientists call an atom is nothing more than a mathematical model that describes certain physical observable properties of our surroundings all of which is subjective this deserves framing it really does atoms aren t even real tell me then those atoms we have seen with electron microscopes are atoms now so what are they figments of our imaginations the evidence that atoms are real is overwhelming but i won t bother with most evidence at the moment ha ha ha sorry but having studied cell biology i have to say that i can see it through an electron microscope therefore it is real is a laughable statement stuff deleted thank you i thought i was in the twilight zone for a moment it still amazes me that many people with science backgrounds still confuse the models and observables with what even they would call the real world jim halat in article ursa bear com halat panther bears jim halat writes in article apr princeton edu datepper phoenix princeton edu david aaron tepper writes you were a liberal arts major weren tcha guess you never saw that photo of the smallest logo in the world ibm made with noble gas atoms krypton xenon i forget the specifics atoms trees electrons are all independently observable and verifiable morals aren t see the difference just for the record not that any kind of information would be likely to affect your thinking i have an msee focus in electromagnetics from penn a photo of the smallest logo in the world does not an atom make what was observed is something we can measure that matches what the mathematical model we call an atom had predicted much in the same way that we need both a particle model and a wave model for light the atomic model is a mathematical representation of physical phenomena a model that can and probably will continue to change over time that makes it subjective the model that is however the model gives us an objective way to talk about the physical world to put it another way the quantum mechanical model of the atom allows for discussion of the atom that will give repeatable and unambiguous results which is objective however as bohr and einstein duked it out mid century the interpretation of those reapeatable observable measurements is quite subjective bohr said that the observable randomness of atomic motion was inherent in the nature of the universe einstein said particle motion was deterministic but it was our measurement shortcomings that introduced the randomness they were talking about the exact same results though jim halat
alt.atheism	re amusing atheists and agnostics timmbake mcl ucsb edu bake timmons writes there lies the hypocrisy dude atheism takes as much faith as theism admit it some people might think it takes faith to be an atheist but faith in what does it take some kind of faith to say that the great invisible pink unicorn does not exist does it take some kind of faith to say that santa claus does not exist if it does and it may for some people i suppose it certainly isn t as big a leap of faith to say that these things and god do exist i suppose it depends on your notion and definition of faith besides not believing in a god means one doesn t have to deal with all of the extra baggage that comes with it this leaves a person feeling wonderfully free especially after beaten over the head with it for years i agree that religion and belief is often an important psychological healer for many people and for that reason i think it s important however trying to force a psychological fantasy i don t mean that in a bad way but that s what it really is on someone else who isn t interested is extremely rude what if i still believed in santa claus and said that my belief in santa did wonderful things for my life making me a better person allowing me to live without guilt etc and then tried to get you to believe in santa too just cuz he did so much for me you d call the men in white coats as soon as you could get to a phone bake timmons iii nanci just babbling if you know and are sure of the author of this quote please send me email nm w andrew cmu edu spring is nature s way of saying let s party
alt.atheism	southern baptist convention freemasonry with the southern baptist convention convening this june to consider the charges that freemasonry is incompatible with christianity i thought the following quotes by mr james holly the anti masonic flag carrier would amuse you all the following passages are exact quotes from the southern baptist convention and freemasonry by james l holly m d president of mission and ministry to men inc n th st beaumont tx the inside cover of the book states mission ministry to men inc hereby grants permission for the reproduction of part or all of this booklet with two provisions one the material is not changed and two the source is identified i have followed these provisions freemasonry is one of the allies of the devil page iv the issue here is not moderate or conservative the issue is god and the devil page vi it is worthwhile to remember that the formulators of public school education in america were freemasons page jesus christ never commanded toleration as a motive for his disciples and toleration is the antithesis of the christian message page the central dynamic of the freemason drive for world unity through fraternity liberty and equality is toleration this is seen in the writings of the great writers of freemasonry page he jesus christ established the most sectarian of all possible faiths page for narrowness and sectarianism there is no equal to the lord jesus christ page what seems so right in the interest of toleration and its cousins liberty equality and fraternity is actually one of the subtlest lies of the father of lies page the southern baptist convention has many churches which were founded in the lodge and which have corner stones dedicated by the lodge each of these churches should hold public ceremonies of repentance and of praying the blood and the name of the lord jesus christ over the church and renouncing the oaths taken at the dedication of the church and or building page tony
alt.atheism	re amusing atheists and agnostics in article madhausc rfqo ql netcom com madhaus netcom com maddi hausmann writes clam bake timmons bill shit stirrer connor sorry gotta disagree with you on this one maddi not the resemblence to bill the nickname i prefer half bake d timmons bob beauchaine bobbe vice ico tek com they said that queens could stay they blew the bronx away and sank manhattan out at sea
alt.atheism	re requests in article healta saturn wwc edu healta saturn wwc edu tammy r healy writes bob if you re wanting an excuse to convert to christianity you gonna have to look elsewhere damn and i did so have my hopes up bob beauchaine bobbe vice ico tek com they said that queens could stay they blew the bronx away and sank manhattan out at sea
alt.atheism	re thoughts on christians in article sandvik sandvik kent apple com sandvik newton apple com kent sandvik writes as i know you can t get any physical problems by passive christianity unlike smoking it s not that hard to avoid christianity today anyway just ignore em right on keith err kent whadda you mean you didn t see the smiley bob beauchaine bobbe vice ico tek com they said that queens could stay they blew the bronx away and sank manhattan out at sea
alt.atheism	re what s a shit shoveler to do was re amusing atheists and in article qvn pinnj shelley u washington edu jimh carson u washington edu james hogan writes when the various bill conners and bobbys post here i felt that their passive aggressive knock that chip off my shoulder type of approach meant that attempts at reasoned argument would be wasted i still think that however while more primitive responses teasing bronx cheers sarcasm are somewhat satisfying apologies to anyone who still thinks bobby is a performance artist some of them feed in to a pointless circular round of ad hominem name calling witness precisely my position as a newbie i tried the point by point approach to debate with these types it wasted both my time and my lifespan ignoring them is not an option since they don t go away and doing so would leave one with large stretches of complete anonymity in this group what s left healthy flaming i m sure on occassion i ve appeared to be little more than a caustic boob to some of the bobby types but why waste breath arguing with someone whose most rational though process involves his excretory system and i stand by my record of recognizing these people long before most of the rest of the group so let s see what this timmons character has in store for us bob beauchaine bobbe vice ico tek com they said that queens could stay they blew the bronx away and sank manhattan out at sea
alt.atheism	re christian morality is in article eastman uucp dps nasa kodak com writes in article vice ico tek com bobbe vice ico tek com robert beauchaine writes yet i am still not a believer is god not concerned with my disposition why is it beneath him to provide me with the evidence i would require to believe the evidence that my personality given to me by this god would find compelling the fact is god could cause you to believe anything he wants you to but think about it for a minute would you rather have someone love you because you made them love you or because they wanted to love you first i don t expect them to love me if they don t even know i exist secondly i wouldn t expect them to love me simply because they were my creator i would expect to have to earn that love the responsibility is on you to love god and take a step toward him he promises to be there for you but you have to look for yourself are you daft how do i love something i don t believe exists come back when you ve learned to love your third testicle those who doubt this or dispute it have not givin it a sincere effort simple logic arguments are folly if you read the bible you will see that jesus made fools of those who tried to trick him with logic our ability to reason is just a spec of creation yet some think it is the ultimate if you rely simply on your reason then you will never know more than you do now to learn you must accept that which you don t know at which point you have stepped over the line and become a complete asshole even though it s your first offense i won t let it slip becuase i ve heard it too goddamned many times you love jesus because deep in your heart you re a cannibalistic necrophiliac because i say so and i m much more qualified to assess your motivations than you are fortunately there are some things i get to accept on evidence rather than faith one of them being that until christians like yourself quit being so fucking arrogant there will never be peace you ve all made sure of that bob beauchaine bobbe vice ico tek com they said that queens could stay they blew the bronx away and sank manhattan out at sea
alt.atheism	re theism and fanatism was islamic genocide in article bb b ca i dbstu rz tu bs de i dbstu rz tu bs de benedikt rosenau writes in article qv q fn horus ap mchp sni de frank d s uucp frank o dwyer writes theism is strongly correlated with irrational belief in absolutes irrational belief in absolutes is strongly correlated with fanatism correlation is not causation and a belief that absolutes exist is not the same thing as a belief in absolutes any more than belief in a shortest route from thurles to clonmel is the same thing as a knowledge of the irish roadsystem correlation is not necessarily causation however as you might have noticed the above allows to conclude that the correlation between religion and fanatism is based on common features of religious belief sorry for the long quotes but i dont see where to cut huh are you barking mad hardly theism is not as strongly correlated with fanaticism as you say plus you could find stronger correlations if you were actually interested in the truth instead of being as you seeming are a bigot theism is correlated with fanaticism i have neither said that all fanatism is caused by theism nor that all theism leads to fanatism the point is theism increases the chance of becoming a fanatic one could of course argue that would be fanatics tend towards theism for example but i just have to loook at the times in history when theism was the dominant ideology to invalidate that conclusion that that is the basic mechanism behind it imo the influence of stalin or for that matter ayn rand invalidates your assumption that theism is the factor to be considered gullibility blind obedience to authority lack of scepticism and so on are all more reliable indicators and the really dangerous people the sources of fanaticism are often none of these things they are cynical manipulators of the gullible who know precisely what they are doing now some brands of theism and more precisely some theists do tend to fanaticism i grant you to tar all theists with this brush is bigotry not a reasoned argument and it reads to me like a warm up for censorship and restriction of religious freedom ever read animal farm define irrational belief e g is it rational to believe that reason is always useful irrational belief is belief that is not based upon reason the latter has been discussed for a long time with charley wingate one point is that the beliefs violate reason often and another that a process that does not lend itself to rational analysis does not contain reliable information well there is a glaring paradox here an argument that reason is useful based on reason would be circular and argument not based on reason would be irrational which is it the first part of the second statement contains no information because you don t say what the beliefs are if the beliefs are strong theism and or strong atheism then your statement is not in general true the second part of your sentence is patently false counterexample an axiomatic datum does not lend itself to rational analysis but is assumed to contain reliable information regardless of what process is used to obtain it compared the evidence theists have for their claims to the strength of their demands makes the whole thing not only irrational but antirational i can t agree with this until you are specific which theism to say that all theism is necessarily antirational requires a proof which i suspect you do not have the affinity to fanatism is easily seen it has to be true because i believe it is nothing more than a work hypothesis however the beliefs say they are more than a work hypothesis i don t understand this can you formalise your argument frank o dwyer i m not hatching that odwyer sse ie from hens by evelyn conlon
alt.atheism	re you will all go to hell decay cbnewsj cb att com dean kaflowitz writes in article c lh p k portal hq videocart com dfuller portal hq videocart com dave fuller writes jsn psuvm psu edu writes you blashephemers you will all go to hell for not believing in god be prepared for your eternal damnation what do you mean be prepared surrounded by thumpers like yourself has proven to be hellish enough and i m not even dead yet well here s how i prepared i got one of those big beach umbrellas some of those gel pack ice things a big coleman cooler which i ve loaded up with miller draft so i like miller draft so sue me a new pair of new balance sneakers a sony watchman and a couple of cartons of bonton cheddar cheese popcorn stuff deleted actually you get a ton of weapons and ammunition followers and hole up in some kind of compound and wait for alan a deguzman calvin i m so smart it s almost scary i guess calculus mathematica i m a child progeny disclaimer the university can t afford my opinions hobbes most children are
alt.atheism	re you will all go to hell in article c lh p k portal hq videocart com dfuller portal hq videocart com dave fuller writes jsn psuvm psu edu writes you blashephemers you will all go to hell for not believing in god be prepared for your eternal damnation what do you mean be prepared surrounded by thumpers like yourself has proven to be hellish enough and i m not even dead yet well here s how i prepared i got one of those big beach umbrellas some of those gel pack ice things a big coleman cooler which i ve loaded up with miller draft so i like miller draft so sue me a new pair of new balance sneakers a sony watchman and a couple of cartons of bonton cheddar cheese popcorn i haven t decided what to wear yet what does one wear to an eternal damnation dean kaflowitz
alt.atheism	re what s a shit shoveler to do was re amusing atheists and in article timmbake mcl timmbake mcl ucsb edu bake timmons writes james hogan writes fine sentiments from his very first post jim assumed an attack of ad hominem sarcastic innuendo i e shit to be shoveled he conveniently forgets this of course and then whines about his boredom ad hominem sarcastic innuendo absolutely forgotten hardly bored not really i try not to confuse life on a a with life i just can t overcome the urge to tease taunt folks who bound faq less onto a a with such a chip on their shoulder to listen to you one might think we belonged to some church i appreciate the patience of others who questioned your posting on a line by line content basis though it s hard to know what impact that might have had as compared to say shovelling fact if he were truly interested in ending the thread he wouldn t have posted his last shit to be shoveled i think i only lamented that whatever the initial satisfactions past a certain point circular abuse heaping was just that bake timmons iii there s nothing higher stronger more wholesome and more useful in life than some good memory alyosha in brothers karamazov dostoevsky sincere questions why are you here what are you looking for jim
alt.atheism	re societally acceptable behavior in qvh tinnsg citation ksu ksu edu yohan citation ksu ksu edu jonathan w newton writes in article c qgm dl news cso uiuc edu cobb alexia lis uiuc edu mike cobb writes merely a question for the basis of morality moral ethical behavior societally acceptable behavior i disagree with these what society thinks should be irrelevant what the individual decides is all that is important this doesn t seem right if i want to kill you i can because that is what i decide who is society i think this is fairly obvious not really if whatever a particular society mandates as ok is ok there are always some in the society who disagree with the mandates so which societal mandates make the standard for morality how do they define what is acceptable generally by what they feel is right which is the most idiotic policy i can think of so what should be the basis unfortunately i have to admit to being tied at least loosely to the feeling in that i think we intuitively know some things to be wrong awfully hard to defend though how do we keep from a whatever is legal is what is moral position by thinking for ourselves i might agree here just because certain actions are legal does not make them moral mac michael a cobb and i won t raise taxes on the middle university of illinois class to pay for my programs champaign urbana bill clinton rd debate cobb alexia lis uiuc edu with new taxes and spending cuts we ll still have billion dollar deficits michael a cobb and i won t raise taxes on the middle university of illinois class to pay for my programs champaign urbana bill clinton rd debate cobb alexia lis uiuc edu nobody can explain everything to anybody g k chesterton
alt.atheism	re societally acceptable behavior i guess i m delving into a religious language area what exactly is morality or morals i never thought of eating meat to be moral or immoral but i think it could be how do we differentiate between not doing something because it is a personal choice or preference and not doing something because we see it as immoral do we fall to what the basis of these morals are also consensus positions fall to a might makes right or as you brought out if whatever is right is what is societally mandated then whoever is in control at the time makes what is right mc mac michael a cobb and i won t raise taxes on the middle university of illinois class to pay for my programs champaign urbana bill clinton rd debate cobb alexia lis uiuc edu nobody can explain everything to anybody g k chesterton
alt.atheism	re christian morality is in article eastman uucp dps nasa kodak com writes yet i am still not a believer is god not concerned with my disposition why is it beneath him to provide me with the evidence i would require to believe the evidence that my personality given to me by this god would find compelling the fact is god could cause you to believe anything he wants you to but think about it for a minute would you rather have someone love you because you made them love you or because they wanted to love you oh no not again there is a difference between believing that god exists and loving him for instance satan certainly believes god exists but does not love him what unbelievers request in situations like this is that god provide evidence compelling enough to believe he exists not to compel them to love him on the first day after christmas my truelove served to me leftover turkey on the second day after christmas my truelove served to me turkey casserole that she made from leftover turkey days deleted flaming turkey wings pizza hut commercial and m tlu a gic bait ken arromdee arromdee jyusenkyou cs jhu edu
alt.atheism	re gulf war and peace niks in article apr batman bmd trw com jbrown batman bmd trw com writes hawaii we liberated it from spain well you were going well until you hit this one hawaii was an independent country a coup by americans led to a request to annex it the us refused but eventually did annex it several years later during the spanish american war on the first day after christmas my truelove served to me leftover turkey on the second day after christmas my truelove served to me turkey casserole that she made from leftover turkey days deleted flaming turkey wings pizza hut commercial and m tlu a gic bait ken arromdee arromdee jyusenkyou cs jhu edu
alt.atheism	re christian morality is in article eastman uucp dps nasa kodak com writes the fact is god could cause you to believe anything he wants you to but think about it for a minute would you rather have someone love you because you made them love you or because they wanted to love you same old bullshit not being given to delusions and wishful thinking i do not have the option of either loving or obeying that which i have so reason to believe the responsibility is on you to love god and take a step toward him he promises to be there for you but you have to look for yourself those who doubt this or dispute it have not givin it a sincere effort more bullshit i assure you in my misguided youth i made a sincere effort it was very painful being a rational person raised in christian home many others could tell the same story you choose not to believe anyone s experience which contradicts your smug theories bill mayne
alt.atheism	re societal basis for morality in apr cnsvax uwec edu nyeda cnsvax uwec edu david nye writes reply to cobb alexia lis uiuc edu mike cobb if morals come from what is societally accepted why follow that what right do we have to expect others to follow our notion of societally mandated morality pardon the extremism but couldn t i murder your brother and say that i was exercising my rights as i saw them was doing what felt good didn t want anyone forcing their morality on me or i don t follow your morality i believe that morality is subjective each person is entitled to his own moral attitudes mine are not a priori more correct than someone elses this does not mean however that i must judge another on the basis of his rather than my moral standards while he is entitled to believe what his own moral sense tells him the rest of society is entitled to pass laws spelling out punishments for behavior that is offensive to the majority why how might makes right how can they force their morality on me why can t i do what i want who are they to decide what if i disagree most criminals do not see their behavior as moral the may realize that it is immoral and not care they are thus not following their own moral system but being immoral good point but it is being immoral in our opinion we don t let them choose we make the decision that their actions are wrong for them for someone to lay claim to an alternative moral system he must be sincere in his belief in it and it must be internally consistent some sociopaths lack an innate moral sense i admit to lean toward the idea of an innate moral sense but have little basis for it as of yet how far can such a concept be extended and thus may be incapable of behaving morally while someone like hitler may have believed that his actions were moral we may judge him immoral by our standards do you mean that we could say it would be wrong for us to do such a thing but not him after all he was behaving morally in his own eyes and doing what he chose on what basis do we condemn other societies besides here s the buzz words on the idea that there are some actions wrong for all humans in all societies holding that morality is subjective does not mean that we must excuse the murderer why not do we have to be objective suddenly david nye nyeda cnsvax uwec edu midelfort clinic eau claire wi this is patently absurd but whoever wishes to become a philosopher must learn not to be frightened by absurdities bertrand russell mac michael a cobb and i won t raise taxes on the middle university of illinois class to pay for my programs champaign urbana bill clinton rd debate cobb alexia lis uiuc edu nobody can explain everything to anybody g k chesterton
alt.atheism	re nicknames in article bb b fe i dbstu rz tu bs de i dbstu rz tu bs de benedikt rosenau writes ssauyet eagle wesleyan edu scott d sauyet writes okay how about scott can anybody hear me sauyet ssauyet eagel wesleyan edu could you speak up i can t hear you my sole intention was learning to fly
alt.atheism	re free moral agency in article c pxqs lm darkside osrhe uoknor edu bil okcforum osrhe edu bill conner writes dean kaflowitz decay cbnewsj cb att com wrote now what i am interested in is the original notion you were discussing on moral free agency that is how can a god punish a person for not believing in him when that person is only following his or her nature and it is not possible for that person to deny what his or her reason tells him or her which is that there is no god dean i think you re letting atheist mythology great start i realize immediately that you are not interested in discussion and are going to thump your babble at me i would much prefer an answer from ms healy who seems to have a reasonable and reasoned approach to things say aren t you the creationist guy who made a lot of silly statements about evolution some time ago confuse you on the issue of divine justice according to the most fundamental doctrines of christianity when the first man sinned he was at that time the entire human race and any punishment meted out would necessarily affect the entire race of which he was the sole representive all humans coming after him would being of the same race species share in that judgement it has nothing to do with who deserves what from the perspective of god humanity is but one category of created things and that category is condemned duh gee then we must be talking christian mythology now i was hoping to discuss something with a reasonable logical person but all you seem to have for your side is a repetition of the same boring mythology i ve seen a thousand times before i am deleting the rest of your remarks unless i spot something that approaches an answer because they are merely a repetition of some uninteresting doctrine or other and contain no thought at all i have to congratulate you though bill you wouldn t know a logical argument if it bit you on the balls such a persistent lack of function in the face of repeated attempts to assist you in learning which i have seen in this forum and others in the past speaks of a talent that goes well beyond my own meager abilities i just don t seem to have that capacity for ignoring outside influences dean kaflowitz
alt.atheism	re is morality constant was re biblical rape my last response in this thread fell into a bit bucket and vanished though appearing locally i ll repost it since i always feel slighted when someone appears to ignore one of my postings in a conversational thread i don t want rob to think i m doing so since this is now dated however don t feel compelled to respond in article apr watson ibm com strom watson ibm com rob strom writes i was making two separate points both of which attack face value bible interpretation to judge the bible s value today you judge it based on the way it is used today that is what do commentators actually say what do rabbis teach etc i suspect you meant this in context of the jewish tradition you have been referring to one problem with a highly interpreted tradition like this is what happens when a schism occurs and over time certain large and influential branches of the heretical group come to favor exactly a face value interpretation to judge the bible s value when originally written you a read it in the context of its time not with today s assumptions and b compare it to the practices of surrounding people while the context of the time is important value judgments must ultimately be according to current understanding or at least to some base standard relative stability success of a society e g this is obviously true in comparing it to practices of surrounding people for instance according to the bible the surrounding people were immoral savages with repulsive and inhuman habits we need to look rather at what those peoples were really like for instance in what way is it better to worship a single god whose presence is symbolically strongest in a tent or temple over multiple gods some of whose presence is symbolically represented in a statue by the bible s own terms idolatry is inherently evil but i see no evidence that the followers of the various other religions of the area and time were particularly bad people relative to the people in the bible scissors and cloth now in the past our ancestors did cut cloth with scissors but they at least knew that their inhumane neighbors cut it with their bare teeth so this was a relatively enlightened step forward from their earlier barbarism and made the transition to modern civilized paper cutting that much easier sounds good but it presupposes teeth rending neighbors which i see no support for one can argue that post facto assertion of inhumane neighbors can be used to make moral points but that doesn t mean that the actual neighbors really were inhuman more to the point such dehumanization of the people across the river or over the mountain or even of a different people dwelling among us is all too common that complex and benign moral traditions have evolved based on particular mythic interpretations of that history is interesting but i still don t think it fair to take that long tradition of interpretation and use it to attack condemnation of the original history note that i m speaking of historical interpretation here for instance claiming that hammurabi s an eye for an eye was primitive brutal retribution while moses version was an enlightened benign fine because the tradition has since interpreted the phrase that way as of years ago or so they probably both meant the same thing to be sure i m arguing from a parochial perspective i belong to this tiny tribe which has struggled against overwhelming odds for survival as a distinct tribe and this book is the book of my tribe the book commands us to dedicate ourselves to study to improve the world and to set an example as a light to the nations we ve revered the book and i think we ve been successful as scientists as artists and musicians as leaders in important humanitarian causes it s hard for me to separate the success of my people from the virtue of our book you d have to argue that we d have done significantly better with a different book or with no book or that another tribe with a different book or with no book has done significantly better i don t belittle the accomplishments particularly the intellectual ones of the jewish people i have given up on trying to think by analogy since i don t know of any other tribe that is at all similar the closest i can think of are the romany but i don t know enough about them to make a meaningful comparison i think a tradition of reflective study of flexible rather than dogmatic interpretation is a good thing i think that with such an attitude a case could be made that you could have done as well starting with a captain america comic or whatever the babylonian equivalent would have been jim perry perry dsinc com decision support inc matthews nc these are my opinions for a nominal fee they can be yours jim perry perry dsinc com decision support inc matthews nc these are my opinions for a nominal fee they can be yours
alt.atheism	re satanic verses once again this posting has been delayed for about a week by falling between some software cracks in article bu edu jaeger buphy bu edu gregg jaeger writes as promised here is rafiq zakaria s discussion of the nature of the so called satanic verses from which rushdie s title has been taken rafiq zakaria muhammad and the quran penguin here follows an introduction to the controversial incident and an apologetic explanation purporting to show why it couldn t actually have happened the historicity of the episode doesn t matter to what follows i don t know whether i m quoting gregg or zakaria below anyway back to current affairs rushdie has by his own admission drawn on the version given by the orientalist watt among others this incident is not something rushdie or watt or anyone else dug up from nowhere it is a well known story a myth if you will known according to umar khan to every muslim school boy and girl and so presumably to rushdie and to gibreel farishta and then allowed his imagination to run wild yes this is what writing fiction is all about rushdie was writing about a crisis of faith and chose this myth to present it by placing the actor gibreel in the role of the angel whose name he took rushdie was not writing a history or theology book and nowhere claims or implies that this is what actually happened it s somewhat like stories woven around the relationship between jesus and the reformed prostitute mary magdalene another myth or those referring to the arthurian mythos or the grail legend or the wandering jew or dozens of others if you can stand to read the work of a blasphemer consider salman rushdie s children s book haroun and the sea of stories for an idea of the way a storyteller a specific storyteller works with existing story lines to ridicule muhammad s integrity no muhammad s mahound s integrity is not really impugned in this part of the story and there s no reason to think this was rushdie s intent gibreel as the archangel produces the verses divine and satanic though he doesn t know their provenance it is not implied in a straight reading that muhammad influences them not my voice i d never know such words i m no classy speaker never was never will be but this isn t my voice it s a voice mahound s eyes open wide he s seeing some kind of vision staring at it oh that s right gibreel remembers me he s seeing me my lips moving being moved by what whom don t know can t say nevertheless here they are coming out of my mouth up my throat past my teeth the words being god s postman is no fun yaar butbutbut god isn t in this picture god knows whose postman i ve been it s ambiguous is mahound somehow manipulating gibreel is it satan or something else the answer is not given to be sure the question is raised this novel explores faith and the role of revelation in religion among other things addressing loss of faith implicitly raises questions about the truth of revelation but this novel proposes no answers at least not directly the very existence of a newsgroup named alt atheism raises the same questions more forcefully and does propose some answers which is the real relevance if rushdie s mild fictional exploration is filth and lies and he asked for what he got are we next on the fatwa list that s a rhetorical question of course jim perry perry dsinc com decision support inc matthews nc these are my opinions for a nominal fee they can be yours jim perry perry dsinc com decision support inc matthews nc these are my opinions for a nominal fee they can be yours
alt.atheism	re who says the apostles were tortured another article that fell between the cracks in article qiu innpq srvr engin umich edu ingles engin umich edu ray ingles writes as evidence for the resurrection it is often claimed that the disciples were tortured to death for their beliefs and still did not renounce their claim that jesus had come back from the dead now i skimmed acts and such and i found a reference to this happening to stephen but no others where does this apparently very widely held belief come from is there any evidence outside the bible is there any evidence in the bible i sure haven t found any briefly no there is widespread folklore but no good documentary evidence or even solid rumor concerning the deaths of the apostles further the usual context of such arguments as you observe is no martyrs for a lie i e the willingness of these people to die rather than recant is evidence for the truth of their belief this adds the quite stronger twist that the proposed martyrs must have been offered the chance of life by recanting since we don t even know how or where they died we certainly don t have this information by the way even in the case of stephen it is not at all clear that he could have saved himself by recanting the willingness of true believers to die for their belief be it in jesus or jim jones is well documented so martyrdom in and of itself says little see kings for a biblical account of the martyrdom of priests of baal jim perry perry dsinc com decision support inc matthews nc these are my opinions for a nominal fee they can be yours
alt.atheism	re who has read rushdie s the satanic verses another one rescued from the bit bucket over the years the furor over this book has been discussed on a a and elsewhere on the net generally the discussion comes down to the contention on the one hand that tsv contains such blood libel against islam as to merit if not death than at least banning and probably some sort of punishment and on the other that rushdie particularly as a non muslim in a western country had every right to write and publish whatever he chose regardless of whether some muslims find it offensive without fear of persecution or death i am naturally inclined to the latter position but find myself in an interesting position because i think this is a fine book only incidentally concerned with islam and moreover i m damned if i can find anything malevolently offensive in it over the years when i have made this point various primarily muslim posters have responded saying that yes indeed they have read the book and had called it such things as filth and lies i would rank rushdie s book with hitler s mein kempf or worse and so on unfortunately these comments are usually generalities and attempts to follow up by requesting explanations for what specifically is so offensive have met either with stony silence more generalizations or inaccurate or out of context references to the book which lead me to believe that few of them have actually read it corrections and attempts to discuss the text in context have been ignored anyway since i seem to be the only one following this particular line of discussion i wonder how many of the rest of the readership have read this book what are your thoughts on it jim perry perry dsinc com decision support inc matthews nc these are my opinions for a nominal fee they can be yours jim perry perry dsinc com decision support inc matthews nc these are my opinions for a nominal fee they can be yours
alt.atheism	re is morality constant was re biblical rape this response originally fell into a bit bucket i m reposting it just so bill doesn t think i m ignoring him in article c w pv jxd darkside osrhe uoknor edu bil okcforum osrhe edu bill conner writes jim perry perry dsinc com wrote some stuff about biblical morality though bill s quote of me had little to do with what he goes on to say bill i m sorry to have been busy lately and only just be getting around to this apparently you have some fundamental confusions about atheism i think many of these are well addressed in the famous faq your generalisms are then misplaced atheism needn t imply materialism or the lack of an absolute moral system however i do tend to materialism and don t believe in absolute morality so i ll answer your questions how then can an atheist judge value an atheist judges value in the same way that a theist does according to a personal understanding of morality that i don t believe in an absolute one doesn t mean that i don t have one i m just explicit as in the line of postings you followed up that when i express judgment on a moral issue i am basing my judgment on my own code rather than claiming that it is in some absolute sense good or bad my moral code is not particular different from that of others around me be they christians muslims or atheists so when i say that i object to genocide i m not expressing anything particularly out of line with what my society holds if your were to ask why i think morality exists and has the form it does my answer would be mechanistic to your taste that a moral code is a prerequisite for a functioning society and that humanity probably evolved morality as we know it as part of the evolution of our ability to exist in large societies thereby achieving considerable survival advantages you d probably say that god just made the rules neither of us can convince the other but we share a common understanding about many moral issues you think you get it from your religion i think i get it and you get it from early childhood teaching that you don t like what god told people to do says nothing about god or god s commands it says only that there was an electrical event in your nervous system that created an emotional state that your mind coupled with a pre existing thought set to form that reaction i think you ve been reading the wrong sort of comic books but in prying through the gobbledygook i basically agree with what you re saying i do believe that my mental reactions to stimuli such as god commanded the genocide of the canaanites is mechanistic but of course i think that s true of you as well my reaction has little to do with whether god exists or even with whether i think he does but if a god existed who commanded genocide i could not consider him good which is supposedly an attribute of god all of this being so you have excluded yourself from any discussion of values right wrong goood evil etc and cannot participate your opinion about the bible can have no weight whatsoever hmm yes i think some heavy faq reading would do you some good i have as much place discussing values etc as any other person in fact i can actually accomplish something in such a discussion by framing the questions in terms of reason for instance it is clear that in an environment where neighboring tribes periodically attempt to wipe each other out based on imagined divine commands then the quality of life will be generally poor so a system that fosters coexistence is superior if quality of life is an agreed goal an absolutist on the other hand can only thump those portions of a bible they happen to agree with and say this is good even if the act in question is unequivocally bad by the standards of everyone in the discussion the attempt to define someone or a group of people as excluded from discussion such that they cannot participate and their opinions given no weight whatsoever is the lowest form or reasoning ad hominem poisoning the well and presumably the resort of someone who can t rationally defend their own ideas of right wrong and the bible jim perry perry dsinc com decision support inc matthews nc these are my opinions for a nominal fee they can be yours jim perry perry dsinc com decision support inc matthews nc these are my opinions for a nominal fee they can be yours
alt.atheism	re origins of the bible in article apr cs nott ac uk eczcaw mips nott ac uk a wainwright writes hi i have been having an argument about the origins of the bible lately with a theist acquaintance he stated that thousands of bibles were discovered at a certain point in time which were syllable perfect this therefore meant that there must have been one copy at a certain time the time quoted by my acquaintace was approximately years after the death of jesus you can tell your friend from me that i was in a publisher s warehouse one time and saw thousands of copies of the joy of cooking and every one of them was syllable perfect i have since sold all i own and become a follower of the joy of cooking the incident i mentioned convinced me once and for all that the joy of cooking is inspired by god and the one true path to his glory dean kaflowitz may the sauce be with you
alt.atheism	re amusing atheists and agnostics in article qsum inng k shelley u washington edu jimh carson u washington edu james hogan writes i think you ve missed the point take alt atheism for instance it s an exponent based anagram when fully extended it translates to dig tunnels deep store grain everywhere prepare for the coming struggle you ll no doubt recognize this as a quote from chairman mao thus i think you ll have to admit that atheists have a lot more up their sleeve than you might have suspected agnostics will be sent to the gulag under the mao atheist new order now where did i put my little red book or was that green jim if god is dead and the actor plays his part sting his words of fear will find their way to a place in your heart history without the voice of reason every faith is its own curse will teach us without freedom from the past things can only get worse nothing
alt.atheism	re christian morality is dan schaertel dps nasa kodak com wrote since this is alt atheism i hope you don t mind if we strongly disagree the fact is god could cause you to believe anything he wants you to but think about it for a minute would you rather have someone love you because you made them love you or because they wanted to love you the responsibility is on you to love god and take a step toward him he promises to be there for you but you have to look for yourself indeed knock and it shall be opened to you dan why didn t this work i firmly believed in god for years but i eventually realised i was only deluding myself fearful to face the truth ultimately the only reason what kept me believing was the fear of hell the mental states i had sillily attributed to divine forces or devil s attempts to destroy my faith were nothing more than my imagination and it is easy to achieve the same mental states at will my faith was just learned fear in a disguise those who doubt this or dispute it have not givin it a sincere effort god is demanding too much dan what was it i believed in for years if sincere effort is equivalent to active suspension of disbelief what it was in my case i d rather quit if god does not help me to keep the faith i can t go on besides i am concerned with god s morality and mental health does she really want us to believe in herself without any help revelations guidance or anything i can feel if she has created us why didn t she make the task any easier why are we supposed to love someone who refuses to communicate with us what is the point of eternal torture for those who can t believe i love god just as much as she loves me if she wants to seduce me she ll know what to do simple logic arguments are folly if you read the bible you will see that jesus made fools of those who tried to trick him with logic our ability to reason is just a spec of creation yet some think it is the ultimate if you rely simply on your reason then you will never know more than you do now your argument is of the type you ll know once you try yet there are many atheists who have sincerely tried and believed for many years but were eventually honest enough to admit that they had lived in a virtual reality what else but reason i can use i don t have the spiritual means christians often refer to my conscience disagrees with the bible i don t even believe i have a soul i am fully dependent on my body indeed i am this body when it goes up with flames so does my identity god can entertain herself with copies of me if she wants to learn you must accept that which you don t know what does this mean to learn you must accept that you don t know something right o but to learn you must accept something i don t know why this is not the way i prefer to learn it is unwise to merely swallow everything you read suppose i write a book telling how the great invisible pink unicorn tm has helped me in my daily problems would you accept this since you can t know whether it is true or not note that the gipu is also omnipotent omnipresent and loves just about everyone besides he and she is guiding every writer on this planet you and me and not just some people who write legendary stories years ago your god is just one aspect of his and her presence petri petri pihko kem pmp mathematics is the truth pihatie c finou oulu fi physics is the rule of sf oulu kempmp the game finland phoenix oulu fi chemistry is the game
alt.atheism	re gulf war selling arms in article v rusnews w w mantis co uk mathew mathew mantis co uk writes mccullou snake cs wisc edu mark mccullough writes from a parallel thread much about definitions of bombs etc deleted aaaahhh tell me how many innocents were killed in concentration camps mm hmm now how many more were scheduled to enter concentration camps had they not been shut down because they were captured by the allies mm hmm now civilians died in that war so no matter what you do civilians die what is the proper course don t sell the bastard arms and information in the first place ruthlessly hunt down those who do especially if they re in positions of power mathew i agree this it seems is the crux of your whole position isn t it that the us shouldn t have supported hussein and sold him arms to fight iran i agree and i agree in ruthlessly hunting down those who did or do but we did sell arms to hussein and it s a done deal now he invades kuwait so do we just sit back and say well we sold him all those arms i suppose he just wants to use them now too bad for kuwait no unfortunately sitting back and letting things be is not the way to correct a former mistake destroying hussein s military potential as we did was the right move but i agree with your statement reagan and bush made a grave error in judgment to sell arms to hussein so it s really not the gulf war you abhor so much it was the u s s and the west s shortsightedness in selling arms to hussein which ultimately made the war inevitable right if so then i agree more deleted mathew regards jim b
alt.atheism	re studies on book of mormon i think that the transcedental temptation by paul kurtz has a good section on the origins of mormonism you might want to look at scott o
alt.atheism	re amusing atheists and agnostics in article timmbake mcl timmbake mcl ucsb edu bake timmons writes from timmbake mcl ucsb edu bake timmons subject amusing atheists and agnostics date apr gmt some big deletions many atheists show a poor understanding of human nature so many people who would otherwise sympathize with their cause only shake their heads in disbelief at such childish ranting another in a string of idiotic generalizations gad i m surprised i got this far down in the post i guess some just like seeing their names up on a crt like me phil trodwell this space i d be happy to ram a goddam volt cattle for rent prod into that tub with you right now but not cheap this radio hunter s thompson
alt.atheism	re where are they now perhaps it s prophetic that the week where are they now appears and i can claim to be a still active old timer my news software gets bit rot and ships outgoing articles into a deep hole somewhere anyway here s a repost in article qi innf n senator bedfellow mit edu tcbruno athena mit edu tom bruno writes which brings me to the point of my posting how many people out there have been around alt atheism since i ve done my damnedest to stay on top of the newsgroup but when you fall behind you really fall behind these days you don t have to fall far behind last monday admittedly after a long weekend but i had messages just in those few days aside from a hiatus while changing jobs last fall i ve been here since has anyone tried to keep up with the deluge inquiring minds want to know also does anyone keep track of where the more infamous posters to alt atheism end up once they leave the newsgroup just curious i guess hell norway the rubber room at the funny farm seminary it is not given to us to know jim perry perry dsinc com decision support inc matthews nc these are my opinions for a nominal fee they can be yours
alt.atheism	strong weak atheism did that faq ever got modified to re define strong atheists as not those who assert the nonexistence of god but as those who assert that they believe in the nonexistence of god there was a thread on this earlier but i didn t get the outcome adam no nickname cooper adam john cooper verily often have i laughed at the weaklings who thought themselves good simply because acooper macalstr edu they had no claws
alt.atheism	re faith and dogma in article apr edt neat cs toronto edu tgk cs toronto edu todd kelley writes in light of what happened in waco i need to get something of my chest sadly understandable faith and dogma are dangerous yes religion inherently encourages the implementation of faith and dogma and for that reason i scorn religion to be fair you should really qualify this as semitic western religions but you basically go ahead and do this later on anyway i have expressed this notion in the past some christians debated with me whether christianity leaves any room for reasoning i claimed rationality is quelled out of christianity by faith and dogma again this should really be evaluated at a personal level for example there was only one jesus presumably and he probably didn t say all that many things and yet seemingly billions and billions of christian sects have arisen perhaps there is one that is totally dedicated to rationalism and believes in christ as in pantheism it would seem to go against the bible but it is amazing what people come up with under the guise of personal interpretation a philosopher cannot be a christian because a philosopher can change his mind whereas a christian cannot due to the nature of faith and dogma present in any religion this is a good point we have here the quintessential christian he sets up a system of values beliefs for himself which work very well and every event experience is understandable and deablable within the framework of this system however we also have an individual who has the inability at least not without some difficulty to change which is important because the problem with such a system is the same as with any system one cannot be open minded to the point of testing hypotheses against the basic premise of the system without destroying whatever faith is invested therein unless of course all the tests fail in other words the fairer way would be to test and evaluate moralities without the bias responsibility of losing retaining a system i claimed that a christian philosopher is not a christian but is a person whose beliefs at the moment correspond with those of christianity consider that a person visiting or guarding a prison is not a prisoner unless you define a prisoner simply to be someone in a prison can we define a prisoner to be someone who at the moment is in a prison can we define a christian to be someone who at the moment has christian beliefs no because if a person is free to go he is not a prisoner similarly if a person is not constrained by faith and dogma he is not a christian interesting but again when it seems to basically boil down to individual nuances although not always i will admit and probably it is the mass oriented divisions which are the most appalling it becomes irrelevant unfortunately i admit it s a word game i m going by the dictionary definition of religion religion n concern over what exists beyond the visible world differentiated from philosophy in that it operates through faith or intuition rather than reason webster s now let s go beyond the word game i don t claim that religion causes genocide i think that if all humans were atheist there would still be genocide there will always be humans who don t think there will always be humans who don t ask themselves what is the real difference between themselves and people with different colored skin or a different language or different beliefs granted religion is like the gun that doesn t kill anybody religion encourages faith and dogma and although it doesn t directly condemn people it encourages the use of just because thinking it is just because thinking that kills people in which case the people become the bullets and the religion as the gun merely offers them a way to more adequately do some harm with themselves if i may be so bold as to extend your similie sure religion has many good qualities it encourages benevolence and philanthropy ok so take out only the bad things like faith dogma and tradition put in the good things like careful reasoning and science the result is secular humanism wouldn t it be nice if everyone were a secular humanist to please the supernaturalists you might even leave god in there but the secular emphasis would cause the supernaturalists to start thinking and they too would realize that a belief in a god really doesn t put anyone further ahead in understanding the universe ok i m just poking fun at the supernaturalists also understandable of course not all humans are capable of thought and we d still have genocide and maybe even some mass suicide but not as much i m willing to bet on that todd todd kelley tgk cs toronto edu department of computer science university of toronto best regards adam john cooper verily often have i laughed at the weaklings who thought themselves good simply because acooper macalstr edu they had no claws
alt.atheism	re yet more rushdie re islamic law in article c qt p mvo blaze cs jhu edu arromdee jyusenkyou cs jhu edu ken arromdee writes in article bu edu jaeger buphy bu edu gregg jaeger writes i think many reading this group would also benefit by knowing how deviant the view as i ve articulated it above which may not be the true view of khomeini is from the basic principles of islam from the point ov view of an atheist i see you claim khomeini wasn t practicing true islam but i m sure that he would have said the same about you how am i a member of neither group supposed to be able to tell which one of you two is really a true muslim this is a very good point i have already made the clear claim that khomeini advocates views which are in contradition with the qur an and have given my arguments for this this is something that can be checked by anyone sufficiently interested khomeini being dead really can t respond but another poster who supports khomeini has responded with what is clearly obfuscationist sophistry this should be quite clear to atheists as they are less susceptible to religionist modes of obfuscationism so to answer your question the only way you can judge is by learning more about islam that is by reading the qur an and understanding it s basic principles once one has done this it is relatively easy to see who is following the principles of islam and who is acting in a way at odds with islam khomeini by attributing a superhuman status to twelve muslim historical leaders is at variance with one of basic principles of islam which is that no human being is metaphysically different than any other human being and in no sense any closer to god in metaphysical nature gregg
alt.atheism	re yet more rushdie re islamic law in article vice ico tek com bobbe vice ico tek com robert beauchaine writes in article bu edu jaeger buphy bu edu gregg jaeger writes this supports nothing i have no reason to believe that this is piece is anything other than another anti islamic slander job i have no respect for titles only for real content i can look up this article if i want true but i can tell you bcci was not an islamic bank seeing as i m spending my time responding to propaganda in responding to this little sub thread i really don t feel a deep need to do more than make statements to the effect that the propaganda is false if someone wants to discuss the issue more seriously then i d be glad to have a real discussion providing references etc but you must admit that this is a more thorough argument supporting a proposition than your it s propganda because i say so i hope you can see why we might not find this argument compelling if you want to refute a point then do so but do it right well again i am doing as much as the poster i was replying too i am quite busy and really don t have the time to respond in full scholarly form to every accusation that is flippantly made by someone who s being clearly antagonistic and have you ever considered that perhaps these people actually believe what they say that they are not just spreading propaganda i have considered it but if someone spreads falsehoods out of ignorance then they are still spreading falsehoods those falsehoods generally do not come out of nowhere but are produced by people who know that what they are saying is at least not the whole truth i still consider such spreading of falsehoods propaganda on some level i m not in a position to say since i know nothing about the situation that does not in my estimation qualify me as having my head up my ass bob i never accused you of having your head up your ass it takes me quite some time in dealing with someone before accusing them of having their head up their ass i was accusing the original poster benedikt i believe of being so impaired cheers gregg
alt.atheism	re who says the apostles were tortured the willingness of true believers to die for their belief be it in jesus or jim jones is well documented so martyrdom in and of itself says little it does say something about the depth of their belief religion has both deluded believers and con men the difference is often how far they will follow their beliefs i have no first hand or even second hand knowledge of how the original apostles died if they began a myth in hopes of exploiting it for profit and followed that myth to the death that would be inconsistent real con men would bail out when it was obvious it would lead to discomfort pain and death the story in kings regarding the prophets of baal is of no help in this debate one can easily assume that they believed that no overwhelming vindication of elijah would be forthcoming he was simply a fool who would be shown to be so the fire from heaven was swift and their seizure and deaths were equally swift
alt.atheism	re yet more rushdie re islamic law in article c r c b unix portal com danb shell portal com dan e babcock writes in article c qt p mvo blaze cs jhu edu arromdee jyusenkyou cs jhu edu ken arromdee writes in article bu edu jaeger buphy bu edu gregg jaeger writes i think many reading this group would also benefit by knowing how deviant the view as i ve articulated it above which may not be the true view of khomeini is from the basic principles of islam from the point ov view of an atheist i see you claim khomeini wasn t practicing true islam but i m sure that he would have said the same about you how am i a member of neither group supposed to be able to tell which one of you two is really a true muslim easy just read the koran because the koran is perfect there is no possibility of disagreement okay i see smilies so this isn t supposed to be a serious post on the other hand i would suppose it does has some motivation behind it apparently the idea is to poke fun at religion but there is presumably some sort of reasoning behind it as an argument this statement is worthless presuming the qur an is a perfect religious text whatever that might be there is still plenty of room for disagreement about its implications for issues far from essentials i ve already responded to the question of how a judgment might be made between two people who in fact do disagree about islam which doesn t presume anything about the qur an other than its having sufficient clarity for all important disputes about the basic principles of islam this hardly constitutes a claim that no two people could have disagreements about all issues relevant to islam gregg
alt.atheism	re societally acceptable behavior in article c qgm dl news cso uiuc edu cobb alexia lis uiuc edu mike cobb writes from cobb alexia lis uiuc edu mike cobb subject societally acceptable behavior date mon apr gmt merely a question for the basis of morality moral ethical behavior societally acceptable behavior who is society how do they define what is acceptable how do we keep from a whatever is legal is what is moral position mac wow you got me thinking now this is an interesting question in that recently there has been a move in society to classify previously socially unacceptable yet legal activities as ok in the past it seems to me there were always two coexisting methods of social control first and most explicit is legal control that is the set of actions we define as currently illegal and having a specifically defined set of punishments secondly and somewhat more hidden is social control these are the actions which are considered socially unacceptable and while not covered by legal control are scrictly controled by social censure ideally if socialization is working as it should legal control is hardly ever needed since most people voluntarilly control their actions due to the pressure of social censure the control manifests itself in day to day life as guilt and morality i ve heard it said and fully believe that if it weren t for the vast majority of people policing themselves legal control would be absolutely impossible lately last years however there has been a move to attempt to dissengage the individual from societal control ie if it ain t illegal then don t pick on me i m not saying this is wrong merely that it is a byproduct of a society which has a high education level a high exposure to alternative ideas via the popular media a high level of institutionalized individual rights and a me oriented culture i guess what i m saying is that we appear to be in a state of transition here in the western world in that we still have many ideas about what we can can t allow people to do based entirely on personal squeamishness yet we are fully bent on maximizing individual freedoms to the max as long as those freedoms don t impinge on another s imho society is trying to persue two mutually exclusive ends here while we appreciate and persue individual rights these satisfy the old territoriality and dominance instincts the removal of socialized inherent fears based on ignorance will result in the continued destabilization of society i got no quick fix i have no idea how we can get ourselves out of this mess i know i would never consent to the roll back of personal freedoms in order to stabilize society yet i believe development of societies follow a darwinian process which selects for stability can we find a social model which maximizes indiv freed s yet is stable perhaps it is possible to live with a non stable society anybody see a way out comments ps therefore answer to question we don t do we want to phil trodwell this space i d be happy to ram a goddam volt cattle for rent prod into that tub with you right now but not cheap this radio hunter s thompson
alt.atheism	re gulf war was re death penalty was re political atheists in article v rusnews w w mantis co uk mathew mathew mantis co uk writes don t sell the bastard arms and information in the first place ruthlessly hunt down those who do especially if they re in positions of power i looked back at this and asked some questions of various people and got the following information which i had claimed and you pooh poohed the us has not sold iraq any arms their navy is entirely made of f ussr vessels their airforce not including stuff captured from kuwait which i am not as sure about doesn t include any us equipment their missiles are all non us their tanks are almost all soviet with about french tanks older ones the only us stuff in the iraqi arsenal is a few m s those were not sold to iraq iraq captured them from other countries like kuwait information is hard to prove you are claiming that the us sold information prove it now how did the us build up iraq again i just gave some fairly conclusive evidence that the us didn t sell arms to iraq information is hard to prove almost certainly if the us did sell information then that fact is classified and you can t prove it if you can provide some useful evidence that the us sold arms or valuable intelligence to iraq i am very interested but not if you just make claims based on what everyone knows mccullou whipple cs wisc edu never program and drink beer at the same m time it doesn t work
alt.atheism	re who has read rushdie s the satanic ve in article r cl innknk bozo dsinc com perry dsinc com jim perry writes anyway since i seem to be the only one following this particular line of discussion i wonder how many of the rest of the readership have read this book what are your thoughts on it i read it i found it wonderful for some reason no flames please i was reminded of hemingway carl orff and van gogh not all at once though geoff arnold pc nfs architect sun select geoff arnold east sun com what if they made the whole thing up the great lie by four guys two thousand years ago over wine the tear garden
alt.atheism	re after years can we say that christian morality is reply to frank d s uucp frank o dwyer the problem for the objectivist is to determine the status of moral truths and the method by which they can be established if we accept that such judgements are not reports of what is but only relate to what ought to be see naturalistic fallacy then they cannot be proved by any facts about the nature of the world this can be avoided in at least two ways by leaving the good undefined since anyone who claims that they do not know what it is is either lying or so out of touch with humanity as to be undeserving of a reply if the good is undefined undefinable but you require of everyone that they know innately what is right you are back to subjectivism by defining the good solely in terms of evaluative terms ditto here an evaluative statement implies a value judgement on the part of the person making it at this point the objectivist may talk of self evident truths pretty perceptive that prof flew but can he deny the subjectivist s claim that self evidence is in the mind of the beholder of course by denying that subject object is true dichotomy please explain how this helps i don t see your argument if not what is left of the claim that some moral judgements are true if nothing then no moral judgements are true this is a thing that is commonly referred to as nihilism it entails that science is of no value irrepective of the fact that some people find it useful how anyone arrives at relativism subjectivism from this argument beats me this makes no sense either flew is arguing that this is where the objectivist winds up not the subjectivist furthermore the nihilists believed in nothing except science materialism revolution and the people the subjectivist may well feel that all that remains is that there are some moral judgements with which he would wish to associate himself to hold a moral opinion is he suggests not to know something to be true but to have preferences regarding human activity and if those preferences should include terrorism that moral opinion is not true likewise if the preferences should include noterrorism that moral opinion is not true why should one choose a set of preferences which include terrorisim over one which includes noterrorism oh no reason this is patently absurd and also not the position of the subjectivist as has been pointed out to you already by others ditch the strawman already and see my reply to mike cobb s root message in the thread societal basis for morality david nye nyeda cnsvax uwec edu midelfort clinic eau claire wi this is patently absurd but whoever wishes to become a philosopher must learn not to be frightened by absurdities bertrand russell
alt.atheism	re he has risen reply to kmr po cwru edu keith m ryan our lord and savior david keresh has risen he has been seen alive spread the word jeez can t he get anything straight i told him to wait for three days god david nye nyeda cnsvax uwec edu midelfort clinic eau claire wi this is patently absurd but whoever wishes to become a philosopher must learn not to be frightened by absurdities bertrand russell
alt.atheism	college atheists i read an article about a poll done of students at the ivy league schools in which it was reported that a third of the students indentified themselves as atheists this is a lot higher than among the general population i wonder what the reasons for this discrepancy are is it because they are more intelligent younger is this the wave of the future david nye nyeda cnsvax uwec edu midelfort clinic eau claire wi this is patently absurd but whoever wishes to become a philosopher must learn not to be frightened by absurdities bertrand russell
alt.atheism	re amusing atheists and agnostics reply to timmbake mcl ucsb edu bake timmons the same kind of ignorance is demonstrated in just about every post in this newsgroup for instance generalizations about christianity are popular which newsgroup have you been reading the few anti christian posts are virtually all in response to some christian posting some you will all burn in hell kind of drivel i m a soft atheist courtesy of the faq but even i know enough about the bible to see that it repeatedly warns of false prophets preaching in the name of god bake it is transparently obvious that you are a theist pretending to be an atheist you probably think you are very clever but we see this all the time but the possibilities of creator and eternity carry with them too much emotional power to dismiss merely on the basis of this line but of course you have dismissed them because you are an atheist right just like any other religion hard atheism is a faith in other words you didn t read the faq after all david nye nyeda cnsvax uwec edu midelfort clinic eau claire wi this is patently absurd but whoever wishes to become a philosopher must learn not to be frightened by absurdities bertrand russell
alt.atheism	re what s a shit shoveler to do was re amusing atheists and reply to jimh carson u washington edu james hogan so what s someone with a prediliction to shit shoveling to do when the latest i know what you atheists are about arrival on a a shows up ignore the bills bobbys bakes try to engage in reasonable discourse while flame fests have been among some of the most entertaining threads here other tugs of war with folks like bobby have grown old before their time i take the view that they are here for our entertainment when they are no longer entertaining into the kill file they go david nye nyeda cnsvax uwec edu midelfort clinic eau claire wi this is patently absurd but whoever wishes to become a philosopher must learn not to be frightened by absurdities bertrand russell
alt.atheism	re amusing atheists and agnostics timmbake mcl ucsb edu half bake timmons writes maddi whirr click whirr frank o dwyer might also be contained in that shell pop stack to determine whirr click whirr killfile keith allen schneider frank closet theist o dwyer maddi the mad sound o geek hausmann no no no i ve already been named by killfile keith my nickname is maddi never a useful post hausmann and don t you dare forget it half there s nothing higher stronger more wholesome and more useful in life than some good memory alyosha in brothers karamazov dostoevsky you really should quote ivan karamazov instead on a a as he was the atheist maddi hausmann madhaus netcom com centigram communications corp san jose california kids please don t try this at home remember i post professionally
alt.atheism	re death penalty was re political athei date tue apr from mathew mathew mantis co uk there s a great film called manufacturing consent noam chomsky and the media it s a canadian film i saw it at the berlin film festival this year if you get a chance go and see it i can t really recommend any books from having read them i m thinking of ordering a book which a reviewer claimed gives a good introduction to his political activism i could dig up the title mathew could it be the chomsky reader edited by james peck published by pantheon
alt.atheism	re amusing atheists and agnostics date apr gmt from bake timmons timmbake mcl ucsb edu remember koresh dried for your sins and pass that beef jerky umm umm though i wasn t there at least i can rely on you now to keep me posted on what what he s doing what a cook off
alt.atheism	re societally acceptable behavior cobb alexia lis uiuc edu mike cobb writes merely a question for the basis of morality moral ethical behavior societally acceptable behavior who is society society is the collection of individuals which will fall under self defined rules in terms of un decisions all the sets of peoples who are represented at the un are considered part of that society if we then look at us federal laws provided by representatives of purely us citizens then the society for that case would be the citizens of the us and so on how do they define what is acceptable acceptable are those behaviours which are either legislated for the society by representatives of that society or those behaviours which are non verbally and in effect non consciously such as picking your nose on the oprah winfrey show no one does it but there is no explicit law against doing it in many cases there are is no definition of whether or not a behaviour is acceptable but one can deduce these behaviours by observation how do we keep from a whatever is legal is what is moral position in an increasingly litigation mad society this trap is becoming exceedingly difficult to avoid with the infusion and strengthening of ethnic cultures in american and australian to bring in my local perspective culture the boundaries of acceptable behaviour are ever widening and legislation may eventually become the definition of moral behaviour for instance some cultures dominant religion call for live sacrifice of domesticated animals most fundamental christians would find this practice abhorrent however is it moral according to the multicultural american society this kind of problem may only be definable by legislation obviously within any society there will be differences in opinion in what is acceptable behaviour or not and much of this will be due to different environmental circumstances rather than merely different opinions one thing is for sure there is no universal moral code which will suit all cultures in all situations there may however be some globally accepted mores which can be agreed upon and instantiated as a globally enforcable concept the majority of mores will not be common until all peoples upon this earth are living in a similar environment if that ever happens jeff nonickname clark
alt.atheism	re you will all go to hell in article apr nuscc nus sg cmtan iss nus sg tan chade meng dan writes from cmtan iss nus sg tan chade meng dan subject re you will all go to hell date tue apr gmt in article jsn psuvm psu edu jsn psuvm psu edu writes you blashephemers you will all go to hell for not believing in god be prepared for your eternal damnation arrgg another one of those another letter to the big guy dear god please take them back to heaven leave us rational intelligent people alone love meng the unenlightened one tan chade meng there is light at the end of the tunnel singapore cmtan iss nus sg it s an on coming train meng i have a better prayer dear god please save the world from the likes of these tammy
alt.atheism	re you will all go to hell in article c s zm e cbnewsj cb att com decay cbnewsj cb att com dean kaflowitz writes from decay cbnewsj cb att com dean kaflowitz subject re you will all go to hell date tue apr gmt in article c lh p k portal hq videocart com dfuller portal hq videocart com dave fuller writes jsn psuvm psu edu writes you blashephemers you will all go to hell for not believing in god be prepared for your eternal damnation what do you mean be prepared surrounded by thumpers like yourself has proven to be hellish enough and i m not even dead yet well here s how i prepared i got one of those big beach umbrellas some of those gel pack ice things a big coleman cooler which i ve loaded up with miller draft so i like miller draft so sue me a new pair of new balance sneakers a sony watchman and a couple of cartons of bonton cheddar cheese popcorn i haven t decided what to wear yet what does one wear to an eternal damnation dean kaflowitz you should wear your nicest boxer shorts and bring plenty of spf sunscreen i ll grab my bathing suit towerl and some veggie hotdogs and we can have bonfire cookout does that sound good enough to you dean every a a poster is invited tammy no trim healy
alt.atheism	re death penalty gulf war long from jbrown batman bmd trw com actually it was the fact that both situations existed that prompted us and allied action if some back water country took over some other back water country we probably wouldn t intervene not that we don t care but we can t be the world s policman or if a coup had occured in kuwait instead of an invasion then we still wouldn t have acted because there would not have been the imminent danger perceived to saudi arabia but the combination of the two an unprovoked invasion by a genocidal tyrant and the potential danger to the west s oil interests caused us to take action there are many indications that would have taken place had saddam been wanting or planning on going into saudi arabia there were none this has been openly stated by ex pentagon analysts pull from jbrown batman bmd trw com i m not setting up a strawman at all if you want to argue against the war then the only logical alternative was to allow hussein to keep kuwait diplomatic alternatives including sanctions were ineffective actually reports from other mid east countries showed that hussein was ready to make concessions due to the sanctions we just didn t want him to we wanted to crush him as well as battle test all these high tech toys we ve built over the years from jbrown batman bmd trw com probably because we re not the saviors of the world we can t police each and every country that decides to self destruct or invade another nor are we in a strategic position to get relief to tibet east timor or some other places we re also hypocrites of the first magnitude obviously we don t give a shit about freedom and democracy all we care about is our oil oh and the excuse now that the soviets are gone from the board to keep a sizable military presence in the gulf region care to make bets about when all our troops will come home basically saddam was ok with us he was a killer who tortured his own people used gas on them and other horrors he was a brutal dictator but he was our brutal dictator once he said fuck you to the us he became the next hitler the same for noriega he was a bastard but he was our bastard until he changed his mind and went his own way then we had to get rid of him david hunt graduate slave my mind is my own towards both a mechanical engineering so are my ideas opinions palestinian and carnegie mellon university use golden rule v jewish homeland t h e r e i s n o g o d t h e r e i s n o g o d email bluelobster cmu edu working towards my piled higher and deeper it will be a great day when scientists and engineers have all the r d money they need and religions have to beg for money to pay the priest
alt.atheism	re societally acceptable behavior in article c s tv h news cso uiuc edu cobb alexia lis uiuc edu mike cobb writes in qvh tinnsg citation ksu ksu edu yohan citation ksu ksu edu jonathan w newton writes in article c qgm dl news cso uiuc edu cobb alexia lis uiuc edu mike cobb writes merely a question for the basis of morality moral ethical behavior societally acceptable behavior i disagree with these what society thinks should be irrelevant what the individual decides is all that is important this doesn t seem right if i want to kill you i can because that is what i decide exactly although this may be a dissapointing answer there has to be an interplay of the two personal ethos and societal morality a person s self generated learned set of beliefs are usually expressed on a purely mental verbal level and don t usually find expression in society except in an impure not in the sense of bad state sometimes this has to be so who is society i think this is fairly obvious not really if whatever a particular society mandates as ok is ok there are always some in the society who disagree with the mandates so which societal mandates make the standard for morality also what if one feels oneself to be part of more than one society in a very real sense to use the obvious example there is a political society and a racial society and a gender society and sometimes they do not always agree on every issue how do they define what is acceptable generally by what they feel is right which is the most idiotic policy i can think of so what should be the basis unfortunately i have to admit to being tied at least loosely to the feeling in that i think we intuitively know some things to be wrong awfully hard to defend though yes perhaps with an infamous do what you want so long as it doesn t hurt others the problem with this is that it is merely saying what you can do it is not a morality in that it doesn t propound any specifically preferred behaviours how do we keep from a whatever is legal is what is moral position by thinking for ourselves i might agree here just because certain actions are legal does not make them moral i ll add a hearty me two however one could just as well say just because certain actions are moral does not make them legal one still doesn t really get an impression of which one is truly right mac michael a cobb and i won t raise taxes on the middle university of illinois class to pay for my programs champaign urbana bill clinton rd debate cobb alexia lis uiuc edu with new taxes and spending cuts we ll still have billion dollar deficits michael a cobb and i won t raise taxes on the middle university of illinois class to pay for my programs champaign urbana bill clinton rd debate cobb alexia lis uiuc edu nobody can explain everything to anybody g k chesterton best regards adam john cooper verily often have i laughed at the weaklings who thought themselves good simply because acooper macalstr edu they had no claws
alt.atheism	re societally acceptable behavior in article c sa s news cso uiuc edu cobb alexia lis uiuc edu mike cobb writes i guess i m delving into a religious language area what exactly is morality or morals i hope there is not one with a subject like this you just have a spiral what would then be a morality of a morality of morals labels don t make arguments one really needs a solid measuring stick by which most actions can be interpreted even though this would hardly seem moral for example the best thing for me is to ensure that i will eat and drink enough hence all actions must be weighed against this one statement whatever helps this goal is moral whatever does not is immoral of course this leads such a blank space there are so many different ways to fulfill a goal one would need a hyper morality to apply to just the methods i never thought of eating meat to be moral or immoral but i think it could be how do we differentiate between not doing something because it is a personal choice or preference and not doing something because we see it as immoral do we fall to what the basis of these morals are seems to me we only consider something moral or immoral if we stop to think about it long enough on the other hand maybe it is our first gut reaction which who knows perhaps here we have a way to discriminate morals i don t instinctively thing vegetarianism is right the same way i instinctively feel torture is wrong but if i thought about it long enough and listened to the arguments i could perhaps reason that it was wrong is that possible see the difference also consensus positions fall to a might makes right or as you brought out if whatever is right is what is societally mandated then whoever is in control at the time makes what is right mc mac michael a cobb and i won t raise taxes on the middle university of illinois class to pay for my programs champaign urbana bill clinton rd debate cobb alexia lis uiuc edu nobody can explain everything to anybody g k chesterton best regards adam adam john cooper verily often have i laughed at the weaklings who thought themselves good simply because acooper macalstr edu they had no claws
alt.atheism	re societal basis for morality in article c sad dm news cso uiuc edu cobb alexia lis uiuc edu mike cobb writes in apr cnsvax uwec edu nyeda cnsvax uwec edu david nye writes reply to cobb alexia lis uiuc edu mike cobb if morals come from what is societally accepted why follow that what right do we have to expect others to follow our notion of societally mandated morality pardon the extremism but couldn t i murder your brother and say that i was exercising my rights as i saw them was doing what felt good didn t want anyone forcing their morality on me or i don t follow your morality i believe that morality is subjective each person is entitled to his own moral attitudes mine are not a priori more correct than someone elses this does not mean however that i must judge another on the basis of his rather than my moral standards while he is entitled to believe what his own moral sense tells him the rest of society is entitled to pass laws spelling out punishments for behavior that is offensive to the majority why how might makes right how can they force their morality on me why can t i do what i want who are they to decide what if i disagree well i agree with you in the sense that they have no moral right to inflict these rules but there is one thing i might add at the very least almost everybody wants to avoid pain and if that means sacrificing some stuff for a herd morality then so be it most criminals do not see their behavior as moral the may realize that it is immoral and not care they are thus not following their own moral system but being immoral good point but it is being immoral in our opinion we don t let them choose we make the decision that their actions are wrong for them right and since they grew up and learned around us they have some idea of our right and wrong which i think must in part be incorporated very rarely do you see criminal behaviour for philosophical reasons for someone to lay claim to an alternative moral system he must be sincere in his belief in it and it must be internally consistent some sociopaths lack an innate moral sense i admit to lean toward the idea of an innate moral sense but have little basis for it as of yet how far can such a concept be extended stuff deleted do you mean that we could say it would be wrong for us to do such a thing but not him after all he was behaving morally in his own eyes and doing what he chose on what basis do we condemn other societies besides here s the buzz words on the idea that there are some actions wrong for all humans in all societies holding that morality is subjective does not mean that we must excuse the murderer why not do we have to be objective suddenly david nye nyeda cnsvax uwec edu midelfort clinic eau claire wi this is patently absurd but whoever wishes to become a philosopher must learn not to be frightened by absurdities bertrand russell mac michael a cobb and i won t raise taxes on the middle university of illinois class to pay for my programs champaign urbana bill clinton rd debate cobb alexia lis uiuc edu nobody can explain everything to anybody g k chesterton best regards adam adam john cooper verily often have i laughed at the weaklings who thought themselves good simply because acooper macalstr edu they had no claws
alt.atheism	re you will all go to hell in article healta saturn wwc edu healta saturn wwc edu tammy r healy writes you should wear your nicest boxer shorts and bring plenty of spf sunscreen i ll grab my bathing suit towerl and some veggie hotdogs and we can have bonfire cookout does that sound good enough to you dean every a a poster is invited is there room for nudists after all if you believe most upstanding moral churches nudity is a sin my sole intention was learning to fly
alt.atheism	re free moral agency in article minster york ac uk cjhs minster york ac uk writes are you saying that their was a physical adam and eve and that all humans are direct decendents of only these two human beings then who were cain and able s wives couldn t be their sisters because a e didn t have daughters were they non humans genesis and the days of adam after he begat seth were eight hundred years and he begat sons and daughters felicitations chris ho stuart it is still incestuous adam what happened to my sig cooper
alt.atheism	test ignore test adam john cooper verily often have i laughed at the weaklings who thought themselves good simply because acooper macalstr edu they had no claws understand one another i fear i am beyond your comprehension gandalf
alt.atheism	re amusing atheists and anarchists in article timmbake mcl timmbake mcl ucsb edu bake timmons writes mccullou whipple cs wisc edu writes the line about atheists haveing something up their sleeves is what seemed to imply that sorry been reading too much on the clipper project lately and the paranoia over there may have seeped in some what is the clipper project btw the clipper initiative is an announcement by clinton that all the secure voice phones will use the same crypto chip as a de facto government standard problem is the government is admitting that they hold the keys to break the code easily and the justice department will be using the keys to listen in on illegal activities many people are really scared about such an initiative because it is a major step towards outlawing real crypto protection on things like email if you read the press release the project was developed by nsa and given to nist it uses two keys s and s that the government claims are needed to break the code they claim that these keys will be handed to two different companies and when they get a warrant to do a wiretap the chip is nicknamed the wiretap chip they have to get the keys from both companies people have poked holes through and through the press release official version and shown how it is nowhere near as nice as it sounds and i have given the simplified version people over on sci crypt are really scared about this proposal it seems mccullou whipple cs wisc edu never program and drink beer at the same m time it doesn t work
alt.atheism	re the pope is jewish date tue apr gmt from r bruce rakes bruce cortex dixie com mcgoy unicorn acs ttu edu david mcgaughey writes i always thought that the pope was a bear you know because of that little saying does a bear shit in the woods is the pope catholic there must be some connection between those two lines and i always heard it is the bear catholic does the pope oh nevermind r bruce rakes software systems manager elekta instruments inc executive park w suite atlanta ga voice fax email bruce elekta com anyone from alabama knows it should be is the bear catholic does a pope shit in the woods the pope may not be a bear but the bear is a god paul bear bryant football coach god university of alabama
alt.atheism	re faith and dogma tgk cs toronto edu todd kelley writes in light of what happened in waco i need to get something of my chest faith and dogma are dangerous religion inherently encourages the implementation of faith and dogma and for that reason i scorn religion i don t necessarily disagree with your assertion but i disagree with your reasoning faith bad dogma bad religion faith dogma religion bad bad religion bad unfortunately you never state why faith and dogma are dangerous if you believe faith and dogma are dangerous because of what happened in waco you are missing the point the branch davidians made the mistake of confusing the message with the messenger they believed koresh was a prophet and therefore believed everything he said the problem wasn t the religion it was the followers they didn t die because of faith and dogma they died because of their zealotry or in the case of the children the zealotry of their parents i have expressed this notion in the past some christians debated with me whether christianity leaves any room for reasoning i claimed rationality is quelled out of christianity by faith and dogma so christians are totally irrational irrational with respect to their religion only what are you saying one s belief in a christian god does not make one totally irrational i think i know what you were getting at but i d rather hear you expand on the subject a philosopher cannot be a christian because a philosopher can change his mind whereas a christian cannot due to the nature of faith and dogma present in any religion again this statement is too general a christian is perfectly capable of being a philosopher and absolutely capable of changing his her mind faith in god is a belief and all beliefs may change would you assert that atheists would make poor philosophers because they are predisposed to not believe in a god which of course may show unfair bias when studying say religion i claimed that a christian philosopher is not a christian but is a person whose beliefs at the moment correspond with those of christianity consider that a person visiting or guarding a prison is not a prisoner unless you define a prisoner simply to be someone in a prison can we define a prisoner to be someone who at the moment is in a prison can we define a christian to be someone who at the moment has christian beliefs no because if a person is free to go he is not a prisoner similarly if a person is not constrained by faith and dogma he is not a christian so christianity is a prison eh ever heard of parole you have read far too much into this subject a christian is one who follows the religion based on the teachings of a man named jesus christ nowhere does this definition imply that one cannot change one s mind in prison however you can t just decide to leave one is voluntary the other is not the two are not compatible religion is like the gun that doesn t kill anybody religion encourages faith and dogma and although it doesn t directly condemn people it encourages the use of just because thinking it is just because thinking that kills people i prefer to think of religion as a water pistol filled with urine seriously though some but certainly not all religions do condemn groups of people the common target is the infidel a curious being who is alternately an atheist a non insert specific religious affiliation here a person of a different race or an egyptian please explain how just because thinking kills people and please state more in your answer than waco of course not all humans are capable of thought and we d still have genocide and maybe even some mass suicide but not as much i m willing to bet on that i ll see your conscientious peacenik and raise you a religious zealot with bad acne by the way i wasn t aware mass suicide was a problem waco and jonestown were isolated incidents mass suicides are far from common kevin marshall computer science department virginia tech marshall csugrad cs vt edu blacksburg virginia
alt.atheism	church o satan was re islamic authority sic over women david rice ofa fidonet org writes who marshall csugrad cs vt edu kevin marshall what q kc dj csugrad cs vt edu km yeah hilarious satanists believe satan is a god but not km the only god satan is a part of christian mythology km therefore one cannot reasonably worship satan without km acknowledging the existence of a christian god satanists km see satan as their master and they see god and satan as km adversaries of similar power satanists believe in the km eventual overthrow of god and a transfer of all power to km their master kevin marshall a great many satanists do not believe in satan some do some don t i d go so far as to assert that most orthodox satanists do not worship satan church of satan etc but rather worship self to hear lavey say it only idiots and fools believe in satan and or allah he knew that suckers are born every minute maximus wb anton lavey s interpretation of satanism has always puzzled me i read his satanic bible a few years ago for a social studies project as well as a book by arthur lyons called the cult of devil worship in america the latter included a very interesting interview with the black pope in which he did indeed say that satan was merely an instrument for one to realize the self when i refer to satanism i am referring to the mishmash of rural satanic ritualism and witchcraft which existed before the church of satan i don t consider lavey s church to be at all orthodox nor do i consider its followers satanists lavey combined the philosophies of nietzsche crowley and reich slapped in some religious doctrine added a little touch of p t barnum and christened his creation the church of satan no doubt the title was a calculated attempt to attract attention i suppose he could have just as easily called it the church of free sex at any rate it worked for a while in its heyday the church had a huge following including such hollywood celebrities as sammy davis jr and jayne mansfield i have a picture of lavey with sammy by the way i find the idea of a satanist not believing in satan about as credible as a christian not believing in christ but if you include the church of satan then i suppose i need to alter my definition webster s dictionary and the american heritage dictionary will have to do the same kevin marshall computer science department virginia tech marshall csugrad cs vt edu blacksburg virginia
alt.atheism	re who has read rushdie s the satanic verses in article edm apr gocart twisto compaq com edm twisto compaq com ed mccreary writes while we re on the topic of books has anyone else noticed that paine s the age of reason is hard to find i ve been wanting to pick up a copy for a while but not bad enough to mail order it i ve noticed though that none of the bookstores i go to seem to carry it i thought this was supposed to be classic what s the deal me too our local used book store is the second largest on the west coast and i couldn t find a copy there i guess atheists hold their bibles in as much esteem as the theists bob beauchaine bobbe vice ico tek com they said that queens could stay they blew the bronx away and sank manhattan out at sea
alt.atheism	re islamic genocide in article qu o horus ap mchp sni de frank d s uucp frank o dwyer writes in article qkovl k fido asd sgi com livesey solntze wpd sgi com jon livesey writes false dichotomy you claimed the killing were not religiously motivated and i m saying that s wrong i m not saying that each and every killing is religiously motivate as i spelled out in detail which killings do you say are religously motivated for example i would claim that the recent assassination of four catholic construction workers who had no connection with the ira was probably religously motivated at the time of writing i think that someone who claims the current violence is motivated by religion is reaching what would you call is when someone writes the killings in n i are not religously motivated now it s possible to argue that religion in the past is a major contributing factor to the violence in the present but i don t know of any evidence that this is so and i m not enough of a historian to debate it given that the avowed aim of the ira is to take northern ireland into a country that has a particular church written into its constitution and which has restriction on civil rights dictated by that church i fail to see why the word past is appropriate but to claim that the killings in n i are not religously motivated is grotesque all that means is that the church and believers are doing what they always do with history they can t face they rewrite it you re attacking a different claim my claim is that when an ira terrorist plants a bomb in warrington s he does not have as a motive the greater glory of god sorry frank but what i put in quotes is your own words from your posting qi b ec horus ap mchp sni de don t tell us now that it s a different claim if you can no longer stand behind your original claim just say so i mean the same thing when i say the killings in n i are not religously motivated as i do when i say when a terrorist plants a bomb s he doesn t have a religious motive the example is meant to clarify not to be a new claim the different claim to which i refer is the claim which you were seemingly attacking in the previous post namely that religion is not a major historical cause of the present violence i don t assert that nor do i assert its opposite you don t have to hand us a bunch of double talk about what i was seemingly attacking i quoted what i was attacking jon
alt.atheism	re the inimitable rushdie in article apr monu cc monash edu au darice yoyo cc monash edu au fred rice writes in qi jkj fido asd sgi com livesey solntze wpd sgi com jon livesey writes my understanding is that uk blasphemy laws yes they exist in the uk although they are little used apply only to anglican christianity how does this fit in with your claim that there is no state religion in the uk why don t you ask the approx two million british muslims who break it five times a day and have never ever been prosecuted under it then ask how easy it is to hold a christian church service in saudi arabia jon
alt.atheism	re who has read rushdie s the satanic verses in article r cl innknk bozo dsinc com perry dsinc com jim perry writes anyway since i seem to be the only one following this particular line of discussion i wonder how many of the rest of the readership have read this book what are your thoughts on it i read it when it first came out and the controversy broke put my name on the waiting list at the library that way if the book was really offensive none of my money would find its way to the author or publisher and read it cover to cover to use a phrase that seems popular here right now and i liked it the writing style was a little hard to get used to but it was well worth the effort coming from a similar background rushdie grew up in bombay in a muslim family and moved to england i grew up in new delhi it made a strong impression on me and he used many of the strange constructions of indian english the yaar at the end of a sentence butbutbut the occasional hindi phrase etc at the time i still sorta kinda thought of myself as a muslim and i couldn t see what the flap was all about it seemed clear to me that this was allegory it was clear that he described some local prostitutes who took on the names and personae of muhammed s wives and had not as my grandfather thundered implied that muhammed s wives were prostitutes in short every angry muslim that had read even part of the book seemed to have missed the point completely and i won t mention the fact that the most militant of them had never even seen the book oops i just did perhaps in a deep sense the book is insulting to islam because it exposes the silliness of revealed religion why does an omnipotent deity need an agent she can come directly to me can t she how do we know that muhammed didn t just go out into the desert and smoke something and how do we know that the scribes he dictated the quran to didn t screw up or put in their own little verses and why can muhammed marry more than four women when no other muslim is allowed to although i think the biggest insult to islam is that the majority of its followers would want to suppress a book sight unseen on the say so of some holy guy not to mention murder the author over the years when i have made this point various primarily muslim posters have responded saying that yes indeed they have read the book and had called it such things as filth and lies i would rank rushdie s book with hitler s mein kempf or worse and so on i had much the same response when i tried to talk about the book a really silly argument after all how many of these same people have read mein kampf it just made me wonder what are they afraid of why don t they just read the book and decide for themselves maybe the reaction of the muslim community to the book and the absence of protest from the liberal muslims to khomeini s fatwa outrage was the final push i needed into atheism s shamim mohamed uunet noao cmcl arizona shamim shamim cs arizona edu take this cross and garlic here s a mezuzah if he s jewish a page of the koran if he s a muslim and if he s a zen buddhist you re on your own member of the league for programming freedom write to lpf uunet uu net
alt.atheism	re the universe and black holes was re years in article apr iastate edu kv iastate edu warren vonroeschlaub wrote let s say that we drop a marble into the black hole it races ever faster towards the even horizon but thanks to the curving of space caused by the excessive gravity as the object approaches the event horizon it has further to travel integrating the curve gives a time to reach the event horizon of infinity so the math says that nothing can enter a black hole not true only an observer at rest at infinite distance from the black hole will see the particle take infinite time to reach the horizon in the particle s own reference frame it takes a very finite time to reach the horizon and the singularity the math does indeed predict this take a look at mitchner thorne and wheeler s gravitation peter walker don t forget to sing they say there s a heaven for those who will wait some say it s better but i say it ain t i d rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints the sinners are much more fun only the good die young
alt.atheism	re yet more rushdie re islamic law in article bu edu jaeger buphy bu edu gregg jaeger writes in article qla g afp fido asd sgi com livesey solntze wpd sgi com jon livesey writes i hope an islamic bank is something other than bcci which ripped off so many small depositors among the muslim community in the uk and elsewhere grow up childish propagandist bbci was an example of an islamically owned and operated bank what will someone bet me they weren t real islamic owners and operators an islamic bank is a bank which operates according to the rules of islam in regard to banking this is done explicitly by the bank this was not the case with bcci so now you are saying that an islamic bank is something other than bcci would you care to explain why it was that when i said i hope an islamic bank is something other than bcci you called me a childish propagandist jon
alt.atheism	re yet more rushdie re islamic law in article apr monu cc monash edu au darice yoyo cc monash edu au fred rice writes the difference as i understand it is that when one invests one shares in the risk of the venture whereas when a bank lends money while charging interest the bank takes little risk the entire business of a bank is the management of risk that s what a bank is for that s what people who work for banks do something like that anyway financial stuff ain t my thing ok but in that case why are you posting about it what i hear you saying is i don t understand this stuff but if islam says it s so it s so jon
alt.atheism	re cruel was re political atheists in article qnpe inn b gap caltech edu keith cco caltech edu keith allan schneider writes livesey solntze wpd sgi com jon livesey writes they spent quite a bit of time on the wording of the constitution i realise that this is widely held belief in america but in fact the clause on cruel and unusual punishments like a lot of the rest was lifted from the english bill of rights of just because the wording is elsewhere does not mean they didn t spend much time on the wording in the part of the posting you have so helpfully deleted i pointed out that they used the wording from the english bill of rights apparently changing what they understood by it and i asked why then should we two hundred years later be bound by what keith allan schneider thinks they understood by it we have already looked in the dictionary to define the word isn t this sufficient since the dictionary said that a lack of mercy or an intent to inflict injury or grief counted as cruel sure people can be described as cruel in this way but punishments cannot so one cannot say a cruel fate your prevarications are getting increasingly unconvincing i think jon
alt.atheism	re cruel was re political atheists in article apr bmerh bnr ca dgraham bmers bnr ca douglas graham writes in article qnedm a fido asd sgi com livesey solntze wpd sgi com jon livesey writes in article ql mdinn gap caltech edu keith cco caltech edu keith allan schneider writes they spent quite a bit of time on the wording of the constitution i realise that this is widely held belief in america but in fact the clause on cruel and unusual punishments like a lot of the rest was lifted from the english bill of rights of according to jerry mander s in the absence of the sacred good book btw the great binding law of the iroquois confederacy also played a significant role as a model for the u s constitution furthermore apparently marx and engels were strongly influenced by a study of iroquois society using it as the prime example of a successful classless egalitarian noncoercive society mander goes on to say that both the u s and the u s s r would do well to study the original document figure out where each went wrong and try to get it right next time that s fascinating i heard that the chinese rather than the italians invented pasta jon
alt.atheism	re political atheists in article qnp inn gap caltech edu keith cco caltech edu keith allan schneider writes livesey solntze wpd sgi com jon livesey writes perhaps the chimps that failed to evolve cooperative behaviour died out and we are left with the ones that did evolve such behaviour entirely by chance that s the entire point no that s the point of evolution not the point of natural morality unless of course as i have suggested several times already natural morality is just a renaming are you going to proclaim a natural morality every time an organism evolves cooperative behaviour yes natural morality is a morality that developed naturally but your yes is actually stronger than this you are agreeing that every time an organism evolves cooperative behaviour you are going to call it a natural morality what about the natural morality of bee dance huh bee dance is a naturally developed piece of cooperative behaviour jon
alt.atheism	re political atheists in article apr daffy cs wisc edu mccullou snake cs wisc edu mark mccullough writes in article ql a afp fido asd sgi com livesey solntze wpd sgi com jon livesey writes in article ql ajinn kj gap caltech edu keith cco caltech edu keith allan schneider writes well chimps must have some system they live in social groups as we do so they must have some laws dictating undesired behavior ah the verb to must i was warned about that one back in kindergarten so why must they have such laws jon hey must is a verb in some languages just happens it is only a modifier in english but the verb of the sentence is to have this is modified by must i know that must is a verb in some languages i m complaining about the assertion containing the word must jon
alt.atheism	re a little too satanic in article mimsy umd edu mangoe cs umd edu charley wingate writes jon livesey writes what i said was that people took time to copy the text correctly translations present completely different issues so why do i read in the papers that the qumram texts had different versions of some ot texts did i misunderstand reading newspapers to learn about this kind of stuff is not the best idea in the world newspaper reporters are notoriously ignorant on the subject of religion and are prone to exaggeration in the interests of having a real story that is a bigger headline let s back up to at this point we have the masoretic text the various targums translations commentaries in aramaic etc and the septuagint the ancient greek translation the masoretic text is the standard jewish text and essentially does not vary in some places it has obvious corruptions all of which are copied faithfully from copy to copy these passages in the past were interpreted by reference to the targums and to the septuagint so when they took the time to copy the text correctly that includes obvious corruptions now the septuagint differs from the masoretic text in two particulars first it includes additional texts and second in some passages there are variant readings from the masoretic text in addition to fixing predating the various corrupted passages it must be emphasized that to the best of my knowledge these variations are only signifcant to bible scholars and have little theological import so when they took the time to copy the text correctly that does not exclude variant readings from the masoretic text which are of little theological import the dead sea scroll materials add to this an ancient copy of almost all of isaiah and fragments of various sizes of almost all other ot books there is also an abundance of other material but as far as i know there is no sign there of any hebrew antecdent to the apocrypha the extra texts in the septuagint as far as analysis has proceeded there are also variations between the dss texts and the masoretic versions these tend to reflect the septuagint where the latter isn t obviously in error again though the differences thus far are not significant theologically there is this big expectation that there are great theological surprises lurking in the material but so far this hasn t happened the dss are important because there is almost no textual tradition in the ot unlike for the nt hey you re the expert jon
alt.atheism	re amusing atheists and agnostics in article ofp qp vpdinppwh andrew cmu edu nanci ann miller nm w andrew cmu edu writes timmbake mcl ucsb edu bake timmons writes there lies the hypocrisy dude atheism takes as much faith as theism admit it besides not believing in a god means one doesn t have to deal with all of the extra baggage that comes with it this leaves a person feeling wonderfully free especially after beaten over the head with it for years i agree that religion and belief is often an important psychological healer for many people and for that reason i think it s important however trying to force a psychological fantasy i don t mean that in a bad way but that s what it really is on someone else who isn t interested is extremely rude what if i still believed in santa claus and said that my it should be noted that belief in god is in itself no more a behavoral imperative than lack of belief it is religion which causes the harm not the belief in god dan
alt.atheism	re faith and dogma in article r mr eov aurora engr latech edu ray engr latech edu bill ray writes todd kelley tgk cs toronto edu wrote faith and dogma are dangerous faith and dogma are inevitable christians merely understand and admit to the fact give me your proof that no god exists or that he does whichever position you take you are forced to do it on faith it does no good to say you take no position for to show no interest in the existence of god is to assume he does not exist stuff deleted as many posters have said in as many posts lately this is just not true for to show no interest in the existence of god takes no faith at all you make the presumption that the knowledge of the possibility of something is enough to require faith to render that possibilty of no interest it is a very different thing to say that you don t believe something than it is to say that you don t have sufficent reason to believe something is even interesting to think about it s not either or sometimes is just something else more interesting that occupies your mind i agree that faith and dogma are inevitable but not necessarily applied to god and religion it takes both faith and dogma to expect the sun to come up every morning but there is overwhelming reason every single day day in and day out for everyone to put his faith and dogma there not so with the christian religion jim halat halat bear com bear stearns whatever doesn t kill you will only serve to annoy you nyc i speak only for myself
alt.atheism	re christian morality is in article eastman uucp dps nasa kodak com dan schaertel wrote in article vice ico tek com bobbe vice ico tek com robert beauchaine writes yet i am still not a believer is god not concerned with my disposition why is it beneath him to provide me with the evidence i would require to believe the evidence that my personality given to me by this god would find compelling the fact is god could cause you to believe anything he wants you to but think about it for a minute would you rather have someone love you because you made them love you or because they wanted to love you i wouldn t punish him with eternal torture if he didn t love me but then i m a decent chap it seems your god isn t the responsibility is on you to love god and take a step toward him he promises to be there for you but you have to look for yourself i ve looked and he wasn t another promise broken those who doubt this or dispute it have not givin it a sincere effort lying bastard how do you know what effort i have and have not given simple logic arguments are folly if you read the bible you will see that jesus made fools of those who tried to trick him with logic our ability to reason is just a spec of creation yet some think it is the ultimate if you rely simply on your reason then you will never know more than you do now to learn you must accept that which you don t know can anyone eaplain what he s just said here peter don t forget to sing they say there s a heaven for those who will wait some say it s better but i say it ain t i d rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints the sinners are much more fun only the good die young
alt.atheism	re you will all go to hell in article c s zm e cbnewsj cb att com decay cbnewsj cb att com dean kaflowitz wrote in article c lh p k portal hq videocart com dfuller portal hq videocart com dave fuller writes jsn psuvm psu edu writes you blashephemers you will all go to hell for not believing in god be prepared for your eternal damnation what do you mean be prepared surrounded by thumpers like yourself has proven to be hellish enough and i m not even dead yet well here s how i prepared i got one of those big beach umbrellas some of those gel pack ice things a big coleman cooler which i ve loaded up with miller draft so i like miller draft so sue me a new pair of new balance sneakers a sony watchman and a couple of cartons of bonton cheddar cheese popcorn i haven t decided what to wear yet what does one wear to an eternal damnation dean kaflowitz dress casual only in heaven is there a dress code black tie and self important expression don t forget to sing they say there s a heaven for those who will wait some say it s better but i say it ain t i d rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints the sinners are much more fun only the good die young
alt.atheism	re genocide is caused by atheism in article apr monu cc monash edu au darice yoyo cc monash edu au fred rice writes in qi fc jkj fido asd sgi com livesey solntze wpd sgi com jon livesey writes in article apr monu cc monash edu au darice yoyo cc monash edu au fred rice writes some here on alt atheism think that by condemning the actions of some of those who call themselves muslims they are condemning islam do you read minds mr rice you know what posters think now not just what they write for myself i only have what people are posting here to go on and that s what i am commenting on i think you may have misunderstood me i mean that one does not really criticize islam necessarily by bringing khomeini etc into the argument for whether he is or is not following islam has to be determined by examining his actions against islamic teachings islamic teachings are contained in the qur an and hadiths reported sayings and doings of the prophet that s funny i thought you were making a statement about what people think in fact i see it quoted up there jon
alt.atheism	re genocide is caused by atheism in article apr monu cc monash edu au darice yoyo cc monash edu au fred rice writes by the way jon i found a reference to my claim that the percentage of the population that suffers from depression has been increasing this century as you requested i will start a new heading thread to post it under cool then we can discuss the increase in radio and tv use the increase in the use of fossil fuels the increase in air travel and consumption of processed bread and you can instruct us on which of them causes increased depression jon
alt.atheism	re genocide is caused by atheism in article qugin tf horus ap mchp sni de frank d s uucp frank o dwyer writes in article qkogg k fido asd sgi com livesey solntze wpd sgi com jon livesey writes and in that area what you care about is whether someone is sceptical critical and autonomous on the one hand or gullible excitable and easily led on the other indeed i may and one may be an atheist and also be gullible excitable and easily led i would say that a tendency to worship tyrants and ideologies indicates that a person is easily led whether they have a worship or belief in a supernatural hero rather than an earthly one seems to me to be beside the point sure but whether or not they are atheists is what we are discussing not whether they are easily led not if you show that these hypothetical atheists are gullible excitable and easily led from some concrete cause in that case we would also have to discuss if that concrete cause rather than atheism was the factor that caused their subsequent behaviour jon
alt.atheism	re faith and dogma marshall csugrad cs vt edu kevin marshall r eba hsq csugrad cs vt edu wrote i don t necessarily disagree with your assertion but i disagree with your reasoning faith bad dogma bad religion faith dogma religion bad bad religion bad unfortunately you never state why faith and dogma are dangerous faith and dogma are dangerous because they cause people to act on faith alone which by its nature is without justification that is what i mean by the word faith belief without justification or belief with arbitrary justification or with emotional irrational justification for example when someone says that god exists that they don t know why they believe god exists they can just feel it that s faith dogma is bad because it precludes positive change in belief based on new information or increased mental faculty so christians are totally irrational irrational with respect to their religion only what are you saying one s belief in a christian god does not make one totally irrational i think i know what you were getting at but i d rather hear you expand on the subject faith and dogma are irrational the faith and dogma part of any religion are responsible for the irrationality of the individuals i claim that faith and dogma are the quintessential part of any religion if that makes the much overused in this context buddism a philosophy rather than a religion i can live with that science is not a religion because there is no faith nor dogma a philosopher cannot be a christian because a philosopher can change his mind whereas a christian cannot due to the nature of faith and dogma present in any religion again this statement is too general a christian is perfectly capable of being a philosopher and absolutely capable of changing his her mind faith in god is a belief and all beliefs may change would you assert that atheists would make poor philosophers because they are predisposed to not believe in a god which of course may show unfair bias when studying say religion have you noticed that philosophers tend to be atheists if a philosopher is not an atheist s he tends to be called a theologian a christian tends to consider christianity sacred christianity is a special set of beliefs sanctioned by god himself and therefore to conceive of changing those beliefs is to question the existence of that being who makes no mistakes faith comes into play dogma comes into play the lord works in mysterious ways is an example of faith being used to reconcile evidence that the beliefs are flawed sure interpretations of what god said are changed to satisfy the needs of society but when god says something that s it it was said and that s that since god said it it is unflawed even if the interpretations are flawed science as would be practiced by atheists in contrast has a built in defence against faith and dogma a scientist holds sacred the idea that beliefs should change to suit whatever is the best information available at the time and and and a scientist understands that any current beliefs are deficient in some way the goal is to keep improving the beliefs the goal is to keep changing the beliefs to reflect the best information currently available that s the only rational thing to do that s good philosophy can you see the difference science views beliefs as being flawed and new information can be obtained to improve them how many scientists would claim to have complete and perfect understanding of everything none it would put them out of a job religion views its beliefs as being perfect and the interpretations of those beliefs must be changed as new information is acquired which conflicts with them please explain how just because thinking kills people and please state more in your answer than waco it s easier for someone to kill a person when s he doesn t require a good rational justification of the killing i don t consider he s jewish or he was born of jewish parents or this document says he s jewish to be good rational justification by the way i wasn t aware mass suicide was a problem waco and jonestown were isolated incidents mass suicides are far from common clinton and the fbi would love for you to convince them of this it would save the us taxpayer a lot of money if you could todd
alt.atheism	re faith and dogma in r mr eov aurora engr latech edu ray engr latech edu bill ray wrote faith and dogma are inevitable christians merely understand and admit to the fact give me your proof that no god exists or that he does whichever position you take you are forced to do it on faith it does no good to say you take no position for to show no interest in the existence of god is to assume he does not exist consider special relativity it hasn t be proved nor has it been disproved no one has a proof one way or the other but many people are interested in it i ve satisfied myself that nothing could indicate absolutely the existence of god one way or the other the two possibilities are supernaturalism and naturalism of course no set of circumstances can be inconsistent with supernaturalism but similarly no set of circumstances can be inconsistent with naturalism in naturalism any phenomenon that could be described as god is considered part of the natural world to be studied as any other natural phenomenon gravity for instance for example if a loud godlike voice vociferously announced i am god i exist and i will prove it by reversing the force of gravity and if then gravity did indeed reverse a naturalist probably a scientist would say boy we sure didn t understand gravity as well as we thought we did and that loud voice is something new perhaps we didn t understand thunder as well as we thought we did either i contend that proper implementation of the christian faith requires reasoning but that reasoning cannot be used to throw out things you don t like or find uncomfortable hedonistic sexual behavior is condemned in the bible and no act of true reason will make it any less condemned hatred murder gossip all these are condemned is there god ordained murder in the bible you bet and if god ever orders me to kill you i will but i will first use the gideon like behavior of verifying that god actually ordered the hit and will probably discuss it in an abram like fashion i m sure glad you don t know where i live since you don t seem to realize it is impossible for you to distinguish between voices in your head and god s voice i can hear you now this is how jim jones and david koresh justify their behavior delusional religious cults bear the same relationship to christianity that rape bears to consentual sex form but no substance when the southern baptist church or the methodist church begin to do this then you have reason to blame mainstream religion for the behaviors of these people or should i associate every negative behavior i witness in any non christian with you you seem to have missed my point even if jim jones and david koresh were not religious people my point remains that faith and dogma are dangerous and religion encourages them jim jones and david koresh also encouraged them my point does not rely on jim jones and david koresh being religious todd
alt.atheism	re faith and dogma in article r mr eov aurora engr latech edu ray engr latech edu bill ray writes todd kelley tgk cs toronto edu wrote faith and dogma are dangerous faith and dogma are inevitable christians merely understand and admit to the fact give me your proof that no god exists or that he does whichever position you take you are forced to do it on faith it does no good to say you take no position for to show no interest in the existence of god is to assume he does not exist absolutely not true without religion either an established one or one you invent for yourself the theist and atheist are equally not interested in god because without religious revelation there is no information about god available strip away the dogma and the theists atheists are no different simply holding a different opinion on a matter of little practical importance i contend that proper implementation of the christian faith requires reasoning but that reasoning cannot be used to throw out things you don t like or find uncomfortable hedonistic sexual behavior is condemned in the bible and no act of true reason will make it any less condemned hatred murder gossip all these are condemned is there god ordained murder in the bible you bet and if god ever orders me to kill you i will but i will first use the gideon like behavior of verifying that god actually ordered the hit and will probably discuss it in an abram like fashion sorry but that doesn t help what test will you apply to decide whether it is god or satan with whom you are speaking how will you know that you have not simply gone insane or having delusions you are like a loaded gun i can hear you now this is how jim jones and david koresh justify their behavior delusional religious cults bear the same relationship ah you not as stupid as i assumed when the southern baptist church or the methodist church begin to do this then you have reason to blame mainstream religion for the behaviors of these people or should i associate every negative behavior i witness in any non christian with you yes we re all in this together each human making up a small part of the definition of humanity dan
alt.atheism	re thoughts on christians in article vice ico tek com bobbe vice ico tek com robert beauchaine wrote in article sandvik sandvik kent apple com sandvik newton apple com kent sandvik writes as i know you can t get any physical problems by passive christianity unlike smoking it s not that hard to avoid christianity today anyway just ignore em right on keith err kent whadda you mean you didn t see the smiley ouch i guess i didn t sorry but my comment was just more irony into the fire cheers kent sandvik newton apple com alink ksand private activities on the net
alt.atheism	re who has read rushdie s the satanic verses in article vice ico tek com bobbe vice ico tek com robert beauchaine wrote in article edm apr gocart twisto compaq com edm twisto compaq com ed mccreary writes while we re on the topic of books has anyone else noticed that paine s the age of reason is hard to find i ve been wanting to pick up a copy for a while but not bad enough to mail order it i ve noticed though that none of the bookstores i go to seem to carry it i thought this was supposed to be classic what s the deal me too our local used book store is the second largest on the west coast and i couldn t find a copy there i guess atheists hold their bibles in as much esteem as the theists if i remember correctly prometheus books have this one in stock so just call them and ask for the book cheers kent sandvik newton apple com alink ksand private activities on the net
alt.atheism	age of reason was who has read rushdie s this is the story of kent the archetype finn that lives in the bay area and tried to purchase thomas paine s age of reason this man was driving around to staceys to books inc to well cleanlighted place to daltons to various other places when he asked for this book the well educated american book store assistants in most placed asked him to check out the thriller section or then they said that his book has not been published yet but they should receive the book soon in some places the assistants bluntly said that they don t know of such an author or that he is not a well known living author so they don t keep copies of his books such is the life and times of america years after the revolution cheers kent sandvik newton apple com alink ksand private activities on the net
alt.atheism	re some thoughts in article c rekj y darkside osrhe uoknor edu bil okcforum osrhe edu bill conner writes james felder spbach lerc nasa gov wrote logic alert argument from incredulity just because it is hard for you to believe this doesn t mean that it isn t true liars can be very pursuasive just look at koresh that you yourself cite this is whole basis of a great many here rejecting the christian account of things in the words of st madalyn murrey o hair face it folks it s just silly why is it okay to disbelieve because of your incredulity if you admit that it s a fallacy it isn t and i wasn t aware that this o hair chick was a reader of a a so that doesn t support your assertion that the argument is the whole basis of a great many here rejecting dan
alt.atheism	re thoughts on christians in article c rgkb fs darkside osrhe uoknor edu bil okcforum osrhe edu bill conner writes kent sandvik sandvik newton apple com wrote the social pressure is indeed a very important factor for the majority of passive christians in our world today in the case of early christianity the promise of a heavenly afterlife independent of your social status was also a very promising gift reason slaves and non romans accepted the religion very rapidly if this is a hypothetical proposition you should say so if it s fact you should cite your sources if all this is the amateur sociologist sub branch of a a however it would suffice to alert the unwary that you are just screwing around what would you accept as sources this very thing has been written in lots of books you could start with erich fromm s the dogma of christ doug graham dgraham bnr ca my opinions are my own
alt.atheism	re cruel was re political atheists in article r j d e fido asd sgi com livesey solntze wpd sgi com jon livesey writes in article apr bmerh bnr ca dgraham bmers bnr ca douglas graham writes according to jerry mander s in the absence of the sacred good book btw the great binding law of the iroquois confederacy also played a significant role as a model for the u s constitution furthermore apparently marx and engels were strongly influenced by a study of iroquois society using it as the prime example of a successful classless egalitarian noncoercive society mander goes on to say that both the u s and the u s s r would do well to study the original document figure out where each went wrong and try to get it right next time that s fascinating i heard that the chinese rather than the italians invented pasta that s fascinating i take it that you re expressing skepticism at the idea that those ignorant savages could have influenced the constitution of the people who stole their continent you could be right but it sounds plausible to me is there any reason that you dismiss it out of hand here s some more recent scholarship has shown that in the mid s indians were not only invited to participate in the deliberations of our founding fathers but that the great binding law of the iroquois confederacy arguably became the single most important model for the albany plan of union and later the articles of confederation and the constitution that this would be absent from our school texts and from history and from media is not surprising given the devotion americans feel to our founding myth great men gathered to express a new vision that has withstood the test of time if it were revealed that indians had a role in it imagine the blow to the american psyche by when most of these men and others gathered to creat the albany plan of union the first try at confederation they invited forty two members of the iroquois grand council to serve as advisors on confederate structures benjamin franklin freely acknowledged his interest in the iroquois achievement in a famous speech at albany congress it would be a strange thing if six nations of ignorant savages sic should be capable of forming such a union and be able to execute it in such a manner that it has subsisted for ages and appears indissoluble and yet that a like union should be impractical for ten or a dozen english colonies according to grinde franklin convened meetings of iroquois chiefs and congressional delegates in order to hammer out a plan that he acknowedged to be similar to the iroquois confederacy grinde is professor donald grinde jr of the university of california at riverside whose book the iroquois and the founding fathers of the american nation addresses this issue doug graham dgraham bnr ca my opinions are my own
alt.atheism	re studies on book of mormon date tue apr gmt from carolyn jean fairman cfairman leland stanford edu agrino enkidu mic cl andres grino brandt asks about mormons there are some mention about events places or historical persons later discovered by archeologist one of the more amusing things in the bom is a claim that a civilization existed in north america aroun where the mystical plates were found not only did it use steel and other metals but it had lots of wars very ot no one has ever found any metal swords or and traces of a civilization other than the native americans this is just one example from free inquiry winter the following is an introduction to the article joseph smith and the book of mormon by george d smith the introduction is written by paul kurtz mormonism the church of jesus christ of latter day saints claims a worldwide membership million it is one of the world s fastest growing religions with as many as new converst in alone because of the church s aggressive missionary program covering more than one hundred countries it is spreading even to third world countries mormonism is both puritanical in moral outlook and evangelical in preachment the church is run along strict authoritarian lines led by a president who allegedly receives revelations directly form god and a group of twelve apostles who attempt to maintain orthodoxy in belief and practice the church is opposed to abortion pornography sexual freedom women s rights and other in its view immoral influences of secular society and it forbids the use of tobacco alcohol coffee and tea centered in salt lake city the church is extremely wealthy and politically powerful in utal and many other western states among well know present day mormons are ezra taft benson former secretary of agriculture the osmond family the mariotts of the hotel empire and a score of high placed government officials the mormon church was founded in western new york in by joseph smith who claimed that by divine revelation be had found gold plates containing hieroglyphics buried on a hill and that with the help of visits from the angel moroni he had been able to translate the writing into the book of mormon the basis of mormon belief this book written by the commandment of god claims that the ancient hebrews settled in america about b c e and were the ancestors of the american indians mormons believe that those who have been baptized in the true church will be reunited after death and that deceased non mormon family members can be baptized by proxy and thus join their relatives in the hereafter because of these beliefs mormons have been considered outcasts by mainline christian denominations and as heretics by religious fundamentalists joseph smith was a controversial figure in his day he was both worshiped as a saint and denounced as a fraud because of persecution he led his band of loyal followers from palmyra new york westward to ohio and then to illinois where in he was shot to death by an agry mob brigham young who reportedly had as many as eighty wives took over the leadership of the church and led the mormons further westward to found the new zion in salt lake city following the teachings of joseph smith in the practice of polygamy was perhaps the mormons most controversial practice in nineteenth century america while other religions go back many centuries muhammadanism years christianity and judaism and attempts to examine their beginnings are difficult extensive historical investigation of mormon roots is possible some mormons are willing to examine this history objectively bu others maintain that such scrutiny is dangerous to the faith in the following pages free inquiry presents two articles about the mormon church first george d smith a lifelong member of the church provides a detailed critical examination of joseph smith and his claim the the book of mormon was divinely revealed second we present a portion of an interview with philosopher sterling mcmurrin also a mormon since birth who questions the treatment of the history of the church by mormon authorities paul kurtz the article itself is super c jimtims p psilink com
alt.atheism	re christian morality is in article eastman uucp dps nasa kodak com writes simple logic arguments are folly if you read the bible you will see that jesus made fools of those who tried to trick him with logic why don t you cite the passages so that we can focus on some to discuss then following jesus you can make fools of us and our logic if you rely simply on your reason then you will never know more than you do now indeed if you can justifiably make this assertion you must be a genius in logic and making fools of us should be that much easier qpliu princeton edu standard opinion opinions are delta correlated
alt.atheism	logic of jesus dps nasa kodak com pontificated simple logic arguments are folly if you read the bible you will see that jesus made fools of those who tried to trick him with logic can you cite an example of this please post an answer as i don t want to receive e mail james t green jgreen oboe calpoly edu at all times and in all nations the priest has been hostile to liberty thomas jefferson
alt.atheism	re islamic authority over women kmr po cwru edu keith m ryan pontificated q how many moslem men does it take to rape a woman a five one to commit the act and four to witness the penetration a guilty verdict can be rendered only if there is a confession or if there are at least two male witnesses to the crime adultery and rape are proved only if four witnesses have seen the actual penetration an occurrence that presumably does not happen often is this from the quran or however it s spelled james t green jgreen oboe calpoly edu at all times and in all nations the priest has been hostile to liberty thomas jefferson
alt.atheism	re so help you god in court i ve heard that in california they ask you to swear without any mention of a god what states actually include god in the courtroom oath james t green jgreen oboe calpoly edu at all times and in all nations the priest has been hostile to liberty thomas jefferson
alt.atheism	re after years can we say that christian morality is in article apr abo fi mandtbacka finabo abo fi mats andtbacka writes in r fpv p horus ap mchp sni de frank d s uucp writes in article apr abo fi mandtbacka finabo abo fi mats andtbacka writes ah that old chestnut your claim that moral objectivism scientific objectivism i don t agree with it now try proving through some objective moral test that my disagreeing is incorrect your claim which you have deleted now was not universal not objective i ve deleted it now in the interest of brevity go back a step and you ll see it was still in your post yes that was my claim if you can refute it then please do so firstly an apology you hadn t deleted your claim and i was mistaken in saying you had sorry for any offence caused secondly how can i refute your definition i can only point up its logical implications and say that they seem to contradict the usage of the word objective in other areas indeed by your definition an objective x is an oxymoron for all x i have no quibble with that belief other than that it is useless and that objective is a perfectly good word so what is objective not the age of the universe anyway as i show above how many ages can the universe have and still be internally self consistent i d be amazed if it was more than one how many different moral systems can different members of society have indeed single individuals in some cases and humanity still stick together begging the question people can have many opinions about the age of the universe and humanity can still stick together you are saying that the universe has a real age independent of my beliefs about it why the age of the universe like most scientific facts can be emirically verified through means that ll give the same result no matter who performs the testing albeit there are error bars that may be on the largish side this assumes that the universe has a real age or any kind of reality which doesn t depend on what we think why should an extreme biblical creationist give a rat s ass about the means of which you speak i ve heard of no way to verify morality in a consistent way much less compute the errors of the measurement care to enlighten me the same is true of pain but painkillers exist and can be predicted to work with some accuracy better than a random guess i wrote elsewhere that morality should be hypotheses about observed value if a moral system makes a prediction it will be better if that can be tested and is falsifiable in the same way as a prediction this drug will relieve pain people s ideas about the age of object x are not objective you can have any idea you like and i can t stop you universae and their ages is another ballgame they are what they are and if you dislike some detail of them that s a problem with your opinion of them sure assume an objective reality and you get statements like this i claim that morality is an opinion of ours and as such subjective and individual if i m wrong then some more or less objectively real thing exists which you label objective morality can you back up this positive claim of existence can you back up your positive claim above no that s because it s an assumption i make the same assumption about values on the basis that there is no logical difference between the two and the empirical basis of the two is precisely the same point morals are in essence personal opinions usually ideally well founded motivated such but nonetheless personal the fact that a real large lot of people agree on some moral question sometimes even for the same reason does not make morals objective it makes humans somewhat alike in their opinions on that moral question which can be good for the evolution of a social species and if a real large lot nice phrase of people agree that there is a football on a desk i m supposed to see a logical difference between the two perhaps you can explain the difference to me since you seem to see it so clearly take a look on the desk i e perform a test if football then accept theory else do tell people they re hallucinating now take a look at morality see anything if so please inform me which way to look and why to look that particular way as opposed to some other get my drift no just look are you claiming never to know what good means science is a whole other matter altogether says you prove that those who disagree are wrong that s a simple matter of proving the track record of the scientific method i think it s great and should be applied to values i may be completely wrong but that s what i conclude as a result of quite an amount of thought frank o dwyer i m not hatching that odwyer sse ie from hens by evelyn conlon
alt.atheism	re some thoughts in article c reyf ce darkside osrhe uoknor edu bil okcforum osrhe edu bill conner wrote kent sandvik sandvik newton apple com wrote in article vice ico tek com bobbe vice ico tek com robert beauchaine wrote someone spank me if i m wrong but didn t lord liar or lunatic originate with c s lewis who s this campollo fellow anyway i do think so and isn t there a clear connection with the i do believe because it is absurd notion by one of the original christians origen there is a similar statement attributed to anselm i believe so that i may understand in both cases reason is somewhat less exalted than anyone posting here could accept which means that neither statement can be properly analysed in this venue bill i think you have a misunderstanding about atheism lack of belief in god does not directly imply lack of understanding transcendental values i hope you would accept the fact that for instance buddhists appreciate issues related to non empirical reasoning without the need to automatically believe in theism i think reading a couple of books related to buddhism might revise and fine tune your understanding of non christian systems cheers kent sandvik newton apple com alink ksand private activities on the net
alt.atheism	re christian morality is in article pww spac at rice edu pww spacsun rice edu peter simple logic arguments are folly if you read the bible you will see that jesus made fools of those who tried to trick him with logic our ability to reason is just a spec of creation yet some think it is the ultimate if you rely simply on your reason then you will never know more than you do now to learn you must accept that which you don t know can anyone eaplain what he s just said here i can t it seems jesus used logic to make people using logic look like fools no that does not sound right he maybe just told they were fools and that s it and people believed that hmm does not sound reasonable either i find it always very intriguing to see people stating that transcendental values can t be explained and then in the next sentence they try to explain these unexplained values highly strange cheers kent sandvik newton apple com alink ksand private activities on the net
alt.atheism	re thoughts on christians in article c rgkb fs darkside osrhe uoknor edu bil okcforum osrhe edu bill conner wrote kent sandvik sandvik newton apple com wrote the social pressure is indeed a very important factor for the majority of passive christians in our world today in the case of early christianity the promise of a heavenly afterlife independent of your social status was also a very promising gift reason slaves and non romans accepted the religion very rapidly if this is a hypothetical proposition you should say so if it s fact you should cite your sources if all this is the amateur sociologist sub branch of a a however it would suffice to alert the unwary that you are just screwing around well as i remember jacoby s mythmaker talks about this to cite one source but i m not sure if all christians have read this book in addition my social experiences is from being raised and educated as a lutheran having a lot of christian friends and i even have played in two christian rock bands so over to you do you have any counter claims sources et rest that shows that christianity does not have the concept of a social promise that is independent on the social status cheers kent sandvik newton apple com alink ksand private activities on the net
alt.atheism	re islamic authority over women in article c rb g u darkside osrhe uoknor edu bil okcforum osrhe edu bill conner wrote to credit religion with the awesome power to dominate history is to misunderstand human nature the function of religion and of course history i believe that those who distort history in this way know exaclty what they re doing and do it only for affect however to underestimate the power of religion creating historical events is also a big misunderstanding for instance would the year old war have ever started if there were no fractions between the protestants and the vatican cheers kent sandvik newton apple com alink ksand private activities on the net
alt.atheism	re death penalty was re political atheists in article c rlyz mt darkside osrhe uoknor edu bil okcforum osrhe edu bill conner wrote this is fascinating atheists argue for abortion defend homosexuality as a means of population control insist that the only values are biological and condemn war and capital punishment according to benedikt if something is contardictory it cannot exist which in this case means atheists i suppose i would like to understand how an atheist can object to war an excellent means of controlling population growth or to capital punishment i m sorry but the logic escapes me and why just capital punishment what is being questioned here the propriety of killing or of punishment what is the basis of the ecomplaint bill ever heard of secular humanism please check out what this stands for and then revise your statements above cheers kent sandvik newton apple com alink ksand private activities on the net
alt.atheism	re genocide is caused by atheism in article r kt e fido asd sgi com livesey solntze wpd sgi com jon livesey writes in article qugin tf horus ap mchp sni de frank d s uucp frank o dwyer writes in article qkogg k fido asd sgi com livesey solntze wpd sgi com jon livesey writes and in that area what you care about is whether someone is sceptical critical and autonomous on the one hand or gullible excitable and easily led on the other indeed i may and one may be an atheist and also be gullible excitable and easily led i would say that a tendency to worship tyrants and ideologies indicates that a person is easily led whether they have a worship or belief in a supernatural hero rather than an earthly one seems to me to be beside the point sure but whether or not they are atheists is what we are discussing not whether they are easily led not if you show that these hypothetical atheists are gullible excitable and easily led from some concrete cause in that case we would also have to discuss if that concrete cause rather than atheism was the factor that caused their subsequent behaviour i m not arguing that atheism causes such behaviour merely that it is not relevant to the definition of atheism which is lack of belief in gods frank o dwyer i m not hatching that odwyer sse ie from hens by evelyn conlon
alt.atheism	re islamic genocide in article r gi e fido asd sgi com livesey solntze wpd sgi com jon livesey writes in article qu o horus ap mchp sni de frank d s uucp frank o dwyer writes in article qkovl k fido asd sgi com livesey solntze wpd sgi com jon livesey writes false dichotomy you claimed the killing were not religiously motivated and i m saying that s wrong i m not saying that each and every killing is religiously motivate as i spelled out in detail which killings do you say are religously motivated for example i would claim that the recent assassination of four catholic construction workers who had no connection with the ira was probably religously motivated at the time of writing i think that someone who claims the current violence is motivated by religion is reaching what would you call is when someone writes the killings in n i are not religously motivated i d say it was motivated by a primitive notion of revenge and by misguided patriotism otherwise i d have to wonder how come mainland catholics are not killed by mainland protestants and southern catholics are not killed by southern protestants and so on take away all plausible causes bar religion and the violence diminishes markedly gee why is that now it s possible to argue that religion in the past is a major contributing factor to the violence in the present but i don t know of any evidence that this is so and i m not enough of a historian to debate it given that the avowed aim of the ira is to take northern ireland into a country that has a particular church written into its constitution and which has restriction on civil rights dictated by that church i fail to see why the word past is appropriate the country also has a different official language written in its constitution and vice versa maybe they re motivated by a love of irish poetry your argument is fallacious jon for what it s worth i agree with all that you say about ireland above and more frank o dwyer i m not hatching that odwyer sse ie from hens by evelyn conlon
alt.atheism	re islam and scientific predictions was re genocide is caused by atheism in article apr monu cc monash edu au darice yoyo cc monash edu au fred rice writes deletion god is the one who created the night the day the sun and the moon each is travelling in an orbit with its own motion qur an the positive aspect of this verse noted by dr maurice bucaille is that while geocentrism was the commonly accepted notion at the time and for a long time afterwards there is no notion of geocentrism in this verse or anywhere in the qur an well that is certainly different but it looks as if there is a translation found for everything by the way i am most surprised to hear that night and day move in an orbit and that the sun travels in an orbit without saying that earth does too sounds geocentric to me benedikt
alt.atheism	re after years can we say that christian morality is in article r inr lvi horus ap mchp sni de frank d s uucp frank o dwyer writes deletion and if a real large lot nice phrase of people agree that there is a football on a desk i m supposed to see a logical difference between the two perhaps you can explain the difference to me since you seem to see it so clearly rest deleted that s a fallacy and it is not the first time it is pointed out it s not a fallacy note the if if a supermajority of disinterested people agree on a fundamantal value we re not doing ethics yet benedikt then what is the difference between that and those people agreeing on a trivial observation the reference to it s not yet being ethics is dubious you have used the terms absolute objective and others interchangeably same with moral values values at all worth measuers and usefulness you infer from them as if they were the same to the if when the if is not fulfilled your intermission is a waste of time assuming that you don t intend this it is reasonable to conclude that you want to argue a point you have made a interesting statement here namely that of the disinterested observer there is no such thing in morals probably the shortest proof for objective and morality being a contradiction for one you have never given a set of morals people agree upon unlike a football further you conveniently ignore here that there are many who would not agree on tghe morality of something the analogy does not hold i have however given an example of a value people agree on and explained why people will agree that their freedom is valuable i have also stated that such a value is a necessary condition for doing objective ethics the if assertion above and that is what i m talking about there isn t a point in talking about ethics if this can t be agreed fine and that freedom is valuable is not generally agreed upon i could name quite a lot of people who state the opposite not that that wasn t mentioned before in other words you have nothing to fulfill your strong claims with one can expect sufficiently many people to agree on its being a football while you have to give the evidence that only vanishing number disagrees with a set of morals you have to give i m not doing morals ethics if we can t get past values as i say the only cogent objection to my freedom example is that maybe people aren t talking about the same thing when they answer that it is valuable maybe not and i want to think about this some especially the implications of its being true clutching a straw i don t believe in mappings into metaphysical sets were loaded terms are fixpoints those who deny the morality of freedom make quite clear what they say their practice is telling yes there are even those who are willingly unfree it is quite common in religions by the way for one there is a religion which is named submission don t even try to argue that submission is freedom further the above is evidence not proof proof would evolve out of testing your theory of absolute morals against competing theories garbage that s not proof either if it were so it would argue my case but i am afraid that that is considered proof the above is one of the arguments you reiterate while you never answer the objections evidence that you are a preacher name that fallacy there is something universally valued in a moral context benedikt
alt.atheism	re yet more rushdie re islamic law in qla g afp fido asd sgi com livesey solntze wpd sgi com jon livesey writes in article bu edu jaeger buphy bu edu gregg jaeger writes in article qi l jkj fido asd sgi com livesey solntze wpd sgi com jon livesey writes i hope an islamic bank is something other than bcci which ripped off so many small depositors among the muslim community in the uk and elsewhere deletions bbci was an example of an islamically owned and operated bank what will someone bet me they weren t real islamic owners and operators and yet it actually turned out to be a long running and quite ruthless operation to steal money from small and often quite naive depositors an islamic bank is something which operates in a different fashion to your modern bank as i have explained here on another thread before for example islamic banks don t pay fixed interests on deposits but a return on investments which varies according to the market and is not fixed like interest is islamic banks are a relatively new phenomenon in the islamic world there are no islamic banks in the west including the usa to my knowledge i doubt if the market for them exists there at least not while islamic banks are at a relatively early stage of their development as is the case now bcci is most certainly not an islamic bank did bcci ever pay a fixed interest rate on deposits if the answer to this question is yes then bcci was not an islamic bank as islamic banks are specifically set up to not pay or charge interest whether some muslims partially owned the bank or whatever is completely irrelevant fred rice darice yoyo cc monash edu au
alt.atheism	re death penalty gulf war long this is the most unmitigated bilge i ve seen in a while jim brown obviously has possession of the right wing token diplomatic alternatives including sanctions were ineffective in december former national security adviser zbigniew brzezinski told a senate committee that sanctions were costing iraq million per day and that the multinational coalition could take all the time in the world iraq he suggested was losing badly every day it defied the un demands while the community of nations won every day with no taking of life or loss of life fcnl washington newsletter the world is full of evil and circumstances are not perfect many innocents suffer due to the wrongful actions of others it it regretable but that s the way it is wrongful actions of murderers like leaders of the us government perhaps regrettable of course the way it is certainly not the media is not totally monolithic there are even conservative sources out there if you know where to look hurrah for rush good heavens an escapee from rush limbot land conservative my ass and btw the reason i brought up the blanket bombing in germany was because you were bemoaning the iraqi civilian casualties as being so deplorable yet blanket bombing was instituted because bombing wasn t accurate enough to hit industrial military targets in a decisive way by any other method at that time but in the gulf war precision bombing was the norm bullshit in the gulf massacre of all ordnance used was smart the rest that s was just regular dumb ol iron bombs and stuff have you forgotten that the pentagon definition of a successful patriot launch was when the missile cleared the launching tube with no damage or that a successful interception of a scud was defined as the patriot and scud passed each other in the same area of the sky and of the that was the smart stuff hit again try to follow me here that means of this smart arsenal missed the stories of hundreds of thousands of iraqi civilian dead is just plain bunk prove it i have a source that says that to date the civilian death count er excuse me i mean collateral damage is about s no one has attempted to calculate the costs of an execution in washington state but studies elsewhere suggest it costs far more than incarceration california is spending more than million annually on capital cases and until this year hadn t executed anyone since texas the national leader in the number of executions spends an estimated million per execution that compares to an average cost of incarceration in washington state of per maximum security prisoner per year shamim mohamed uunet noao cmcl arizona shamim shamim cs arizona edu take this cross and garlic here s a mezuzah if he s jewish a page of the koran if he s a muslim and if he s a zen buddhist you re on your own member of the league for programming freedom write to lpf uunet uu net
alt.atheism	re gulf war was re death penalty was re political atheists in article o rusnews w w mantis co uk mathew mathew mantis co uk writes mccullou snake cs wisc edu mark mccullough writes i looked back at this and asked some questions of various people and got the following information which i had claimed and you pooh poohed the us has not sold iraq any arms what about the land mines which have already been mentioned i asked around in one of the areas you suggested yourself and presented the information i got no mention of us landmines was given other countries like kuwait information is hard to prove you are claiming that the us sold information prove it information is hard to prove almost certainly if the us did sell information then that fact is classified and you can t prove it oh very neat dismiss everything i say unless i can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt something which you yourself admit i can never prove to your satisfaction thanks i ll stick to squaring circles mathew okay so you are going to blindly believe in things without reasonable evidence i didn t realize you were a theist i am doubting a claim presented without any evidence to support it if you are able to present real evidence for it then great but unsupported claims or even claims by such and such news agency will not be accepted if you want to stick to the sheer impossible instead of the merely difficult then fine the statement that if such a fact is classified then you can t prove it is a simple matter of pragmatics and the law if you have access to classified information that you know to be classified and you reveal it there is a good chance that you or someone else the person who revealed it to you is going to jail i never said that you couldn t prove it to my satisfaction i merely said that it was difficult who said i try and make things easy for people i am arguing with unless of course they need the handicap mccullou whipple cs wisc edu never program and drink beer at the same m time it doesn t work
alt.atheism	re gulf war and peace niks in article r lva vq fido asd sgi com livesey solntze wpd sgi com jon livesey writes in article apr batman bmd trw com jbrown batman bmd trw com writes in article apr bmerh bnr ca dgraham bmers bnr ca douglas graham writes wait a minute doug i know you are better informed than that the us has never invaded nicaragua as far as i know the us invaded nicaragua several times this century including october andf again in february haiti was occupied in thanks jon i had forgotten about the and invasions if i had ever learned of them i mean i really forgot but i read the context as more recent such as when the sandinistas were expecting an imminent invasion from the u s which never happened i stand corrected thanks panama we invaded true twice this century the us created panama in the first place by fomenting and then intervening in a civil war in the then republic of colombia us troops landed in colombia to help with the uprising and then colombia was duly dismembered and replaced by two countries in order that the us could build the panama canal in the new republic of panama i remembered this one this one and bush s invasion were the two i mentioned above good ol teddy r he knew how to get things done jon regards jim b
alt.atheism	re christian morality is in article eastman uucp dps nasa kodak com writes in article ousrvr oulu fi kempmp phoenix oulu fi petri pihko writes dan schaertel dps nasa kodak com wrote what does this mean to learn you must accept that you don t know something right o but to learn you must accept something i don t know why this is not the way i prefer to learn it is unwise to merely swallow everything you read suppose i write a book telling how the great invisible pink unicorn tm has helped me in my daily problems would you accept this since you can t know whether it is true or not no one asks you to swallow everything in fact jesus warns against it but let me ask you a question do you beleive what you learn in history class or for that matter anything in school i mean it s just what other people have told you and you don t want to swallow what others say right right there is no way to get into a sceptical heart you can not say you have given a sincere effort with the attitude you seem to have you must trust not just go to church and participate in it s activities were you ever willing to die for what you believed the branch dividians were they believed and trusted so much that it became impossible to turn back to reality what you are advocating is total irreversible brainwashing dan
alt.atheism	re genocide is caused by atheism in article r oe hqd horus ap mchp sni de frank d s uucp frank o dwyer writes in article r kt e fido asd sgi com livesey solntze wpd sgi com jon livesey writes in article qugin tf horus ap mchp sni de frank d s uucp frank o dwyer writes in article qkogg k fido asd sgi com livesey solntze wpd sgi com jon livesey writes and in that area what you care about is whether someone is sceptical critical and autonomous on the one hand or gullible excitable and easily led on the other indeed i may and one may be an atheist and also be gullible excitable and easily led i would say that a tendency to worship tyrants and ideologies indicates that a person is easily led whether they have a worship or belief in a supernatural hero rather than an earthly one seems to me to be beside the point sure but whether or not they are atheists is what we are discussing not whether they are easily led not if you show that these hypothetical atheists are gullible excitable and easily led from some concrete cause in that case we would also have to discuss if that concrete cause rather than atheism was the factor that caused their subsequent behaviour i m not arguing that atheism causes such behaviour merely that it is not relevant to the definition of atheism which is lack of belief in gods throw away the faq we can all just ask mr o dwyer since he can define the thing that the rest of us only talk about jon
alt.atheism	re gulf war selling arms in article l rusnews w w mantis co uk mathew mathew mantis co uk writes jbrown batman bmd trw com writes mathew i agree this it seems is the crux of your whole position isn t it that the us shouldn t have supported hussein and sold him arms to fight iran i agree and i agree in ruthlessly hunting down those who did or do but we did sell arms to hussein and it s a done deal now he invades kuwait so do we just sit back and say well we sold him all those arms i suppose he just wants to use them now too bad for kuwait no unfortunately sitting back and letting things be is not the way to correct a former mistake destroying hussein s military potential as we did was the right move but i agree with your statement reagan and bush made a grave error in judgment to sell arms to hussein but it s still happening that s the entire point only last month john major hailed it as a great victory that he had personally secured a sale of arms to saudi arabia the same month we sold jet fighters to the same indonesian government that s busy killing the east timorese i heard about the arms sale to saudi arabia now how is it such a grave mistake to sell saudi arabia weapons or are you claiming that we shouldn t sell any weapons to other countries straightforward answer please it s all very well to say oops we made a boo boo better clean up the mistake but the us and uk keep making the same mistake they do it so often that i can t believe it s not deliberate this suspicion is reinforced by the fact that the mistake is an extremely profitable one for a decrepit economy reliant on arms sales who benefits from arms sales hint it isn t normally the gov t it is the contractor that builds that piece of equipment believe it or not the us and uk don t export the huge quantities of arms that you have just accused them of doing arms exports are rare enough that it requires an act of congress for non small arms to most countries if not all do you believe in telling everyone who can do what and who can sell their goods to whom mathew mccullou whipple cs wisc edu never program and drink beer at the same m time it doesn t work
alt.atheism	re yet more rushdie re islamic law in article apr monu cc monash edu au darice yoyo cc monash edu au fred rice wrote stuff deleted now i do not believe in blindly following anyone no matter how knowledgeable he or she may be in islamic law if someone tells me islam says such and such i immediately say show me the support for this statement from the qur an and sunnah i believe this to be my islamic duty for according to one hadith of the prophet peace and blessings of god be with him if your leader tells you to enter a fire and you do it and kill yourself then you have sinned for doing wrong even though you were blindly following the instructions of your leader i am responsible for my own actions not abu hanifa or imam malik etc even if i am blindly following the opinions of abu hanifa etc with this in mind to my understanding we must look at the reasoning behind such opinions of muslims that support khomeini s fatwa now to my understanding the hadith upon which those who support khomeini s fatwa is relating to a particular instance that occurred during war time now brother in general it is imho ridiculous and wrong to say that a hadith relating to the actions of war is usable during times of peace i think any sensible human being can see this so i personally think that the reasoning of some of our ulema in this matter is faulty for they think it is legitimate to use acts of war in times of peace regarding this particular subject if you think i am wrong please feel free to say so with your reasoning from qur an and hadith please not because somebody said so i want the reasoning from al qur an and the sahih hadiths perhaps we should take our discussion to soc religion islam please email me rashid if you think we should do this by the way i also disagree with your opinion regarding the punishment for apostasy the viewpoint i follow that there is in general no punishment for apostasy is very strongly supported by qur an and hadith this is very well shown in the book punishment in islamic law by mohamed s el awa american trust publications i reiterate that i would agree with you that there is little justification for the punishment of apostasy in the qur an in islamic history as well apostasy has rarely been punished belief is considered a matter of conscience and since there is to be no compulsion in the matter of belief apostates have been generally left to believe or not believe as they will however when an apostate makes attacks upon god and his messenger the situation changes now the charge of apostasy may be complicated with other charges perhaps charges of sedition treason spying etc if the person makes a public issue of their apostasy or mounts public attacks as opposed to arguement against islam the situation is likewise complicated if the person spreads slander or broadcasts falsehoods again the situation changes the punishments vary according to the situation the apostate is in anyhow the charge of aggravated apostasy would only be a subsidiary charge in rushdie s case there is a distinction in the qur an between a formal war situation and being in the situation where someone unilaterally wages war by their actions creates disorder makes mischief etc against the muslims and creates a situation that results in harm to muslims here a small group or even a single individual could be said to be engaged in such a practise in other words there is a clear difference between a formal war situation where two clearly defined parties wage war conclude treaties exchange prisoners etc and dealing with attacks that come from isolated individuals or groups against islam it is the second situation the unilateral attack and the spreading of fasad that would apply in the case of rushdie the matter of rushdie is not a simple matter of banning an offensive book banning the book is secondary a full set of circumstances following the publication of the book come into play as well including the deaths of many muslims and rushdie s and his publishers media games now i do not believe in blindly following anyone no matter how knowledgeable he or she may be in islamic law if someone tells me islam says such and such i immediately say show me the support for this statement from the qur an and sunnah i believe this to be my islamic duty for according to one hadith of the prophet peace and blessings of god be with him if your leader tells you to enter a fire and you do it and kill yourself then you have sinned for doing wrong even though you were blindly following the instructions of your leader i am responsible for my own actions not abu hanifa or imam malik etc even if i am blindly following the opinions of abu hanifa etc now to my understanding the hadith upon which those who support khomeini s fatwa is relating to a particular instance that occurred during war time now brother in general it is imho ridiculous and wrong to say that a hadith relating to the actions of war is usable during times of peace i think any sensible human being can see this so i personally think that the reasoning of some of our ulema in this matter is faulty for they think it is legitimate to use acts of war in times of peace regarding this particular subject i am not sure which hadith you are referring to above i believe that one of the qur anic verses on which the fatwa is based is every verse in the qur an has a corresponding circumstance of revelation but in no way is the understanding the tafsir of the verse restricted solely to the particular historical circumstance in which it was revealed if this was the case then we could say that all the laws and regulations that were revealed when the muslims were not involved in conflict should be suspended when they were at war the logic does not follow in complex real life situations there may be many verses and many hadiths which can all be related to a single complicated situation the internal relationships between these verses may be quite complex such that arriving at an understanding of how the verses interlock and how each applies to the particular situation can be quite a demanding task it is not necessarily a simple this or that process there may be many parameters involved there may be a larger context in which a particular situation should be viewed all these matters impinge on the situation in other words there is a great deal involved in deciphering the qur an the qur an asks us to reflect on its verses but this reflection must entail more than simply reading a verse and its corresponding hadith if the reflection is for the sake of increasing personal piety then each person has his own level of understanding and there is no harm in that however if the reflection is in order to decide matters that pertain to the state to the gestation of laws and rulings to the gestation of society the dispensing of justice the guidance of the community then there are certain minimum requirements of understanding that one should achieve jaffar ibn muhammad as sadiq a s relates some of these requirements as taught by the prophet s a in a hadith he who does not distinguish in the book of allah the abrogating verse from the abrogated one and a specific one from a general one and a decisive from an ambiguous and does not differentiate between a permission and an obligation and does not recognize a verse of meccan period from a medinite one and does not know the circumstances of revelation and does not understand the technical words of the qur an whether simple or compound and does not comprehend the knowledge of decree and measure and is ignorant of advancing and delaying in its verses and does not distinguish the clear from the deep nor the manifest from the esoteric nor the beginning from the termination and is unaware of the question and the answer the disjoining and the joining and the exceptions and the all inclusive and is ignorant of an adjective of a preceding noun that explains the subsequent one and is unaware of the emphasized subject and the detailed one the obligatory laws and the permissions the places of the duties and rules and the meaning of the lawful and the unlawful and does not know the joined words and the words that are related to those coming before them or after them then such a man does not know the qur an nor is he among the people of the qur an based on these and other hadiths and in accordance with many qur anic verses why should not a company from every group remain behind to gain profound understanding tafaqquh in religion and to warn people when they return to them so that they may beware a science of jurisprudence arose the requirements for a person to be considered a mujtahid one who can pronounce on matters of law and religion are many i ve listed a few major divisions below there are of course many subdivisions within these headings knowledge of arabic syntax conjugation roots semantics oratory knowledge of tafsir and principles of tafsir logic mantiq a knowledge of hadiths a knowledge of transmitters rijal knowledge of the principles of juriprudence qur an sunnah consensus reasoning the study of qur an and sunnah for purposes of law involves discussion of imperatives awamir discussion of negative imperatives nawahi discussion of generalities and particularities aam wa khas discussion of unconditional and conditional discussion of tacit meanings discussion of the abstract and the clear discussion of the abrogator and the abrogated the principles of application of the law involves principles of exemption principles of precaution principles of option principles of mastery the jurisprudent is bound to go through a very rigorous process in pronouncing judgement on a given situation it is not a matter of looking at one verse and one hadith now no one should blindly follow anyone but there is a difference between blind following and acceding to the opinion of someone who is clearly more knowledgeable and more qualified than oneself there is the famous hadith of the prophet s a in which he says the fuqaha religious scholars are the trustees of the prophet as long as they do not concern themselves with the illicit desires pleasures and wealth of this world the prophet s a was asked o messenger of god how may we know if they so concern themselves he s a replied by seeing whether they follow the ruling power if they do that fear for your religion and shun them i do not yet know enough about the imams of the four sunni madhabs to comment on how this hadith applies to them or to the contemporary scholars who base themselves upon them the prophet also refered to the fuqaha as the fortress of islam my only point is to make it clear that arriving at a legal judgement calls into play a certain amount of expertise the specifics of this expertise is delineated in the qur an and hadith those who acquire this expertise are praised in both the qur an and hadith those who without the requisite knowledge pronounce on matters that affect society state and religion are cautioned the only reason i said anything at all about the rushdie affair in this group is because the whole basis for the discussion of the fatwa that is apostasy was wrong when one discusses something they should at least base their discussion on fact secondly khomeini was condemned as a heretic because he supposedly claimed to be infallible another instance of creating a straw man and then beating him perhaps we should take our discussion to soc religion islam please email me rashid if you think we should do this i agree that we should move the discussion to another newsgroup unfortunately i do not have any access to email so private discussion or a moderated group is out of the question i cannot post to a moderated group like soc religion islam how about soc culture arabic or talk religion misc as salaam a laikum
alt.atheism	re yet more rushdie re islamic law in article bu edu jaeger buphy bu edu gregg jaeger wrote i have already made the clear claim that khomeini advocates views which are in contradition with the qur an and have given my arguments for this this is something that can be checked by anyone sufficiently interested khomeini being dead really can t respond but another poster who supports khomeini has responded with what is clearly obfuscationist sophistry this should be quite clear to atheists as they are less susceptible to religionist modes of obfuscationism don t mind my saying this but the best example of obfuscation is to condemn without having even your most basic facts straight if you want some examples go back and look at your previous posts where you manage to get your facts wrong about the fatwa and khomeini s supposed infallibility as salaam a laikum
alt.atheism	re consciousness part ii kev strikes back kevin anthoney kax cs nott ac uk wrote about my reply diplomatic it a society that is constantly on the verge of flaming usenet diplomacy is the best way to ensure the voice of reason gets through isn t it i realize i m fighting occam s razor in this argument so i ll try to explain why i feel a mind is necessary kevin unfortunately you are now delving into field i know too little about algorithms your reasoning as i see it is very much along the lines of roger penrose who claimed that mathematical insight cannot be algorithmic in his book the emperor s new mind concerning computers minds and the laws of physics however penrose s claim that he has mathematical insight or your similar claim that wavefunctions collapse only when we consciously take a look could be just illusions we are obviouslu taking very different viewpoints i try to ponder on the problem of consciousness from an evolutionary perspective realising that it might not be anything special but certainly useful thinking back of what i wrote do you think worms have minds or not they are able to experience pain at least they behave just like that yet it is conceivable that we might some day in the future perform a total synthesis of c elegans from the elements would such a worm have a mind firstly i m not impressed with the ability of algorithms they re great at solving problems once the method has been worked out but not at working out the method itself this is true to some extent however i do not think that our brains work like computers at all in fact there is substantial evidence skarda skarda freeman that brains work more or less chaotically generating enough randomness for mental states to evolve our brains work much like genetic algorithm generators i suppose the trick still has to be there in some form to be discovered does this mean that all the ideas we will ever have are already pre programmed into our brains this is somewhat unlikely given that our brains ultimately are encoded in chromosomes worth of genetic material much of which isn t used indeed this is extremely unlikely given the vast impact of nurture on our mind and brain i suggest however that before trying to understand our consciousness as a collection of algorithms kevin take a look at the references i mentioned and think again i still think the best experts on the nature of a conscious mind are neurologists neuropsychologists and biologists but do not flame me for my opinions since they study beings that are conscious the reason i am repeating my advice is that this discussion cannot lead to anywhere if our backgrounds are too different and please do not bring qm into this discussion at all not all physicists are happy with the claim that our consciousness plays some special role in physics i would say it doesn t the other problem with algorithms is their instability not many algorithms survive if you take out a large portion of their code yet people survive strokes without going completely haywire there are side effects but patients still seem remarkably stable also neurons in perfectly healthy people are dying at an alarming rate can an algorithm survive if i randomly corrupt various bits of it s code again brains are not computers don t forget this this does not mean they need something else to work they just work differently their primary purpose is perception and guidance of action self awareness and high intelligence are later appearances the next problem is the sticky question of what is colour replace colour with the sensation of your choice presumably the materialist viewpoint is that it s the product of some kind of chemical reaction the usual products of such a reaction are energy different chemicals is colour a mixture of these you are still expecting that we could find the idea of green in our brains somewhere perhaps in the form of some chemical this is not how i see it the sensation green is a certain time dependent pattern in the area v of our visual cortex and it is distributed with the help of areas v and v to the rest of the brain indeed a firing pattern i have sometimes thought of our consciousness as a global free induction pattern of these local firing patterns but this is just idle speculation scientific american s september issue was a special issue on mind and brain have you already read it from cover to cover there are two articles on visual perception so you might be interested but again please note that subjective experiences cannot be observed from a third person perspective if we see nothing but neuronal activity we cannot go on to conclude that this is not the mind kalat writes about numerous examples where electric stimulation of different areas of brain have led to various changes in the patients state of mind for instance a patient whose septal area was stimulated without his knowledge by remote control during a psychiatric interview was quickly cured of his depression and started discussing a plan to seduce his girlfriend stimulations in the temporal lobe have sometimes led to embarrassing situations when the patients have started flirting with the therapist in conclusion there is evidence that brains are essentially necessary for subjective experiences brain damage is usually equivalent to some sort of mind damage conscious processes involve substantial brain activity in various areas of brain when we think of colours our visual cortex is activated etc consciousness is an afterthought we become conscious of our actions with a half a second delay and our brains are ahead of our conscious will by at least ms thus i think it is fruitful to turn the question why do i see colours around and ask what is this i that seems to be observing since it seems that our conscious mind is not the king of our brains if this is so a computer won t see colour because the chemistry is different does an algorithm that sees colour have a selective advantage over an equivalent that doesn t it shouldn t because the outputs of each algorithm ought to be the same in equivalent circumstances so why do we see colour this depends on what is meant by seeing colours does a neural network that is capable of recognising handwritten numbers from to see the numbers if it is capable of sorting them if you are asking why does an animal who is conscious of itself as an observer have an evolutionary advantage over an animal who doesn t i have a good answer read my previous posting where i wrote why a sense of identity helps social animals to swap roles and act more morally so that they don t unconsciously kill each other with newly discovered weapons a bit extreme but this is the basic idea when early homo became more and more efficient in using tools a sense of identity and the concept of self had to evolve in line with this development indeed respect for others and conscious altruistic behaviour might be evolutionary advantages for social animals such as early humans if i remember correctly quantum mechanics consists of a wavefunction with two processes acting on it the first process has been called unitary evolution or u is governed by schroedinger s equation and is well known the second process called various things such as collapse of the wavefunction or state vector reduction or r and is more mysterious it is usually said to occur when a measurement takes place although nobody seems to know precisely when that occurs when it does occur the effect of r is to abruptly change the wavefunction if minds are required for this does this mean that until human minds came to the scene wavefunctions never collapsed but remained in the superpositions for aeons my how powerful we are this has been discussed before and i think this topic is irrelevant since we do not agree that minds are necessary and neither do physicists anyway i m speculating that minds would be in part x there seems to be some link between consciousness and r in that we never see linear superpositions of anything although there are alternative explainations for this i ve no idea how a brain is supposed to access part x but since this is only speculation that won t matter too much my main point is that there might be a place for minds in physics i agree but not in the sense you apparently mean above physics needs sharp minds to solve many real problems i ll go back to my nice padded cell now if that s ok with you it s ok if you don t forget to take with you the references i wrote about in my previous posting plus the following kalat james w biological psychology rd ed wadsworth publishing company belmont ca skarda c explaining behavior bringing the brain back in inquiry skarda c freeman w how brains make chaos in order to make sense of the world behavioral and brain sciences petri petri pihko kem pmp mathematics is the truth pihatie c finou oulu fi physics is the rule of sf oulu kempmp the game finland phoenix oulu fi chemistry is the game
alt.atheism	re consciousness part ii kev strikes back scott d sauyet ssauyet eagle wesleyan edu wrote in apr cs nott ac uk kevin anthony kax cs nott ac uk writes firstly i m not impressed with the ability of algorithms they re great at solving problems once the method has been worked out but not at working out the method itself crossword example deleted have you heard of neural networks i ve read a little about them and they seems to overcome most of your objections i m sure there are many people who work with neural networks and read this newsgroup please tell kevin what you ve achieved and what you expect i am not saying that nns will solve all such problems but i think they show that it is not as hard as you think to come up with mechanical models of consciousness indeed i think dualism is a non solution or as dennett recently put it a dead horse petri petri pihko kem pmp mathematics is the truth pihatie c finou oulu fi physics is the rule of sf oulu kempmp the game finland phoenix oulu fi chemistry is the game
alt.atheism	re consciousness part ii kev strikes back in article apr ousrvr oulu fi kempmp phoenix oulu fi petri pihko writes kevin anthoney kax cs nott ac uk wrote this post is probably either brilliant or insane do let me know which a brilliant example of using the introspective objection against materialist theories of consciousness diplomatic i realize i m fighting occam s razor in this argument so i ll try to explain why i feel a mind is necessary firstly i m not impressed with the ability of algorithms they re great at solving problems once the method has been worked out but not at working out the method itself as a specific example i like to solve numerical crosswords not the simple do the sums and insert the answers type the hard ones to do these with any efficiency you need to figure out a variety of tricks now i know that you can program a computer to do these puzzles but in doing so you have to work out the tricks yourself and program them into the computer you can of course obfuscate the trick and write the program so that it is uncovered but as far as i can see the trick still has to be there in some form to be discovered does this mean that all the ideas we will ever have are already pre programmed into our brains this is somewhat unlikely given that our brains ultimately are encoded in chromosomes worth of genetic material much of which isn t used one way around this is to bring the environment into the equation but again as far as i can see this still has an air of if you see object x then perform action y and we don t seem to get anywhere the algorithm has to anticipate what it might see and what conclusions to draw from it s experience the other problem with algorithms is their instability not many algorithms survive if you take out a large portion of their code yet people survive strokes without going completely haywire there are side effects but patients still seem remarkably stable also neurons in perfectly healthy people are dying at an alarming rate can an algorithm survive if i randomly corrupt various bits of it s code the next problem is the sticky question of what is colour replace colour with the sensation of your choice presumably the materialist viewpoint is that it s the product of some kind of chemical reaction the usual products of such a reaction are energy different chemicals is colour a mixture of these if this is so a computer won t see colour because the chemistry is different does an algorithm that sees colour have a selective advantage over an equivalent that doesn t it shouldn t because the outputs of each algorithm ought to be the same in equivalent circumstances so why do we see colour however such a view is actually a nonsolution how should minds be able to act as observers feel pain and pleasure and issue commands any better than the brain moreover how do the interactions occur a bit of idle speculation if i remember correctly quantum mechanics consists of a wavefunction with two processes acting on it the first process has been called unitary evolution or u is governed by schroedinger s equation and is well known the second process called various things such as collapse of the wavefunction or state vector reduction or r and is more mysterious it is usually said to occur when a measurement takes place although nobody seems to know precisely when that occurs when it does occur the effect of r is to abruptly change the wavefunction i envisage r as an interaction between the wavefunction and something else which i shall imaginitively call part x it seems reasonable to assume that something causes r although that something might be the wavefunction itself in which case part x is simply the wavefunction note though that we d need more than u to explain r anyway i m speculating that minds would be in part x there seems to be some link between consciousness and r in that we never see linear superpositions of anything although there are alternative explainations for this i ve no idea how a brain is supposed to access part x but since this is only speculation that won t matter too much my main point is that there might be a place for minds in physics i ll go back to my nice padded cell now if that s ok with you petri kevin anthoney kax cs nott ac uk don t believe anything you read in sig files
alt.atheism	re christian morality is in article eastman uucp dps nasa kodak com dan schaertel wrote the life death and resurection of christ is documented historical fact not by any standard of history i ve seen care to back this up sans the lies apologists are so fond of however all the major events of the life of jesus christ were fortold hundreds of years before him neat trick uh not really most of the prophesies aren t even prophesies they re prayers and comments taken from the torah quite out of context seems xians started lying right from the beginning there is no way to get into a sceptical heart you can not say you have given a sincere effort with the attitude you seem to have my we re an arrogant ass aren t we you must trust not just go to church and participate in it s activities you re wrong to think we haven t the trust was in something that doesn t exist were you ever willing to die for what you believed i m still willing to die for what i believe and don t believe so were the loonies in waco so what besides the point s not to die for what one believes in the point s to make that other sorry son of a bitch to die for what he believes in doesn t anyone else here get tired of these cretins tirades peter the damed and damned proud of it don t forget to sing they say there s a heaven for those who will wait some say it s better but i say it ain t i d rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints the sinners are much more fun only the good die young
alt.atheism	re cults vs religions in article r bfe hg aurora engr latech edu ray engr latech edu bill ray wrote james thomas green jgreen trumpet calpoly edu wrote so in conclusion it can be shown that there is essentially no logical argument which clearly differentiates a cult from a religion i challenge anyone to produce a distinction which is clear and can t be easily knocked down how about this one a religion is a cult which has stood the test of time or a religion is a cult that got co opted by people who are better at compartmentalizing their irrationality peter don t forget to sing they say there s a heaven for those who will wait some say it s better but i say it ain t i d rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints the sinners are much more fun only the good die young
alt.atheism	re gulf war and peace niks in article e rusnews w w mantis co uk mathew mathew mantis co uk writes jbrown batman bmd trw com writes the problem with most peace niks it they consider those of us who are not like them to be bad and unconscionable i would not have any argument or problem with a peace nik if they held to their ideals and stayed out of all conflicts or issues especially those dealing with the national defense but no they are not willing to allow us to legitimately hold a different point of view they militate and many times resort to violence all in the name of peace yawn another right wing wasp imagining he s an oppressed minority perhaps camille paglia is right after all personal attacks i would not have any argument or problem with a peace nik if they stayed out of all conflicts or issues i bet you wouldn t you d love it deliberate misinterpretation of a persons statement by cutting out the part of the statement he tries to blunt the thrust of the sentence he never addresses the issue of extreemist peace people not holding true to their ideals but what makes you think that sitting back saying nothing about defense issues and letting people like you make all the decisions is anything to do with their ideals ignoring the challenge he ignores the challenge that extreemists for peace tend to be quite insistent that everyone accept their ideals for the world and have even turned quite violent witness chicago summer mathew paranoia he assumes that anyone who argues against his viewpoint must masturbate over guns n ammo fire up the oven it isn t hot enough mccullou whipple cs wisc edu never program and drink beer at the same m time it doesn t work
alt.atheism	re death penalty gulf war long in article optima cs arizona edu sham cs arizona edu shamim zvonko mohamed writes this is the most unmitigated bilge i ve seen in a while jim brown obviously has possession of the right wing token diplomatic alternatives including sanctions were ineffective in december former national security adviser zbigniew brzezinski told a senate committee that sanctions were costing iraq million per day and that the multinational coalition could take all the time in the world iraq he suggested was losing badly every day it defied the un demands while the community of nations won every day with no taking of life or loss of life fcnl washington newsletter as i understand that number is deceptive the reason is that the money cost was in non oil sales for the most part iraq still is not allowed to sell oil or do many of the things under the initial sanctions but is still surviving and btw the reason i brought up the blanket bombing in germany was because you were bemoaning the iraqi civilian casualties as being so deplorable yet blanket bombing was instituted because bombing wasn t accurate enough to hit industrial military targets in a decisive way by any other method at that time but in the gulf war precision bombing was the norm bullshit in the gulf massacre of all ordnance used was smart the rest that s was just regular dumb ol iron bombs and stuff have you forgotten that the pentagon definition of a successful patriot launch was when the missile cleared the launching tube with no damage or that a successful interception of a scud was defined as the patriot and scud passed each other in the same area of the sky of the i have heard figures closer to but i won t quibble your figures most was dropped in carpet bombing of regions only occupied by enemy troops a b drops a lot of bombs in one sortie and we used them around the clock not to mention other smaller aircraft using dumb munitions the patriot uses a proximity fuse the adjusted figures for number of patriot kills of ss derivitives is that figure came not from some fluke in the pentagon but a someone working with such stuff in another part of dod the statement precision bombing was the norm is true around areas where civilians were close to the target we dropped by tonnage very little bombs in populated regions explaining the figures and of the that was the smart stuff hit again try to follow me here that means of this smart arsenal missed this figure is far below all the other figures i have seen if it is indeed accurate then how do you explain the discrepancy between that figure and other figures from international organizations most figures i have seen place the hit ratio close to which is still far higher than your or does your figure say a bomb missed if the plane took off with it and the bomb never hit the target regardless of whether or not the bomb was dropped such methods are used all the time to lie with statistics the stories of hundreds of thousands of iraqi civilian dead is just plain bunk prove it i have a source that says that to date the civilian death count er excuse me i mean collateral damage is about i have never seen any source that was claiming such a figure please post the source so its reliability can be judged mccullou whipple cs wisc edu never program and drink beer at the same m time it doesn t work
alt.atheism	re david coresh is god on one of the morning shows i think is was the today show david koresh s lawyer was interviewed during that interview he flipped through some letters that david koresh wrote on one of letters was written in hebrew near the bottom of the page koresh adonai did anyone else see that what could this mean by him david writing this
alt.atheism	re smullyanism for the day in article r tpi pu dr pepper east sun com geoff east sun com geoff arnold sun bos r h coast near the top writes this raymond smullyan quote is too big for a sig but deserves posting imho to big for a sig no way keith home of the billdboard sig files ryan private note to jennifer fakult this post may contain one or more of the following sarcasm cycnicism irony or humor please be aware of this possibility and do not allow yourself to be confused and or thrown for a loop if in doubt assume all of the above the owners of this account do not take any responsiblity for your own confusion which may result from your inability to recognize any of the above read at your own risk jennifer
alt.atheism	re christian morality is in article apr cs nott ac uk kax cs nott ac uk kevin anthoney writes in article eastman uucp dps nasa kodak com writes the fact is god could cause you to believe anything he wants you to but think about it for a minute would you rather have someone love you because you made them love you or because they wanted to love you there s a difference between believing in the existence of an entity and loving that entity god could show me directly that he exists and i d still have a free choice about whether to love him or not so why doesn t he kevin anthoney kax cs nott ac uk don t believe anything you read in sig files kevin makes a good point here and when that theists miss all too often that is the belief in a diety is not necessarily coupled with agreement love of that diety so really they have yet another bit of convincing to do just beyond belief i guess the standard argumet goes something like well once you believe in god you know god is love and you will choose to love him if it wasnt so widely accepted and asserted it d be laughable best regards adam adam john cooper verily often have i laughed at the weaklings who thought themselves good simply because acooper macalstr edu they had no claws understand one another i fear i am beyond your comprehension gandalf
alt.atheism	re christian morality is in article eastman uucp dps nasa kodak com dan schaertel writes in article ousrvr oulu fi kempmp phoenix oulu fi petri pihko writes dan schaertel dps nasa kodak com wrote i love god just as much as she loves me if she wants to seduce me she ll know what to do but if he she did you would probably consider it rape probably because it is rape simple logic arguments are folly if you read the bible you will see that jesus made fools of those who tried to trick him with logic our ability to reason is just a spec of creation yet some think it is the ultimate if you rely simply on your reason then you will never know more than you do now your argument is of the type you ll know once you try yet there are many atheists who have sincerely tried and believed for many years but were eventually honest enough to admit that they had lived in a virtual reality obviously there are many christians who have tried and do believe so so nothing it may work for some but not for others it doesn t give any insight into an overall god or overall truth of a religion it would seem to be dependent solely on the individual as well as individually created and since christians have failed to show us how there way of life is in any wy better than ours i do not see why the attempt to try it is necessary or even particularly attractive to learn you must accept that which you don t know what does this mean to learn you must accept that you don t know something right o but to learn you must accept something i don t know why this is not the way i prefer to learn it is unwise to merely swallow everything you read suppose i write a book telling how the great invisible pink unicorn tm has helped me in my daily problems would you accept this since you can t know whether it is true or not no one asks you to swallow everything in fact jesus warns against it but let me ask you a question do you beleive what you learn in history class or for that matter anything in school i mean it s just what other people have told you and you don t want to swallow what others say right well we will nerver know for sure if we were told the truth or not but at the very least there is a bit more evidence pointing to the fact that say there was a military conflict in vietnam years ago then there is a supernatural diety who wants us to live a certain way the fact that jesus warned against it means nothing i warn against it too big deal the life death and resurection of christ is documented historical fact this is not true the first two choices here life and death are scantily documented and the last one is total malarky unless one uses the bible and that is totally circular perhaps it be better to use the imagination or one s ignorance someone else will address this i m sure and refer you to plenty of documentation as much as anything else you learn how do you choose what to believe and what not to i could argue that george washington is a myth he never lived because i don t have any proof except what i am told however all the major events of the life of jesus christ were fortold hundreds of years before him neat trick uh how is this there is nothing more disgusting than christian attempts to manipulate interpret the old testament as being filled with signs for the coming of christ every little reference to a stick or bit of wood is autmoatically interpreted as the cross what a miscarriage of philology there is no way to get into a sceptical heart you can not say you have given a sincere effort with the attitude you seem to have you must trust not just go to church and participate in it s activities were you ever willing to die for what you believed well since we have skeptical hearts thank goodness there is no way to get into us here we have the irreconcilable difference christians glorify exactly what we tend to despise or snub trust belief faith without knowledge if i am lucky one day and i happen to be thinking of god at the same time my enkephalins go up then i may associate this as a sign of god it will feel right and i will trust without knowing maybe religosity does not seem to be anything that is conclusively arrived at but rather it seems to be more of a sudden affliction i believe many of us were willing to die for what we believed many of us were not the question is is suchg an attitude reflective of a correct or healthy morality it would seem not to be the same thing could reflect fanaticism for example and is any case an expression of simple selfishness adam adam john cooper verily often have i laughed at the weaklings who thought themselves good simply because acooper macalstr edu they had no claws understand one another i fear i am beyond your comprehension gandalf
alt.atheism	from soc religion christian i found this little gem i don t know if anyone has any interest comments hi everyone i m a commited christian that is battling with a problem i know that romans talks about how we are saved by our faith not our deeds yet hebrews and james say that faith without deeds is useless saying you fools do you still think that just believing is enough now if someone is fully believing but there life is totally lead by themselves and not by god according to romans that person is still saved by there faith but then there is the bit which says that god preferes someone who is cold to him i e doesn t know him condemned so a lukewarm christian someone who knows and believes in god but doesn t make any attempt to live by the bible now i am of the opinion that you a saved through faith alone not what you do as taught in romans but how can i square up in my mind the teachings of james in conjunction with the lukewarm christian being spat out can anyone help me this really bothers me in christ will adam adam john cooper verily often have i laughed at the weaklings who thought themselves good simply because acooper macalstr edu they had no claws understand one another i fear i am beyond your comprehension gandalf
alt.atheism	re college atheists in article apr nuscc nus sg cmtan iss nus sg tan chade meng dan writes nm w andrew cmu edu nanci ann miller writes nyeda cnsvax uwec edu david nye writes i read an article about a poll done of students at the ivy league schools in which it was reported that a third of the students indentified themselves as atheists this is a lot higher than among the general population i wonder what the reasons for this discrepancy are is it because they are more intelligent younger is this the wave of the future what is the figure for the general population the last i heard of americans believe in reincarnation can somebody quote a stat i don t have a stat but unfortunately i did read generally that both smoking and belief in the supernatural occultish garbage is on the rise here i would guess that it probably has something to do with the ease of which ideas and thoughts are communicated on a college campus so in a world where theists are forced to contend with and listen to atheists and theists of other religions some are bound to have a change in their beliefs over four years there is nowhere to run funny in my country it works the other way round univ life is v v stressful for most people remember we re an asian population xtians like to prey on these people there is nowhere to run from them this is very interesting i thing the principle is sort of the same though all philosophical ideas are generally tried out and tested mostly during college years whether the idea is christian or atheist doesn t always matter but i d like to say it s because atheists are more intelligent the unenlightened one tan chade meng the wise man tells his wife that he understands her singapore cmtan iss nus sg the fool tries to prove it regards adam adam john cooper verily often have i laughed at the weaklings who thought themselves good simply because acooper macalstr edu they had no claws understand one another i fear i am beyond your comprehension gandalf
alt.atheism	some thoughts on christian books dn i think i took on this liar lunatic or the real thing dn the last time or was it the time before anyway let dn somebody else have a turn i can t debate it with a dn straight face or perhaps for something completely dn different we could just ridicule him or gather up all the dn posts from the last two times we did this and email them to dn him as an aside can you believe that somebody actually dn got a book published about this must have been a vanity dn press i would recomend to anyone out there to visit your local christian bookstore and become aware of the stuff they sell quite interesting most of the stuff is far from intelectual about the level of chick pamphelets if it is a common fundie bookstore it should have at least one section about how you should hate wiccans pagans catholics mormons rock musicians and anyone else who is not as fanatical as them hate for the love of god tm it is even more interesting watching the people who frequent such places very scary people they hear voices from god telling them whatever they want to hear if they were not christians most of them would be locked away maybe this is why federal money was reduced to mental institutions by the reagan administration had to get their religious leaders out where would christianity be if jesus got eight to fifteen years with time off for good behavior new york state senator james h donovan on capitol punishment alan beware to touch these wires is instant death anyone found doing this will be prosecuted
alt.atheism	re what it means to be human was parsifal in article apr cs ucla edu brad pierce pierce cs ucla edu writes the bedrock of spiritual unreason is the belief that resonant yet but theology is full of reason even if it is as we believe based on false premises etc etc ill defined terms e g spirit transcendental mind self consciousness ultimate reality soul elan vital etc have meaning sadly adherents of spiritual movements are seldom satisfied hold on there no meaning to consciousness or mind or self with this harmless illogicality they seem inexorably drawn to a belief what illogicality in the primacy of the spiritual and transcendental over the material and empirical i e the primacy of pipe dreams jabberwocky and illusion over facts science and reason since when is for instance non behaviourist psychology a pipe dream surely the major purpose of the science of psychology is to understand the workings of the mind all creatures all feelings all thoughts all perceptions all processes and all phenomena are manifestations of the mundane i e matter energy space and time those who believe otherwise albeit some do not supplicate god are not atheists manifestations of the mundane sounds rather transcendental to me in fact matter energy space and time are well measured but mysterious concepts does an atheist really have to believe in your reductionism or be cast out as not following the true faith richard wilson logica industry ltd
alt.atheism	re christian morality is acooper mac cc macalstr edu turin turambar me department of utter misery said re dan schaertel s article if i followed the quoting right as much as anything else you learn how do you choose what to believe and what not to i could argue that george washington is a myth he never lived because i don t have any proof except what i am told however all the major events of the life of jesus christ were fortold hundreds of years before him neat trick uh how is this there is nothing more disgusting than christian attempts to manipulate interpret the old testament as being filled with signs for the coming of christ every little reference to a stick or bit of wood is autmoatically interpreted as the cross what a miscarriage of philology i think it may also be worthwhile pointing out that if we take the appellation rabbi seriously then jesus had a full grasp of contemporary scripture mat jesus saith unto them did ye never read in the scriptures mat jesus answered and said unto them ye do err not knowing mat the scriptures nor the power of god following from this he would have been in a wonderful position to fulfil prophesies and the nt says as much mat but how then shall the scriptures be fulfilled mat that thus it must be mat but all this was done that the scriptures of the mat prophets might be fulfilled then all the disciples mat forsook him and fled if the books comprising the referred to scripture had not been accessible then it probably would be a different matter tony
alt.atheism	another request for darwin fish hello gang there have been some notes recently asking where to obtain the darwin fish this is the same question i have and i have not seen an answer on the net if anyone has a contact please post on the net or email me thanks john chadwick johnchad triton unm edu or
alt.atheism	re another request for darwin fish darwin fish can be bought from join the darwinners tm send to receive your official evolving fish wherever you want to spread the good news darwinners sunset blvd ste l a ca the greatest theory ever told jenny forty years from now nursing homes will be filled with demented hackers studying their blank laptop screens nicely placed on knitted quilts to keep their knees warm k mitchum
alt.atheism	re faq sheet mike mcangus mam mouse cmhnet org wrote by the way news announce newusers has an article can t remember which one that recommends reading a newsgroup for month before posting this makes sense because you get an idea who the players are and what the current discussions are about am i the only one who followed that advice no i spent a month just reading too mainly because i did not know much about the way atheists think i even printed out the faqs and discussed it with a friend before i started posting alt atheism deals with religious issues more appropriately lack of religious beliefs which are by their very nature very controversial it makes sense to read what is being discussed and how just to make sure you are not repeating something others have said better petri petri pihko kem pmp mathematics is the truth pihatie c finou oulu fi physics is the rule of sf oulu kempmp the game finland phoenix oulu fi chemistry is the game
alt.atheism	re gulf war was re death penalty was re political atheists mark mccullough mccullou snake cs wisc edu wrote details of us built chemical plant at al alteer near baghdad however the plant s intended use was to aid the iraqi infrastructure it is not an example of selling a weapon may sound nitpicking but are we going to refuse to sell valuable parts that build the infrastructure because of dual use technology i am contending that in this case and in the case of the sale of pesticides by uk companies that they knew full well that it was to be used for the production of chemical weapons even if that was not its officially stated purpose i personally don t think that letting iran conquer iraq would have been a good thing for that matter neither do i for the reasons you state it is the hypocrisy and claims the us did not help iraq that make me angry plus the fact that the usa seems to believe it has the right to interfere where is sees fit i e has an interest rather than a duty to intervene where it is required this is demonstrated by the failure of the us to do anything about east timor and the region is becoming destabilised the usa might have done something approaching the right thing given my reservations about the uncessary number of civillian casualites but for wholly the wrong reasons and after having a hand in creating the situation that in no way would affect the us later military action against iraq i did not suggest it would and it would be ridiculous to assert otherwise i was simply indicating the usa has previously aided iraq intel on manufacturing techniques or something of that nature no apparently data orginally from satellites although i doubt that iraq would have been given the raw data concerning troop concentrations aaron turner aaron minster york ac uk
alt.atheism	re death penalty gulf war long shamim zvonko mohamed sham cs arizona edu wrote bullshit in the gulf massacre of all ordnance used was smart the rest that s was just regular dumb ol iron bombs and stuff have you forgotten that the pentagon definition of a successful patriot launch was when the missile cleared the launching tube with no damage or that a successful interception of a scud was defined as the patriot and scud passed each other in the same area of the sky and of the that was the smart stuff hit again try to follow me here that means of this smart arsenal missed i used to have full figures on this including the tons of bombs dropped and the number of cluster bomblet munitions used i had heard the of the laser guided weapons hit which is an unprecedented rate of success of the iron weapons hit again unprecedented the following is a rough estimate but this means of the tons of bombs dropped by us aircraft around tons missed i m not sure what proportion of this was dropped of baghdad rather than troop concentrations in iraq and kuwait much of the tonnage dropped was cluster munitions as were all the mrls rounds and many of the artillery rounds napalm and fuel air explosives were also used remember how we were told that weapons of mass destruction such as fae were very naughty indeed
alt.atheism	re death penalty gulf war long mark mccullough mccullou snake cs wisc edu wrote this figure is far below all the other figures i have seen if it is indeed accurate then how do you explain the discrepancy between that figure and other figures from international organizations most figures i have seen place the hit ratio close to which is still far higher than your or does your figure say a bomb missed if the plane took off with it and the bomb never hit the target regardless of whether or not the bomb was dropped such methods are used all the time to lie with statistics answering the last sentence claimed that they had a success rate of without initially explaining until pressed that this meant that of the aircraft came back having dropped their bombs somewhere regardless of whether they had hit the intended target or indeed anything al all aaron turner
alt.atheism	re death penalty gulf war long mark mccullough mccullou snake cs wisc edu wrote prove it i have a source that says that to date the civilian death count er excuse me i mean collateral damage is about i have never seen any source that was claiming such a figure please post the source so its reliability can be judged this figure would not simply be deaths by bombing but also death later from disease the sewer system of baghdad was deliberately targeted and starvation i believe but when i get a copy of the latest research in june or july that this was the figure proposed in the census bureau report on the matter the report was suppressed and the cb attempted to sack the author of the report but failed due to procedural technicality the author is now on permanent leave aaron turner
alt.atheism	re gulf war selling arms mark mccullough mccullou snake cs wisc edu wrote i heard about the arms sale to saudi arabia now how is it such a grave mistake to sell saudi arabia weapons or are you claiming that we shouldn t sell any weapons to other countries straightforward answer please saudi arabia is an oppressive regime that has been recently interfering in the politcs of newly renunified yemen including assasinations and border incursions it is entirely possible that they will soon invade unluckily for yemen it is not popular in the west as they managed to put aside political differences during reunification and thus the west has effectively lost one half north as a client state aaron turner
alt.atheism	re free moral agency in article c v mr z darkside osrhe uoknor edu bil okcforum osrhe edu bill conner writes deleted stuff from andrew wrt which atheist myth is bill re to andrew the myth to which i refer is the convoluted counterfeit athiests have created to make religion appear absurd counterfeit atheists hmmmm so we re just cheap knock offs of the true atheists religion demonstrates itself to be absurd constantly personally if someone asks i m happy to point out how this is so rather than approach religion including christainity in a rational manner and debating its claims as the are stated atheists concoct outrageous parodies and then hold the religious accountable for beliefs they don t have what is more accurately oxymoric is the a term like reasonable atheist man what is your pill wrt atheists if you re going to make such contentious statements back them up at least read news time and time again we ve hashed out the beliefs various religous doctrines hold try debating reasonably with someone who makes a statement like more accurately oxymoric is the a term like reasonable atheist then take a look at the responses we ve given tammy seem pretty reasonable nay even polite to me accusations of myths a flyin here s a good example of of what i said above read the post again i said acoording to which means i am referring to christian doctrine as i understand it if i am speaking for myself you ll know it my purpose in posting was to present a basic overview of christain doctrines since it seemed germane i saw your reference to according to in the original article then you do such an excellent job of spewing dogma that well the implication was pretty clear if wrong in this case jeez a misunderstanding let it go more statements to wrap this thing up if you read my post with same care as read the faq we wouldn t be having this conversation if you had written your post with the same as care as the faq has been we wouldn t be having this discussion gems about evidence deleted yes human reason does always come back to the existence of god we re having this discussion are we not jeez do i have to point this out to you this discussion is not all instances of human reason therefore your implication is false well this is interesting truth is to be determined by it politically correct content granted it s extremely unhip to be a wasp male and anything european is contemptable but i thought this kind of dialogue the purpose of a a was to get at the truth of things but then i remember the oxymoron reasonalble atheist and i understand how lame can you get who said anything about the truth of things read the faq very carefully please then report your findings about where it says the purpose of a a is to find the truth of things and stop impressing your own misguided image of atheists upon us it s really pissing me off bill
alt.atheism	discordian subgenius books addresses etc as requested here are some addresses of sources of bizarre religious satire and commentary plus some bijou book reviewettes loompanics unlimited po box port townsend wa usa publishers of one of the most infamous mail order book catalogue in the world anarchism discordianism libertarianism cryogenics money making legal and illegal privacy and security self defense and all kinds of other stuff that keeps christians awake at nights the church of the subgenius po box dallas tx usa the original end times church for post human mutants a high temple for scoffers mockers and blasphemers be one of the few to board the x ist saucers in and escape space god jhvh s stark fist of removal j r bob dobbs god of sales is waiting to take your money and ordain you magazines sick audio cassettes and assorted offensive cynisacreligious material periodic lists of addresses of pink religious cults and contact points for the world wierdo network expect a slow response to mail only conspiracies are well organized you will eventually get what you pay for if you give them some slack counter productions po box london se rl uk a uk source of obscure books a wide ranging selection surrealism anarchism subgenius discordianism robert anton wilson lovecraftian horror cyberpunk forteana political and social commentary wilhelm reich orgone tech obscure rock music sf and so on send an sae and maybe a bribe they need your money and ask for a catalogue tell them mathew sent you i ve ordered from these folks three or four times now and they re about as fast and efficient as you can expect from this sort of operation forbidden planet various sites in the uk in particular along london s new oxford street just down the road from tottenham court road tube station mass market oddness subgenius robert anton wilson loompanics and of course huge quantities of sf not a terribly good selection but they re in the high street reviewette loompanics greatest hits isbn x loompanics a selection of articles picked from the books in loompanics catalogue subjects include christian dispensationalism how right wing christians encouraged the cold war satanic child abuse myths religion and censorship plus lots of anarchist and libertarian stuff situationism computers and privacy and so on guaranteed to contain at least one article that ll offend you like for example the interview with bradley r smith the holocaust revisionist a good sampling of stuff in a coffee table book of course whether you want to leave this sort of stuff lying around on your coffee table is another matter quote the fundamentalists leap up and down in apoplectic rage and joy their worst fantasies are vindicated and therefore or so they like to think their entire theology and socio political agenda is too meanwhile teen age misanthropes and social misfits murder their enemies classmates families friends even complete strangers all because they read one of anton lavey s cooks or listened to one too many ac dc records the born agains are ready to burn again and not just books this time reviewette the book of the subgenius j r dobbs the subgenius foundation isbn simon schuster described by rolling stone as a sick masterpiece for those who can still laugh at the fact that nothing is funny anymore the official bible of the subgenius church containing the sacred teachings of j r bob dobbs instant answers to everything causes catalytic brain cell loss in seconds the secret of total slack how to relax in the safety of your delusions and pull the wool over your own eyes nuclear doom and other things to laugh at quote he has been known to answer questions concerning universal truths with screams with suggestive silence by peeing down his pants leg his most famous sermon was of cosmic simplicity bob standing on the stage with his hands in his pockets smoking looking around and saying nothing heated arguments still rage among the monks often erupting into fatal duels as towhether the master consulted his wristwatch during this divine period of grace reviewette high weirdness by mail rev ivan stang isbn x simon schuster an encyclopedia of wierd organizations you can contact by mail space jesuses christian vs christian ufo contactees new age saps creationists flat earthers white supremacist churches plus yawn csicop sceptical enquirer and stuff like that not just a list of addresses though as each kook group is ruthlessly mocked and ridiculed with sarcastic glee if you like alt atheism s flame wars this is the book for you made me laugh until my stomach ached revised edition due some time in the next year or two sample entry entertaining demons unawares southwest radio church po box oklahoma city ok your watchman on the wall another flagellating genuflecting fundamentalist outfit their booklet entertaining demons unawares exposes the star wars e t dungeons dragons saturday morning cartoon satanic connection in horrifying detail left out smurfs though i especially liked the bit about wonder woman s antichrist origins keep in mind that once you send for anything from these people you ll be on their mailing list for life reviewette the abolition of work bob black isbn loompanics a selection of bob black s painfully witty and intelligent anarchist tracts collected into book form if i were this good i d be insufferable probably the only thought provoking political book that s fun to read quote babble about the wages of sin serves to cover up the sin of wages we want rights not rites sex not sects only eros and eris belong in our pantheon surely the nazarene necrophile has had his revenge by now remember pain is just god s way of hurting you reviewette principia discordia malaclypse the younger isbn loompanics the infamous discordian bible reprinted in its entirety and then some yes you could ftp the online copy but this one has all the pictures explains absolutely everything including the law of fives how to start a discordian cabal and instructions for preaching discordianism to christians quote a discordian is required during his early illumination to go off alone partake joyously of a hot dog on a friday this devotive caremony to remonstrate against the popular paganisms of the day of catholic christendom no meat on friday of judaism no meat of pork of hindic peoples no meat of beef of buddhists no meat of animal and of discordians no hot dog buns reviewette natural law or don t put a rubber on your willy robert anton wilson isbn x loompanics the author of the illuminatus trilogy rails against natural law natural morality objective reality and other pervasive myths witty and thought provoking work from someone who actually seems to know an argument from a hole in the ground quote since theological propositions are scientifically meaningless those of us of pragmatic disposition simply won t buy such dubious merchandise maybe remotely there might be something in such promotions as there might be something in the talking dogs and the stocks in arabian tapioca mines that w c fields once sold in his comedies but we suspect that we recognize a con game in operation at least we want to hear the dog talk or see the tapioca ore before we buy into such deals all of the books mentioned above should be available from counter productions in the uk or directly from the subgenius foundation or loompanics unlimited mathew what do you mean i am anyway dreamed i laid a toaster daddy caught me in the act can you take it devo
alt.atheism	re free moral agency in article r voinnr q lynx unm edu cfaehl vesta unm edu chris faehl writes the myth to which i refer is the convoluted counterfeit athiests have created to make religion appear absurd counterfeit atheists hmmmm so we re just cheap knock offs of the true atheists they must be theists in disguise in any event we don t need to create religious parodies just look at some actual religions which are absurd mand now mdeep thoughts m mby jack handey m mif you go parachuting and your parachute doesn t open and your friends are all watching you fall i think a funny gag would be to pretend you were swimming m
alt.atheism	atheism survey i am doing research on atheism part of which involves field research here on the net the following is a survey directed towards all readers of this group intended to get data about the basis of atheistic belief i would seriously appreciate it if each and every one of you would fill it out and mail it back to me at mtabbott unix amherst edu first of all i ve tried to structure questions that can be answered in a variety of ways with varying amounts of detail it s possible to give succinct answers to most everything but there s enough here to keep most of you typing for hours i m sure as much detail as you want to give me i mean it is great but it s also important for me to have as broad a base of individuals as possible so even minimal responses are far better than nothing it s a short survey if you just answer the questions without elaboration secondly i hope some of the questions don t come off as obnoxious i know that phrases like what would convince you of the existence of god imply that i am a seminary student intent on proving you all to be ignorant godless heathens in fact i m not too sure about the existence of a higher power myself so my use of god is a question of locution rather than ideology it s easier than just repeating a deity or higher power every time also i tend to use a lot of anthropological buzzwords like belief system although i know some of you might contend that you don t have any beliefs but are skeptical towards everything i understand but you know what i mean think of such buzzwords as abbreviations for the rather unweildy phrases required to get the precise idea across lastly thanks please fill out as much as you can in as much detail as you can and send them to me my research and i thank you where would you place your beliefs on the spectrum theism agnosticism weak atheism strong atheism feel free to elaborate on your specific beliefs in what if any religious tradition were you raised did you ever believe in the existence of a god several of the following questions presume that the answer to this is yes if you ve always been an atheist or at least never a theist you may have to modify the question answer somewhat how serious was your your family s involvement how and when did you start to doubt the tenets you were raised to believe how and when did your final break with your beliefs if any occur i realize that this is often more of an ongoing process than an event per se whatever the case just describe it in whatever detail you wish what contact with other atheists have you had before and after and during your conversion to atheism certainly your involvement with alt atheism counts how have net discussions affected your beliefs to what extent do you think other atheists have influenced you in your beliefs did you come by your beliefs through discussion through independent means or by some combination of the two or other means are you convinced that your beliefs were acquired through wholly rational means proofs of the non existence of god etc or was it perhaps at least in part through other means alienation from mainstream religion etc to what extent do you feel you understand the universe through your beliefs what phenomena of the universe and of human existence anything from physical phenomena to the problem of the existence of evil in human affairs do you feel are adequately dealt with by your beliefs and where are they lacking as an explanatory method what would it take for you to question or change your beliefs what would convince you of the existence of god what would convince you of the plausibility of god s existence and so forth how dynamic are your beliefs are they constantly changing have they stayed more or less the same for some time are you involved in a career or education in science to what extent do you think science has influenced your beliefs issac asimov claimed that science was the new secular religion and that scientists are in a very real sense the new priesthood do you see the pursuit of science as having a quasi religious base or even a religious element this survey is intended to get data from a broad range of individuals but also to help me narrow down the field to a small group of people whose ideas and histories could be very useful to me would you be willing to have me on the basis of this survey write you to find out more about you and your beliefs if not fine your filling out the survey alone is great thanks again feel free to contact me if you have any questions about what i m doing with this data or if you have anything to say in addition to what i ve asked about above mark abbott mtabbott unix amherst ed
alt.atheism	re americans and evolution now with free ockham s razor inside sorry about the delay in responding due to conference paper deadline panic in article qsnqqinn nr senator bedfellow mit edu bobs thnext mit edu robert singleton writes in article apr dcs warwick ac uk simon dcs warwick ac uk simon clippingdale writes alarming amounts of agreement deleted i made my statement about ockums razor from my experiences in physics thanks for info in baysian statistics very interesting and i didn t know it before i follow your proof but i have one questions we have two hypotheses h and hg the latter is more complicated which by definition means p h p hg that complicated isn t in fact where p h p hg comes from it s more the other way around it s from p h p hg p hg where g is the complement of g and by axiom p anything so p hg so p h p hg in a sense hg is necessarily more complicated than h for any h and g so i may be splitting hairs but what i m trying to say is that irrespective of subjective impressions of how complicated something is p h p hg holds with equality if and only if p hg as you point out it s a very simple matter to show p x h p x hg p h x p hg x and thus h is to be preferd to hg now to say that h is as consistent with the data as hg is to say p x h p x hg can you elaborate some on this well p x a p x b means that x is as likely to be observed if a is operative as it is if b is operative this implies that observing x does not provide any useful information which might allow us to discriminate between the respective possibilities that a and b are operative the difference reduces to the difference between the unknown and unhelpful prior probabilities p a and p b p x a p x b p a x k p a and p b x k p b where k p x a p x p x b p x so a and b are equally consistent with the data in that observing x doesn t give any pointers as to which of a or b is operative in the particular case where a h and b hg however we know that their prior probabilities are ordered by p h p hg although we don t know the actual values and it s this which allows us to deploy the razor to throw out any such hg also in the real world it isn t as clear cut and dry it seems to me we can t always determine whether the equality p x h p x hg is true that s certainly true but the particular point here was whether or not a divine component actually underlies the prevalence of religion in addition to the memetic transmission component which even the religious implicitly acknowledge to be operative when they talk of spreading the word now it seems to me as i ve said that the observed variance in religious belief is well accounted for by the memetic transmission model but rather less well if one proposes a divine component in addition since i would expect the latter to conspire against wide variance and even mutual exclusion among beliefs thus my personal feeling is that p x hg isn t even equal to p x h in this case but is smaller h is memetic transmission g is divine component x is the variance among beliefs but i happily acknowledge that this is a subjective impression btw my beef with your baysian argument was not a mathematical one i checked most of your work and didn t find an error and you seem very careful so there probably isn t a math mistake i think the mistake is philosophical but just to make sure i understand you can please rephrase it in non technical terms i think this is a reasonable request i always try to look for ways of explaining physics to non physicist i m not a baysian statistician nor any type of statistician so this would be very helpful not that i m a statistician as such either but the idea is that both theism and atheism are compatible with all of the read my observations to date however theism of the type with which i am concerned also suggests that for instance prayer may be answered people may be miraculously healed both are in principle amenable to statistical verification and that god s may generally intervene in measurable ways this means that these regions of the space of possible observations which i loosely termed appearances of god s have some nonzero probability under the theistic hypothesis and zero under the atheistic since there is only so much probability available for each hypothesis to scatter around over the observation space the probability which theism expends on making appearances of god s possible must come from somewhere else i e other possible observations all else being equal this means that an observation which isn t an appearance of god s must have a slightly higher probability under atheism than under theism the bayesian stuff implies that such observations must cause my running estimate for the probability of the atheistic hypothesis to increase with a corresponding decrease in my running estimate for the probability of the theistic hypothesis sorry if that s still a bit jargonesque but it s rather difficult to put it any other way since it does depend intimately on the properties of conditional probability densities and particularly that the total area under them is always unity an analogy may or may not be helpful say that hypothesis a is the coin is fair and that b is the coin is unfair two headed i ve used a and b to avoid confusion with h heads and t tails then p h a total p t a p h b total p t b the observations are a string of heads with no tails this is compatible with both a fair coin a and a two headed coin b however the probability expended by a on making possible the appearance of tails even though they don t actually appear must come from somewhere else since the total must be unity and it comes in this case from the probability of the appearance of heads say our running estimates at time n are e n a and e n b the observation x n at time n is another head x n h the estimates are modified according to p h a e n a e n a e n a m p h and p h b e n b e n b e n b m p h now we don t know p h the actual prior probability of a head but the multiplier for e a is half that for e b this is true every time the coin is tossed and a head is observed thus whatever the initial values of the estimates after n heads we have n e n a m e a and n e n b m e b and since e k a e k b at any time k you can show that m and thus m hence the estimate for the fair coin hypothesis a must decrease at each trial and that for the two headed coin hypothesis b must increase even though both hypotheses are compatible with a string of heads the loose analogy is between unfair coin and atheism and between fair coin and theism with observations consistent with both a tail which would falsify unfair coin is analogous to an appearance of god s which would falsify atheism i am not claiming that the analogy extends to the numerical values of the various probabilities just that the principle is the same constant observation of no evidence for gods if evidence for them is at all possible under the respective theisms constantly increases the notional estimated probability that they don t exist it s important to draw a distinction between theism that could be supported or not supported by evidence and theism that can t given a theism for which evidence is in principle not possible it doesn t make sense to say lack of evidence supports the contrary view quite so but this type of theism is what i might call the g in the hg in terms of our ockham s razor discussion and i d bin it on those grounds so it depends upon your conception of this god if it s a conception like zeus who happened to come down to earth to play quite frequently then i agree with you lack of evidence for this conception of god is evidence that it does not exist but if your conception of god is one that does not make falsifiable predictions see below on falsifiable predictions then i disagree lack of evidence does not support a disbelief the hypotheses don t have to be falsifiable and indeed in my model the theism isn t falsifiable i used the phrase should obverse given any specific x theism does not make the prediction p x ht that s why i used the word should theism makes no predictions about any specific event i can only say i believe that god did such and such after such and such happens or i believe god will do such and such but for any given x i can never a priori say p x ht i can not even say this for the set of all x or some x this is what don t like about your use of probability we also have no way of assigning these probabilities i hold science to positivistic criteria if someone cannot tell me how to measure even in principle p x h then probability is not applicable to hypothesis h such is the case when h ht theistic and ha atheistic for example p x ha p x ha p ha what is p ha how do i measure it you don t have to we don t need in the above analogy to know any prior probabilities to deduce that the updating multiplier for the fair coin hypothesis is less than unity and that the corresponding multiplier for the two headed coin hypothesis is greater than unity you don t need to know the initial values of the running estimates either it s clear that after a large number of observations p fair coin approaches zero and p two headed coin approaches unity all you need to know is whether p x ha is larger than p x ht for observed x and this follows from the assumptions that there are certain events rendered possible not necessary under ht which are not possible under ha and all else is equal baysian statistics relies upon a series of observations but what if the hypothesis isn t amenable to observation and even for statements that are amenable to observation some observations are not relevant a sequence of observations must be chosen with care i m curious to know what types of observations x x you have in mind concerning theism and atheism any observations you like it really doesn t matter nor affect the reasoning provided that there are some possible observations which would count as appearances of god s examples of this might be a demonstration of the efficacy of prayer or of the veracity of revelation but any statement about p x h for general x still counts as a prediction of h if the theism in question ht says that prayer may be answered or that miracles may happen see my interpretation quoted again above of what god exists means then this is a prediction p x ht for such x it s what distinguishes it from the atheist hypothesis ha which predicts that this stuff does not happen p x ha for such x theism does not make the claim that p x ht for such x or i should say that my theism doesn t maybe i was too quick to say we had a common language you said that by the existence of god you mean the notion that the deity described by the bible and by christians does interact with the universe as claimed by those agents i agreed with this however i must be careful here i believe this i m not making any claims maybe i should have changed does to can there is an important shift of emphasis but any way since i only have a belief i cannot conclude p x ht for such x ok we ll downgrade does interact to may interact which would actually be better since does interact implies a falsifiability which we both agree is misplaced i don t think my theism makes predictions maybe i m not understanding what you mean by prediction could you explain what you mean by this word i ll explain but bear in mind that this isn t central all i require of a theism is that it not make the prediction appearances of god s will never happen as does atheism before somebody points out that quantum mechanics doesn t make this prediction either the difference is that qm and atheism do not form a partition predictions include such statements as prayer is efficacious implying if you do the stats you will find that prayer is efficacious or prayer is not efficacious or verily i say unto you this generation shall not pass till all these things be fulfilled i don t think we have any problems of misunderstanding here persistent observation of this stuff not happening consistent with ht though it may be is more consistent with ha as explained in the bayesian stats post even if ht god exists is unfalsifiable that s no problem for my argument other than that you have to let the number of observations go to infinity to falsify it asymptotically btw i do not consider an argument that requires an infinite number of observations as valid or rather that part of the argument is not valid we as existing humans can never make an infinite number of measurments and any conclusion that reilies on this i don t accept as valid that s fine i don t claim that theism is false merely that the finite number of observations available to me so far suggest that it is and that as i continue to observe the suggestion looks better and better renormalization stuff deleted in the bayesian stats post i assumed that theism was indeed unfalsifiable in a finite number of observations here s the relevant quote the important assumption is that there are some observations which are compatible with the theist hypothesis and not with the atheist hypothesis and thus would falsify atheism these are what i called appearances of god s but this need not be taken too literally any observation which requires for its explanation that one or more gods exist will count all other observations are assumed to be compatible with both hypotheses this leaves theism as unfalsifiable and atheism as falsifiable in a single observation only by such appearances of god s here is my problem with this for something to be falsifiable it must make the prediction that x should not be seen if x is seen then the hypothesis has been falsified now atheism is a word in oposition to something theism a theism aserts a belief and an atheism aserts a disbelief so there are certain atheisms that are certainly falsifiable just as there are certain theisms that are falsifable e g if my theism asserts the world is only years old and that god does not decieve then this has been falsified however the atheism that is in oposition to an unfalsifiable theism is also unfalsifiable i could be wrong on this statment contd i think you are an appearance of god s is sufficient to falsify atheism whereas in general the corresponding theism is unfalsifiable i ll think more about it until then here is a general question suppse x were unfalsifiable is not x also unfalsifiable no by way of a counterexample let x the coin is fair or more accurately so that not x makes sense the two sides of the coin are different this is unfalsifiable by tossing the coin even a string of heads is consistent with a fair coin and you have to go to an infinite number of tosses to falsify x in the limit its converse is falsifiable and is falsified when at least one head and at least one tail have appeared this is partly what s wrong with you baysian argument which requires observations x x n to be made there are simply no such observations that have a truth value in relation to the statement god exists now by use of your symmetry argument i can understand why someone would say since the statement god does not exist makes no predictions i will choose not to believe it but none the less this would be founded on a type of faith or if you don t like the word faith insert belief for which there is no falsifiable evidence instead i ll assume you meant god exists up there at the highlight but by our agreed definition of exists the statement makes predictions as i said above although it isn t falsifiable in a finite number of observations actually i mean god does not exist makes no predictions oops sorry mea culpa the truth of this statment actually depends upon which god you are refering to but i can think of some conceptions of god for which it is true but once again i m open to the posibility that i could be wrong so give me some examples of predictions of the statment god does not exist here is one that i can think of if true then there would be no healing or miricles but this can in principle never be determined one way or the other there are cases in which people seem to recover and are healed without the help of a doctor and for no known reason these situations do in fact happen they are consistent with a theistic hypothesis but in no way support such a hypothesis we agree here they are not inconsistent with an atheistic hypothesis i can t think of one prediction from god does not exist that isn t of this type but i might be missing something the rapture will not happen on october said rapture would have falsified atheism to my satisfaction had it happened although its failure to happen does not of course falsify any theisms other than those which specifically predicted it no phenomenon which requires the existence of one or more gods for its explanation will ever be observed that about sums the whole thing up bob singleton bobs thnext mit edu cheers simon simon clippingdale simon dcs warwick ac uk department of computer science tel university of warwick fax coventry cv al u k
alt.atheism	re some thoughts healta saturn wwc edu tammy r healy writes tammy see maddi i trimmed it healy well you re going to have to practice but you re getting the hang of it soon we re going to have to give you a new nickname try these on for size tammy lucky seven healy tammy pass the falafel healy tammy r us healy tammy learning by doing healy maddi never a useful post hausmann maddi hausmann madhaus netcom com centigram communications corp san jose california kids please don t try this at home remember i post professionally
alt.atheism	re free moral agency in article kmr po cwru edu kmr po cwru edu keith m ryan writes mand now mdeep thoughts m mby jack handey m mif you go parachuting and your parachute doesn t open and your friends are all watching you fall i think a funny gag would be to pretend you were swimming m you fall if it opens too gravity it s not just a good idea it s the law dean kaflowitz
alt.atheism	re religion as cause was islamic authority over women scott d sauyet ssauyet eagle wesleyan edu wrote the same works for the horrors of history to claim that christianity had little to do with the crusades or the inquisition is to deny the awesome power that comes from faith in an absolute what it seems you are doing twisting the reasonable statement that religion was never the solitary cause of any evil into the unreasonable statement that religion has had no evil impacts on history that is absurd scott until this paragraph i would willingly amend my earlier statements since your point s are well made and generally accurate this last part though slips into hyperbole since i ve discussed my objections to such generalizations before i really don t feel i need to do it again if you haven t seen those posts ask maddi she saves everything i write bill
alt.atheism	re yet more rushdie re islamic law in article bu edu jaeger buphy bu edu gregg jaeger writes in article r idi e fido asd sgi com livesey solntze wpd sgi com jon livesey writes so now you are saying that an islamic bank is something other than bcci would you care to explain why it was that when i said i hope an islamic bank is something other than bcci you called me a childish propagandist yes sure because the only obvious reason anyone would make the jump from bcci to islamic bank is by associating islamic banking with muslim ownership but in this case i said i hoped that bcci was not an islamic bank and the only reason one would generalize from a given islamic bank to all islamic banks is through a stereotype one x is bad therefore all x s are bad but in this case i said i hoped that bcci was not an islamic bank next think you know there is a bosnia on tap but in this case i said i hoped that bcci was not an islamic bank jon
alt.atheism	re free moral agency in article bb dba i dbstu rz tu bs de i dbstu rz tu bs de benedikt rosenau writes in article r j ak fido asd sgi com livesey solntze wpd sgi com jon livesey writes deletion so mr conner is bobby mozumder a myth a performing artist a real moslem a crackpot a provocateur you know everything and read all minds why don t you tell us as a side note isn t it telling that one cannot say for sure if bobby mozunder is a firm believer or a provocateur what does that say about religious beliefs i think that s an insightful comment especially when at the same time we have people like bill projector conner complaining that we are posting parodies jon
alt.atheism	re societally acceptable behavior in article c ws s ns news cso uiuc edu cobb alexia lis uiuc edu mike cobb writes in r ioh t fido asd sgi com livesey solntze wpd sgi com jon livesey writes in article c qgm dl news cso uiuc edu cobb alexia lis uiuc edu mike cobb writes this doesn t seem right if i want to kill you i can because that is what i decide sounds as though you are confused between what i want and what i think is morally right jon what do you mean would your idea still apply if i said i think it is ok to kill you because that is what i decided what i mean is what i said what i want does not automatically translate into what i think is right that is it does not translate that way for me if you reply that i think it is ok to kill you because that is what i decided then what that means is that for you what i want does translate into what i think is right it just doesn t translate that way for me jon
alt.atheism	re societal basis for morality in article apr cnsvax uwec edu nyeda cnsvax uwec edu david nye writes you asked me to look over here but i was on my way back anyway reply to cobb alexia lis uiuc edu mike cobb if morals come from what is societally accepted why follow that what right do we have to expect others to follow our notion of societally mandated morality pardon the extremism but couldn t i murder your brother and say that i was exercising my rights as i saw them was doing what felt good didn t want anyone forcing their morality on me or i don t follow your morality i believe that morality is subjective each person is entitled to his own moral attitudes mine are not a priori more correct than someone elses this does not mean however that i must judge another on the basis of his rather than my moral standards while he is entitled to believe what his own moral sense tells him the rest of society is entitled to pass laws spelling out punishments for behavior that is offensive to the majority why your last statement why by which authority most criminals do not see their behavior as moral the may realize that it is immoral and not care they are thus not following their own moral system but being immoral for someone to lay claim to an alternative moral system he must be sincere in his belief in it and it must be internally consistent why your last statement why are these things necessary and believe me a belief in terrorism can be both sincere and frighteningly consistent some sociopaths lack an innate moral sense and thus may be incapable of behaving morally while someone like hitler may have believed that his actions were moral we may judge him immoral by our standards holding that morality is subjective does not mean that we must excuse the murderer trouble is this would sound just fine coming from someone like hitler too i do not mean any comparison or offence david try substituting the social minority of your choice for sociopath hitler and murderer no logical difference someone like you vs someone like hitler zero sum frank o dwyer i m not hatching that odwyer sse ie from hens by evelyn conlon
alt.atheism	re faith and dogma reply to tgk cs toronto edu todd kelley in light of what happened in waco i need to get something of my chest faith and dogma are dangerous agreed a philosopher cannot be a christian because a philosopher can change his mind whereas a christian cannot due to the nature of faith and dogma present in any religion it is hard for me to understand but quite a few professional scientists and philosophers are theists sure religion has many good qualities it encourages benevolence and philanthropy but also intolerance and superstition i m not sure that in the balance it is not detrimental wouldn t it be nice if everyone were a secular humanist sure would david nye nyeda cnsvax uwec edu midelfort clinic eau claire wi this is patently absurd but whoever wishes to become a philosopher must learn not to be frightened by absurdities bertrand russell
alt.atheism	re yet more rushdie re islamic law in article bu edu jaeger buphy bu edu gregg jaeger writes i m not in a position to say since i know nothing about the situation that does not in my estimation qualify me as having my head up my ass bob i never accused you of having your head up your ass it takes me quite some time in dealing with someone before accusing them of having their head up their ass i was accusing the original poster benedikt i believe of being so impaired after insult gregg resorts to lies in article bu edu jaeger buphy bu edu gregg jaeger writes could you maybe flesh it out just a bit or did i miss the full grandeur of it s content by virtue of my blinding atheism you may be having difficulty seeing the light because you have your head up your ass i suggest making sure this is not the case before posting again that s was the original answer while it does not say that he has the head necessarily up its ass it would be meaningless and pointless if it was not insinuated benedikt
alt.atheism	re after years can we say that christian morality is in article r fpv p horus ap mchp sni de frank d s uucp frank o dwyer writes deletion point morals are in essence personal opinions usually ideally well founded motivated such but nonetheless personal the fact that a real large lot of people agree on some moral question sometimes even for the same reason does not make morals objective it makes humans somewhat alike in their opinions on that moral question which can be good for the evolution of a social species and if a real large lot nice phrase of people agree that there is a football on a desk i m supposed to see a logical difference between the two perhaps you can explain the difference to me since you seem to see it so clearly rest deleted that s a fallacy and it is not the first time it is pointed out for one you have never given a set of morals people agree upon unlike a football further you conveniently ignore here that there are many who would not agree on tghe morality of something the analogy does not hold one can expect sufficiently many people to agree on its being a football while you have to give the evidence that only vanishing number disagrees with a set of morals you have to give further the above is evidence not proof proof would evolve out of testing your theory of absolute morals against competing theories the above is one of the arguments you reiterate while you never answer the objections evidence that you are a preacher benedikt
alt.atheism	re amusing atheists and agnostics in article r jcinnt g lynx unm edu cfaehl vesta unm edu chris faehl writes correction hard atheism is a faith yes can be a faith like weak atheism we had that before benedikt
alt.atheism	re theism and fanatism was islamic genocide in article r sn r horus ap mchp sni de frank d s uucp frank o dwyer writes theism is strongly correlated with irrational belief in absolutes irrational belief in absolutes is strongly correlated with fanatism deletion theism is correlated with fanaticism i have neither said that all fanatism is caused by theism nor that all theism leads to fanatism the point is theism increases the chance of becoming a fanatic one could of course argue that would be fanatics tend towards theism for example but i just have to loook at the times in history when theism was the dominant ideology to invalidate that conclusion that that is the basic mechanism behind it imo the influence of stalin or for that matter ayn rand invalidates your assumption that theism is the factor to be considered bogus i just said that theism is not the only factor for fanatism the point is that theism is a factor gullibility blind obedience to authority lack of scepticism and so on are all more reliable indicators and the really dangerous people the sources of fanaticism are often none of these things they are cynical manipulators of the gullible who know precisely what they are doing that s a claim you have to support please note that especially in the field of theism the leaders believe what they say now some brands of theism and more precisely some theists do tend to fanaticism i grant you to tar all theists with this brush is bigotry not a reasoned argument and it reads to me like a warm up for censorship and restriction of religious freedom ever read animal farm that s a straw man and as usually in discussions with you one has to repeat it read what i have written above not every theism leads to fanatism and not all fanatism is caused by theism the point is there is a correlation and it comes from innate features of theism gullibility by the way is one of them and to say that i am going to forbid religion is another of your straw men interesting that you have nothing better to offer define irrational belief e g is it rational to believe that reason is always useful irrational belief is belief that is not based upon reason the latter has been discussed for a long time with charley wingate one point is that the beliefs violate reason often and another that a process that does not lend itself to rational analysis does not contain reliable information well there is a glaring paradox here an argument that reason is useful based on reason would be circular and argument not based on reason would be irrational which is it that s bogus self reference is not circular and since the evaluation of usefulness is possible within rational systems it is allowed your argument is as silly as proving mathematical statements needs mathematics and mathematics are therfore circular the first part of the second statement contains no information because you don t say what the beliefs are if the beliefs are strong theism and or strong atheism then your statement is not in general true the second part of your sentence is patently false counterexample an axiomatic datum does not lend itself to rational analysis but is assumed to contain reliable information regardless of what process is used to obtain it i ve been speaking of religious systems with contradictory definitions of god here an axiomatic datum lends itself to rational analysis what you say here is a an often refuted fallacy have a look at the discussion of the axiom of choice and further one can evaluate axioms in larger systems out of which they are usually derived i exist is derived if you want it that way further one can test the consistency and so on of a set of axioms what is it you are trying to say compared the evidence theists have for their claims to the strength of their demands makes the whole thing not only irrational but antirational i can t agree with this until you are specific which theism to say that all theism is necessarily antirational requires a proof which i suspect you do not have using the traditonal definition of gods personal supernatural entities with objective effects on this world usually connected to morals and or the way the world works the affinity to fanatism is easily seen it has to be true because i believe it is nothing more than a work hypothesis however the beliefs say they are more than a work hypothesis i don t understand this can you formalise your argument person a believes system b becuase it sounds so nice that does not make b true it is at best a work hypothesis however the content of b is that it is true and that it is more than a work hypothesis testing or evaluating evidence for or against it therefore dismissed because b already believed says it is wrong a waste of time not possible depending on the further contents of b amalekites idolaters protestants are to be killed this can have interesting effects answer the question what the absolute set of morals is people agree on like they would agree on a football being a football benedikt
alt.atheism	re islamic authority over women in article c racm q darkside osrhe uoknor edu bil okcforum osrhe edu bill conner writes i can t recall anyone claiming that god makes anyone act a particlar way i think that you re attempting to manufacture a contradiction a world creator god does the moment it creates the world and to sayi that you can t recall anyone is even below your usual standard of a arguing my argument is based on quite usual theistic assumptions namely god is perfect god is all knowing god sets the rules the rules don t work for whatever reason because of its omniscience the god has known it in advance deletion to say that something defined contadictorily cannot exist is really asking too much you would have existence depend on grammar all you can really say is that something is poorly defined but that in itself is insufficient to decide anything other than confusion of course it is not a question of grammar it is a question of modelling has been discussed in the wonderful time when you were not posting to this group when a is contradictorily defined a does not point to an instance in reality unless there is more information in the definition of a that allows me to find it somehow however when the contradictory attribute is said to be essential ie has not got that attribute not the a i am looking for i can conclude that a does not exist your point that there are better reasons for the phenomenon of belief than the object of belief may lead to a rat s nest of unnecessary complexity i think i know what you re implying but i d like to see your version of this better alternative just the same that s quite like i predict coins falling predicted happened heads tails tails tails heads tails heads tails i take and dismiss the rest because of the unnecessary complexity the other evidence causes for an easy to understand explanation of why humans believe in gods read manwatching by desmond morris benedikt
alt.atheism	re death penalty gulf war long jbrown batman bmd trw com writes i don t regret the fact that sometimes military decisions have to be made which affect the lives of innocent people but i do regret the circumstances which make those decisions necessary and i regret the suffering caused by those decisions i m afraid i m going to have to kill you don t worry though as a loving christian i guarantee that i will regret the fact that i have to kill you although i won t regret the actual killing if we hadn t intervened allowing hussein to keep kuwait then it would have been appeasement right but did you ever hear anyone advocate such a course of action or are you just setting up a strawman i m not setting up a strawman at all if you want to argue against the war then the only logical alternative was to allow hussein to keep kuwait false dichotomy diplomatic alternatives including sanctions were ineffective that s because they weren t even attempted but what about those who didn t support hitler s dreams of conquest it s not as if they democratically voted for all his policies the nsdap got in the elections of and that was the last chance the german people got to vote on the matter they suffered along with the rest why does this bother you so much you want to know why it bothers me that thousands of innocent people were maimed or killed by bombing at the end of ww when it was far from clear that such bombing was necessary the world is full of evil and circumstances are not perfect many innocents suffer due to the wrongful actions of others it it regretable but that s the way it is and why is it that way who set things up to be that way this was happening before the gulf war why didn t we send in the bombers to east timor why aren t we sending in the bombers now probably because we re not the saviors of the world we can t police each and every country that decides to self destruct or invade another no just the ones that have oil or the ones that look like they might make a success of communism nor are we in a strategic position to get relief to tibet east timor or some other places i don t see that getting un forces to east timor is any harder than getting them to iraq tibetan people are rounded up tortured and executed amnesty international recently reported that torture is still widespread in china why aren t we stopping them in fact why are we actively sucking up to them by trading freely with them tell me how we could stop them and i ll support it i for one do not agree with the present us policy of sucking up to them as you put it i agree that it is deplorable fine write to your congressman and to president clinton china s status as most favoured nation comes up for renewal in june point out that the us shouldn t be offering favourable trading terms to such a despicable regime i doubt anything will happen clinton s keener on trade sanctions against europe unbelievable comments about the rodney king case deleted the media is not totally monolithic even though there is a prevailing liberal bias programs such as the macneil lehrer news hour try to give a balanced and fair reporting of the news there are even conservative sources out there if you know where to look hurrah for rush any idea how many kill files you just ended up in i an atheist am arguing against killing innocent people you a supposed christian are arguing that it s ok to kill innocent people so long as you get some guilty ones as well hardly i didn t say that it s a good thing tm to kill innocent people if the end is just unfortunately we don t live in a perfect world and there are no perfect solutions if one is going to resist tyranny then innocent people on both sides are going to suffer and die i didn t say it is ok it is unfortunate but sometimes necessary the ends justify the means eh you having criticised moral relativism in the past are now arguing that i am in no position to judge the morality of allied actions at the end of the war you certainly are not in such a position if you are a moral relativist the same tired old misunderstanding moral relativism means that there is no objective standard of morality it doesn t mean you can t judge other people s morals christ on a bike how many times have we tried to hammer that into your head where s your christian love where s your absolute morality oh how quick you are to discard them when it suits you as ivan stang would say jesus would puke one day i will stand before jesus and give account of every word and action even this discourse in this forum i understand the full ramifications of that and i am prepared to do so i don t believe that you can make the same claim obviously not as i am an atheist i don t think you d get on with jesus though he was a long haired lunatic peace nik was he not and btw the reason i brought up the blanket bombing in germany was because you were bemoaning the iraqi civilian casualties as being so deplorable yet blanket bombing was instituted because bombing wasn t accurate enough to hit industrial military targets in a decisive way by any other method at that time but in the gulf war precision bombing was the norm so the point was why make a big stink about the relatively few civilian casualties that resulted in spite of precision bombing when so many more civilians proportionately and quantitatively died under the blanket bombing in ww right unfortunately for you it turned out that my opinions on the matter were entirely consistent in that i condemned the bombing of dresden too i think you re being a bit glib with your explanation of the blanket bombing policy too you make it sound as though we were aiming for military targets and could only get them by destroying civilian buildings next door as i understand it that is not the case we aimed deliberately at civilian targets in order to cause massive damage and inspire terror amongst the german people civilians suffer but less civilians suffered in this war than any other iany other in history oh come on with wars like the falklands fresh in people s minds that sort of propaganda isn t going to fool anyone the stories of hundreds of thousands of iraqi civilian dead is just plain bunk yes bunk the us lost servicemen in ww over four years and the majority of them were directly involved in fighting yes and what about the millions of casualties the russians suffered it s hardly surprising the us didn t lose many men in ww given that you turned up late mathew
alt.atheism	re gulf war selling arms jbrown batman bmd trw com writes mathew i agree this it seems is the crux of your whole position isn t it that the us shouldn t have supported hussein and sold him arms to fight iran i agree and i agree in ruthlessly hunting down those who did or do but we did sell arms to hussein and it s a done deal now he invades kuwait so do we just sit back and say well we sold him all those arms i suppose he just wants to use them now too bad for kuwait no unfortunately sitting back and letting things be is not the way to correct a former mistake destroying hussein s military potential as we did was the right move but i agree with your statement reagan and bush made a grave error in judgment to sell arms to hussein but it s still happening that s the entire point only last month john major hailed it as a great victory that he had personally secured a sale of arms to saudi arabia the same month we sold jet fighters to the same indonesian government that s busy killing the east timorese it s all very well to say oops we made a boo boo better clean up the mistake but the us and uk keep making the same mistake they do it so often that i can t believe it s not deliberate this suspicion is reinforced by the fact that the mistake is an extremely profitable one for a decrepit economy reliant on arms sales so it s really not the gulf war you abhor so much it was the u s s and the west s shortsightedness in selling arms to hussein which ultimately made the war inevitable right no i thought both were terrible mathew
alt.atheism	re gulf war was re death penalty was re political atheists mccullou snake cs wisc edu mark mccullough writes i looked back at this and asked some questions of various people and got the following information which i had claimed and you pooh poohed the us has not sold iraq any arms what about the land mines which have already been mentioned other countries like kuwait information is hard to prove you are claiming that the us sold information prove it information is hard to prove almost certainly if the us did sell information then that fact is classified and you can t prove it oh very neat dismiss everything i say unless i can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt something which you yourself admit i can never prove to your satisfaction thanks i ll stick to squaring circles mathew
alt.atheism	re gulf war and peace niks jbrown batman bmd trw com writes the problem with most peace niks it they consider those of us who are not like them to be bad and unconscionable i would not have any argument or problem with a peace nik if they held to their ideals and stayed out of all conflicts or issues especially those dealing with the national defense but no they are not willing to allow us to legitimately hold a different point of view they militate and many times resort to violence all in the name of peace yawn another right wing wasp imagining he s an oppressed minority perhaps camille paglia is right after all i would not have any argument or problem with a peace nik if they stayed out of all conflicts or issues i bet you wouldn t you d love it but what makes you think that sitting back saying nothing about defense issues and letting people like you make all the decisions is anything to do with their ideals mathew
alt.atheism	re strong weak atheism acooper mac cc macalstr edu turin turambar me department of utter misery writes did that faq ever got modified to re define strong atheists as not those who assert the nonexistence of god but as those who assert that they believe in the nonexistence of god in a word yes mathew
alt.atheism	re who has read rushdie s the satanic verses perry dsinc com jim perry writes anyway since i seem to be the only one following this particular line of discussion i wonder how many of the rest of the readership have read this book what are your thoughts on it i bought a copy of the satanic verses when there was talk of the british government banning it there s nothing interests me in a book more than making it illegal however it s still sitting on my shelf unread perhaps i ll get round to it soon i ve still got a pile of lem bulgakov and zamyatin to go through i don t find nearly enough time to read in fact there are far more interesting things to do than i can ever find time for how anyone ever manages to be bored is beyond me if i didn t have to sleep maybe i could manage it mathew atheism anti virus software for the mind
alt.atheism	re yet more rushdie re islamic law in article apr bnr ca rashid writes in article bu edu jaeger buphy bu edu gregg jaeger wrote i have already made the clear claim that khomeini advocates views which are in contradition with the qur an and have given my arguments for this this is something that can be checked by anyone sufficiently interested khomeini being dead really can t respond but another poster who supports khomeini has responded with what is clearly obfuscationist sophistry this should be quite clear to atheists as they are less susceptible to religionist modes of obfuscationism don t mind my saying this but the best example of obfuscation is to condemn without having even your most basic facts straight if you want some examples go back and look at your previous posts where you manage to get your facts wrong about the fatwa and khomeini s supposed infallibility why shouldn t i mind it sounds as if you are proceeding with just the sort of obfuscation you have accused me of i always preceeded my statements with it is my understanding that now i have made my claim clear with regard to the issue of both the twelve imams and with khomeini s supposed claim of infalibility after hearing your seemingly more knowledgable claim that khomeini made no such claim regarding himself i have withdrawn that portion of my statement regarding that claim however i have received no such response regarding the infallibility of the twelve imams there is nothing obfuscationist about my claims which are always made clearly i have received no such clear response regarding the twelve imams but rather abstruse references to unusual metaphysical natures and other such opaque concepts often used by people to camoflage the baselessness of their positions particularly in matters of theology these are just the sorts of concepts used by christian churches the perverting of their religion as salaam a laikum alaikum wassalam gregg
alt.atheism	re yet more rushdie re islamic law in article apr bnr ca rashid writes in article bu edu jaeger buphy bu edu gregg jaeger wrote i think many reading this group would also benefit by knowing how deviant the view as i ve articulated it above which may not be the true view of khomeini is from the basic principles of islam so that the non muslim readers of this group will see how far from the simple basics of islam such views are on the face of them and if they are not in contradiction with the basics of islam how subtle such issues are and how it seems sects exist in islam while they are explicitly proscribed by the qur an discussing it here is fine by me shall we start a new thread called say infallibility in islam and move the discussion there i think this should be illuminating to all let me make a first suggestion when arabic words especially technical ones become of use let us define them for those especially atheists to whom they may not be terribly familiar please also note that though i did initially refer to khomeini as a heretic for what i understood to be a claim rejected by you since of personal infallibility i withdraw this as a basis for such a statement i conditionally retain this reference in regard to khomeini s advocacy of the thesis of the infallibility of the so called twelve imams which is in clear conflict with the qur an in that it places the twelve imams in a category of behavior and example higher than that of the muhammad in that the qur an shows that the prophet was clearly fallible as well as it appears given your abstruse theological statment regarding the natures of the twelve imams placing them in a different metaphysical category than the remainder of humanity with the possible exception of muhammad something which verges on the sin of association as salam a laikum alaikum wassalam gregg
alt.atheism	re after years can we say that christian morality is in article bb b i dbstu rz tu bs de i dbstu rz tu bs de benedikt rosenau writes in article r fpv p horus ap mchp sni de frank d s uucp frank o dwyer writes deletion point morals are in essence personal opinions usually ideally well founded motivated such but nonetheless personal the fact that a real large lot of people agree on some moral question sometimes even for the same reason does not make morals objective it makes humans somewhat alike in their opinions on that moral question which can be good for the evolution of a social species and if a real large lot nice phrase of people agree that there is a football on a desk i m supposed to see a logical difference between the two perhaps you can explain the difference to me since you seem to see it so clearly rest deleted that s a fallacy and it is not the first time it is pointed out it s not a fallacy note the if if a supermajority of disinterested people agree on a fundamantal value we re not doing ethics yet benedikt then what is the difference between that and those people agreeing on a trivial observation for one you have never given a set of morals people agree upon unlike a football further you conveniently ignore here that there are many who would not agree on tghe morality of something the analogy does not hold i have however given an example of a value people agree on and explained why people will agree that their freedom is valuable i have also stated that such a value is a necessary condition for doing objective ethics the if assertion above and that is what i m talking about there isn t a point in talking about ethics if this can t be agreed one can expect sufficiently many people to agree on its being a football while you have to give the evidence that only vanishing number disagrees with a set of morals you have to give i m not doing morals ethics if we can t get past values as i say the only cogent objection to my freedom example is that maybe people aren t talking about the same thing when they answer that it is valuable maybe not and i want to think about this some especially the implications of its being true further the above is evidence not proof proof would evolve out of testing your theory of absolute morals against competing theories garbage that s not proof either the above is one of the arguments you reiterate while you never answer the objections evidence that you are a preacher name that fallacy frank o dwyer i m not hatching that odwyer sse ie from hens by evelyn conlon
alt.atheism	re studies on book of mormon on tue apr gmt cfairman leland stanford edu carolyn jean fairman said cjf agrino enkidu mic cl andres grino brandt asks about mormons cjf although i don t personally know about independent sudies i do know cjf a few things cjf he writes there are some mention about events places or historical persons later discovered by archeologist cjf one of the more amusing things in the bom is a claim that a cjf civilization existed in north america aroun where the mystical plates cjf were found not only did it use steel and other metals but it had cjf lots of wars very ot no one has ever found any metal swords or cjf and traces of a civilization other than the native americans i was talking to the head of the archeology dept once in college and the topic of mormon archeology came up it seems that the mormon church is or was big on giving grants to archeologists to prove that the native americans are really the lost tribe of israel and other such bunk the archeologists would shake their head knowingly while listening to them take the grant and go off to do real archeology anyway ed mccreary o edm twisto compaq com if it were not for laughter there would be no tao
alt.atheism	science and theories as per various threads on science and creationism i ve started dabbling into a book called christianity and the nature of science by jp moreland a question that i had come from one of his comments he stated that god is not necessarily a religious term but could be used as other scientific terms that give explanation for events or theories without being a proven scientific fact i think i got his point i can quote the section if i m being vague the examples he gave were quarks and continental plates are there explanations of science or parts of theories that are not measurable in and of themselves or can everything be quantified measured tested etc mac michael a cobb and i won t raise taxes on the middle university of illinois class to pay for my programs champaign urbana bill clinton rd debate cobb alexia lis uiuc edu nobody can explain everything to anybody g k chesterton
alt.atheism	re age of reason was who has read rushdie s on wed apr gmt sandvik newton apple com kent sandvik said ks this is the story of kent the archetype finn that lives in the ks bay area and tried to purchase thomas paine s age of reason this ks man was driving around to staceys to books inc to well cleanlighted ks place to daltons to various other places ks when he asked for this book the well educated american book store ks assistants in most placed asked him to check out the thriller section ks or then they said that his book has not been published yet but they ks should receive the book soon in some places the assistants bluntly ks said that they don t know of such an author or that he is not ks a well known living author so they don t keep copies of his books ks such is the life and times of america years after the revolution sigh now i don t feel so bad searching for a copy in bookstores has been a habit of mine for at least two years now i spend a lot of time browsing through bookstores new and and used and i ve not once seen a copy now i know all i do is pick up a phone and order the darned thing but come on this is america and he s one of the founding fathers and no one carries his books sure you can find common sense but i think that s because it s required reading for most colleges i did find one hole in the wall bookstore where the owner said that they usually carry one or two copies but that they were currently out i haven t been back since so i don t know if he was telling the truth or not sigh ed mccreary o edm twisto compaq com if it were not for laughter there would be no tao
alt.atheism	re science and theories in article c u bq j news cso uiuc edu cobb alexia lis uiuc edu mike cobb writes the examples he gave were quarks and continental plates are there sounds like more of the same gods were used to describe almost everything in the past as we come to understand the underpinnings of more and more the less we credit to a god now the not so well understood elements at least by the author includes quarks and tectonic drift i guess that s better than describing the perceived patterns of stars in the sky as heroes being immortalized by the gods kinda sounds like old earth creation it seems that life did indeed evolve from a common ancestor what caused that initial common ancestor are we going to hear another debate on causeless events explanations of science or parts of theories that are not measurable in and of themselves or can everything be quantified measured tested etc mac michael a cobb frank doss the above stated words are my opinions and do not reflect the opinions attitudes or policies of my employer or any affilliated organizations
alt.atheism	re theism and fanatism was islamic genocide in article bb d c i dbstu rz tu bs de i dbstu rz tu bs de benedikt rosenau writes in article r tqo ook horus ap mchp sni de frank d s uucp frank o dwyer writes theism is strongly correlated with irrational belief in absolutes irrational belief in absolutes is strongly correlated with fanatism deletion theism is correlated with fanaticism i have neither said that all fanatism is caused by theism nor that all theism leads to fanatism the point is theism increases the chance of becoming a fanatic one could of course argue that would be fanatics tend towards theism for example but i just have to loook at the times in history when theism was the dominant ideology to invalidate that conclusion that that is the basic mechanism behind it imo the influence of stalin or for that matter ayn rand invalidates your assumption that theism is the factor to be considered bogus i just said that theism is not the only factor for fanatism the point is that theism is a factor that s your claim now back it up i consider your argument as useful as the following belief is strongly correlated with fanaticism therefore belief is a factor in fanaticism true and utterly useless note this is any belief not belief in gods tiring to say the least i have backed it up read the first statement i have read it conspicuous by its absence is any evidence or point the latter is the fallacy of the wrong analogy saying someone believes something is hardly an information about the person at all saying someone is a theist holds much more information further the correlation between theists and fanatism is higher than that between belief at all and fanatism because of the special features of theistic belief truth by blatant assertion evidence gullibility blind obedience to authority lack of scepticism and so on are all more reliable indicators and the really dangerous people the sources of fanaticism are often none of these things they are cynical manipulators of the gullible who know precisely what they are doing that s a claim you have to support please note that especially in the field of theism the leaders believe what they say if you believe that you re incredibly naive you frank o dwyer are living in a dream world i wonder if there is any base of discussion left after such a statement as a matter of fact i think you are ignorant of human nature even when one starts with something one does not believe one gets easily fooled into actually believing what one says to give you the benefit of the doubt prove your statement the onus of proof is on you sunshine what makes you think that theist leaders believe what they say especially when they say one thing and do another or say one thing closely followed by its opposite the practice is not restricted to theism but it s there for anyone to see it s almost an epidemic in this country just for instance if it is harder for a camel to pass thru the eye of a needle why is the catholic church such a wealthy land owner why are there churches to the square inch in my country now some brands of theism and more precisely some theists do tend to fanaticism i grant you to tar all theists with this brush is bigotry not a reasoned argument and it reads to me like a warm up for censorship and restriction of religious freedom ever read animal farm that s a straw man and as usually in discussions with you one has to repeat it read what i have written above not every theism leads to fanatism and not all fanatism is caused by theism the point is there is a correlation and it comes from innate features of theism no some of it comes from features which some theism has in common with some fanaticism your last statement simply isn t implied by what you say before because you re trying to sneak in innate features of all theism the word you re groping for is some bogus again not all theism as is is fanatic however the rest already gives backup for the statement about the correlation about fanatism and theism and further the specialty of other theistic beliefs allows them to switch to fanatism easily it takes just a nifty improvement in the theology truth by blatant assertion gullibility by the way is one of them no shit sherlock so why not talk about gullibility instead of theism since it seems a whole lot more relevant to the case you have as opposed to the case you are trying to make because there is more about theism that the attraction to gullible people causing the correlation and the whole discussion started that way by the statement that theism is meaningfully correlated to fanatism which you challenged indeed i did as i recall i asked for evidence what is the correlation of which you speak and to say that i am going to forbid religion is another of your straw men interesting that you have nothing better to offer i said it reads like a warm up to that that s because it s an irrational and bogus tirade and has no other use than creating a nice them us split in the minds of excitable people such as are to be found on either side of church walls blah blah blah i am quite well aware that giving everyone their rights protects me better from fanatics than the other way round of course other people are always fanatics never oneself your wish to slur all theists seems pretty fanatical to me it is quite nice to see that you are actually implying a connection between that argument and the rise of fanatism so far it is just another of your assertions so you can do it define irrational belief e g is it rational to believe that reason is always useful irrational belief is belief that is not based upon reason the latter has been discussed for a long time with charley wingate one point is that the beliefs violate reason often and another that a process that does not lend itself to rational analysis does not contain reliable information well there is a glaring paradox here an argument that reason is useful based on reason would be circular and argument not based on reason would be irrational which is it that s bogus self reference is not circular and since the evaluation of usefulness is possible within rational systems it is allowed o k it s oval it s still begging the question however and though that certainly is allowed it s not rational and you claiming to be rational and all another of your assertions no proof no evidence just claims hey i learned it from you did i do good at the risk of repeating myself and hearing we had that before we didn t hear a refutation before so we re back deal with it you can t use reason to demonstrate that reason is useful someone who thinks reason is crap won t buy it you see that is unusually weak even for you the latter implies that my proof depends on their opinion somehow who does not accept that there are triangles won t accept pythagoras wow that s an incredible insight i don t have to prove them wrong in their opinion it is possible to show that their systems leave out useful information respectively claims unreliable or even absurd statements to be information totally circular and totally useless their wish to believe makes them believe things are judges by their appeal and not by their information it makes you feel good when you believe that may be good for them but it contains zillions of possible pitfalls from belief despite contrary evidence to the bogus proofs they attempt truth by blatant assertion i ve seen as many bogus proofs of the non existence of gods as i have of their existence rational systems by the way does not mean that every data has to come from logical analysis the point is that the evaluation of the data does not contradict logic it easily follows that such a system does not allows to evaluate if its rational in itself yes it is possible to evaluate that it is rational in a system that is not rational by the fallacies of that system but since the validity of the axioms is agreed upon that has as little impact as the possibility of a demon ala descartes this just doesn t parse sorry so far it just a matter of consistency i use ratiional arguments to show that my system is consistent or that theirs isn t the evaluation of the nor this predictions does not need rationality it does not contradict however your argument is as silly as proving mathematical statements needs mathematics and mathematics are therfore circular anybody else think godel was silly stream of consciousness typing what is that supposed to mean the first part of the second statement contains no information because you don t say what the beliefs are if the beliefs are strong theism and or strong atheism then your statement is not in general true the second part of your sentence is patently false counterexample an axiomatic datum does not lend itself to rational analysis but is assumed to contain reliable information regardless of what process is used to obtain it i ve been speaking of religious systems with contradictory definitions of god here an axiomatic datum lends itself to rational analysis what you say here is a an often refuted fallacy have a look at the discussion of the axiom of choice and further one can evaluate axioms in larger systems out of which they are usually derived i exist is derived if you want it that way further one can test the consistency and so on of a set of axioms what is it you are trying to say that at some point people always wind up saying this datum is reliable for no particular reason at all example i am not dreaming nope there is evidence for it the trick is that the choice of an axiomatic basis of a system is difficult because the possibilities are interwoven one therefore chooses that with the least assumptions or with assumptions that are necessary to get information out of the system anyway i d like to see this alleged evidence one does not need to define axioms in order to define an evaluation method for usefulness the foundation is laid by how one feels at all that s not how one feels about it i see you have no irrational beliefs but then fanatics never do do they compared the evidence theists have for their claims to the strength of their demands makes the whole thing not only irrational but antirational i can t agree with this until you are specific which theism to say that all theism is necessarily antirational requires a proof which i suspect you do not have using the traditonal definition of gods personal supernatural entities with objective effects on this world usually connected to morals and or the way the world works imo any belief about such gods is necessarily irrational that does not mean that people who hold them are in principle opposed to the exercise of intelligence some atheists are also scientists for example they don t use theism when doing science or it wouldn t be science please note that subjective data lend themselves to a scientific treatment as well they just prohibit formulating them as objective statements ergo nothing is objective fair enough the affinity to fanatism is easily seen it has to be true because i believe it is nothing more than a work hypothesis however the beliefs say they are more than a work hypothesis i don t understand this can you formalise your argument person a believes system b becuase it sounds so nice that does not make b true it is at best a work hypothesis however the content of b is that it is true and that it is more than a work hypothesis testing or evaluating evidence for or against it therefore dismissed because b already believed says it is wrong a waste of time not possible depending on the further contents of b amalekites idolaters protestants are to be killed this can have interesting effects peculiar definition of interesting but sure now show that a belief in gods entails the further contents of which you speak why aren t my catholic neighbours out killing the protestants for example maybe they don t believe in it maybe it s the conjunction of b asserts b and jail kill dissenters that is important and the belief in gods is entirely irrelevant it certainly seems so to me but then i have no axe to grind here the example with your neighbours is a fallacy that your neighbours don t says little about others and there were times when exactly that happened nope it s not a fallacy it just doesn t go to the correlation you wish to see and tell me when it is not irrelevant why are such statements about amalekites and idolaters in the holy books please note that one could edit them out when they are not relevant anymore because gods don t err what does that say about that message excuse me the holy books and how come we had theists saying genocides ordered by god are ok a god is the easiest way to excuse anything and therefore highly attracting to fanatics not to mention the effect interpretation by these fanatics can have on the rest of the believers happens again and again and again a god is neither the easiest way to excuse anything nor the only way frank o dwyer i m not hatching that odwyer sse ie from hens by evelyn conlon
alt.atheism	re after years can we say that christian morality is in article apr cnsvax uwec edu nyeda cnsvax uwec edu david nye writes reply to frank d s uucp frank o dwyer the problem for the objectivist is to determine the status of moral truths and the method by which they can be established if we accept that such judgements are not reports of what is but only relate to what ought to be see naturalistic fallacy then they cannot be proved by any facts about the nature of the world this can be avoided in at least two ways by leaving the good undefined since anyone who claims that they do not know what it is is either lying or so out of touch with humanity as to be undeserving of a reply if the good is undefined undefinable but you require of everyone that they know innately what is right you are back to subjectivism no and begging the question see below by defining the good solely in terms of evaluative terms ditto here an evaluative statement implies a value judgement on the part of the person making it again incorrect and question begging see below at this point the objectivist may talk of self evident truths pretty perceptive that prof flew but can he deny the subjectivist s claim that self evidence is in the mind of the beholder of course by denying that subject object is true dichotomy please explain how this helps i don t see your argument i don t see yours it seems to rest on the assertion that everything is either a subject or an object there s nothing compelling about that dichotomy i might just as well divide the world into subject object event it even seems more sensible causation for example is an event not a subject or an object furthermore if subject object were true dichotomy i e everything is either a subject or an object then is that statement a self evident truth or not if so then it s all in the mind of the beholder according to the relativist and hardly compelling add to that the fact that the world can quickly be shoved in its entirety into the subjective category by an idealist or solipsist argument and that we have this perfectly good alternate set of categories subject object event which can be reduced to subject object quality without any logical difficulty and why yes i guess i am denying that self evident truths are all in the mind of the beholder if not what is left of the claim that some moral judgements are true all of it if nothing then no moral judgements are true this is a thing that is commonly referred to as nihilism it entails that science is of no value irrepective of the fact that some people find it useful how anyone arrives at relativism subjectivism from this argument beats me this makes no sense either flew is arguing that this is where the objectivist winds up not the subjectivist furthermore the nihilists believed in nothing except science materialism revolution and the people i m referring to ethical nihilism the subjectivist may well feel that all that remains is that there are some moral judgements with which he would wish to associate himself to hold a moral opinion is he suggests not to know something to be true but to have preferences regarding human activity and if those preferences should include terrorism that moral opinion is not true likewise if the preferences should include noterrorism that moral opinion is not true why should one choose a set of preferences which include terrorisim over one which includes noterrorism oh no reason this is patently absurd and also not the position of the subjectivist as has been pointed out to you already by others ditch the strawman already and see my reply to mike cobb s root message in the thread societal basis for morality i ve responded over there btw i don t intend this as a strawman but as something logically entailed by relativism really any ethical system where values are assumed to be unreal it s different to say relativists say than relativism implies frank o dwyer i m not hatching that odwyer sse ie from hens by evelyn conlon
alt.atheism	re free moral agency in article minster york ac uk cjhs minster york ac uk writes are you saying that their was a physical adam and eve and that all humans are direct decendents of only these two human beings then who were cain and able s wives couldn t be their sisters because a e didn t have daughters were they non humans genesis and the days of adam after he begat seth were eight hundred years and he begat sons and daughters felicitations chris ho stuart yeah but these were not the wives the wives came from nod apparently a land being developed by another set of gods brian
alt.atheism	re room for metaphor i can and do take religious writings as a metaphor for life i do this with all sorts of fiction from beowolf to deep space nine the idea is to not limit yourself to one book screen out the good stuff from what you read and to remember that it is all just a story you sound buddist to me brian
alt.atheism	re the universe and black holes was re years in article apr iastate edu kv iastate edu warren vonroeschlaub wrote in article r hj inn c gap caltech edu keith cco caltech edu keith allan schneider writes well suppose a probe emitting radiation at a constant frequency was sent towards a black hole as it got closer to the event horizon the red shift would keep increasing the period would get longer and longer but it would never stop an observer would not observe the probe actually reaching the event horizon the detected energy from the probe would keep decreasing but it wouldn t vanish exp t never quite reaches zero that s kind of what i meant to be more precise given any observer in any single position outside the event horizon would that observer ever in any way be able to detect the probe having crossed the event horizon yes unless the observer is at rest with respect to the singularity at infinite distance away but an observer on a close approach to the bh will see the particle go in in finite time peter don t forget to sing they say there s a heaven for those who will wait some say it s better but i say it ain t i d rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints the sinners are much more fun only the good die young
alt.atheism	re asimov stamp battin cyclops iucf indiana edu laurence gene battin writes apart from the suggestion that appeared in the letters column of skeptical inquirer recently has there been any further mention about a possible asimov commemorative stamp if this idea hasn t been followed up does anyone know what needs to be done to get this to happen i think that its a great idea should we start a petition or something i m sure all the religious types would get in a snit due to asimov s atheism do we have any atheists on stamps now mark schnitzius schnitzi eola cs ucf edu university of central florida
alt.atheism	re amusing atheists and agnostics in article timmbake mcl timmbake mcl ucsb edu bake timmons writes nah i will encourage people to learn about atheism to see how little atheists have up their sleeves whatever i might have suspected is actually quite riddle me this if a god s exist why on earth should we grovel why on earth should we give a damm at all what evidence do you have that if such a creature s exist it deserves anything beyond mild admiration or sheer hatred for what it they have done in the past whichever god s you care to pick that is assuming any records of their actions are correct religon offers a bliss bubble of self contained reality which is seperate from the physical world any belief system can leave you in such a state and so can drugs god s are not a requirement only if you remove such useless tappestry can you build a set of morals to build a society upon it is that or keep on exterminating those who don t believe or converting them eric new viruses right to life virus won t allow you to delete a file regardless of how old it is if you attempt to erase a file it requires you to first see a counselor about possible alternatives
alt.atheism	re some thoughts in article c rekj y darkside osrhe uoknor edu bil okcforum osrhe edu bill conner writes james felder spbach lerc nasa gov wrote logic alert argument from incredulity just because it is hard for you to believe this doesn t mean that it isn t true liars can be very pursuasive just look at koresh that you yourself cite this is whole basis of a great many here rejecting the christian account of things in the words of st madalyn murrey o hair face it folks it s just silly why is it okay to disbelieve because of your incredulity if you admit that it s a fallacy bill i suppose for the same reason that you do not believe in all the gods why should any be any different i use the same arguments to dismiss koresh as i do god tell me then why do you not believe that koresh is the son of god by logic it is equally possible that koresh is jesus reborn adda wainwright does dim atal y llanw o eczcaw mips nott ac uk o mae sig ma ar werth
alt.atheism	re death penalty was re political atheists in article c rlyz mt darkside osrhe uoknor edu bil okcforum osrhe edu bill conner writes this is fascinating atheists argue for abortion prove it i am an atheist it doesn t mean i am for or against abortion defend homosexuality as a means of population control an obvious effect of homosexuality is non procreation that unlike your statement is a fact please prove that a homosexuality is defended as means of population control b being atheist causes you to hold these beliefs i defend homosexuality because a what people do with their bodies is none of my business b i defend the equal rights of all humans do you insist that the only values are biological define values prove your statement something is contardictory it cannot exist which in this case means atheists i suppose prove your statement electrons are waves electrons are particles i believe in both i have physical proof of both i have no proof of god tm only an ancient book that is not indicative of the existence of a being with omnipotence or omnipresence and by your own argument christians don t exist i would like to understand how an atheist can object to war an excellent means of controlling population growth or to capital punishment i m sorry but the logic escapes me and why just capital punishment what is being questioned here the propriety of killing or of punishment what is the basis of the ecomplaint first of all your earlier statements have absolutely nothing to do with your question why did you post them to show that athiests besides not existing your view are more humane than christians other religions secondly i am very much for the control of population growth the logic that you cannot grasp indicates ignorance of contraception but of course this is outlawed sometimes literally by religion since if it can t create more followers it will die i bill adda wainwright does dim atal y llanw o eczcaw mips nott ac uk o mae sig ma ar werth
alt.atheism	re you will all go to hell jsn is jeremy scott noonan
alt.atheism	re you will all go to hell in article apr ncsu edu aiken news ncsu edu wayne nmi aiken writes jsn psuvm psu edu wrote you blashephemers you will all go to hell for not believing in god be prepared for your eternal damnation did someone leave their terminal unattended again holy temple of mass slack ncsu edu my used underwear consumption is legal tender in po box bbs countries raleigh nc warning i hoard pennies bob probably not the jesus freak s post is probably jsn psuvm penn state is just loaded to the hilt with bible bangers i use to go there vomit and it was the reason i left they even had a group try to stop playing rock music in the dining halls one year cuz they deemed it satanic kampus krusade for khrist people run the damn place for the most part except the liberal arts departments they are the safe havens wdb v rock music in the dining t
alt.atheism	re some thoughts in article aa therose pdx com alan olsen p f n z fidonet org alan olsen writes from alan olsen p f n z fidonet org alan olsen subject some thoughts date wed apr rh from house helios usq edu au ron house rh newsgroups alt atheism rh organization university of southern queensland rh bissda saturn wwc edu dan lawrence bissell writes first i want to start right out and say that i m a christian it rh i know i shouldn t get involved but rh bit deleted the book says that jesus was either a liar or he was crazy a modern day koresh or he was actually who he said he was rest of rant deleted this is a standard argument for fundies can you spot the falicy the statement is arguing from the assumption that jesus actually existed so far they have not been able to offer real proof of that existance i just thought it necessary to help defend the point that jesus existed guys jesus existed if he didnt then you have to say that socrates didnt exist cuz he like jesus has nothing from his hands that have survived only plato and others record his existance many others record jesus existance including the babylonian talmud sorry guys the argument that jesus may not have existed is a dead point now he did whether he was god or whether there is a god is a completely different story however most of them try it using the very flawed writings of josh mcdowell and others to prove it but those writers use very flawed sources if they are real sources at all some are not when will they ever learn to do real research instead of believing the drivel sold in the christian bookstores rh righto dan try this one with your cornflakes rh the book says that muhammad was either a liar or he was rh crazy a modern day mad mahdi or he was actually who he rh said he was some reasons why he wouldn t be a liar are as rh follows who would die for a lie wouldn t people be able rh to tell if he was a liar people gathered around him and rh kept doing it many gathered from hearing or seeing how his rh son in law made the sun stand still call me a fool but i rh believe he did make the sun stand still rh niether was he a lunatic would more than an entire nation rh be drawn to someone who was crazy very doubtful in fact rh rediculous for example anyone who is drawn to the mad rh mahdi is obviously a fool logical people see this right rh away rh therefore since he wasn t a liar or a lunatic he must have rh been the real thing nice rebutal alan
alt.atheism	re christian morality is in article eastman uucp dps nasa kodak com writes the fact is god could cause you to believe anything he wants you to but think about it for a minute would you rather have someone love you because you made them love you or because they wanted to love you there s a difference between believing in the existence of an entity and loving that entity god could show me directly that he exists and i d still have a free choice about whether to love him or not so why doesn t he kevin anthoney kax cs nott ac uk don t believe anything you read in sig files
alt.atheism	re genocide is caused by theism evidence to benedikt roseneau in article qv at fb horus ap mchp sni de frank d s uucp frank o dwyer writes the information of that is invariant under your child being a son or a daughter and singing about santa claus wasn t your argument that there has to be more more than what more than we assume which is what exactly a most of the people i debate disagree with my premises hardly debate otherwise your favorite point that we sense so it hs to be there has been challenged more than once when i did it you said good question and did not address it i ve addressed it your caricature is not my favourite point needless to say at length in a previous outing and am currently discussing it with eric rescorla b there s little point in responding the same points everywhere i do my best to give everyone the courtesy of a reply you still repeat that point i do curious since i believe that was the first time i ve ever made it not that repetition would imply much more than your seeming inability to understand you ask me the same question i ll give you the same answer especially when in this case i know the answer to be true i do my best to give everyone the courtesy of a reply but if everyone is making the same points and i m pushed for time then i try to respond what i believe are the strongest formulations of those points if that doesn t include your post tough this is usenet and life is tough all over c since there s a great deal of responses this isn t always feasible i do my best to honestly answer questions put to me you drop out of debates with some posters and continue with others you appear with the same issue every n months and start the dicussion at the beginning again i ve only debated this issue twice in a a and occasionally in t a the first was in response to simon clippingdale s positive assertion that disagreement about moral values inexorably acknowledges that morals are relative it doesn t now simon has dropped out of the debate for some time i take that to mean that he is either busy or bored with the topic i certainly do not accuse him of dishonesty do you d i can t always understand what you say neither can t i understand you all the time usually one asks what the other side means usually one does usually you re clear but sometimes you aren t and i ask you what you mean other times you seem to get extremely uptight and i feel that i m debating against line noise sometimes i get tired and sometimes i have other things i d rather do again this is usenet and life is tough all over you re going to have to deal with it e you re starting to get personally insulting i may not even put your name in the hat in future that s supposed to be a threat no that s a simple statement and an assertion that i am not answerable to those who offer me baseless insults for example those who accuse me of lying about my personal beliefs while also complaining that i don t answer their questions like that you what you sense is evidence for the sensed to be there if only everything would be so easy what almost everyone senses is evidence for the sensed to be there because to all intents and purposes it is there we had that argument for one your claim that everyone senses it is not founded and you have been asked to give evidence for it often and then the correct statement would be it is reason to assume that it is there unless evidence against it has been found i have no problem with the second statement i have provided an argument that almost everyone senses that freedom is valuable the only cogent objection to this came from jon livesey and was offered by some other people too essentially that people disagree about fuzzy concepts such as freedom it s a good point and i m thinking about it your trick is to say i feel a is not right and so do many i know therefore a is absolutely right it neglects the possibility that these people consider a to be right as an effect of the same process restricting the claim of its absoluteness to those who have been subject of that process in other words refutes it you make the ontological claim you have to prove it nonsense my trick is to say i feel that a is better than b and so does almost any disinterested person i ask best evidence is therefore that a really is better than b subject to the assumption that we can establish to our mutual satisfaction what we mean by a and b and that the resulting system of values is self consistent now get this really is better is an idealisation a fictional model in the same sense that real material existence is a fictional model it may or may not correspond to something true it is nonetheless a useful assumption far more useful than the equally assumed relativist trick to wit i feel that a is better than b and so does almost any disinterested person i ask however if even one person disagrees that a is better than b or if even one person dissents from mutually agreed definitions of a and b then it is the case that b is better than a for that person and nothing more can be said i say this is useless because it inexorably implies that a supermajority seeking to maximise a cannot morally take action against someone seeking to maximise b e g a terrorist to do that would be to claim that a supermajority s carefully considered morality would be better than the terrorist s which would of course be true but a no no for an ethical relativist to claim that ethical relativism implies anything else is simply weasel words and an example of compartmentalisation to rival anything in the world of religion for a similar argument i sense morality is subjective it does not hurt me to do things that are considered to be objectively wrong by others if you mean that you do things that some others consider objectively wrong and it turns out not to be the case for you of course this is possible it is neither evidence for subjectivism nor evidence against objectivism except sometimes in a pragmatic sense it serves as a counterexample for that everything that is subject to judgements is absolute and as long as you don t provide evidence for that there is something universally agreed upon there is no reason to believe your hypothesis i ve done this freedom with the proviso that i still have to answer jon s objection that fuzzy concepts like freedom have no objective meaning further in order to make morality absolute universal or objective you would have to show that it is independent of humans or the attributes above look quite misleading not really what evidence is there that anything exists independently of humans you ll be hard pressed to find any that isn t logically equivalent when applied to values an analogous set of premises would be premise some people believe that objectively speaking the shortest route from my house to a bar is through the main entrance of the estate and down the malahide road premise i checked it out and found that the shortest route from my which is much closer you would never deduce from these that there is no shortest route from my house to a bar yet that is seemingly how you derive your relativist claim using premises which are logically no different no morals are a matter of belief so far the people still believe that the shortest way is through the main entrance no agreement on belief here and in order to have an analogy you would have to show that there is a shortest way and that there is a method to convince everyone of that it is the shortest way indeed in other words your analogy works only when one assumes that your premises are right in the first place if not it is a fallacy and if this were an argument for objectivism you d be right it isn t though it s a demonstration that the argument you gave me is neither argument against objectivism nor argument for relativism your gimmick is to assume in the first place that values aren t real and to use this to prove that values aren t real in other words you beg the question against me frank o dwyer i m not hatching that odwyer sse ie from hens by evelyn conlon
alt.atheism	re gulf war and peace niks in article apr batman bmd trw com jbrown batman bmd trw com writes in article apr bmerh bnr ca dgraham bmers bnr ca douglas graham writes actually i rather like your idea perhaps the rest of the world should have bombed or maybe missiled washington when the us invaded nicaragua grenada panama vietnam mexico hawaii or any number of other places wait a minute doug i know you are better informed than that the us has never invaded nicaragua as far as i know we liberated grenada liberate is the way an invader describes an invasion including if i m not mistaken the iraqi liberation of kuwait never invaded nicaragua only with more word games can you say send in the marines so if you mean by the word invaded some sort of military action where we cross someone s border you are right out of but normally invaded carries a connotation of attacking an autonomous nation if some nation invades the u s virgin islands would they be invading the virgin islands or the u s so from this point of view your score falls to out of mexico panama oh good word games if you let the aggressor pick the words there s scarcely ever been a reprehensible military action what s a peace nik is that somebody who doesn t masturbate over guns n ammo or what is it supposed to be bad to be a peace nik no it s someone who believes in peace at all costs in other words a person who would have supported giving hitler not only austria and czechoslakia but poland too if it could have averted the war and one who would allow hitler to wipe all all jews slavs and political dissidents in areas he controlled as long as he left the rest of us alone that s a convenient technique much seen on alt atheism define those who disagree with you according to a straw man extreme that matches virtually nobody is it supposed to be bad to be a peace nik you ask well it depends on what your values are if you value life over liberty peace over freedom then i guess not but if liberty and freedom mean more to you than life itself if you d rather die fighting for liberty than live under a tyrant s heel then yes it s bad to be a peace nik very noble and patriotic i m sure the fine young americans who carpet bombed iraqi infantry positions from over the horizon destroyed iraq s sewer and water infrastructure from the safety of the sky or further or who bulldozed other iraqi infantry into their trenches or more importantly the commanders who ordered them to were just thrilled to be risking death if not risking it by much in the defense of the liberty of well wealthy kuwaitis can t have those oil fields under a tyrant s heel if that tyrant is antagonistic to us interests the problem with most peace niks it they consider those of us who are not like them to be bad and unconscionable i would not have any argument or problem with a peace nik if they held to their ideals and stayed out of all conflicts or issues especially those dealing with the national defense but no they are not willing to allow us to legitimately hold a different point of view having pigeon holed peace niks in this context people who disagree with me about the conduct of the gulf war into peace at all cost hitler supporting genocide abetting wimps you can now express righteous indignation when they refuse to fit this mold and question the conduct of the war on legitimate terms how dare they they militate and many times resort to violence all in the name of peace what rank hypocrisy yes hypocrisy indeed those violent peace niks care to list an example here all to stop we warmongers who are willing to stand up and defend our freedoms against tyrants and who realize that to do so requires a strong national defense wow instant s nostalgia of course peace nik itself is a s cold war derogatory term equating those who promote pacifism with godless pinko communists yes indeed i felt my freedoms mightily threatened by iraq jim perry perry dsinc com decision support inc matthews nc these are my opinions for a nominal fee they can be yours
alt.atheism	re after years can we say that christian morality is in r n hfj horus ap mchp sni de frank d s uucp writes deletia in case anybody hadn t noticed frank and i are debating objective morality and seemingly hitting semantics secondly how can i refute your definition i can only point up its logical implications and say that they seem to contradict the usage of the word objective in other areas indeed by your definition an objective x is an oxymoron for all x i have no quibble with that belief other than that it is useless and that objective is a perfectly good word it may be that being a non native english speaker i ve misunderstood your usage of objective and tried to debate something you don t assert my apologies i m at a loss to imagine what you really do mean though how many ages can the universe have and still be internally self consistent i d be amazed if it was more than one how many different moral systems can different members of society have indeed single individuals in some cases and humanity still stick together begging the question people can have many opinions about the age of the universe and humanity can still stick together you are saying that the universe has a real age independent of my beliefs about it why wrong point the age of the universe has no direct effect on humanity s sticking power in the way the moral system of a society can have i m saying the universe has a real age because i see evidence for it cosmology astronomy and so on i say this age is independent of people s opinions of it because i know different people have a lot of different opinions in the matter yet empirical tests consistently seem to give roughly the same results the age of the universe like most scientific facts can be emirically verified through means that ll give the same result no matter who performs the testing albeit there are error bars that may be on the largish side this assumes that the universe has a real age or any kind of reality which doesn t depend on what we think i can t see how it does that put a creationist to the task of performing the tests and calculations see to it s he makes no blatant errors in measuring or calculating and the result of the test will be the same why should an extreme biblical creationist give a rat s ass about the means of which you speak because logically consistent empirical tests contradict their opinion if those tests were just my opinion then their own tests which would then be their opinion would contradict mine even if we conducted said tests in identical manner no they don t which i take as showing these tests have some validity beyond our opinion of them i ve heard of no way to verify morality in a consistent way much less compute the errors of the measurement care to enlighten me the same is true of pain but painkillers exist and can be predicted to work with some accuracy better than a random guess map the activity of nerves and neural activity if you mean physical pain you have a sharp point i ll give you that but you still haven t given me a way to quantify morality i wrote elsewhere that morality should be hypotheses about observed value we agree hypotheses however can change i hold that there is no ultimate hypothesis of morality towards which these changes could gravitate but that they could be changed in any way imaginable producing different results suitable for different tasks or purposes if a moral system makes a prediction it will be better if that can be tested better and worse are almost always defined in the context of a moral system your prediction will always be correct within that moral system what you need now is an objective definition of good and bad i wish you luck people s ideas about the age of object x are not objective you can have any idea you like and i can t stop you universae and their ages is another ballgame they are what they are and if you dislike some detail of them that s a problem with your opinion of them sure assume an objective reality and you get statements like this isn t that what you re doing when assuming an objectively real morality besides what exactly is provably wrong with my statement i claim that morality is an opinion of ours and as such subjective and individual if i m wrong then some more or less objectively real thing exists which you label objective morality can you back up this positive claim of existence can you back up your positive claim above no that s because it s an assumption i make the same assumption about values on the basis that there is no logical difference between the two and the empirical basis of the two is precisely the same claiming there is no objective morality is suddenly a positive claim besides i think i can lend some credence to my claim ponder different individuals both fully functional as human beings and members of society but yet with wildly different moral codes if morality was objective at least one should be way off base but yet hir incorrect morality seems to function fine how come as for producing these individuals it might be easiest to pick them from different societies say an islamic one and some polynesian matrilineal system for example if such still exist deletia testing for footballs on desks now take a look at morality see anything if so please inform me which way to look and why to look that particular way as opposed to some other get my drift no just look are you claiming never to know what good means one thing is good under some circumstances because we wish to achieve some goal for some reason other times we wish to do something else and that thing is no longer so clearly good at all some things are hard to make good because we d seldom if ever wish to achieve the sort of goal mass murder would lead one into still the aztecs were doing fine until the spaniards wiped them out i almost always know what good means sometimes i even know why i never claim this good is thereby fixed in stone immutable that s a simple matter of proving the track record of the scientific method i think it s great and should be applied to values i may be completely wrong but that s what i conclude as a result of quite an amount of thought yes me too and i ve tried a thing or two down that line it doesn t look good for objective values to me at all disclaimer it s great to be young and insane
alt.atheism	re asimov stamp in article schnitzi eustis schnitzi eustis cs ucf edu mark schnitzius writes battin cyclops iucf indiana edu laurence gene battin writes apart from the suggestion that appeared in the letters column of skeptical inquirer recently has there been any further mention about a possible asimov commemorative stamp if this idea hasn t been followed up does anyone know what needs to be done to get this to happen i think that its a great idea should we start a petition or something i m sure all the religious types would get in a snit due to asimov s atheism do we have any atheists on stamps now more to the point how long are atheists going to be insulted by the disgraceful addition of religious blah blah to our money and out pledge what s big noisy and has an iq of operation rescue
alt.atheism	re mottos to replace in dog we trust andrew hilmer hilmera storm cs orst edu wrote at the risk of beginning a cascade i ll start with a possibly cheesy good ol uhmericun our shield is freedom or considering what our government has been doing for the past years perhaps this would be more appropriate debt holy temple of mass slack ncsu edu my used underwear consumption is legal tender in po box bbs countries raleigh nc warning i hoard pennies bob
alt.atheism	re islamic genocide in article r ek uo fido asd sgi com livesey solntze wpd sgi com jon livesey writes in article r ubl bd horus ap mchp sni de frank d s uucp frank o dwyer writes in article r o a qe fido asd sgi com livesey solntze wpd sgi com jon livesey writes noting that a particular society in this case the mainland uk has few religously motivated murders and few murders of any kind says very little about whether inter religion murders elsewhere are religiously motivated no but it allows one to conclude that there is nothing inherent in all religion or for that matter in catholicism and protestantism that motivates one to kill motivates or allows the christian bible says that one may kill under certain circumstances in fact it instructs one to kill under certain circumstances i d say the majority of people have a moral system that instructs them to kill under certain circumstances i do get your distinction between motivate and allow and i do agree that if a flavour of theism allows atoricities then that s an indictment of that theism but it rather depends on what the certain circumstances are when you talk about christianity or islam then at least your claims can be understood it s when people go to a general statement about theism that it falls apart one could believe in a god which instructs one to be utterly harmless for my part i conclude that something else is required i also happen to believe that that something else will work no less well without religion any easy them us will do and what does religion supply if not an easy them us not necessarily love thy neighbour does not supply a them us it demolishes it and my definition of religion is broader than my definition of theism as i have explained by insisting that even the murder of four labourers chosen because they were catholics and who had nothing to do with the ira by protestant extremists is not religously motivated i think what you are saying is that you simply will not accept any murder as being religiously motivated no what about that guy who cut off someone s head because he believed he was the devil incarnate that was religously motivated what about the protestant extremists who killed four catholic labourers that wasn t religiously motivated not in my opinion if they were doing it because of some obscure point of theology then yes but since all protestants don t do this nor do they elect extremists to do it for them it s just too broad too say religion did this i m saying that the causes are far more complex than that take away the religious element and you d still have the powerful motives of revenge and misguided patriotism you know when most catholics and protestants worldwide say stop the killing one might listen to that especially when you claim not to read minds also the murders ensuing from the fatwa on mr rushdie the inquisitions and the many religous wars what s so special about these exceptions isn t this all just a grab bag of ad hoc excuses for not considering some other murders to be religiously motivated what s the general principle behind all this the general principle is that it s fairly clear to me at least that religion is the primary motivator enabler whatever of these it s not nearly so obvious what s going on when one looks at ni apart from violence of course it s not an abstract argument northern irish protestants say we don t want to be absorbed into am officially catholic country now what are we supposed to do are we supposed to reply no that s only what you think you don t want mr o dwyer assures us that no matter what you say you want you really want something else you think the unionists wouldn t mind being absorbed into a non catholic country other than the uk of course it s a terrible thing to lose a mind maybe the word country is there for more than just kicks i certainly don t believe that the unionists are in it for god i think they wish to maintain their position of privilege i m still listening to what they say and you are still telling us your version of what they think you read minds and i don t you ve speculated on my motives often enough and you don t take my statements of my own beliefs at face value therefore your claim not to read minds has no credibility with me sorry i also note that you fail to answer my question it just looks to me very much like you have an axe to grind especially as you are indeed ignoring what most protestants say which is stop the killing the people you refer to are properly described as unionists not protestants as for their position of privilege what is that if not religion based it is based on politics bigotry and heartless extremism none of these things are synonymous with religion though there is certainly some overlap frank o dwyer i m not hatching that odwyer sse ie from hens by evelyn conlon
alt.atheism	re asimov stamp in article schnitzi eustis schnitzi eustis cs ucf edu mark schnitzius writes i m sure all the religious types would get in a snit due to asimov s atheism do we have any atheists on stamps now due to a discussion on this group some time ago the theists would more likely take an asimov quote out of context and paint him as the biggest bible thumpin god fearin atheist hatin christian you ever laid eyes on right up there with einstein bob beauchaine bobbe vice ico tek com they said that queens could stay they blew the bronx away and sank manhattan out at sea
alt.atheism	more best of a a rapture october what to do in case you miss the rapture i stay calm and do not panic your natural reaction once you realize what has just occurred is to panic but to do so is absolutely useless now if you had wanted to get right with god before the rapture you could have but you chose to wait now your only chance is to stay on this earth and to endure to the end of the tribulation but he that shall endure unto the end the same shall be saved matthew ii realize you are now living during the great tribulation the great tribulation is a seven year period starting from the time of the rapture until christ s second coming also know as the time of jacob s israel s trouble jere and daniel s seventieth week dan this period will be unparalleled in trouble and horror iii gather as many bibles as you can and hide them soon after the antichrist becomes the leader of the european community the revived roman empire bibles will be confiscated and owning a bible will be tantamount to treason the bible however will be your most valuable possession during the tribulation iv read the bible like you have never read it before in your life since all of your bibles may be confiscated even if you are careful it is imperative that you read the word until you memorize whole passages and can quote them it is especially important to read daniel luke matthew revelation and amos for these books describe the events you can expect to unfold before you v pray like you have never prayed before in your life pray until the power of god comes strongly upon you pray and pray and pray only by reading the word and praying will you gain the spiritual strength to be able to withstand the torture you may have to endure for the sake of christ vi do not take the mark at any cost even in fit means you and your loved ones die as martyrs after the antichrist becomes the leader of the european community he will institute a world economic system designed so that you cannot buy sell or eat unless you take his mark or the number of his name money will be useless and he causes all both small and great rich and poor free and slave to receive a mark on their right hand or on their foreheads and that no one may buy or sell except one who has the mark or the name of the beast or the number of his name here is wisdom let him who has understanding calculate the number of the beast for it is the number of a man his number is revelation the antichrist will implement the greatest slaughter in all of humanity think of the various ways people have been tortured and killed in the past such as the holocaust or maybe the crusades m you cannot even imagine the horror that will take place under the antichrist s rule it will be much worse than anything in history matt i saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of god and for the testimony which they held and a white robe was given to each of them and it was said to them that they should rest a little while longer until both the number of the fellow servants and their brethren who would be killed as they were was completed revelation his targets will be jews and christians who do not worship his image or take the mark on their forehead or right hadn and i saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for their witness to jesus and for the word of god who had not worshiped the beast or his image and had not received his mark on their foreheads or on the hands revelation he will use every form of torture and humiliation in order to force you to renounce christ nor will he hesitate to use your loved ones against you even your children torturing and killing them in front of you so that you will be tempted to take the mark if you take the mark or worship the antichrist or his image however you will be consigned to the second death which is the lake of fire sung about so eloquently by johnny cash m you cannot be redeemed it is better to endure torture for a short while and gain eternal life then sic to endure eternal torment in the ring h h h h lake of fire if anyone worships the beast and his image and receives his mark on his forehead or on his hand he himself shall also drink the wine of the wrath of god which is poured out full strength into the cup of his indignation an sic he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the lamb revelation and probably in the presence of season ticket holders special hats given to the first at the stadium m vii set a plan in motion for survival although you may not be able to hide from the antichrist s government until the end of the tribulation all of the time you gain in hiding is important for your spiritual growth and strengthening since only those who are extremely strong in christ can suffer and die for his sake the first thing to do is move out of the city and into a rural or mountainous area for the antichrist s control will come last to the least populated areas take a good radio or tv with you so that you can stay attuned to events and discern the time schedule of the tribulation as you can see on the weather map heavy currents of tribulation will sweep into our area by daybreak expect delays on i outbound and perhaps school closings m store water and food because you will not be able to purchase anything without the mark water in lakes and streams will be polluted by radioactive waste from nuclear warfare and will eventually turn into blood get a good water filter m bring different types of clothing for all seasons as well as flashlights batteries generators and first aid supplies in short learn how to survive and live off the land as the pioneers did viii trust no one there will be secret agents everywhere spying for the antichrist s government be on the lookout perot supporters take note m ix watch for the antichrist it is important to realize who the antichrist is and what he is up to for he will deceive many into thinking that he is a great world leader who will bring peace and prosperity to a world hungry for it we can infer from daniel certain characteristics of this man popular during the first three and a half years of the tribulation he will dominate the airwaves he will be physically appealing highly intelligent with christ like charisma and personality an international politician military tactician and economic expert his word will be peace he will make a treaty with the jews which he will break after three and a half years he will have such supernatural power that a mortal wound to his head will be healed even the very elect will be deceived if you do not pray and read the bible you too will be deceived dominate the airwaves perhaps howard stern or rush limbaugh m the antichrist will have a companion the false prohphet sic who will make an image in the likeness of the antichrist and cause it to speak all who refuse to worhsip sic the image will be killed the final three and a half years will be absolutely insane with demonized spirits everywhere x do not give up hope the seven years of tribulation will end with the triumphant return of christ the antichrist will be defeated be steadfast and endure and you will be rewarded greatly in heaven start reading the bible and praying fervently now the salvation of your sould depends upon it determine that come what may you will not take the mark or worship the antichrist you still have a chance to be saved or remain saved but this time you will have to be faithful unto death may god find you ready in the hour of his glorious return mike cluff christianity is stupid v qs ubvms or mike luick ubvms give up negativland ub language perception laboratory bob beauchaine bobbe vice ico tek com they said that queens could stay they blew the bronx away and sank manhattan out at sea
alt.atheism	re are atoms real in article c ue t g k news rich bnr ca bcash crchh nosubdomain nodomain brian cash writes petri and mathew your discusion on the reality of atoms is interesting but it would seem that you are verging on the question is anything real that is since observation is not reliable how can we say that anything is real i don t think this was the intention of the original question since you now define out the word real so that nothing can meet its criteria just a thought brian ps rainbows and shadows are real they are not objects they are phenomenon an interesting question would be if atoms are objects classical or phenomenon neo quantum or what i ve been following this train of talk and the question of dismissing atoms as being in some sense not real leaves me uneasy it seems to be implied that we obseve only the effects and therefore the underlying thing is not necessarily real the tree outside my window is in this category is observe the light which bounces off of it not the tree itself the observation is indirect but no more so than observations i have made of atoms also what about observations and experiments that have been routinely done with individual atoms i am thinking in particular of atom trapping experiments and tests of fundamental quantum mechanics such as the quantum zeno effect where an individual atom is studied for a long period of time some of the attempts at quantum mechanical arguments were not very satisfying either one has to be carefull about making such arguments without a solid technical background in the field what i read seemed a little confused a quite a red herring anyway if the purpose of a public debate is to make the audience think it worked after doing so i m willing to try to defend the following assertion if anyone cares atoms are as real as trees and are real in the ussual every day sense of the word real
alt.atheism	re free moral agency in article kmr po cwru edu kmr po cwru edu keith m ryan writes in article r voinnr q lynx unm edu cfaehl vesta unm edu chris faehl writes the myth to which i refer is the convoluted counterfeit athiests have created to make religion appear absurd you don t need any counterfeit athiest s myth to make religion appear absurd you need only read any of friendly christian bill conner s posts jim halat halat bear com bear stearns whatever doesn t kill you will only serve to annoy you nyc i speak only for myself
alt.atheism	re some thoughts in article apr mks com mike mks com mike brookbank writes in article apr mac cc macalstr edu acooper mac cc macalstr edu writes in article bissda saturn wwc edu bissda saturn wwc edu dan lawrence bissell writes die for a lie wouldn t people be able to tell if he was a liar i light of yesterday s events in waco texas i guess the answer to your questions are very obvious if you think waco is just one example think back to in jonestown where more than people died for a lie deletions correction i think it was also contrary to earlier belief it is now widely accepted that not all committed suicide but were actually killed in the end they did die for a lie but some not out of conviction alone thought i try to make this point clear disclaimer the opinions expressed in this posting are mine solely and do not represent my employer in any way f a karner aix technical support karner austin vnet ibm com
alt.atheism	islam and sufism was re move the islam discussions short reply to kent sandvik s post remarking how it is strange that somehow sufism is related to islam as to him they seem quite different if one really understands islam it is not strange that sufism is associated with it in fact sufism is in general seen as the inner dimension of islam one of the roots of the word islam is submission islam denotes submission to god sufism is the most complete submission to god imaginable in annihilating oneself in god i am not a sufi or on the sufi path but have read a lot and recently have been discussing a number of things with others who are on the sufi path fred rice darice yoyo cc monash edu au
alt.atheism	re genocide is caused by atheism in apr cs nott ac uk eczcaw mips nott ac uk a wainwright writes in article apr monu cc monash edu au darice yoyo cc monash edu au fred rice writes great respect or love for a particular person does not equal a form of theism fred rice darice yoyo cc monash edu au hmm what about jesus sure a person could have great respect for jesus and yet be an atheist having great respect for jesus does not necessarily mean that one has to follow the christian or muslim interpretation of his life fred rice darice yoyo cc monash edu au
alt.atheism	re atheism survey i replied to this query via e mail but i think there are some issues that are worth discussing in public mta mtabbott unix amherst edu wrote i am doing research on atheism part of which involves field research here on the net the following is a survey directed towards all readers of this group intended to get data about the basis of atheistic belief i would recommend you to take a look at your dictionary alt atheism faq files to notice that atheism is not a belief system and what is common to all atheists is not a belief but a lack of belief in deities i cannot imagine how anyone could do research on atheism without paying careful attention to this issue first of all i ve tried to structure questions that can be answered in a variety of ways with varying amounts of detail it s possible to give succinct answers to most everything but there s enough here to keep most of you typing for hours i m sure imho this is a poor method to do any real survey although i m sure the replies might keep you amused for hours also i tend to use a lot of anthropological buzzwords like belief system although i know some of you might contend that you don t have any beliefs but are skeptical towards everything i understand but you know what i mean think of such buzzwords as abbreviations for the rather unweildy phrases required to get the precise idea across no i do not know what you mean if you are surveying our individual philosophies fine but that s not strictly atheism atheism is not just another godless version of the theistic explanations for life the universe and everything it is not a belief system and it could hardly be called a philosophical system once more atheism is characterised by lack of belief in deities do not twist the meaning or assume that we have some kind of philosophy we all agree on some comments on your questions what contact with other atheists have you had before and after and during your conversion to atheism certainly your involvement with alt atheism counts how have net discussions affected your beliefs i would also like to hear more about this have we been able to convert anyone are you convinced that your beliefs were acquired through wholly rational means proofs of the non existence of god etc or was it perhaps at least in part through other means alienation from mainstream religion etc this question contains a contradiction in terms beliefs cannot be acquired rationally if they could they would not be beliefs you also seem to have rather strange ideas of how people become atheists those who are alienated from religion do not necessarily become atheists they just think very little about religion it seems it requires a considerable time of honest inquiry to find out that religions are actually intellectually dishonest virtual realities those who have never had beliefs will certainly find this question quite odd how can lack of belief be acquired when did i acquire lack of belief in the easter bunny i did believe in santa though to what extent do you feel you understand the universe through your beliefs what phenomena of the universe and of human existence anything from physical phenomena to the problem of the existence of evil in human affairs do you feel are adequately dealt with by your beliefs and where are they lacking as an explanatory method this question does not make any sense since atheism does not deal with these issues it is not a worldview or a philosophy or a belief system sigh why haven t i seen a good well thought survey in the usenet for three years and what is the point of doing surveys in the net anyway just to abstract some opinions petri petri pihko kem pmp mathematics is the truth pihatie c finou oulu fi physics is the rule of sf oulu kempmp the game finland phoenix oulu fi chemistry is the game
alt.atheism	re theism and fanatism was islamic genocide in article bb b i dbstu rz tu bs de i dbstu rz tu bs de benedikt rosenau writes in article r sn r horus ap mchp sni de frank d s uucp frank o dwyer writes theism is strongly correlated with irrational belief in absolutes irrational belief in absolutes is strongly correlated with fanatism deletion theism is correlated with fanaticism i have neither said that all fanatism is caused by theism nor that all theism leads to fanatism the point is theism increases the chance of becoming a fanatic one could of course argue that would be fanatics tend towards theism for example but i just have to loook at the times in history when theism was the dominant ideology to invalidate that conclusion that that is the basic mechanism behind it imo the influence of stalin or for that matter ayn rand invalidates your assumption that theism is the factor to be considered bogus i just said that theism is not the only factor for fanatism the point is that theism is a factor that s your claim now back it up i consider your argument as useful as the following belief is strongly correlated with fanaticism therefore belief is a factor in fanaticism true and utterly useless note this is any belief not belief in gods gullibility blind obedience to authority lack of scepticism and so on are all more reliable indicators and the really dangerous people the sources of fanaticism are often none of these things they are cynical manipulators of the gullible who know precisely what they are doing that s a claim you have to support please note that especially in the field of theism the leaders believe what they say if you believe that you re incredibly naive now some brands of theism and more precisely some theists do tend to fanaticism i grant you to tar all theists with this brush is bigotry not a reasoned argument and it reads to me like a warm up for censorship and restriction of religious freedom ever read animal farm that s a straw man and as usually in discussions with you one has to repeat it read what i have written above not every theism leads to fanatism and not all fanatism is caused by theism the point is there is a correlation and it comes from innate features of theism no some of it comes from features which some theism has in common with some fanaticism your last statement simply isn t implied by what you say before because you re trying to sneak in innate features of all theism the word you re groping for is some gullibility by the way is one of them no shit sherlock so why not talk about gullibility instead of theism since it seems a whole lot more relevant to the case you have as opposed to the case you are trying to make and to say that i am going to forbid religion is another of your straw men interesting that you have nothing better to offer i said it reads like a warm up to that that s because it s an irrational and bogus tirade and has no other use than creating a nice them us split in the minds of excitable people such as are to be found on either side of church walls define irrational belief e g is it rational to believe that reason is always useful irrational belief is belief that is not based upon reason the latter has been discussed for a long time with charley wingate one point is that the beliefs violate reason often and another that a process that does not lend itself to rational analysis does not contain reliable information well there is a glaring paradox here an argument that reason is useful based on reason would be circular and argument not based on reason would be irrational which is it that s bogus self reference is not circular and since the evaluation of usefulness is possible within rational systems it is allowed o k it s oval it s still begging the question however and though that certainly is allowed it s not rational and you claiming to be rational and all at the risk of repeating myself and hearing we had that before we didn t hear a refutation before so we re back deal with it you can t use reason to demonstrate that reason is useful someone who thinks reason is crap won t buy it you see your argument is as silly as proving mathematical statements needs mathematics and mathematics are therfore circular anybody else think godel was silly the first part of the second statement contains no information because you don t say what the beliefs are if the beliefs are strong theism and or strong atheism then your statement is not in general true the second part of your sentence is patently false counterexample an axiomatic datum does not lend itself to rational analysis but is assumed to contain reliable information regardless of what process is used to obtain it i ve been speaking of religious systems with contradictory definitions of god here an axiomatic datum lends itself to rational analysis what you say here is a an often refuted fallacy have a look at the discussion of the axiom of choice and further one can evaluate axioms in larger systems out of which they are usually derived i exist is derived if you want it that way further one can test the consistency and so on of a set of axioms what is it you are trying to say that at some point people always wind up saying this datum is reliable for no particular reason at all example i am not dreaming compared the evidence theists have for their claims to the strength of their demands makes the whole thing not only irrational but antirational i can t agree with this until you are specific which theism to say that all theism is necessarily antirational requires a proof which i suspect you do not have using the traditonal definition of gods personal supernatural entities with objective effects on this world usually connected to morals and or the way the world works imo any belief about such gods is necessarily irrational that does not mean that people who hold them are in principle opposed to the exercise of intelligence some atheists are also scientists for example the affinity to fanatism is easily seen it has to be true because i believe it is nothing more than a work hypothesis however the beliefs say they are more than a work hypothesis i don t understand this can you formalise your argument person a believes system b becuase it sounds so nice that does not make b true it is at best a work hypothesis however the content of b is that it is true and that it is more than a work hypothesis testing or evaluating evidence for or against it therefore dismissed because b already believed says it is wrong a waste of time not possible depending on the further contents of b amalekites idolaters protestants are to be killed this can have interesting effects peculiar definition of interesting but sure now show that a belief in gods entails the further contents of which you speak why aren t my catholic neighbours out killing the protestants for example maybe they don t believe in it maybe it s the conjunction of b asserts b and jail kill dissenters that is important and the belief in gods is entirely irrelevant it certainly seems so to me but then i have no axe to grind here frank o dwyer i m not hatching that odwyer sse ie from hens by evelyn conlon
alt.atheism	re christian morality is in article ousrvr oulu fi kempmp phoenix oulu fi petri pihko writes dan schaertel dps nasa kodak com wrote i love god just as much as she loves me if she wants to seduce me she ll know what to do but if he she did you would probably consider it rape simple logic arguments are folly if you read the bible you will see that jesus made fools of those who tried to trick him with logic our ability to reason is just a spec of creation yet some think it is the ultimate if you rely simply on your reason then you will never know more than you do now your argument is of the type you ll know once you try yet there are many atheists who have sincerely tried and believed for many years but were eventually honest enough to admit that they had lived in a virtual reality obviously there are many christians who have tried and do believe so to learn you must accept that which you don t know what does this mean to learn you must accept that you don t know something right o but to learn you must accept something i don t know why this is not the way i prefer to learn it is unwise to merely swallow everything you read suppose i write a book telling how the great invisible pink unicorn tm has helped me in my daily problems would you accept this since you can t know whether it is true or not no one asks you to swallow everything in fact jesus warns against it but let me ask you a question do you beleive what you learn in history class or for that matter anything in school i mean it s just what other people have told you and you don t want to swallow what others say right the life death and resurection of christ is documented historical fact as much as anything else you learn how do you choose what to believe and what not to i could argue that george washington is a myth he never lived because i don t have any proof except what i am told however all the major events of the life of jesus christ were fortold hundreds of years before him neat trick uh there is no way to get into a sceptical heart you can not say you have given a sincere effort with the attitude you seem to have you must trust not just go to church and participate in it s activities were you ever willing to die for what you believed
alt.atheism	re alt atheism faq constructing a logical argument here s a suggestion for the logical argument faq i don t think it s covered though the fallacy probably has a better name than the one i used how about it mathew inconsistency and counterexample this occurs when one party points out that some source of information takes stand a which is inconsistent with b there are two variations in which b is either a mutually agreed on premise or else a stand elsewhere from the same source the second party fallaciously responds by saying see the source really does say b it s right here this reply does not refute the allegation of inconsistency because it does not show that the source only says b example of the first type the koran says unbelievers should be treated in these ways we can both agree these are immoral the koran clearly says in this other passage that unbelievers are not to be treated that way example of the second type there are two biblical creation stories you re wrong since the bible clearly describes the creation as description on the first day after christmas my truelove served to me leftover turkey on the second day after christmas my truelove served to me turkey casserole that she made from leftover turkey days deleted flaming turkey wings pizza hut commercial and m tlu a gic bait ken arromdee arromdee jyusenkyou cs jhu edu
alt.atheism	religion as cause was islamic authority over women bill conner bil okcforum osrhe edu writes my stuff deleted i don t have to make outrageous claims about religion s affecting and effecting history for the purpsoe of a a all i have to do point out that many claims made here are wrong and do nothing to validate atheism bill you seem to have erroneously assumed that this board has as its sole purpose the validation of atheism it doesn t this board is used to discuss atheism as a philosophy to share posters experiences regarding atheism to debunk various theisms and theism as a whole to share resources relating to atheism and even to socialize with others with similar views and of course with the number of theists who come here to preach it is also used to argue the case for atheism at no time have i made any statement that religion was the sole cause of anything what i have done is point out that those who do make that kind of claim are mistaken usually deliberately if you want to accuse people of lying please do so directly the phrase deliberately mistaken is rather oxymoronic to credit religion with the awesome power to dominate history is to misunderstand human nature the function of religion and of course history i believe that those who distort history in this way know exaclty what they re doing and do it only for affect the two forms of theism most often discussed here these days are christianity and islam both of these claim to make their followers into good people and claim that much of benefit to humanity has been accomplished through their faiths imho they are right the american friends service committee quaker catholic relief services bread for the world salvation army soup kitchens and mother theresa spring to mind can someone with more knowledge of islam supply the names of some analagous islamic groups when mother theresa claims that her work is an outgrowth of her christianity i believe her her form of theism ascribes to her deity such a benevolence toward humanity that it would be wrong not to care for those in need the point is that such a philosophy does have the power to change the behavior of individuals if it is widespread enough it can change societies the same works for the horrors of history to claim that christianity had little to do with the crusades or the inquisition is to deny the awesome power that comes from faith in an absolute what it seems you are doing twisting the reasonable statement that religion was never the solitary cause of any evil into the unreasonable statement that religion has had no evil impacts on history that is absurd scott sauyet ssauyet eagle wesleyan edu
alt.atheism	books edm twisto compaq com ed mccreary writes while we re on the topic of books has anyone else noticed that paine s the age of reason is hard to find i ve been wanting to pick up a copy for a while but not bad enough to mail order it i ve noticed though that none of the bookstores i go to seem to carry it i thought this was supposed to be classic what s the deal actually i ve got an entire list of books written by various atheist authors and i went to the largest bookstore in my area pittsburgh and couldn t find any of them what section of the bookstore do you find these kinds of books in do you have to look in an alternative bookstore for most of them any help would be appreciated i can send you the list if you want thanks nanci if you know and are sure of the author of this quote please send me email nm w andrew cmu edu the fate of the country does not depend on what kind of paper you drop into the ballot box once a year but on what kind of man you drop from your chamber into the street every morning
alt.atheism	re college atheists nyeda cnsvax uwec edu david nye writes i read an article about a poll done of students at the ivy league schools in which it was reported that a third of the students indentified themselves as atheists this is a lot higher than among the general population i wonder what the reasons for this discrepancy are is it because they are more intelligent younger is this the wave of the future i would guess that it probably has something to do with the ease of which ideas and thoughts are communicated on a college campus in the real world tm it s easier for theists well people in general really to lock themselves into a little bubble where they only see and talk to those people who are of the same opinion as they are in college you are constantly surrounded by and have to interact with people who have different ideas about life the universe and everything it is much much harder to build a bubble around yourself to keep everyone else s ideas from reaching you so in a world where theists are forced to contend with and listen to atheists and theists of other religions some are bound to have a change in their beliefs over four years there is nowhere to run david nye nyeda cnsvax uwec edu midelfort clinic eau claire wi this is patently absurd but whoever wishes to become a philosopher must learn not to be frightened by absurdities bertrand russell nanci if you know and are sure of the author of this quote please send me email nm w andrew cmu edu the fate of the country does not depend on what kind of paper you drop into the ballot box once a year but on what kind of man you drop from your chamber into the street every morning
alt.atheism	re yet more rushdie re islamic law in article apr nic csu net davec silicon csci csusb edu dave choweller wrote in article apr bnr ca rashid writes stuff deleted the point of my post was that rushdie was not being condemned solely for the words in his book although this was certainly a contributing factor it was the whole series of actions of rushdie and his publishers following the publication of the book and the initial media spotlight placed on the book that in large part led to the fatwa the kind of fatwa levelled against rushdie is not lightly placed and there are any number of anti islamic writers both within and outside the islamic world who have not had fatwas made against them here someone who adds fuel to an explosive situation might be charged with incitement to riot if people die in the rioting the charges against him might become even more serious how can rushdie be blamed for the deaths of people who are demonstrating against him the deaths should be blamed on the people who dealt with the demonstrations or on the demonstrators themselves if they were violent to what lengths will you go to justify this barbaric behaviour against rushdie once the rushdie situation exploded into the media the muslim voice on the matter of the book was effectively restricted to short video bytes showing the dramatic highlights of muslim demonstrations for every twenty or so newspaper magazine articles interviews etc supporting rushdie there would appear one muslim voice this person was usually selected based on how dramatic and incoherent he was not on his knowledge of islam or the situation at the time this approx twenty to one ratio continued throughout the escalation of the crisis with rushdie in the central spotlight as the man of the moment the valiant defender of everyman s right to free speech decoupled from responsibility as an aside it s interesting that while the hue and cry about freedom of speech went up some books defaming certain ethnic and religious groups continued to be banned here it was felt that they injured the sensibilities of these groups and presented a false image which could promote feelings of hate towards these groups for muslims this kind of double standard was annoying rushdie saw this spotlight as a golden opportunity to lash out at organized islam and he did so with admirable verbal skill the only kind of islam which rushdie finds palatable is what he calls a secular islam an islam separated from it s qur an it s prophet god its legislation and most importantly from any intrusion into any political arena fine rushdie made his views known the muslim s made their anger at his book known the scale of the whole affair erupted into global proportions it was by this time already a political situation affecting governments as well as individuals the situation was a serious one with far reaching political implications at the centre of this turmoil was rushdie throwing fuel on the fire engaged in a personal crusade that made him oblivious to any sense of caution now you may feel that the person in the centre of a worldwide storm such as this has no responsibility has no reason to exercise restraint of any kind has no obligation to perhaps step back momentarily out of the spotlight till matters calm down perhaps you even feel that he is justified in boldly defying the anger of all those who dare to take umbrage at his literary work no matter what insult they find within it perhaps you see him as a kind of secular heroic knight mounted on the his media steed doing battle with the dragon of islamic fundamentalism well khomeini saw him as a disingeneous author who grew up in a muslim atmosphere knew well what muslim s hold dear who wrote a book which mischievously uses certain literary conventions to slander insult and attack islam and its most notable personalities who when faced with a situation that became a worldwide crisis continued with his mischief in the world stage of the media who even after people were injured and killed because of the magnitude and emotion of the situation continued his mischief instead of having the good sense to desist khomeini saw the crisis as mischief making on a grand scale mischief making that grew in scale as the scale of the crisis enlarged the deaths of muslims around the world and rushdie s continued media mischief even after this was the triggering factor that seemed to decide khomeini on putting a stop to the mischief the person at the centre of all these events was rushdie he was the source of the continuing mischief all media support government support was just that support the source was rushdie and his publishers who were nothing short of ecstatic at the publicity and were very happy to see rushdie constantly in the media the islamic rulings that deal with people who engage in this kind of grand scale mischief making was applied to rushdie you re attempts at justification are not doing the image of islam any good i have made no attempts at justification only at explanation image is the chief concern of muslim apologists for islam and for rushdie if muslims willingly relegated themselves to becoming a sub culture within a larger secular culture such that the secular principles and laws had precedence over the laws of islam then i have no doubt that islam would then be thought to have a good image principally because it would by and large reflect the secular image a good image usually means be more like me your attempts at totally exonerating rushdie reflect exactly the attitude that resulted in the polarization brought about by the crisis in iran the situation was monitored for many months when rushdie kept adding fuel to the flames through the free worldwide voice that the media gave him the situation was monitored more seriously when even after many deaths occured worldwide rushdie still did not desist the fatwa was pronounced when behaving like a total jerk endangers lives and the jerk sees this and still insists on his right to behave like a total jerk he has the rug jerked out from under him if the muslims didn t make such a big fuss over the book like issuing death threats and killing publishers no one would have heard of it the fatwa came later much later if rushdie didn t mouth off so much in the media the fuss would have died down no one would have been killed no fatwa would have been passed the whole episode would have fizzled away
alt.atheism	re who has read rushdie s the satanic verses in article bu edu jaeger buphy bu edu gregg jaeger writes yes the qur an discusses this point in several ways some of them quite directly for example it says that if god were to appear them there would be no need for faith and belief as the evidence would be definitive ah excellent so why doesn t she appear to me i m a little weak in the blind faith department besides she doesn t even really need to appear how about oh say a little tip something like put your all on in the at the dog races perhaps in a dream or vision how do we know that muhammed didn t just go out into the desert and smoke something would a person who was high write so well and with such consistency i m afraid i don t know arabic i have only read translations i wouldn t know it if it were well written consistent though is one thing the quran is not and have you read it in arabic besides some of my best writing has been done under the influence of shall we say consciousness altering substances and how do we know that the scribes he dictated the quran to didn t screw up or put in their own little verses they d have to be very good to do so without destroying the beauty and literary quality of text arabic text yes so how do we know they weren t very good again assuming that the quran is beautfully written and why can muhammed marry more than four women when no other muslim is allowed to muhammad did not exceed the number after the revelation regulating the number of wives a man could marry but before it ok i retract this point although i might still say that once he knew he should have done something about it although i think the biggest insult to islam is that the majority of its followers would want to suppress a book sight unseen on the say so of some holy guy not to mention murder the author i agree but is it really true that this is the case i haven t interviewed all muslims about this i would really like it if this were false but i can t take it on your say so what are your sources another case of judging principles on the basis of those who claim to follow them what other basis do we have to judge a system especially when we can t get a consistent picture of what islam really is do i believe khomeini do i go by the imam of the mosque in mecca or perhaps the guy in new jersey or perhaps you say i should go only by the quran ok whose translation and what about things like and wherever you find idolators kill them s shamim mohamed uunet noao cmcl arizona shamim shamim cs arizona edu take this cross and garlic here s a mezuzah if he s jewish a page of the koran if he s a muslim and if he s a zen buddhist you re on your own member of the league for programming freedom write to lpf uunet uu net
alt.atheism	re genocide is caused by theism evidence i saw a hour show on pbs the other day about the history of the jews appearently the cursades a religious war agianst the muslilams in the holy land sparked the widespread persecution of muslilams and jews in europe among the supporters of the persiecution were none other than martin luther and the vatican later hitler would use luthers writings to justify his own treatment of the jews genocide is caused by theism evidence sd
alt.atheism	re societal basis for morality in article c zu k fzd news cso uiuc edu cobb alexia lis uiuc edu mike cobb writes on what basis can we say that the actions of another society as per hitler comment are wrong ultimately it rests with personal opinion in my opinion why does majority make right the question doesn t make sense to me maybe it would be better to ask what makes a democracy better than for example a totalitarian regim dan
alt.atheism	re high times a comin verdant ucs umass edu sol lightman writes my theory though yet unproven is that this is due to simple envy no its not its due to the fact that there are two issues here religion and religion religion is personal belief system religion is a memetic virus people loudly proclaiming their beliefs are crossing the border from religion religion people that want to save others are firmly entrenched in religion memoids rule of not practicing religion is to shut the fuck up unless you discuss it politely this means that the motive behind the conversation is not only your self gratifying wish to spread the word religion is something that ultimately comes from within a person and reflects their value judgements religion is something that is contracted from others and does not reflect the persons value judgements other than perhaps i think i ll be brainwashed today religion is a drug i believe you can discuss religion however the post that started this off was not intented as discussion it was more a proclamation of someones religion if you think i m talking about censorship or that i m closeminded you haven t understood this i don t have any problem with the discussion of religion its just religion that i can t stand
alt.atheism	re high times a comin rubble leland stanford edu adam heath clark writes it seems a very large part of christianity is based on the notion that it is the right religion and that just about any other way of looking at the universe is flat out wrong in the old days we had the inquisition and the burning of heretics now we have pat buchanan trying to start some cultural war because he can t stand to live in the same country as all these other non god fearing people its a survival trait there are only a fixed number of resources people for religions to inhabit the doctrines of intolerance and not using birth control are devices whereby the meme of the capital r religion of christianity gains a larger share of the population than its memetic competitors
alt.atheism	re christian morality is in article apr dcs warwick ac uk simon dcs warwick ac uk simon clippingdale writes dan i m concerned that you are in grave spiritual danger because of your stubborn refusal to love and accept into your heart the mighty invisible pink unicorn nice parody deleted i shall pray for you in fact brother i cast out the demon which binds you in the name of the mighty invisible pink unicorn dan you must have faith then you better pray for me too because i believe that the mighty invisibile pink unicorn does not exist one being cannot be both pink and invisible the demon or should that be daemon that keeps me from believing and saving my soul is named logic bill mayne
alt.atheism	re who has read rushdie s the satanic verses in article optima cs arizona edu sham cs arizona edu shamim zvonko mohamed writes in article r cl innknk bozo dsinc com perry dsinc com jim perry writes anyway since i seem to be the only one following this particular line of discussion i wonder how many of the rest of the readership have read this book what are your thoughts on it i read it when it first came out and i liked it at the time i still sorta kinda thought of myself as a muslim and i couldn t see what the flap was all about thank you i now know at least that though i may be on drugs at least i m not the only one the writing style was a little hard to get used to but it was well worth the effort coming from a similar background rushdie grew up in bombay in a muslim family and moved to england i grew up in new delhi it made a strong impression on me and he used many of the strange constructions of indian english the yaar at the end of a sentence butbutbut the occasional hindi phrase etc yes this took some getting used to of course not having an indian connection no knowledge of hindi etc this was not trivial for me i did have thanks to the wonders of the net a glossary to satanic verses posted to rec arts books by vijay raghavan which explains a lot of the indian english constructions indian culture references even the islamic references jahilia submission the context of the satanic verses incident etc what i have only covers the first couple of hundred pages but it helped me get into the flow of the novel i can mail this to anyone interested if anyone has portions after part i if they exist i d like to get those jim perry perry dsinc com decision support inc matthews nc these are my opinions for a nominal fee they can be yours
alt.atheism	re burden of proof in r b hg aurora engr latech edu ray engr latech edu bill ray writes if i make a statement that god exists loves me etc but in no way insist that you believe it does that place a burden of proof upon me if you insist that god doesn t exist does that place a burden of proof upon you i give no proofs i only give testimony to my beliefs i will respond to proofs that you attempt to disprove my beliefs what is your reaction to people who claim they were abducted by space aliens some of these people say i was abducted experimented on etc if we insist that these aliens don t exist is the burden of proof placed on us these people can give no hard facts but can give a lot of testimony to back up their beliefs replace space aliens with elvis big foot blue unicorns and we have a larger percentage of the population than i like to think about sometimes i wonder if reality really is a different experience for everone
alt.atheism	re rawlins debunks creationism john e king king ctron com posts a whopping one liner the modern theory of evolution is so inadequate that it deserves to be treated as a matter of faith francis hitching i have a few points to make about the above posting science is not based on and does not consist of quotes from either real or alleged experts critical reasoning evidence and if possible experimentation are necessary creationists frequently display a massive confusion about this by merely quoting both non experts and experts alike some of the latter quotes are in fact false and steadfastly refusing to follow any kind of rigorous scientific procedure this strongly suggests that a their claims completely lack any scientific merit and b they are aware of this fatal deficiency of course you may not actually be a creationist and this may not be your real intent you have failed to identify hitching and the surrounding context of his statement why is that if hitching is a scientific illiterate then the quote would merely display his profound ignorance of evolutionary biology creationists are frequently known to quote real scientists out of context and to fabricate statements that they subsequently attribute to legitimate scientists of course you may not actually be a creationist and this may not be your real intent evidence supporting the alleged inadequacies of the modern theory of evolution would be a much more powerful argument than a contextless one line quote from an unidentified nobody it is also important to note that disproving biological evolution does not automatically prove some alternate claims any more that disproving that the earth is shaped like a hockey puck proves that it is a hyperbolic paraboloid creationists seem rather fond of diving head first into this logical fallacy of course you may not actually be a creationist and this may not be your real intent since evolution is central to virtually all of modern science an attack on evolution either the fact or the theory really represents an attack on science while the theory will unquestionably continue to evolve b the fact of evolution will not ever go away creationists lost the battle long ago more than years in fact but are simply too willfully ignorant and irrational to acknowledge the fact of course you may not actually be a creationist and you may not really be that ignorant warren kurt vonroeschlaub kv iastate edu asks neither i nor webster s has ever heard of francis hitchings who is he i like hitchings am not to be found in webster s b francis hitchings is a scientifically illiterate creationist or perhaps he is just playing the part of one who wrote a quite ignorant book attacking evolution the neck of the giraffe in that publication he quotes a creationist jean sloat morton using the standard invalid creationist probability argument that proteins could not have formed by chance thus not only confusing abiogenesis with evolution the two are quite independent but also concluding with a non sequitur i e the conclusion does not follow pp hitchings also misquotes richard lewontin in an effort to support creationism pp hitchings book was reviewed by national park service ecologist david graber in the los angeles times and repeated in the oregonian the article was titled giraffe sticks scientific neck out too far excerpts include francis hitchings is not a biologist he goes after darwin like mark antony after brutus he flips from scientific reasoning to mysticism and pseudo science with the sinuosity of a snake oil salesman he suggests a mystical organizing principle of life using the similarity of organs in different creatures as evidence sic note that the last statement above is actually evidence for evolution not against it if john e king is quoting from this reviewed book it wouldn t surprise me much it s also interesting that king had nothing to add i e he only posted a quote uucp uunet tektronix sail mikec or m cranford uunet tektronix sail labs tek com mikec principal troll arpa mikec sail labs tek com relay cs net resident skeptic csnet mikec sail labs tek com teklabs tektronix
alt.atheism	re genocide is caused by theism evidence in article c a s dvi mailer cc fsu edu dekorte dirac scri fsu edu stephen l dekorte writes i saw a hour show on pbs the other day about the history of the jews appearently the cursades a religious war agianst the muslilams in the holy land sparked the widespread persecution of muslilams and jews in europe among the supporters of the persiecution were none other than martin luther and the vatican later hitler would use luthers writings to justify his own treatment of the jews genocide is caused by theism evidence heck i remember reading a quote of luther as something like jews should be shot like deer and of course much catholic doctrine for centuries was extremely anti semitic are you so sure that your truth and your justice are worth more than the truths and justices of other centuries simone de beauvoir where is there a certainty that rises above all doubt and withstands all critique karl jaspers rice university will rice college
alt.atheism	re political atheists in article r e vinnkn gap caltech edu keith cco caltech edu keith allan schneider writes kcochran nyx cs du edu keith justified and ancient cochran writes wait are we talking about ethics or morals here is the distinction important yes well make it ethics deal with individuals morals deal with groups well our moral system seems to mimic the natural one in a number of ways please describe these number of ways in detail then explain the any contradictions that may arise just look at how human behavior mimics animal behavior i couldn t even begin to list all of the similarities many of the dissimilarities are due to our high intelligence please describe these number of ways in detail then explain any contradictions that may arise i don t know what is wrong is it possible for humans to survive for a long time in the wild yes it s possible but it is difficult humans are a social animal and that is a cause of our success define difficult i don t understand what you don t understand the sentence yes it s possible but it is difficult humans survived in the wild for hundreds of thousands of years no as noted earlier lack of mating such as abstinence or homosexuality isn t really destructive to the system it is a worst neutral so if every member of the species was homosexual this wouldn t be destructive to the survival of the species most animals that exhibit homosexuality are actually bisexual answer the question keith is homosexuality detrimental to the survival of the species kcochran nyx cs du edu b c d e f g k m r s t tsakc my thoughts my posts my ideas my responsibility my beer my pizza ok
alt.atheism	re bayesian statistics theism and atheism in article apr dcs warwick ac uk simon dcs warwick ac uk simon clippingdale writes in article quei mb horus ap mchp sni de frank d s uucp frank o dwyer writes in article apr dcs warwick ac uk simon dcs warwick ac uk simon clippingdale writes i write imagine that alterian dollars turn up in your bank account every month suppose further that this money is being paid to you by a your big hearted alterian benefactor or b a bug in an alterian atm let s suppose that this is a true dichotomy so p a p b trouble is alterius is in a different universe so that no observations of alterius are possible except for the banks you couldn t possibly afford it now let s examine the case for a there is no evidence whatsoever that there is any such thing as a big hearted alterian benefactor however p exists b h a b p not exists b h a b on the grounds that lack of evidence for is evidence against when we have a partition like that we dismiss hypothesis a turning therefore to b we also find no evidence to support that hypothesis on the same grounds as before we dismiss hypothesis b the problem with this is that we have dismissed all of the possible hypotheses and even though we know by construction that the money arrives every month we have proven that it can t because we have dismissed all of its potential causes that s an extremely poor argument and here s why premise this money is being paid to you by either a your big hearted alterian benefactor or b a bug in an alterian atm thus each monthly appearance of the bucks should it happen is an observation on alterius and by construction is evidence for the existence of either the benefactor or the bug in the atm premise no observations on alterius are possible except for the banks you couldn t possibly afford it you forgot to include this my premise is actually premise the cardinality of the set of possible observations on alterius is one this is clearly contradictory to the first not if you state it properly trouble is on the basis of premise you say that there can be no evidence of either the benefactor or the bug but the first premise leads to the conclusion that the appearance of the bucks should it happen is evidence for the existence of either the benefactor or the bug voila a screaming contradiction with my highlights sc but in a strawman argument there is only evidence for oneof benefactor bug no observation to distinguish benefactor from bug is possible that is not evidence for bug and neither is it evidence for benefactor nor is true to say that this hypothetical universe appears exactly as if there were no benefactor bug two statements both would be false this is still contradictory it reduces to alterian dosh arriving in my account is due to benefactor or bug this is not evidence for benefactor neither is it evidence for bug meaning that it doesn t lend more weight to one than to the other therefore no evidence can exist for benefactor and no evidence can exist for bug but relies on a shift in meaning from when you say paraphrased in that this is not evidence for benefactor for example what you mean is that it s no more evidence for benefactor than it is for bug yes that s what i mean in however you ve shifted the meaning of evidence for benefactor so that it now means absolute evidence for benefactor rather than relative evidence for benefactor w r t bug not really i meant evidence that would tend to one over the other i think this is just a communications problem what i am trying to say in my clumsy way is that while i buy your theory as far as it relates to theism making predictions prayer your rapture example i don t buy your use of occam s razor in all cases where a in my example one couldn t dismiss benefactor or bug on the grounds of simplicity one of these is necessary to explain the dosh i brought up the one by one dismissal process to show that it would be wrong to do so from what you re saying in this post it seems you agree and we re talking at cross purposes is still in contradiction to some sums may help with b benefactor b bug d dosh arrives in account implies p b b d assuming that p bb d so it s either the benefactor or a bug which is responsible if the bucks arrive but not both then p b b d p b d p b d so p b d p b d but implies that p b d and p b d no this isn t what i meant p b d and p b d with necessarily no new observation we ve already seen the dosh to change those estimates i was trying to say again in my clumsy way that it would be wrong to assign probability to either of these and that s precisely what use of the razor does in the case of gods gods are one class of hypothesis there are many others belonging to a set of hypotheses one of which is necessary to explain something which otherwise would not be satisfactorily explained it can be thrown out or retained on grounds of non rational preference not of science or statistics alternatively one could chuck out or retain the lot on the grounds that the answer can t be known or that the notional probability estimates are effectively useless being equal agnosticism weak atheism as they do when the set m is filled by the universe is caused by x where x is gods pink unicorns nothing etc and no observation tends to one conclusion over the other exactly the point i was making i think so we don t throw out any of these contrary to your assertion above that we do some people do simon and they think they are doing excellent science my sole point was that they aren t only observations which directly contradict the hypothesis h i i e x where p x h i can cause p h i to go to zero after a finite number of observations only in this case do we get to throw any of the hypotheses out exactly my point though i may have been unclear you said the diametric opposite which i guess is the source of my confusion i was merely trying to illustrate the incorrectness of doing so what i m trying to say is that while you are correct to say that absence of evidence can sometimes be evidence of absence this does not hold true for all or perhaps any versions of theism and it isn t true that those for which it does not hold can be discarded using the razor on the contrary those for which it does not hold are exactly those which can be discarded using the razor see my post on the other branch of this thread then you seem to be guilty of the contradiction you accuse me of if the razor holds for gods then it holds for all like hypotheses which means that you re assigning p x h i for all i though we ve already established that it s not correct to do so when sum p x h i over all i simply put anyone who claims to have a viable proof of the existence or non existence of gods whether inductive or no is at best mistaken and at worst barking mad luckily i make no such claim and have specifically said as much on numerous occasions you wouldn t be constructing a strawman here would you frank although that doesn t of course rule out my being barking mad in any case i could be barking mad in my spare time with apologies to cleese et al but i think you miss the point once again when i say that something is evidence against an hypothesis that doesn t imply that observation of the said something necessarily falsifies the hypothesis reducing the estimate of p h data to zero if it reduces this quantity it s still evidence against h no i got that i m talking about the case when a you re clearly correct when a and i m not constructing a strawman though it s certainly possible that i ve misunderstood what you re saying however by any standards a system that says when a gods are highly unlikely and when a gods can be dismissed using the razor is a system purporting to be an inductive proof that gods either don t exist or are unnecessary to explain any or all phenomena in my experience systems such as this including those which purport to prove that gods exist always contain a fallacy upon close examination if that s not what you re saying then please put me straight frank o dwyer i m not hatching that odwyer sse ie from hens by evelyn conlon
alt.atheism	re asimov stamp battin cyclops iucf indiana edu laurence gene battin writes apart from the suggestion that appeared in the letters column of skeptical inquirer recently has there been any further mention about a possible asimov commemorative stamp if this idea hasn t been followed up does anyone know what needs to be done to get this to happen i think that its a great idea should we start a petition or something i believe that there s a year period from time of death until a person can be on a commemorative stamp it was broken once for lyndon johnson i think but other than that it has held for awhile of course we can still start now the elvis stamp was petitioned for ages and things really moved once it got past the year anniversary of his death carl christensen dept of computer science christen astro ocis temple edu temple university curiouser and curiouser lc philadelphia pa usa
alt.atheism	re where are they now in article r ou u horus ap mchp sni de frank d s uucp frank o dwyer writes in article apr nuscc nus sg cmtan iss nus sg tan chade meng dan writes i ll be leaving in june that s because i m going back to my university alt atheism is banned there stupid theist intolerance sad isn t it anybody has any idea how i can circumvent this problem frank s solution deleted if you have access to telnet contact nyx cs du edu it s a public access unix system completly free and all you need to for access is a verifiable form of id i think he requires a notarized copy of a picture or a check or some such kcochran nyx cs du edu b c d e f g k m r s t tsakc my thoughts my posts my ideas my responsibility my beer my pizza ok
alt.atheism	re age of reason was who has read rushdie s sandvik newton apple com kent sandvik writes this is the story of kent the archetype finn that lives in the bay area and tried to purchase thomas paine s age of reason this man was driving around to staceys to books inc to well cleanlighted place to daltons to various other places when he asked for this book the well educated american book store assistants in most placed asked him to check out the thriller section or then they said that his book has not been published yet but they should receive the book soon in some places the assistants bluntly said that they don t know of such an author or that he is not a well known living author so they don t keep copies of his books such is the life and times of america years after the revolution on a similar note a good friend of mine worked as a clerk in a chain bookstore several of his peers were amazing one woman in particular a customer asked her if they had the autobiography of benjamin franklin who s it by was her first question then is he still alive then is it fiction or non fiction finally my friend intervened and showed the guy where it was it makes one wonder what the standards of employment are scott sauyet ssauyet eagle wesleyan edu
alt.atheism	re strong weak atheism in c rusnews w w mantis co uk mathew writes did that faq ever got modified to re define strong atheists as not those who assert the nonexistence of god but as those who assert that they believe in the nonexistence of god in a word yes mathew mathew could you let us know when this happened so i can see if my version is as up to date as possible i try to re save the faqs once in a while but otherwise i ignore their regular postings so i wouldn t generally notice such a change and i like to stay current thanks scott
alt.atheism	a problem with omnipotence i recall a discussion i had heard years ago it went something like this the problem with omnipotence at least as i perceive it as personified by the christian god ideal is that it is potentially contradictory if a manifestation such as god is truly infinite in power can god place limits upon itself some stuff i can t recall then some other questions i think i recall correctly can god unmake itself can god make itself assuming it doesn t yet exist has god has always existed or is it necessary for an observer to bind all of gods potential quantum states into reality was god nothing more than a primordial force of nature that existed during the earliest stages of universal inflationary creation is god a vacuum fluctuation given a great enough energy density could we re create god would that make us god and god something else some more stuff i don t recall concerning creating god followed by is god self aware is it necessary that god be self aware is god a living entity is it necessay that god be a living entity is god unchanging or does it evolve any comments post them so that others might benefit from the open inquiry and resulting discussion kyle
alt.atheism	atheism 
alt.atheism	re you will all go to hell in article pharaoh cyborg bt co uk martin pharaoh cyborg bt co uk martin gorman writes jsn psuvm psu edu writes you blashephemers you will all go to hell for not believing in god be prepared for your eternal damnation oh fuck off actually i just think he s confused i m going to hell because i m gay not becuase i don t believe in god i wonder if that means i can t come to tammy deans picnic kcochran nyx cs du edu b c d e f g k m r s t tsakc my thoughts my posts my ideas my responsibility my beer my pizza ok because i m the daddy that s why
alt.atheism	re requests in article c qllg bc mailer cc fsu edu mayne pipe cs fsu edu william mayne writes in article pww spac at rice edu pww spacsun rice edu peter walker writes didn t the church get lightning rods banned in several european countries in the eighteenth century because it was widely believed that they interfered with god s striking down of blasphemers i seem to remember that this was more common in eastern europe i don t know about eastern europe but according to bertrand russell writing in science and mysticism i think though it could have been another book said that preachers in colonial boston attributed an earthquake to god s wrath over people putting up lightning rods which they had been preaching against as interference with god s will being deprived of lightning bolts as a method to get at sinners he evidently resorted to sterner measures no smilies i am not making this up i m sure you are not after the san francisco earthquake a couple of years ago there was a flurry of traffic on talk religion misc about how this was the result of the notorious homo this that and t other in the city the fact that the earthquake was actually down the road in santa cruz watsonville didn t seem to phase them any jon
alt.atheism	re a little too satanic kent sandvik and jon livesey made essentially the same response so this time kent s article gets the reply i agree but this started at one particular point in time and we don t know when this starting point of accurately copied scriptures actually happened this begs the question of whether it ever started perhaps because accuracy was always an intention even worse if the events in nt were not written by eye witness accounts a high probability looking at possible dates when the first gospels were ready then we have to take into account all the problems with information forwarded with the telephone metaphor indeed it makes little difference if you have eyewitnesses or people one step away reporters if you will as i said earlier the telephone metaphor is innately bad because the purpose of a game of telephone is contrary to the aims of writing these sorts of texts also i would point out that by the standards generally asserted in this group the distinction between eyewitnesses and others is hollow since nobody can be shown to be an eyewitness or indeed even shown to be the author of the text there is no evidence that the original texts of either the ot or the nt are largely lost over time in a sea of errors corrections additions and deletions in the case of the nt the evidence is strongly in the other direction the textus r and the nestle aland text do not differ on more than a low level of significance it is reasonable to assume a similar situation for the ot based on the nt as a model c wingate the peace of god it is no peace but strife closed in the sod mangoe cs umd edu yet brothers pray for but one thing tove mangoe the marv lous peace of god
alt.atheism	re societally acceptable behavior in article c s tv h news cso uiuc edu cobb alexia lis uiuc edu mike cobb writes in qvh tinnsg citation ksu ksu edu yohan citation ksu ksu edu jonathan w newton writes in article c qgm dl news cso uiuc edu cobb alexia lis uiuc edu mike cobb writes merely a question for the basis of morality moral ethical behavior societally acceptable behavior i disagree with these what society thinks should be irrelevant what the individual decides is all that is important this doesn t seem right if i want to kill you i can because that is what i decide sounds as though you are confused between what i want and what i think is morally right jon
alt.atheism	re why rushdie s writings are unappreciated in article quc u qu cc tut fi a lehtori cc tut fi aario sami writes in bu edu jaeger buphy bu edu gregg jaeger writes in article c jqd mdb blaze cs jhu edu arromdee jyusenkyou cs jhu edu ken arromdee writes in article bu edu jaeger buphy bu edu gregg jaeger writes it has been asked why no counter fatwa has been issued against khomenei s condemnation of rushdies because of his satanic verses the reason is basically that the satanic verses from which rushdie took his title are a serious matter not to be played around with by anyone who cares about islam this shouldn t matter that s your opinion which i am sorry to say is irrelevant gregg this guy sounds more than a little borg ish vell this is perfectly normal behaviour vor a vogon you know jon
alt.atheism	re yet more rushdie re islamic law i just received some new information regarding the issue of bcci and whether it is an islamic bank etc i am now about to post it under the heading bcci look for it there fred rice darice yoyo cc monash edu au
alt.atheism	re why boyd acsu buffalo edu daniel f boyd writes if the bible is such incredible proof of christianity then why aren t the muslims or the hindus convinced if the qur an is such incredible proof of islam then why aren t the hindus or the christians convinced if god exists why aren t atheists convinced tan chade meng yes sir i have only one question singapore cmtan iss nus sg what is going on
alt.atheism	christianity logic was xtian morality is in article eastman uucp dps nasa kodak com writes simple logic arguments are folly if you read the bible you will see that jesus made fools of those who tried to trick him with logic if you rely simply on your reason then you will never know more than you do now i once heard an arguement from a xtian friend similar to this christianity is a higher logic athiest like u will not be able to understand it your atheist logic is very low only thru faith can we understand the higher logic in god so i asked him so what is this higher logic his answer i don t know this the posting above highlights one of the worst things about xtainity it is abundantly clear to both atheists xtains that their believe is both illogical irrational their tactics therefore to disregard logic rationality altogether silly excuses such as the ones above and those such as how can u trust science science was invented by man only goes to further show the weakness of their religion in my country where xtainity was and still is rapidly growing xtains never try to convert people by appealing to their brains or senses they know it would be a fruitless act given the irrational nature of their faith they would wait until a person is in distress then they would comfort him her and addict them to their emotional opium never in my life had i met a person who converted to xtainity coz it s reasonable rationality has no place in xtainity see xtian arguement against reason above the unenlightened one tan chade meng the wise man tells his wife that he understands her singapore cmtan iss nus sg the fool tries to prove it the unenlightened one tan chade meng the wise man tells his wife that he understands her singapore cmtan iss nus sg the fool tries to prove it
alt.atheism	re some thoughts in article madhausc yd kip netcom com madhaus netcom com maddi hausmann writes healta saturn wwc edu tammy r healy writes tammy see maddi i trimmed it healy well you re going to have to practice but you re getting the hang of it soon we re going to have to give you a new nickname try these on for size tammy lucky seven healy tammy pass the falafel healy tammy r us healy tammy learning by doing healy the r us thing is trademarked i don t know if charles lazarus is dead or alive but i d be careful because with a name like lazarus he might rise again just to start a lawsuit dean kaflowitz i knew an architect once who i swear was employed to design the signs for the toys r us and kids r us stores the signs the things they stick over the store or up on a big pole so they can be seen from the highway what a job all those hours in school studying to be an architect so you can tell them to move the pole ten feet closer to the highway
alt.atheism	re some thoughts in article c aec fb cbnewsj cb att com decay cbnewsj cb att com dean kaflowitz writes the r us thing is trademarked i don t know if charles lazarus is dead or alive but i d be careful because with a name like lazarus he might rise again just to start a lawsuit the r us is not trademarked but the backwards r us is i believe speaking of proofs of god the funniest one i have ever seen was in a term paper handed in by a freshman she wrote god must exist because he wouldn t be so mean as to make me believe he exists if he really doesn t is this argument really so much worse than the ontological proofs of the existence of god provided by anselm and descartes among others raymond smullyan from b c and other philosophical fantasies
alt.atheism	re fundamental beliefs of sda in article healta saturn wwc edu healta saturn wwc edu tammy r healy writes i was asked to post list of the sda church s basic beliefs the sda church has always been reluctant to formalize a creed in the usual sense of word however the powers that be in the church deemed it neccessary to publish a summary of basic sda beliefs may i ask why they are afraid to do so speaking of proofs of god the funniest one i have ever seen was in a term paper handed in by a freshman she wrote god must exist because he wouldn t be so mean as to make me believe he exists if he really doesn t is this argument really so much worse than the ontological proofs of the existence of god provided by anselm and descartes among others raymond smullyan from b c and other philosophical fantasies
alt.atheism	re cults vs religions jgreen trumpet calpoly edu james thomas green writes a religion is a cult which if those in power belong to it actually they re all bull shit graeme t g nattress uk ac ncl hitler is nibor from the planet vashir the galactic shape changing psychopath john the tomorrow people hitler s last secret
alt.atheism	re you will all go to hell in article healta saturn wwc edu healta saturn wwc edu tammy r healy writes in article apr mnemosyne cs du edu kcochran nyx cs du edu keith justified and ancient cochran writes from kcochran nyx cs du edu keith justified and ancient cochran subject re you will all go to hell date sun apr gmt in article pharaoh cyborg bt co uk martin pharaoh cyborg bt co uk martin gorman writes jsn psuvm psu edu writes you blashephemers you will all go to hell for not believing in god be prepared for your eternal damnation oh fuck off actually i just think he s confused i m going to hell because i m gay not becuase i don t believe in god i wonder if that means i can t come to tammy deans picnic of course you can come i said all a a posters are invited and i didn t put a no homosexual clause bring some munchies and join the party i can t imagine dean objecting either knowing keith i expect he ll bring the leather accessories better oil it well leather cracks when it dries dean kaflowitz
alt.atheism	re poisoning the well was islamic genocide in article rbpq ibg horus ap mchp sni de frank d s uucp frank o dwyer writes in article bbacbc i dbstu rz tu bs de i dbstu rz tu bs de benedikt rosenau writes by the way that s why i consider you a theist points consisting of rhetorical fallacy unsupported claims and demonstrable falsehoods deleted no wonder that we don t see any detail for this claim it is good to remember that you have answered the statement that you are a theist by another correspondent with that you are not a member of a denomination it is either stupidity or an attempt at a trick answer not unlike the rest of your arguments mr roseneau i have little patience with people who tell me what i believe and who call me a liar when i disagree i m in a position not only to know what it is that i believe but to say so i am an agnostic i am extremely wary of the way you use words like in this case there are broader definitions of gods used by persons who are considered by themselves and others theists i have pointed to that in my post you use one of them your use of definitions seems to rest on the assumption because my moral is objective absolute or the other buzz words you are so fond of everybody will know it and there is no need to define it more exactly and as a user has shown recently the easiest way to dispell you is to ask you for definitions you are of course free to speculate on my motives for objecting to seeming irrational bigotry if you wish but the flaws which i point out in your arguments stand on their own merits since you are the only one seeing them and many correspondents point to the flaws in your reasoning respectively discussing i can t say i am impressed benedikt
alt.atheism	re some thoughts in article c b lkz blaze cs jhu edu arromdee jyusenkyou cs jhu edu ken arromdee writes in article w briggs ccresources h cc utas edu au w briggs postoffice utas edu au william briggs writes wasn t jc a carpenter anyway that s beside the point i think the fact that is more compelling is jc fulfilling the prophecies when the prophecies include him getting killed in the most agonizing possible way this is nonsense i can think of a lot more agonizing ways to get killed fatal cancer for instance anyone else have some more maybe we can make a list actually i find the stuff about jc being a carpenter more interesting is there an independent source for this assertion or is it all from the christian bible is there any record at all of anything he built a table a house some stairs norm abrams says the real test of a carpenter s skill is building stairs with hand tools did he leave any plans behind for say kitchen counters and cabinets did he build his own cross if so did he use pressure treated lumber gotta use that pressure treated anywhere that wood meets concrete but it holds up better anyway for mose outdoor applications i keep seeing these bumper stickers that say my boss is a jewish carpenter but they re always on the back of ford escorts and a real carpenter s apprentice would probably drive a pickup so i m out for verification that he really was a carpenter dean kaflowitz sometimes i like to get away from the shack catfish ain t pretty but they don t talk back goin fishin again goin fishin again me and my no good friends sure goin fishin again
alt.atheism	re some thoughts in article apr daffy cs wisc edu mccullou snake cs wisc edu mark mccullough writes in article c b lkz blaze cs jhu edu arromdee jyusenkyou cs jhu edu ken arromdee writes i can think of a lot more agonizing ways to get killed fatal cancer for instance anyone else have some more maybe we can make a list how about dying of a blood clot in a very bad place kidney stones with complete blockage
alt.atheism	re some thoughts in article kmr po cwru edu kmr po cwru edu keith m ryan writes in article c aec fb cbnewsj cb att com decay cbnewsj cb att com dean kaflowitz writes the r us thing is trademarked i don t know if charles lazarus is dead or alive but i d be careful because with a name like lazarus he might rise again just to start a lawsuit the r us is not trademarked but the backwards r us is i believe yup i think you re right my mistake now how do i make an r backwards using a computer keyboard i ll bet the gods know how this is alt atheism after all tell you what if all my r s start coming out backwards when i type from now on i ll become a believer and that s not asking for miracles if i asked for a miracle i d ask for a real miracle like for pat buchanan to become an out of the closet drag queen well maybe that wouldn t be so miraculous but i think he d look fabulous in a feather boa and a sequined hat like mia farrow wore in gatsby dean kaflowitz
alt.atheism	re it s all mary s fault in article w briggs ccresources h cc utas edu au w briggs postoffice utas edu au william briggs writes deletion lucky for them that the baby didn t have any obvious deformities i could just see it now mary gets pregnant out of wedlock so to save face she and joseph say that it was god that got her pregnant and then the baby turns out to be deformed or even worse stillborn they d have a lot of explaining to do a few points guys oops guy and gal but i use the term guy asexually has the same sort of conspiracy ever occurred since i mean there must have been dozen of times in the past two thousand years when it would have been opportune time for a messiah to be born it has there is a guy running around in switzerland who claims to have been conceived similarly his mother says the same his father is said to be a bit surprised but anyway there have been a lot of messiahs and many have had a similar story about their birth or their death a list of messiahs could be quite interesting wouldn t you feel bad if you turned out to be wrong and the conception of christ was via god i can just imagine your faces as mary asks you if you ve ever had a child yourself i would wonder why an omnipotent god pulls such stunts instead of providing evidence for everyone to check and the whole question is absurd wouldn t you feel bad if you d find out that stones are sentient and that you have stepped on them all your life and wouldn t you feel bad when you d see the proof that jesus was just a plot of satan if they wanted to save image they could have done what joseph planned to do in the first place have a quite wedding and an equally quite divorce i think it was quite easy to do under jewish law in that regard they would have been pretty dumb to think up a conspiracy like the one you ve outlined in that they a bringing attention on themselves messiah appearances were like royal scandals in zero ad israel see the part in acts when the sandhedrin are discussing what to do about the growth of the new church i e one wise guy said leave it alone and if it is what it says it is nothing can stop it and if it isn t then it will just fizzle out anyway you ve forgotten the pride factor it didn t fizzle the church i mean the argument is a fallacy it is like thanks for reading this far on the end of a letter most religions claim that they won t fizzle because they contain some eternal truth so does christianity since there are old religions it is no wonder to find old religions that have it that they would last roll twelve dice calculate the chance for the result argue that there must be something special about the result because an event with a chance of could hardly happen by chance only feel elevated because you have participated in letting that special event take place benedikt
alt.atheism	re thoughts on christians bil okcforum osrhe edu bill conner writes robert beauchine wrote rb no that s praying on the young preying on the young comes rb later when the bright eyed little altar boy finds out what the rb priest really wears under that chasible does this statement further the atheist cause in some way surely it s not intended as wit surely it was intended as wit by the way which atheist cause were you referring to bill kevin marshall computer science department virginia tech marshall csugrad cs vt edu blacksburg virginia
alt.atheism	re room for metaphor in article bakerlj augustana edu bakerlj augustana edu lloyd baker writes what i want is a response giving me the pros and cons of metaphorical religious language could an atheist accept this view without giving up the foundamentals of what he believes in could an atheist accept a usage in which religious literature or tradition is viewed in a metaphorical way of course this is essentially what we do with homer or with other concepts such as fate luck free will however there remains the question of whether the religious literature of say christianity is a particularly good set of metaphors for the world today it s also entirely unclear and to me quite unlikely that one could take a contemporary religion like that and divorce the metaphoric potential from the literalism and absolutism it carries now in many cases jim perry perry dsinc com decision support inc matthews nc these are my opinions for a nominal fee they can be yours
alt.atheism	re moraltiy was re political atheists in article r cmninnb gap caltech edu keith cco caltech edu keith allan schneider writes livesey solntze wpd sgi com jon livesey writes pardon me i am trying to apply human terms to non humans that s right you are basically stating that morality can only deal with humans because only humans are sentient enough to be moral that is you say that morality can only deal with intentions i have never said that only humans are the only beings which are sufficiently sentient to have intentions in fact i have explicitly said that i am perfectly happy to consider that some animals are capable of forming intentions what i am objecting to is considering programmed or instinctive behaviour to have moral significance since it seems to me such behaviour does not involve intention i think that even if someone is not conscious of an alternative this does not prevent his behavior from being moral i m sure you do think this if you say so how about trying to convince me i think that a moral act is moral whether or not the implementor thinks it is that s not the point the point is whether the implementor thinks at all the issue is not whether thinking produces opinion a or opinion b but whether thinking takes place period i ve offered four times i think to accept your definition if you allow me to ascribe moral significence to the orbital motion of the planets hmm perhaps you can ascribe it i could say that many human actions are not natural and thus don t follow a natural morality since humans are part of nature are not all human actions natural or perhaps you re going to throw in a definition of natural that will allow us to describe some actions as natural and some as not natural if so what is the definition other than those death which surround mating rituals other animals just don t kill each other within a species that often do they sure they do as multiple posters have show you sharks for example eat wounded sharks i ve personally seen cats eat their newborn are you in some kind of denial people give you example after example and you go off the air for a week and then pop up claiming that it never happened it s very strange but why don t animals kill each other see what i mean here we go again what do we have to do write up a tailor made faq just for mr schneider jon
alt.atheism	re you will all go to hell this is hell hasn t anyone noticed consensual reality is a special case
alt.atheism	re islam and scientific predictions was re genocide is caused by atheism in article apr monu cc monash edu au darice yoyo cc monash edu au fred rice writes deletion god is the one who created the night the day the sun and the moon each is travelling in an orbit with its own motion qur an deletion well that is certainly different but it looks as if there is a translation found for everything by the way i am most surprised to hear that night and day move in an orbit i thought about this too some translations refer to only the latter two objects being in orbit but bucaille s translation seems to indicate the night and the day travelling in orbit too perhaps this can be understood when one looks at it from the earth s reference frame from this reference frame the day and the night would appear to orbit the earth travelling from east to west this is from the reference frame when the earth is still well yes but that belongs in the other group there is a interpretation found for everything however allowing any form of interpretation reduces the information of the text so interprteted to zero by the way i have checked the quote and i think the lines preceding those quoted above are more interesting where mountains are set on earth in order to immobilize the earth where the skies heavens are referred to as well supported the lines given above are after my edition maybe this is what is meant by the above it s just a possibility and that the sun travels in an orbit without saying that earth does too sounds geocentric to me i will see if i can find out more about this but it is still not geocentric that sun and moon move and the earth is immobile sounds geocentric to me benedikt
alt.atheism	re cruel was re political atheists in article r emjinnmk gap caltech edu keith cco caltech edu keith allan schneider writes kmr po cwru edu keith m ryan writes but this just shows then that painful execution is not considered cruel and unusual punishment this shows that cruel as used in the constitution does not refer to whether or not the punishment causes physical pain rather it must be a different meaning i don t think so although some forms of execution are painful the electric chair looks particularly so i think the pain is relatively short lived drawing and quartering on the other hand looks very painful and the victim wouldn t die right away he d bleed to death i d imagine so what do we have now an integral over pain x time i get to lash you with a wet noodle for ever but i only get to cut you up with a power saw if i m quick about it jon
alt.atheism	alt atheism faq atheist resources archive name atheism resources alt atheism archive name resources last modified april version atheist resources addresses of atheist organizations usa freedom from religion foundation darwin fish bumper stickers and assorted other atheist paraphernalia are available from the freedom from religion foundation in the us write to ffrf p o box madison wi telephone evolution designs evolution designs sell the darwin fish it s a fish symbol like the ones christians stick on their cars but with feet and the word darwin written inside the deluxe moulded d plastic fish is postpaid in the us write to evolution designs laurel canyon north hollywood ca people in the san francisco bay area can get darwin fish from lynn gold try mailing figmo netcom com for net people who go to lynn directly the price is per fish set free atheist stickers t shirts and books write to set free p o box garden grove ca american atheist press aap publish various atheist books critiques of the bible lists of biblical contradictions and so on one such book is the bible handbook by w p ball and g w foote american atheist press pp isbn nd edition bible contradictions absurdities atrocities immoralities contains ball foote the bible contradicts itself aap based on the king james version of the bible write to american atheist press p o box austin tx or cameron road austin tx telephone fax prometheus books sell books including haught s holy horrors see below write to east amherst street buffalo new york telephone an alternate address which may be newer or older is prometheus books glenn drive buffalo ny african americans for humanism an organization promoting black secular humanism and uncovering the history of black freethought they publish a quarterly newsletter aah examiner write to norm r allen jr african americans for humanism p o box buffalo ny united kingdom rationalist press association national secular society islington high street holloway road london n ew london n nl british humanist association south place ethical society lamb s conduit passage conway hall london wc r rh red lion square london wc r rl fax the national secular society publish the freethinker a monthly magazine founded in germany ibka e v internationaler bund der konfessionslosen und atheisten postfach d berlin germany ibka publish a journal miz materialien und informationen zur zeit politisches journal der konfessionslosesn und atheisten hrsg ibka e v miz vertrieb postfach d berlin germany for atheist books write to ibdk internationaler b ucherdienst der konfessionslosen postfach d hannover germany telephone books fiction thomas m disch the santa claus compromise short story the ultimate proof that santa exists all characters and events are fictitious any similarity to living or dead gods uh well walter m miller jr a canticle for leibowitz one gem in this post atomic doomsday novel is the monks who spent their lives copying blueprints from saint leibowitz filling the sheets of paper with ink and leaving white lines and letters edgar pangborn davy post atomic doomsday novel set in clerical states the church for example forbids that anyone produce describe or use any substance containing atoms philip k dick philip k dick dick wrote many philosophical and thought provoking short stories and novels his stories are bizarre at times but very approachable he wrote mainly sf but he wrote about people truth and religion rather than technology although he often believed that he had met some sort of god he remained sceptical amongst his novels the following are of some relevance galactic pot healer a fallible alien deity summons a group of earth craftsmen and women to a remote planet to raise a giant cathedral from beneath the oceans when the deity begins to demand faith from the earthers pot healer joe fernwright is unable to comply a polished ironic and amusing novel a maze of death noteworthy for its description of a technology based religion valis the schizophrenic hero searches for the hidden mysteries of gnostic christianity after reality is fired into his brain by a pink laser beam of unknown but possibly divine origin he is accompanied by his dogmatic and dismissively atheist friend and assorted other odd characters the divine invasion god invades earth by making a young woman pregnant as she returns from another star system unfortunately she is terminally ill and must be assisted by a dead man whose brain is wired to hour easy listening music margaret atwood the handmaid s tale a story based on the premise that the us congress is mysteriously assassinated and fundamentalists quickly take charge of the nation to set it right again the book is the diary of a woman s life as she tries to live under the new christian theocracy women s right to own property is revoked and their bank accounts are closed sinful luxuries are outlawed and the radio is only used for readings from the bible crimes are punished retroactively doctors who performed legal abortions in the old world are hunted down and hanged atwood s writing style is difficult to get used to at first but the tale grows more and more chilling as it goes on various authors the bible this somewhat dull and rambling work has often been criticized however it is probably worth reading if only so that you ll know what all the fuss is about it exists in many different versions so make sure you get the one true version books non fiction peter de rosa vicars of christ bantam press although de rosa seems to be christian or even catholic this is a very enlighting history of papal immoralities adulteries fallacies etc german translation gottes erste diener die dunkle seite des papsttums droemer knaur michael martin atheism a philosophical justification temple university press philadelphia usa a detailed and scholarly justification of atheism contains an outstanding appendix defining terminology and usage in this necessarily tendentious area argues both for negative atheism i e the non belief in the existence of god s and also for positive atheism the belief in the non existence of god s includes great refutations of the most challenging arguments for god particular attention is paid to refuting contempory theists such as platinga and swinburne pages isbn hardcover paperback also available the case against christianity temple university press a comprehensive critique of christianity in which he considers the best contemporary defences of christianity and ultimately demonstrates that they are unsupportable and or incoherent pages isbn james turner without god without creed the johns hopkins university press baltimore md usa subtitled the origins of unbelief in america examines the way in which unbelief whether agnostic or atheistic became a mainstream alternative world view focusses on the period and while considering france and britain the emphasis is on american and particularly new england developments neither a religious history of secularization or atheism without god without creed is rather the intellectual history of the fate of a single idea the belief that god exists pages isbn hardcover x paper george seldes editor the great thoughts ballantine books new york usa a dictionary of quotations of a different kind concentrating on statements and writings which explicitly or implicitly present the person s philosophy and world view includes obscure and often suppressed opinions from many people for some popular observations traces the way in which various people expressed and twisted the idea over the centuries quite a number of the quotations are derived from cardiff s what great men think of religion and noyes views of religion pages isbn paper x richard swinburne the existence of god revised edition clarendon paperbacks oxford this book is the second volume in a trilogy that began with the coherence of theism and was concluded with faith and reason in this work swinburne attempts to construct a series of inductive arguments for the existence of god his arguments which are somewhat tendentious and rely upon the imputation of late th century western christian values and aesthetics to a god which is supposedly as simple as can be conceived were decisively rejected in mackie s the miracle of theism in the revised edition of the existence of god swinburne includes an appendix in which he makes a somewhat incoherent attempt to rebut mackie j l mackie the miracle of theism oxford this posthumous volume contains a comprehensive review of the principal arguments for and against the existence of god it ranges from the classical philosophical positions of descartes anselm berkeley hume et al through the moral arguments of newman kant and sidgwick to the recent restatements of the classical theses by plantinga and swinburne it also addresses those positions which push the concept of god beyond the realm of the rational such as those of kierkegaard kung and philips as well as replacements for god such as lelie s axiarchism the book is a delight to read less formalistic and better written than martin s works and refreshingly direct when compared with the hand waving of swinburne james a haught holy horrors an illustrated history of religious murder and madness prometheus books looks at religious persecution from ancient times to the present day and not only by christians library of congress catalog card number norm r allen jr african american humanism an anthology see the listing for african americans for humanism above gordon stein an anthology of atheism and rationalism prometheus books an anthology covering a wide range of subjects including the devil evil and morality and the history of freethought comprehensive bibliography edmund d cohen the mind of the bible believer prometheus books a study of why people become christian fundamentalists and what effect it has on them george h smith atheism the case against god prometheus books describes the positions of atheism theism and agnosticism reviews many of the arguments used in favour of the existence of god concludes with an assessment of the impact of god on people s lives net resources there s a small mail based archive server at mantis co uk which carries archives of old alt atheism moderated articles and assorted other files for more information send mail to archive server mantis co uk saying help send atheism index and it will mail back a reply mathew
alt.atheism	alt atheism faq overview for new readers archive name atheism overview alt atheism archive name overview last modified april version overview welcome to alt atheism and alt atheism moderated this is the first in a series of regular postings aimed at new readers of the newsgroups many groups of a controversial nature have noticed that new readers often come up with the same questions mis statements or misconceptions and post them to the net in addition people often request information which has been posted time and time again in order to try and cut down on this the alt atheism groups have a series of five regular postings under the following titles alt atheism faq overview for new readers alt atheism faq introduction to atheism alt atheism faq frequently asked questions faq alt atheism faq constructing a logical argument alt atheism faq atheist resources this is article number please read numbers and before posting the others are entirely optional if you are new to usenet 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psuvm psu edu john a johnson dgraham bmers bnr ca douglas graham mayne open cs fsu edu william mayne ajr bigbird hri com andy rosen stoesser ira uka de achim stoesser bosullvn unix tcd ie bryan o sullivan lippard ccit arizona edu james j lippard s b rigel tamu edu s baum ydobyns phoenix princeton edu york h dobyns schroede sdsc edu wayne schroeder baldwin csservera usna navy mil j d baldwin d nibby unhh unh edu dana nibby dempsey kodak com richard c dempsey jmunch hertz elee calpoly edu john david munch pdc dcs ed ac uk paul crowley rz mips complang tuwien ac at richard zach tycchow math mit edu tim chow simon dcs warwick ac uk simon clippingdale phimanen cc helsinki fi pekka himanen and countless others i ve forgotten these articles are free truly free you may copy them and distribute them to anyone you wish however please send any changes or corrections to the author and please do not re post copies of the articles to alt atheism it does nobody any good to have multiple versions of the same document floating around the network finding stuff all of the faq files should be somewhere on your news system here are some suggestions on what to do if you can t find them check the newsgroup alt atheism look for subject lines starting with alt atheism faq check the newsgroup news answers for the same subject lines if you don t find anything in steps or your news system isn t set up correctly and you may wish to tell your system administrator about the problem if you have anonymous ftp access connect to rtfm mit edu go to the directory pub usenet alt atheism and you ll find the latest versions of the faq files there ftp is a a way of copying files between networked computers if you need help in using or getting started with ftp send e mail to mail server rtfm mit edu with send usenet news answers ftp list faq in the body there are other sites which also carry news answers postings the article introduction to the news answers newsgroup carries a list of these sites the article is posted regularly to news answers if you don t have ftp send mail to mail server rtfm mit edu consisting of the following lines send usenet news answers finding sources send usenet alt atheism faq send usenet alt atheism introduction send usenet alt atheism logic send usenet alt atheism resources penultimate resort send mail to mail server mantis co uk consisting of the following lines send atheism faq faq txt send atheism faq logic txt send atheism faq intro txt send atheism faq resource txt and our poor overworked modems will try and send you a copy of the files there s other stuff too interesting commands to try are help and send atheism index last resort mail mathew mantis co uk or post an article to the newsgroup asking how you can get the faq files you should only do this if you ve tried the above methods and they ve failed it s not nice to clutter the newsgroup or people s mailboxes with requests for files it s better than posting without reading the faq though for 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alt.atheism	re after years can we say that christian morality is in sandvik sandvik kent apple com sandvik newton apple com kent sandvik writes in article markp avignon markp avignon mark pundurs wrote you take lsd and it skews your perception of reality you come down and your perceptions unskew i ve never taken lsd but read about the strange lifes and times of the ashbury heights culture something that was usually profound was the way these lsd trippers mentioned that after their first trip they changed their view of the world in other words taking lsd would change their reference frames which would indicate that deep changes due to let us say rewiring of the brain temporarily will indeed change frames and this leads to the statement that there is no solid reference frame the lsd trippers modified their relative view much of the haight ashbury crowd probably had pre existing dissatisfactions with their lives dissatisfactions ameliorated by mumbo jumbo about new realities the only change i experienced after lsd was to gain the knowledge that i didn t enjoy how lsd twisted my perception mark pundurs any resemblance between my opinions and those of wolfram research inc is purely coincidental
alt.atheism	re genocide is caused by theism evidence on apr gmt bobbe vice robert beauchaine lp a yayg said execellent examples of luther s insane rantings deleted gee i m sooooo surprised that they don t teach this part of his ideology in high schools today ed mccreary o edm twisto compaq com if it were not for laughter there would be no tao
alt.atheism	re thoughts on christians on wed apr gmt sandvik newton apple com kent sandvik wrote in article c rgkb fs darkside osrhe uoknor edu bil okcforum osrhe edu re conner s questioning of the blissful afterlife as a reason why many joined the early xian church well as i remember jacoby s mythmaker talks about this to cite one source but i m not sure if all christians have read this book in addition my social experiences is from being raised and educated as a lutheran having a lot of christian friends and i even have played in two christian rock bands do you mean hyam maccoby s the mythmaker mike mcangus the truth is still the truth mam mouse cmhnet org even if you choose to ignore it some of the old sig viruses are still the best
alt.atheism	re death penalty was re political atheists on tue apr gmt bil okcforum osrhe edu bill conner wrote this is fascinating atheists argue for abortion defend homosexuality as a means of population control insist that the only values are biological and condemn war and capital punishment according to benedikt if something is contardictory it cannot exist which in this case means atheists i suppose what atheists are you talking about imnsho abortion is the womans choice homosexual sex is the choice of the people involved war is sometimes necessary this leaves capital punishment i oppose capital punishemnt because mistakes can happen yes this thread went around with no resolution recently as far as poplulation control i think contraception and education are the best courses of action i would like to understand how an atheist can object to war an excellent means of controlling population growth or to capital punishment i m sorry but the logic escapes me that s because you are again making the assumption that all atheists have some specific mindset and why just capital punishment what is being questioned here the propriety of killing or of punishment what is the basis of the ecomplaint mistakes can happen bill and i could be the victim of such a mistake mike mcangus the truth is still the truth mam mouse cmhnet org even if you choose to ignore it some of the old sig viruses are still the best
alt.atheism	re americans and evolution on tue apr gmt bil okcforum osrhe edu bill conner wrote robert singleton bobs thnext mit edu wrote sure it isn t mutually exclusive but it lends weight to i e increases notional running estimates of the posterior probability of the atheist s pitch in the partition and thus necessarily reduces the same quantity in the theist s pitch this is because the divine component falls prey to ockham s razor the phenomenon being satisfactorily explained without it and there being no independent evidence of any such component more detail in the next post occam s razor is not a law of nature it is way of analyzing an argument even so it interesting how often it s cited here and to what end it seems odd that religion is simultaneously condemned as being primitive simple minded and unscientific anti intellectual and childish and yet again condemned as being too complex occam s razor the scientific explanation of things being much more straightforeward and apparently simpler cute characterization bill however there is no inconsistency between the two statements even if one believes that religion is primitive simple minded and unscientific anti intellectual and childish one can still hold the view that religion also adds an unnecessary level of complexity to the explanation the ideas themselves don t have to be complex before being excised by occam s razor they only have to add unnecessarily to the overall complexity of the description which is it to be which is the non essential and how do you know i think the non essential part of an explanatory system is one that adds no predictive capability to the system considering that even scientists don t fully comprehend science due to its complexity and diversity maybe william of occam has performed a lobotomy kept the frontal lobe and thrown everything else away huh this is all very confusing i m sure one of you will straighten me out tough watch it your freudian slip is showing mike mcangus the truth is still the truth mam mouse cmhnet org even if you choose to ignore it some of the old sig viruses are still the best
alt.atheism	re christian morality is on apr gmt dps nasa kodak com dan schaertel wrote in article vice ico tek com bobbe vice ico tek com robert beauchaine writes yet i am still not a believer is god not concerned with my disposition why is it beneath him to provide me with the evidence i would require to believe the evidence that my personality given to me by this god would find compelling the fact is god could cause you to believe anything he wants you to but think about it for a minute would you rather have someone love you because you made them love you or because they wanted to love you the responsibility is on you to love god and take a step toward him he promises to be there for you but you have to look for yourself those who doubt this or dispute it have not givin it a sincere effort i and many others on a a have described how we have tried to find god are you saying our efforts have not been sincere for all the effort i have put in there has been no outward nor inward change that i can perceive what s a sincerely searching agnostic or atheist supposed to do when even the search turns up nothing simple logic arguments are folly if you read the bible you will see that jesus made fools of those who tried to trick him with logic our ability to reason is just a spec of creation yet some think it is the ultimate if you rely simply on your reason then you will never know more than you do now to learn you must accept that which you don t know how do you accept that which you don t know do you mean that i must believe in your god in order to believe in your god mike mcangus the truth is still the truth mam mouse cmhnet org even if you choose to ignore it some of the old sig viruses are still the best
alt.atheism	hard soft strong weak kiss on apr gmt timmbake mcl ucsb edu bake timmons wrote mccullou whipple cs wisc edu writes writing to someone else but you probably like me seem to be a soft atheist sorry for the flamage can we get back to using the terms strong atheist and weak atheist rather than this hard atheist and soft atheist i can imagine future discussions with newbies where there is confusion because of the multiplication of descriptions rest deleted mike mcangus the truth is still the truth mam mouse cmhnet org even if you choose to ignore it some of the old sig viruses are still the best
alt.atheism	re after years can we say that christian morality is arromdee jyusenkyou cs jhu edu ken arromdee writes simple take out some physics books and start looking for statements which say that there is no objective physics i doubt you will find any you might find statements that there is no objective length or no objective location but no objective physics perhaps you have a different understanding of what physics is if we can t measure anything objectively then the answers we get from physics aren t objective either that s what i mean when i say there s no objective physics sure we can all agree that say f gmm r but that s maths it s only physics when you relate it to the real world and if we can t do that objectively we re stuck of course this displays my blatant bias towards applied science but even theoretical physics gets applied to models of real world situations based on real world observations consider for instance that speed of light in vacuum is invariant this sounds an awful lot like an objective speed of light in vacuum it s an axiom that it s invariant but if the two of us measure it we ll get different answers yes we call that experimental error but it s not really error in the conventional sense in fact if you don t get any that s an error you could argue that the value of c is objective to within some value but i d call that a rather odd usage of the word objective and it opens the way for statements like murder is objectively wrong for all people to within of the total population mathew
alt.atheism	re burden of proof watson sce carleton ca stephen watson writes kmr po cwru edu keith m ryan writes in article healta saturn wwc edu healta saturn wwc edu tammy r healy writes fbi officials said cult leader david koresh may have forced followers to remain as flames closed in koresh s armed guard may have injected as many as children with poison to quiet them do the fbi have proof of this yet why ask me i am only quoting the fbi official why not ask the fbi myabe they re lying to cover up or maybe they re telling the truth the children were of course killed by a lone gunman in a second story window who fired eight bullets in the space of two seconds mathew
alt.atheism	re cults vs religions mangoe cs umd edu charley wingate writes to the media religion and cult have about the same relative connotations as government and terrorist group yes each is a form of the other charley an anarchist no just true words being spoken in jest mathew
alt.atheism	re gulf war and peace niks mccullou snake cs wisc edu mark mccullough writes we seem to be agreeing that the soldiers were just doing their job as best they could following orders proof positive that some people are beyond satire mathew
alt.atheism	re are atoms real was re after years blah blah blah kempmp phoenix oulu fi petri pihko writes mathew mathew mantis co uk wrote what is the difference between a chemist and someone who is taught chemistry at say cambridge university put like this i can t answer i was originally pointing out that your attitude seemed to be i don t know if it really was that chemists tend to ignore all kinds of effects when they re not important yes all scientists do otherwise science would never get anywhere your original posting stated that when doing chemistry it is common to ignore atomic interactions hang about not atomic interactions in general just specific ones which are deemed unimportant like gravitational interactions between ions which are so small they re drowned out by electrostatic effects and so on has there been some revolution in teaching methods in the last four years perhaps this revolution has yet to reach cambridge my now i ll get flamed for sure oh probably they still make people memorize equations and ir spectra maybe in a few decades they ll discover the revolutionary data book technique bitter and twisted mathew
alt.atheism	re history texts was ancient references to christianity i wrote the diaries of the followers of the maharishi formerly of oregon are historical evidence in article p psilink com robert knowles p psilink com writes are you confusing bhagwan rajneesh sp with the maharishi mahesh yogi here by any chance i believe that maharishi is titular someone please correct me if i am wrong thus maharishi rajneesh is a different person from maharishi mahesh but they are both maharishis russell
alt.atheism	re after years can we say that christian morality is in article r kh itp horus ap mchp sni de frank d s uucp frank o dwyer says specifically i d like to know what relativism concludes when two people grotesquely disagree is it a both are right b one of them is wrong and sometimes though perhaps rarely we have a pretty good idea who it is c one of them is wrong but we never have any information as to who so we make our best guess if we really must make a decision d the idea of a right moral judgement is meaningless implying that whether peace is better than war e g is a meaningless question and need not be discussed for it has no correct answer e something else a short positive assertion would be nice as i hope you can tell b and c are actually predicated on the assumption that values are real so statements like these can t consistently derive from the relativist assumption that values aren t part of objective reality i am a relativist who would like to answer your question but the way you phrase the question makes it unanswerable the concepts of right and wrong or correct incorrect or true false belong to the domain of epistemological rather than moral questions it makes no sense to ask if a moral position is right or wrong although it is legitimate to ask if it is good or better than another position let me illustrate this point by looking at the psychological derivatives of epistemology and ethics perception and motivation respectively one can certainly ask if a percept is right correct true veridical or wrong incorrect false illusory but it makes little sense to ask if a motive is true or false on the other hand it is strange to ask whether a percept is morally good or evil but one can certainly ask that question about motives therefore your suggested answers a c simply can t be considered they assume you can judge the correctness of a moral judgment now the problem with d is that it is double barrelled i agree with the first part that the rightness of a moral position is a meaningless question for the reasons stated above but that is irrelevant to the alleged implication not an implication at all that one cannot feel peace is better than war i certainly can make value judgments bad better best without asserting the correctness of the position sorry for the lengthy dismissal of a d my short e answer is that when two individuals grotesquely disagree on a moral issue neither is right correct or wrong incorrect they simply hold different moral values feelings john a johnson j j psuvm psu edu department of psychology penn state dubois campus penn state is not responsible for my behavior a ruthless doctrinaire avoidance of degeneracy is a degeneracy of another sort getting drunk and picking up bar ladies and writing metaphysics is a part of life from lila by r pirsig
alt.atheism	re after years can we say that christian morality is this is swf in another indirect post via dan in article apr asl dl nec com duffy aslss asl dl nec com joseph duffy writes in article apr microsoft com russpj microsoft com russ paul jones writes the same way that any theory is proven false you examine the predicitions that the theory makes and try to observe them if you don t or if you observe things that the theory predicts wouldn t happen then you have some evidence against the theory if the theory can t be modified to incorporate the new observations then you say that it is false but how does one handle the nonrepeatability of the experiment in many types of experiments the prediction is that the observed phenomena will happen again and be capable of being observed for example in chemistry someone may predict the outcome of a chemical reaction and then actually observe that reaction repeatedly there are several problems here first you are discussing only experimental procedures observational procedures are also useful the main criterion is attempting to verify an idea by using it to make prediction about as yet unmade observations the observations could be the result of an experiment or they could be obsevations of activity occuring spontaneossly in nature or they could even be observations of the lasting results of events long past all that matters is that the observations be new this is what prediction is about in science it is not about predicting the future except in this very restricted sense secondly repeatability can also take many forms it is really just the requirement that independent observers be able to verify the results the observation of a fossil is repeatable since any qualified observer may look at it this is why the specimens are reqtined in a museum also there is the implicit prediction that future fossil finds will correspond to the current one new fossils are found often enough that this is tested regularly many times a new fossil actually falsifies some conclusion made on the basis of previous fossils unfortunately for you the models that were falsified have alway been peripheral to the model of evolution we now have for instance the front legs of tyrannosaurus rex turned out to have tremendous muscles rather than being weakly endowed as previously believed so in fact histoircal science findings are repeatable in the necessary sense just becuase you cannot go out and repeat the original event does not make it impossible to make valid observations this is not to say that biologists would not go coo coo if extra terrestrial life were discovered that could make the determination of the process of abiogenesis relatively easy sarima teradata com formerly tdatirv sarima or stanley friesen elsegundoca ncr com sarima teradata com formerly tdatirv sarima or stanley friesen elsegundoca ncr com
alt.atheism	re yet more rushdie re islamic law in article apr monu cc monash edu au darice yoyo cc monash edu au fred rice writes the intent of my post as i remember it was to show that you cannot argue against any religion or ideology for that matter by the actions of those who claim to be its followers you have to look at the teachings of the religion or the principles of the ideology itself there is no getting around this so to argue against islam you have to go to the qur an bringing up khomeini or anyone else is relevant to discussing khomeini but not necessarily relevant to discussing islam as a religion sorry fred but for the purposes under discussion here i must disagree your point is true only in the sense that one cannot argue against communism by reference to the chinese or soviet empires since those did not represent true communism in judging the practical consequences of islam as a force to contend with in the world today it is precisely the khomeini s of the world the rushdie fatwa supporters and perhaps more importantly the reaction of the world muslim community to those extremists that we must look to perhaps unfortunately from your perspective most people are not concerned with whether islam is the right religion for them or whether the qur an could be used as a guidebook for a hypothetical utopia but how islam affects the world around them or what their lives might be like if islam gains in influence when i consider such possibilities it is with not inconsiderable fear jim perry perry dsinc com decision support inc matthews nc these are my opinions for a nominal fee they can be yours
alt.atheism	re hoban was re the inimitable rushdie in article bu edu jaeger buphy bu edu gregg jaeger writes interchange on hoban deleted this post of mine also illustrates that i am not simply a reactionary who hates any book which doesn t go out of its way to avoid upsetting religionists only those you haven t actually read sorry but the irony remains i reiterate for the nth time also that i don t agree with k s fatwa nor do i support censorship my point in the original thread has been to show why rushdie is not particularly due sympathy by those who hold their religion in high esteem and don t enjoy seeing things which slander it like the story of the satanic verses as opposed to the rushdie s tsv played with for amusement so although you don t agree with the fatwa and apparently don t think rushdie should be killed for his book yet you think he is not due sympathy for being being under this threat furthermore you base this reaction solely on the fact that he wrote about a particular well known story which if true might reflect poorly on the absolute truth of your religion yet this opinion is formed without recourse to actually looking to see how the story is used in context accepting at face value the widespread propaganda on just what this book contains and what the author s motivations are and then you come forward and recommend another book which touches on presumably plays with religious historical material because you find its overall presentation neutral jim perry perry dsinc com decision support inc matthews nc these are my opinions for a nominal fee they can be yours
alt.atheism	re death penalty was re political atheists bil okcforum osrhe edu bill conner writes this is fascinating atheists argue for abortion defend homosexuality as a means of population control insist that the only values are biological and condemn war and capital punishment according to benedikt if something is contardictory it cannot exist which in this case means atheists i suppose i would like to understand how an atheist can object to war an excellent means of controlling population growth or to capital punishment i m sorry but the logic escapes me first you seem to assume all atheists think alike an atheist does not believe in the existence of a god our opinions on issues such as capital punishment and abortion however vary greatly if you were attacking the views of a particular atheist benedikt i presume then please present your argument as such and do not lump us all together as for the issues let s start with abortion personally i do not support abortion as a means of population control or contraception after the fact however i support the right of any woman to have an abortion regardless of what my personal views may be because it would be arrogant of me to tell any individual what he she may or may not do to his her body and the domain of legislators should not extend into the uterus that s my opinion and i am sure many atheists and theists would disagree with me i do not defend homosexuality as a means of population control but i certainly defend it as an end to itself i think most homosexuals would be angered to hear of anyone characterizing their personal relationship as nothing more than a conscious effort to keep population levels down as for atheists believing all values are biological i have no idea what you re talking about finally there are the issues of war and capital punishment an atheist can object to either one just as easily as a theist might you seem to be hung up on some supposed conspiratorial link between atheism and population control could this be the atheist cause you were referring to a few posts back kevin marshall computer science department virginia tech marshall csugrad cs vt edu blacksburg virginia
alt.atheism	re faith and dogma tgk cs toronto edu todd kelley writes faith and dogma are irrational the faith and dogma part of any religion are responsible for the irrationality of the individuals i disagree in the end the individual is responsible for his her own irrationality the individual s belief in some dogmatic religion is a symptom of that irrationality have you noticed that philosophers tend to be atheists atheists and agnostics i would imagine but yes that was my point an atheist would theoretically be just as ill equipped to study the philosophy of religion as a christian and yet there is a persistence of atheists among the ranks of philosophers therefore the conflict between one s religious beliefs or lack thereof and the ability to be a philosopher must not be as great as you assert the fact that most philosophers may be non religious was a secondary point science as would be practiced by atheists in contrast has a built in defence against faith and dogma as opposed to science practiced by theists be careful here science does have a built in defence against faith and dogma skepticism unfortunately it is not foolproof there is that wonderful little creature known as the theory many of us believe in the theory of evolution we have no absolute proof that this theory is true so why do we believe it because it makes more sense than there is quite a bit of faith involved here a scientist holds sacred the idea that beliefs should change to suit whatever is the best information available at the time and and and a scientist understands that any current beliefs are deficient in some way well not all current beliefs are deficient but basically i agree can you see the difference science views beliefs as being flawed and new information can be obtained to improve them ideally this is true in reality though you have to acknowledge that scientists are human scientists have egos and biases some scientists assume a particular theory is true refuse to admit the flaws in that theory because of ego problems or whatever and proceed to spend their time and money trying to come up with absolute proof for the theory remember cold fusion by the way i wasn t aware mass suicide was a problem waco and jonestown were isolated incidents mass suicides are far from common clinton and the fbi would love for you to convince them of this it would save the us taxpayer a lot of money if you could not really i agree that we spent far too much money on the waco crisis i believe especially considering the outcome my point was that mass suicides in the u s are rare jonestown was in guyana incidentally although we footed the bill for the clean up and the u s has far more important issues to address compare the number of u s citizens who have died in mass suicides with say the number of u s soldiers who died during one week of the vietnam war and you will see my point kevin marshall computer science department virginia tech marshall csugrad cs vt edu blacksburg virginia
alt.atheism	re rawlins debunks creationism in article r dglinnkv ctron news ctron com king ctron com john e king writes kv iastate edu warren vonroeschlaub writes neither i nor webster s has ever heard of francis hitchings who is he please do not answer with a well known evolutionist or some other such informationless phrase he is a paleontologist and author of the neck of the giraffe the quote was taken from pg jack for your information i checked the library of congress catalog and they list the following books by francis hitching earth magic the neck of the giraffe or where darwin went wrong pendulum the psi connection the world atlas of mysteries tom scharle scharle irishmvs room g computing center scharle lukasiewicz cc nd edu university of notre dame notre dame in usa
alt.atheism	re rawlins debunks creationism in article ursa bear com halat pooh bears jim halat writes in article c sncl j o usenet ucs indiana edu adpeters sunflower bio indiana edu andy peters writes evolution as i have said before is theory and fact it is exactly the same amount of each as the existence of atoms and the existence of gravity if you accept the existence of atoms and gravity as fact then you should also accept the existence of evolution as fact andy i don t accept atoms or gravity as fact either they are extremely useful mathematical models to describe physical observations we can make other posters have aptly explained the atomic model gravity too is very much a theory no gravity waves have even been detected but we have a very useful model that describes much of the behavior on objects by this thing we call gravity gravity however is not a fact it is a theoretical model used to talk about how objects behave in our physical environment newton thought gravity was a simple vector force einstein a wave both are very useful models that have no religious overtones or requirements of faith unless of course you want to demand that it is a factual physical entity described exactly the way the theory now formulated talks about it that takes a great leap of faith which of course is what religion takes evolution is no different jim halat halat bear com bear stearns whatever doesn t kill you will only serve to annoy you nyc i speak only for myself what do you accept as a fact the roundness of the earth after all the ancient greeks thought it was a sphere and then newton said it was a spheroid and now people say it s a geoid yourself isn t your personal identity just a theoretical construct to make sense of memories feelings perceptions i m trying to think of anything that would be a fact for you give some examples and let s see how factual they are by your criteria btw what are your criteria gravity is not a fact is that a fact how about newton s and einstein s thoughts about gravity is it a fact that they had those thoughts i don t see how any of the things that you are asserting are any more factual than things like gravity atoms or evolution in short before i am willing to consider your concept of what a fact is i m going to have to have as a minimum some examples of what you think are facts tom scharle scharle irishmvs room g computing center scharle lukasiewicz cc nd edu university of notre dame notre dame in usa
alt.atheism	re mottos to replace in dog we trust pepke dirac scri fsu edu eric pepke writes in mammon we trust hey this is just a piece of paper spend me quickly this is your god from john carpenter s they live natch steve the lurking horror stelter sjs uxa cso uiuc edu
alt.atheism	re fake god holy lies in article apr zeus calpoly edu dmcaloon tuba calpoly edu david mcaloon writes remember einstien said imagination is greater than knowledge then einstein should have had lunch with me at the tien fu on castro street yesterday when they handed me a fortune cookie that said he who has imagination but not knowledge has wings but no feet jon
alt.atheism	re free moral agency see i told you there was an atheist mythology thanks for proving my point bill
alt.atheism	re free moral agency maddi hausmann madhaus netcom com wrote but how do we know that you re representing the real christians bill you re an asshole get lost maddi i see that you still can t grasp the obvious is it because your are devious by nature or can you only find fault with an argument by misrepresenting it i plainly said that i was stating the christian position as i understand it i did not say whether i agree with it since my point was that the only flaws in that position are those atheists invent i have never claimed to be an expert on anything and especially christianity but i have made it an object of pretty intense study over the years so i feel qualified to discuss what its general propositions are what offends you is that i have exposed the distortions and misrepresentations of christianity you contrive and then rail against which seems more like the classical strawman dodge than what i said this leaves you with nothing but to attack but me as usual you avoid the larger issues by picking away at the insignificant stuff why not find one particular thing in my post that we can discuss or can you even tell me what the issues are bill
alt.atheism	re free moral agency in article c uul n c darkside osrhe uoknor edu bil okcforum osrhe edu bill conner writes many of the atheists posting here argue against their own parody of religion they create some ridiculous caricature of a religion and then attack the believers within that religion and the religion itself as ridiculous by their own devices they establish a new religion a mythology you mean bobby mozumder is a myth we wondered about that the point of course is to erect an easy target and deflect the disputants away from the real issue atheism the fictional christian or moslem or jew who is supposed to believe the distorted representation of their beliefs presented here is therefore made to seem a fool and his her arguments can thereby be made to appear ludicrous the mythology is the misrepresentations of religion used here as fact you mean bobby mozumder didn t really post here we wondered about that too so mr conner is bobby mozumder a myth a performing artist a real moslem a crackpot a provocateur you know everything and read all minds why don t you tell us jon
alt.atheism	re free moral agency in article c uul n c darkside osrhe uoknor edu bil okcforum osrhe edu bill conner writes many of the atheists posting here argue against their own parody of religion they create some ridiculous caricature of a religion and then attack the believers within that religion and the religion itself as ridiculous by their own devices they establish a new religion a mythology that is not an atheism mythology in any sense of the word religious paradoy would be significantly more appropriate the nd part is rendered null and void by the simple fact that i do know several strong atheists i am sure that others do i myself am strong in the sense that i find the standard concept of god without any meaning any attempt to bring meaning either results in the destruction of the viability of language or in internal self contradiction the concept of strong atheism is not just a whimsical fantasy they and i exist your strawman is pointless and weak private note to jennifer fakult this post may contain one or more of the following sarcasm cycnicism irony or humor please be aware of this possibility and do not allow yourself to be confused and or thrown for a loop if in doubt assume all of the above the owners of this account do not take any responsiblity for your own confusion which may result from your inability to recognize any of the above read at your own risk jennifer
alt.atheism	re free moral agency in article c uxj pj darkside osrhe uoknor edu bil okcforum osrhe edu bill conner writes see i told you there was an atheist mythology thanks for proving my point bill considering what you quoted and refered to was blank i must say touche of course you are correct there is no atheistic mythology employed on this board or if there is it is null and void private note to jennifer fakult this post may contain one or more of the following sarcasm cycnicism irony or humor please be aware of this possibility and do not allow yourself to be confused and or thrown for a loop if in doubt assume all of the above the owners of this account do not take any responsiblity for your own confusion which may result from your inability to recognize any of the above read at your own risk jennifer
alt.atheism	re free moral agency in article c uzpe p darkside osrhe uoknor edu bil okcforum osrhe edu bill conner writes what offends you is that i have exposed the distortions and misrepresentations of christianity you contrive and then rail against which seems more like the classical strawman dodge than what i said this leaves you with nothing but to attack but me as usual you avoid the larger issues by picking away at the insignificant stuff why not find one particular thing in my post that we can discuss or can you even tell me what the issues are let me guess you re not a psycho analyst in real life but you play one on alt atheism right is esp something you have been given by god private note to jennifer fakult this post may contain one or more of the following sarcasm cycnicism irony or humor please be aware of this possibility and do not allow yourself to be confused and or thrown for a loop if in doubt assume all of the above the owners of this account do not take any responsiblity for your own confusion which may result from your inability to recognize any of the above read at your own risk jennifer
alt.atheism	re death penalty gulf war long in article apr daffy cs wisc edu mccullou snake cs wisc edu mark mccullough writes in article optima cs arizona edu sham cs arizona edu shamim zvonko mohamed writes bullshit in the gulf massacre of all ordnance used was smart the rest that s was just regular dumb ol iron bombs and stuff i have heard figures closer to and of the that was the smart stuff hit again try to follow me here that means of this smart arsenal missed most figures i have seen place the hit ratio close to which is still far higher than your i have a source that says that to date the civilian death count er excuse me i mean collateral damage is about i have never seen any source that was claiming such a figure please post the source so its reliability can be judged obviously we have different sources bill moyers who happens to be a theist to tie this to alt atheism in his pbs documentary after the war is my main source i think i still have it on videotape others include the nation and the progressive the rest of the article is mere rationalisation you may claim that sanitation plants are strategic legitimate targets but what happens to the civilians in a city with no sewer system what happens to the civilians when you destroy water purification plants and when hospitals can t handle the resultant epidemics because there is no more electricity and what exactly are your sources we have all i m sure seen postol s interviews in the media where he demostrates how the pentagon lied about the patriot s effectiveness what is your source for the effectiveness you claim in any case i don t know if this is relevant to alt atheism how about if we move it somewhere else s shamim mohamed uunet noao cmcl arizona shamim shamim cs arizona edu take this cross and garlic here s a mezuzah if he s jewish a page of the koran if he s a muslim and if he s a zen buddhist you re on your own member of the league for programming freedom write to lpf uunet uu net
alt.atheism	re the qur an and atheists was re jewish settlers demolish a mosque in gaza in article p psilink com robert knowles p psilink com writes date sun apr gmt from fred rice darice yoyo cc monash edu au the qur an talks about those who take their lusts and worldly desires for their god i think this probably encompasses most atheists fred rice darice yoyo cc monash edu au as well as all the muslim men screwing fourteen year old prostitutes in thailand got a better quote i wonder if the above quote forms the justification for athiesm and the equanimity with which their belief is arrived at
alt.atheism	re free moral agency andrew newell tan psuvm psu edu wrote i think you re letting atheist mythology confuse you on the issue of webster myth a traditional or legendary story a belief whose truth is accepted uncritically how does that qualify indeed it s almost oxymoronic a rather amusing instance i ve found that most atheists hold almost no atheist views as accepted uncritically especially the few that are legend many are trying to explain basic truths as myths do but they don t meet the other criterions andrew the myth to which i refer is the convoluted counterfeit athiests have created to make religion appear absurd rather than approach religion including christainity in a rational manner and debating its claims as the are stated atheists concoct outrageous parodies and then hold the religious accountable for beliefs they don t have what is more accurately oxymoric is the a term like reasonable atheist bill divine justice according to the most fundamental doctrines of christianity when the first man sinned he was at that time the you accuse him of referencing mythology then you procede to launch your own xtian mythology this time meeting all the requirements of myth here s a good example of of what i said above read the post again i said acoording to which means i am referring to christian doctrine as i understand it if i am speaking for myself you ll know it my purpose in posting was to present a basic overview of christain doctrines since it seemed germane bill with those who pretend not to know what is being said and what it means when atheists claim that they do not know if god exists and don t know what he wants they contradict the bible which clearly says that everyone knows the authority of the bible is its claim to be should i repeat what i wrote above for the sake of getting it across you may trust the bible but your trusting it doesn t make it any more credible to me if the bible says that everyone knows that s clearly reason to doubt the bible because not everyone knows your alleged god s alleged existance again i am paraphrasing christian doctrine which is very clear on this point your dispute is not with me bill refuted while the species wide condemnation is justified those that claim that there is no evidence for the existence of god or that his will is unknown must deliberately ignore the bible the ignorance itself is no excuse no they don t have to ignore the bible the bible is far from universally accepted the bible is not a proof of god it is only a proof that some people have thought that there was a god or does it prove even that they might have been writing it as series of fiction short stories as in the case of dionetics assuming the writers believed it the only thing it could possibly prove is that they believed it and that s ignoring the problem of whether or not all the interpretations and biblical philosophers were correct there are people who have truly never heard of the bible again read the faq here again you miss the point the bible itself is not the point it s what it contains it makes no difference who accpets the bible or even who s unaware of its existence christians hold that it applies universally because mankind shares the same nature and the same fate and the same innate knowledge of god see above if you read my post with same care as read the faq we wouldn t be having this conversation bill freedom you are free to ignore god in the same way you are free to ignore gravity and the consequences are inevitable and well known in both cases that an atheist can t accept the evidence means only bzzt wrong answer gravity is directly there it doesn t stop exerting a direct and rationally undeniable influence if you ignore it god on the other hand doesn t generally show up in the supermarket except on the tabloids god doesn t exert a rationally undeniable influence gravity is obvious gods aren t as i said the evidence is there you just don t accept it here at least we agree bill secondly human reason is very comforatble with the concept of god so much so that it is in itself intrinsic to our nature human reason always comes back to the question of god in every generation and in no human reason hasn t always come back to the existance of god it has usually come back to the existance of god in other words it doesn t generally come back to the xtian god it comes back to whether there is any god and in much of oriental philosophic history it generally doesn t pop up as the idea of a god so much as the question of what natural forces are and which ones are out there from a world wide view human nature just makes us wonder how the universe came to be and or what force s are currently in control a natural tendancy to believe in god only exists in religious wishful thinking yes human reason does always come back to the existence of god we re having this discussion are we not bill i said all this to make the point that christianity is eminently reasonable that divine justice is just and human nature is much different than what atheists think it is whether you agree or not you certainly are not correct on human nature you are at the least basing your views on a completely eurocentric approach try looking at the outside world as well when you attempt to sum up all of humanity well this is interesting truth is to be determined by it politically correct content granted it s extremely unhip to be a wasp male and anything european is contemptable but i thought this kind of dialogue the purpose of a a was to get at the truth of things but then i remember the oxymoron reasonalble atheist and i understand bill
alt.atheism	re free moral agency james felder spbach lerc nasa gov wrote are you saying that their was a physical adam and eve and that all humans are direct decendents of only these two human beings then who were cain and able s wives couldn t be their sisters because a e didn t have daughters were they non humans okay all humans are direct descendents of of a bunch of hopeful monsters the human race didn t evolve from one set parents but from thousands do you really base your atheist on this considering that something like out of humans on this planet don t know instinctively that the christian god exist the claim of instinctive knowledge doesn t look like it hold much water or are you saying that the billion non christians in the world must fight this instinctive urge to acknowledge god and jc did i say that people were christians by nature or did i say that christians hold that everyone knows of the god the christians worship i would have thought the distinction obvious sorry read my post again and see what i really said from what you ve written i think you are just being agumentative also your word wrap is screwed up or you need to shift to columns text bill
alt.atheism	re free moral agency kent sandvik sandvik newton apple com wrote i agree i had a hard feeling not believing my grand grand mother who told me of elves dancing outside barns in the early mornings i preferred not to accept it even if her statement provided the truth itself life is hard kent truly a brilliant rebuttal apparently you are of the opinion that ridicule is a suitable substitute for reason you ll find plenty of company a a bill
alt.atheism	re cruel kmr po cwru edu keith m ryan writes i don t think so although some forms of execution are painful the electric chair looks particularly so i think the pain is relatively short lived drawing and quartering on the other hand looks very painful and the victim wouldn t die right away he d bleed to death i d imagine ah so a cruel punishment is not just if it is painful as you origionally stated it is about long term pain eg non short lived why this sudden chance in your stance i don t think i ve changed my stance at all my original stance was that a painless execution was not a cruel one i didn t say what would be considered cruel only that a painless death wasn t now cruelty must involve some sort of suffering i believe i don t think someone that gets shot in the head or electrocuted really suffers very much even a hanging probably produces one sharp instance of pain but it s over so quickly hmmmmm pardon could it be that a counter example has been made which renders your previous stance null and void why don t you admit that your previous stance is incorrect or if you somehow managed to slip up and misstated your origional stance why not admit it no well again i stated that a painless death isn t cruel but i don t think i stated that all painful executions are cruel i think that some are cruel depending on the nature and duration of the pain by the way how long is too long anything more than an instant i guess any death by suffocation asphyxiation or blood loss would be cruel i think this includes the gas chamber and drawing and quartering i d say that any pain that lasts say over twenty seconds or so would be too long but this may be an arbitrary cutoff i suppose keith
alt.atheism	re christian morality is dan schaertel dps nasa kodak com wrote in article ousrvr oulu fi kempmp phoenix oulu fi petri pihko writes i love god just as much as she loves me if she wants to seduce me she ll know what to do but if he she did you would probably consider it rape of course not i would think that would be great fun not having ever felt the joy and peace the christians speak of with a longing gaze this is not what i got when i believed i just tried to hide my fear of getting punished for something i never was sure of the bible is hopelessly confusing for someone who wants to know for sure god did not answer in the end i found i had been following a mass delusion a lie i can t believe in a being who refuses to give a slightest hint of her existence obviously there are many christians who have tried and do believe so i suggest they should honestly reconsider the reasons why they believe and analyse their position in fact it is amusing to note in this context that many fundamentalist publications tell us exactly the opposite one should not examine one s belief critically i ll tell you something i left out of my testimony i posted to this group two months ago a day after i finally found out my faith is over i decided to try just one more time the same cycle of emotional responses fired once again but this time the delusion lasted only a couple of hours i told my friend in a phone that it really works thank god just to think about it again when i hung up i had to admit that i had lied and fallen prey to the same illusion no one asks you to swallow everything in fact jesus warns against it but let me ask you a question do you beleive what you learn in history class or for that matter anything in school i mean it s just what other people have told you and you don t want to swallow what others say right i used to believe what i read in books when i was younger or what other people told me but i grew more and more skeptical the more i read i learned what it means to use reason as a student of chemistry i had to perform a qualitative analysis of a mixture of two organic compounds in the lab i hated experiments like this they are old fashioned and increase the student s workload considerably besides i had to do it twice since i failed in my first attempt however i think i ll never forget the lesson no matter how strongly you believe the structure of the unknown is x it may still be y it is very tempting to jump into conclusions take a leap of faith assure oneself ignore the data which is inconsistent but it can still be wrong i found out that i was after all using exactly the same mechanism to believe in god mental self assurance suspension of fear filtering of information in other words it was only me no god playing any part the life death and resurection of christ is documented historical fact oh and i had better believe this dan many ufo stories are much better documented than the resurrection of jesus the resurrection is documented quite haphazardly in the bible it seems the authors did not pay too much attention to which wild rumour to leave out besides the ends of the gospels probably contain later additions and insertions for instance the end of mark is missing from many early texts says my bible jesus may have lived and died but he was probably misunderstood as much as anything else you learn how do you choose what to believe and what not to this is easy i believe that the world exists independent of my mind and that logic and reason can be used to interpret and analyse what i observe nothing else need to be taken on faith i will go by the evidence it makes no difference whether i believe george washington existed or not i assume that he did considering the vast amount of evidence presented there is no way to get into a sceptical heart you can not say you have given a sincere effort with the attitude you seem to have you must trust not just go to church and participate in it s activities were you ever willing to die for what you believed a liar how do you know what my attitude was try reading your bible again i was willing to die for my faith those who do are usually remembered as heroes at least among those who believe dan do you think i m lying when i say i believed firmly for years it seems it is very difficult to admit that someone who has really believed does not do so anymore but i can t go on lying to myself blind trust is dangerous and i was just another blind led by the blind but if god really wants me she ll know what to do i m willing i just don t know whether she exists looking at the available evidence it looks like she doesn t petri petri pihko kem pmp mathematics is the truth pihatie c finou oulu fi physics is the rule of sf oulu kempmp the game finland phoenix oulu fi chemistry is the game
alt.atheism	upi mother files complaint over boy scouts by default followups to newsgroups a short excerpt brookfield wis upi a mother has filed a complaint with the elmbrook school board alleging her son s elementary school and its parent teacher organization show discrimination by supporting the boy scouts gisele klemp said wednesday the pto s sponsorship of a boy scout troop and cub scout pack that meet at hillside elementary school in surbarban milwaukee is discrimination because the boy scouts ban homosexuals pto president gail pludeman disputed the charges of discrimination and said she believes the boy scouts are beneficial carl kadie i do not represent any organization this is just me kadie cs uiuc edu
alt.atheism	re free moral agency in article c v t dq darkside osrhe uoknor edu bil okcforum osrhe edu bill conner writes okay all humans are direct descendents of of a bunch of hopeful monsters the human race didn t evolve from one set parents but from thousands do you really base your atheist on this in article c v zp dq darkside osrhe uoknor edu bil okcforum osrhe edu bill conner writes truly a brilliant rebuttal apparently you are of the opinion that ridicule is a suitable substitute for reason you ll find plenty of company a a bill conner meet bill conner jon
alt.atheism	re after years can we say that christian morality is in article kmr po cwru edu kmr po cwru edu keith m ryan writes only when the sun starts to orbit the earth will i accept the bible did you forget that two spinning skaters are in orbit around each other
alt.atheism	re you will all go to hell in article apr wam umd edu willdb wam umd edu william david battles says in article apr ncsu edu aiken news ncsu edu wayne nmi aiken writes jsn psuvm psu edu wrote you blashephemers you will all go to hell for not believing in god e b prepared for your eternal damnation did someone leave their terminal unattended again probably not the jesus freak s post is probably jsn psuvm penn state is just loaded to the hilt with bible bangers i use to go there vomit and it was the reason i left they even had a group try to stop playing rock music in the dining halls one year cuz they deemed it satanic kampus krusade for khrist people run the damn place for the most part except the liberal arts departments they are the safe havens sounds like you were going to a different penn state or something kampus krusade for khrist is very vocal here but they really have little power to get anything done sometimes it seems like there are a lot of them because they re generally more vocal than their opposition but there really aren t that many krusaders the liberals tend to keep to themselves if they can help it since all they really want is to be allowed to go about their own lives the way they want to so you don t hear from or about most of them the bible bangers stand out because they want everyone to be forced to live according to bible banger rules the krusaders certainly don t run this place i d say we ve got a rather average mix of people here much like the rest of the u s and just like everywhere else some factions are louder than others andrew
alt.atheism	re free moral agency in article c v mr z darkside osrhe uoknor edu bil okcforum osrhe edu bill conner writes the myth to which i refer is the convoluted counterfeit athiests have created to make religion appear absurd rather than approach religion including christainity in a rational manner and debating its claims as the are stated atheists concoct outrageous parodies and then hold the religious accountable for beliefs they don t have what is more accurately oxymoric is the a term like reasonable atheist they are religious parodies not atheistic paradies please substantiate that they are parodies and are outrageous specifically why is the iup any more outrageous than many religions private note to jennifer fakult this post may contain one or more of the following sarcasm cycnicism irony or humor please be aware of this possibility and do not allow yourself to be confused and or thrown for a loop if in doubt assume all of the above the owners of this account do not take any responsiblity for your own confusion which may result from your inability to recognize any of the above read at your own risk jennifer
alt.atheism	re cruel in article r bkpinno s gap caltech edu keith cco caltech edu keith allan schneider writes no well again i stated that a painless death isn t cruel but i don t think i stated that all painful executions are cruel i think that some are cruel depending on the nature and duration of the pain but hanging is certainly painful or do you not let the condemned know they are going to die anything more than an instant i guess any death by suffocation asphyxiation or blood loss would be cruel i think this includes the gas chamber and drawing and quartering i d say that any pain that lasts say over twenty seconds or so would be too long but this may be an arbitrary cutoff i suppose hanging is not supposed to be very pleasant i believe that in actuality it is not quick and clean however gas chambers can be quite non painful heck why not give them a good time suffication by nitrious oxide private note to jennifer fakult this post may contain one or more of the following sarcasm cycnicism irony or humor please be aware of this possibility and do not allow yourself to be confused and or thrown for a loop if in doubt assume all of the above the owners of this account do not take any responsiblity for your own confusion which may result from your inability to recognize any of the above read at your own risk jennifer
alt.atheism	re books stuff about hard to find atheist books deleted perhaps the infiltration of fundies onto school boards city councils etc has something to do with why you can t find alternative media
alt.atheism	re cults vs religions bill ray ray engr latech edu wrote james thomas green jgreen trumpet calpoly edu wrote so in conclusion it can be shown that there is essentially no logical argument which clearly differentiates a cult from a religion i challenge anyone to produce a distinction which is clear and can t be easily knocked down how about this one a religion is a cult which has stood the test of time just like history is written by the winners and not the losers from what i ve seen of religions a religion is just a cult that was so vile and corrupt it was able to exert it s doctrine using political and military measures perhaps if koresh withstood the onslaught for another couple of months he would have started attracting more converts due to his strength hence becoming a full religion and not just a cult carl christensen dept of computer science christen astro ocis temple edu temple university curiouser and curiouser lc philadelphia pa usa
alt.atheism	re nicknames cmtan iss nus sg tan chade meng dan writes somebody forgotten me no nickname tan chade meng chinese have nicknames in the front the unenlightened one i thought your nickname was unenlightened maddi hausmann madhaus netcom com centigram communications corp san jose california kids please don t try this at home remember i post professionally
alt.atheism	re asimov stamp in article c h h d dcs ed ac uk pdc dcs ed ac uk paul crowley writes quoting schnitzi eustis cs ucf edu mark schnitzius in article schnitzi eustis i m sure all the religious types would get in a snit due to asimov s atheism can someone confirm this someone told me that asimov converted to christianity at some point or something does anyone have any good quotes what absolutely not no way asimov was a lifelong atheist and said so many times right until his death judging from the many stories he told about his own life he felt culturally closest to judaism which makes sense he was born jewish ed ed wente llnl gov
alt.atheism	re free moral agency dean kaflowitz decay cbnewsj cb att com wrote i think you re letting atheist mythology great start i realize immediately that you are not interested in discussion and are going to thump your babble at me i would much prefer an answer from ms healy who seems to have a reasonable and reasoned approach to things say aren t you the creationist guy who made a lot of silly statements about evolution some time ago duh gee then we must be talking christian mythology now i was hoping to discuss something with a reasonable logical person but all you seem to have for your side is a repetition of the same boring mythology i ve seen a thousand times before i am deleting the rest of your remarks unless i spot something that approaches an answer because they are merely a repetition of some uninteresting doctrine or other and contain no thought at all i have to congratulate you though bill you wouldn t know a logical argument if it bit you on the balls such a persistent lack of function in the face of repeated attempts to assist you in learning which i have seen in this forum and others in the past speaks of a talent that goes well beyond my own meager abilities i just don t seem to have that capacity for ignoring outside influences dean kaflowitz dean re read your comments do you think that merely characterizing an argument is the same as refuting it do you think that ad hominum attacks are sufficient to make any point other than you disapproval of me do you have any contribution to make at all bill
alt.atheism	re after years can we say that christian morality is mark mccullough mccullou snake cs wisc edu wrote in article ursa bear com halat pooh bears jim halat writes atoms are not objective they aren t even real what scientists call an atom is nothing more than a mathematical model that describes certain physical observable properties of our surroundings all of which is subjective jim halat this deserves framing it really does atoms aren t even real tell me then those atoms we have seen with electron microscopes are atoms now so what are they figments of our imaginations the evidence that atoms are real is overwhelming but i won t bother with most evidence at the moment you would have us believe that what the eye perceives as images are actaully there as perceived this may be interesting i thought that an electron microscope was used because no wavelength of light can illuminate any object of atomic scale if this image is to have useful resolution wouldn t the illuminating sources wavelength have to be several orders of magnitude less than size of thing observed if an atom is a probablity cloud lower resolutions would give the appearance of solidity but it seems fairly certain that an atom is not an object is any conventional sense obviously i am not a physicist but the question does have ramification of a philosophic nature anyway just a stray thought carry on bill
alt.atheism	re after years can we say that christian morality is mike cobb cobb alexia lis uiuc edu wrote very true length of time for discussions on creationism vs evolutionism atheists and christians have been debating since and still debate with unabated passion mike i ve seen referrences to creation vs evolution several times in a a and i have question is either point of view derived from direct observation can either be scientific i wonder if the whole controversy is more concerned with the consequences of the truth rather than the truth itself both sides seem to hold to a philosophical outcome and i can t help wondering which came first as i ve pointed out elsewhere my view of human nature makes me believe that there is no way of knowing anyhthing objectively all knowledge is inherently subjective so in the context of a a would you take a stand based on what you actually know to be true or on what you want to be true and how can you tell the difference bill
alt.atheism	re after years can we say that christian morality is kent sandvik sandvik newton apple com wrote in article c mw qr darkside osrhe uoknor edu bil okcforum osrhe edu bill conner wrote i d say that what one chooses to observe and how the observation is interpreted and what significance it s given depends a great deal on the values of the observer science is a human activity and as such is subject to the same potential for distortion as any other human activity the myth that scientists are above moral influence or ethical concern that their knowledge can be abstacted whole and pure from nature untainted by the biases of the scientist is nonsense bill this is wonderfully phrased i assume you understand that your statement is also undermining such human constructs as religion as well kent i ll accept this as a compliment although i m always a little paranoid when visiting a a thanks yes i do know the extent of the statements relevence it s what i think of as human nature i m not sure it undermines either religion or atheism since both claim special knowledge about the truth and since such claims are always suspect all we can learn from it is that humans are a very arrogant species my point is that we cannot ignore human nature when examining human claims the trick here then is to find some way to abstract our infinitely fallible nature from whatever reality is out there so we can see what there is to see i can think of no way this can be done bill
alt.atheism	re what s a shit shoveler to do was re amusing atheists and robert beauchaine bobbe vice ico tek com wrote precisely my position as a newbie i tried the point by point approach to debate with these types it wasted both my time and my lifespan ignoring them is not an option since they don t go away and doing so would leave one with large stretches of complete anonymity in this group bob i ve posted here long enough to see your name a few times but i can t recall any point by point approach to anything you ve contributed but i m old probably senile and i may have just forgotten if you could post an example of your invincible logic it might jog my memory bill
alt.atheism	free energy technology free energy technology by robert e mcelwaine physicist ninety to a hundred years ago everybody knew that a heavier than air machine could not possibly fly it would violate the laws of physics all of the experts and authorities said so for example simon newcomb declared in the demonstration that no possible combination of known substances known forms of machinery and known forms of force can be united in a practical machine by which man shall fly long distances through the air seems to the writer as complete as it is possible for the demonstration of any physical fact to be fortunately a few smart people such as the wright brothers did not accept such pronouncements as the final word now we take airplanes for granted except when they crash today orthodox physicists and other scientists are saying similar things against several kinds of free energy technologies using negative terms such as pseudo science and perpetual motion and citing so called laws which assert that energy cannot be created or destroyed st law of thermodynamics and there is always a decrease in useful energy nd law of thermodynamics the physicists do not know how to do certain things so they arrogantly declare that those things cannot be done such principles of impotence are common in orthodox modern science and help to cover up inconsistencies and contradictions in orthodox modern theories free energy inventions are devices which can tap a seemingly unlimited supply of energy from the universe with out burning any kind of fuel making them the perfect solution to the world wide energy crisis and its associated pollution degradation and depletion of the environment most free energy devices probably do not create energy but rather tap into existing natural energy sources by various forms of induction unlike solar or wind devices they need little or no energy storage capacity because they can tap as much energy as needed when needed solar energy has the dis advantage that the sun is often blocked by clouds trees buildings or the earth itself or is reduced by haze or smog or by thick atmosphere at low altitudes and high latitudes likewise wind speed is widely variable and often non existent neither solar nor wind power are suitable to directly power cars and airplanes properly designed free energy devices do not have such limitations for example at least three u s patents and have so far been awarded for motors that run exclusively on permanent magnets seemingly tapping into energy circulating through the earth s magnetic field the first two require a feedback network in order to be self running the third one as described in detail in science mechanics magazine spring amazing magnet powered motor by jorma hyypia pages and front cover requires critical sizes shapes orientations and spacings of magnets but no feedback such a motor could drive an electric generator or reversible heatpump in one s home year round for free complete descriptive copies of u s patents are each from the u s patent office jefferson davis hwy arlington va correct digit patent number required or try getting copies of both the article and the patents via your local public or university library s inter library loan dept a second type of free energy device such as the gray motor u s patent the tesla coil and the motor of inventor joseph newman see science pages taps electro magnetic energy by induction from earth resonance about cycles per second plus harmonics they typically have a spark gap in the circuit which serves to synchronize the energy in the coils with the energy being tapped it is important that the total inductance and capacitance of the device combine to resonate at the same frequency as earth resonance in order to maximize the power output this output can also be increased by centering the spark gap at the neutral center of a strong u shaped permanent magnet in the case of a tesla coil slipping a toroid choke coil around the secondary coil will enhance output power earth energy fuelless propulsion power systems by john bigelow health research p o box mokelumne hill ca during the s an austrian civil engineer named viktor schauberger invented and partially developed an implosion turbine german name zokwendle after analyzing erosion and lack of erosion in differently shaped waterways and developing sophisticated mathematical equations to explain it as described in the book a breakthrough to new free energy sources by dan a davidson water is pumped by an impeller pump through a logarithmic spiral shaped coil of tubing until it reaches a critical velocity the water then implodes no longer touching the inside walls of the tubing and drives the pump which then converts the pump s motor into an electric generator the device seems to be tapping energy from that of the earth s rotation via the coriolis effect like a tornado it can also neutralize gravity a fourth type of free energy device is the mcclintock air motor u s patent which is a cross between a diesel engine it has three cylinders with a compression ratio of to and a rotary engine with solar and planetary gears it burns no fuel but becomes self running by driving its own air compressor this engine also generates a lot of heat which could be used to heat buildings and its very high torque makes it ideal for large trucks preventing their slowing down when climbing hills david mcclintock is also the real original inventor of the automatic transmission differential and wheel drive crystals may someday be used to supply energy as shown in the star trek shows perhaps by inserting each one between metal capacitor plates and bombarding it with a beam of particles from a small radioactive source like that used in a common household smoke detector one other energy source should be mentioned here despite the fact that it does not fit the definition of free energy a bulgarian born american physicist named joseph maglich has invented and partially developed an atomic fusion reactor which he calls migma which uses non radioactive deuterium as a fuel available in nearly unlimited quantities from sea water does not produce radioactive waste can be converted directly into electricity with out energy wasting steam turbines and can be constructed small enough to power a house or large enough to power a city and unlike the tokamaks and laser fusion monstrosities that we read about migma works already producing at least three watts of power for every watt put in new times u s version pages and then there are the cold fusion experiments that have been in the news lately originally conducted by university of utah researchers b stanley pons and martin fleischmann some u s navy researchers at the china lake naval weapons center in california under the direction of chemist melvin miles finally took the trouble to collect the bubbles coming from such an apparatus had them analyzed with mass spectrometry techniques and found helium which proves that atomic fusion did indeed take place and enough of it to explain the excess heat generated there are good indications that the two so called laws of thermodynamics are not so absolute for example the late physicist dewey b larson developed a comprehensive general unified theory of the physical universe which he calls the reciprocal system which he describes in detail in several books such as nothing but motion and the universe of motion in which the physical universe has two distinct halves the material half and an anti matter half with a continuous cycle of matter and energy passing between them with out the heat death predicted by thermodynamic laws his theory explains the universe much better than modern orthodox theories including phenomena that orthodox physicists and astronomers are still scratching their heads about and is self consistent in every way some free energy devices might be tapping into that energy flow seemingly converting low quality energy into high quality energy also certain religious organizations such as sant mat and eckankar teach their members that the physical universe is only the lowest of at least a dozen major levels of existence like parallel universes or analogous to tv channels as described in books like the path of the masters by dr julian johnson and eckankar the key to secret worlds by sri paul twitchell for example the next level up from the physical universe is commonly called the astral plane long time members of these groups have learned to soul travel into these higher worlds and report on conditions there it seems plausible that energy could flow down from these higher levels into the physical universe or be created at the boundary between them given the right configuration of matter to channel it this is supported by many successful laboratory controlled experiments in psycho kinesis throughout the world such as those described in the book psychic discoveries behind the iron curtain in terms of economics the market has failed inventors do not have enough money and other resources to fully develop and mass produce free energy equipment and the conventional energy producer have no desire to do so because of their ve ted intere t the government is needed to intervene if the government does not intervene then the total supply of energy resources from the earth will continue to decline and will soon run out prices for energy will increase and pollution and its harmful effects including the greenhouse effect acid rain smog radioactive contamination oil spills rape of the land by strip mining etc will continue to increase the government should subsidize research and development of free energy by inventors and universities subsidize private production until the producers can make it on their own and subsidize consumption by low income consumers of free energy hardware the long range effects of such government intervention would be wide spread and profound the quantity of energy demanded from conventional energy producer coal mining companie oil companie and countries electric utilitie etc would drop to near zero forcing their employees to seek work elsewhere energy resources coal uranium oil and gas would be left in the ground prices for conventional energy supplies would also drop to near zero while the price of free energy equipment would start out high but drop as supply increases as happened with vcr s personal computers etc costs of producing products that require large quantities of energy to produce would decrease along with their prices to consumers consumers would be able to realize the opportunity costs of paying electric utility bills or buying home heating fuel tourism would benefit and increase because travelers would not have to spend their money for gasoline for their cars government tax revenue from gasoline and other fuels would have to be obtained in some other way and energy could no longer be used as a motive or excuse for making war many conventional energy producer would go out of business but society as a whole and the earth s environment and ecosystems would benefit greatly it is the people that government should serve rather than the big corporation and bank for more information answers to your questions etc please consult my cited sources patents articles books un altered reproduction and dissemination of this important information is encouraged robert e mcelwaine b s physics uw ec
alt.atheism	re christian morality is dan schaertel dps nasa kodak com wrote let us go back oh say years or so whatever pretend someone says to you someday there will be men on the moon now remember you still think the world is flat this is quite an extraordinary claim i think c s lewis has argued that medieval people did not all think the world is flat however this argument goes both ways pretend someone telling plato that it is highly probable that people do not really have souls their minds and their consciousness are just something their brains make up and their brains their body is actually ahead of their mind even in voluntarly actions i don t think plato would have been happy with this and neither would paul although paul s ideas were quite different however if you would read what we discuss in this group and not just preach you would see that there currently is much evidence in favour of these statements the same applies to the theory of natural selection or other sacred cows of christianity on our origins and human nature i don t believe in spirits devils or immortal souls any more than in gods the fact is we can argue the existence of god until the end of time there really is no way to either prove or disprove it but there will be a time when we all know the truth i hope and believe i m right and i hope and pray that you find your way too ah you said it you believe what you want to this is what i had assumed all along ok maybe i shouldn t have said no way i guess i really believe there is a way but all i can do is plant seeds either they grow or they don t you might be as well planting satan s seeds ever thought of this besides you haven t yet explained why we must believe so blindly without any guiding light at all at least i haven t noticed it i don t think this is at all fair play on god s part your argument sounds like a version of pascal s wager please read the faq this fallacy is discussed there but they won t if they re not planted the holy spirit is the nurishment that helps them grow and that comes from god and i failed to get help from the hs because i had a wrong attitude sorry dan but i do not think this spirit exists people who claim to have access to it just look badly deluded not gifted petri petri pihko kem pmp mathematics is the truth pihatie c finou oulu fi physics is the rule of sf oulu kempmp the game finland phoenix oulu fi chemistry is the game
alt.atheism	re free moral agency bil okcforum osrhe edu bill conner writes i see that you still can t grasp the obvious is it because your are devious by nature or can you only find fault with an argument by misrepresenting it gee since you ignored the entire substance of my substantial post you got a lot of nerve claiming that i don t understand what s being talked about respond to the previous post or shut the fuck up you re really annoying maddi hausmann madhaus netcom com centigram communications corp san jose california kids please don t try this at home remember i post professionally
alt.atheism	re free energy technology in article apr cnsvax uwec edu mcelwre cnsvax uwec edu writes free energy inventions are devices which can tap a seemingly unlimited supply of energy from the universe with out burning any kind of fuel making them the perfect solution to the world wide energy crisis and its associated pollution degradation and depletion of the environment give me a call when you build a working model then we ll talk stock options private note to jennifer fakult this post may contain one or more of the following sarcasm cycnicism irony or humor please be aware of this possibility and do not allow yourself to be confused and or thrown for a loop if in doubt assume all of the above the owners of this account do not take any responsiblity for your own confusion which may result from your inability to recognize any of the above read at your own risk jennifer
alt.atheism	re the qur an and atheists was re jewish settlers demolish a mosque in gaza in article apr doug cae wisc edu kahraman hprisc cae wisc edu gokalp kahraman writes in this respect since atheists are dominantly arrogant and claim self control and self ownership they would make pharoahs look like very humble decent people in comparison if the logic is this since i own myself others who are like me should also own themselves and going further things are self existent and self standing and self living etc yes atheists tend to claim self control and self ownership are you saying that theists claim to not have self control i don t think atheists are dominantly arrogant they don t claim some god that has supremacy over all of mankind now this claim would be arrogant but atheists don t claim it most atheists do claim to own themselves i think any disagreement with this claim of self ownership would be supremely arrogant john david munch jmunch hertz elee calpoly edu the heart can change be full of hate or love if people are allowed to base their lives through their hearts anything can happen a dangerous situation in my opinion bobby mozumder describing problems with atheism
alt.atheism	re cults vs religions to the media religion and cult have about the same relative connotations as government and terrorist group c wingate the peace of god it is no peace but strife closed in the sod mangoe cs umd edu yet brothers pray for but one thing tove mangoe the marv lous peace of god
alt.atheism	re science and theories in article c u bq j news cso uiuc edu cobb alexia lis uiuc edu mike cobb writes as per various threads on science and creationism i ve started dabbling into a book called christianity and the nature of science by jp moreland as i don t know this book i will use your heresay a question that i had come from one of his comments he stated that god is not necessarily a religious term but could be used as other scientific terms that give explanation for events or theories without being a proven scientific fact it depends on how he defines god the way i understand the meaning of that term preclues it being used in a useful way in science ideas drawn from an understanding that god is supernatural precludes us from forming scientific assertions that can be falsified that is where we can decide that they are true or false within the terms of we use and useful observations drawn from them some religionists have an interest in bluring the definitions within science to make them more reconcilable and especially subserviant in a basic way to religious dogma this pursuit always fails i think i got his point i can quote the section if i m being vague the examples he gave were quarks and continental plates are there explanations of science or parts of theories that are not measurable in and of themselves or can everything be quantified measured tested etc reconciliation of science with religion involves circumventing the tendancy to claim that either pursuit can gain absolute or certian knowledge or that the domain of truth in each is fundementally limited in some way it gererally confurs the element of uncertainty and limitations to human knowledge while allowing for the different concerns of these separate pursuits science and religion ask different questions which have imperfect and provisional answers at best science is distinctly limited in where it can ask meaningful questions more questions can be posed than it can answer at the basis of sacred language is the place where words fail us and mere assertions disolve in contradiction bruce salem
alt.atheism	re a little too satanic jon livesey writes so when they took the time to copy the text correctly that includes obvious corruptions well yes this is the real mystery of the matter and why i am rather dubious of a lot of the source theories there are a number of places where the masoretic text mt of the ot is obscure and presumably corrupted these are reproduced exactly from copy to copy the dss tend to reflect the same errors this would appear to tell us that at least from some point people began to copy the texts very exactingly and mechanically the problem is we don t know what they did before that but it seems as though accurate transmission begins at the point at which the texts are perceived as texts they may be added to and in some situations such as the end of mark material is lost but for the most part there are no substantial changes to the existing text you re basically trying to make a mountain out of a molehill some people like to use the game of telephone as a metaphor for the transmission of the texts this clearly wrong the texts are transmitted accurately c wingate the peace of god it is no peace but strife closed in the sod mangoe cs umd edu yet brothers pray for but one thing tove mangoe the marv lous peace of god
alt.atheism	albert sabin br from wpr atlanta dg com bill rawlins br newsgroups alt atheism br organization dgsid atlanta ga br since you have referred to the messiah i assume you br are referring to the new testament please detail br your complaints or e mail if you don t want to post br first century greek is well known and br well understood have you considered josephus the jewish br historian who also wrote of jesus in addition br the four gospel accounts are very much in harmony it is also well known that the comments in josephus relating to jesus were inserted badly by later editors as for the four gospels being in harmony on the issue of jesus you know not of what you speak here are a few contradictions starting with the trial and continuing through the assension the death of judas after the betrayal of jesus acts now this man judas purchased a field with the reward of iniquity and falling headlong he burst asunder in the midst and all his bowels gushed out matt and he judas cast down the pieces of silver in the temple and departed and went and hanged himself and the chief priests bought with them the potter s field what was jesus prediction regarding peter s denial before the cock crow matthew before the cock crow twice mark how many times did the cock crow mar and the second time the cock crew and peter called to mind the word that jesus said unto him before the cock crow twice thou shalt deny me thrice and when he thought thereon he wept mat then began he to curse and to swear saying i know not the man and immediately the cock crew mat and peter remembered the word of jesus which said unto him before the cock crow thou shalt deny me thrice and he went out and wept bitterly luk and peter said man i know not what thou sayest and immediately while he yet spake the cock crew luk and the lord turned and looked upon peter and peter remembered the word of the lord how he had said unto him before the cock crow thou shalt deny me thrice joh jesus answered him wilt thou lay down thy life for my sake verily verily i say unto thee the cock shall not crow still thou hast denied me thrice joh peter then denied again and immediately the cock crew destruction of cities what said was jeremiah was zechariah this is interesting because matthew quotes a prophesy that was never made not the only time he does this either mat then was fulfilled that which was spoken by jeremy the prophet saying and they took the thirty pieces of silver the price of him that was valued whom they of the children of israel did value zechariah nothing in jeremiah remotely like what was the color of the robe placed on jesus during his trial scarlet matthew purple john the time of the crucifiction mark says the third hour or a m but john says the sixth hour noon was when the sentence was passed inscription on the cross matthew this is jesus the king of the jews mark the king of the jews luke this is the king of the jews john jesus of nazareth the king of the jews what did they give him to drink vinegar matthew wine with myrrh mark women at the cross matthew said many stood far off including mary magdaline mary the mother of james and the mother of zebedee s children mark and luke speak of many far off and mark includes mary magdeline and mary the mother of james the less john says that jesus s mother stood at the cross along with her sister and mary magdalene jesus last words matt and about the ninth hour jesus cried with a loud voice saying eli eli lama sabachthani that is to say my god my god why hast thou forsaken me jesus when he cried again with a loud voice yielded u the ghost luke and when jesus had cried with a loud voice he said father unto thy hands i commend my spirit and having said thus he gave up the ghost john when jesus therefore had received the vinegar he said it is finished and he bowed his head and gave up the ghost events of the crucifiction matthew says that the veil of the temple was rent that there was an earthquake and that it was dark from the sixth to the ninth hour that graves opened and bodies of the saints arose and went into jeruselem appearing to many beating jesus to the resurection mark and luke speak of darkness and the veil of the temple being rent but mention no earthquake or risen saints john is the only one who mentions jesus s side being peirced burial of jesus matthew says the jews asked pilate for a guard to prevent the body from being stolen by the disciples and for the tomb to be sealed all of this was supposedly done but the other gospels do not mention these precautions how long was jesus in the tomb depends where you look matthew gives jesus prophesying that he will spend three days and three nights in the heart of the earth and mark has after three days meta treis emeras he will rise again as far as i can see from a quick look the prophecies have after three days but the post resurrection narratives have on the third day time of the resurection matthew says sunday at dawn mark says the sun was rising and john says it was dark who was at the empty tomb is it mat in the end of the sabbath as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week came mary magdalene and the other mary to see the sepulchre mar and when the sabbath was past mary magdalene and mary the mother of james and salome had bought sweet spices that they might come and anoint him joh the first day of the week cometh mary magdalene early when it was yet dark unto the sepulchre and seeth the stone taken away from the sepulchre whom did they see at the tomb mat and behold there was a great earthquake for the angel of the lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone from the door and sat upon it mat his countenance was like lightning and his raiment white as snow mat and for fear of him the keepers did shake and became as dead men mat and the angel answered and said unto the women fear not ye for i know that ye seek jesus which was crucified mar and entering into the sepulchre they saw a young man sitting on the right side clothed in a long white garment and they were affrighted luk and it came to pass as they were much perplexed thereabout behold two men stood by them in shining garments joh and seeth two angels in white sitting the one at the head and the other at the feet where the body of jesus had lain belief that the disciples stole jesus s body matthew says the guard was paid to tell this story but no other gospel makes this claim appearences of the risen jesus matthew says an angel at the tomb told the two marys and that jesus also told them to tell the disciples to meet him in galilee the disciples then went to a mountain previously agreed opon and met jesus there this was his only appearance except to the women at the tomb matthew only devotes five verses to the visit with the disciples mark says that jesus walked with two of the disciples in the country and that they told the rest of the disciples who refused to believe later he appeared to the disciples at mealtime luke says two followers went the same day that jesus rose from the dead to emmaus a village eight miles from jeruselem and there jesus jioned them but was unrecognised while they ate a meal together that evening they finally recognised jesus whereopon he dissapeared returning at once to jeruselem they told the disciples of their experience and suddenly jesus appeared among them frightening them as they thought he was a spirit jesus then ate some fish and honey and then preached to them john says jesus appeared to the disciples the evening of the day he arrose in jeruselem where they were hiding he breathed the holy ghost opon them but thomas was not present and refused to believe eight days later jesus joined the disciples again at the same place and this time he convinced thomas once more jesus made an appearance to the disciples at the sea of tiberias but again was not recognised after telling them to cast their netson the other side of the boat jesus becomes known to them and prepares bread and fish for them they all eat together and converse the book of acts further adds to the confusion it says that jesus showed himself to the apostles for a period of days after his resurection thus contradicting matthew mark luke and john and spoke to them of things pertaining to the kingdom of god and when he had spoken these things while they beheld he was taken up and a cloud recieved him out of their sight and while they looked steadfastly toward heaven as he went up two men stood by them in white apparel which also said ye men of galilee why stand ye gazing into heaven this same jesus which is taken from you into heaven shall so comein like manneras ye have seen him go into heaven acts paul outdoes every other authority by saying that jesus was seen by persons between the time of the resurection and the assension although he does not say where he also claims that he himself as one born out of due time also saw jesus cor the ascension matthew says nothing about it mark casually says that jesus was recieved into heaven after he was finished talking with the disciples in jeruselem luke says jesus led the desciples to bethany and that while he blessed them he was parted from them and carried up into heaven john says nothing about it acts contradicts all of the above see previous section when second coming mat verily i say unto you this generation shall not pass till all these things be fulfilled mar verily i say unto you that this generation shall not pass till all these things be done luk verily i say unto you this generation shall not pass away till all be fulfilled thessalonians how many apostles were in office between the resurection and ascention corinthians matthew minus one from acts mathias not elected until after resurrection mat then the eleven disciples went away into galilee into a mountain where jesus had appointed them ascend to heaven and elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven kings no man hath ascended up to heaven but he that came down from heaven the son of man john as you can see there are a number of contradictions in the account of the trial crucifiction and resurection of jesus if these are good witnesses you would think that they could get some of these important details right in fact i cannot find very many points on where they agree you would think that they could at least agree on some of the points they were supposedly observing because of the fact that there is so much contradiction and error the story of the resurection as presented cannot be taken as literal truth due to the nature of the story i doubt if it should be taken as any sort of truth alan
alt.atheism	albert sabin br from wpr atlanta dg com bill rawlins br newsgroups alt atheism br organization dgsid atlanta ga br the problem is that most scientists exclude the br possibility of the supernatural in the question of br origins is this is a fair premise i utterly br reject the hypothesis that science is the highest form of br truth it is better than the crap that the creationists put out so far all they have been able to manage is distortions and half truths when they are not taking quotes out of context br some of these so called human like creatures were br apes some were humans some were fancifully br reconstructed from fragments the genetic code has shown more about how man is realted to primates that the fossil record a little detail the creationists try and ignore br good deeds do not justify a person in god s br sight an atonement jesus is needed to atone br for sin who says your bible tm i would be surprised if any christian followed all of the rules in the bible most of them just pick and choose according to the local biases br my point god is the creator look s like we agree where is your proof how do you know it was your god br i ll send you some info via e mail br regards bill why not post them i would be interested in seeing them myself alan
alt.atheism	after years can we say that christian morality is mc theory of creationism my theistic view of the theory of mc creationism there are many others is stated in genesis mc in the beginning god created the heavens and the earth and which order of creation do you accept the story of creation is one of the many places in the bible where the story contradicts itself the following is an example gen and god made the beast of the earth after his kind and cattle after their kind and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind and god saw that it was good gen and god said let us make man in our image after our likeness and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air and over the cattle and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth gen and the lord god said it is not good that the man should be alone i will make him an help meet for him gen and out of the ground the lord god formed every beast of the field and every fowl of the air and brought them unto adam to see what he would call them and whatsoever adam called every living creature that was the name thereof even your bible cannot agree on how things were created why should we believe in it alan
alt.atheism	some thoughts rh from house helios usq edu au ron house rh newsgroups alt atheism rh organization university of southern queensland rh bissda saturn wwc edu dan lawrence bissell writes first i want to start right out and say that i m a christian it rh i know i shouldn t get involved but rh bit deleted the book says that jesus was either a liar or he was crazy a modern day koresh or he was actually who he said he was rest of rant deleted this is a standard argument for fundies can you spot the falicy the statement is arguing from the assumption that jesus actually existed so far they have not been able to offer real proof of that existance most of them try it using the very flawed writings of josh mcdowell and others to prove it but those writers use very flawed sources if they are real sources at all some are not when will they ever learn to do real research instead of believing the drivel sold in the christian bookstores rh righto dan try this one with your cornflakes rh the book says that muhammad was either a liar or he was rh crazy a modern day mad mahdi or he was actually who he rh said he was some reasons why he wouldn t be a liar are as rh follows who would die for a lie wouldn t people be able rh to tell if he was a liar people gathered around him and rh kept doing it many gathered from hearing or seeing how his rh son in law made the sun stand still call me a fool but i rh believe he did make the sun stand still rh niether was he a lunatic would more than an entire nation rh be drawn to someone who was crazy very doubtful in fact rh rediculous for example anyone who is drawn to the mad rh mahdi is obviously a fool logical people see this right rh away rh therefore since he wasn t a liar or a lunatic he must have rh been the real thing nice rebutal alan
alt.atheism	re so help you god in court bobbe vice robert beauchaine lp a yayg pontificated i guess i don t understand the problem i ve never had any problem swearing and using the name of god in the same sentence comes quite naturally as a matter of facxt i would guess that you either mean that you don t have a problem swearing aligance to a non existant being or that you are being deliberatily dense considering what group this is it doesn t come quite naturally to nonbelievers such as myself or even to followers of other religions would you say it would be quite natural if you were forced to swear by allah or budda james t green jgreen oboe calpoly edu at all times and in all nations the priest has been hostile to liberty thomas jefferson
alt.atheism	re alleged deathbed conversions was asimov stamp in article sheafferc zt brs netcom com sheaffer netcom com robert sheaffer writes it had to happen the old allegation of the deathbed conversion of the noted unbeliever other examples what all of these deathbed conversion claims have in common is that they are utterly unsubstantiated and almost certainly untrue i would not be too quick to say that they are almost certainly untrue even strong minded people may fall back on childhood indoctrination grasp at straws or do other strange things when faced with extreme suffering not to mention physiological problems which may lead to diminished mental capacity at the risk of restarting an old argument and accusations of appeal to authority i remind readers of what i posted a while back as a kind of obituary for the late atheist dr albert sabin in an old interview rebroadcast on public radio just after his death he told about a time a few years before when he was stricken with a very serious illness he admitted to having cried out to god while critically ill and on a respirator as it turned out he recovered and lived several more years after his recovery he attributed this to early indoctrination don t say it couldn t happen to you or that it hasn t happened to others even if you are one of the few people who have experienced things like this people are different i admire dr sabin for admitting his human weakness in that instance i would not think less of asimov for similar weakness nevertheless i agree that these reports are unsubstantiated and may well be untrue in any case they are not evidence for anything besides the power of early indoctrination and human frailty bill mayne
alt.atheism	re yet more rushdie re islamic law in article bu edu jaeger buphy bu edu gregg jaeger writes deletion that s was the original answer while it does not say that he has the head necessarily up its ass it would be meaningless and pointless if it was not insinuated i don t see a header referring to bob as the poster to whom i was responding i distinctly remember thinking i was responding to you when i wrote this in which case i would make no apologies but in the event that i was in fact responding to bob i hereby apologize to bob for insinuating such a thing sorry bob on the other hand it could be that ben has his head so far up his ass that he can t tell himself from bob sorry gregg it was no answer to a post of mine and you are quite fond of using abusing language whenever you think your religion is misrepresented by the way i have no trouble telling me apart from bob beauchaine i still wait for your answer to that the quran allows you to beat your wife into submission you were quite upset about the claim that it was in it to be more correct you said it wasn t i asked you about what your consequences were in case it would be in the quran but you have simply ceased to respond on that thread can it be that you have found out in the meantime that it is the holy book what are your consequences now was your being upset just a show do you simple inherit your morals from a book ie is it suddenly ok now is it correct to say that the words of muhammad reflect the primitive machism of his society or have you spent your time with your new gained freedom benedikt
alt.atheism	re alleged deathbed conversions was asimov stamp in article c n o panix com carlf panix com carl fink writes in sheafferc zt brs netcom com sheaffer netcom com robert sheaffer writes deletion it had to happen the old allegation of the deathbed conversion of the noted unbeliever i seem to recall similar claims being made about voltaire mencken darwin ingersoll etc indeed the literary hoax attributed to nietzsche my sister and i portrays him as trembling in fear before divine judgment and it was recently re issued by amok books with an introduction by a lutheran professor telling us why we should take it seriously what all of these deathbed conversion claims have in common is that they are utterly unsubstantiated and almost certainly untrue perhaps the least believable and most infurating alleged conversion was that of tom paine reported like most only by his devout relatives asimov was very unlikely to convert to christianity on his deathbed return to judaism perhaps if he did revert to childhood training but christianity the good doctor would more likely have converted to hinduism isaac asimov read creationist books he read the bible he had ample opportunity to kneel before his creator and savior he refused in fact he sent out a strong promotional letter urging support of the american humanist association shortly before he died excerpt from ken ham asimov meets his creator back to genesis no june p c included in acts facts vol no june from the institute for creation research this is one of the most offensive articles they ve ever published but at least it argues against a deathbed conversion there s a part of the article even worse than what i ve just quoted in which an excerpt from a reader s letter says that if asimov is burning in hell now then he certainly has had a degree change in his former beliefs about creation and the creator a post deathbed conversion jim lippard lippard ccit arizona edu dept of philosophy lippard arizvms bitnet university of arizona tucson az
comp.graphics	quicktime performance was re rumours about do ok with all the discussion about observed playback speeds with quicktime the effects of scaling and so on i thought i d do some more tests first of all i felt that my original speed test was perhaps less than realistic the movie i had been using only had frames in it it was a version of the very first movie i created with the compact video compressor i decided something a little longer would give closer to real world results for better or for worse i pulled out a copy of a space odyssey that i had recorded off tv a while back about fifteen minutes into the movie there s a sequence where the earth shuttle is approaching the space station specifically i digitized a portion of about seconds duration zooming in on the rotating space station i figured this would give a reasonable amount of movement between frames to increase the differences between frames i digitized it at only frames per second to give a total of frames i captured the raw footage at a resolution of pixels with the spigot card in my centris quarter size resolution from a pal source i then imported it into premiere and put it through the compact video compressor keeping the fps frame rate i created two versions of the movie one scaled to resolution the other at resolution i used the default quality setting in premiere and specified a key frame every ten frames i then ran the movie through the same raw speed test program i used for the results i d been reporting earlier result a playback rate of over frames per second that s right i was getting a much higher result than with that first short test movie just for fun i copied the movie to my external hard disk a quantum lp s and ran it from there this time the playback rate was only about frames per second obviously the mb internal hard disk also a quantum is a significant contributor to the speed of playback i modified my speed test program to allow the specification of optional scaling factors and tried playing back the movie scaled to size this time the playback speed was over fps clearly the poster who observed poor performance on scaled playback was seeing quicktime in action not i d try my tests with quicktime but i don t think it s entirely compatible with my centris and system unscaled the playback rate for the movie was over fps the other thing i tried was saving versions of the movie with preferred playback rates greater than and seeing how well they played from within movieplayer ie with quicktime s normal synchronized playback a preferred rate of fps didn t work too well the playback was very jerky compare this with the raw speed test which achieved fps with ease i can t believe that quicktime s synchronization code would add this much overhead i think the slowdown was coming from the mac system s task switching a preferred rate of fps seemed to work fine i couldn t see any evidence of stutter at fps i think i could see slight stutter but with four key frames every second it was hard to tell i guess i could try recreating the movies with a longer interval between the key frames to make the stutter more noticeable of course this will also improve the compression slightly which should speed up the playback performance even more lawrence d oliveiro fone computer services dept fax university of waikato electric mail ldo waikato ac nz hamilton new zealand s e gmt
comp.graphics	icn msdos pbm pgm ppm format i have many icons in iconedit and pbicon format and i would like to convert them to pbm pgm or ppm format do you know the formats of iconedit or pbicon thank s for your help rene kiwi iis ethz ch
comp.graphics	re bit graphics howdy all oehler yar cs wisc edu wonko the sane writes i was recently talking to a possible employer mine and he made a reference to a bit graphics computer image processing system i seem to remember it being called image or something akin to that anyway he claimed it had bit color a bit alpha channel that s bits of info what could that possibly be for specifically the bit color that s trillion colors many more than the human eye can resolve is this an anti aliasing thing or is this just some magic number to make it work better with a certain processor hmm bit aye well it beats a bit design for thee sake of ellegance bit means bits per primary colour the nr of colours is a bit misleading it makes more sense to see it as possible shades of pure red this might actually make some sense since shades of red bit colours may produce visible jumps in intensity then again a byte per primary colour for each pixel is the most elegant way of doing colour graphics because it leaves ya such a tidy and fast program code take care bram flying is a nack the trick is bram stolk stolk fwi uva nl to throw yourself at the ground dept of maths computer science and miss douglas adams university of amsterdam no i dont use ms windoze i prefer linux
comp.graphics	help need bits viewer hi i m looking for a program which is able to display bits images we are using a sun sparc equipped with parallax graphics board running x thanks in advance
comp.graphics	human body data sets needed urgently hi all i m looking for datasets of a human body or head in any of the popular formats i m doing a presentation tomorrow which could be greatly enhanced by bringing in this human factor i ve looked around the net with no sucess so far anyone got any ideas i d also appreciate info on the location of datasets for the uss enterprise any model thanks in advance ronan
comp.graphics	re why does illustrator autotrace so poorly mac utkvx bitnet richard j mcdougald writes in article b vmcbrt diablo uucp diablo uucp cboesel charles boesel writes of these application softwares we re using but even so how come one hasn t been written to my knowledge i mean even hijaak one of the commercial industry standards of file conversion hasn t attempted it yet adobe streamline has been out four a couple of years it does a much better job than the autotracing functions which are built into illustration programs of course a higher resolution bitmap will produce a more accurate trace the problem that i ve run into though is that when it creates a detailed trace it produces way more points than are necessary if i trace something manually i use many less es points the problem with this is it produces big files which slow everything down especially printing chuck y
comp.graphics	wanted scott leatham microsoft hello there a few days ago i got a mail concerning bitmap stretching from scott leatham microsoft redmond wa usa i really would like to answer back to him but i have lost his email address so if scott or anybody that knows his email address reads this please mail me his address so i can answer his mail please mail to d tm efd lth se thanks tomas
comp.graphics	re pov problems with tga outputs remember that the unix versions of pov don t create tga but qrt file format output by default ft is needed to make tga o o o brain inside o o o o andre beck abpsoft mehl andre beck irs inf tu dresden de o o o
comp.graphics	re pov ray problem please help what about qrttoppm file dis ppmtotga file tga o o o brain inside o o o o andre beck abpsoft mehl andre beck irs inf tu dresden de o o o
comp.graphics	re why does illustrator autotrace so poorly mac utkvx bitnet richard j mcdougald writes since there s no not really such thing as a decent raster to vector conversion program this tracing technique is about it simple stuff like b w logos etc do pretty well while more complicated stuff goes haywire the first and only thing i ve ever tried to auto trace was a piece of a uscg nautical chart using adobe illustrator i wanted to get the outline of the coast for western long island sound i was simultaneously suprised at how good a job it did and disappointed at how poorly it did i suspect what i gave it was a very difficult thing not only is the coastline very irregular but overlaid on the chart are numerous sets of gridlines not only lattitude and longitude but loran grids as well the most common mistake it make was whenever the coastline was roughly parallel and tangent to a grid line it would take off following the gridline instead of the coast i think the best improvement would be some sort of interactive algorithm that would let you step in and say no dummy you re going the wrong way steve reisberg a friend of mine a few years back did his doctoral work analysing electron micrographs of filimentous phage virii a good chunk of the work was writing a program to take a digitized micrograph and automatically trace the centerline of the virus particles this is essentially the same problem that illustrator tries to solve with its auto trace tool in some respects the problem steve worked on was harder since he was trying to do quantitative analysis of the virus structure and finding a good centerline was only the first step but a step on which all future analysis depended however in other respects it was an easier problem since the program could be written with a lot of knowledge about what the virus particles were supposed to look like and the analysis could be restricted to those particles which happend to be relatively straight clean and well imaged you don t always have that freedom auto tracing real life images in any case it gave me some insight into just how difficult this problem is to solve in the general case steve is no longer with us he and his wife disappeared while on vacation in hawaii a couple of years after they graduated their last known location was hiking in a densely wooded in a mountainous area while no bodies were ever found they are presumed to have been the victim of some sort of fall or accident in the woods roy smith roy nyu edu hippocrates project department of microbiology coles nyu school of medicine first avenue new york ny this never happened to bart simpson
comp.graphics	re rumours about do johnm spudge lonestar org john munsch writes in article lot rapnbh h viamar uucp rutgers viamar kmembry writes read issue of wired magazine it has a long article on the hype of do i ve noticed that every article talks with the designers and how great it is but never show any pictures of the output or at least pictures that one can understand gamepro magazine published pictures a few months ago and computer chronicles a program that is syndicated to public tv stations around the nation spent several minutes on it when it was shown at ces it was very impressive what it can do in real time john munsch the april edition of mix magazine carries a story on do which includes pictures of the unit a schematic of what s inside and some indication from the people at do as to where they intend to go and in what stages mix is a trade rag aimed at the professional sound engineering community the schematic shows a central dma engine connecting and mediating between two graphics animation processors bit bus a bit risc processor with math co processor video decomp module a control port an expansion port where do hangs its double fast cd player mb dram an optional video port for editing video and on the outbound side mb vram to video processor to tv chain parallel with a dsp to sound chain they promise red book cd quality audio full fps video and a future connection path to your pc via a pc expansion card i am not informed enough to have an opinion about the various means and methods discussed here the article written by philip de lancie does cover the other machines mentioned in this thread i come from the pc tcp ip world and see a tremendous potential for bringing connectedness to the educated consumer do seems to have the right business partners to make this happen hope this helps david shute email dks world std com
comp.graphics	real d earlier today i read an ad for real d animation ray tracing software and it looked very convincing to me however i don t own an amiga and so i began to wonder if there s a pc version of it so has anyone seen used real d for dos rauno rene haapaniemi i every word of it are true haapanatie d i except for those that are lies oulu i reneh otol fi i douglas adams
comp.graphics	hallusion info has anyone seen hallusions you can buy a poster of them and it looks like a simple dot pattern when you first look at it but if you focus behind it you see a d picture i m looking for a program that generates these pictures there s a company in texas that makes them but i doubt if they re giving the program away any help would be appreciated
comp.graphics	cgm something preferably pcx does anybody know about a converter from cgm to pcx or anything else more common i ve spent some time searching the archives with no luck could you email me your responses thx in advance mike g d np jupiter sun csd unb ca
comp.graphics	kubota kenai denali does anyone have any real experience with the kubota kenai denali series of graphics workstations they pretty much blow the pants off sgi machines and sun machines in the same price point which is about bucks real nice stuff but i ve only seen the stuff on paper i m wondering is there anything not to like the specs are too massive to get into here but if a summary is desired i could be coaxed into uploading the spec sheet brian
comp.graphics	re is there an ftp achive for usgs terrain dat try spectrum xerox com in pub map dem
comp.graphics	re real d rauno haapaniemi raunoh otol fi wrote earlier today i read an ad for real d animation ray tracing software and it looked very convincing to me yes it looks like very good indeed however i don t own an amiga and so i began to wonder if there s a pc version of it nope regards email x x mattias matt dah dsv su se i love it
comp.graphics	re fast polygon routine needed osprey ux cso uiuc edu lucas adamski writes in article pdxgate uucp idr rigel cs pdx edu ian d romanick writes what kind of polygons shaded texturemapped hm more comes into play with fast routines than just polygons it would be nice to know exaclty what system vga is a start but what processor and a few of the specifics of the implementation you need to give more info if you want to get any answers p i don t want texture mapped cause if i did i d asked for them just a simple and fast routine to do filled polygons as for the processor it d be for a minimum of a maybe if i can t find a good one for s ideally i want a polyn function that can clip to a user defined viewport and write to an arbitrary location in memory of course the chances of ok it is for a game that is d and you have listed the characteristics that you are looking for i think you may have left out a few important parameters the polygons are all convex they have less than n sides you are drawing meshes walls doors etc i believe that the algorithms you can get that will only draw convex polygons can be much more efficient than those that can draw concave self intersecting polygons this efficiency can largely be attributed to the fact that simple convex polygons only have a left and a right edge on each scan line complex figure type polygons can be a bit trickier the less than n sides specification especially if it is a very small number like or allow othe optimisations to be made thus for a high speed game application i think you are looking for code that exploits and is hence limited to drawing simple convex polygons finding something like that are pretty remote so i guess i d need the source with it oh and i guess it would need to be in asm otherwise it d be too slow i ve seen some polygon routines in c and they ve all been waaay too slow its for a d vector graphics program i ve been hunting high and low it may have been that they were very general purpose algorithms if you limit yourself to or four sided simple convex polygons i think you might be suprised how fast a c algorithm with a asm block move to fill each scan line might actually be for a polyn function in asm and i can t find one anywhere that i can use i ve found one or two polyn functions but my asm is pretty bad so i won t even try to rewrite them lucas
comp.graphics	apr comp graphics frequently asked questions faq archive name graphics faq this message is automatically posted once a week or so in an effort to cut down on the repetitive junk in comp graphics it was last changed on apr if you have answers to other frequently asked questions that you would like included in this posting please send me mail if you don t want to see this posting every week please add the subject line to your kill file thank you if your copy of the faq is more than a couple of weeks old you may want to seek out the most recent version the latest version of this faq is always available on the archive site pit manager mit edu alias rtfm mit edu as pub usenet news answers graphics faq john john grieggs grieggs jpl devvax jpl nasa gov johng portal com last update apr sorry i haven t posted this for a couple of weeks but i was called out of town due to a death in the family this is reality folks what s new siggraph online bibliography project spencer cgrg ohio state edu grieggs jpl devvax jpl nasa gov contents general references for graphics questions drawing three dimensional objects on a two dimensional screen quantizing bit images down to bits converting color into grayscale quantizing grayscale to black white rotating a raster image by an arbitrary angle free image manipulation software format documents for tiff iff biff nff off fits etc converting between vector formats how to get pixar films how do i draw a circle as a bezier or b spline curve how to order standards documents how to ftp by email how to tell whether a point is within a planar polygon how to tessellate a sphere specific references on ray tracing and global illumination siggraph information online siggraph panels proceedings available graphics mailing lists specific references on file formats what about gif what is morphing how to ray trace height fields how to find the area of a d polygon how to join acm siggraph where can i find mri and ct scan volume data specific references on spatial data structures including quadtrees and octrees where can i get a program to plot xy z data or f x data specific references on pex and phigs siggraph online bibliography project general references for graphics questions computer graphics principles and practice nd ed j d foley a van dam s k feiner j f hughes addison wesley isbn procedural elements for computer graphics david f rogers mcgraw hill isbn mathematical elements for computer graphics nd ed david f rogers and j alan adams mcgraw hill isbn three dimensional computer graphics alan watt addison wesley isbn an introduction to ray tracing andrew glassner ed academic press isbn graphics gems andrew glassner ed academic press isbn graphics gems ii james arvo ed academic press isbn graphics gems iii david kirk ed academic press isbn with ibm disk or with mac disk digital image warping george wolberg ieee computer society press monograph isbn digital image processing nd ed rafael c gonzalez paul wintz addison wesley isbn a programmer s geometry adrian bowyer john woodwark butterworths isbn pbk an automatic mail handler at brown university allows users of computer graphics principles and practice by foley van dam feiner and hughes to obtain text errata and information on distribution of the software packages described in the book also users can send the authors feedback to report text errors and software bugs make suggestions and submit exercises to receive information describing how you can use the mail handler simply mail graphtext cs brown edu and put the word help in the subject line use the subject line software distribution to receive information specifically concerning the software packages srgp and sphigs errata for an introduction to ray tracing is available on wuarchive wustl edu in graphics graphics books introtort errata errata for digital image warping is in the same directory as digital image warping errata all c code from the graphics gems series is available via anonymous ftp from princeton edu look in the directory pub graphics graphicsgems for the various volumes gems gemsii gemsiii and get the readme file first errata to graphics gems and graphics gems ii is available on wuarchive wustl edu in graphics graphics books a list of computer graphics computational geometry and image processing journals is available from juhana kouhia jk cs tut fi drawing three dimensional objects on a two dimensional screen the simple answer is you divide by the depth for a more verbose explanation see any of the above references starting with the foley van dam feiner hughes computer graphics book is certainly a good start chapter is viewing in d then read chapter visible surface determination for more information go to chapter for shading chapter for clipping and branch out from there quantizing bit images down to bits find a copy of color image quantization for frame buffer display by paul heckbert siggraph proceedings page there are other algorithms but this one works well and is fairly simple implementations are included in most raster toolkits see item below a variant method is described in graphics gems p note that the code from the graphics gems series is all available from an ftp site as described above check out john bradley s diversity algorithm which is incorporated into the xv package and described in the back of the manual the imagemagick package see section for where it is contains another quantizing algorithm which is presented as doing a better job than the other algorithms but slower there s also an implementation of wan wong and prusinkiewicz an algorithm for multidimensional data clustering transactions on mathematical software vol june pp avialable as princeton edu pub graphics colorquant shar this code in modified form appears in the utah raster toolkit as well converting color into grayscale the ntsc formula is luminosity red green blue quantizing grayscale to black white the only reference you need for this stuff is digital halftoning robert ulichney mit press isbn but before you go off and start coding check out the image manipulation software mentioned in item below all of the packages mentioned can do some form of gray to b w conversion rotating a raster image by an arbitrary angle the obvious but wrong method is to loop over the pixels in the source image transform each coordinate and copy the pixel to the destination this is wrong because it leaves holes in the destination instead loop over the pixels in the destination image apply the reverse transformation to the coordinates and copy that pixel from the source this method is quite general and can be used for any one to one d mapping not just rotation you can add anti aliasing by doing sub pixel sampling however there is a much faster method with antialising included which involves doing three shear operations the method was originally created for the im raster toolkit see below an implementation is also present in pbmplus reference a fast algorithm for raster rotation by alan paeth awpaeth watcgl waterloo edu graphics interface vancouver an article on the im toolkit appears in the same journal an updated version of the rotation paper appears in graphics gems see section under the original title free image manipulation software there are a number of toolkits for converting from one image format to another doing simple image manipulations such as size scaling plus the above mentioned color gray gray b w conversions here are pointers to some of them xv by john bradley x based image display manipulation and format conversion package xv displays many image formats and permits editing of gif files among others the program was updated see the file contrib xv tar z on export lcs mit edu pbmplus by jef poskanzer comprehensive format conversion and image manipulation package the latest version is always available via anonymous ftp as ftp ee lbl gov pbmplus tar z wuarchive wustl edu graphics graphics packages pbmplus pbmplus tar z and export lcs mit edu contrib pbmplus tar z im raster toolkit by alan paeth awpaeth watcgl uwaterloo ca provides a portable and efficient format and related toolkit the format is versatile in supporting pixels of arbitrary channels components and bit precisions while allowing compression and machine byte order independence the kit contains more than tools with extensive support of image manipulation digital halftoning and format conversion previously distributed on tape c o the university of waterloo an ftp version will appear someday utah rle toolkit conversion and manipulation package similar to pbmplus available via ftp as cs utah edu pub urt princeton edu pub graphics urt and freebie engin umich edu pub urt fuzzy pixmap manipulation by michael mauldin mlm nl cs cmu edu conversion and manipulation package similar to pbmplus version available via ftp as nl cs cmu edu usr mlm ftp fbm tar z ftp uu net pub fbm tar z and ucsd edu graphics fbm tar z img software set by paul raveling raveling venera isi edu reads and writes its own image format displays on an x screen and does some image manipulations version is available via ftp as export lcs mit edu contrib img tar z and venera isi edu pub img tar z along with a large collection of color images xim x image manipulator by philip r thompson it does essential interactive image manipulations and uses x r and the osf motif toolkit for the interface it supports images in and bit formats reads writes and converts to from gif xwd xbm tiff rle xim and other formats writes level postscript other utilities and image application library are included not a paint package available via ftp from gis mit edu xloadimage by jim frost madd std com reads in images in various formats and displays them on an x screen available via ftp as export lcs mit edu contrib xloadimage and in your nearest comp sources x archive xli by grame gill is an updated xloadimage with numerous improvements in both speed and in the number of formats supported available in the same places as xloadimage contrib tape comp sources x archives tiff software by sam leffler sam okeeffe berkeley edu nice portable library for reading and writing tiff files plus a few tools for manipulating them and reading other formats available via ftp as ucbvax berkeley edu pub tiff tar z or ftp uu net graphics tiff tar z xtiff an x tool for viewing a tiff file it was written to handle as many different kinds of tiff files as possible while remaining simple portable and efficient xtiff illustrates some common problems with building pixmaps and using different visual classes it is distributed as part of sam leffler s libtiff package and it is also available on export lcs mit edu ftp uu net and comp sources x xtiff was announced in it includes xlib and xt versions alv a sun specific image toolkit version posted to comp sources sun on dec also available via email to alv users request cs bris ac uk popi an image manipulation language version posted to comp sources misc on dec imagemagick an x package for display and interactive manipulation of images includes tools for image conversion annotation compositing animation and creating montages imagemagick can read and write many of the more popular image formats available via ftp as export lcs mit edu contrib imagemagick tar z khoros a huge meg graphical development environment based on x r khoros components include a visual programming language code generators for extending the visual language and adding new application packages to the system an interactive user interface editor an interactive image display package an extensive library of image and signal processing routines and d d plotting packages available via ftp as pprg eece unm edu pub khoros laboimage a sunview based image processing and analysis package it includes more than image manipulation processing and measurement routines on line help plus tools such as an image editor a color table editor and several biomedical utilities available via anonymous ftp as ads com pub vision list archive shareware laboimage tar z the san diego supercomputer center image tools software tools for reading writing and manipulating raster images binaries for some machines available via anonymous ftp in sdsc edu sdscpub the independent jpeg group has written a package for reading and writing jpeg files ftp to ftp uu net graphics jpeg jpegsrc v tar z don t forget to set binary mode when you ftp tar files for you milnet folks who still don t have name servers the ip addresses are ads com cs utah edu coral cs jcu edu au export lcs mit edu freebie engin umich edu ftp ee lbl gov ftp uu net or gis mit edu gondwana ecr mu oz au karazm math uh edu marsh cs curtin edu au nic funet fir ftp ncsa uiuc edu nl cs cmu edu pit manager mit edu pprg eece unm edu princeton edu sdsc edu ucbvax berkeley edu venera isi edu weedeater math yale edu wuarchive wustl edu zamenhof cs rice edu please do not post or mail messages saying i can t ftp could someone mail this to me there are a number of automated mail servers that will send you things like this in response to a message see item below for details on some also the newsgroup alt graphics pixutils is specifically for discussion of software like this you may find useful information there format documents for tiff iff biff nff off fits etc you almost certainly don t need these read the above item on free image manipulation software get one or more of these packages and look through them chances are excellent that the image converter you were going to write is already there but if you still want one of the format documents many such files are available by anonymous ftp from zamenhof cs rice edu in directory pub graphics formats these files were collected off the net and are believed to be correct this archive includes pixel formats and two and three dimensional object formats the future of this archive is uncertain at the moment as mark hall foo cs rice edu will apparently no longer be maintaining it a second graphics file format archive is now being actively maintained by quincey koziol koziol ncsa uiuc edu the latest version exists at ftp ncsa uiuc edu in misc file formats graphics formats apparently neither of these is complete you might want to check both fits stands for flexible image transport system it s a file format most often used in astronomy despite the name it can contain not only images but other things as well there is a regular monthly fits basics and information posting on sci astro fits read it if you want to know more converting between vector formats a lot of people ask about converting from hpgl to postscript or macdraw to cgm or whatever it is important to understand that this is a very different problem from the image format conversions in item converting one image format to another is a fairly easy problem since once you get past all the file header junk a pixel is a pixel the basic objects are the same for all image formats this is not so for vector formats the basic objects circles ellipses drop shadowed pattern filled round cornered rectangles etc vary from one format to another except in extremely restricted cases it is simply not possible to do a one to one conversion between vector formats there is software for converting to and from cgm files on ftp psc edu the contributor states that it runs on unix ms windows and possibly the mac a better more specific blurb would be most welcome on the other hand it is quite possible to do a close approximation rendering an image from one format using the primitives from another as far as i know no one has put together a general toolkit of such converters but two different hpgl to postscript converters have been posted to comp sources misc check the index on your nearest archive site a related frequent question is how to convert from some vector format to a bitmapped image from postscript to sun raster format or hpgl to x bitmap for example some of the commercial postscript clones for pc s allow you to render to a disk file as well as a printer also the postscript interpreters in the next box and in sun s x news can be used to render to a file if you re clever but in general the answer is no however if someone were to put together a vector to vector conversion toolkit adding a vector to raster converter would be trivial gnu ghostscript from the fsf current version includes drivers for both ppm and gif format files thus it can be used as a postscript to ppm or a postscript to gif filter it implements essentially all of postscript level and alot of display postscript and level how to get pixar films the various john lasseter pixar computer animated shorts are available on video tape you can order them from direct cinema limited film individual price institutional price luxo jr red s dream tin toy knickknack luxo jr red s dream tin toy all tapes are on vhs ntsc add tape for pal format also available tin toy t shirt knickknack d t shirt includes glasses for individual orders add s h for the first tape or shirt for each additional tape or shirt for institutional orders add s h for the first tape for each additional tape foreign shipping add tape or shirt call international fax to charge to your credit card call first to verify prices and availability or just write to direct cinema limited th street santa monica ca allan braunsdorf has this to say at siggraph they were selling a tape with all four shorts for that was a sale price you can get it for slightly more than that normally maybe i believe it s available from renderman retail at pixar s address pixar west cutting blvd richmond ca fax you can obtain a video directly from pixar which contains luxo jr red s dream tin toy and knicknack for plus for shipping they will take your order over the phone or via fax with a major credit card i ordered mine just last week and received it several days later don t expect to be able to rent a copy from your local video store according to the license agreement printed on the back cover of the case it cannot be rented how do i draw a circle as a bezier or b spline curve the short answer is you can t unless you use a rational spline you can only approximate a circle the approximation may look acceptable but it is sensitive to scale magnify the scale and the error of approximation magnifies deviations from circularity that were not visible in the small can become glaring in the large if you want to do the job right consult the article a menagerie of rational b spline circles by leslie piegl and wayne tiller in ieee computer graphics and applications volume number september pages for rough non rational approximations consult the book computational geometry for design and manufacture by i d faux and m j pratt ellis horwood publishers halsted press john wiley for the best known non rational approximations consult the article good approximation of circles by curvature continuous bezier curves by tor dokken morten daehlen tom lyche and knut morken in computer aided geometric design volume numbers combined june pages elsevier science publishers north holland how to order standards documents the american national standards institute sells ansi standards and also iso international standards their sales office is at mailing address is broadway ny ny it helps if you have the complete name and number some useful numbers to know cgm computer graphics metafile is iso gks graphical kernel system is ansi x phigs programmer s hierarchical interactive graphics system is ansi x iges is asme ansi y m language bindings are often separate but related numbers for example the gks fortran binding is x standards in progress are made available at key milestones to solicit comments from the graphical public this includes you ansi can let you know where to order them most are available from global engineering at how to ftp by email there are a number of sites that archive the usenet sources newsgroups and make them available via an email query system you send a message to an automated server saying something like send comp sources unix fbm and a few hours or days later you get the file in the mail in addition there is at least one ftp by mail server send mail to ftpmail decwrl dec com saying help and it will tell you how to use it note that this service has at times been turned off due to abuse how to tell whether a point is within a planar polygon consider a ray originating at the point of interest and continuing to infinity if it crosses an odd number of polygon edges along the way the point is within the polygon if the ray crosses an even number of edges the point is either outside the polygon or within an interior hole formed from intersecting polygon edges this idea is known in the trade as the jordan curve theorem see eric haines article in glassner s ray tracing book above for more information including treatment of special cases another method is to sum the absolute angles from the point to all the vertices on the polygon if the sum is pi the point is inside if the sum is the point is outside however this method is about an order of magnitude slower than the previous method because evaluating the trigonometric functions is usually quite costly code for both methods plus barycentric triangle testing can be found in the ray tracing news vol no available from princeton edu pub graphics rtnews rtnv n z how to tessellate a sphere one simple way is to do recursive subdivision into triangles the base of the recursion is an octahedron and then each level divides each triangle into four smaller ones jon leech leech cs unc edu has posted a nice routine called sphere c that generates the coordinates it s available for ftp on ftp ee lbl gov and princeton edu specific references on ray tracing and global illumination rick speer maintains a cross indexed ray tracing bibliography highlights of this edition i more than citations spanning the period from through november ii papers from all siggraph graphics interface eurographics cg international and ausgraph proceedings through december iii all citations keyworded for easy lookup iv cross indices by keyword and author v glossary of the keywords used the bib is in the form of a postscript file the printout is pages long below is a list of ftp sites and the dirs that contain the file it s named speer raytrace bib ps z and is compressed at most sites site dir wuarchive wustl edu graphics graphics bib rt bib speer karazm math uh edu pub graphics gondwana ecr mu oz au pub papers nic funet fi pub sci papers graphics coral cs jcu edu au graphics papers eric haines erich eye com maintains ray tracing and radiosity global illumination bibliographies these are in refer format and so can be searched electronically a simple awk script to search for keywords is included with each the bibliographies are available at most of the sites listed above and the most current versions are maintained at princeton edu pub graphics papers as raybib and radbib tom wilson wilson cs ucf edu has collected over abstracts from ray tracing related research papers and books the information is essentially in plaintext and latex and troff formatting programs are included this collection is available at most of the sites above as rtabs siggraph information online from steve cunningham and ralph orlick acm siggraph announces its online information site at siggraph org this site now provides siggraph information via both anonymous ftp and an electronic mail archive server the anonymous ftp service is very standard and the ftp directory includes both conference and publications subdirectories to retrieve information by electronic mail send mail to archive server siggraph org and in the subject or the body of the message include the message send followed by the topic and subtopic you wish a good place to start is with the command send index which will give you an up to date list of available information siggraph panels proceedings available from steve cunningham and bob judd acm siggraph announces the availability of the siggraph panels proceedings at the siggraph org site the proceedings are available in three formats text ascii rtf rich text format suitable for many word processors word ms word for the macintosh they may be retrieved from siggraph org in two ways by anonymous ftp change to one of the directories publications s panels proceedings text rtf word the text and rtf files may be downloaded in ascii mode while the word files are stored in macbinary format and must be downloaded in binary mode each directory contains a table of contents file toc that describes the contents of each panel file by electronic mail send mail to archive server siggraph org you can retrieve either the text or rtf files we suggest that you first retrieve the index files by putting one of the messages send panel txt index send panel rtf index in the subject or body of the message you will get the necessary information to retrieve the actual transcript files graphics mailing lists there are a variety of graphics related mailing list out there each covering either a single product or a single topic i have been an active participant in one of these for some time now and find the focus and expertise which can be brought to bear on an isolated topic to be nothing short of amazing please send me the appropriate information if you have any others you would like to see added name imagine mailing list description discussion forum for users of the imagine d rendering and animation package by impulse inc platforms amiga ibm subscription imagine request email sp paramax com posting imagine email sp paramax com name dctv mailing list description discussion forum for users of the digital creations dctv box software and file formats platforms amiga subscription dctv request nova cc purdue edu posting dctv nova cc purdue edu name rayshade users mailing list description discussion forum for users of the rayshade raytracer platforms most unix boxes amiga mac ibm subscription rayshade request cs princeton edu posting rayshade users cs princeton edu name lightwave d software for toaster mailing list description discussion forum for users of lightwave the video toaster modelling and rendering package platforms amiga subscription lightwave request bobsbox rent com with subscribe lightwave l in your message posting lightwave bobsbox rent com name pov mailing list description discussion forum for dkbtrace and pov renderers platforms unix subscription listserv trearn bitnet posting dkb l trearn bitnet name mailing list for massive parallel rendering description same platforms unix subscription mp render request icase edu posting mp render icase edu specific references on file formats graphics file formats david kay and john levine windcrest mcgraw hill isbn paper isbn hardcover isbn paper comments formats no software this is good imho i prefer books which are non platform dependent questions about this book may be sent to gbook iecc cambridge ma us what about gif gif stands for graphics interchange format it is portable and usable upon a wide variety of platforms it is quite limited in some ways yes the keeper of the faq has some opinions after all and in fact i don t like it much however it looks to me like the most frequently asked question which was not previously covered in this list the following is a list of newsgroups and the like where one could go to find out about gif subject alt binaries pictures faq general info subject alt binaries pictures faq os specific info newsgroups alt binaries pictures d alt binaries pictures misc alt binaries pictures utilities alt binaries pictures fractals alt binaries pictures fine art d news answers available in the indicated usenet newsgroup s or via anonymous ftp from pit manager mit edu in the files pub usenet news answers pictures faq part pub usenet news answers pictures faq part also available from mail server pit manager mit edu by sending a mail message containing any or all of send usenet news answers pictures faq part send usenet news answers pictures faq part send a message containing help to get general information about the mail server also you could check out the resources described in sections and above for more information what is morphing warping is the deformation of an image by mapping each pixel to a new location morphing is blending from one image or object to another one valerie hall has written an excellent introduction to warping and morphing this is available for anonymous ftp from marsh cs curtin edu au in the directory pub graphics bibliography morph there are three files morph intro ps z postscript version many pictures m morph intro txt z text version m responses z responses to morphing questions the files are compressed so you must use binary transfer and uncompress them afterwards how to ray trace height fields height fields are a special case in ray tracing they have a number of uses such as terrain rendering and some optimization is possible thus they get their own faq section note that further references can no doubt be located via the ray tracing bibs in section above the following paper seems to be the definitive reference f kenton musgrave grid tracing fast ray tracing for height fields july musg ps z this is available as research report yaleu dcs rr from yale university it s also in the siggraph fractal modeling in d computer graphics and imaging course notes and best of all it s available on the net nic funet fi pub sci papers musg ps z weedeater math yale edu pub papers musg ms z princeton edu pub graphics papers musg ms z coral cs jcu edu au graphics papers musg ps z gondwana ecr mu oz au pub papers musg ms z and musg ps z an implementation of this paper may be found in rayshade another paper exists a david w paglieroni a sidney m petersen t parametric height field ray tracing j proceedings of graphics interface i canadian information processing society c toronto ontario d may p and still one more musgrave kolb and mace the synthesis and rendering of eroded fractal terrains computer graphics vol no siggraph procedings p how to find the area of a d polygon the area of a triangle is given by in c notation area x y x y x y x y x y x y and the area of a planar polygon is given by area for i i n i area x i y i x i y i area x n y x y n area if the area is a negative number the polygon or triangle is clockwise if positive it is counterclockwise from ronald golman s gem in graphics gems ii see section above area of planar polygons and volume of polyhedra the area of a polygon p p p pn not in the x y plane is given by area polygon n sigma pk x pk where n is the unit vector normal to the plane and p is a polygonal vertex the represents the dot product operator and the x represents the cross product operator sigma represents the summation operator represents the absolute value operator pn is equal to p how to join acm siggraph probably the easiest way to join acm siggraph is to trot over to your local technical library and find a copy of communications of the acm somewhere within the first few pages will be an application blank fill it out and mail it in acm membership for students costs voting or associate membership yearly siggraph student membership costs an additional for voting or associate members also yearly to get tog transactions on graphics it s another for students and for voting or associate members if you just want to join siggraph without joining acm it ll cost you no student discount there are surcharges for overseas airmailing of publications acm member services may be contacted via email at acmhelp acmvm bitnet their phone number is fax number snailmail address acm po box church street station new york new york siggraph will be held in anaheim california at the anaheim convention center just up the street from disneyland on august where can i find mri and ct scan volume data volume data sets are available from the university of north carolina at omicron cs unc edu in pub softlab chvrtd commerical use is prohibited head data a slice mri data set of a human head knee data a slice mri data set of a human knee hipip data the result of a quantum mechanical calculation of a sod data of a one electron orbital of hipip an iron protein sod data an electron density map of the active site of sod superoxide dismutase ct cadaver head data a slice mri data set of a ct study of a cadaver head mr brain data a slice mri data set of a head with skull partially removed to reveal brain rna data an electron density map for staphylococcus aureus ribonuclease specific references on spatial data structures including quadtrees and octrees h samet the design and analysis of spatial data structures addison wesley reading ma isbn h samet applications of spatial data structures computer graphics image processing a nd gis addison wesley reading ma isbn where can i get a program to plot xy z data or f x data gnuplot is a command driven interactive data function plotting program it runs on just about any machine and is very flexible in terms of supported output devices the official north american distribution site for the latest version is dartmouth edu in pub gnuplot more information is available from the usenet newsgroup comp graphics gnuplot and its faq graphics gnuplot faq ace gr xmgr motif xvgr xview is a data function plotting tool for workstations or x terminals using x available from ftp ccalmr ogi edu in ccalmr pub acegr robotx robot is a general purpose plotting and data analysis program requires xview x terminal or workstation available from sunsite unc edu in pub academic data analysis xgraph is a popular two dimensional plotting program that accepts data in a form similar to the unix program graph and displays line graphs scatter plots or bar charts on an x display available from ic berkeley edu in pub drawplot is a program for drawing d plots on x x windows sunview displays or hp terminals available from xcf berkeley edu in src local specific references on pex and phigs pexlib programming manual tom gaskins pages o reilly associates isbn pexlib reference manual edited by steve talbott pages o reilly associates isbn phigs programming manual tom gaskins pages o reilly associates isbn softcover isbn casebound phigs reference manual edited by linda kosko pages o reilly associates isbn siggraph online bibliography project the acm siggraph online bibliography project is a database of over unique computer graphics and computational geometry references in bibtex format available to the computer graphics community as a research and educational resource the database is located at siggraph org users may download the bibtex files via ftp and peruse them offline or telnet to siggraph org and log in as biblio and interactively search the database for entries of interest by keyword additions corrections suggestions may be directed to the admin bibadmin siggraph org john t grieggs telos jet propulsion laboratory oak grove drive pasadena ca m s uucp cit vax elroy chas jpl devvax grieggs arpa jpl devvax grieggs cit vax arpa
comp.graphics	avi to flc converter i am looking for a small utility that will convert a microsoft video avi file to an autodesk animator pro flc file since avis also contain sound it would be nice if this utility also stored the sound track as a wav or voc file currently i m accomplishing this by saving the avi as multiple dibs using video for windows then converting each dib to a gif then loading the gifs into animator for the sound i load the original avi into wavedit and save it as a seperate wav file this requires too many steps to be productive any help will be greatly appreciated thanks don don campbell internet donc cognos com uucp cognos donc cognos inc mail p o box riverside drive ottawa ontario canada k g z
comp.graphics	turning photographic images into thermal print and or negatives i do not know if i am hitting the right news groups or not any help in the right direction is more than welcome i need help finding a company that will take photographic images scanned in and modified by adobe photoshop and turn them into thermal prints or negatives i am looking for a place as close to north carolina as possible the images will be created on a macintosh quadra running adobe photoshop and will then be stored in whatever format the vendor requires perhaps m cartridges the images will be black and white photographs scanned in with a dpi scanner then modified corrected by adobe photoshop if anyone could help me or even give me phone numbers to people who could i would be very grateful also if anyone else is doing what i am planning i would be happy to hear from you with any advice you might provide as to the computer system you use and or any peripherals or software it seemed the quadra would be my best bet to modify photographic images i am planning on buying a quadra with megs of ram a meg hard drive a dpi scanner sony monitor and a meg cartridge drive and perhaps a cd rom i am new to computers and any advice would be great david at hawks seq uncwil edu or hawks dw wl corning com
comp.graphics	need help to find out the address of several companies doing graphics lucas film pixar d eye inc light magic thanks changyaw wangc cs indiana edu
comp.graphics	research positions in d graphics munich germany european computer research centre research positions in d graphics ecrc is currently expanding its research staff in three dimensional graphics we are looking for highly qualified researchers with a phd in computer science and a proven ability to conduct highly innovative research preference will be given to candidates who have strong experience in developing and implementing algorithms for three dimensional graphics visualization and user interaction we presently have positions available for both experienced researchers and recent graduates candidates with especially strong backgrounds may be considered for positions as visiting scientists or for ph d student research positions the european computer industry research centre is located in munich germany with english as the working language the centre is funded by a consortium of major computer companies with a mission to pursue research in fundamental areas of computer science active areas of research include visualization and user interfaces distributed computing parallelism deductive systems and databases the center employs researchers of different nationalities the small but rapidly growing graphics group is currently investigating new methods for three dimensional human computer interaction and the integration of computer vision and computer graphics technology the center has extensive computing facilities which includes sun workstations apple macintoshes a well equipped graphics laboratory and network access to super computer facilities ecrc offers competitive salaries and excellent benefits for immediate consideration send a written application with curriculum vitae telephone number e mail address and references to douglas greer ecrc gmbh arabellastrasse d munich germany
comp.graphics	re wanted playmation info in article apr osf org omar godzilla osf org mark marino writes hi folks does anyone have a copy of playmation they d be willing to sell me i d love to try it out but not for the retail playmation is available direct from anjon associates for it s hard to beat that price also you d be better off with a newer version than an older version that had bugs that have long since been clobbered thanks in advance mark marino omar osf org uunet osf omar ken baer programmer animator hash enterprises usenet baer qiclab uucp applelink kenbaer office we re not hitchhiking anymore we re riding ren hoak
comp.graphics	re bit graphics wonko the sane oehler yar cs wisc edu wrote i was recently talking to a possible employer mine and he made a reference to a bit graphics computer image processing system i seem to remember it being called image or something akin to that anyway he claimed it had bit color a bit alpha channel that s bits of info what could that possibly be for specifically the bit color that s trillion colors many more than the human eye can resolve is this an anti aliasing thing or is this just some magic number to make it work better with a certain processor i m pretty sure most industry strength image processing specific systems i e photo processing gear use as much as bits of color info why why not oversampling is never a bad idea especially if the hardware s only task is image manipulation and profressional photographers demand professional results also to settle a bet with my roommate what are sgi s flagship products i know of iris indigo and crimson but what are the other ones and which is their top of the line sadly i have access to none of them just a dec sigh strange question but anyway there s the vgx line the newer indigo and the onyx systems are the new big boys on the block you can get a processor system with twice the graphics performance of a reality engine there s more but i don t have my handy periodic table of sgi s on me keith
comp.graphics	re hallusion info sean murphy sean aries scs uiuc edu wrote has anyone seen hallusions you can buy a poster of them and it looks like a simple dot pattern when you first look at it but if you focus behind it you see a d picture i m looking for a program that generates these pictures there s a company in texas that makes them but i doubt if they re giving the program away any help would be appreciated there is a program included with the book virtual reality playhouse which will let you generate these pictures it s not a very powerful program but it does an acceptable job for experimentation purposes davidr rincon ema rockwell com
comp.graphics	message for cgcad bart inescn pt i cant get through to the author of rtrace his site is inaccessible can he upload the new version somewhere else please
comp.graphics	nd rfd for open telematic group for realtime multimedia online apps rfd request for discussion for the open telematic group otg i have proposed the forming of a consortium task force for the promotion of naplps jpeg fif to openly discuss ways method procedures algorythms applications implementation extensions of naplps jpeg standards these standards should facilitate the creation of real time online applications that make use of voice video telecommuting hires graphics conferencing distant learning online order entry fax in addition these dicussion would assist all to better understand how sgml cals oda mime oodbms jpeg mpeg fractals sql cdrom cdromxa kodak photocd tcl v fast eia tia can best be incorporated and implemented to develop telematic multimedia applications we want to be able to support dos unix mac windows nt os platforms it is our hope that individuals developers corporations universities r d labs would join in in supporting such an endeavor this would be a not for profit group with bylaws and charter already many corporation have decided to support otg open telematic group so do not delay joining if you are a developer an rfd has been posted to form a usenet newsgroup and a faq will soon be be compose to start promulgating what is known on the subject if you would like to be added to the mailist send email or mail to the address below this group would publish an electronic quarterly naplps jpeg newsletter as well as a hardcopy version we urge all who wants to see cmcs hires based applications the naplps jpeg g r o w decide to join and mutually benefit from this not for profit endeavor note telematic has been defined by mr james martin as the marriage of voice video hi res graphics fax ivr music over telephone lines lan if you would like to get involve write to me at img inter multimedia group internet epimntl world std com p o box ed pimentel gisatl fidonet org atlanta georgia us cis fidonet bbs zyxel k to all that have responded we are trying to acknowledge as soon as possible we have really been inundated with org corp edu willing to get involve it would be nice if upon responded you can state in what capacity you are willing to get involve edimg willard atl ga us ed pimentel gatech kd nc vdbsan willard edimg emory uumind willard edimg willard s house bbs atlanta ga
comp.graphics	ds inv normal array does anyone truely understand the invalid normal array error ds gives you while rendering it seems to present itself while rendering complicated images i have circumvented this problem by rendering at the command line however it would be nice to render inside the editor is this a memory problem craig
comp.graphics	format of gif files could anyone tell me the format of gif files i would like to know how i could determine the size of the picture also are gif files in compressed format how many bits store pixel color information this is probally a simple question but i couldn t find it in the faq email responses would be perferred david lau davidla ecs comm mot com
comp.graphics	re bit graphics a good reason which is why many companies use it for bits pixel is so you can use double buffering for animating scenes i e you have bit planes you write to the one in the background and then flip the entire screen updates to the second image plane the screen updates in one refresh and you don t see different objects appearing in the order that they re drawn as in the cad macdraw effect now your ready to update the image that used to be in the foreground steve thssstb iitmax iit edu iris iit edu about the sg product line who can even keep track nowadays every co seems to as their ads press releases claim redefine computing etc etc as we know it with each new product progress and competition are great but who wants to invest in a system that s obsolete by the time it reaches your desk
comp.graphics	re why does illustrator autotrace so poorly in article b vmcbrt diablo uucp diablo uucp cboesel charles boesel writes i ve been trying to figure out a way to get adobe illustrator to auto trace exactly what i see on my screen but it misses the edges of templates by as many as pixels or more resulting in images that are useless i need exact tracing not approximate i ve tried adjusting the freehand tolerances as well as autotrace tolerances but it doesn t help any suggestions buy adobe streamline problem solved college men get smashed and break something college women get smashed and get broken robin wilson president ryan p malayter chico state university stanford hall notre dame in n d dept of physics comp sci malayter nd edu
comp.graphics	pc oak vga driver available via ftp a user on my bbs accidentally deleted his vga driver for his oak card and has no backup i was wondering if someone knew of an ftp site and path please where such a thing might be obtained thanks there is no religion when a man has good curry call the lizard s den bbs it s yoda usenet nethack xix pc amiga tim clinkenpeel aberrant analytical skeptical agnostic idealist i exclusively represent myself
comp.graphics	re fast polygon routine needed in article rguqoinnrc edna cc swin edu au alan saturn cs swin oz au alan christiansen writes i believe that the algorithms you can get that will only draw convex polygons can be much more efficient than those that can draw concave self intersecting polygons this efficiency can largely be attributed to the fact that simple convex polygons only have a left and a right edge on each scan line complex figure type polygons can be a bit trickier it is true the convex algorithm is faster than a general concave multi outline algorithm but not tremendously faster i spent awhile implementing and optimizing both flavors and the convex turned out about faster this is all c on hp pa risc the compiler got the inner loop shooting the span as fast as possible as far as i could tell for any sort of game the database to render is known ahead of time and can be made all convex definitely the way to go p s sorry but my code cannot be made public domain jesse jesse lackey d eye inc ithaca ny jesse eye com
comp.graphics	fast polygon routines needed i am looking for some fast polygon routines shaded or texture mapped in asm compile with masm or in turbo pascal compile with tp it has to be able to run on a but does not have to look super fast on a but must look good on a if anyone has any such code could you please mail it to me or tell me where it can be got thanks in advance daniel godden genius is only one step away university of western sydney nepean from insanity aarnet internet dgodden st nepean usw edu au but me i am already there
comp.graphics	re virtual reality for x on the cheap ridout bink plk af mil brian s ridout writes in article apr mfltd co uk sts mfltd co uk steve sherwood x writes has anyone got multiverse to work i have built it on svr mips svr s and sun sparcstation there seems to be many bugs in it the dogfight and dactyl simply do nothing after fixing a bug where a variable is defined twice in two different modules one needed setting to static else the client core dumped steve extn sts mfltd co uk uunet mfocus sts i ve tried compiling it on several sparcstations with gcc after fixing up a few bugs missing constant definitions plus a couple of other things i got it to compile link but after starting client server i just get a black window sometimes the client core dumps sometimes the server sometimes i get a broken pipe sometimes it just sits there doing nothing although i occassionally get the cursor to become a cross hair in dog fight but that s it i ve sent word to the author plus what i did to fix it last week but no reply as yet peter k campbell p campbell trl oz au
comp.graphics	graph traversal algorithms hi everyone i am currently planning to write a program that traverses the image of handwritten characters in ascii format and produces circle and line representation of handwritten characters did anybody out there has any experiences on this problem if you have would you post or e mail to please kevin does anyone has program that traverse the digital image and produces circle and line kevin shin kshin bcstec ca boeing com
comp.graphics	re newsgroup split in article c r bm lh mach wlu ca mart mach wlu ca phil martin u writes chris herringshaw tdawson engin umich edu wrote concerning the proposed newsgroup split i personally am not in favor of doing this i learn an awful lot about all aspects of graphics by reading this group from code to hardware to algorithms i just think making different groups out of this is a wate and will only result in a few posts a week per group i kind of like the convenience of having one big forum for discussing all aspects of graphics anyone else feel this way just curious yes i also like knowing where to go to ask a question without getting hell for putting it in the wrong newsgroup i am also against splitting the group the traffic will decrease on any given subject but the required net bandwidth will increase because of multiply cross postings i just went through this with another group i continuously read it is now almost at the point where it is no longer worth reading strongly suggest not doing this dave rogers
comp.graphics	wanted grayscale dithering routine i have some color gifs which i would like to archive in a much smaller size using a grayscale palette of shades the quantization to grays introduces some ugly bands in the pictures which can be nicely eliminated by dithering up to now i have used xv to process the images but now i would like to automate the procedure the problem is that xv can t i think convert images automatically and the obvious alternative pnmplus ppmquant and pnmdither don t even get close to xv s quality pnmdither apparently dithers in rgb even though the images are in grayscale the dithering routine in xv seems to use the natural image colors for the dither is this or any similar routine available in the public domain if so where niclas mattsson exjob math chalmers se
comp.graphics	vrrend where is it kept i m told that vrrend is available on the internet i wanted to know where it is thanks in advance raoul daruwala cs nyu edu
comp.graphics	re rumours about do in article apr mercury unt edu sean mcmains mcmains unt edu writes wow a i d be very interested to get my hands on one of these especially considering the fact that motorola has not yet released the which is supposedly the next in the x lineup d the is made by someone other than motorola signetics perhaps and was if memory serves me correctly a compatible single chip micro type chip ie built in extra toys like serial ports ram interfaces etc so laugh all you want but there is such a critter gord wait smos systems vancouver design centre uunet jericho gord gord jericho uunet uu net or even some days
comp.graphics	re mgr naplps gui bbs frontends hi all i am looking into methods i can use to turn my linux based bbs into a full color graphical bbs that supports pc mac linux and amiga callers originally i was inspired by the naplps graphics standard a summary of which hit this group about weeks ago i posted that document forgot part etc but it was more than a summary it was a complete technical description of the protocol it can be ftped from simtel or from wuarchive wustl edu in mirrors msdos naplps following up on software availability of naplps supporting software i find that most terminal programs are commercial the only resonable shareware one being pp which runs soley on msdos machines leaving mac and amiga users to buy full commercial software if they want to try out the bbs i know i wouldn t next most interesting possibility is to port mgr to pc mac amiga i why not write a naplps decoder for your choice of platform and release the code to the net then other willing souls can help port it to other platforms naplps was designed for this type of online interactive graphics much the same as x but while x is intended for high bandwidth network connections naplps was optimized for low bandwidth modem connections is there a color version of mgr for linux does anyone have any other suggestions for a linux based gui bbs i m sure you will receive other suggestions but look at it this way if you wanted to provide a full network connection to linux over a modem would you use slip ppp or would you invent some new way most people would say that slip ppp exist and are reasonably well designed protocols so lets just implement them i see it the same way with naplps it is an existing well thought out extensible protocol for online graphics so why not implement it if you need any advice on implementation just e mail me i am currently getting a beta version of my coreldraw to naplps converter working well enough to release it by may if you or someone else does not get going on a freely available naplps decoder then i intend to do it after i get a my conversion program out of beta and get a couple of other things done michael dillon internet mpdillon halcyon halcyon com c powerhouse fidonet rr armstrong bc v e b voice canada bbs
comp.graphics	patches for sungks due to a number of bugs in gks under sunos i installed patches and patch appears to work fine and has fixed a number of problems patch however which is required to fix a number of other annoying bugs breaks with our applications is there a more recent revision of patch any other ideas scott sloan email cesws cc newcastle edu au university of newcastle fax nsw australia
comp.graphics	re psygnosis cd i titles was re rumours about do mark samson samson prlhp prl philips co uk wrote speaking of psygnosis they have licensed games to philips interative media international for cd i and for the commodore cdtv regards email x x mattias matt dah dsv su se i love it
comp.graphics	front end for povray g day all does anyone know anything about front end for povray x version i mean are there things like user friendly modeller for povray or any modellers which will let me design a scene and produce a file which povray can then read cheers tomek tm tomek tpiatek comp vuw ac nz new zealand tm tomek tpiatek comp vuw ac nz new zealand
comp.graphics	vatican library the vatican library recently made a tour of the us can anyone help me in finding a ftp site where this collection is available thanx in advance j watson
comp.graphics	re tiff philosophical significance of on wed apr gmt se psh brunel ac uk peter hauke said peter joachim lous joachim kih no wrote peter does anyone have any other suggestions where the came from peter yep here s a theory that i once heard bandied around rather than thinking peter of the number think of the sound for tea two a sort of anagram on tea for two peter two for tea for tea two un other suggestion is there is no tea above it just and for two many things are possible think binary y n l r t f no wonder there was eve for adam peter malek malek we cooperate in what we agree on and forgive each other for that in which we disagree hassan el banna
comp.graphics	raytracing colours i have a question about recursive backward raytracing when an incident ray i strikes an object at point p first the normal n is calculated light rays are calculated l to ln where n is the number of light sources these being the light rays that do not intersect with anything the reflected ray r and the transmitted ray t is calculated from the formulae calling the routine recursively on r and t will return the colours along the rays r and t as rcol and tcol each object has its own colour ocol and each light source has licol i n the question is how do you combine rcol tcol ocol and all the licol s to get the correct resulting colour to return along the i ray all colours are defined as strucures records having r g b components between and if anyone has done this before could you give me a few hints adrian secchia asecchia cs uct ac za
comp.graphics	re bit graphics apollo now hp have a graphics board that does bit graphics when i heard that i jumped the answer isn t that it can do trillion trillion trillion colors it actually does planes of bits or planes of bits etc for very fast graphics douginoz
comp.graphics	lasergraphics language hi we have an old montage fr mm film recorder when connected to a pc with its processor card it can directly take hpgl targa and lasergraphics language files bit targa is quite ok for raster images but conversion from whatever one happens to have can be quite slow this lasergraphics language seems to be got the source file for one test image a vector based language that can handle one million colors it does some polygons too and perhaps something else the question is where can i find some information about this language a ftp site a book a company address ok it would be nice to have a windows driver for it but i m not that optimistic thanks in advance for any help jussi jussi laaksonen computing centre bo akademi university finland
comp.graphics	matrox pg cv windows driver hi i need a windows driver for the matrox pg cv svga card at the moment windows runs only in the x mode if you have a driver for this card please send it with the oemsetup inf to bockamp informatik tu muenchen de thanks florian bockamp bockamp informatik tu muenchen de o o ooo ooo it s not a bug it s an undocumented feature
comp.graphics	re help needed on hidden line removal in article raynor beech cs scarolina edu raynor cs scarolina edu harold brian raynor writes i am looking for some information of hidden line removal using roberts algorithm something with code or pseudo code would be especially helpful i am required to do this for a class due monday we have very little time to implement these changes it is a very fast paced class the notes given in class leave a lot to be desired so i would vastly appreciate any help actually any algorithm would be nice roberts or no the main problem is two objects intersecting in x and y dimensions need to know which lines to clip off so that one object will appear in front of another if you can give me an ftp address and filename or even the name of a good book i d really appreciate it g day brian i ll be blunt about this the only reasonable explanation of roberts algorithm is in procedural elements for computer graphics rogers mcgraw hill book co go to the library and look at this there is also a somewhat muddled explanation in the first edition of newman and sproull the algorithm described in pecg runs in near linear time luck dave rogers
comp.graphics	wanted how to do a screen dump of a vga screen how can one dump to the printer the content of a vga screen if it were a text screen we can execute a shift printscr but with graphics we have to do a pixed by pixel print it would be greatly appreciated if someone can supply source code for this alternately are there commercial or shareware programs that are available to do this i must be able to shell out of my program to execute this print screen therefore it would be prefferable to have source code thank you in advance rickey tom internet style aruba rickt uu psi com programmer analyst project ze uucp uunet uupsi aruba rickt
comp.graphics	re coreldraw bitmap to scodal in article r rsiinnld zephyr grace cri nz srlnjal grace cri nz writes does anyone know of software that will allow you to convert coreldraw cdr files containing bitmaps to scodal as this is the only format our bureau s filmrecorder recognises corel draw will do it version onwards if you have version perhaps an upgrade is in order another alternative would be to use a different bureau that can take postscript chris lilley technical author itti computer graphics and visualisation training project computer graphics unit manchester computing centre oxford road manchester uk m pl internet c c lilley mcc ac uk voice fax janet c c lilley uk ac mcc
comp.graphics	re needed plotting package that does in c qgf k i alta oh com chris zeus alta oh com chris murphy writes in article full gl apr dolphin pts mot com full gl pts mot com glen fullmer writes looking for a graphics cad or whatever package on a x unix box that will take a file with records like hi see roger grywalski s response to re help on network visualization in comp graphics visualization could someone please post roger grywalski s response or point me to where i could find it thanks a lot s raj chaudhury dept of physics raj phys ksu edu kansas state university manhattan ks s raj chaudhury dept of physics raj phys ksu edu kansas state university manhattan ks
comp.graphics	c classes for graphics i m planning on writing several classes to build a raytracing radiosity library on top of and i m wondering if anythink like this is freely available on the net before i go to it what i need is classes like rays vectors colors shaders surfaces media primitives worlds containing primitives and views images please post or mail torgeir veimo studying at the university of bergen i m gona wave my freak flag high jimi hendrix and it would be okay on any other day the police
comp.graphics	re xv problems in article r iv cba cc tut fi jk lehtori cc tut fi kouhia juhana writes recent discussion about xv s problems were held in some newsgroup here is some text users of xv might find interesting i have also minor ideas for bit xv e mail me for them deleted for space basically complaints that xv is an bit program and that making several modifications to the rgb sliders is slow because of screen updates in reverse order try clicking in the auto apply box to switch it off then make your mods then click on apply there is no problem as stated it has already been solved if you look carefully yes xv is an bit program this is not a bug you can edit individual pallette entries or do global colour changes crop scale etc clearly the program must save out the altered image else all your work would be thrown away so yes it saves out bit images of course xv can import bit images and quantises them down to bits this is a handy facility not a bug how would you suggest doing colour editing on a bit file how would you group related colours to edit them together only global changes could be done unless the software were very different and much more complicated if you want to do colour editing on a bit image you need much more powerfull software which is readily available commercially and lastly jpeg is a compression algorithm it can be applied to any image of arbitrary bit depth again this is not a bug it is a way of saving disk space later chris lilley technical author itti computer graphics and visualisation training project computer graphics unit manchester computing centre oxford road manchester uk m pl internet c c lilley mcc ac uk voice fax janet c c lilley uk ac mcc
comp.graphics	re vatican library reposted by request these images are great but they are also large x pixels is a typical size be warned regards tom lane from rsquires cyclops eece unm edu roger squires newsgroups comp archives subject rec arts books vatican library exhibit at library of congress online date feb gmt x original newsgroups rec arts books x original date feb gmt archive name auto rec arts books vatican library exhibit at library of congress online this is from another newsgroup looks quite interesting rms announcing a new online exhibit from the library of congress rome reborn the vatican library renaissance culture an exhibit at the library of congress washington dc available by anonymous ftp from seq loc gov pub vatican exhibit rome reborn the vatican library and renaissance culture presents some of the vatican library s most precious manuscripts books and maps many of which played a key role in the humanist recovery of the classical heritage of greece and rome the exhibition presents the untold story of the vatican library as the intellectual driving force behind the emergence of rome as a political and scholarly superpower during the renaissance the exhibit will be on display in the jefferson building of the library of congress from january through april the online exhibit will be available by anonymous ftp indefinitely the exhibit is divided into nine sections the vatican library archaeology humanism mathematics music medicine biology nature described a wider world i how the orient came to rome and a wider world ii how rome went to china each section consists of its own sub directory within the exhibit directory and contains the exhibit text for that section and separate jpeg image files for each object this online exhibit includes not only objects from the library of congress exhibit but also the alternate objects brought from rome to be used if there were a problem with one of the primary objects and items omitted later in the planning process this exhibit will be of interest to medieval and renaissance scholars in particular but also to art historians historians of science or medicine early music scholars students of the humanist movement students of printing and the printed word theologians scholars of both far and near eastern studies and to librarians and information professionals please get the readme file for details on what files this exhibit contains if you have questions about how to use ftp speak to your local computer support person if you have questions or comments about the content of the exhibit please write to vatican kell loc gov while if you have any questions or comments on the system please contact me k d ellis k d ellis special projects office library of congress washington dc internet kell seq loc gov
comp.graphics	re coreldraw bitmap to scodal in article r gmginn fm zephyr grace cri nz srlnjal grace cri nz writes yes i am aware coreldraw exports in scodal version did it quite well apart from a few hassles with radial fills version revb is better but if you try to export in scodal with a bitmap image included in the drawing it will say something like cannot export scodal with bitmap at least it does on my version oh ok then sorry for misunderstanding if anyone out there knows a way around this i am all ears temporal images make a product called filmpak which converts autocad plots to scodal postscript to scodal and now gif to scodal but it costs and i was just wondering if there was anything out there that just did the bitmap to scodal part a tad cheaper maybee you should persuade your burea that for only they can become much more competitive taking input from autocad postscript andgif as well as scodl seriously this sounds like something the bureau should have or find another bureau you should not be the one buting this software chris lilley technical author itti computer graphics and visualisation training project computer graphics unit manchester computing centre oxford road manchester uk m pl internet c c lilley mcc ac uk voice fax janet c c lilley uk ac mcc
comp.graphics	re adobe photo shop type software for unix x motif platforms in article c w xb iv world std com wdm world std com wayne michael writes i have been searching for a quality image enhancement and manipulation package for unix x motif platforms that is comparable to adobe photo shop for the mac corel draw will be able to do this as it will include the photopaint stuff that the pc version got with version don t hold your breath though chris lilley technical author itti computer graphics and visualisation training project computer graphics unit manchester computing centre oxford road manchester uk m pl internet c c lilley mcc ac uk voice fax janet c c lilley uk ac mcc
comp.graphics	re bit graphics in article apr cs wisc edu oehler yar cs wisc edu wonko the sane writes i was recently talking to a possible employer mine and he made a reference to a bit graphics computer image processing system i seem to remember it being called image or something akin to that anyway he claimed it had bit color a bit alpha channel that s bits of info what could that possibly be for specifically the bit color that s trillion colors many more than the human eye can resolve is this an anti aliasing thing or is this just some magic number to make it work better with a certain processor well bit colour could be for improved resolution but bits per channel seems like a bit excessive i have seen a paper that quoted bits per channel of bits for computational precision more than that would seem to be wasted perhaps the frame buffer uses another colourspace which needs more bits to represent the full range rgb is a cube so it is a compact encoding most likely however is that there are two separate bit bits per component frame buffers this set up called double buffering allows a complex d picture to be built up on one buffer while the other buffer containing the previous frame is displayed this makes for smoother animation sadly i have access to none of them just a dec sigh well hey if you want to brag about numbers the range can take a pxg turbo card with bits per pixel full double buffering two bit buffers a bit z buffer and an extra bit buffer for off screen image storage mind you the card costs more than your workstation chris lilley technical author itti computer graphics and visualisation training project computer graphics unit manchester computing centre oxford road manchester uk m pl internet c c lilley mcc ac uk voice fax janet c c lilley uk ac mcc
comp.graphics	re turning photographic images into thermal print and or negatives also if anyone else is doing what i am planning i would be happy to hear from you with any advice you might provide as to the computer system you use and or any peripherals or software it seemed the quadra would be my best bet to modify photographic images i am planning on buying a quadra with megs of ram a meg hard drive a dpi scanner sony monitor and a meg cartridge drive and perhaps a cd rom i am new to computers and any advice would be great well i have lots of experience with scanning in images and altering them as for changing them back into negatives is that really possible scanning and altering is no big deal i don t know what types of features you have in your version of photoshop but the one i use which incidentally is on a quadra has gallery effects and all types of other neato stuff i m just wondering why you would want to put your images back into negatives because once you print the image out that s your print do you know what exactly your aim is in all of this like are you doing this just for fun for a business to gain more computer knowledge for a project you re working on otherwise i guess i don t know if i d be helping or not by posting info on scanning and stuff ok cool seeya jennifer urso the oh so bitter woman of utter blahness but cheerful undertones
comp.graphics	re help need bits viewer in article seti inria fr deniaud cartoon inria fr gilles deniaud writes i m looking for a program which is able to display bits images we are using a sun sparc equipped with parallax graphics board running x utah raster toolkit using getx convert your sun raster files presumably to ppm with the pbm toolkit then convert ppm to utah rle format with ppmtorle which is provided in the toolkit i seem to remember that xloadimage can do bit servers too possibly xwud the x window un dump program can display bit images certainly xwd can grab them chris lilley technical author itti computer graphics and visualisation training project computer graphics unit manchester computing centre oxford road manchester uk m pl internet c c lilley mcc ac uk voice fax janet c c lilley uk ac mcc
comp.graphics	povray tga rle hello i have some problem in converting tga file generated by povray to rle file when i convert i do not get any warning message but if i use xloadimage getx something is wrong error messages are targatorle o o rle data tga xloadimage o rle o rle is a x bit rle image with no map will dither to bits with gamma of dithering image done building ximage done xloadimage x error badvalue integer parameter out of range for operation on x xloadimage x error badwindow invalid window parameter on xb i know that i need to install ppmtorle and tgatoppm but i do not spend time to install them even i do not want to generate rgb from povray and then convert them to rle if possible rgb to rle works but it will mess up my directory with so many files and it needs more steps to finally convert to rle file say cat rawtorle rleflip does any body out there have same experience problems thanks in advance j park
comp.graphics	re wanted playmation info in article apr qiclab scn rain com baer qiclab scn rain com ken baer writes in article apr osf org omar godzilla osf org mark marino writes hi folks does anyone have a copy of playmation they d be willing to sell me i d love to try it out but not for the retail playmation is available direct from anjon associates for oops forgot the phone number it s ken baer programmer animator hash enterprises usenet baer qiclab uucp applelink kenbaer office we re not hitchhiking anymore we re riding ren hoak
comp.graphics	please help point in concave polyhedra dear netters i am looking for c source code to test if a d point lies within a concave polyhadra i have read a few articles about this and know that two solutions exist parity counting and angle sumation both ideas are pretty simple but coding is not so i wonder if there exists public domain source code for this another rough solition don t care special cases is ray casting which is reported to be more or less independent of number of faces consisting the polyhedra if a special space indexing is used m tamminen et al ray casting and block model conversion using a spatial index computer aided designs but the prerequirement is that all the facets of polyhedra have their normal pointing outside of polyhedra how this could be done in practice i have a set of trangles consisting the polyhedra how could i ensure their normals pointing outside the polyhedra the paper mentioned above assumed this is already the case i have also read some standard computer graphics textbook about hidden line removal it says if we make the rule that the normal of a facet pointing toward viewer standing far away from the polyhedra again how to make sure any pointers are welcome yaohong jiang queen s university kingston ont jiangy qucdn queensu ca
comp.graphics	triangulized data wanted with texture to be mapped i need triangulized data of some nice looking model with some texture mapping it would be better if the parametric values of each vertex for the surface before triangulized are avaliable along with the euclidean points so that we could use them for texture mapping thanks kwansik
comp.graphics	where is faq where can i find it thanks kwansik
comp.graphics	what is the difference between raytracing and rendering hello i ve raytraced and rendered and the only difference i ve found is that raytracing takes a hell of a lot longer am i missing something later z
comp.graphics	re tiff complexity anyone who thinks that tiff is too complex hasn t dealt with cgm asn cda dca sgml or any one of a number of other very successful file format people seem perfectly capable dealing with these others dealing with the format of tiff is frankly less difficult than dealing with the dct lzw and fax encoding of the image data the majority of the libraries which deal with tiff are dedicated to these other issues rather than with simply decoding the tags and parameters perhaps people are overwhelmed in comparison with some rather simpleminded formats such as gif pcx and bmp but to suggest that tiff is so complex as to be doomed to failure is ludicrous that doesn t mean that gif isn t fine but don t even thing about using it in many instances gif is very nice for use in low end photos applications and for screen grabs and such but it would never do for high volume or high resolution systems fax is nice but it doesn t do color and gif doesn t do b w all that well jpeg is nice for high resolution color but is slow for low end the advantage tiff brings to the table is its ability to handle all these situations and then some naturally it s more complex but i ld rather propose tiff imaging solutions over imaging systems based on having to deal with file formats anyday you may find that tiff is too complicated for your personal tastes but please don t wrail against it s complexity the complexity it contains is required to provide the functionality it does and doesn t come close to the complexity found in most commercially viable file formats if we re in philosophical arguments against complexity let s all go program in scheme and forth and do imaging with run length encoding
comp.graphics	dxf to pcx gif tif or tga does anyone know of a program for the pc that will take autocad dxf format files and convert them to a raster format like pcx gif etc thanks in advance ed ed murashie us mail beckman instruments inc phone diagnostic system group fax s kraemer blvd w internet murashiea mail beckman com brea ca
comp.graphics	i donwloaded a bin file from a unix machine now what i just donwloaded a bin file from a unix machine which is supposed to be converted to a mac format does anyone know what i need to do to this file to get it into any dos mac or unix readable format someone mentioned fetch on the unix machine is this correct could someone explain the bin format a little thanks elizabeth elizabeth strickler matess gsusgi gsu edu
comp.graphics	help d studio ipas hi can anyone please give me some ftp sites to get ipas processes for d studio thanks warren
comp.graphics	computer graphics studies at the technion technion israel institute of technology department of computer science graduate studies in computer graphics applications are invited for graduate students wishing to specialize in computer graphics and related fields active research is being conducted in the fields of image rendering geometric modelling and computer animation state of the art graphics workstations sun silicon graphics and video equipment are available the technion offers full scholarship support tuition and assistantships for suitable candidates for more information contact dr craig gotsman computer science deptartment technion israel institute of technology haifa israel gotsman cs technion ac il
comp.graphics	dwg gcd dd formats reference needed can some kind soul point me to references for the above formats thanks earl
comp.graphics	any autodesk d concepts users out there if you are a user of autodesk d concepts and are willing to answer a small number of short questions then please send me email earl boebert sctc com
comp.graphics	re raytracing colours asecchia cs uct ac za adrian secchia writes when an incident ray i strikes an object at point p the reflected ray r and the transmitted ray t is calculated from the formulae calling the routine recursively on r and t will return the colours along the rays r and t as rcol and tcol each object has its own colour ocol and each light source has licol i n the question is how do you combine rcol tcol ocol and all the licol s to get the correct resulting colour to return along the i ray first of all this is not a snide response if you re confused about this issue you will stumble over a lot of other things as well i suggest that the weakness is your reference material get an introduction to ray tracing by andrew glassner for very good coverage of the raytracing algorithm you could also refer to the nd edition of foley van dam on to the question the simple answer is that you just keep adding up all the contributions and then clamping at the maximum intensity for example if your intensity values range from to then keep adding up and clamp the resultant values to you might have to clamp the lower bound to if you have dark bulbs but that s another issue so you get some illumination equation like this i lambient ldiffuse light n lreflected ltransparent the contribution due to reflection is just summed with the light intensity as is the light due to transparency now a slightly less hand waving illumination equation is this i kala kdld light n krlr ktlt that is each component of the illumination equation is governed by the material constants ka kd kr and kt so the maximum you can get from transparency for a given object for example might be for a purple colored glass object hopefully this answers your question i ll forward my illumination equation sermon to you also steve hollasch kubota pacific computer inc hollasch kpc com santa clara california
comp.graphics	re what is the difference between raytracing and rendering zlg uxa cso uiuc edu zhenhai li writes hello i ve raytraced and rendered and the only difference i ve found is that raytracing takes a hell of a lot longer am i missing something yes there are many methods of rendering raytracing is one of them you didn t say what you mean by rendering so i won t guess methods of rendering include o pencil and graph paper doing the math by hand o wireframe rendering of the d projection o hidden line rendering o scanline rendering using painter s algorithm bsp trees z buffer other o raytracing o radiosity o holographic projection to film o combination of any of the above steve hollasch kubota pacific computer inc hollasch kpc com santa clara california
comp.graphics	dna helix looking for a tiff eps of a dna helix e mail any auggestions please
comp.graphics	re i donwloaded a bin file from a unix machine now what in article matess gsusgi gsu edu matess gsusgi gsu edu eliza strickler writes i just donwloaded a bin file from a unix machine which is supposed to be converted to a mac format does anyone know what i need to do to this file to get it into any dos mac or unix readable format someone mentioned fetch on the unix machine is this correct could someone explain the bin format a little this is almost certainly a macbinary file which is an encoded version of a mac file so the resource fork and data fork get preserved you need a program that converts this to a regular file if this is a macbinary file you may have downloaded it in text mode and is probably corrupt if you did if you re using ftp to transfer it at any point make sure you type binary first if you can open the file with a text editor and find this file must be converted with bin at the top it is a binhex file and can be decoded with binhex among other programs niko schuessler project vincent systems manager email niko iastate edu iowa state university computation center voice ames ia snail durham
comp.graphics	rfd comp multimedia open telematic rfd request for discussion for the open telematic group otg i have proposed the forming of a consortium task force for the promotion of naplps jpeg fif to openly discuss ways method procedures algorythms applications implementation extensions of naplps jpeg standards these standards should facilitate the creation of real time online applications that make use of voice video telecommuting hires graphics conferencing distant learning online order entry fax in addition these dicussion would assist all to better understand how sgml cals oda mime oodbms jpeg mpeg fractals sql cdrom cdromxa kodak photocd tcl v fast and eia tia can best be incorporated and implemented to develop telematic multimedia applications we want to be able to support dos unix mac windows nt os platforms it is our hope that individuals developers corporations universities r d labs would join in in supporting such an endeavor this would be a not for profit group with bylaws and charter already many corporations have decided to support otg open telematic group so do not delay joining if you are a developer an rfd has been posted to form a usenet newsgroup and a faq will soon be be composed to start promulgating what is known on the subject if you would like to be added to the maillist send email or mail to the address below this group would publish an electronic quarterly naplps jpeg newsletter as well as a hardcopy version we urge all who wants to see cmcs hires based applications the naplps jpeg g r o w decide to join and mutually benefit from this not for profit endeavor note telematic has been defined by mr james martin as the marriage of voice video hi res graphics fax ivr music over telephone lines lan if you would like to get involve write to me at img inter multimedia group internet epimntl world std com p o box ed pimentel gisatl fidonet org atlanta georgia us cis fidonet bbs zyxel k edimg willard atl ga us ed pimentel gatech kd nc vdbsan willard edimg emory uumind willard edimg willard s house bbs atlanta ga
comp.graphics	wanted bit viewer hello thanks to the people who helped me with the problem of displaying bit images all the viewers like xli xloadimage and display are converting the bit images to bit before display them on the screen what i really want is a viewer with make use of the bit frame screen buffer in our case the parallax one thanks in advance gilles ps we are using a sun sparc running x
comp.graphics	scientific visualization of chemical systems molecules has evolved from an esoteric academic subject into a international industry computer graphics has played a decisive role in this transformation by allowing chemists to build visualize and interact with complex geometrical objects while computer scientists are conversant in the language of their own discipline they are often unfamiliar with the terminology simulation techniques and practical needs of research chemists similarly chemists are often unfamiliar with the latest paradigms and technological advances in graphical computing this interdisciplinary course is intended to bridge the gap between computer science and chemistry and to equip chemistry researchers who wish to be more than just casual users of prepackaged graphics software although this is not intended to be a course in computational chemistry or drug design data sets from chemical research problems will be used in lab and students will be encouraged to bring data sets of their own lab exercises and projects will be carried out using data flow programming ibm visualization data explorer software and students will have access to cornell theory center computing resources including video recording equipment audience researchers and students in the chemical and biological sciences interested in integrating state of the art computer graphics into their research computer scientists wishing to gain familiarity with a major application of scientific visualization the class size will be limited to participants on a first come first served basis level graduate advanced undergraduate or credits may be taken without credit as a workshop calculus linear algebra and introductory chemistry required familiarity with unix x windows and c is useful but not required date june credits june or credits time mon fri am to pm and pm to pm cost or credit credits format the course will be held in the theory center training facility where computer workstations will be available daily lectures will be interspersed with laboratory exercises and ample time will be provided for project enablement and familiarization with the new computing environment students enrolled for one credit will be graded on the basis of their laboratory exercises and short final project those enrolled for a second credit will receive more advanced lectures be given more time for project development and meet daily to share experience and discuss problems encountered content may vary elements of computer graphics polygonal rendering lighting models ray tracing volumetric rendering stereo graphics animation introduction to data flow programming dx interactivity representing the atom size time and energy scales basic classical and quantum mechanics important categories of molecules small molecules biopolymers surfaces and catalysts miscellaneous current applications data formats and conversions advanced molecular graphics techniques types of simulation and experiment electronic structure molecular dynamics mechanics electrostatics x ray crystallography nmr quantum dynamics and spectroscopy instructors the course will be taught by two instructors topics related to computer graphics will be handled by dr bruce land project leader of visualization cornell national supercomputing facility chemistry specific aspects of the course will be handled by dr richard e gillilan visualization specialist and research scientist cornell national supercomputing facility to register mail completed form to cornell university school of continuing education and summer sessions b day hall ithaca ny questions richard gillilan richard tc cornell edu important acceptance will be first come first served and based on a target class size of full credit and single or non credit participants deadline may application form scientific visualization of chemical systems chemistry computer science u s social security number if available cornell id number if available name last first middle suffix jr etc address home address where grades will be mailed local phone home phone academic discipline course number check one chemistry computer science credits status undergraduate student smart node consultant graduate student smart node advisor post doctoral faculty other explain corporate commercial research staff other explain name of firm indicate which of the following best describes you optional african american alaskan native asian american caucasian hispanic american native american list special needs e g mobility impaired accommodations blocks of rooms are available at the sheraton reservations must be made no later than may be sure to tell them you are here for the cornell theory center visualization workshop sheraton inn one sheraton drive ithaca fax rates starting at other local motels make your reservation early our workshop coincides with other cornell events econo lodge cayuga mall n triphammer rd ithaca fax rates from ask for the cornell rate dorm rooms have also been reserved participants both credit and non credit participants who are interested in dorm rooms should call below for registration information jeanne miller or donna smith email jeanne tc cornell edu or donna tc cornell edu
comp.graphics	analysis on text readins utils ocr wanted ibm pc from tolsty thu apr to newsserv newcom kiae su newsgroups comp periphs comp graphics digest comp graphics comp binaries ibm pc wanted alt graphics pixutils bit listserv omrscan message id kaj nzfm w nsk uucp free msk su organization nsk ran from andrey v shorin tolsty nsk uucp free msk su date thu apr subject analysis on text reading utils needed ibm pc distribution msk hi does anybody know any reliable utils to read english texts with scanner i want some analysis on quality of recognition because i want to read texts which i get by fax you know quality on faxes is rather bad the scanner i have is b w and dpi but if there exist any good software that needs other specifications that will be ok please send messages to my e mail or on conference server i ll summarize them and consider your recomendations thank you andrey v shorin scientific council on complex problem cybernetics russian academy of sciences e mail tolsty nsk uucp free msk su tel fax
comp.graphics	cross sobel roberts filters i saw an imaging program some time ago on an amiga that had cross sobel and roberts filters for edge detection can anybody direct me to these algorithms paul denize paul denize internet pdenize waikato ac nz department of computer science university of waikato phone hamilton ext new zealand fax
comp.graphics	apr computer graphics resource listing weekly part archive name graphics resources list part last modified computer graphics resource listing weekly posting part last change april many faqs including this listing are available on the archive site pit manager mit edu alias rtfm mit edu in the directory pub usenet news answers the name under which a faq is archived appears in the archive name line at the top of the article this faq is archived as graphics resources list part there s a mail server on that machine you send a e mail message to mail server pit manager mit edu containing the keyword help without quotes in the message body you can see in many other places for this listing see the item places to find the resource listing for more information items changed re arranged the subjects in order to fir better in the k article limit i plan on changing headers soon so be careful only the resource listing keys are sure to remain in the subject line computer graphics ftp site list by eric haines mail servers and graphics oriented bbses plotting packages i m thinking of making this post bi weekly what do you think lines which got changed have the character in front of them added lines are prepended with a removed lines are just removed use diff to locate these changes this text is c copyright of nikolaos c fotis you can copy freely this file provided you keep this copyright notice intact compiled by nikolaos nick c fotis e mail nfotis theseas ntua gr please contact me for updates corrections etc disclaimer i do not guarantee the accuracy of this document use it at your own risk this is mainly a guide for computer graphics software i would suggest reading the comp graphics faq for image analysis stuff it s entitled date comp graphics frequently asked questions faq john t grieggs grieggs jpl devvax jpl nasa gov is the poster of the official comp graphics faq i have included my comments within braces and nikolaos fotis contents of the resource listing part places to find the resource listing archie notes computer graphics ftp site list by eric haines mail servers and graphics oriented bbses ray tracing graphics related mailing lists d graphics editors a public domain free and shareware systems b commercial systems scene description languages solids description formats part plotting packages image analysis software image processing and display part scene generators geographical data maps data files d scanners digitized d data background imagery textures datafiles introduction to rendering algorithms a ray tracing b z buffer depth buffer c others where can i find the geometric data for the a teapot b space shuttle image annotation software scientific visualization stuff molecular visualization stuff gis geographical information systems software future additions please send me updates info places to find the resource listing this file is crossposted to comp graphics comp answers and news answers so if you can t locate it in comp graphics you re advised to search in comp answers or news answers the latter groups usually are archived in your site contact your sysadmin for more info these articles are posted to comp graphics times a month and are kept in many places see below many faqs including this one are available on the archive site pit manager mit edu alias rtfm mit edu in the directory pub usenet news answers the name under which a faq is archived appears in the archive name line at the top of the article this faq is archived as graphics resources list part there s a mail server on that machine you send a e mail message to mail server pit manager mit edu containing help in the subject field the inria graphlib mail server mirrors this posting see under the subject mail servers the resource listing is accesible through wais in the machine enuxva eas asu edu port under the name graphics resources list it s got a digest type line before every numbered item for purposes of indexing another place that monitors the listing is the maasinfo files for more info contact robert e maas rem btr com yet another place to search for faqs in general is the switch swiss academic and research network system in switzerland interactive telnet nic switch ch login as info move to the info service usenet periodic postings directory search in the index file by typing and the word to look for you may then just read the faq in the faqs directory or decide to fetch it by one of the following methods ftp login to nic switch ch as user anonymous and enter your internet style address after being prompted for a password cd info service usenet periodic postings mail send e mail to rfc archive server nic switch ch x s archive server ou nic o switch prmd switch admd arcom c ch enter help in the bodypart to receive instructions no information is required in the subject header line archie the archie is a service system to locate ftp places for requested files it s appreciated that you will use archie before asking help in the newsgroups archie servers archie au or aussie nz archie funet fi or finland eur archie th darmstadt de or ger cs huji ac il or israel archie kuis kyoto u ac jp or japan archie sogang ac kr or korea archie ncu edu tw or telnet twn archie doc ic ac uk or uk ireland archie sura net or usa md archie unl edu password archie usa ne archie ans net or usa ny archie rutgers edu or usa nj archie nz or new zealand connect to archie server with telnet and type archie as username to get help type help you can get xarchie or archie which are clients that call archie without the burden of a telnet session xarchie is on the x r contrib tape and archie on comp sources misc vol to get information on how to use archie via e mail send mail with subject help to archie account at any of above sites note to janet pss users the united kingdom archie site is accessible on the janet host doc ic ac uk connect to it and specify archie as the host name and archie as the username notes excerpted from the faq article please do not post or mail messages saying i can t ftp could someone mail this to me there are a number of automated mail servers that will send you things like this in response to a message there are a number of sites that archive the usenet sources newsgroups and make them available via an email query system you send a message to an automated server saying something like send comp sources unix fbm and a few hours or days later you get the file in the mail computer graphics ftp site list by eric haines computer graphics related ftp sites and maintainers compiled by eric haines erich eye com and nick fotis nfotis theseas ntua gr ray tracers rayshade a great ray tracer for workstations on up also for pc mac amiga pov son and successor to dkb trace written by compuservers for more questions call drew wells compuserve com or dave buck david buck carleton ca art ray tracer with a good range of surface types part of vort package dkbtrace another good ray tracer from all reports pcs mac ii amiga unix vms last two with x previewer etc rtrace portugese ray tracer does bicubic patches csg d text etc etc an ms dos version for use with djgpp dos extender go exists also as a mac port vivid a shareware raytracer for pcs binary only author stephen coy coy ssc vax boeing com the no source version is available to registered users us direct from the author ray steve hollasch s dimensional ray tracer renders hyperspheres hypertetrahedra hyperplanes and hyperparallelepipeds there s a separate real time wireframe viewer written in gl called wire mtv qrt dbw yet more ray tracers some with interesting features distributed parallel raytracers xdart a distributed ray tracer that runs under x there are server binaries which work only on decstations sparcs hp snakes x series and next the clients are distributed as binaries and c source inetray a network version of rayshade needs sun rpc or newer contact andreas thurnherr ant ips id ethz ch prt vm pray parallel ray tracers volume renderers vrend cornell s volume renderer from kartch devine caffey warren fortran radiosity and diffuse lighting renderers radiance a ray tracer w radiosity effects by greg ward excellent shading models and physically based lighting simulation unix x based though has been ported to the amiga and the pc india an indian radiosity package based on radiance sgi rad an interactive radiosity package that runs on sgi machines with a spaceball it includes a house database author guy moreillon moreillo ligsg epfl ch rad a simple public domain radiosity package in c the solution can be run stand alone on any unix box but the walk through requires a sgi d author bernard kwok g kwok cs yorku ca renderers which are not raytracers and graphics libraries sipp scan line z buffer and phong shading renderer now uses the shadow buffer algorithm tcl sipp a tcl command interface to the sipp rendering program tcl sipp is a set of tcl commands used to programmed sipp without having to write and compile c code commands are used to specify surfaces objects scenes and rendering options it renders either in ppm format or in utah raster toolkit rle format or to the photo widget in the tk based x applications vogle graphics learning environment device portable vogl an sgi gl like library based on vogle rend a fast polygon renderer for intel s and up version on up it s not photorealistic but rather a real time renderer xsharp dr dobb s journal pc renderer source code with budget texture mapping modellers wireframe viewers vision d mac modeler can output radiance rayshade files irit a csg solid modeler with support for freeform surfaces x d a wireframe viewer for x dv d wireframe graphics toolkit with c source dv objects other stuff look at major pc archives like wuarchive one such file is dkit zip pv d a shareware front end modeler for povray still in beta test french docs for now price for registering french francs save disabled some extra utilities dxf files for the registered version geometric viewers salem a gl based package from dobkin et al for exploring mathematical structures geomview a gl based package for looking and interactively manipulating d objects from geometry center at minnesota xyz geobench experimental geometry zurich is a workbench for geometric computation for macintosh computers wire gl wireframe previewer for steve hollasch s ray see above data formats and data sets for ray tracing spd a set of procedural databases for testing ray tracers nff simplistic file format used by spd off another file format p d a lispy file format tddd imagine d modeler format has converters for rayshade nff off etc also includes a nice postscript object displayer some great models ttdddlib converts to from tddd ttddd off nff rayshade imagine and vort d objects also outputs framemaker mif files and isometric views in postscript registered users get a tex pk font converter and a superquadric surfaces generator glenn lewis glewis pcocd intel com note ttdddlib is also known as t dlib chvrtd chapel hill volume rendering test datasets includes volume sets for two heads a brain a knee electron density maps for rna and others written material on rendering rt news collections of articles on ray tracing rt bib references to articles on ray tracing in refer format rad bib references to articles on radiosity global illumination speer rt bib rick speer s cross referenced rt bib in postscript rt abstracts collection by tom wilson of abstracts of many rt articles paper bank project various technical papers in electronic form contact juhana kouhia jk cs tut fi online bibliography project the acm siggraph online bibliography project is a database of over unique computer graphics and computational geometry references in bibtex format available to the computer graphics community as a research and educational resource the database is located at siggraph org users may download the bibtex files via ftp and peruse them offline or telnet to siggraph org and log in as biblio and interactively search the database for entries of interest by keyword for the people without internet access there s also an e mail server send mail to archive server siggraph org and in the subject or the body of the message include the message send followed by the topic and subtopic you wish a good place to start is with the command send index which will give you an up to date list of available information additions corrections suggestions may be directed to the admin bibadmin siggraph org image manipulation libraries utah raster toolkit nice image manipulation tools pbmplus a great package for image conversion and manipulation libtiff library for reading writing tiff images imagemagick x package for display and interactive manipulation of images uses its own format miff and includes some converters xv x based image display manipulation and format converter xloadimage xli displays various formats on an x screen khoros a huge excellent system for image processing with a visual programming interface and much much more uses x windows fbm another set of image manipulation tools somewhat old now img image manipulation displays on x screen a bit old now xflick plays fli animation under x xanim plays any resolution fli along with gif s including gif a animation extensions dl s and amiga iff animations j l and iff pictures including ham ehb and color cycling sdsc sdsc image tools package san diego supercomputing center for image manipulation and conversion clrpaint a bit paint program for sgi bit workstations and bit indigos libraries with code for graphics graphics gems i ii iii code from the ever so useful books spline patch tar z spline patch ray intersection routines by sean graves kaleido computation and d display of uniform polyhedra mirrored in wuarchive this package computes and displays the metrical properties of polyhedra author dr zvi har el e mail rl gauss technion ac il means site is an official distributor so is most up to date north america please look for things on your own continent first wuarchive wustl edu graphics graphics get contents file for a roadmap graphics graphics objects tddd the ttddd objects and converters mirrors unix c graphics rayshade ray tracer mtv ray tracer vort ray tracer fbm pbmplus popi utah raster toolkit mirrors msdos graphics dkb ray tracer fli raytracker demos pub rad tar z sgi rad graphics graphics radiosity radiance and indian radiosity package msdos ddjmag ddj zip version of xsharp with fast texture mapping there s lots more including bibs graphics gems i ii code off rtn radiance nff sipp spline patch intersection routines textbook errata source code from roy hall s book illumination and color in computer generated imagery etc graphics graphics packages kaleido kaleido george kyriazis kyriazis turing cs rpi edu princeton edu pub graphics note capital g rayshade ray tracer and separate executable color quantization code spd rt news wilson s rt abstracts rt bib utah raster toolkit newer fbm graphics gems i ii iii code pub graphics directory salem and other stuff craig kolb cek princeton edu replaces weedeater math yale edu note the capital g in pub graphics because there s a trouble with princeton s incoming area you can upload rayshade specific stuff to weedeater math yale edu alfred ccs carleton ca pub dkbtrace dkb ray tracer pub pov ray pov ray pvray compuserve group ray tracer or pov david buck david buck carleton ca avalon chinalake navy mil d objects multiple formats utilities file format documents this site was created to be a d object repository for the net francisco x dejesus dejesus archimedes chinalake navy mil omicron cs unc edu pub softlab chvrtd chapel hill volume rendering test datasets ftp mv com official ddj ftp repository xsharp peipa essex ac uk the pilot european image processing archive in a directory ipa synth or something like that there are image synthesis packages adrian clarke alien essex ac uk barkley berkeley edu tcl extensions tsipp b tar z tcl sipp mark diekhans markd grizzly com or markd neosoft com acs cps msu edu pub sass x window fonts converter into rayshade polygons rayshade animation tool s ron sass sass cps msu edu hobbes lbl gov radiance ray trace radiosity package greg ward gjward lbl gov geom umn edu pub geomview geomview contact for geomview software geom umn edu ftp arc umn edu pub gvl tar z the latest version of bob icol and raz source a manual man pages and binaries for irix are included bob is a real time volume renderer pub contains also many volume datasets ken chin purcell ken ahpcrc umn edu ftp kpc com pub graphics holl steve hollasch s thesis pub graphics ray ray pub graphics wire wire pub mirror avalon mirror of avalon s d objects repository steve hollasch hollasch kpc com swedishchef lerc nasa gov programs hollasch d ray sgi explorer modules and postscript manual etc zamenhof cs rice edu pub graphics formats various electronic documents about many object and image formats mark hall foo cs rice edu will apparently no longer be maintaining it see ftp ncsa uiuc edu rascal ics utexas edu misc mac inqueue vision d facet based modeller can output rayshade and radiance files ftp ncsa uiuc edu misc file formats graphics formats contains various image and object format descriptions many scivi tools in various directories e g sgi alpha shape alvis tar z d alpha shape visualizer sgi machines only sgi polyview polyview z interactive visualization and analysis of d geometrical structures quincey koziol koziol ncsa uiuc edu tucana noao edu iraf the iraf astronomy package ftp ipl rpi edu sigma erich spd images and haines thesis images pub images various and bit image stills and sequences kevin martin sigma ipl rpi edu ftp psc edu pub p d p d tar p d lispy scene language renderers joel welling welling seurat psc edu ftp ee lbl gov pbmplus tar z rayshade data files jef poskanzer jef ace ee lbl gov george lbl gov pub ccs lib ccs tar z ccs complex conversion system a standard software interface for image processing hanauma stanford edu pub graphics comp graphics best of comp graphics very extensive ray tracers dbw mtv qrt and more joe dellinger joe hanauma stanford edu ftp uu net graphics irit rt news back issues not complete nurbs models other graphics related material graphics jpeg jpegsrc v tar z independent jpeg group package for reading and writing jpeg files freebie engin umich edu utah raster toolkit spencer thomas thomas eecs umich edu export lcs mit edu contrib pbmplus image magick xloadimage xli xv img lots more pub r untarred mit demos gpc ncga graphics performance characterization gpc suite life pawl rpi edu pub ray kyriazis stochastic ray tracer george kyriazis kyriazis turing cs rpi edu cs utah edu pub utah raster toolkit nurbs databases jamie painter jamie cs utah edu gatekeeper dec com pub dec off tar z off models also gpc benchmark files planned but not checked randi rost rost kpc com hubcap clemson edu pub amiga incoming imagine stuff for the amiga imagine turbo silver ray tracers pub amiga ttdddlib ttdddlib pub amiga incoming imagine objects many objects glenn lewis glewis pcocd intel com pprg eece unm edu pub khoros khoros image processing package huge but great danielle argiro danielle bullwinkle unm edu expo lcs mit edu contrib pbmplus portable bitmap package poskbitmaptars bitmap collection raveling img xloadimage jef poskanzer jef well sf ca us venera isi edu pub img tar z and img tar z some image manipulation pub images rgb separation photos paul raveling raveling venera isi edu ucsd edu graphics utah rle toolkit pbmplus fbm databases mtv dbw and other ray tracers world map other stuff not updated much recently castlab engr wisc edu pub x d tar z x d pub xdart xdart mark spychalla spy castlab engr wisc edu sgi com graphics tiff tiff spec libtiff software and pics also much sgi and gl related stuff e g opengl manuals sam leffler sam sgi com supercedes okeeffe berkeley edu for the libtiff stuff surya waterloo edu graphics fbm ray tracers ftp sdsc edu sdscpub sdsc ftp brl mil brl cad information on how to get the brl cad package ray tracer images various test images a texture library has also begun here lee a butler butler brl mil cicero cs umass edu texture temp x grayscale brodatz textures from julien flack julien scs leeds ac uk karazm math uh edu pub graphics rtabs shar z wilson s rt abstracts vm pray j eric townsend jet karazm math uh edu or jet nas nasa gov ftp pitt edu users qralston images bit image archive small james ralston crawford qralston gl pitt edu ftp tc cornell edu pub vis vrend sunee waterloo edu pub raytracers vivid rend or sunee uwaterloo ca archive umich edu msdos graphics pc graphics stuff msdos graphics raytrace vivid apple apple com pub archivevol prt research att com netlib graphics spd package polyhedra polyhedra databases if you don t have ftp use the netlib automatic mail replier uucp research netlib internet netlib ornl gov send one line message send index for more info send haines from graphics to get the spd siggraph org siggraph archive site publications online bibliography project conference proceedings in various electronic formats papers panels siggraph video review information and order forms other stuff in various directories automatic mailer is archive server siggraph org send index ftp cs unc edu pub reaction diffusion greg turk s work on reaction diffusion textures x windows code siggraph avs ncsc org ftp volvis volume datasets from the boston workshop on volume visualization this site is also the international avs center terry myerson tvv ncsc org uvacs cs virginia edu pub suit demo sparc dec etc suit simple user interface toolkit finger suit uvacs cs virginia edu to get detailed instructions nexus yorku ca pub reports radiosity code tar z rad pub reports radiosity thesis ps z rad msc thesis this site will be changed to ftp yorku ca in the near future milton u washington edu ftp public veos veos virtual reality and distributed applications prototyping environment for unix veos software support veos support hitl washington edu oldpublic fly fly d visualization software demo that package is built for fly throughs from various datasets in near real time there are binaries for many platforms also much other virtual reality stuff zug csmil umich edu x xpecs d files an lcd glass shutter for amiga computers great for vr stuff sugrfx acs syr edu various stereo pair images has closed down sunsite unc edu pub academic computer science virtual reality final copy of the sugrfx acs syr edu archive that ceased to exist it contains powerglove code vr papers d images and irc research material jonathan magid jem sunsite unc edu archive cis ohio state edu pub siggraph code for siggraph course procedural modeling and rendering techniques dr david s ebert ebert cis ohio state edu lyapunov ucsd edu this machine is considered the repository for preprints and programs for nonlinear dynamics signal processing and related subjects and fractals of course matt kennel mbk inls ucsd edu cod nosc mil pub grid ps tex ascii a short survey of methods to interpolate and contour bivariate data ics uci edu honig various stereo pair images movie c animates a movie on an x display bit and mono with digital subtraction taurus cs nps navy mil pub dabro cyberware demo tar z human head data pioneer unm edu pub texture maps hans du buf s grayscale test textures aerial swatches brodatz textures synthetic swatches space planetary image repository provides access to cd roms with data images on line at a time pub info beginner info here you should start browsing colby kraybill opus pioneer unm edu cs brown edu srgp sphigs for more info on srgp sphigs mail s software distribution graphtext cs brown edu pdb pdb bnl gov has data about various organic molecules bonds between the different atoms etc atomic coordinates and a load of other stuff are contained in the ent files but the actual atomic dimemsions seem to be missing you could convert these data to pov rayshade etc biome bio ns ca pub art some renoir paintings escher s pictures etc ic ee umanitoba ca specmark sample set of images from the images from the edge cd rom images of atomic landscapes advanced semiconductors superconductors and experimental surface chemistry among others contact ruskin ee umanitoba ca explorer dgp toronto edu pub sgi clrpaint clrpaint pub sgi clrview clrview a tool that aids in visualization of gis datasets in may formats like dxf dem arc info etc ames arc nasa gov pub space cdrom images from magellan and viking missions etc get pub space index first pub spacelink has most of the spacelink service data see below e mail server available send mail to archive server ames arc nasa gov or ames archive server with subject help or send space index without the quotes peter yee yee ames arc nasa gov pubinfo jpl nasa gov images other data etc from jpl missions modem access at no parity data bits stop bit newsdesk jplpost jpl nasa gov or phone spacelink msfc nasa gov passwd guest space graphics and gif images from nasa s planetary probes and the hubble telescope main function is support for teachers you can telnet also to this site dial up access v baud bits no parity stop bit stsci edu hubble space telescope stuff images and other data read the readme first pete reppert reppert stsci edu or chris o dea odea stsci edu pit manager mit edu pub usenet news answers the land of faqs graphics and pictures directories of particular interest also available from mail server pit manager mit edu by sending a mail message containing help uucp archive avatar rt news back issues for details write kory hamzeh kory avatar avatar com europe nic funet fi pub sci papers paper bank project including pete shirley s entire thesis with pics wilson s rt abstracts pub misc cia worldmap cia world data bank comp graphics research archive india and much much more juhana kouhia jk cs tut fi dasun epfl ch radiance good for european sites but doesn t carry the add ons that are available for radiance isy liu se pub sipp sipp tar z sipp scan line z buffer and phong shading renderer jonas yngvesson jonas y isy liu se irisa fr ipsc vm pray ray tracer spd nff many non spd nff format scenes rayshade data files didier badouel badouel irisa irisa fr may have disappeared phoenix oulu fi fli raytracker animation files pc vga also big flis rayscene demos americans check wuarchive first more animations to come jari kahkonen hole phoenix oulu fi jyu fi pub graphics ray traces many ray tracers including vm pray dbw dkb mtv qrt rayshade some rt news nff files jari toivanen toivanen jyu fi garbo uwasa fi much pc stuff etc pc source contour f fortran program to contour scattered data using linear triangle based interpolation asterix inescn pt pub rtrace rtrace nffutils tar z nff utilities for rtrace medical data cat etc converters to nff autocad to nff autolisp code autocad to scn rtrace s language converter and other goodies antonio costa acc asterix inescn pt vega hut fi graphics rtn archive ray tracers mtv qrt others nff some models it was shut down months ago check under nic funet fi nfotis sun nl nluug nl pub graphics raytrace dbw microray mtv etc unix hensa ac uk misc unix ralcgm ralcgm tar z cgm viewer and converter there s an e mail server also mail to archive unix hensa ac uk with the message body send misc unix ralcgm ralcgm tar z maeglin mt luth se graphics raytracing prt others doc wilson s rt abstracts vivid ftp fu berlin de pub unix graphics rayshade inputs aq tar z is rayshade aquarium americans check princeton edu first heiko schlichting heiko math fu berlin de maggia ethz ch pub inetray inetray and sun rpc code andreas thurnherr ant ips id ethz ch osgiliath id dth dk pub amiga graphics radiance amiga port of radiance per bojsen bojsen ithil id dth dk ftp informatik uni oldenburg de pov raytracer mirrored in wuarchive has many goods for pov pub dkbtrace incoming polyray polyray raytracer pub dkbtrace incoming pv d pv d ftp uni kl de pub amiga raytracing imagine mirror of the hubcap imagine files neptune inf ethz ch xyz xyz geobench peter schorn schorn inf ethz ch iamsun unibe ch graphics graphtal a l system interpreter christoph streit streit iam unibe ch amiga physik unizh ch amiga gfx graphics stuff for the amiga computer stesis hq eso org on line access to a huge astronomical database login starcat no passwd decnet stesis it s the space telescope european coordination facility benoit pirenne bpirenne eso org phone middle east gauss technion ac il kaleida australia gondwana ecr mu oz au pub vort art ray tracer vogle wilson s ray tracing abstracts pub contrib artscenes art scenes from italy pub images haines haines thesis images graphics gems code spd nff off databases nff and off previewers plus some and bit images and lots of other stuff pub rad tar z sgi rad bernie kirby bernie ecr mu oz au munnari oz au pub graphics vort tar z vort art csg and algebraic surface ray tracer vogle pub dbw pbmplus graphics room tar z art scenes from italy david hook dgh munnari oz au marsh cs curtin edu au pub graphics bibliography facial animation pub graphics bibliography morph pub graphics bibliography ui stuff about facial animation morphing and user interfaces pub fascia fred parke s fascia program valerie hall val lillee cs curtin edu au oceania asia ccu auckland ac nz ftp mac architec vision d facet based modeller can output rayshade files many other neat things for macs paul bourke pdbourke ccu auckland ac nz for users outside nz go to wuarchive wustl edu directory mirrors architec scslwide sony co jp ftp sgi facial animation steve franks site for facial animation steve franks stevef csl sony co jp or stevef cs umr edu mail servers and graphics oriented bbses please check first with the ftp places above with archie s help don t overuse mail servers there are some troubles with wrong return addresses many of these mail servers have a command like path a valid return e mail address to get a hint for sending back to you stuff dec s ftpmail send a one line message to ftpmail decwrl dec com without a subject field and having a line containing the word help you should get back a message detailing the relevant procedures you must follow in order to get the files you want note that the reply or answer command in your mailer will not work for this message or any other mail you receive from ftpmail to send requests to ftpmail send an original mail message not a reply complaints should be sent to the ftpmail request uucp gw pa dec com address rather than to postmaster since decwrl s postmaster is not responsible for fixing ftpmail problems bitftp for bitnet sites only there s bitftp pucc send a one line help message to this address for more info red red listserv redirector is essentially a mail server the server sites that are available are location earn bitnet internet in turkey trickle trearn trickle ege edu tr in denmark trickle dktc in italy trickle imipoli in belgium trickle banufs trickle ufsia ac be in austria trickle awiwuw in germany trickle ds rus i trickle rusvm rus uni stuttgart de in israel trickle taunivm trickle vm tau ac il in netherlands trickle hearn trickle hearn nic surfnet nl in france trickle frmop trickle frmop cnusc fr in colombia trickle unalcol trickle unalcol unal edu co in taiwan trickle twnmoe trickle twnmoe edu tw you are urged to use the one that is closer to your location send a message to one of these containing the body help and you ll get more instructions lightwave d mail based file server a mail based file server for d objects bit jpeg images gif images and image maps is now online for all those with internet mail access the server is the official archive site for the lightwave d mail list and contains many pd and shareware graphics utilities for several computer platforms including amiga atari ibm and macintosh the server resides on a bbs called the graphics bbs the bbs is operational hours a day days a week at the phone number of it has upgraded its modem to a hayes ultra v bis v bis which has speeds from bps up to bps if you would like to submit objects scenes or images to the server please pack uuencode and then mail the files to the address server bobsbox rent com for information on obtaining files from the server send a mail message to the address file server graphics rent com with the following in the body of the message help dir and a help file describing how to use the server and a complete directory listing will be sent to you via mail now it includes the cyberware head and shouders in ttddd format check it out only if you can t use ftp nfotis inria graphlib pierre jancene and sabine coquillart launched the inria graphlib mail server a few months ago echo help mail inria graphlib inria fr will give you a quick summary of what inria graphlib contains and how to browse among its files echo send contents mail inria graphlib inria fr will return the extended summary as an other example echo send cgrl from misc mail inria graphlib inria fr will return the computer graphics resource listing mirrored from comp graphics bbses there are many bbses that store datafiles etc etc but a guide to these is beyond the scope of this listing and the resources of the author if you can point to me internet or mail accessible bbses that carry interesting stuff send me info studio amiga is a d modelling and ray tracing specific bbs hours meg online from jeff walkup pwappy well sf ca us the castle k v bis v v bis mnp in pacifica dang close to san francisco california usa the new user password is tao j oin base the castle g fx anim video d s i g of which i am the sig op lazerus bob lindabury operates a bbs see above the entry for the graphics bbs you can call me ray ray tracing related bbs in chicago suburbs or digital pixel sysop mark ng mcng descartes waterloo edu is based at toronto ontario canada phone storage space megs modem type k baud k zyxel v bis v mnp access fee none free system supported dos os amiga mac netmail currently no echo mail topics raytracing fractals graphics programming cad any comp graphics related from david tiberio dtiberio ic sunysb edu amiga graphics bbs in long island new york running hours at k v bis with megs on line we also subscribe to mailing lists of which originate from our bbs with more to be added soon these include lightwave imagine real d ray tracing database files include imagine d objects d renderings scalable fonts music modules sound samples demos animations utilities text databases and pending lightwave d objects the graphics alternative the graphics alternative is in el cerrito ca running hours a day at k hst v bis with mb online and a user base tga runs two nodes node is for public access and includes a free day trial subscription tga is the west coast host for pcgnet the profesional cad and graphics network supporting nodes across the continental u s alaska new zealand australia france and the uk tga s file database includes ms dos executables for pov vivid rtrace rayshade polyray and others tga also has numerous graphics utilities viewers and conversion utilities registered vivid users can also download the latest vivid aeta code from a special vivid conference from scott bethke sbathkey access digex com the intersection bbs this bbs is dedicated to supporting d animators the system is provided free of charge and is not commercialized in anyway users are given full access on the first call features usenet news internet mail fidonet echo s netmail megs online v bis v bis modem platforms of interest amiga the videotoaster macintosh ms dos unix workstations sun sgi etc atari st from alfonso hermida afanh robots gsfc nasa gov pi square bbs in maryland it supports raytracers such as pov and vivid the bbs runs off a mhz megs hard drive and cd rom now it runs on bps this will change soon topics graphics programming animation raytracing programming general from lynn falkow roxxie delphi com vertech design s graphic connection in portland oregon v v bis the bbs aside from carrying typical bbs services like message bases all topic specific and files cad and graphics related hundreds of megabytes also offers material texture files that are full color seamlessly tiling photo realistic images there are samples available to first time callers the bbs is a subscription system although callers have hours before they must subscribe and there are several subscription rates available people interested in materials can subscribe to the library in addition to a basic subscription rate and can use their purchased time to download whichever materials they wish ray tracing graphics related mailing lists imagine modeling and animation system for the amiga send subscription requests to imagine request email sp paramax com send material to imagine email sp paramax com dave wickard has substituted steve worley in the maintenance of the mailing list please note that the unisys com address is no longer valid lightwave for the amiga it s part of newtek s video toaster send subscription requests to lightwave request bobsbox rent com send material to lightwave bobsbox rent com bob lindabury toaster send subscription requests to listserv karazm math uh edu with a body of subscribe toaster list real d another modeling and animation system for the amiga to subscribe send a mail containing the body subscribe real d l your full name to listserv gu uwa edu au rayshade send subscription requests to rayshade request cs princeton edu send material to rayshade users cs princeton edu craig kolb alladin d for the amiga send subscription requests to subscribe xamiga linet org and in the body of the message write alladin d username domain radiance greg ward the author sends to registered via e mail users digests of his correspodence with them notes about fixes updates etc his address is gjward lbl gov rend send subscription requests to rend request sunee waterloo edu send material to rend sunee waterloo edu pov ray dkb raytracers to subscribe send a mail containing the body subscribe dkb l your full name to listserv trearn bitnet send material to dkb l trearn bitnet mailing list for massively parallel rendering send subscription requests to mp render request icase edu send material to mp render icase edu d graphics editors a public domain free and shareware systems vision d mac based program written by paul d bourke pdbourke ccu aukland ac nz the program can be used to generate models directly in the rayshade and radiance file formats polygons only it s shareware and listed on the ftp list brl a solid modeling system for most environments including sgi and x it has csg and nurbs plus support for non manifold geometry whatever it is you can get it free via ftp by signing and returning the relevant license found on ftp brl mil uses ray tracing for engineering analyses contact ms carla moyer tel fax cad dist brl mil e mail snail mail brl cad distribution surviac aberdeen satellite office old philadelphia road suite aberdeen md usa irit a constructive solid geometry csg modeling program for pc and x includes freeform surface support free see ftp list for where to find it surfmodel a solid modeling program for pc written in turbo pascal by ken van camp available from simtel pd msdos srfmodl directory noodles from cmu namely fritz printz and levent gursoz elg styx edrc cmu edu it s based on non manifold topology ask them for more info i don t know if they give it away xyz xyz is an interactive d editor builder written by dale p stocker to create objects for the surfacemodel automove and dkb raytracer packages xyz is free and can be found for example in simtel as msdos surfmodl xyz zip dos only dmod it s an msdos program check at barnacle erc clarkson edu pub msdos graphics dmod undocumented file format dmod is c by micah silverman pierrepoint ave postdam new york tel northcad shareware msdos cad ncad d zip in simtel undocumented file format vertex amiga shareware send us check or money order to the art machine nickolas sterling heights mi usa in addition to the now standard file formats including lightwave imagine sculpt turbo silver geo and wavefront this release offers d professional and rayshade support rayshade is supported only by the primitive triangle but you can easily include this output in your rayshade scripts the latest demo version is available on fred fish for more information contact the author alex deburie at ad s sycom mi org phone icoons amiga it s a spline based object modeller icoons interactive coons path editor in amiga physik unizh ch gfx d icoons lzh it s free under the gnu licence and requires fpu the program has a look feel which is a cross between journeyman and imagine and it generates objects in ttddd format it is possible to load journeyman objects into icoons so the program can be used to convert jman objects to imagine format author helge e rasmussen her compel dk phone fax it s also on fred fish disk series n nfotis protocad d ver from trius shareware it s at wsmr simtel army mil and oak oakland edu as pcad d zip for pcs it has this menu layout file file handling load save import xport draw draw d objects line circle box d draw d objects mesh sphere block edit editing features copy move surface modify objects revolve xtrude sweep image image zooming features update window half option global defaults grid toggles axis plot print drawing picture go image render shade objects frame lighting tune layer layer options select active layer set colors sculptura runs under windows and outputs pov files a demo can be found on wuarchive wustl edu in mirrors win demo demo d zip author michael gibson gibsonm stein u washington edu b commercial systems alpha a spline based modeling program written in university of utah features splines up to trimmed nurbs support for boolean operations sweeps bending warping flattening etc groups of objects and transformations extensible object types applications include nc machining animation utilities dimensioning fem analysis etc rendering subsystem with support for animations support the following platforms hp and s x r hp ux sgi d or pi machines x r and gl irix sun sparcstation x r sunos licensing and distribution is handled by egs glenn mcminn president engineering geometry systems east south temple suite salt lake city ut mcminn cs utah edu educational pricing the charge is per platform you may run the system on as many different workstations of that type as you wish for each platform there is also a licensing fee for portable standard lisp psl which is bundled with the system you need to obtain an additional license from the university of utah for psl from the following address professor robert kessler computer science department university of utah salt lake city utah egs can handle the licensing of psl for u s institutions for a usd nominal fee nfotis vertigo they have an educational institution program the package is used in the industrial design architectural scientific visualization educational broadcast imaging and post production fields they ll quoting from a letter sent to me nfotis donate fully configured vertigo d graphics software worth over usd per package to qualified educational institutions for licencing on any number of silicon graphics personal iris or power series workstations if you use an iris indigo station we will also licence our vertigo revolution software worth usd if you are interested in participating in this program please send a letter by mail or fax on your institution s letterhead briefly outlining your potential uses for vertigo together with the following information unix version model and number of sgi systems peripheral devices third party software participants will be asked to contribute usd per institution to cover costs of the manual administration and shipping we recommend that vertigo users subscribe to our technical support services for an annual fee you will receive technical assistance on our support hotline bug fixes software upgrades and manual updates for educational institution we will waive the administration fee if support is purchased the annual support fee is plus the following cost for additional machines number of machines additional cost per machine there s also a day training program nfotis contact vertigo technology inc suite west georgia st vancouver bc canada v e y phone fax does anyone know of such offers from tdi alias softimage wavefront etc this would be a very interesting part nfotis padl basically it s a solid modeling kernel in top of which you build your application s available by license from cornell programmable automation cornell university engineering and theory center ithaca ny license fees are very low for educational institutions and gov t agencies internal commercial licenses and re dissemination licenses are available for an information packet write to the above address or send your address to marisa cpa tn cornell edu richard marisa acis from spatial technology it s a solid modelling kernel callable from c heard that many universities got free copies from the company the person to contact regarding acis in academic institutions is scott owens e mail sdo spatial com and their address is spatial technology inc th st bldg a boulder co phone fax movie byu cquel byu basically in my understanding this is a fem pre and post proccessor system it s fairly old today but it still serves some people in mech eng depts now it s superseded from cquel byu pronounced sequel that s a complete modelling animation and visualization package runs in the usual workstation environments sun dec hp sgi ibm rs and others you can get a demo version days trial period either by sending usd in their address or a blank tape it costs for a full run time licence contact engineering computer graphics lab clyde building brigham young univ provo ut phone e mail cquel byu edu twixt soon to add stuff about it if i get a reply to my fax voxblast it s a volume renderer marketed by vaytek inc fairfield iowa phone running on pcs with fpu at least call vaytek for more info voxelbox a d volume renderer for windows features include direct ray traced volume rendering color and alpha mapping gradient lighting animation reflections and shadows runs on a pc or higher with at least an bit video card svga is fine under windows x it costs contact jaguar software inc main st suite b winchester ma jwp world std com john w poduska scene description languages nff neutral file format by eric haines very simple there are some procedural database generators in the spd package and many objects floating in various ftp sites there s also a previewer written in hp starbase from e haines also there s one written in vogle so you can use any of the devices vogle can output on check in sites carrying vogle like gondwana ecr mu oz au off object file format from dec s randy rost rost kpc com the object archive server seems to be mothballed in a future version i ll remove the ref to it nfotis available also through their mail server to obtain help about using this service send a message with a subject line containing only the word help and a null message body to object archive server decwrl dec com for ftp places to get it see in the relevant place there s an off previewer for sgi d machines called off preview in godzilla cgl rmit oz au there are previewers for xview and sunview also on gondwana tddd it s a library of d objects with translators to from off nff rayshade imagine or vort objects edited copy of the announcement follows from raytracing news v new library of d objects available via ftp by steve worley worley cup portal com i have assembled a set of over d objects in a binary format called tddd these objects range from human figures to airplanes from semi trucks to lampposts these objects are all freely distributable and most have readmes that describe them in order to convert these objects to a human readable format a file with the specification of tddd is included in the directory with the objects there is also a shareware system called ttdddlib officially on hubcap clemson edu that will convert ala pbm to from various object formats imagine ttddd extension of tddd off nff rayshade or vort source included for amiga unix as executables for the amiga also outputs framemaker mif files and isometric views in postscript p d from pittsburgh supercomputing center the p d uses lisp with slight extensions to store three dimensional models a simple lisp interpreter is included with the p d release so there is no need to have access to any vendor s lisp to run this software the mouse driven user interfaces for motif open look and silicon graphics gl and the drawp d subroutine library for generating p d without ever looking at the underlying lisp the p d software currently supports nine renderers they are painter painter s algorithm dore silicon graphics inc gl language generic phigs sun phigs dec phigs rayshade art ray tracer from vort package and pixar renderman the code is available via anonymous ftp from the machines ftp psc edu directory pub p d and nic funet fi directory pub graphics programs p d renderman pixar s renderman is not free call pixar for details solids description formats a eec s esprit project cad i cad interfaces has developed a neutral file format for transfer of cad data curves surfaces and solid models between cad systems and from cad to caa computer aided analysis an cam computer aided manufacturing b iges v now tries to define a standard to tranfer solid models brep and csg the current standard number is ansi y m for documentation you might want to contact nancy flower at ncga technical services and standards ext and the cost is this standard is not available in electronic format c pdes step this slowly emerging standard tries to encompass not only the geometrical information but also for things like fem etc the main bodies besides this standard are nist and darpa you can get more information about pdes by sending mail to nptserver cme nist gov and putting the line send index in the body not the subject area of the message the people at rutherford appleton lab are also working on step tools they have an express compiler and an exchange file parser both available in source form and for free for research purposes soon they will also have an express based database system for the tools contact mike mead phone fax x e mail mm inf rl ac uk or mcsun uknet rlinf mm or mm inf rl ac uk nsfnet relay ac uk end of part of the resource listing nick nikolaos fotis national technical univ of athens greece home esperidon st internet nfotis theseas ntua gr halandri gr uucp mcsun ariadne theseas nfotis athens greece fax
comp.graphics	apr computer graphics resource listing weekly part archive name graphics resources list part last modified computer graphics resource listing weekly posting part last change april plotting packages gnuplot it is one of the best and d plotting packages with online help it s a command line driven interactive function plotting utility for unix msdos amiga archimedes and vms platforms at least freely distributed it supports many terminals plotters and printers and is easily extensible to include new devices it was posted to comp sources misc in version plus patches you can practically find it everywhere use archie to find a site near you the comp graphics gnuplot newsgroup is devoted to discussion of gnuplot xvgr and xmgr ace gr xmgr is an xy plotting tool for unix workstations using x or openwindows there is an xview version called xvgr for suns collectively these tools are known as ace gr compiling xmgr requires the motif toolkit version and x r xmgr will not compile under x r motif x check at ftp ccalmr ogi edu in ccalmr pub acegr xmgr tar z motif version ccalmr pub acegr xvgr tar z xview version comments suggestions bug reports to paul j turner pturner amb ese ogi edu if mail fails try pturner ese ogi edu due to time constraints replies will be few and far between robot release d and limited d based on xview written in c fortran so you need a fortran compiler or the f c translator mainly tested on sun less on decstations check at ftp astro psu edu pub astrod vg plotting library this is a library of fortran callable routines at sunspot ceee nist gov xgobi it s being developed at bellcore and its speciality are multidimensional data sets analysis and exploration you can call it from the s language also and it works as an x client using the athena widget set or with an ascii terminal it s distributed free of charge from statlib at cmu to get it via e mail send email to statlib temper stat cmu edu and in the body area of the message put the line send xgobi from general if you want to pick it via ftp connect to lib stat cmu edu log in as statlib and use your e mail address as your password then type cd general mget xgobi warning it s about mb sources large postscript manual read the relevant readme to decide whether you need it or not pgplot runs on vax vms and supposedly on unix it s a set of fortran routines freely available though copyrighted and requiring a nominal fee of or so that includes contour plots and support for various devices including ps contact tjp deimos caltech edu ggraph host shorty cs wisc edu pub ggraph tar z unknown more details epigraph for pcs call dvj lab phys lgu spb su vladimir j dmitriev for details you can get the program demo or and play version if sent to budapest posta fiok hungary ph fax budapest ph multiplot xln for amigas shareware usd uk or aust advanced d package that has a big list of features contact dr alan baxter agb mbuc bio cam ac uk cambridge university department of pathology tennis court road cambridge cb qp uk athena plotter widget set this version v is based on gregory bond s version v beta added some stuff for scientific graphs i e log axes free scalable axes xy lineplots and some more and re added plotter callbacks from v e g to request the current pointer position or to cut off a rectangle from the plotting area for zooming in version v has a log of bugs fixed and a log of improvements against v beta additionally i did some other changes extensions besides origin and frame lines for axes subgrid lines on subtic positions line plots in different line types lines points lines points impulses lines impulses steps bars line styles solid dotted dashed dot dashed and marker types for data points legend at the right or left hand side of the plot optional drawing to a pixmap instead of a window layout callback for aligning axis positions when using multiple plotters in one application available at export lcs mit edu directory contrib plotter sciplot sciplot is a scientific d plotting and manipulation program for the next requires nextstep and it s shareware features ascii import and export eps export copy cut paste with data buffer free number of data points data buffer and document window selective open and save plotting in many styles automatic legend subviews linear and logarithmic axes two different axes text and graphic color support zoom normalizing and moving axis conversions free hand data manipulations cut edit move etc data editor sorting of data absolute relative and free defined error bars calculating with buffers background subtractions linear shirley tougaard bezier integration and relative integration fitting of one or more free defined functions linear regression calculations sin cos log etc function generator spline interpolation least square smooth and fft smooth differentiation fft esca calculations and database and something more you can find it on ftp cs tu berlin de pub next science sciplot tar z author michael wesemann scillerstr berlin germany mike fiasko rz berlin mpg de plplot plplot is a scientific plotting package for many systems small micro and large super alike despite its small size and quickness it has enough power to satisfy most users including standard x y plots semilog plots log log plots contour plots d plots mesh plots bar charts and pie charts multiple graphs of the same or different sizes may be placed on a single page with multiple lines in each graph different line styles widths and colors are supported a virtually infinite number of distinct area fill patterns may be used there are almost characters in the extended character set this includes four different fonts the greek alphabet and a host of mathematical musical and other symbols the fonts can be scaled to any size for various effects many different output device drivers are available system dependent including a portable metafile format and renderer freely available but copyrighted via anonymous ftp on hagar ph utexas edu directory pub plplot at present v plplot is known to work on the following systems unix sunos a ix hp ux unicos dg ux ultrix other platforms vms amiga exec ms dos os next authors many the main supporters are maurice lebrun mjl fusion ph utexas edu plplot kernel and the metafile xterm xwindow tektronix and amiga drivers geoff furnish furnish fusion ph utexas edu ms dos and os drivers tony richardson amr egr duke edu plplot on the next supermongo d plotting package at cmu filename re tmp sm tar z probably under the ftp cmu edu or andrew cmu edu machines gle gle is a high quality graphics package for scientists it runs on a variety of platforms pcs vaxes and unix with drivers for xwindows regis tek pc graphics cards vt s hp plotters postscript printers epson compatible printers and laserjet paintjet printers it provides latex quality fonts as well as full support for postscript fonts the graphing module provides full control over all features of graphs the graphics primitives include user defined subroutines for complex pictures and diagrams accompanying utilities include surface for hidden line surface plotting contour for contour plots manip for manipulation of columnar data files and fitls for fitting arbitrary equations to data available via anon ftp at these places pc gle simtel wuarchive wustl edu and other mirrors msdos graphics gle unix gle zephyr grace cri nz pub gle unix vms gle zephyr grace cri nz pub gle vms mailing list glelist send a message to listserver tbone biol scarolina edu with a message boyd containing sub glelist your name maintainer dean pentcheff dean tbone biol scarolina edu image analysis software image processing and display pc and mac based tools multi platform software imdisp imdisp written at jpl and other nasa sites can do simple display enhancing smoothing and so on works with the fits and vicar pds data formats of nasa can read tiff images if you know their dimensions pc and macs labview labview is used as a framework for image processing tools it provides a graphical programming environment using block diagram sketch is the program with graphical elements representing the programming elements hundreds of functions are already available and are connected using a wiring tool to create the block diagram program functions that the block diagrams represent include digital signal processing and filtering numerical analysis statistics etc the tool allows any virtual instrument vi a software file that looks and acts like a real laboratory instrument to be used as a part of any other virtual instrument national instruments markets plug in digital signal processing dsp boards for macintoshs and pc compatables that allow real time acquisition and analysis at a personal computer new software tools for dsp are allowing engineers to harness the power of this technology the tools range from low level debugging software to high level block diagram development software there are three levels of dsp programming associated with the nb dsp board and labview use of the nb dsp analysis library ffts power spectra filters routines callable from think c and macintosh programers workshop mpw c that execute on the nb dsp board there is an analysis virtual interface library of ready to use vis optimized for the nb dsp use of the national instruments developers toolkit that includes an optimizing c compiler an assembler and a linker for low level programming of the dsp hardware this approach offers the highest level of performance but is the must difficult in terms of ease of use use of the national instruments interface kit software package which has utility functions for memory management data communications and downloading code to the nb dsp board this is the easiest route for the development of custom code ultimage concept vi concept vi by graftek france is a family of image processing virtual instruments vis that give labview described above users high end tools for designing integrating and monitoring imaging control systems a vi is a software file that looks and acts like a real laboratory instrument typical applications for concept vi include thermography surveillance machine vision production testing biomedical imaging electronic microscopy and remote sensing ultimage concept vi addresses applications which require further qualitative and quantitative analysis it includes a complete set of functions for image enhancement histogram equalization spatial and frequency filtering isolation of features thresholding mathematical morphology analysis density measurement object counting sizing and characterization the program loads images with a minimum resolution of by a pixel depth of or bits and one image plane standard input and output formats include pict tiff satie and aipd other formats can be imported image enhancement features include lookup table transformations spatial linear and non linear filters frequency filtering arithmetic and logic operations and geometric transformations among others morphological transformations include erosion dilation opening closing hole removal object separation and extraction of skeletons among others quantitative analysis provides for objects detection measurement and morphological distribution measures include area perimeter center of gravity moment of inertia orientation length of relevant chords and shape factors and equivalence measures are saved in ascii format the program also provides for macro scripting and integration of custom modules a d view command plots a perspective data graph where image intensity is depicted as mountains or valleys in the plot the histogram tool can be plotted with either a linear or logarithmic scale the twenty eight arithmetic and logical operations provide for masking and averaging sections of images noise removal making comparisons etc there are spatial filters that alter pixel intensities based on local intensity these include high pass filters for contrast and outlines the frequency data resulting from fft analysis can be displayed as either the real imaginary components or the phase magnitude data the morphological transformations are useful for data sharpening and defining objects or for removing artifacts the transformations include thresholding eroding dilating and even hole filling the program s quantitative analysis measurements include area perimeter center of mass object counts and angle between points gtfs inc bennett valley road c santa rosa ca iplab spectrum iplab spectrum supports image processing and analysis but lacks the morphology and quantitative analysis features provided by graftek franceus ultimage concept vi using scripting tools the user tells the system the operations to be performed the problem is that far too many basic operations require manual intervention the tool supports ffts arithmetic operations for pixel alteration and a movie command for cycling through windows macintosh based tools ncsa image ncsa paledit and more ncsa provides a whole suite of public domain visualization tools for the macintosh primarily aimed at researchers wanting to visualize results from numerical modelling calculations these applications documentation and source code are available for anonymous ftp from ftp ncsa uiuc edu commercial versions of the ncsa programs have been developed by spyglass spyglass inc devonshire drive champaign il fax nih image available at alw nih gov or preferably zippy nimh nih gov directory pub image it has painting and image manipulation tools a macro language tools for measuring areas distances and angles and for counting things using a frame grabber card it can record sequences of images to be played back as a movie it can invoke user defined convolution matrix filters such as gaussian it can import raw data in tab delimited ascii or as or byte quantities it also does histograms and even d plots it is limited to bits pixel though the bits map into a color lookup table it runs on any mac that has a color screen and a fpu or get the nonfpu version from zippy nimh nih gov photomac data translation inc locke dr marlboro ma photopress blue solutions marigold place thousand oaks ca pixeltools and tcl image complete family of pixeltools hardware accelerator and applications software for scientific image processing and analysis video rate capture display processing and analysis of high resolution monochromatic and color images includes c source code tcl image software package for scientific quantitative image processing and analysis it provides a complete language for the capture enhancement and extraction of quantitative information from gray scale images tcl image has over functions for image processing and contains the other elements needed in a full programming language for algorithm development variables and control structures it is easily extensible through script or indirect command files these script files are simply text files that contain tcl image commands they are executed as normal commands and include the ability to pass parameters the direct capture of video images is supported via popular frame grabber boards tcl image comes with the i view utility that provides conversion between common image file types such as pict and tiff perceptics pellissippi parkway knoxville tn satellite image workshop it comes with a number of satellite pictures raw data and does all sorts of image enhancing on it you ll need at least a mac ii with co processor a color display and a large harddisk the program doesn t run under system x ate v in the documentation the contact address is given as liz smith jet propulsion laboratory ms oak grove dr pasadena ca visualization workbench an electronic imaging software system that performs interactive image analysis and scientific d and d plotting paragon imagine lincoln st lowell ma adobe photoshop the tool supports rtrue colors with bit images or levels of grey scale once an image has been imported it can be rre toucheds with various editing tools typical of those used in macintosh based rpaints applications these include an eraser pencil brush and air brush advanced rpastes tools that control the interaction between a pasted selection and the receiving site have also been incorporated for example all red pixels in a selection can easily be preventing from being pasted photoshop has transparencies ranging from to allowing you to create ghost overlays rphoto editings tools include control of the brightness and contrast color balancing hue saturation modification and spectrum equalization images can be subjected to various signal processing algorithms to smooth or sharpen the image blur edges or locate edges image scaling is also supported for storage savings the images can be compressed using standard algorithms including externally supplied compression such as jpeg availlable from storm technologies the latest version of adobe photoshop supports the import of numerous image formats including epsf epsf tiff pict resource amiga iff ilbm compuserve gif macpaint pixar pixelpaint scitex ct tga and thunderscan adobe systems inc charlestown road po box mountain view ca colorstudio and imagestudio colorstudio is an image editing and paint package from letraset that has more features than adobe photoshop but is decidedly more complex and therefore more difficult to use several steps are often required to accomplish that which can be done in a single step using photoshop the application requires a great deal of available disk space as one can easily end up with images in the mb range the program provides a variety of powerful selection tools including the auto selection tool which lets the user choose image areas on the basis of color close hues color range and mask imagestudio don t know letraset usa eisenhower drive paramus nj dapple systems high resolution image analysis software provides processing tools to work with multiple images enhance and edit and measure a variety of global or feature parameters and interpret the data dapple systems w olive ave sunnyvale ca digital darkroom the latest release of digital darkroom has five new selection and editing tools for enhancing images one such feature allows the user to select part of an image simply by painting it a new polyline selection tool creates a selection tool for single pixel wide selections a brush lets the operator paint with a selected portion of the image note that this is not a true color image enhancement tool this tool should be used when the user intends to operate in grey scale images only it should be noted that digital darkroom is not as powerful as either adobe photoshop or colorstudio silicon beach software carroll ctr rd suite j san diego ca dimple it is compatible with system and system requires mac lc or ii series with colours with a recommended min of mb of ram it has the capability of reading erdas files functions include image enhancement d and contour plots image statistics supervised and unsupervised classification pca and other image transformations there is also a means image operation language or iol by which you can write your own transformations there is no image rectification however dimple is compatable with mapii the latest version is and it is in the beta stage of testing dimple was initially developed as a teaching tool and it is very good for this purpose dimple runs on a colour macintosh it is a product still in its development phase i e it doesn t have all the inbuilt features of other packages but is coming along nicely it has its own inbuilt language for writing programs for processing an image defining convolution filters etc dimple is a full mac application with pull down menus etc it is unprotected software process software solutions po box wollongong new south wales australia phone fax enhance enhance has a rrulers tool that supports measurements and additionally provides angle data the tool has over mathematical filter variations laplacian medium noise filter etc files can be saved as either tiff pict epsf or text however epsf files can t be imported microfrontier hickman road des moines ia image analyst an image processing product for users who need to extract quantitative data from video images image analyst lets users configure sophisticated image processing and measurement routines without the necessity of knowing a programming language it is designed for such tasks at computing number and size of cells in images projected by video cameras attached to microscopes or enhancing and measuring distances in radiographs image analyst provides users with an array of field proven video analysis techniques that enable them to easily assemble a sequence of instructions to enhance feature appearance count objects determine density shape size position or movement perform object feature extraction and conduct textural analysis automatically image analyst works with either a framegrabber board and any standard video camera or a disk stored image within minutes without the need for programming the image analyst user can set up a process to identify and analyze any element of a image measurements and statistics can be automatically or semi automatically generated from tiff or pict files or from captured video tape images image analyst recognizes items in images based on their size shape and position the tool provides direct support for the data translation and scion frame grabbers a menu command allows for image capture from a vcr video camera or other ntsc or pal devices there are types of files the image itself and the related sequence file that holds the processing measurements and analysis that the user defines automated sequences are set up in regions of interest roi represented by movable sizable boxes atop the image inside a roi the program can find the distance between two edges the area of a shape the thickness of a wall etc image analyst finds the center edge and other positions automatically the application also provides tools so that the user can work interactively to find the edge of object it also supports histograms and a color look up table clut tool automatix inc middlesex turnpike billerica ma iplab signal analytics corp maple ave e vienna va fax menu driven image processing software that supports bit color or pseudocolor grayscale image display and manipulation map ii among the mac gis systems map ii distributed by john wiley has integrated image analysis image from stanford try anonymous ftp from sumex aim stanford edu it has pd source for image v and ready to run code for a mac under image v windows dos pc based tools ccd richard berry s ccd imaging book for willamon bell contains optional disks with image manipulating software source code is included erdas erdas will do all of the things you want rectification classification transformations canned user defined overlays filters contrast enhancement etc i was using it on my thesis then changed the topic a bit that work became secondary erdas inc buford highway suite atlanta ga fax rsvga i have been getting up to speed on a program called rsvga available from eidetic digital image ltd in british columbia its for ibm pc s or clones cheap about and does all the stuff erdas does but is not as fast or as powerful though i have had only limited experience with erdas i have used rsvga with of landsat bands and it is a good starter program except for the obtuse manual imagine it s a bit package i suppose for pcs called imagine or image the program does a modest amount of image processing add subtract multiply divide display and plot an x or y cut across the image it can also display a number of images simultaneously the company is compuscope in santa barbara ca pc vista it was announced in the august edition of pasp it is known to be available from mike richmond whose email addresses have been richmond bllac berkeley edu richmond bkyast berkeley edu and his s mail address is michael richmond astronomy department campbell hall berkeley ca the latest version of pc vista version includes not only the source code and help files but also a complete set of executable programs and a number of sample fits images if you do wish to use the source code you will need microsoft c version or later other compilers may work but will require substantial modifications to receive the documentation and nine double density k floppies or three quad density inch floppies m with everything on them just send a request for pc vista together with your name and a us mail address to office of technology licensing shattuck ave suite berkeley ca include a check traveller s checks are fine or purchase order for in u s dollars if your address is inside the continental u s or otherwise made out to regents of the university of california to cover duplication and mailing costs software tools it s a set of software tools put out by canyon state systems and software they are not free but rather cheap at about i heard it will handle most all of the formats used by frame grabber software mirage it s image processing software written by jim gunn at the astrophysics dept at princeton it will run on a pc among other platforms it is a forth based system i e a forth language with many image processing displaying functions built in data translation source book the data translation company in massachusetts publishes a free book containing vendors of data analysis hardware and software which is compatible with data translation and other frame grabbers surely you can find much more pc related stuff in it maxen a couple of canadians have written a program named maxen which does maximum entropy image deconvolution their company is named digital signal processing software or something like that and the software is mentioned in an article in astronomy magazine either jan or feb an article on ccd s vs film jandel scientific java another software package java is put out by jandel scientific jandel scientific koch road corte madera ca microbrian runs on an ms dos platform and uses a bit graphics card vista or an about to be released version will support a number of super vga cards its a full blown remote sensed data processing system it is menu driven character based screen but is does not use a windowed user interface its is hardware protected with a dongle mbrian micro barrier reef image anaysis system it was developed by csiro commonwealth scientific industrial organization and is marketed supported by mpa australia lusher road croydon victoria tel fax there are educational and commercial prices but be prepared to set aside a k for the first educational licence subsequent ones come cheaper they need to it has installed sites worldwide it is widely used at anu microimage the remote sensing lab here at dartmouth currently uses terra mar s microimage on pcs with some fancy display hardware terra mar resource information services inc landings drive mountain view ca fax unix based tools iraf image reduction and analysis facility developed in the national optical astronomy observatory kitt peak az it is free you can ftp it from tucana noao edu and complement it with stsdas from stsci edu email to iraf noao edu for more details apparently this is one of the de facto standards in the astronomical image community they issue a newsletter also they seem to support very well their users works with vms also last i heard and practically has its own shell on top of the vms unix shells it s suggested that you get a copy of saoimage for display under x windows very flexible extendable tons literally linear feet of documentation for the general user skilled user and programmer alv a sun specific image toolkit version posted to comp sources sun on dec also available via email to alv users request cs bris ac uk aips astronomical image processing system contact aipsmail nrao edu also see the usenet newsgroups alt sci astro aips and sci astro fits built by nrao national radio astronomy observatory hq in charlottesville va sites in nm az wv software distributed by track exabyte dat or non anonymous internet ftp documentation postscript mostly available via anonymous ftp to baboon cv nrao edu directory pub aips and pub aips text publ installation requires building the system and thus a fortran and c compiler this package can read and write fits data see sci astro fits and is primarily for reduction analysis and image enhancement of radio astronomy data from radio telescopes particularly the very large array vla a synthesis instrument it consists of almost programs that do everything from copying data to sophisticated deconvolution e g via maximum entropy there is an x based image tool xas and a tek compatible xterm based graphics tool built into aips the xas tool is modelled after the hardware functionality of the international imaging systems model display unit and can do image arithmetic etc the code is mostly fortran with some system c language modules and is available for suns ibm rs dec ultrix convex cray unicos and alliant with support planned for hp xx solaris and maybe sgi there is currently a project aips underway to rewrite the algorithmic functionality of aips in a modern setting using c and an object oriented approach whereas aips is proprietary code licensed for free to non profit institutions owner by nrao and the nsf aips will be in the public domain at some level as it is an international effort with contributions from the us canada england the netherlands india and australia to name a few laboimage version is out for x it s written in c and currently runs on sun xxx sun xxx os and under sunview the expert system for image segmentation is written in allegro common lisp it was used on the following domains computer science image analysis medicine biology physics it is distributed free of charge source code available via anonymous ftp at ftp ads com in pub vision list archive shareware laboimage contact prof thierry pun computer vision group computing science center u geneva rue du lac ch geneva switzerland phone fax e mail pun cui unige ch or pun cgeuge bitnet figaro it was originally made for vms and can be obtained from keith shortridge in australia ks aaoepp aao gov au and for unix from sam southard at caltech sns deimos caltech edu it s about mbytes on a sun khoros moved to the scientific visualization category below vista the real thing is available via anonymous ftp from lowell edu email to vista lowell edu for more details total size less than mbytes disimp device independent software for image processing is a powerful system providing both user friendliness and high functionality in interactive times feature description disimp incorporates a rich library of image processing utilities and spatial data options all functions can be easily accessed via the disimp executive this menu is modular in design and groups image processes by their function such a logical structure means that complicated processes are simply a progression through a series of modules processes include image rectification classification unsupervised and supervised intensity transformations three dimensional display and principal component analysis disimp also supports the more simple and effective enhancement techniques of filtering band subtraction and ratioing host configuration requirements running on unix workstations disimp is capable of processing the more computational intensive techniques in interactive processing times disimp is available in both runtime and programmer s environments using the programmers environment utilities can be developed for specific applications programs graphics are governed by an icon based display panel which allows quick enhancments of a displayed image manipulations of look up tables colour stretches changes to histograms zooming and panning can be interactively driven through this control a range of geographic projections enables disimp to integrate data of image graphic and textual types images can be rectified by a number of coordinate systems providing the true geographic knowledge essential for ground truthing overlays of grids text and vector data can be added to further enhance referenced imagery the system is a flexible package allowing users of various skill levels to determine their own working environment including the amount of help required disimp comes fully configured with no optional extras the purchase price includes all functionality required for professional processing of remote sensed data for further information please contact the business manager clough engineering group systems division chapel street south yarra australia telephone fax global imaging software we use global imaging software to process avhrr data from the dish to the final display select a chunk of five band data from a pass automatic navigation calibrate it to albedo and temp convert that to byte register it to predesigned window all relatively automatically and carefree it has no classification routines to speak of but it isn t that difficult to write your own with their programmer s module very small operation one designs one codes one sells been around for a number of years sold to weather service and navy runs on hp with hp ux supports bit display hips human information processing laboratory s image processing system michael landy co wrote and sell a general purpose package for image processing which has been used for basically all the usual image processing applications robotics medical satellite engineering oil exploration etc it is called hips and deals with sequences of multiband images in the same way it deals with single images it has been growing since we first wrote it both by additions from us as well as a huge user contributed library feature description hips is a set of image processing modules which together provide a powerful suite of tools for those interested in research system development and teaching it handles sequences of images movies in precisely the same manner as single frames programs and subroutines have been developed for simple image transformations filtering convolution fourier and other transform processing edge detection and line drawing manipulation digital image compression and transmission methods noise generation and image statistics computation over such image transformation programs have been developed as a result almost any image processing task can be performed quickly and conveniently additionally hips allows users to easily integrate their own custom routines new users become effective using hips on their first day hips features images that are self documenting each image stored in the system contains a history of the transformations that have been applied to that image hips includes a small set of subroutines which primarily deals with a standardized image sequence header and a large library of image transformation tools in the form of unix filters it comes complete with source code on line manual pages and on line documentation host configuration requirements originally developed at new york university hips now represents one of the most extensive and flexible vision and image processing environments currently available it runs under the unix operating system it is modular and flexible provides automatic documentation of its actions and is almost entirely independent of special equipment hips is now in use on a variety of computers including vax and microvax sun apollo masscomp ncr tower iris ibm at etc for image display and input drivers are supplied for the grinnell and adage ikonas image processors and the sun sun sun and sun i consoles we also supply user contributed drivers for a number of other framestores and windowing packages sun gfx sun console matrox vip iti ip lexidata macintosh ii x windowing system and iris the hipsaddon package includes an interface for the crs it is a simple matter to interface hips with other frame stores and we can put interested users in touch with users who have interfaced hips with the arlunya and datacube max video hips can be easily adapted for other image display devices because of hips is machine independent availability hips has proven itself a highly flexible system both as an interactive research tool and for more production oriented tasks it is both easy to use and quickly adapted and extended to new uses hips is supplied on magnetic tape in unix tar format either reel to reel or sun cartridge and comes with source code libraries a library of convolu tion masks and on line documentation and manual pages michael landy sharpimage software p o box prince street station new york ny voice fax msl cns nyu edu mira please don t confuse that with the thalmanns animation system from montreal these are altogether different beasts nfotis mira stands for microcomputer image reduction and analysis mira gives workstation level performance on dos computers using svga cards in color modes up to x mira contains a very handsome functional gui which is mouse and keystroke operated mira reads writes tiff and fits formats native formats of a number of ccd cameras and uncompressed binary images in byte short integer and byte real pixel format in or dimensions the result of an image processing operation can be short integer or real pixels or the same as that of the input image mira does the operation using short or floating point arithmetic to maintain the precision and accuracy of the pixel format over functions are hand coded in assembly language for maximum speed on the intel hardware the entire graphical interface is also written in assembly language to maximize the speed of windowing operations windows for d image and d image data display and analysis have dedicated cursors which read position and value value in real time as you move the mouse there are also smooth real time contrast and brightness stretch and panning of a magnified portion of the displayed image s all operated by the mouse a wide selection of grayscale pseudocolor and random palettes is provided and other palettes can be generated supported functions include such niceties as the following o image image interpolation o image constant o unary operations abs value polynomial of pixel value chs x log byteswap clip values at upper lower limits short real or real short o combine images by mean median mode or sum of pixel values with or without autoscaling to mean median or mode of an image section o convolutions filters laplacian sobel edge operator directional gradient line gaussian elliptical and rectangular equal weight filters unsharp masking median filters user defined filter kernel ellipse rectangle line gradient gaussian and user defined filters can be rotated to any specified angle o ccd data reduction flat fielding dark subtraction column over underscan bias removal remove bad pixels and column defects normalize to region target mean median or modal value o create subimage mosaic m x n d or d images to get larger image collapse d image into d image o plot d section or collapsed section of d image plot histogram of region of an image o review change image information header data rename keywords plot keyword values for a set of images o luminance photometry elliptical or circular aperture photometry brightness profile isophotal photometry between set of upper lower luminances area and luminance inside traced polygon interactive background fitting and removal from part or all of image fit elliptical aperture shape to image isophotes o interactive with d image contrast brightness x y or diagonal plot of pixel values distance between two points compute region stats centroid pan to x y location or image center zoom to times change cursor to rectangle crosshair full image crosshair or off and adjust cursor size on image select linear log or gamma transfer function or histogram equalization o interactive or specified image offset computation and re sampling for registration o interactive with d image zoom in x y or both in steps of or times current re center plot or enlarge a framed area plot buffers can be cycled through interactive data analysis polynomial fitting point deletion undelete change value point weighting linear and quadratic loess and binomial smoothing revert to unit point weights or original data buffer substitute results into data buffer for pass back to calling function dump data buffer overlays and error bars to file or printer change to user specified coordinate system o tricolor image combination and display hardcopy halftone printout to hp pcl compatible printers laserjet deskjet etc o documentation is over pages in custom vinyl binder cost usd copy available from axiom research inc box tucson az phone fax international marketing rep saguaro scientific corporation tucson arizona end of part of the resource listing nick nikolaos fotis national technical univ of athens greece home esperidon st internet nfotis theseas ntua gr halandri gr uucp mcsun ariadne theseas nfotis athens greece fax
comp.graphics	apr computer graphics resource listing weekly part archive name graphics resources list part last modified computer graphics resource listing weekly posting part last change april scene generators geographical data maps data files dems digital elevation models dems digital elevation models as well as other cartographic data huge is available from spectrum xerox com pub map contact lee moore webster research center xerox corp voice arpa internet moore wbst xerox com check also on ncgia ucsb edu pub dems nfotis many of these files are also available on cd rom selled by usgs scale digital line graph dlg data contains datas for all states price is about call to or visit in offices in menlo park in reston virginia usa maps the data user services division of the bureau of the census also has data on cd rom tso standard format that is derived from usgs map data call for more info or they have a bbs at from dr dobbs march the u s defense mapping agency in cooperation with their counterpart agencies in canada the u k and australia have released the digital chart of the world dcw this chart consists of over gigabytes of reasonable quality vector data distributed on four cd roms includes coastlines rivers roads railrays airports cities towns spot elevations and depths and over place names it is iso compatible and only available from u s geological survey p o box denver federal center denver co digital distribution services energy mines and resources canada booth street ottawa on k a e canada director general of military survey survey elmwood avenue feltham middlesex tw ah united kingdom director of survey australian army department of defense campbell park offices cp campbell act australia fractal landscape generators public domain many people have written fractal landscape generators for example for the mac some of these generators were written by pdbourke ccu aukuni ac nz paul d bourke many of the programs are available from the ftp sites and mail archive servers check with archie commercial vista pro for the amiga from virtual reality labs list price is about their address is vrl ganador court san luis obispo ca telephone or fax scenery animator also for the amiga is of the same caliber with vista pro check with natural graphics p o box raklin ca phone don t forget to ask about companion programs and data disks tapes vista pro has been ported to the pcs cia world map ii note this database is quite out of date and not topologically structured if you need a standard for world cartographic data wait for the digital chart of the world this m database has been produced from the defense mapping agency s oncs and will be available together with searching and viewing software on a number of cd roms later this summer check into hanauma stanford edu and ucsd edu see ftp list above the cia database consists of coastlines rivers and political boundaries in the form of line strokes also on hanauma stanford edu is a x array of elevation data containing one ieee floating point number for every half degree longitude and latitude a program for decoding the database mfil can be found on the machine pi arc umn edu there s another program which reads a compressed cia data bank file and builds a phigs hierachical structure it uses a phigs extension known as polyline sets for performance but you can use regular polylines ask joe stewart joes lpi liant com the raw data at stanford require the vplot package to be able to view it was posted in comp sources unix to be more exact you ll have to compile just the libvplot routines not the whole package ncar data ncar national center for atmospheric research has many types of terrain data ranging from elevation datasets at various resolutions to information about soil types vegetation etc this data is not free they charge from to or more depending on the data volume and media exabyte tape cartridge track tape ibm pc floppy and ftp transfer are all available their data archive is mostly research oriented not hobbyist oriented for more information email to ilana ncar ucar edu unc data tapes with voxel data there are public domain tapes with data for the comparison and testing of various volume rendering algorithms mainly mri and ct scans these tapes are distributed by the softlab of unc chapel hill softlab cs unc edu the data sets volume i and ii are also available via anonymous ftp from omicron cs unc edu in pub softlab chvrtd nasa many us agencies such as nasa publish cd roms with many altimetry data from various space missions eg viking for mars magellan for venus etc especially for nasa i would suggest to call the following address for more info national space science date center goddard space flight center greenbelt maryland telephone email address request nssdca gsfc nasa gov the data catalog not the data itself is available online internet users can telnet to nssdca gsfc nasa gov and log in as nodis no password you can also dial in at or baud bits no parity one stop at the enter number prompt enter md and carriage return when the system responds call complete enter a few more carriage returns to get the username and log in as nodis no password nssdca is also an anonymous ftp site but no comprehensive list of what s there is available at present earth sciences data there s a listing of anonymous ftp sites for earth science data including imagery this listing is called earth sciences resources on internet and you can get it via anonymous ftp from csn org in the directory cogs under the name internet resources earth sci some sites include aurelie soest hawaii edu pub avhrr images avhrr images ames arc nasa gov pub space cdrom images from magellan and viking missions etc pub space index contains a listing of files available in the whole archive the index is about k by itself there s also an e mail server for the people without internet access send a letter to archive server ames arc nasa gov or ames archive server in the subject of your letter or in the body use commands like send space index send space shuttle ss capitalization is important only text files are handled by the email server at present vab larc nasa gov pub gifs misc landsat landsat photos in gif and jpeg format it was shut down nfotis anyone has a copy of this archive others daily values of river discharge streamflow and daily weather data is available from earthinfo central ave boulder co these disks are expensive around but there are quantity discounts check vmd cso uiuc edu the wx directory carries data regarding surface analysis weather radar and sat view pics in gif format updated hourly pioneer unm edu is the space and planetary image facility located on the university of new mexico campus ftp server it provides anonymous ftp access to cd roms with data images a disk with earthquake data topography gravity geopolitical info is available from ngdc national geophysical data center broadway boulder co eosat at least in the us now sells landsat mss data older than two years old for per scene and they have been talking about a similar deal for landsat tm data the mss data are bands meter resolution check out anonymous ftp to ftp ncsa uiuc edu in unix polyview alpha shape for a tool that creates convex hulls alpha shapes a generalization of the convex hull from d point sets the grips ii gov raster image processing software cd rom is available from cd rom inc at for code for viewing adrg arc digitised raster graphics files is available on the grips ii cd rom the u s army engineer topographic labs juan perez code is also available via ftp adrg zip archive in spectrum xerox com nrcc range data rioux m cournoyer l the nrcc three dimensional image data files tech report cnrc national research council canada ottawa canada from what i understand these data are from a laser range finder and you can a copy for research purposes d scanners digitized d data a cyberware labs monterey ca manufactures a d color laser digitizer which can be used to model parts of or a complete human body they run a service bureau also so they can digitize models for you address cyberware labs inc harris ct suite d monterey ca phone fax b polhemus makes a d input device actually a couple of models that senses position d and orientation d based on electromagnetic field interference this equipment is also incorporated in the vpl dataglove this hardware is also called isotrack from keiser aerospace ascension technology makes a similar d input device there is a company applied sciences that makes a d input device position only based on speed of sound triangulation c a company that specializes in digitizing is viewpoint you can ask for viewpoint s free page catalog full of ready to ship datasets from categories such as cars anatomy aircraft sports boats trains animals and others though these objects are quite expensive the cataloge is nevertheless of interest for it has pictures of all the available objects in wireframe polygon mesh contact viewpoint west center orem utah ph fax dataset some addresses for companies that make digitizers ascension technology bird flock of birds big bird d trackers p o box burlington vt phone fax polhemus incorporated digitizer d trackers p o box hercules dr colchester vt tel logitech inc red baron ultrasonic d mouse kaiser dr freemont ca tel w shooting star technology mechanical headtracker holdom ave burnaby b c canada v b w tel fax spaceball technologies inc spaceball d stationary input device suffolk street lowell ma tel fax tel in mountain view transfinite systems gold brick powerglove for macintosh p o box n mit branch post office cambridge ma tel email d applelink apple com vpl research inc eyephone head mounted display dataglove glove hand input device vpl research inc tower lane th floor foster city ca tel fax simgraphics engineering flying mouse d input device huntington rd suite a south pasadena ca background imagery textures datafiles first check in the ftp places that are mentioned in the faq or in the ftp list above bit scanning get a good bit scanner like epson s suggested is an scsi port for speed eric haines had a suggestion in rt news volume scan textures for wallpapers and floor coverings etc from doll house supplies so you have a rather cheap way to scan patterns that don t have scaling troubles associated with real materials and scanning area books with textures find some houses books magazines that carry photographic material educorp sells cd roms with various imagery also a wide variety of stock art is available stock art from big name stock art houses such as comstock uniphoto and metro image base is available in italy there s a company called belvedere that makes such books for the purpose of clipping their pages for inclusion in your graphics work their address is edition belvedere co ltd rome italy piazzale flaminio tel fax texture libraries a mannikin sceptre graphics announced textiles a set of x bit textures initial shipments in bit iff for amigas soon in bit tiff format algorithmically built for tiled surfaces srp is volume each volume images disks demo disks for are available contact mannikin sceptre graphics indiana ave winter park fl phone fax b essence is a library of sixty five new algoritmic textures for imagine by impulse inc these textures are fully compatible with the floating point versions of imagine imagine and even turbo silver written by steve worley for more info contact essence info apex software publishing el camino real suite menlo park ca usa what about texture city introduction to rendering algorithms a ray tracing i assume you have a general understanding of computer graphics no then read some of the books that the faq contains for ray tracing i would suggest an introduction to ray tracing andrew glassner ed academic press isbn note that i have not read the book but i feel that you can t be wrong using his book an errata list was posted in comp graphics by eric haines erich eye com there s a more concise reference also roman kuchkuda unc chapel hill an introduction to ray tracing in theoretical foundations for computer graphics and cad ed r a e earnshaw nato as vol f pp printed by springer verlag it contains code for a small but fundamentally complete ray tracer b z buffer depth buffer a good reference is procedural elements for computer graphics david f rogers mcgraw hill new york pages and c others more info is needed nfotis where can i find the geometric data for the a teapot displays on display column of ieee cg a jan has the whole story about origin of the martin newell s teapot the article also has the bezier patch model and a pascal program to display the wireframe model of the teapot ieee cg a sep in jim blinn s column jim blinn s corner describes an another way to model the teapot bezier curves with rotations for example are used the off and spd packages have these objects so you re advised to get them to avoid typing the data yourself the off data is triangles at a specific resolution around x x triangles meshing per patch the spd package provides the spline patch descriptions and performs a tessellation at any specified resolution b space shuttle tolis lerios tolis nova stanford edu has built a list of space shuttle datafiles here s a summary from his sci space list model a modified version of the newsgroup model model vertices useful i e referred to in the polygon descriptions polygons vertex vertex vertex vertex payload doors non existent units unknown simon marshall s marshall sequent cc hull ac uk has a copy he said there is no proprietary information associated with it model the newsgroup model in off format you can find it in gondwana ecr mu oz au file pub off objects shuttle geo hanauma stanford edu pub graphics comp graphics objects shuttle data model the triangles model this model is stored in several files each defining portions of the model greg henderson henders infonode ingr com has a copy he did not mention any restriction on the model s distribution model the nasa model the file starts off with a header line containing three real numbers defining the offsets used by lockheed in their simulations x offset y offset z offset from then on the file consists of a sequence of polygon descriptions vertices polygons vertex vertex vertex vertex vertex vertex vertex vertex vertex vertex vertex vertex vertex vertex payload doors closed units inches jon berndt jon l h jsc nasa gov seems to be responsible for the model proprietary info unknown model the old shuttle model the file consists of a sequence of polygon descriptions vertices polygons vertex vertex payload doors open units meters we have been using this model at star labs stanford university for some years now contact me tolis nova stanford edu or my supervisor scott williams scott star stanford edu if you want a copy image annotation software a touchup runs in sunview and is pretty good it reads in rasterfiles but even if your image isn t normally stored in rasterfile format you could use screendump to make it a rasterfile b idraw part of stanford s interviews distribution can handle some image formats in addition to being a macdraw like tool i m not sure exactly what they are you can ftp the idraw s binary from interviews stanford edu c tgif is another macdraw like tool that can handle x bitmap xbm and x pixmap xpm formats if the image you have is in formats other than xbm or xpm you can get the pbmplus toolkit to convert things like gif or even some macintosh formats to xpm tgif s sources are available in the pub directory on cs ucla edu version of tgif at patchlevel plus patch and patch d use the editimage facility of khoros see below this is just one utility in the overall system you can essentially do all your image processing and macdraw type graphics using this package e you might be able to get by with pbmplus pbmtext gives you text output bitmaps which can be overlaid on top of your image f ice requires sun hardware running openwindows it s a postscript based graphical editor and it s available for anonymous ftp from internet host eo soest hawaii edu requires sun c and two other locally developed packages the lxt library an xlib based toolkit and a small c class library all files pub ice tar z pub lxt tar z and pub ldgoc tar z are available in compressed tar format pub ice tar z contains a readme that gives installation instructions as well as an extensive man page ice a statically linked compressed executable pub ice sun z for sparc systems is also available for ftp all software is the property of columbia university and may not be redistributed without permission ice means image composition environment and it s an imaging tool that allows raster images to be combined with a wide variety of postscript annotations in wysiwyg fashion via x imaging routines and news postscript rasterizing g use imagemagick to annotate an image from your x server pick the position of your text with the cursor and choose your font and pen color from a pull down menu imagemagick can read and write many of the more popular image formats imagemagick is available as export lcs mit edu contrib imagemagick tar z or at your nearest x archive scientific visualization stuff x data slice xds bundled with the x distribution from mit in the contrib directory available at ftp ncsa uiuc edu either as a source or binaries for various platforms national center for supercomputing applications ncsa tool suite platforms unix workstations dec ibm sgi sun apple macintosh cray supercomputers availability now available source code in the public domain ftp from ftp ncsa uiuc edu contact national center for supercomputing applications computing applications building e springfield ave champaign il cost free zero dollars the suite includes tools for d image and d scene analysis and visualization the code is actively maintained and updated spyglass they sell commercial versions of the ncsa tools examples are spyglass dicer d volumetric data analysis package platform mac spyglass transform d data analysis package platforms mac sgi sun dec hp ibm contact spyglass inc p o box champaign il khoros patch available via anonymous ftp at pprg eece unm edu cd to pub khoros to see what is available it is huge mb but good needs unix and x r freely copied not pd complete with sources and docs very extensive and at its heart is visual programming khoros components include a visual programming language code generators for extending the visual language and adding new application packages to the system an interactive user interface editor an interactive image display package an extensive library of image and signal processing routines and d d plotting packages see comp soft sys khoros on usenet and the relative faq for more info contact the khoros group room eece dept university of new mexico albuquerque nm email khoros request chama eece unm edu macphase analysis visualization application for the macintosh operates on d and d data arrays import export several different file formats several different plotting options such as gray scale color raster d wire frame d surface contour vector line and combinations ffts filtering and other math functions color look up editor array calculator etc shareware available via anonymous ftp from sumex aim stanford edu in the info mac app directory for other information contact doug norton e mail compuserve com iris explorer it s an application creation system developed by silicon graphics that provides visualisation and analysis functionality for computational scientists engineers and other scientists the explorer gui allows users to build custom applications without having to write any or a minimal amount of traditonal code also existing code can be easily integrated into the explorer environment explorer currently is available now on sgi and cray machines but will become available on other platforms in time bundled with every new sgi machine as far as i know see comp graphics explorer or comp sys sgi for discussion of the package there are also two ftp servers for related stuff modules etc ftp epcc ed ac uk swedishchef lerc nasa gov mirror of the uk site ape back in the old good days you could get ape for nearly free now has gone commercial and the following vendor supplies it taravisual corporation harrison avenue columbus ohio tel and fax cost plus tax runtime version with a site license for a single user at a time no limit on the number of machines in a cluster includes support maintenance and upgrades source code more additional user licenses the name of the package has become ape iii tm khoros is very similar to ape on philosophy as are avs and explorer avs see also comp graphics avs platforms convex cray dec evans sutherland hp ibm kubota set technologies sgi stardent sun wavetracer availability avs available on all the above for all unix workstations contact advanced visual systems inc fifth ave waltham ma telephone fax avs avs com email advanced visual systems inc for cray hp ibm sgi stardent sun convex for convex advanced visual systems inc or cray for cray dec for dec evans sutherland for evans sutherland advanced visual systems inc or ibm for ibm kubota pacific inc for kubota set technologies for set technologies wavetracer for wavetracer ftp site for modules data sets other info avs ncsc org wit in a nutshell it s a package of the same genre as avs explorer etc it seems more a image processing system than a generic scivi system imho major elements are a visual programming language which automatically exploits the inherent parallelism a code generator which converts the graph to a standalone program iconified libraries present a rich set of point filter io transform morphological segmentation and measurement operations a flow library allows graphs to employ broadcast merge synchronization conditional and sequencing control strategies wit delivers an object oriented distributed visual programming environment which allows users to rapidly design solutions to their imaging problems users can consolidate both software and hardware developments within a complete cad like workspace by adding their own operators c functions objects data structures and servers specialized hardware wit runs on sun hp xx sgi and supports datacube mv hardware allowing you to run your graphs in real time for a free wit demo disk call fax or e mail poon ee ubc ca us stating your complete name address voice fax e mail info and desired platform pricing wit for sparc one yr free upgrades days technical support us academic institutions discounts available contact logical vision ltd suite gilmore way burnaby b c canada v g m tel fax terry arden poon ee ubc ca vis d a system for visually exploring the output of d gridded data sets such as those made by weather models platforms sgi iris with vgx gtx tg or g graphics sgi crimson or indigo r elan graphics suggested irix x ibm rs with gl graphics aix version or later stardent gs and gs with truecolor display in any case or more mb of ram are suggested you can get it freely thanks to nasa support via anonymous ftp ftp iris ssec wisc edu or ftp then ftp cd pub vis d ftp ascii ftp get readme ftp bye note you can find the package also on wuarchive wustl edu in the graphics graphics packages directory read section of the readme file for full instructions on how to get and install vis d contact bill hibbard whibbard vms macc wisc edu brian paul bpaul vms macc wisc edu dataexplorer ibm platforms ibm risc system ibm power visualization server simd mesh i s mhz working on announced sgi hp sun contact your local ibm rep for a trial package ask your rep to contact david kilgore data explorer product marketing yktvmh kilcore wavefront data visualizer personal visualizer advanced visualizer platforms sgi sun ibm rs hp dec availability available on all the above platforms from wavefront technologies educational programs and site licenses are available contacts mike wilson mike wti com wavefront technologies inc east montecito street santa barbara ca fax wavefront europe guldenspoorstraat b gent belgium fax wavefront technologies japan f shinjuku sumitomo bldg nishi shinjuku shunjuku ku tokyo japan fax plot d and fast from nasa ames these packages are distributed from cosmic at least for fast ask pat elson pelson nas nasa gov for distribution information in general these codes are for us citizens only xgraph on the contrib tape of x r its specialty is display of up to data sets d ncar national center for atmospheric research one of the original graphics packages runs on sun rs sgi vax cray y mp decstations and more contact graphics information ncar scientific computing division p o box boulder co scdinfo ncar ucar edu cost edu unlimited users gov user users users com users multiply gov idl an environment for scientific computing and visualization based on an array oriented language idl includes d and d graphics matrix manupulation signal and image processing basic statistics gridding mapping and a widget based system for building gui for idl applications open look motif or ms windows environments dec vms and ultrix hp ibm rs sgi sun microsoft windows mac version in progress cost to educational and quantity discounts available see also comp lang idl pvwave the idl pvwave bundle contact research systems inc th street suite boulder co phone fax e mail info rsinc com demo available via ftp call or e mail for details idl sips a lot of people are using idl with a package called sips this was developed at the university of colorado boulder by some people working for alex goetz you might try contacting them if you already have idl or would be willing to buy it it s a few thousand dollars american i expect for idl and the other should be free those are the general purpose packages i ve heard of besides what terramar has sips was written for aviris imagery i m not sure how general purpose it is you would have to contact goetz or one of his people and ask i have another piece of software pcw that does pc and walsh transformations with pseudocoloring and clustering and limited image modification you can compute an image using selected components i ve used it on megabyte aviris images without problems but for the best speed you need an external dsp card it will work without it but large images take quite a while times as long to process that s a freebie if you want it my favorite is idl interactive data language from research systems inc idl is in my opinion much better and infinitely easier its programming language is very strong and easy very pascal like it handles the number crunching very well also personally i like doing the number crunching with idl on the vax or mathematica igor or even excel on the mac if it s not too hairy then bringing it over to nih image for the imaging part i have yet to encounter any situation which that combination couldn t handle and the speed and ease of use compared to iraf was incredible by the way it s mostly astronomical image processing which i ve been doing this means image enhancement cleaning up bad lines pixels and some other traditional image processing routines then for example taking a graph of intensity versus position along a line i choose with the mouse then doing a curve fit to that line which i might do like in kaleidagraph for idl call research systems for pv wave call precision visuals and for sips call university of colorado boulder from what i can understand you can get packaged programs from research systems though nfotis visual contact robert haimes mit fieldview an interactive program designed to assist an engineer in investigating fluid dynamics data sets platforms sgi ibm hp sun x terminals availability currently available on all of the above platforms educational programs and volume discounts are available contact intelligent light p o box fair lawn nj steve kramer kramer ilight com scian scian is primarily intended to do d visualizations of data in an interactive environment with the ability to generate animations using frame accurate video recording devices a user manual on line help and technical notes will help you use the program cost free source code provided via ftp platforms sgi d machines and ibm rs with the gl card z buffer where to find it ftp scri fsu edu pub scian a mirror is monu cc monash edu au pub scian scry from the readme scry is a distributed image handling system that pro vides image transport and compression on local and wide area networks image viewing on workstations recording on video equipment and storage on disk the system can be distri buted among workstations between supercomputers and works tations and between supercomputers workstations and video animation controllers the system is most commonly used to produce video based movie displays of images resulting from visualization of time dependent data complex d data sets and image processing operations both the clients and servers run on a variety of systems that provide unix like c run time environments and bsd sockets the source is available for anonymous ftp csam lbl gov pub scry tar z contact bill johnston wejohnston lbl gov ucbvax csam lbl gov johnston or david robertson dwrobertson lbl gov ucbvax csam lbl gov davidr imaging technologies group ms b lawrence berkeley laboratory cyclotron road berkeley ca svlib fvs svlib is an x windows widget set based on the osf open software foundation motif widget set svlib widgets are macro widgets comprising lower level motif widgets such as buttons scrollbars menus and drawing areas it is designed to address the reusability of d visualization routines and each widget in the library is an encapsulation of a specific visualization technique such as colormap manipulation image display and contour plotting it is targetted to run on unix workstations supporting osf motif currently only color monitors are supported since svlib is a collection of widgets developed in the same spirit as the osf motif user interface widget set it integrates seamlessly with the motif widgets programmers using svlib widgets see the same interface and design as other motif widgets fvs is a visualization software for computational fluid dynamics cfd simulations fvs is designed to accept data generated from these simulations and apply various visualization techniques to present these data graphically fvs accepts three dimensional multi block data recorded in ncsa hdf format iti gov sg pub svlib scientific visualization pu fvs these directories contain demo binaries for sun sgi cost us for academic and us for non academic institutions for each of the above items you re getting the source for the licence contact miss quek lee hian member of technical staff information technology institute national computer board ncb building sicence park drive singapore republic of singapore tel fax email leehian iti gov sg gvlware distribution bob an interactive volume renderer for the sgi raz a disk based movie player for the sgi icol motif color editor the army high performance computing research center ahpcrc has been developing a set of tools to work with large time dependent d and d data sets in the graphics and visualization lab gvl we are using these tools along side standard packages such as sgi explorer and the utah raster toolkit to render d volumes and create digital movies a couple of the more general purpose programs have been bundled into a package called gvlware gvlware currently consisting of bob raz and icol is now available via ftp the most interesting program is probably bob an interactive volume renderer for the sgi raz streams raster images from disk to an sgi screen enabling movies larger than memory to be played icol is a color map editor that works with bob and raz source and pre built binaries for irix are included to acquire gvlware anonymous ftp to machine ftp arc umn edu file pub gvl tar z to use gvlware mkdir gvl cd gvl zcat gvl tar z tar xvf more readme some bob features motif interface sgi gl rendering renders cubed data set in to seconds on a vgx alpha compositing and maximum value rendering in perspective only maximum value rendering on personal iris data must be a brick of bytes on a regularly spaced grid animation subvolumes subsampling stereo some raz features motif interface sgi gl rendering loads files to a raw disk partition then streams to screen requires an empty disk partition to be set aside script interface available for movie sequences can stream from memory like ncsa ximage some icol features motif interface easy to create interpolated color maps between key points rgb hsv and yuv color spaces multiple file formats communicates changes automatically to bob and raz has been tested on sgi sun dec and cray systems btw bob brick of bytes icol interpolated color raz just a name please send any comments to gvlware ahpcrc umn edu this software collection is supported by the army research office contract number daalo c with the university of minnesota army high performance computing research center iap imaging applications platform is a commercial package for medical and scientific visualization it does volume rendering binary surface rendering multiplanar reformating image manipulation cine sequencing intermixes geometry and text with images and provides measurement and coordinate transform abilities it can provide hardcopy on most medical film printers image database functionality and interconnection to most medical ct mri etc scanners it is client server based and provides an object oriented interface it runs on most high performance workstations and takes full advantage of parallelism where it is available it is robust efficient and will be submitted for fda approval for use in medical applications cost k for oem developer k for educational developer and run times starting at and going down based on quantity the developer packages include two days training for two people in toronto available from isg technologies airport road mississauga ontario canada l v s e mail rod gilchrist rod isgtec com molecular visualization stuff based on a list from cristy dupont com cristy which asked for systems for displaying molecular dynamics md for short flex it is a public domain package written by michael pique at the scripps research institute la jolla ca flex is stored as a compressed tar ed archive about mb at perutz scripps edu in pub flex it displays molecular models and md trajectories macmolecule for macintosh i searched with archie and the most promising place is sumex aim stanford edu info mac app and info mac art qt for a demo md display runs on sgi machines call terry lybrand lybrand milton u washington edu xtalview it is a crystallography package that does visualize molecules and much more it uses the xview toolkit call duncan mcree dem scripps edu landman hal physics wayne edu i am writing my own visualization code right now i look at md output a specific format easy to alter for the subroutine on pc s my program has hooks into gks if your friend has access to phigs for x pex and fortran bindings i would be happy to share my evolving code free of charge right now it can display supercells of up to atoms easy to change and up to time steps drawing nearest neighbor bonds between defining nn radii it works acceptably fast on a mhz icsg caesar cs montana edu i did a project on molecular visualization for my master s thesis using unix x motif which generates a simple point and space filling model kgngraf kgngraf is part of motecc look on malena crs it in pub motecc motecc info txt information about motecc in plain ascii format motecc info troff information about motecc in troff format motecc form troff motecc order form in troff format motecc license troff motecc license agreement in troff format motecc info ps information about motecc in postscript format motecc form ps motecc order form in postscript format motecc license ps motecc license agreement in postscript format ditolla itnsg cineca it i m working on molecular dynamic too a friend of mine and i have developed a program to display an md run dynamically on silicon graphics we are working to improve it but it doesn t work under x we are using the graphi lib of the silicon gr because they are much faster then x when we ll end it we ll post on the news info about where to get it with ftp will be free software xball v written by david nedde call daven maxine wpi edu xmol an x window system program that uses osf motif for the display and analysis of molecular model data data from several common file formats can be read and written current formats include alchemy chemlab ii gaussian molsim mopac pdb and msci s xyz format which has been designed for simplicity in translating to and from other formats xmol also allows for conversion between several of these formats xmol is available at ftp msc edu read pub xmol readme for further details insight ii from biosym technologies inc scarecrow the program has been published in j molecular graphics the program can analyze and display charmm discover yasp and mumod trajectories the program package contains also software for the generation of probe surfaces proton affinity surfaces and molecular orbitals from an extended huckel program it works on silicon graphics machines contact leif laaksonen leif laaksonen csc fi or laaksone csc fi multi ns niehs nih gov pub multi multi process molecular modeling suite mindtool it runs under sunview and requires a fortran compiler and sun s cgi libraries mindtool is a tool provided for the interactive graphic manipulation of molecules and atoms currently up to atoms may be input available via anonymous ftp at rani chem yale edu directory pub mindtool check with archie for other sites if that s too far i would also suggest looking at least in sgi s applications directory it contains many more packages nfotis gis geographical information systems software grass geographic resource analysis support system of the us army construction engineering research lab cerl it is a popular geographic and remote sensing image processing package many may think of grass as a geographic information system rather than an image processing package although it is reported to have significant image processing capabilities feature descriptions i use grass because it s public domain and can be obtained through the internet for free grass runs in unix and is written in c the source code can be obtained through an anonymous ftp from the office of grass integration you then compile the source code for your machine using scripts provided with grass i would recommend grass for someone who already has a workstation and is on a limited budget grass is not very user friendly compared to macintosh software a first review of overview documentation indicates that it looks useful and has some pixel resampling functions not in other packages plus good general purpose image enhancement routines fft kelly maurice at vexcel corp in boulder co is a primary user of grass this gentleman has used the grass software and developed multi spectral bands volumetric rendering full color on suns and stardents it was a really effective interface vexcel corp currently has a contract to map part of venus and convert the magellan radar data into contour maps you can call them at or email care of greg vexcel com host configuration requirements if you are willing to run a ux you could install grass on a macintosh which has significant image analysis and import capabilities for satellite data grass is public domain and can run on a high end pc under unix it is raster based has some image processing capability and can display vector data but analysis must be done in the raster environment i have used grass v on a sun workstation and found it easy to use it is best of course for data that are well represented in raster grid cell form availability cerl s office of grass integration ogi maintains an ftp server moon cecer army mil mail regarding this site should be addressed to grass ftp admin moon cecer army mil this location will be the new canonical source for grass software as well as bug fixes contributed sources documentation and other files this ftp server also supports dynamic compression and uncompression and tar archiving of files a feature attraction of the server is john parks grass tutorial because the manual is still in beta test stage john requests that people only acquire it if they are willing to review it and mail him comments corrections the ogi is not currently maintaining this document so all correspondence about it should be directed to grassx tang uark edu support listserv mailing lists grassu list amber cecer army mil for grass users application level questions support concerns miscellaneous questions etc send subscribe commands to grassu request amber cecer army mil grassp list amber cecer army mil for grass programmers system level questions and tips tricks and techniques of design and implementation of grass applications send subscribe commands to grassp request amber cecer army mil both lists are maintained by the office of grass integration subset of the army corps of engineers construction engineering research lab in champaign il the ogi is providing the lists as a service to the community while ogi and cerl employees will participate in the lists we can make no claim as to content or veracity of messages that pass through the list if you have questions problems or comments send e mail to lists owner amber cecer army mil and a human will respond microstation imager intergraph based in huntsville alabama sells a wide range of gis software hardware microstation is a base graphics package that imager sits on top of imager is basically an image processing package with a heavy gis remote sensing flavor feature description basic geometry manipulations flip mirror rotate generalized affine rectification affine nd rd th and th order models as well as a projective model warp an image to a vector map or to another image rgb to ihs and ihs to rgb conversion principal component analysis classification k means and isodata fourier xforms forward filtering and reverse filters high pass low pass edge enhancing median generic complex histogram contrast control layer controller manages up to images at a time user can extract single bands from a band image or create color images by combining various individual bands etc the package is designed for a remote sensing application it can handle very large images and there is all kinds of other software available for gis applications host configuration requirements it runs on intergraph workstations a unix machine similar to a sun though there were rumors there are always rumors that the software would be ported to pc and possibly a sun environment pci a company called pci inc out of richmond hill ontario canada makes an array of software utilities for processing manipulation and use of remote sensing data in eight or ten different industry standard formats lgsowg bsq landsat and a couple of others whose titles i forget the software is available in versions for ms dos unix workstations among them hp sun and ibm and vms and quite possibly other platforms by now i use the vms version the pci software consists of several classes groups packages of utilities grouped by function but all operating on a common pci database disk file the tape i o package is a set of utility programs which read from the various remote sensing industry tape formats into or write those formats out from the pci database file this is the only package i use or know much about other packages can display data from the pci database to one or another of several pci supported third party color displays output numeric or bitmap representation of image data to an attached printer e g an epson type dot matrix graphics printer you might be more spe cifically interested in the mathematical operations package histo gram and fourier analysis equalization user specified operations e g multiply channel by add channel and store as channel and god only knows what all else there s a lot i don t have and don t use these so can t say much about them you only buy the packages your particular application interest calls for each utility is controlled by from one to eight parameters read from a common parameter file which must be in vms anyway in your default directory some utilities will share parameters and use the same parameter for a different purpose so it can get a bit confusing setting up a series of operations the standard pci environment contains a scripting language very similar to ibm pc basic but which allows you to automate the process of setting up parameters for a common complicated lengthy or difficult series of utility executions in vms i can also invoke utilities independently from a dcl command procedure there s also an optional programming library which allows you to write compiled language programs which can interface with read from write to the pci data structures database file parameter file the pci software is designed specifically for remote sensing images but requires such a level of operator expertise that once you reach the level where you can handle r s images you can figure out ways to handle a few other things as well for instance the tape i o package offers a utility for reading headerless multi band what adobe photoshop on the macintosh calls raw data from tape in a number of different interleave orders this turns out to be ideal for manipulating the graphic arts industry s ct t format would probably i haven t tried handle targa and so on above all however you have to know what you re doing or you can screw up to the nth degree and have to start over it s worth noting that the pci database file is designed to contain not only raster image data but vectors for overlaying map information entered via digitizing table land use and all manner of other information i observe that a remote sensing image tape often contains all manner of information about the spectral bands latitude longitude time date etc of the original satellite pass all of this can go into the pci database i believe that on workstations the built in display is used on vax systems other than workstations pci supports only a couple of specific third party display systems the name gould deanza seems to come to mind one of my personal workarounds was a display program which would display directly from a pci database file to a peritek vct q q bus bit directcolor display subsystem pci software could be overkill in your case it seems designed for the very high end applications users i e those for whom a mac pc largely doesn t suffice although as you know the gap is getting smaller all the time it s probably no coincidence that pci is located in canada a country which does a lot of its land resource management via remote sensing i believe the canadian government uses pci software for some of its work in these areas spam spectral analysis manager back in jpl developed something called spam spectral analysis manager which got a fair amount of use at the time that was designed for airborne imaging spectrometer imagery byte data pixels across by lines by bands a modified version has since been developed for aviris airborne visual and infrared imaging spectrometer which uses much larger images spam does none of these things rectification classification pc and ihs transformations filtering contrast enhancement overlays actually it does limited filtering and contrast enhancement stretching spam is aimed at spectral identification and clustering the original spam uses x or sunview to display the aviris version may require vicar an executive based on tae and may also require a frame buffer i can refer you to people if you re interested pcw requires x for display map ii among the mac gis systems map ii is distributed by john wiley clrview clrview is a dimensional visualization program designed to exploit the real time capabilities of silicon graphics iris computers this program is designed to provide a core set of tools to aid in the visualization of information from cad and gis sources it supports the integration of many common but disperate data sources such as dxf tin dem lattices and arc info coverages among others clrview can be obtained from explorer dgp utoronto ca in the directory pub sgi clrview contact rodney hoinkes head of design applications centre for landscape research university of toronto tel email rodney dgp utoronto ca end of resource listing nick nikolaos fotis national technical univ of athens greece home esperidon st internet nfotis theseas ntua gr halandri gr uucp mcsun ariadne theseas nfotis athens greece fax
comp.graphics	wanted references on parallel algorithms element analysis radiosity distributed processing hi i m looking for references to parallel algorithms on octrees adaptive subdivision adaptive meshing finite element meshing analysis radiosity any help will be greatly appreciated e mail replies to dave small dts cis ufl edu
comp.graphics	need help z buffering lines areas together i m asking for help on a sticky problem involving unreasonably low apparent precision in z buffering that i ve encountered in different pex implementations i can t find any discussion of this problem in any resources i can lay hands on e g the comp windows x pex faq gaskins s pexlib programming manual vendors documentation i m posting this article by itself on comp graphics and virtually the same article with a test program demonstrating the problem on comp windows x pex the problem is hard to describe without pictures hence this article is longish if you can run pexlib x programs and are interested i encourage you to build and run the test program in comp windows x pex to see the effect yourself and play with my approach to dealing with it it depends on the utility code from the above gaskins book instructions for fetching it via anonymous ftp are given the problem to be solved is to eliminate or minimize stitching artifacts resulting from the use of z buffering with polylines that are coplanar with filled areas the interpolated z values along a line will differ slightly due to roundoff error from the interpolated z values across an area even when the endpoints of the line are coincident with vertices of the area because of this it s a tossup whether the z buffer will allow the line pixels or the area pixels to be displayed visually the result tends to be a dashed line effect even though the line is supposed to be solid using the pexlib api my approach to a solution is to use two slightly different pex view mapping transforms in two view table entries one for the areas and one for the lines the pex structures or immediate mode output must be organized so that one view table index is always in effect for areas and the other is always in effect for lines the result is a slight shift in npc z coordinates for the lines so as to attempt to bias the tossup situations in favor of the lines this shift is effected by moving the front and back clipping planes used in the pexlib view table entry for lines just a hair backwards i e smaller vrc z coordinates compared to their positions in the view table entry used for areas this means that when a point is transformed to npc its z value will be slightly bigger if it comes from a line than if it comes from an area thus accomplishing the desired bias i would expect the z roundoff errors which cause the problem to amount to a few units at most out of the entire dynamic range of the z buffer typically from to if not i e or bit z buffers therefore it seems that a tiny fraction of the range of z in vrc between the front and back clip planes ought to suffice to reliably fix the stitching but in fact experience shows that the shift has to be as much as to of the range empirically it s worst when the npc z component of the slope of the surface is high i e when it appears more or less edge on to the viewer it s as if only or bits of the z buffer have any dependable meaning this amount is so great that one problem is replaced by another sometimes the polylines show through areas which they are supposed to lie behind i ve observed the problem on both hewlett packard and digital workstation pex servers to approximately the same degree the test program demonstrates the problem on an mit pexlib x implementation this version is known to compile and run on an hp ux system with pex open questions why does this happen am i configuring the pex view table wrongly is there a systematic difference in z interpolation for lines as opposed to areas e g pixel centers versus corners which could be corrected for are pex implementors wantonly discarding z precision in their interpolators something else what to do about it can i fix my use of the view table to allow better precision in z buffered hlhsr is there another approach i can take to remove the stitching artifacts am i just out of luck any help would be immensely appreciated dave gorgen internet gorgen ann arbor applicon slb com applicon inc gorgen aaaca sinet slb com ann arbor michigan usa uucp uunet sharkey applga gorgen
comp.graphics	raytriacing and animation now i have a couple raytracing questions just so you know i m using povray both ms dos and unix and i m generating targa files of varying size ok so i can view these wonderful pictures on my screen what s the best way to get them on to paper would it be possible to take it to kinko s and have them make an actual picture on paper from it i was thinking about making a small animation bit with different raytraced frames is this a bad idea any tricks to it how would i get a sequence of targa files made into an animation that i could put on a videotape is there a cheap way
comp.graphics	need gif iff file format could somebody please email me some info on either what gif or iff file formats are or where i can get such info thanx rtaraz wpi wpi edu
comp.graphics	archiving gif what s the best way to archive gif s i zip them and they only shrink i have most compression programs except stacker which i heard was good for gif s thanx brando ps please e mail me i don t get down this far on the news usually
comp.graphics	re povray tga rle in article ltqp innpa pageboy cs utexas edu jhpark cs utexas edu jihun park writes hello i have some problem in converting tga file generated by povray to rle file when i convert i do not get any warning message but if i use xloadimage getx something is wrong edited i know that i need to install ppmtorle and tgatoppm but i do not spend time to install them even i do not want to generate rgb from povray and then convert them to rle if possible rgb to rle works but it will mess up my directory with so many files and it needs more steps to finally convert to rle file say cat rawtorle rleflip does any body out there have same experience problems well for starters why use rle files you might have a specific program that needs them ok but i tend to convert straight to jpeg format thus a meg bit targa file becomes a k or less bit jpeg the latest versions of xv and xloadimage both handle jpeg files and the best way to convert to jpeg is with the c djpeg suit even at quality you can t see the difference the jpeg is way smaller than anything else even an bit gif later ish craig i didn t do it nobody saw me do it you can t prove anything craig humphrey stargate actrix gen nz ccc c ccc c chumphre comp vuw ac nz
comp.graphics	kubota kenai denali specs okay i got enough replies about the kubota kenai denali systems that i will post a summary of their capabilities i haven t actually used one or seen one so take the specs with a grain of salt i d like to see an independent review of one against say an sgi indigo extreme or something basically the kenai workstations are dec alpha axp based workstations that run osf dec s and will likely run windows nt in the future they are binary compatible with digital s osf alpha axp implementation denali is their graphics subsystem which is upgradable in the field by simply adding transformation engines the two main kenai machines are the imaging and d graphics workstation and the imaging and d graphics workstation cpu dec alpha axp mhz dec alpha axp mhz on chip cache k k k k onboard cache k k word size bit bit memory initial mb mb memory future mb gb specmark specint specfp graphics transform modules frame buffer modules frame buffer x x bit x x bit double buffered double buffered z buffer bit bit alpha stencil bit bit stereo support yes yes other both machines will double buffer or do stereo output per window both have an auxiliary video output that is rs a ntsc and pal storage internal fixed internal removable max capacity gb gb io both have turbochannel mb sec scsi ethernet and fddi application programming interfaces both have libraries for xlib motif mit pexlib dec pexlib dec phigs and gl okay now the real stuff the kenai stations work with a graphics architecture known as denali the denali comes in three models the e p and v they use a decchip superscalar risc processor at mhz their capabilities are as follows e p v d vectors k k k d vectors k k k d vectors k k k d vectors k k k d triangles k k k d triangles k k k pixel flat shaded connected pixel gouraud shaded connected pixel pixel wide anti aliased connected pixel gouraud shaded z buffered strip pixel texture mapped persp point sampled image processing cine loop bit mp s mp s mp s cine loop bit mp s mp s mp s cine loop bit mp s mp s mp s contrast stretching mp s mp s mp s bilinear zoom mp s mp s mp s trilinear interp mvoxels s mvoxels s lookup table bit to trilinear interpolation bit voxels configurations frame buffer modules transform engine mod as you can see these are pretty powerful workstations and the best part is the pricing i would recommend that you call kubota for more information their number is i m sure they ll send you an information you may want oh some prices low end kenai e series w tem and fbm dollars u s kenai e series w tem and fbm dollars u s high end kenai v series w tem and fbm dollars u s kenai v series w tem and fbm dollars u s if someone could post a relative comparision with an indigo extreme or something i would appreciate it hope this helps someone out there brian ps i am not affiliated with kubota in any way hell i thought they made tractors or something
comp.graphics	autocad graphics converter could anybody tell me if exists any program to convert autocad graphics to another format gif tiff bmp pcx and where to get it thanks in advance j c cuesta cuesta tidsa madrid spain
comp.graphics	looking for code to brake image into sub bands hi all i am working on a project in which i need to brake an image into sub bands and then work with them since i have never done anything like this don t even understand the concept of sub bands i was wondering if there is some software out there that would allow me to do this any hints thanks scott violet xepo csd csd uwm edu
comp.graphics	re virtual reality for x on the cheap peter gort trl oz au peter k campbell writes ridout bink plk af mil brian s ridout writes in article apr mfltd co uk sts mfltd co uk steve sherwood x writes has anyone got multiverse to work extn sts mfltd co uk uunet mfocus sts i ve tried compiling it on several sparcstations with gcc after fixing up a few bugs missing constant definitions plus a couple of other things i got it to compile link but after starting client server i just get a black window sometimes the client core dumps sometimes the server sometimes i get a broken pipe sometimes it just sits there doing nothing although i occassionally get the cursor to become a cross hair in dog fight but that s it i ve sent word to the author plus what i did to fix it last week but no reply as yet peter k campbell p campbell trl oz au i ve discovered a bug in the libraries parser parser c loadcolour function where it was generating a segmentation fault it appears the colourlist is geting corrupted somehow i had it return random colours instead and everything worked great except for a few colour problems so i know its the only thing wrong the colour table somehow gets a couple of nulls placed in it so when the name of the colours are compared it crashes i haven t found the problem yet maybe someone else can adrian turner university college of northern victoria turner ironbark ucnv edu au
comp.graphics	looking for graig toontown i noticed you post in comp graphics and know a person with your name i was wondering if you used to live in paxton mass if so i have a friend that would like to say hi sorry for the inconvience if this isn t who i think it is sr
comp.graphics	re gif to targa in article apr fuw edu pl muchor fuw edu pl krzysztof muchorowski writes hello subject says it all i need a gif to targa converter so that my dta could make a fli of them krzysztof dta will make a fli from gifs as well as targas you don t need a converter also get the latest version of dta from wuarchive wustl edu in pub msdos uploads
comp.graphics	re acm siggraph registration problem zyda cs nps navy mil michael zyda notes a word of warning for those of you registering for siggraph i just received my registration form back in the mail with the envelope marked return to sender moved left no address closed po box the address i used to register for siggraph is the one printed on the registration form acm siggraph po box chicago il i printed the envelope in my best printing honest but evidently siggraph has skipped town or moved i ended up faxing my registration to i hope that number is real michael zyda i had the same problem and called the people who handle the box the problem happened some time ago and was caught almost instantly all registrations going to that address are now fixed see what trouble you get into when you don t procrastinate mike and no siggraph has not skipped town we re preparing the best siggraph conference yet steve cunningham
comp.graphics	hpgl viewer and utilities hi i would like to know if there is any software pd or not who could produce x output of hpgl file on rs and same kind of software who could produce hardcopy on postscript and lasetjet thank you gaetan lord voice analyste fax ecole polytechnique de montreal p o box station a montreal quebec canada there s no future in time travel j t c
comp.graphics	re why does illustrator autotrace so poorly i ve had pretty good success autotracing line art with adobe streamline the key to controlling excessive points etc is to take some time and do some test conversions using various tolerance settings jim powlesland internet powlesla acs ucalgary ca academic computing services voice university of calgary message calgary alberta canada t n n fax
comp.graphics	re cross sobel roberts filters in article apr waikato ac nz pdenize waikato ac nz writes i saw an imaging program some time ago on an amiga that had cross sobel and roberts filters for edge detection can anybody direct me to these algorithms ok never heard of cross filters but roberts prewitt and sobel filters are standard spatial masks for edge detection highpass filtering does a good job of detecting edges too a good reference for all sorts of general digital image processing is the book digital image processing by rafael c gonzalez and richard e woods addison wesley publishing co isbn i ve used this source to do the above filters and many other things as a grad project not too dificult to do the worst part is loading in the images from tiff gif iff ilbm whatever wayne rigby rigby cs unr edu
comp.graphics	source code help on ip packages please greetings this is a general call for information regarding image processing i am looking for any material related to the field and am also trying to get my hands on some easy to use packages related to the field in particular source code for general use packages i already have several texts on the subject but would appreciate more input from people more knowledgable in the field than myself i m not mathematically literate ie i don t have a degree in mathematics so any material that is suggested i would prefer that it was not mathematically intensive the best book i have found on the subject at the moment is practical digital image processing by rhys lewis isbn published by ellis horwood c likewise i am trying to get a fair sample of programs that demonstrate image processing techniques so far i have xv and khoros for unix dcview for the ibm pc and various related smatterings of c code to help describe topics like contrasting dithering image enhancement via convolution etc if anyone could kindly supply me with some public domain software pertinent to this area or better still if they could tell me where i am most likely to find it on the aarnet internet if i can i would prefer source code in c or turbo pascal that includes some image processing code algorithms that i can readily alter manipulate for the purposes of demonstration it would be most helpful all the above information will contribute to my post graduate studies and will be liberally used in my paper and seminar on the subject thanks in advance vance ashlin diploma advanced computing thinking is dangerous subversive mindnumbing and leads you astray ashlin ironbark ucnv edu au i redgum ucnv edu au
comp.graphics	re quicktime performance was re rumours about do in article apr waikato ac nz ldo waikato ac nz lawrence d oliveiro waikato university writes path dime ymir cs umass edu nic umass edu noc near net howland reston ans net usc elroy jpl nasa gov decwrl waikato ac nz ldo from ldo waikato ac nz lawrence d oliveiro waikato university newsgroups comp multimedia comp graphics date apr gmt references mar aragorn unibe ch apr rchland ibm com organization university of waikato hamilton new zealand lines xref dime comp multimedia comp graphics ok with all the discussion about observed playback speeds with quicktime the effects of scaling and so on i thought i d do some more tests first of all i felt that my original speed test was perhaps less than realistic the movie i had been using only had frames in it it was a version of the very first movie i created with the compact video compressor i decided something a little longer would give closer to real world results for better or for worse i pulled out a copy of a space odyssey that i had recorded off tv a while back about fifteen minutes into the movie there s a sequence where the earth shuttle is approaching the space station specifically i digitized a portion of about seconds duration zooming in on the rotating space station i figured this would give a reasonable amount of movement between frames to increase the differences between frames i digitized it at only frames per second to give a total of frames i captured the raw footage at a resolution of pixels with the spigot card in my centris quarter size resolution from a pal source i then imported it into premiere and put it through the compact video compressor keeping the fps frame rate i created two versions of the movie one scaled to resolution the other at resolution i used the default quality setting in premiere and specified a key frame every ten frames i then ran the movie through the same raw speed test program i used for the results i d been reporting earlier result a playback rate of over frames per second that s right i was getting a much higher result than with that first short test movie just for fun i copied the movie to my external hard disk a quantum lp s and ran it from there this time the playback rate was only about frames per second obviously the mb internal hard disk also a quantum is a significant contributor to the speed of playback i modified my speed test program to allow the specification of optional scaling factors and tried playing back the movie scaled to size this time the playback speed was over fps clearly the poster who observed poor performance on scaled playback was seeing quicktime in action not i d try my tests with quicktime but i don t think it s entirely compatible with my centris and system unscaled the playback rate for the movie was over fps the other thing i tried was saving versions of the movie with preferred playback rates greater than and seeing how well they played from within movieplayer ie with quicktime s normal synchronized playback a preferred rate of fps didn t work too well the playback was very jerky compare this with the raw speed test which achieved fps with ease i can t believe that quicktime s synchronization code would add this much overhead i think the slowdown was coming from the mac system s task switching a preferred rate of fps seemed to work fine i couldn t see any evidence of stutter at fps i think i could see slight stutter but with four key frames every second it was hard to tell i guess i could try recreating the movies with a longer interval between the key frames to make the stutter more noticeable of course this will also improve the compression slightly which should speed up the playback performance even more lawrence d oliveiro fone computer services dept fax university of waikato electric mail ldo waikato ac nz hamilton new zealand s e gmt i m afraid i missed the start of this thread but there are three factors that can significantly affect quicktime s playback speed that you may want to take into account playback bit depth things are fastest when you play a movie back at the bit depth it was compressed for this is usually or bit but other depths are of course possible type of scaling qt is optimized for double size scaling other scaling factors hit peformance much harder playback window position movieplayer limits your window placement choices to advantagous pixel boundaries by default i m not sure about premiere any combination of those can radically alter playback performance image size is of course another biggie giving the movie player lots of ram can also make a real difference forgive me if these were mentioned earlier in the thread peter lee peter e lee software conductor specular international inc lee cs umass edu or h or w beauty is bits deep plus eight bits of alpha channel
comp.graphics	re help need bits viewer in article seti inria fr deniaud cartoon inria fr gilles deniaud writes hi i m looking for a program which is able to display bits images we are using a sun sparc equipped with parallax graphics board running x xli xloadimage or imagemagick export lcs mit edu contrib graeme gill
comp.graphics	re povray tga rle in article ltqp innpa pageboy cs utexas edu jhpark cs utexas edu jihun park writes hello i have some problem in converting tga file generated by povray to rle file when i convert i do not get any warning message but if i use xloadimage getx something is wrong error messages are targatorle o o rle data tga xloadimage o rle o rle is a x bit rle image with no map will dither to bits with gamma of dithering image done building ximage done xloadimage x error badvalue integer parameter out of range for operation on x xloadimage x error badwindow invalid window parameter on xb this happens when your x server has run out of memory you need more memory or you need to quit any un neccessary running clients graeme gill
comp.graphics	re povray tga rle in rkkb gec st james comp vuw ac nz craig humphrey comp vuw ac nz craig andrew humphrey writes in article ltqp innpa pageboy cs utexas edu jhpark cs utexas edu jihun park writes hello i have some problem in converting tga file generated by povray to rle file when i convert i do not get any warning message but if i use xloadimage getx something is wrong edited i know that i need to install ppmtorle and tgatoppm but i do not spend time to install them even i do not want to generate rgb from povray and then convert them to rle if possible rgb to rle works but it will mess up my directory with so many files and it needs more steps to finally convert to rle file say cat rawtorle rleflip does any body out there have same experience problems well for starters why use rle files exactly i didn t want to mess with tga or rle so i wrote the following script all you need is the very standard set of pbm utilities this script is a pov to jpg converter just run it like this pov jpg fred pov you will need to modify the path s in the script to reflect where you put povray and its include files if you have a problem with disk space you can use named pipes instead of temporary files i hope you find it useful bin sh if lt then echo usage width height sourcefile pov other options exit fi width height datafile shift basedatafile echo datafile sed e s pov thedatafile basename datafile basedatafile basename datafile pov dirdatafile dirname datafile cd dirdatafile afs rnd sas com u sherman pov povsrc build povray l afs rnd sas com u sherman pov povscn include o tmp data w width h height fr i thedatafile echo rawtopgm width height tmp data grn tmp green rawtopgm width height tmp data red tmp red rawtopgm width height tmp data blu tmp blue rgb toppm tmp red tmp green tmp blue cjpeg basedatafile jpg rm tmp red tmp green tmp blue tmp data grn tmp data red tmp data blu echo wrote output to basedatafile jpg chris sherman sherman unx sas com
comp.graphics	adobe photoshop mailing list i ve done a bit of looking and havn t been able to come up with a mailing list or newsgroup for users of adobe photoshop assuming i ve just not missed it i ll go ahead and see if there is enough interest to start a mailing list and or alt newsgroup drop me a note if you might be interested in subscribing thanks bob wier not of the grateful dead insert usual disclaimers here bob wier east texas state u commerce texas historic image processing project wier merlin etsu edu watch for address change
comp.graphics	re morphing in article news duke edu seth north acpub duke edu seth wandersman writes keywords i am looking for some morphing programs for dec s or pc s i looked for a program called dmorph using archie but could not find it i found a progrmam call morpho but it only did grayscale images does anyone know where i should look try searching for dmorf i think it s located on wuarchive wustl edu in a mirror directory i ve used it before it was pretty good pete wilmshurst email wilmshurst reg triumf ca
comp.graphics	ds where did all the te to rych festival ed ac uk r hawkes rh i ve noticed that if you only save a model with all your mapping planes rh positioned carefully to a ds file that when you reload it after restarting rh ds they are given a default position and orientation but if you save rh to a prj file their positions orientation are preserved does anyone rh know why this information is not stored in the ds file nothing is this is because the prj project format saves all of your settings right down to the last render file s name rh i d like to be able to read the texture rule information does anyone have rh the format for the prj file sorry don t have anything on that or the cel format r c v t ell r deluxe sa stupid line noise
comp.graphics	re parametric variational design here now some initial references best regards walter inproceedings keirouz et al author walid keirouz and jahir pabon and robert young title integrating parametric geometry features and variational modeling for conceptual design booktitle international conference on design theory and methodology year editor j r rinderle pages organization american society of mechanical engineers asme optpublisher optaddress optmonth note proceedings inproceedings yamaguchi kimura author yasushi yamaguchi and fumihiko kimura title a constraint modeling system for variational geometry booktitle geometric modeling for product engineering year editor michael j wozny and j u turner and k preiss pages organization ifip publisher elsevier science publishers b v north holland amsterdam the netherlands optaddress optmonth note selected and expanded papers form the ifip wg nsf working conference on geometric modeling rensselaerville ny u s a september inproceedings chung et al author jack c h chung and joseph w klahs and robert l cook and thijs sluiter title implementation issues in variational geometry and constraint management booktitle third international conference on cad cam robotics and factories of the future cars and fof year opteditor optpages optorganization optpublisher address detroit michigan usa month august note proceedings probably springer verlag berlin heidelberg article kimura et al author fumihiko kimura and hiromasa suzuki and toshio sata title variational product design by constraint propagation and satisfaction in product modelling journal annals of the cirp year volume number pages optmonth note probably international institution for production engineering research article kimura et al author f kimura and h suzuki and h ando and t sato and a kinosada title variational geometry based on logical constraints and its applications to product modelling journal annals of the cirp year volume number pages inproceedings chung schussel author jack c h chung and martin d schussel title comparison of variational and parametric design booktitle autofact year opteditor pages optorganization optpublisher address detroit michigan usa month october november note conference proceedings article pabon et al author jahir pabon and robert young and walid keirouz title integrating parametric geometry features and variational modeling for conceptual design journal international journal of systems automation research and applications sara year volume optnumber pages optmonth optnote article kondo author koichi kondo title pigmod parametric and interactive geometric modeller for mechanical design journal cad computer aided design year volume number pages month december note butterworth heinemann ltd inproceedings zalik et al a author borut v z alik and nikola guid and aleksander vesel title parametric design using constraint description graph booktitle cad neue konzepte zur realisierung anwendungsorientierter cad systeme year editor frank lothar krause and detlev ruland and helmut jansen pages optorganization publisher informatik aktuell springer verlag berlin heidelberg optaddress month mai note gi fachtagung berlin inproceedings murtagh shimura author niall murtagh and masamichi shimura title parametric engineering design using constraint based reasoning booktitle aaai eighth national conference on artificial intelligence year opteditor pages organization american association for artificial intelligence publisher proceedings volume one aaai press menlo park ca u s a address boston ma month july august optnote
comp.graphics	re need gif iff file format in article rkjm i q bigboote wpi edu rtaraz bigwpi wpi edu ramin taraz writes could somebody please email me some info on either what gif or iff file formats are or where i can get such info well gif stands for graphics interchange format and was put forth by compuserve back in or so it was to create a format that could be read and displayed by any system gif is limited to bit color but has a built in compression scheme lzw iff is not really a graphics format but rather a standard way to package images sounds animations text or whatever into one file iff was created by electronic arts i do believe i could be wrong for the amiga it was quickly adopted as pretty much the standard file format for the amiga the most common image format for the iff package is an ilbm interleaved bitmap but many others exist this format supports bit color images information on both of these and many more are available via anonymous ftp at zamenhof cs rice edu in the directory pub graphics formats taken from the faq for this news group wayne rigby rigby cs unr edu
comp.graphics	pov where sorry if this is a faq but where can i get a bit version of pov ray any help would be greatly appreciated i need the version since turbo pascal won t let me run a bit program from within my program any info on this would also be a great help thanks byron bkidd esk compserv utas edu au b kidd cam compserv utas edu au byron kidd e mail computing services
comp.graphics	geosphere image article of alt graphics newsgroups alt graphics path news nd edu moliere rmalayte from rmalayte moliere helios nd edu ryan malayter subject geosphere images via ftp message id apr news nd edu sender news news nd edu usenet news system organization university of notre dame notre dame date mon apr gmt does anyone know if a digitized version of the geosphere image is available via ftp for those of you who don t know it is a composite photograph of the entire earth with cloudcover removed i just think it s really cool it was created with government funds and sattelites as a research project so i would assume it s in the public domain thanks for any info ryan college men get smashed and break something college women get smashed and get broken robin wilson president ryan p malayter chico state university stanford hall notre dame in n d dept of physics comp sci malayter nd edu
comp.graphics	help colour display restriction limitation hi netters i m doing a project which is about image analysis firstly i have to find out any restrictions or limitations on the colour display on various kind of workstations they are decstation hp amiga apollo secondly i read from some graphic texts that image is displayed in bites please point out to me if i got it wrong but the images which i will deal with are displayed in bites by the software they are using currently so will there be any problems to display them under x windows in the future because we are thinking to implement the gui by x windows for our project is there any person here can help me to solve the problem or query above or give me some advice or suggestion where i can find them out please send me an e mail if there are any thanks in advance yours christine chan my address golum riv csu edu au
comp.graphics	re tiff anything in article apr yang earlham edu joshuaf yang earlham edu writes are there any tiff to anything programs out there for the ibm our scanner works into tiff and i can view it on cshow but all of my other programs read errors are there any basic tiff to jpeg gif pcx bmp etc try winjpeg on oak oakland edu pub msdos windows winjp zip it has more tiff support than graphics workshop it also converts to all the above formats ken
comp.graphics	re d widget wish list what i d like to see is the more generic n dimensional widget set i realize that there wouldn t be a whole shitload of people who d want more than but why stop all i need is a widget with up to n viewports showing me different d or d slices of my stuff alter pat pat ritcsh csh rit edu paf ritvax rit edu paflecke spectrum xerox com all objects are macroscopic invisible non physical or otherwise non heisenbergish fuck the cat me
comp.graphics	rgb hls hsv conversion routines wanted hi i m looking for rgb cube hls double hexcone hsv cylinder conversion routines i have rgb hsv but miss the hls rgb hsv please e mail me directly as i do not get this newsgroup at my site any and all help wil be greatly appreciated gert o gert bultman bultman dgw rws nl phone o snail rijkswaterstaat dienst getijdewateren afd aoct o o o mail postbus ex the hague the netherlands o o o o please mark all personal mail persoonlijk o
comp.graphics	re ds where did all the texture rules go eric vitiello tfd coplex com eric vitiello writes to rych festival ed ac uk r hawkes rh i ve noticed that if you only save a model with all your mapping planes rh positioned carefully to a ds file that when you reload it after restarting rh ds they are given a default position and orientation but if you save rh to a prj file their positions orientation are preserved does anyone rh know why this information is not stored in the ds file nothing is this is because the prj project format saves all of your settings right down to the last render file s name rh i d like to be able to read the texture rule information does anyone have rh the format for the prj file sorry don t have anything on that or the cel format well i dived in feet first and reverse engineered the prj file as much as i needed to extracted the mapping icon information which is when it dawned on me that d studio is useless for my needs i need a mapping icon per applied texture i want to use a special purpose graphics computer for rendering the ds models and it requires a texture rule plane to be specified in space i e position orientation of the mapping rule since only one mapping icon is used in ds to apply textures to all objects faces it renders no pun intended ds totally unsuitable for my needs anyone got a contact for alias upfront or any other good modeller for a pc i must be able to specify texture rules one per texture and this must be saved in a file which i can read i haven t found any info on alias in the copy of the faq that i have rych
comp.graphics	sw convert plot to ascii file i am looking for software that reads a plot in pcx or other format and converts it into x y coordinate
comp.graphics	best ftp viewer please could someone please tell me the best ftp able viewer available for msdos i am running a mhz with svga monitor i need to look at gifs mainly and it would be advantageous if it ran under windows thanks
comp.graphics	rgb to hvs and back i have a little question i need to convert rgb coded red green blue colors into hvs coded hue value saturnation colors does anyone know which formulas to use thanks r w hartog remcoha solist htsa aha nl
comp.graphics	re wanted bit viewer in article seti inria fr deniaud cartoon inria fr gilles deniaud writes thanks to the people who helped me with the problem of displaying bit images all the viewers like xli xloadimage and display are converting the bit images to bit before display them on the screen what i really want is a viewer with make use of the bit frame screen buffer in our case the parallax one try imagemagick i cannot test it but one told me it does bit anyway are you sure your xserver supports bit truecolor visuals check with xdpyinfo o o o brain inside o o o o andre beck abpsoft mehl andre beck irs inf tu dresden de o o o
comp.graphics	comp graphics research i have not seen articles in comp graphics research for a long time does it he work anymore i have seen many conference related postings in comp graphics and it is hard to believe that people have not tried to post them to c g research if somebody has not got his article to comp graphics research then write to me or post here juhana kouhia
comp.graphics	polaroid palette system does anyone have any information on the polaroid palette system it appears to be a gadget for transfering graphics images to film does anyone have any detail about it like the maximum supported resolution or types of video input what did polaroid market them as fletch all irregularities will be handled by the forces controlling each dimension trans uranic heavy elements may not be used where there is life medium atomic weights are available gold lead copper jet diamond radium sapphire silver and steel sapphire and steel have been assigned
comp.graphics	re tiff anything there is a program called graphic workshop you can ftp from wuarchive the file is in the msdos graphics directory and is called grfwk t zip this program should od everthing you need tmc tmc spartan ac brocku ca could you be more specific i need that file too but couldn t find it amongst all the directories at wuarchive page z nixsp ccsvax sfasu edu
comp.graphics	monthly lightwave mailing list faq lightwave d mail list what is lightwave lightwave d is part of a suite of programs that come bundled with a device called the toaster from newtek inc that operates on an amiga platform the lightwave software lightwave lightwave d and lightwave modeler allows and artist to create three dimensional photo realistic images for a variety of purposes why are we doing this this mailing list is for those interested in the lightwave software how it operates and in ideas on how to obtain the best quality images available to them the list is for those who own the toaster and lightwave as well as those just interested in what can be done with the package we hope to share information tips procedures and to bond as a group what are the rules since lightwave modeler are just a part of the newtek video toaster software i m sure we will discuss a few items related to the operation of the toaster however we will strive to keep the subject revolving specifically around the d software related tools and products you do not have to own a toaster to join this list ok how do i join to become a member of the lightwave d mailing list you must send a mail message to the address lightwave request bobsbox rent com in the body of the message enter subscribe lightwave l your name your site domain or just ask to be signed up and i will sign you up to the list at this point in time the process is manual but i hope to get an automated script based system in place soon there shouldn t be too much of a delay in joining expect a welcome message within days after you send your request then expect the mail to start flowing in how do i post to the list contributing to the list is simple just mail your articles to the following address lightwave bobsbox rent com your article will be processed by the system and distributed to all others joined to the list your articles will also be sent to you so you know that your article has made it to the list however those addresses that are either no good or no longer active will bounce back to you so if you post an article and another members address is no longer valid your original article will be returned to you this doesn t mean it hasn t been posted to the list in fact just the opposite is true it means that your article was posted and that it couldn t be sent to one or more of the members of the list due to a bad address note i hope to have a fix for this behavior soon how do i quit the list simply mail a request to be removed from the list to the same address you used to sign up lightwave request bobsbox rent com in the body of the message enter unsubscribe lightwave l your name your site domain i will remove your name from the list of members please if you join the list and your account is going to be closed or if you will not be able to receive mail for a while send a request to be removed from the list if you are just going to lose access for a short while still send a request for a suspension of your membership and i will suspend forwarding of the articles to you what about old articles i am currently archiving all the articles posted to the list at the originating site bobsbox however i can not continue to do this due to lack of disk space what we need is a volunteer that will maintain a compendium of articles sent to the list they can compress and store them in archives on their system they can then periodically post an index of the contents of the compendium and any other information that relates if there are no volunteers then maybe someone can donate a large scsi hard drive to me for archival purposes grin i have setup a mail based file server so that anyone interested in the list can obtain information as well as the entire archive of past articles the membership listing and other information pertaining to the lightwave d mailing list for information on this service please send a mail message to fileserver bobsbox rent com the first command to the server must be help or user name passwd use help to request a current copy of the helpfile use user name passwd to connect to the service use to get a short listing of all available commands now what do i do well sit back and enjoy the pouring out of information if you have something to offer please feel free to contribute that information to the list every little bit helps questions are welcomed it makes some of us feel important when we can answer them grin if you have any questions or comments regarding the list please contact me at the address lightwave admin bobsbox rent com cheers bob lindabury
comp.graphics	your one stop graphics shop t h e g r a p h i c s b b s rent com it s better than a sharp stick in the eye andy meyer we are pleased to announce that we have just upgraded our system to a new hayes ultra v bis v bis modem that will allow connections from bps up to bps featuring o a graphics specific system for those of you interested in such things as d graphics image processing animation clip art and the latest in public domain graphics programs o graphics specific mailing lists such as imagine d dctv and lightwave d mailing lists aliased to easy to read forums which you can join and read many more to come o free usenet access and free netmail to sites all over the world the ability to contact software hardware developers right at their mainframes just by sending them netmail from the graphics bbs not to mention your kids at college or your parents from college with our quick connections and reliable links you can have your mail sent around the world in a matter of minutes o a unique conference bulletin section the abilty to join and keep track of only the conferences that you enjoy the ability to read in files from your own personal file area for use in messages also with proper access you can create your own conference and moderate it o newsfeeds from usenet that include topics such as graphics mac amiga ibm science erotica ham radio star trek scuba diving programmers forums game designers forums and cyberspace forums o the most sophisticated but easy to learn and use mail system ever created for a pc you can easily read your mail delete it or move it to your personal directory for storage and reply to it you can attach files to your mail and send it to another member a smart sendmail feature ensures accurate addressing of netmail o ability to send mail and messages to arpanet usenet internet bitnet and any of the networks that interface with them around the world such as fidonet peoplenet and the uucp network of university and research facility systems o a file library containing downloads for most popular computers featuring an easy to learn and use system the library features master directory listing newscan and search capabilities as well as complete archived file listings the file library supports most popular transfer protocols such as x y z modem as well as advance protocols such as hs link and bi modem the file library also doubles as a file server for users from other sites all around the world o complete control over your environment you select whether you want hot key control menus more prompting etc you can define your cancel key and choose your terminal emulation you can also edit your personal login script to do what you want it to do o online games global war jet combat simulator etc new games to be added o online manual and extensive help facilities complete tracking of online usage time o megabytes of storage the graphics bbs currently runs on an ibm at at mhz with meg of ram meg ide drive call the graphics bbs at baud hours a day everyday system administator bob lindabury bobl graphics rent com
comp.graphics	re dxf to pcx gif tif or tga in murashiea mail beckman com murashiea mail beckman com ed murashie writes does anyone know of a program for the pc that will take autocad dxf format files and convert them to a raster format like pcx gif etc thanks in advance ed i m also interested in such a program but most of all i d like to know wich program is able to convert gif or pcx to dxf when i have this program i can scan pictures and frase or something like that them this will be beyond the limit roderick
comp.graphics	ntsc data to rgb for video capture does anyone know how to decode the color information of a ntsc signal i need to convert this data to rgb for a video capture utility i am writing for use with an ibm m motion video adapter card i need to know the how the v and u signals work in the color process thanks in advance for any information or algorythms etc later hammonck net
comp.graphics	re best ftp viewer please situnaya ibm bham ac uk wrote could someone please tell me the best ftp able viewer available for msdos i am running a mhz with svga monitor i need to look at gifs mainly and it would be advantageous if it ran under windows thanks ftp to wuarchive wustl edu change into mirrors msdos graphics get grfwk t zip this is the dos version of graphic workshop there is a windows version which you could probably find in the mirrors msdos windows directory but i don t know what the file name is tmc tmc spartan ac brocku ca
comp.graphics	re turning photographic images into thermal print and or negatives jennifer lynn urso ju andrew cmu edu wrote well i have lots of experience with scanning in images and altering them as for changing them back into negatives is that really possible stuff deleted jennifer urso the oh so bitter woman of utter blahness but cheerful undertones i use aldus photostyler on the pc and i can turn a colour or black and white image into a negative or turn a negative into a colour or black and white image i don t know how it does it but it works well to test it i scanned a negative and used aldus to create a positive it looked better than the print that the film developers gave me tmc tmc spartan ac brocku ca
comp.graphics	interesting conversion problem i have a very large x feet file in macintosh canvas v something which i need to import into autocad in the least disk space intensive way possible i e eps is a big problem since it took meg to encode one page of the document the file is entirely lines and words i have access to networked macs pc s and ftp can anyone suggest how this might be accomplished email replies if you would i don t read this group much thanks in advance daniel alt case western reserve university cleveland oh help me i don t have ulcers i m a carrier i can t see you so don t pretend to be i don t like spreading rumors but what else can you do with them there i don t practice what i preach because i m not the kind of person i preach to
comp.graphics	re human head modeling software in article c wbp k taurus cs nps navy mil adaptive cs nps navy mil zyda res acct writes hi there i am interested in facial animation and want to implement some program about this area but i don t have any d information for the face i am looking for some d images of face try getting the cyberware demo via ftp which contains d images of the face what is the copyright status of this data are there restrictions regarding the uses they can be put to kaveh kaveh kardan kardank ere umontreal ca
comp.graphics	looking for hot mac d anim software i am interested in finding d animation programs for the mac i am especially interested in any programs that don t exist in a pc port and are so good that they would make me go buy a mac do any such exist thanks in advance
comp.graphics	re tiff philosophical significance of silly in c wd w bqs skates gsfc nasa gov xrcjd mudpuppy gsfc nasa gov charles j divine writes in article r lf fu geraldo cc utexas edu mark a cartwright markc emx utexas edu writes of course the question has not yet been discovered but the question was later revealed to be what is x in the base system of course if you read the last couple of books in the series closely well and at least there are at least two points at which the real question is implied conversations proceed much like zaphod what is the ultimate question i wonder arthur not paying much attention to zaphod but needing a random seed for the infinite improbability drive think of a number any number actually it may be marvin who uses this phrase a few times as well and everytime it s arranged such that think of a number any number could be an answer to someone s question about the question i kind of like it very mystifying it s not even pick a number or tell me a number just think of one kevin martin sigma rahul net use the flipper
comp.graphics	re geosphere image in article apr news nd edu rmalayte grumpy helios nd edu ryan malayter writes does anyone know if a digitized version of the geosphere image is available via ftp for those of you who don t know it is a composite photograph of the entire earth with cloudcover removed i just think it s really cool it was created with government funds and sattelites as a research project so i would assume it s in the public domain thanks for any info ryan i have a copy of the earth from space on my wall that i purchased from space shots inc la ca as printed on the poster the image was created by tom van sant and the geosphere project the image is copyrighted so i doubt that you ll find it legally in the public domain part of the proceeds from the sale of the image go to the geosphere project an environmental education thing and the cost is nominal so crack a and buy one also i don t think it s always safe to assume that just because the government funded a project any products will be provided for free many government agencies nasa noaa and some private groups national geographic provided assistance to the geosphere project this collaboration seems to be mostly oriented to educating the public rather than pure research dr thomas trusk dept of cellular biology anatomy email to ttrusk its mcw edu medical college of wisconsin milwaukee wi disclaimer i have no affiliation with any of the above mentioned groups this is just my opinion not a flame or advertisement where am i who turned off the lights what s that funny noise i feel strange aaauuugggghhhhh
comp.graphics	re i donwloaded a bin file from a unix machine now what niko iastate edu nikolaus e schuessler writes in article matess gsusgi gsu edu matess gsusgi gsu edu eliza strickler writes i just donwloaded a bin file from a unix machine which is supposed to be converted to a mac format does anyone know what i need to do to this file to get it into any dos mac or unix readable format someone mentioned fetch on the unix machine is this correct could someone explain the bin format a little this is almost certainly a macbinary file which is an encoded version of a mac file so the resource fork and data fork get preserved you need a program that converts this to a regular file if this is a macbinary file you may have downloaded it in text mode and is probably corrupt if you did if you re using ftp to transfer it at any point make sure you type binary first if you can open the file with a text editor and find this file must be converted with bin at the top it is a binhex file and can be decoded with binhex among other programs i opened the file with a text editor and it looks like vnetwork storyboardpictpict bim e i have already tried binhex which does not seem to work any other ideas niko schuessler project vincent systems manager email niko iastate edu iowa state university computation center voice ames ia snail durham elizabeth strickler matess gsusgi gsu edu
comp.graphics	re hpgl viewer and utilities in article apr music mus polymtl ca gaetan lord ecole polytechnique de montreal dg music mus polymtl ca writes hi i would like to know if there is any software pd or not who could produce x output of hpgl file on rs and same kind of software who could produce hardcopy on postscript and lasetjet try export lcs mit edu i think that there is a viewer there called xviewgl check the readme in contrib bill woodward wpwood austin ibm com try this first aix software support billw aixwiz austin ibm com graphics group i am the terror that flaps in the night
comp.graphics	gif to targa hello subject says it all i need a gif to targa converter so that my dta could make a fli of them krzysztof
comp.graphics	re viewing jpeg files in apr ucbeh san uc edu lwilson ucbeh san uc edu writes can i view jpeg files without special hardware lucy wilson access services librarian college of engineering university of cincinnati yup most jpeg viewers seem to require specific video drivers since they support only specific video cards some have the standard ibm bios video support for the vga x colour mode but they leave out the other cards such as the hercules monochrome card which by the way can give very good picture quality if your dithering works right i can t remember the name of a jpeg viewer since i usually convert jpeg s to gif s before viewing them but some require vesa driver for the video cards you don t need any special hardware to view jpeg s except perhaps for a vga card and maybe a processor most people these days program for computers and neglect the rest of the processors i have a clone a nec v processor and a hercules card i have had to write some programs so that they will view gif s and animations for the vga and other colour graphics boards on my monochrome hercules card i use floyd steinberg dithers and have found that if one does something neat with the colour palette the resulting dithered image gives much greater detail than it normally would when viewed on other monochrome systems compushow has fs dithering but it does the standard thing with the image palette before dithering my way gives a brighter more detailed image anyway enough of my rambling in the wrong direction the final point is as far as i know you don t need extra hardware to view jpeg s other than the vga and perhaps a or better have a day gerry
comp.graphics	corel draw or harvard draw my wife wants to publish a newsletter she s no artist so she intends to use comercial clipart and customise it a bit by drawing a circle or a box around it etc we have mspublisher for manipulating text but it is not suitable for doing much with graphics so she needs a more specialised tool right now she s looking at corel draw and harvard draw there seem to be more books in the stores on corel than on harvard so she s inclined to go with corel on the basis of popularity can anyone give us an informed opinion on which package would be more suitable or if there is an even better alternative available if this is a faq please withhold the flames and just send the location of the faq document thanks three ps s is it ok to use clip art from harvard draw or whatever for commercial purposes we have a dpi laser jet printer what would be a good scanner for reading in paper clipart how about someone starting up a newsgroup on desktop publishing if one doesn t exist
comp.graphics	real time visualization hello i am interested to hear from people working in the field of visual simulation ie driving simulation flight simulation etc would be very pleased to see what is going on in the field of research and industrial development for those of you interested as well there is a workshop preferedly held in german situated in wuppertal november specially related to the above topic the title sichtsysteme visualisierung in der simulationstechnik complete details are available please contact me r moeller rmoe welfag elektro uni wuppertal de
comp.graphics	re geosphere image rmalayte grumpy helios nd edu ryan malayter writes article of alt graphics newsgroups alt graphics path news nd edu moliere rmalayte from rmalayte moliere helios nd edu ryan malayter subject geosphere images via ftp message id apr news nd edu sender news news nd edu usenet news system organization university of notre dame notre dame date mon apr gmt does anyone know if a digitized version of the geosphere image is available via ftp for those of you who don t know it is a composite photograph of the entire earth with cloudcover removed i just think it s really cool it was created with government funds and sattelites as a research project so i would assume it s in the public domain this image is copyrighted early in another news group it was being used as a texture map in a planet orbiting simulation that program was being freely distributed but the texture map picture for the earth had to be pulled because of copyright infringement issues mp michael prevost sterling software moffett field ca prevost eos arc nasa gov
comp.graphics	re kubota kenai denali specs in article rkntjinnd no names nerdc ufl edu lioness maple circa ufl edu writes okay i got enough replies about the kubota kenai denali systems that i will post a summary of their capabilities graphics transform modules frame buffer modules frame buffer x x bit x x bit double buffered double buffered z buffer bit bit alpha stencil bit bit does this mean they can either do alpha or stenciling but not both simultaneously stereo support yes yes other both machines will double buffer or do stereo output per window both have an auxiliary video output that is rs a ntsc and pal same question again does this mean they can either do double buffering or stereo but not both simultaneously paul pmartz dsd es com evans sutherland
comp.graphics	re help need bits viewer in article apr nessie mcc ac uk lilley v cgu mcc ac uk chris lilley writes in article seti inria fr deniaud cartoon inria fr gilles deniaud writes i m looking for a program which is able to display bits images we are using a sun sparc equipped with parallax graphics board running x utah raster toolkit using getx convert your sun raster files presumably to ppm with the pbm toolkit then convert ppm to utah rle format with ppmtorle which is provided in the toolkit or just use the urt tool rastorle i seem to remember that xloadimage can do bit servers too yes both it and the newer xli can wes barris ph minnesota supercomputer center inc email wes msc edu
comp.graphics	re wanted bit viewer in article seti inria fr deniaud cartoon inria fr gilles deniaud writes hello thanks to the people who helped me with the problem of displaying bit images all the viewers like xli xloadimage and display are converting the bit images to bit before display them on the screen what i really want is a viewer with make use of the bit frame screen buffer in our case the parallax one both xli and xloadimage will display in bit color if a bit visual is available check the output of xdpyinfo to see if one is wes barris ph minnesota supercomputer center inc email wes msc edu
comp.graphics	cga help wanted hi there i m looking for help on hi rez cga modes hey i know it sounds crazy but at the moment it s got to do my card s manual says it does something like by colour and by colour the card has k memory could anyone give me some help on how to implement these modes assembly language is fine any other usefull tips on the cga regs will also help thanx in advance frans my email is leander up ac za
comp.graphics	what has happened to dkb l trearn hello i ve been on the dkbtrace povray mailing list out of trearn bitnet for some time now but when i tried to post the other day the listserv told me that the list doesn t exist so i got a global list of groups from the listserv and nothing i grepped every string i could think of if frank ville saari andre beck or anyone else who s a regular on dkb l can tell me what is going on please do regards david k drum uc mizzou missouri edu
comp.graphics	tangent vectors of kochanek bartels splines i m working on a system which uses a given set of d key frame positions x y z to control an imaginary camera movement i m using kochanek bartels splines as described in the siggraph proceedings to create a variable number of inbetweens between the key frames i want the inbetweens to be given in the form x y z dx dy dz where the last three argumentsa are the x y and z component of the viewing direction vector of the camera when positioned at x y z the method presented by kochanek and bartels only deals with the positions of the inbetween view points to be generated i ve tried to set the viewing direction at a view point equal to the chord between the two adjacent view points which in general are not key frames but this causes a sligt discontinuity of the viewing direction vector at the key frame positions although the spatial movement seems to work fine and i m quite certain i think that i ve not simply made an implementation error now i wonder if anyone out there has used this spline form for similar purposes and how they decided the viewing vectors i d appreciate replies to be emailed to me at iharkest lise unit no anyone else interested in the answer will be sent a summary of the replies if they contact me n g e a r k e s t a d iharkest lise unit no comp sc nth norwegian institute of technology some people play hard to get i play hard to want ford fairlane
comp.graphics	re need help z buffering lines areas together david gorgen writes i m asking for help on a sticky problem involving unreasonably low apparent precision in z buffering that i ve encountered in different pex implementations i can t find any discussion of this problem in any resources i can lay hands on e g the comp windows x pex faq gaskins s pexlib programming manual vendors documentation the problem to be solved is to eliminate or minimize stitching artifacts resulting from the use of z buffering with polylines that are coplanar with filled areas the interpolated z values along a line will differ slightly due to roundoff error from the interpolated z values across an area even when the endpoints of the line are coincident with vertices of the area because of this it s a tossup whether the z buffer will allow the line pixels or the area pixels to be displayed visually the result tends to be a dashed line effect even though the line is supposed to be solid using the pexlib api my approach to a solution is to use two slightly different pex view mapping transforms in two view table entries one for the areas and one for the lines the pex structures or immediate mode output must be organized so that one view table index is always in effect for areas and the other is always in effect for lines the result is a slight shift in npc z coordinates for the lines so as to attempt to bias the tossup situations in favor of the lines this shift is effected by moving the front and back clipping planes used in the pexlib view table entry for lines just a hair backwards i e smaller vrc z coordinates compared to their positions in the view table entry used for areas this means that when a point is transformed to npc its z value will be slightly bigger if it comes from a line than if it comes from an area thus accomplishing the desired bias i would expect the z roundoff errors which cause the problem to amount to a few units at most out of the entire dynamic range of the z buffer typically from to if not i e or bit z buffers therefore it seems that a tiny fraction of the range of z in vrc between the front and back clip planes ought to suffice to reliably fix the stitching but in fact experience shows that the shift has to be as much as to of the range empirically it s worst when the npc z component of the slope of the surface is high i e when it appears more or less edge on to the viewer it s as if only or bits of the z buffer have any dependable meaning this amount is so great that one problem is replaced by another sometimes the polylines show through areas which they are supposed to lie behind i ve observed the problem on both hewlett packard and digital workstation pex servers to approximately the same degree the test program demonstrates the problem on an mit pexlib x implementation this version is known to compile and run on an hp ux system with pex open questions why does this happen am i configuring the pex view table wrongly is there a systematic difference in z interpolation for lines as opposed to areas e g pixel centers versus corners which could be corrected for are pex implementors wantonly discarding z precision in their interpolators something else what to do about it can i fix my use of the view table to allow better precision in z buffered hlhsr is there another approach i can take to remove the stitching artifacts am i just out of luck we here at ibm have the same problem with our workstations i was also shocked when i first realized that you have to offset lines from fills by about bits assuming bit z buffer this seems huge but is only of the dynamic range in those terms it doesn t seem so bad what is happening is that the interpolation in z is not totally linear due mainly to roundoff i believe so the polygon is not planar in z but is more like a ruffles potato chip ditto with lines when you start end at different x y values the ridges are out of phase resulting in the stitch effect you have the same problem if you try to draw polygon right on top of another but with different vertices you will likely see a smeared effect where they overlap example try polygon polygon your implementation is correct in fact we do a similar trick when rendering primitives that have lines and polygons such as nurbs surfaces with isoparametric lines without the trick the lines appear stitched as you say when the application draws lines polygons independently the system does not have the smarts to automatically do the z shifting so the application must do it this is what you have discovered and are doing bravo note to ibm ers the information given here has been previously disclosed through proper channels so i m not giving away any new unpublished info mark einkauf einkauf austin ibm com ibm advanced workstations and systems graphics systems austin tx views and opinions expressed herein are not necessarily those of ibm corp
comp.graphics	virtual sound i m looking for algorithms or articles on virtual sound what i want to do is the following from a fast source eg a cdrom several sound sources are read each having it s own defined position and other attributes eg direction etc given the listeners position and direction the sum of sound played back in each of the listeners earphones will be a function of this position and direction this means that some simulation of the ears coloring of sound relative to it s incoming direction have to be done for each sound source i think this is possible to do with a lookup table of impulse responses for several angles relative to each ear and interpolate an impulse function from this for a given angle this impulse function could then be convoluted with the sound from the source this impulse function must be changed every time some sound source changes position or the listener changes orientation additionally some reflection diffusion and absorbtion due to the environment wich is defined could be simulated but this requires some sort of sound propagandation simulation kinda like some radiosity algorithm have someone done this and or written articles on implementing such a system please post or mail any answers or comments torgeir veimo studying at the university of bergen i m gona wave my freak flag high jimi hendrix and it would be okay on any other day the police
comp.graphics	re turning photographic images into thermal print and or negatives jennifer lynn urso ju andrew cmu edu writes also if anyone else is doing what i am planning i would be happy to hear from you with any advice you might provide as to the computer system you use and or any peripherals or software it seemed the quadra would be my best bet to modify photographic images i am planning on buying a quadra with megs of ram a meg hard drive a dpi scanner sony monitor and a meg cartridge drive and perhaps a cd rom i am new to computers and any advice would be great well i have lots of experience with scanning in images and altering them as for changing them back into negatives is that really possible scanning and altering is no big deal i don t know what types of features you have in your version of photoshop but the one i use which incidentally is on a quadra has gallery effects and all types of other neato stuff i m just wondering why you would want to put your images back into negatives because once you print the image out that s your print do you know what exactly your aim is in all of this like are you doing this just for fun for a business to gain more computer knowledge for a project you re working on otherwise i guess i don t know if i d be helping or not by posting info on scanning and stuff ok cool seeya jennifer urso the oh so bitter woman of utter blahness but cheerful undertones it is for a business and the end product has to be a photograph i take damaged black and whites usually old some very and repair them by hand at present i would like to do this by using a computer i am just trying to find a vendor who can convert my computer stored images to negatives or thermal print the customer will want his her copy as much as possible like a brand new original photgraph david ps thanks to all of you who have sent me information it was very helpful in my learning about computers combined with photography if anyone else has any information i would be grateful
comp.graphics	re kubota kenai denali specs in article apr dsd es com pmartz dsd es com paul martz writes does this mean they can either do alpha or stenciling but not both simultaneously i don t know the answer the to this one although with bits i would assume that it was one or the other stereo support yes yes other both machines will double buffer or do stereo output per window both have an auxiliary video output that is rs a ntsc and pal same question again does this mean they can either do double buffering or stereo but not both simultaneously according to the literature it will do quadruple buffering so that you can have double buffered stereo output brian
comp.graphics	gif to wpg or tiff converter i am looking for an available program that would convert gif files to other formats usable on dos based software such as wordperfect presentations which will handle wpg and tiff among others any suggestions would be appreciated thank you very much for your time and help steve alford novavax nova edu steve alford nova university college avenue ft lauderdale fl uucp gatech uflorida ucf cs novavax alford internet alford novavax nova edu
comp.graphics	re tiff philosophical significance of silly it s the number of legs on a centipede so now you know richard kirk image processing group crosfield electronics ltd u k rak crosfield co uk x hemel hempstead herts hp rh
comp.graphics	genoa s windowsvga true color board for immediate release editorial contact single source marketing myra manahan genoa systems joseph brunoli neil roehm technical genoa presents high performance video graphics accelerator san jose calif usa genoa systems corporation announces windowsvga a true color bit graphics accelerator card that delivers up to million colors at speeds faster than the competition plus it offers a full range of resolutions high refresh rates as well as unique proprietary performance features the card is available in both bit isa bus and bit vesa local bus versions models and vl with mb dram on board the windowsvga card offers maximum resolution up to x and supports a refresh rate of hz at x and resolution up to x non interlaced both models provide performance many times greater than standard svga boards yet conform to all current video standards windowsvga features genoa s flickerfree tm technology which eliminates screen flash and flicker to make viewing much more comfortable the cards also come with safescan tm a utility developed by genoa to eliminate the black border around the screen and thereby provide percent screen use for overscanning monitors windowsvga model vl takes full advantage of the speed offered by the new vesa local bus technology most vl bus cards will only handle data transfers up to mhz but the vl will transfer data at the full speed of the cpu up to mhz genoa is also offering this card in the turbobahn combination packaged with their turboexpress vl motherboard built around the cirrus logic gd gui accelerator windowsvga offers the user an exceptional price performance value genoa s advanced proprietary drivers act to turbocharge the chip thereby providing an affordable accelerator card with power and performance that surpass many of the more highly priced chip cards the genoa user will enjoy optimal speed and reliability for such programs as windows autocad autoshade d studio os orcad and more driver updates and product bulletins are available on genoa s bbs at genoa systems manufactures and markets an extensive line of graphics adapters motherboards audio and multimedia cards for ibm compatible personal computers all products come with a two year limited warranty on parts and labor genoa products are currently distributed worldwide through authorized distributors resellers vars and systems integrators for more information contact joe brunoli marketing manager genoa systems at e trimble road san jose calif tel or fax stefan hartmann stefanh rahul net
comp.graphics	looking for patches to xv to better support tiff output recently we have found tiff manipulation packages which do not recognize tiff files output by xv this is due to a missing xresolution and yresolution tag which apparently is required or at least believed to be required for valid tiff i have checked both xv x and xv x and neither of these do indeed copy these tags has anyone out there hacked in the fixes for xv to support these tags i have been told that i could find some code in tiff tools tiffcp c but that directory is one of many of the tiff group not distributed with xv i hope to obtain the original tiff src and look at it but would prefer to find code already known to work in xv s s larry w virden inet lvirden cas org s personal falls place reynoldsburg oh
comp.graphics	pc paint program neopaint v help i am looking for a shareware graphics package called neopaint v i saw it in a shareware catalog and was hoping that i could ftp it from the net but have been unable to locate it i have tried archie and i have gone through the entire comp graphics newsgroup looking for some reference to it and have found none i have also looked through the faq and also no reference the program is called neopaint v and if anyone has heard of it or knows where i can get it i would appreciate it suggestions for other pc based shareware paint programs would also be appreciated email me your responses much thanks sean
comp.graphics	re sigkids research showcase call it was brought to my attention that there was an oversight in the sigkids research showcase call for participation and entry form please note that the sigkids research showcase is part of siggraph august anaheim california thank you diane schwartz sigkids committee member institute for the learning sciences maple avenue suite evanston illinois schwartz ils nwu edu
comp.graphics	d widget wish list i am very interested in hearing from all of you who are using or implementing d interactive applications what types of d widgets you would like to have in your applications a d widget is usually located in the same scene as other d objects of the application it may let you manipulate application data the camera d objects in the scene and so on or view the status of the application or d objects via the widget s shape color position orientation and so on or do whatever i missed but you think is possible for example a manipulative widget can be virtual trackball shown as a partially transparent sphere super imposed on the object to be rotated a feedback widget can be a ruler with ends anchored to objects the length of the ruler changes as the objects move and a numeric value is shown on the ruler indicating the distance a widget can provide both manipulation and feedback for example the ruler can be used to change the distance between the objects along its own axis please e mail me or post your opinions on d interaction the information i gathered will help me design a d ui construction tool your help is very much appreciated tony lau tlau cs ubc ca m sc student dept of computer science
comp.graphics	re kubota kenai denali specs lioness maple circa ufl edu okay i got enough replies about the kubota kenai denali systems that i will post a summary of their capabilities graphics transform modules frame buffer modules frame buffer x x bit x x bit double buffered double buffered z buffer bit bit alpha stencil bit bit pmartz dsd es com paul martz does this mean they can either do alpha or stenciling but not both simultaneously lioness maple circa ufl edu stereo support yes yes other both machines will double buffer or do stereo output per window both have an auxiliary video output that is rs a ntsc and pal pmartz dsd es com paul martz same question again does this mean they can either do double buffering or stereo but not both simultaneously for both these questions it s an inclusive or alpha plus stencil is supported they re separate as is double buffered stereo steve hollasch kubota pacific computer inc hollasch kpc com santa clara california barbie had it right math is hard
comp.graphics	phigs user group conference first annual phigs user group conference the first annual phigs user group conference was held march in orlando florida the conference was organized by the rensse laer design research center in co operation with ieee and sig graph attendees came from five countries spanning three con tinents a good cross section of the phigs community was represented at this conference with participants including phigs users workstation vendors third party phigs implementors stan dards committee members and researchers from industry and academia the opening speaker dr richard puk challenged phigs users to take charge of your phigs by participating in phigs standardization activities and communicating their needs to phigs implementors the closing speaker dr andries van dam described his vision of the future of graphics standards beyond phigs technical paper sessions in the conference covered the following topics phigs and x application toolkits application issues texture mapping nurbs phigs extensions and object oriented libraries and frameworks panel sessions on phigs and pex phigs non retained data real world cad applications using phigs and portability issues generated enthusiastic discussions and formed a good forum for exchange of ideas needs and experiences the conference also included a day full of tutorials on topics rang ing from mathematics for d graphics to object oriented tools based on phigs next year s conference is planned for march phigs everywhere at the conference phigs vendors described and demonstrated phigs products that run on all types of computers from pcs to mainframes megatek corporation demonstrated their phigs extensions including conditional traversal composite logical input devices texturing and translucency template graphics software launched figaro pro the photo realistic option for phigs figaro pro is designed to add advanced rendering to the existing phigs api with features like ray tracing materials anti aliasing and texture mapping radiosity support is also planned figaro is an example of how tgs continues to add newly emerging graphics features to their products figaro supports immediate mode extensions to phigs and also supports sun xgl hp starbase and sgi gl opengl figaro for nt will be released this summer tgs also demonstrated the latest versions of figraph a powerful call charting system based on phigs and figt an object oriented utility library for phigs pex developers g g and gallium software demonstrated a new version of gphigs on silicon graphics workstations scheduled for summer ver sion of gphigs the company s phigs library for worksta tions will include an advanced phigs debugger that allows phigs developers to display and browse phigs structures and other phigs internal state g g also described their non duplicated data store that stores pointers to application data in the gphigs css for more efficient use of memory in addition g g described their application gse that allows application callback functions during gphigs traversal gphigs and phigure g g s data visual izer and application development toolkit are currently available on all major workstations that support gl x windows pex or starbase wise software presented a slide show of z phigs for ms windows and arena a phigs based modeller render z phigs implements most of the phigs primitives in addition z phigs has built in many advanced rendering features like texture mapping shadow genera tion area quick updates and ray tracing a demo disk of z phigs or arena is available on request atc exhibited grafpak phigs their full featured phigs implemen tation based on dec phigs grafpak phigs is available on most workstation platforms with c fortran and ada bindings and incor porates pex support within the booth sponsored by advanced technology center digital equipment corporation demonstrated dec phigs v running on the dec axp pxg atcs grafpak phigs is a port of dec phigs dec phigs v contains most phigs and phigs plus features with support for pex v protocol dec phigs also contains most gm eds phigs extensions including post to view as well as proprietary extensions to support immediate mode rendering and the use of phigs in an x environment axp dec and dec phigs are trademarks of digital equipment cor poration grafpak phigs and atc are trademarks of advanced tech nology center pex and x are trademarks of massachusetts insti tute of technology the ibm exhibit featured a gto accelerator attached to an ibm workstation running graphigs and pex hewlett packard and shographics demonstrated at the conference a hewlett packard machine was coupled to display on a shographics pex terminal hp showcased their latest phigs product enhance ments phigs user group the phigs users group was formed to aid the development of phigs applications and provide user feedback to phigs implementors and phigs standards bodies for more information about the phigs users group send e mail to phigsug cadrt me vt edu or write to sankar jayaram virginia polytechnic institute randolph hall blacksburg va fax vendor contacts megatek corporation tel fax template graphics software tel fax wise software gmbh tel fax g g north american sales tel fax advanced technology center tel fax digital equipment corporation tel international business machines corporation tel hewlett packard company tel copies of the conference proceedings copies of the conference proceedings may be obtained by contact ing mary johnson at johnson mary design and manufacturing institute rensselaer polytechnic institute eighth street building cii room troy ny tel fax email mjohnson rdrc rpi edu the cost is per binder
comp.graphics	parametric variational design hi everyone i am looking for papers articels books or any other source of information about parametric variational design in cad solid modeling any suggetions references would be greatly appreaciated thanks in advance jayesh patel enuxha eas asu edu ip no
comp.graphics	an very broad question i am considering creating a demo for the ibm pc for my band i would like to combine interesting graphics and a sample of my music in the program i have seen things like this done for other platforms and even a few for the pc but since i m completly new to this i have no idea wher to start i m pretty sure that i am not skilled enough to put this together but i was hoping that you collectivly could a let me know what issues i need to worry about things i should take into consideration when developing the concept b perhaps someone knows of a programmer artist who would be interested in this type of a project i know these are rather broad questions but any information would be most helpful thanks gregory winer an po cwru edu
comp.graphics	re rgb to hvs and back in article apr htsa aha nl remcoha htsa aha nl remco hartog writes i have a little question i need to convert rgb coded red green blue colors into hvs coded hue value saturnation colors does anyone know which formulas to use i have a little answer see foley van dam feiner and hughes computer graphics principles and practice second edition if people would read this book percent of the questions in this froup would disappear overnight spl steve lamont sciviguy spl szechuan ucsd edu san diego microscopy and imaging resource uc san diego la jolla ca my other car is a car too bumper strip seen on i
comp.graphics	gif viewer source code for pc does anyone know where i could get some source code for a gif viewer on a pc it doesn t have to be fancy it would be best if it were written in c to display gif pictures on a vga screen i was hoping to get it for free from an ftp site but i haven t been able to find it yet david lau davidla ecs comm mot com
comp.graphics	final call for papers call for papers progress in neural networks special volume on shape analysis omid m omidvar minsoo suk series editor volume editor significant progress has been made recently in shape analysis using neural networks and the energy minimization concept ablex publishing corporation is planning a special volume on shape analysis scheduled for this year this volume will be a part of progress in neural networks an annual book series reviewing research in modelling analysis design and application of neural networks the primary aim of this volume is to present in a single volume the most important achievements made on this important topic which are otherwise scattered in diverse literature authors are invited to submit original manuscripts detailing recent progress suggested topics include but are not limited to shape modelling shape estimation shape recovery shape representation shape matching surface reconstruction and surface decomposition research work utilizing neural networks directly or based on energy minimization techniques such as markov random field mean field annealing simulated annealing graduated non convexity algorithms and resistive networks are most welcome the paper should be tutorial in nature self contained and preferably but not necessarily about fifty double spaced pages in length please send electronically if you prefer you can send a hardcopy to the address below an abstract and an outline to msuk ima enst fr by may the full paper must be submitted by july to europe usa professor minsoo suk professor omid m omidvar department images computer science department ecole nationale superieure university of district of columbia des telecommunications connecticut ave n w rue barrault washington d c paris cedex phone france fax fax email oomidvar udcvax bitnet email msuk ima enst fr
comp.graphics	acm siggraph registration problem a word of warning for those of you registering for siggraph i just received my registration form back in the mail with the envelope marked return to sender moved left no address closed po box the address i used to register for siggraph is the one printed on the registration form acm siggraph po box chicago il i printed the envelope in my best printing honest but evidently siggraph has skipped town or moved i ended up faxing my registration to i hope that number is real michael zyda
comp.graphics	re ntsc data to rgb for video capture usually you apply r y g u b v after unlevelshifting u and v subtracting from them this matrix multiplication may give results out of rgb space so you have to clamp the resulting bytes to the conversion should be done with arbitrary big integers not floats this applies to yuv data whereas ntsc may have yiq where a degree rotation to u v is buid in o o o brain inside o o o o andre beck abpsoft mehl andre beck irs inf tu dresden de o o o
comp.graphics	re fast polygon routine needed in article apr eye com jesse eye com jesse lackey writes in article rguqoinnrc edna cc swin edu au alan saturn cs swin oz au alan christiansen writes i believe that the algorithms you can get that will only draw convex polygons can be much more efficient than those that can draw concave self intersecting polygons this efficiency can largely be attributed to the fact that simple convex polygons only have a left and a right edge on each scan line complex figure type polygons can be a bit trickier it is true the convex algorithm is faster than a general concave multi outline algorithm but not tremendously faster i spent awhile implementing and optimizing both flavors and the convex turned out about faster this is all c on hp pa risc the compiler got the inner loop shooting the span as fast as possible as far as i could tell for any sort of game the database to render is known ahead of time and can be made all convex definitely the way to go ok thanks for help everyone i still haven t found quite what i m looking for but i ve got finals coming up soon so i have to put all this on hold thanx lucas
comp.graphics	digital terrain data for visualization needed we need terrain data for a visualization research currently taking place in tel aviv university we have two databases that we are currently working on but we would like to work on more databases possibly more complicated and ones that will give prettier images before i describe what kind of data we need let me mention that we are going to present a paper titled photo realistic imaging of digital terrains which describes the research and the results in the eurographics conference in barcelona this september we are going to show a video tape with some of our results so any good data that we will receive will be presented in the tape with a mention of the donator we are working on databases consisting of aerial or satelite photographs and terrain elevation maps dtm each database consists of a d array of height values any data format can be used for each value and a corresponding d array of color values can be gray level color value or full bit r g b values other format can also be used we work on x and x resolution databases if anybody has access to this kind of data or knows where we can get such data files please respond in this news group or better email us directly amit math tau ac il amit shaked or danny indigo bgu ac il daniel cohen of course the names of the people who will help us get the data will be cited in our paper and in further publications
comp.graphics	ftp site s with gifs i have been looking around some ftp sites and cannot find one with any good gif files could someone please tell me of some ftp sites which do posses goods gifs and a wide range please email me at the address above thanks martin
comp.graphics	kubota vs e s freedome more people have been asking for information on the kubota graphics workstations so here is some more info on the kenai denali vs the e s freedom here is the text of a denali vs e s freedom done by d h brown associates denali bears a strong resemblance to evans and sutherlands freedom graphics subsystem in several aspects of its high level design both products use a parallel array of processors for geometric computations both have a pixel router to connect this front end to a second array of pixel processors as a result denali and freedome overlap significantly in performance and functionality both design teams also appear to have similar philosophies with respect to modularity scalability and market penetration there remain however several important differences between the kpc and e s products evans and sutherland designed freedom as a high end developer s dream system with plenty of performance potential and flexibility in its favor freedom has configurations from two to sixteen floating point units a border range that starts and ends at a higher price and performance levels than denali all freedom systems include a large fixed number of pixel processors that support a broader variety of color blending functions the freedom design treats its entire image memory as general purpose memory allowing developers to allocate it on a flexible basis to a number of special purpose applications finally e s provided freedom with very flexible otput and video integration features for multimedia and simulation applications note that kpc is working an auxiliary board for ntsc and pal output that will not require an external video encoder e s programmable output features however will remain much more flexible the kpc design team in contrast made denali more of an end user s system entry version have better performance range and flexibility than low end freedom configurations and come in at more realistic mainstream price points denali does not need as many modules as freedome because it uses a deeper scan conversion pipeline to support each one resulting in better cost performance characteristics although both products provide strong support for d imaging and volume rendering kpc recognized that not all users will want an even mix of these capabilities denali s configuration flexibility allows customers in effect to purchase geometric and pixel processing capabilities separately and to upgrade them separately as needed both companies have implemented hardware texture mapping at workstation price levels as a way to attack sgi s more expensive vgxt and realityengine systems the only other products to provide this capability kpc supports point sampling and bilinear interpolation of textures in hardware but provides only software support for the higher qualtiy tri linear interpolated mipmapping method on balance however denali provideds bettern overall texturing capabilities than e s for most applications aside from being much more affordable kpc solutions deliver more parallelism for texture processing and more off screen memory for general graphics data storage by implementing texture mapping on its transformation modules e s foces customers to move very quickly to higher price levels to obtain better texturing performance kubota avoids this problem by linking texturing to its frame buffer modules providing a lower cost more scalable solution hope this helps brian ps this was reprinted without permission for the full text please contact kubota
comp.graphics	re xv problems in article apr nessie mcc ac uk c c lilley mcc ac uk writes yes xv is an bit program this is not a bug never claimed it is a bug xv can import bit images and quantises them down to bits this is a handy facility not a bug never claimed it is a bug how would you suggest doing colour editing on a bit file how would you group related colours to edit them together only global changes could be done unless the software were very different and much more complicated if you want to do colour editing on a bit image you need much more powerfull software which is readily available commercially i guess i edited my note on this away from the article i posted to many newsgroups i wrote something about making color modifications quickly with bit quantized images and only at the saving the image to file process we have to make the modifications to the bit image this makes sense because the main use of xv is only viewing images doing many changes to image we should keep all modifications in a buffer and then before making the operations to bit image we should simplify the operation list for unnecessary operations and lastly jpeg is a compression algorithm it can be applied to any image of arbitrary bit depth again this is not a bug never claimed it is a bug i tried kept sure i don t claim that jpeg is noting else than a compression algorithm because i know what the jpeg is you propably misunderstood what i wrote as you have done in many places so far you also missed what is were wrong with xv however i did wrote it juhana kouhia
comp.graphics	convertion program to gremlin i was wondering if somebody knows of a pd program for converting any graphic formats such as fig pic unixplot tek etc to gremlin thanks dan
comp.graphics	re human head modeling software in article c wbp k taurus cs nps navy mil adaptive cs nps navy mil zyda res acct writes hi there i am interested in facial animation and want to implement some program about this area but i don t have any d information for the face i am looking for some d images of face try getting the cyberware demo via ftp which contains d images of the face what is the copyright status of this data are there restrictions regarding the uses they can be put to kaveh kaveh kardan kardank ere umontreal ca kaveh all of the data included with in the cyberware demo is non proprietary use it as you like i just ask that you give us credit if you use it in a research paper project and send us the results thanks geo cyberware george dabrowski cyberware labs dabro taurus cs nps navy mil
comp.graphics	colour transform for red green colour blindness posted on behalf of craig southeren who does not have access to a net account can anyone provide me with a colour space transform that would emulate the effects of red green colour blindness i have had a quick look in the computer graphics literature with no results perhaps someone who has access to medical information could help i would like to write a program probably a ppm filter to allow previewing of images to check for sufficient contract for colour blind users not being colour blind myself this is a bit difficult please email replies i will summarise and repost if there is sufficient interest craig craig southeren you can have it good cheap chief engineer or fast any two picture start productions arthur c clarke email c geoffw ucc su oz au phone educate don t legislate
comp.graphics	re rgb hls hsv conversion routines wanted in article aa sun nl nluug nl bultman dgw rws nl g w bultman writes hi i m looking for rgb cube hls double hexcone hsv cylinder conversion routines i have rgb hsv but miss the hls rgb hsv have you checked foley s book the solutions are in chapter yeh usc
comp.graphics	re rgb to hvs and back in article ltu buinne j caspian usc edu zyeh caspian usc edu zhenghao yeh writes see foley van dam feiner and hughes computer graphics principles and practice second edition if people would read this book percent of the questions in this froup would disappear overnight not really i think it is less than nah i figure most people would be so busy reading that they wouldn t have time to post spl steve lamont sciviguy spl szechuan ucsd edu san diego microscopy and imaging resource uc san diego la jolla ca until i meet you then in upper hell convulsed foaming immortal blood farewell j berryman a professor s song
comp.graphics	re why does illustrator autotrace so poorly i use arts letters on a pc and if you make use of the tracing preferences it traces beautifully but there s a trick to tracing i ve traced entire cartoon images into custom clip art but you can t expect to just point to the image and get it just like that it takes a little work in some cases a lot of work you need to trace a drawing piece by piece and then put it together it s kinda hard to explain in type but if you re ever in reno i can give you a little demonstration
comp.graphics	re rgb to hvs and back i have a little answer see foley van dam feiner and hughes computer graphics principles and practice second edition if people would read this book percent of the questions in this froup would disappear overnight not really i think it is less than yeh usc
comp.graphics	a graphic design newsgroup which newsgroup discusses graphic design on pcs and macs y know like with corel draw
comp.graphics	screen capture is there a dos screen capture utility pd or shareware that will work reliably with vesa a x screens thanks h w stockman hwstock sandia llnl gov
comp.graphics	arts letters graphics editor does anyone on this group use this program it stacks up pretty well to corel draw and since i don t have a cdrom it was the best buy maybe someone would be interested in trading tips and tricks
comp.graphics	re ftp site s with gifs mharring cch coventry ac uk martin writes i have been looking around some ftp sites and cannot find one with any good gif files could someone please tell me of some ftp sites which do posses goods gifs and a wide range whatever you do don t ftp to the sites listed in my sig you won t like what you find really i beg you not to go there please e ed stastny otis project end process sound news and arts po bx ftp sunsite unc edu pub multimedia pictures otis omaha ne projects otis email ed cwis unomaha edu ed sunsite unc edu
comp.graphics	re colour transform for red green colour blindness in article geoffw extro ucc su oz au geoffw extro ucc su oz au geoffrey warren hicks writes posted on behalf of craig southeren who does not have access to a net account can anyone provide me with a colour space transform that would emulate the effects of red green colour blindness i have had a quick look in the computer graphics literature with no results perhaps someone who has access to medical information could help certainly reference follows bear in mind that there are at least two conditions which may be called red green colour blind one protanopia is caused by a lack or major dysfunction of the l cones those that respond best to long wavelengths this gives much reduced red green and red violet discrimination and also means that reds look dimmer than than they do to people with normal vision the other deuteranopia is due to missing or dysfunctional m cones although it can also be caused by a lack of the l m cone difference signals in the retina it also gives reduced red green discrimination but red violet is unaffected unlike protanopia reds are not dimmer than normal on a uniform chromaticity diagram the horseshoe shaped one you see in computer graphics books there is a single confusion point for each type of colour deficiency colours which are confused lie on straight lines radiating from this point for protanopia the point is at u v very close to the far red corner for deuteranopia the point is at u v note that different experimental investigations in the literature give slightly different values for these depending on the precise details of the experimental setup random errors and so on the values quoted are typical so if all colours on a line are seen as the same which colour is actually seen this problem has now been solved tests on people with one normal eye and one affected eye have shown that there is an axis for each type of disorder onto which all the colours collapse for protanopes this joins up nm and nm on the spectral locus the edge of the horseshoe for deuteranopes the line is very similar joining nm and nm so to convert colours from normal vision to a simulated protanopia or duuteranopia plot the colour on a uniform chromaticity diagram construct a line from this point to the appropriate confusion point find the intersection of this line with the appropriate axis line this is the new chromaticity the best reference for this is meyer g w greenberg d p colour defective vision and computer graphics displays ieee computer graphics and applications you will also need a decent reference on basic colour science if you are not familiar with the cie xyz colour model and the uniform chromaticity scale diagram i would like to write a program probably a ppm filter to allow previewing of images to check for sufficient contract for colour blind users not being colour blind myself this is a bit difficult yes this is certainly possible you will need the chromaticities of the red green and blue phosphors of the monitor you intend to display the images on and the chromaticity of the white point this information can be measured or obtained from the manufacturer i posted a list of some monitor chromaticities a couple of weeks ago the procedure for each pixel is as follows some lookup tables might be a help here a convert rgb to cie xyz this is a simple matrix multiplication once you have the monitor data b retaining the y component for later convert xyz to chromaticity coordinates u v using u x x y z v y x y z c find the equation of the line as in step above d find the intersection as in step e convert back from u v to xyz using the y value from step a f ensure that this new colour can be displayed on your monitor if not move it along a line in xyz space towards neutral grey ie half way between black and white until it is displayable please email replies i will summarise and repost if there is sufficient interest done also posted for the rest of us chris lilley technical author itti computer graphics and visualisation training project computer graphics unit manchester computing centre oxford road manchester uk m pl internet c c lilley mcc ac uk voice fax janet c c lilley uk ac mcc
comp.graphics	gif viewer i am having trouble viewing gif files on my system large sections don t show up i have tried vpic and picem both do the same i am running a gateway c with a speedstar plus vga card and an nec multisync ds inch monitor any suggestions i don t know if robert woodward department of physiology university of missouri columbia mo e mail c mizzou missouri edu
comp.graphics	re turning photographic images into thermal print and or negatives in article apr seq uncwil edu hawks seq uncwil edu david hawks writes it is for a business and the end product has to be a photograph i take damaged black and whites usually old some very and repair them by hand at present i would like to do this by using a computer i am just trying to find a vendor who can convert my computer stored images to negatives or thermal print the customer will want his her copy as much as possible like a brand new original photgraph there are several crt to film writers around agfa has some they also might be called matrix and i am pretty sure other companies sell the same equipment you might want to talk to any company in your area that does presentation slides or offers graphics services they should have those machines and they might point you to a local vendor from there on it s all a question of money they units are essentially high res crts plus a filter wheel plus a mm camera and a computer hook up david reiner p s i am currently shooting my slides for my next talk on one of the agfa machines
comp.graphics	viewing jpeg files can i view jpeg files without special hardware lucy wilson access services librarian college of engineering university of cincinnati
comp.graphics	libraries for text math graphics display does anyone know of any c or c libraries for preparing and displaying quickly pages of mixed text mathematical equations and graphics circles ellipses etc on the vdu the maths wouldnt need to be up to tex quality but it would be useful to be scaleable the main thing would be to be able to generate the display quickly from a minimum set of formatting code thanks ed campbell
comp.graphics	re rgb to hvs and back in article ltu buinne j caspian usc edu zyeh caspian usc edu zhenghao yeh writes see foley van dam feiner and hughes computer graphics principles and practice second edition if people would read this book percent of the questions in this froup would disappear overnight not really i think it is less than or alternatively of the questions cover of the topics in this group making them frequently asked so the other cover of the topics making them rarely asked and thus in sore need of answering chris lilley technical author itti computer graphics and visualisation training project computer graphics unit manchester computing centre oxford road manchester uk m pl internet c c lilley mcc ac uk voice fax janet c c lilley uk ac mcc
comp.graphics	re xv problems in article rohjc avt cc tut fi jk lehtori cc tut fi kouhia juhana writes in article apr nessie mcc ac uk c c lilley mcc ac uk writes moved on a bit i wrote something about making color modifications quickly with bit quantized images and only at the saving the image to file process we have to make the modifications to the bit image this makes sense because the main use of xv is only viewing images doing many changes to image we should keep all modifications in a buffer and then before making the operations to bit image we should simplify the operation list for unnecessary operations think about what you are saying here the bit image is quantised down to bits so many similar colours are mapped onto a single palette colour this colour gets modified in fairly arbitrary ways you then want to apply these modifications back to the bit file so you have to find which colours mapped to this one palette colour ok you could do this by copying the bit file to a bit file and using the extra bits to hold the index entry having done this you need to do something to them what exactly apply the difference in rgb between the original and modified palette entry to each colour in the group this could generate colours with rgb outside the range it would also lead to discontinuities when different parts of a smooth colour gradient mapped to several different palette entries you could interpolate from full modification to no modification depending how far each colour was from the palette entry however i suspect this would look rather odd so in summary what i said in my previous posting still holds how would you suggest doing colour editing on a bit file how would you group related colours to edit them together only global changes could be done unless the software were very different and much more complicated if you want to do colour editing on a bit image you need much more powerfull software which is readily available commercially in other words to edit a bit file you need software built for the job tacking mods onto xv is going to create more problems than it solves as to the other bits you seemed to be claiming that there were bugs in xv if that was not what you meant then you propably misunderstood what i wrote as you have done in many places so far yes i probably did i found that the collected digest format of your posting made it a little difficult to understand precisely what your point was sorry if i misunderstood you also missed what is were wrong with xv however i did wrote it yes again what is was wrong with xv chris lilley technical author itti computer graphics and visualisation training project computer graphics unit manchester computing centre oxford road manchester uk m pl internet c c lilley mcc ac uk voice fax janet c c lilley uk ac mcc
comp.graphics	pc question modes hi i need to know if there is a color graphics mode that allows multiple pages i want something like mode x x x pages i have been experimenting with graphics by calling the bios with borland turbo c i feel like i am flying blind in this area and could use all the help that you can give thanks ivan ivan pulleyn university of rochester e mail ip b uhura cc rochester edu
comp.graphics	raw gif hello can anybody help me to find a program that converts a format named raw also known as img to the gif format or jpeg one it s desirable to be for a unix machine than for a pc raw format of a n n image is a file that contain a tail of n n characters each one referencing to the k n j pixel of the monocrome image where k and j lies between and n thanxs mne ing puc cl
comp.graphics	pbm dec when s the new version does anyone know if the fabled new version of pbm will be out soon as far as i know the current version is dec jeff p are you out there jeffrey e hundstad
comp.graphics	ascii or ansi pics where can someone tell me where i could find ansi or ascii pics i already found the gopher ascii pics thanks richard mancsuo curdm uxa ecn bgu edu
comp.graphics	digital cameras i m interested in obtaining the highest possible image capture in a ms windows application the resulting image must go to print and high resolution is the name of the game i m familiar with and unhappy with composite video capture technology what kind of resolution can i get out of an svhs signal what about rgb and who makes rgb cameras does anyone have any experience with digital cameras any help at all would be greatly appreciated william brandsdorfer uucp uunet lehman com wbrand lehman brothers inet wbrand lehman com greenwich st voice new york n y
comp.graphics	windows bmp something wanted g day all i m looking for a program to convert bmp images to gif tga or even ppm i d prefer a unix program but dos is fine also i ve seen alchemy for dos and some windows image viewers which can save an image in other formats but what i m after is a converter not a viewer any help would be apprieciated cheers stephen s peter unsw edu au stephen peter or steve keystone arch unsw edu au v school of architecture university of new south wales australia phone fax messages
comp.graphics	ibm writing to screen memory graphics can anyone give me information or lead me to electronic information not books i m too poor regarding programming the standard graphics modes x x and x x are easy enough but i m not so sure about the rest something about planes or something and writing to ports and the like but i don t know the numbers or anything for the color modes i think if i m wrong let me know also x x is just one byte pixel that s easy enough but are there any other ways to write to the screen perhaps bytes at a time or something like that of course i d appreciate any information about any mode which reminds me of another question do the supervga modes work the same generally as the normal and color modes or is not only the mode numbers for various cards different but the methods for writing to the screen different as well thanks for any help you can give me i m developing a screen class for c and find myself searching for information oh i do have ralf brown s interrupt list which has given me tons of invaluable information already it just doesn t go into the screen programming details except for the read write pixel bios calls thanks again edward ball sigless knight eball calvin edu
comp.graphics	synergy revolt an otis colaberation project the otis project presents synergy revolt the first in a continuing series of collaborative art initiatives designed to exploit the binarity of the infosphere this series of diversely structured art manipulation projects will attempt to stretch across network boundries encouraging use of electronic mail fax video photography scanned conventional art and even sound to create multi artist still visuals in gif and jpg formats visualists from all technical levels are welcome revolt will be structured simply there will be three stages of production the first stage will consist of all participants creating one still work as a starter piece that two other partici pants will in turn manipulate all first stage base images are due by sunday may rd midnight central daylight time stage two will begin on may th all images will be sent to another arbitrarily chosen participant for them to do manipulations on in anyway they see fit for purely digital artists this may consist of filtering the image through their favorite paint program for analog artists this may well be printing a hardcopy of the image and adding their own part with pen pencil or white out then scan ning in the image again to be transferred on to the third stage artist all second stage works are due by midnight on sunday may th stage three is the finishing stage and will begin on may st all artists will do what they think it takes to finish up the image they ve been given using whatever technique they see as worthy these images will be due on june th midnight all involved will participate in each stage of creation to join send email mail with the following info name email address mail address scanner access color grey none printer access laser postscript inkjet color dot computer access mac ibm pc sun amiga atari next other output format tiff targa gif jpeg pict postscript fax photocopy pcx windows bitmap graphics level bit bit bit ftp access time limitations address the information to email mad celt cwis unomaha edu andrew booth project manager include revolt in the subject line mail the otis project synergy revolt po bx omaha ne remember all starter images are due on sunday may rd deposit them at either of these ftp sites sunsite unc edu pub multimedia pictures otis incoming or projects otis incoming or send uuencoded images to us via email or send hardcopies to address above or arrange fax exchange if you don t get your starter image in you won t be able to participate until synergy phase ii in mid june we will do our best to accomodate facilitate image exchange for the technologically impaired if you don t have access to a scanner but need one we ll try to help if you need an image printed out and sent to you let us know send an sase if you anticipate this additional information available on the following suggestions for use of uncommon mediums such as video stills electronic imaging and sound fax availability times copyright considerations appropriation image conversion the otis project in general andy booth were you ever abducted by aliens ever see elvis po bx at the local i would like to hear from you omaha ne about any paranormal experiences you have had
comp.graphics	re rgb to hvs and back remco hartog remcoha htsa aha nl wrote i have a little question i need to convert rgb coded red green blue colors into hvs coded hue value saturnation colors does anyone know which formulas to use lets see if i have this right hsv hsb hsl and none of those are the same as hls hopefully hvs is just a transposition of hsv and not yet another color model the following code should do the hsv hsl coding i haven t tried it yet thanks to bultman dgw rws nl another possibility is mirrors msdos graphics graphgem zip on wuarchive wustl edu bill neisius bill solaria hac com the following code is from the starbase hp manual all coordinates noralised at interval hsl to rgb hue saturation luminosity red green blue float hue saturation luminosity input in hsl float red green blue output in rgb float frac lx ly lz temporaries hue hue frac hue int hue lx luminosity saturation ly luminosity saturation frac lz luminosity saturation frac switch int hue case case red luminosity green lz blue lx break case red ly green luminosity blue lx break case red lx green luminosity blue lz break case red lx green ly blue luminosity break case red lz green lx blue luminosity break case red luminosity green lx blue ly break rgb to hsl red green blue hue saturation luminosity define max a b c a b a b c a b a b c define min a b c a b a b c a b a b c float red green blue input in rgb float hue saturation luminosity output in hsl float x tempr tempg tempb temporary values hue saturation luminosity max red green blue x min red green blue if luminosity calculate only if necessary saturation luminosity x luminosity if saturation calculate only if necessary tempr luminosity red luminosity x tempg luminosity green luminosity x tempb luminosity blue luminosity x if red luminosity hue green x tempb tempg else if green luminosity hue blue x tempr tempb else hue red x tempg tempr hue
comp.graphics	help needed dxf iff hi sorry if this is a faq but are there any conversion utilities available for autodesk dxf to amiga iff format i checked the comp graphics faq and a number of sites but so far no banana please e mail thanks pei hsieh e mail ph cunixb cc columbia edu there s no such thing as a small job just small fees anon on being an architect
comp.graphics	looking for polygon convexifier does anyone know where i can find a code which would take concave polygons and break them up into a set of convex polygons thanks kevin sahr piglet uccs edu
comp.graphics	looking for a job as a software engineer i am not sure that i am supposed to post this mail here however during the last year while i was involved in developing graphical user interface gui applications i have enjoyed being personally part of this news group wherin i got some interesting information which helped me in my work i am posting my resuming hoping that people working in my area would make time to look at it a westgate hall isu ames ia april dear prospective employer i am seeking employment as a software engineer with interests in software design and development in which i can utilize my experience in hardware c c programming graphical user interface gui operating systems and computer networking i received my bachelors of engineering be degree in electronics engineering in and a m s degree in electrical engineering in dec from iowa state university currently i am enrolled in a m s in computer engineering at iowa state university during my masters program as a research assistant since jan i have published three papers including one in the ieee transactions on magnetics these papers are a reflection of the quality of my research and my ability to learn new concepts quickly i have been involved in many projects involving software developments and have extensive experience programming in c c fortran and assembly level i am also familiar with operating systems like unix ultrix and ms dos i am familiar with motif x programming and currently as a research assistant am involved in graphical user interface gui design using the multiplatform gui toolkit xvt my experiences also include areas such as operating systems and computer networks through course work and projects i was involved in the study of the design and development of the internals of the xinu operating system i have also been involved in many tcp ip programming projects in computer networking while in college i learnt the importance of clear and concise communication i have also learned a lot about time management in my m s program i have maintained a grade average worked hours per week and have enjoyed being involved in many other extra curricular activities my software experiences along with my hardware background electronics engineering would be very helpful in my career goals as a software engineer i request that my qualifications may kindly be reviewed i would like to have an interview to discuss your employment needs and my career goals i am eager to hear from you soon sincerely s n rajesh rajsnr iastate edu resume s n rajesh work residence coover isu a westgate hall isu ames ia ames ia e mail rajsnr iastate edu objective to obtain a challenging position as a software engineer involving software design and development in which i can utilize my experience in hardware c c programming graphical user interface gui operating systems and computer networking education currently enrolled in a m s in computer engineering iowa state university ames iowa m s in electrical engineering iowa state university ames iowa dec gpa major overall thesis probability of detection pod models for eddy current nondestructive evaluation nde methods project funded by federal aviation administration faa b e in electronics engineering bangalore university bangalore india jan publications s n rajesh l udpa and s s udpa numerical model based approach for estimating probability of detection in nde applications ieee transactions on magnetics vol no march s n rajesh l udpa and s s udpa estimation of eddy current probability of detection using d finite element model presented at the th annual review of progress in quantitative nondestructive evaluation conferance san diego california jul s n rajesh l udpa s s udpa and n nakagawa probability of detection models for eddy current nde methods presented at the th annual review of progress in quantitative nondestructive evaluation conferance brunswick me jul relevant implemention of operating systems electronic devices and circuits course computer network architecture pulse and digital circuits work advanced computer communications artificial neural networks introduction to supercomputing pattern recognition microprocessors and computer digital image processing organization digital signal processing computer technology and integrated circuits and design programming projects implementation of the fork system call on the xinu operating system also involved in the implementation of a cpu scheduling algorithm taking into consideration the aging of processes this project involved the study of the design and development of the internals of the xinu operating system design and development of an interrupt driven keyboard driver this project involved a thorough understanding of device drivers design and development of a unix like tree structured directory which allows the creation of subdirectories and organization of files accordingly this project included the implementation of routines such as mkdir rmdir cd ls and rm to support the directory structure analysis of methods of congestion control in computer networks implementation of the bellman ford routing algorithm for a distributed network the communication between network nodes was based on udp this project involved programming in c simulation of the various digital logic functional units starting from the basic gates to registers counters adders multipliers arithmetic logic unit alu and so on the project involved extensive c programming in an unix environment work research assistant center for nde iowa state university ames experience ia aug present work involves development of applications using graphical user interface gui toolkits familiar with programming in a motif x environment more recent work involves development of multiplatform gui applications in c using the portable gui toolkit xvt this project is supported by nist national institute of standards and technology research assistant center for nde iowa state university ames ia jan aug work involved developing software for modeling electromagnetic nde techniques such as the eddy current method it also involved optimization of the code on the parallel computer cray ymp this project was supported by faa and involved working in close contact with the aircraft industry boeing trainee engineer indian telephone industries bangalore india work involved design and development of a microprocessor based programmable telephone dialler used in cordless telephones involved programming of a microprocessor to control the pulsing actions of the relays in a telephone circuit jan nov computer languages c c fortran assembly level skills software motif x xvt computer graphics hoops tcp ip programming image processing utilities sdrc ideas autocad operating systems unix stellix ultrix ms dos systems dec series hp and sun workstations macintosh stellar parallel systems cray ymp ibm j maspar n cube honours and iowa state university graduate college scholarship activities jan present ranked out of over students in bachelors of engineering entrance examination ensuring full scholarship from the state to pursue my bachelors s degree current member of ieee references available upon request
comp.graphics	intel s pci standard i read a mesg somewhere on genie about intel coming out with a graphics standard called pci which would supplant vesa standards is this a rumor or is there some substance to it if any of y all have heard of this standard please e mail me on how i might obtain more info thanks in advance vamilliron othello ucd edu
comp.graphics	pov ray for vax computer hi there i m using pov ray on my ibm compatible at home but i would like to run some things at work on our vax computer i believe there is a version of the source code for pov ray that is vax specific but i m not sure where to find it i ve looked at the several sites where the ibmpc version of it can be found can anyone help me thanks in advance ross kummer rmit melbourne australia internet address rkummer phillip edu au no clever signoff yet too busy playing with pov ray
comp.graphics	gws anybody know where i can get graphics work shop brad utkvx utk edu
comp.graphics	re xv problems in article apr nessie mcc ac uk c c lilley mcc ac uk writes in article rohjc avt cc tut fi jk lehtori cc tut fi kouhia juhana writes i wrote something about making color modifications quickly with bit quantized images and only at the saving the image to file process we have to make the modifications to the bit image this makes sense because the main use of xv is only viewing images doing many changes to image we should keep all modifications in a buffer and then before making the operations to bit image we should simplify the operation list for unnecessary operations think about what you are saying here the bit image is quantised down to bits so many similar colours are mapped onto a single palette colour this colour gets modified in fairly arbitrary ways you then want to apply these modifications back to the bit file so you have to find which colours mapped to this one palette colour i suppose you don t know what about we have discussed we discussed about error s in xv which shows images only as bit and my suggestion above works perfectly with it so far i have seen a colormap editing window in xv that is there must be a colormap anyway the problems you present are exist anyway and i didn t tried to solve them at all because i would not make such problems to my programs in the first place gamma and color corrections are easily done to bit image as i presented there s no need make tricks from bit quantized image back to bit image how would you suggest doing colour editing on a bit file how would you group related colours to edit them together only global changes could be done unless the software were very different and much more complicated ok you re writing about situation that user want edit images as bit and user want edit individual colors your questions by the way jumps off the discussion a bit my solution doesn t work because there s no colormap withing real bit image you see user see bit image going back to bit is silly about changing individual colors in bit quantized rasterized image changing individual colors in colormap is useless in most cases if the image is quantized and rasterized small change may make serious errors to anywhere in the image xv allows this feature but i don t recommend to use it with the mentioned type images moreover xv is not a paint program you can only make those global changes in full bit xv changing individual colors sounds like paint program job if person have bit screen there s need for tricks to get the original bit image modified because user don t see full bit image there s need to make approximations and it is not possible to modify individual colors but individual pixels or pixel groups if image is rasterized to select indiavidual color there could be x cursor window which shows true color image in cursor window area selecting individual color is possible from that ok i don t have thought very much bit painting programs never seen such in good view and are not planned to make such not to mention bit painting program in bit screen yes again what is was wrong with xv it saved bit quantized rasterized images as bit jpegs jpeg is not designed for that also human expect that bit will be saved as bit image say person would like to crop part of the image and save it then it is expected that the image still is the same so xv were designed without thinking about human interface and how human expect the program work design error i have heard xv were designed first for bit images files but it were not good idea to take full bit images without making major change to the original design so even all screen images are bit the processed images and saved images could have been bit very easily instead of bit before anybody will make a note yes i may as well make a lift where up means that the lift goes down and down means that the lift goes up and put a note on this design solution to the manuals however even the manuals tells the correct situation it doesn t solve the problem americans the lift is just an example well my text may be a bit hard reading hopefully you suggeeded to read it juhana kouhia
comp.graphics	re raw gif you can use pbm s rawtopgm to convert three raw r g b files to pgm format then you can use pgm toppm to convert the pgm files to a composite ppm file and feed this to cjpeg for compression slow and circuitous but it will work rick
comp.graphics	re help needed dxf iff in article apr news columbia edu ph cunixb cc columbia edu pei hsieh writes hi sorry if this is a faq but are there any conversion utilities available for autodesk dxf to amiga iff format i checked the comp graphics faq and a number of sites but so far no banana please e mail thanks pei hsieh e mail ph cunixb cc columbia edu there s no such thing as a small job just small fees anon on being an architect hei pei i can not help you directly width you problem but there may be intermediate roads to take to get to the iff i am using a converter that can take iges iif dxf iges milespec i iges milespec ii iges iif milespec i iif milespec ii iif and dxf iif is ibm iges format there may be converters out there that can handle iges to iff hope this was to any help by the way the converter is part of the iges processor package from ibm and it runs on rs aix best regard finn chr lundbo ibm bergen environmental sciences solutions centre e mail finn bsc no
comp.graphics	xv for dos what s the problem i downloaded the file xv exe zip from the site someone posted here it contained the files cjpeg exe djpeg exe xv exe when i tried to run it it just said couldn t run go exe and halts what s the matter with this are there some files missing in the zip what is go exe any help appreciated bye wolfram wolfram kresse e mail wolfram rbg informatik th darmstadt de meeneemeeneemeenee cu l r le g r i yes that s right tweeky u
comp.graphics	alpha kubota graphic vs sgi who has experience with porting a gl program to an alpha apx workstation with kubota s denali d graphic is there any problems is the real graphic performance like a sgi r indigo xs z juergen fechter universitaet tuebingen wsi gris office auf der morgenstelle c fax w tuebingen germany email fechter gris informatik uni tuebingen de
comp.graphics	re tiff complexity in article aa enet gw pa dec com you write anyone who thinks that tiff is too complex hasn t dealt with cgm asn cda dca sgml or any one of a number of other very successful file format people seem perfectly capable dealing with these others well yeah but unlike tiff they all do substantially more than encode rectangular bitmaps and the others are hardly trouble free i hear that it is quite common for cgm implementations not to interoperate the annoying thing about tiff is that is that along with the useful options there are stupid options the most egregious example is that rather than picking a byte order and bit order and using it consistently in all tiff files byte and bit order are options and all tiff readers on all machines no matter what their natural byte order have to be prepared to do byte swapping there are four slightly different fax formats again any one of them would have been adequate rgb images can be stored by pixel or by component complexity without function etc etc i also note that the tiff doc says that aldus experiments show that lzw reliably compresses as well or better than any of the fax formats suggesting that none of the fax formats are really useful what s worse a lot of the formats aren t even implemented very well e g lzw limits code words to bits while or bits would have provided substantially better compression and the lzw method compresses bytes rather than pixels but the absolute worst thing about tiff is that any vendor can register proprietary tiff codes and formats without even publicly documenting them this means that there is no way to write a tiff reader that can reliably read all incoming tiff files some standard regards john levine johnl iecc cambridge ma us spdcc ima world iecc johnl
comp.graphics	re help need bits viewer in article apr labtam labtam oz au graeme labtam labtam oz a u graeme gill writes in article seti inria fr deniaud cartoon inria fr gilles deniaud writ es hi i m looking for a program which is able to display bits images we are using a sun sparc equipped with parallax graphics board running x xli xloadimage or imagemagick export lcs mit edu contrib xv shareware supports bit displays and has lots of other improvements over earlier versions definitely worth checking out also at export jean jean liddle computer science illinois state university e mail jliddle ilstu edu
comp.graphics	looking for brain in cad jasen mabus rpi student i am looking for a hman brain in any cad dxf cad iges cgm etc or picture gif jpg ras etc format for an animation demonstration if any has or knows of a location please reply by e mail to mabusj rpi edu thank you in advance jasen mabus
comp.graphics	sci files and sco files hello there a week ago a guy asked what a sco file was well i researched a bit and foundout that it is just another rix file sci files are x files and sco files are x files alle the other formats x x are also called something like sc character regards rued
comp.graphics	re real d in article vall dsv su se matt dah dsv su se mattias dahlberg writes rauno haapaniemi raunoh otol fi wrote earlier today i read an ad for real d animation ray tracing software and it looked very convincing to me yes it looks like very good indeed however i don t own an amiga and so i began to wonder if there s a pc version of it nope did i not hear that there maybe some ports of real d version in the pipeline somewhere possibly unix not too sure though please put me straight gary work serc daresbury lab internet g coulter daresbury ac uk uni staffordshire university hardware a a regards email x x mattias matt dah dsv su se i love it
comp.graphics	re tom gaskins pexlib vs phigs programming manuals o reilly in article rb k l v neuro usc edu merlin neuro usc edu merlin writes could someone explain the difference between tom gaskins two books o pexlib programming manual o phigs programming manual why would i want to buy one book vs the other book i have an pexlib and phigs as it comes from mit with pex and as is explained in the phigs programming manual are just different api s for the pex protocol which is an extension to the x protocol so it depends on you what you go to use advantage of phigs is the protability to other platforms ibm graphigs sunphigs and the standardized structuring of the d objects advantage of pexlib is the sometimes faster and easier programming for immediate mode graphics because pex is not an exactly mapping of phigs to a prortocol o o ooo ooo roland holzapfel computer email wilhelminenstrasse graphics holzapfe igd fhg de darmstadt center phone germany zgdv this space intentionally left blank
comp.graphics	re intel s pci standard vamilliron yes intel s pci is another local bus standard which can be used for graphics although i believe local buses can be used for other things too as far as i know though pci local bus would compete with vesa local bus not the vesa graphics standard but others more enlightened might be able to shed more light on this matter
comp.graphics	wanted shareware graphics display program for dos i need a graphics display program that can take as a parameter the name of the file to be displayed then just display that image and then quit all of the other graphics display programs come up with a menu first or some other silliness this program is going to be run from within another program i have lots of memory and vga color any graphics format will do has anyone heard of such a beast keith keith knudsen notre dame in
comp.graphics	th scia invitation to the th scia the th scandinavian conference on image analysis will be arranged by the norwegian society for image processing and pattern recognition nobim and sponsored by the international association for pattern recognition iapr the conference will be held in tromsoe from th th may tromsoe located at latitude degrees n is northern norway s centre for administration and education about the programme the scientific programme runs over four days and includes invited speakers sessions in three parallel tracks with contributed papers and poster sessions with contributions the conference covers the following topics image processing and analysis pattern recognition computer vision parallel algorithms and architectures neural nets matching methods image compression remote sensing medical and biological applications industrial applications conference language the official language of the conference is english invited talks and speakers segmentation of range images via data fusion and morphological watersheds professor ralph gonzalez university of tennessee knoxville object recognition using range images professor anil k jain michigan state university experiments in mobile robot navigation and range imaging dr judd jones oak ridge national laboratory image compression professor tor ramstad university of trondheim combining evidence in dictionary based probabilistic relaxation professor j kittler university of surrey matching methods professor a sanfeliu polytechnic university of catalonia workshop in connection with the conference a workshop on contextual methods in pattern recognition will be arranged on monday th by iapr tc for further information concerning the workshop contact torfinn taxt chairman tc univ of bergen n bergen norway phone fax e mail torfinn taxt cc uib no registration information the registration fee is nok the fee covers proceedings entrance to all oral and poster sessions exhibition lunches and coffee breaks get together party reception and banquet fees for accompanying persons are presented in the registration form all payments must be made payable in norwegian kroner nok by swift to xiannokktrm or bank giro service at bank account sas conference forut christiania bank og kreditkasse private cheques will not be accepted or by the following credit cards visa mastercard eurocard diners access american express please note for payment with swift and bank giro service made from abroad please add banking fee of nok please remember to state scia and your name on all money transfers registration and information the conference secretariat will be available all four days of the conference for registration and information may th in the sas hotel may th th at the university exhibition an exhibition of relevant literature will be arranged publishers are invited to exhibit their products a visit to local companies and institutions involved in the field mostly remote sensing will be arranged accommodation reservation for hotel accommodation can be made on the registration form the scia conference secretariat at sas luftreisebyraa att bodil lauritsen will provide hotel accommodation for the participants social events monday may th get together party included in the conference fee for delegates nok for accompanying persons tuesday may th fishing trip the tour will last for hours and hopefully the midnight sun will visit us on board the boat there will be music food and drink by choice we bring fishing rods and it will be possible to have our own fish prepared on board nok spouse programme visit by cable car to storsteinen meters above sea level visit to the arctic cathedral and visit to tromsoe museum nok wednesday may th due to the cancellation of the svalbard flight we will arrange a visit to the beerhall nok including beer and food spouse programme visit to a fishfarm in the surroundings of tromsoe nok thursday may th banquet included in the conference fee for delegates accompanying persons nok spouse programme visit to the northern lights planetarium and the polar museum nok the spouse programs need a minimum of participants to be arranged post conference tours with visit to lyngen or finnmark and norh cape will also be arranged for more information about the social program and the post conference tours see the registration form and information included with the registration form weather and dress the weather in tromsoe in late may can be everything from hour sunshine with a maximum temperature of degrees celsius to snowstorms with temperatures below freezing it is therefore recommended to bring some warmer clothes local information the population is approximately in tromsoe you can take part in many activities from mountaineering in the midnight sun to late night fun in international restaurants and bars an afternoon local beer in the beerhall of the world s northernmost brewery is also recommended the th scandinavian conference on image analysis scia will be held at the university campus at the world s northernmost university there will be conference buses going to the campus from within walking distances of all the hotels more detailed information about the locations and transport will be available at the conference hotels travel information tromsoe airport at langnes is only minutes drive from the centre of tromsoe the travelling distance from oslo is hr minutes sas conference support tromsoe offers airticket services for the conference in addition to all standard terms full and reduced fare tickets from europe and overseas reduced fares require that you stay in scandinavia the night between saturday and sunday we can offer additional conference fares for sas flights from sas destinations within scandinavia and reduced fares on norwegian domestic flights if you want to make use of this service please contact bodil lauritsen at the conference secretariat conference secretariat sas luftreisebyraa tromsoe att bodil lauritsen p o box n tromsoe norway phone fax note that reduced airticket fares can not be obtained on flights to scandinavia if you don t stay the night between saturday and sunday in front of or after the conference on the other hand you don t have to stay that night in tromso to obtain reduced fares within scandinavia sas flights cut here registration form the th scandinavian conference on image analysis tromso norway may th th please use block letters or type and fill in one form for each parti cipant completed registration form for accompanying person is to be attached to the registration form of the delegate mr mrs first name and surname company institution title mailing address postal code country telephone telefax delegate accompanying person please tick for right category workshop on contextual methods in pattern recognition monday may th conference fee delegates nok social events please tick for participating get together party monday th included in the conference fee for delegates accompanying person nok spouse programme tuesday may th nok spouse programme wednesday may th nok spouse programme thursday may th nok boat trip tuesday may th nok banquet thursday may th included in the conference fee for delegates accompanying person nok visit to the beerhall wednesday may th nok post conference tour lyngen nok post conference tour finnmark north cape nok we need a minimum number of participants to accomplish these tours total amount for my participation nok payment payment can be made by swift to xiannokktrm or bank giro service at bank account sas conference forut christiania bank og kreditkasse gronnegt n tromso norway private cheques will not be accepted or by credit card visa mastercard eurocard diners access american express account number expiration date signature please note for payment with swift and bank giro service made from abroad please add banking fee of nok please remember to state scia and your name on all money transfers accomodation payment to be made upon arrival weekend friday sunday deadline for cancellation of the hotel room hours before arrival if you would like us to book your accomodation in tromso please fill in date of arrival date of departure sas royal hotel single a double a weekend weekend grand nordic hotel single a double a weekend weekend with home hotel single a double a saga hotel single a double a polar hotel single a double a weekend weekend tromso hotel single a double a weekend weekend skipperhuset pension single a double a triple a hotel nord single a double a triple a private accomodation single a double a i will arrange accomodation on my own if my first choice is not available i wish to stay at airtickets sas conference support tromso offers airticket services for the conference in addition to all standard terms full and reduced fare tickets from europe and overseas reduced fares require that you stay in scandinavia the night between saturday and sunday we can offer additional conference fares for sas flights from sas destinations within scandinavia and reduced fares on norwegian domestic flights if you want to make use of this service please fill in the following point of departure and return date of departure date of return i will arrange airtickets on my own please tick for further information please contact kjell arild hogda scia local chair forut information technology ltd n tromso norway telephone telefax e mail scia conan uit no please forward this registration form to sas luftreisebyra tromso att bodil lauritsen p o box n tromso norway telephone telefax date and signature
comp.graphics	re pov ray for vax computer get the generic version for unix and vms and build it imho a vms com file to build it is supplied as the distribution comes as tar z you should either have uncompress and tar on vms or a unix flavoured machine handy usually you won t find this on ibm pc specific archives but on the better ones o o o brain inside o o o o andre beck abpsoft mehl andre beck irs inf tu dresden de o o o
comp.graphics	re xv problems oops what the hell a crosspost is this have a look onto xv before saying anything more about it s power o o o brain inside o o o o andre beck abpsoft mehl andre beck irs inf tu dresden de o o o
comp.graphics	picture ascii conversion i was wondering if anyone has ever seen heard of a utility that converts any type of image format gif tiff pcx bmp jpeg etc to an ascii representation i have seen some very sophiticated art in ascii format but never was i able to find the author or any program that may have converted the data from a picture format any help or leads would be great thanks in advance danny dunlavy ddunlavy casbah acns nwu edu
comp.graphics	re arts letters graphics editor in comp graphics menchett dws unr edu peter j menchetti writes does anyone on this group use this program it stacks up pretty well to corel draw and since i don t have a cdrom it was the best buy maybe someone would be interested in trading tips and tricks yes i have both arts letters and coreldraw i personally like arts letters better but there are things i like about arts letters that coreldraw doesn t do an vice versa i haven t found the perfect graphics program that does everything yet my favorite feature from coreldraw is that it imports alot of different formats arts letters does not i like the thousands of clipart available with arts letters however i do find looking them up in a book and referencing them by number to be annoying one of my major problems is that there isn t any programs available on the market for the artistically deprived betty harvey harvey oasys dt navy mil david taylor model basin adp networking and communication assessment carderock division branch naval surface warfare code center bethesda md dtmb cd nswc fax
comp.graphics	software development libs for old targa boards i am revamping some computer aided visual inspection systems which use the old at t targa board set cards to display images from a color ccd camera to a color monitor providing the option to overlay text or a crosshair no image capture or manipulation is performed just display i would like to know if there is still a source for development libraries which would allow me to embed commands in my own software to enable the camera draw crosshairs print text etc i ll be glad to pay if they are commercially available e mail if possible joe ryburn cim manager intergraph corporation manufacturing integration huntsville al
comp.graphics	re sgi sales practices was crimson was kubota announcement olson anchor esd sgi com dave olson writes but surely you don t expect a system you buy now for a five year period to be constantly upgradable over that entire five year period what s sort of interesting about this whole thread is just how much it has in common with similar threads in groups dealing with other vendor s hardware i currently deal basically with hardware from vendors apple dec and sgi and thus tend to monitor the groups about those vendor s hardware currently it seems like sgi customers are pissed at sgi about dropping support for the personal iris dec customers are pissed at dec for dropping mips support in favor of the new alpha boxes and apple customers seem to get pissed every time a new mac is introduced that s faster and cheaper than the one they just bought when i used to be a sun customer years ago i remember people being pissed at sun for leaving their and x customers out in the cold when sparc came along what s really interesting is that from what i can tell the mis folks in the basement with their es don t seem to be pissed at ibm why i have no idea either ibm really does take care of their customers better or they just have their customers brainwashed better than the smaller vendors do roy smith roy nyu edu hippocrates project department of microbiology coles nyu school of medicine first avenue new york ny this never happened to bart simpson
comp.graphics	lcd vga display please help i have an ibm compatible notebook computer with an lcd vga screen while i was working with it this morning the screen started to flicker a little which i thought was odd since i do use a surge protector for my computer and all peripherals it only did this for a second and then stopped i left the room for several minutes and when i returned the screen was completely dim not blank but very very dim the contrast slider still worked so that i could adjust it to where i could faintly make out what was on the screen but the brightness slider had absolutely no effect i was plugged in at the time i e not using the battery but i still tried switching the battery changing the power saver features etc etc all to no avail has anyone else experienced anything like this if this just means that i need to replace the screen then i guess i ll have to but i thought that the death of my lcd screen would be a little less dramatic when it eventually happened i didn t want to take it in to be repaired before i asked on the net about this because i already know what they ll say yep you gotta have this replaced and it s gonna cost you i ve only had the computer for about months is that a reasonable life cycle for a lcd display oh i guess i ought to give specifics here the brand is compudyne is this a reputable company it s a sx mhz i forget the model number exactly and i was too ticked off to write it down before coming in to work today if anyone can help me please give me any advice you might have i m not opposed to having it replaced but i d rather not if it s not absolutely necessary if you wouldn t mind please e mail me at mike mik uky edu but if you d rather post i ll be checking back here in a couple of days btw if the answer to this question is already in a faq somewhere feel free to flame away but i would ask that you also include the location and name of the faq if you don t mind thanks in advance for any help mike mattone mike mik uky edu
comp.graphics	re sgi sales practices was crimson was kubota announcement in article rr c u calvin nyu edu roy mchip med nyu edu roy smith writes what s really interesting is that from what i can tell the mis folks in the basement with their es don t seem to be pissed at ibm why i have no idea either ibm really does take care of their customers better or they just have their customers brainwashed better than the smaller vendors do no mis folks have infinite budgets of death and they also get parts of their budget allocated upgrades maintenance and new purchases and a lot of ibm mainframe purchases are actually leases and so is the software basically the engineers who have tight budgets i e the coders and designers of a company bitch and moan when they drop on a sparc only to see a faster machine appear a year later mis types upgrade once every years and their costs are amortized and depreciated over a longer period and the budget office justifies the expense because they actually use the machines for accounting payroll etc now if the budget office was dependant on the engineers for some reason like payroll and accounts you d sure as hell see every engineer with a new cray on his desktop every year brian
comp.graphics	fractel trees i m working on my senior project here at uf florida the project requires fractel trees i m interested in either psuedo or real code just about anything will help perhaps some good books on the subject could help too mail will reach at quartz iriquois eel ufl edu thanks bill devore
comp.graphics	oh make up your mind was re xv problems in article rqisi rhj cc tut fi jk lehtori cc tut fi kouhia juhana writes in article apr nessie mcc ac uk c c lilley mcc ac uk writes in article rohjc avt cc tut fi jk lehtori cc tut fi kouhia juhana writes i wrote something about making color modifications quickly with bit quantized images and only at the saving the image to file process we have to make the modifications to the bit image this makes sense because the main use of xv is only viewing images doing many changes to image we should keep all modifications in a buffer and then before making the operations to bit image we should simplify the operation list for unnecessary operations think about what you are saying here the bit image is quantised down to bits so many similar colours are mapped onto a single palette colour this colour gets modified in fairly arbitrary ways you then want to apply these modifications back to the bit file so you have to find which colours mapped to this one palette colour i suppose you don t know what about we have discussed we discussed about error s in xv which shows images only as bit and my suggestion above works perfectly with it look be consistent first you post something that seems to suggest that you see xv being an bit program as some sort of error so i post and asy it is not a bug it is meant to be like that so you post and say it is not a bug you never said it was i have misunderstood etc now you are saying we discussed about error s in xv which shows images only as bit if you would make up your mind what you are claiming it would make the discussion a lot easier so far i have seen a colormap editing window in xv that is there must be a colormap anyway the problems you present are exist anyway and i didn t tried to solve them at all because i would not make such problems to my programs in the first place eh sorry i don t understand what you are saying here i am aware that english is not your native language and have tried hard to fathom your meaning but this paragraph defeats me gamma and color corrections are easily done to bit image as i presented there s no need make tricks from bit quantized image back to bit image yes as i originally said global changes are easily possible but this statement contradicts what you said earlier i wrote something about making color modifications quickly with bit quantized images and only at the saving the image to file process we have to make the modifications to the bit image how would you suggest doing colour editing on a bit file how would you group related colours to edit them together only global changes could be done unless the software were very different and much more complicated ok you re writing about situation that user want edit images as bit and user want edit individual colors your questions by the way jumps off the discussion a bit no i don t think so actually you were talking about loading a bit image into xv by quantising manipulating the colours in the colour editor then somewhow applying these changes to the bit file when you exit xv xv lets you edit individual colours where is this sudden jumping off the topic my solution doesn t work because there s no colormap withing real bit image yes i am aware there is no colourmap in a bit file you see user see bit image going back to bit is silly i do not understand what this statement is supposed to mean about changing individual colors in bit quantized rasterized image changing individual colors in colormap is useless in most cases if the image is quantized and rasterized small change may make serious errors to anywhere in the image what are you saying xv allows this feature but i don t recommend to use it with the mentioned type images ah now we see thew problem first you want to extend xv to allow editing of bit previews of bit images then i point out problems with this now you are saying there is no problem because you personally happen not to use those parts of the program that cause the problem moreover xv is not a paint program you can only make those global changes not sure what you are saying here certainly one can make local changes in full bit xv changing individual colors sounds like paint program job if person have bit screen there s need for tricks to get the original bit image modified because user don t see full bit image there s need to make approximations and it is not possible to modify individual colors but individual pixels or pixel groups if image is rasterized to select indiavidual color there could be x cursor window which shows true color image in cursor window area selecting individual color is possible from that yes that is one possible approach i would find a program that took such an approach clumsy however ok i don t have thought very much bit painting programs never seen such in good view and are not planned to make such not to mention bit painting program in bit screen well here we agree you have not thought it through very much you don t seem to have a consistent point to make and contradict yourself from one post to the next ok we all have off days perhaps you should step back and think this one through yes again what is was wrong with xv it saved bit quantized rasterized images as bit jpegs jpeg is not designed for that as i said in the last post jpeg is a compression algorithm it is a way of saving disk space by trading off quality against compression i fail to see what the problem is you have not proposed any workable alternatives also human expect that bit will be saved as bit image speak for yourself you are the only person i have met or spoken to who having quantised a bit image down to bits expects this process to somehow reverse when the file is saved keeping all modificvations that heve been made to the bit image palette perhaps that is why you yused the singular say person would like to crop part of the image and save it then it is expected that the image still is the same look next time you import a bit image into xv look carefully at the main control panel it tells you how many colours have been allocated to the bit image xv makes it abundantly clear that you are not editing the original bit file you are the only person who claims this is confusing so xv were designed without thinking about human interface and how human expect the program work design error is a design error the same as a bug read my lips xv is a program for viewing and modifying bit images it lets you import other images it shows i would say a good deal of thought about the human interface and everyone else seems to use it happily for the purpose it was designed for it makes no false claims i have heard xv were designed first for bit images files but it were not good idea to take full bit images without making major change to the original design if you would come up with a solid logical well argued and lucid description of precisely how these proposed extensions would work feel free to post them so far you have not done so so even all screen images are bit the processed images and saved images could have been bit very easily instead of bit argh after all this a comment like that very easily ok go ahead and code it if it is so easy or alternatively look up the terms import and non reversible transformation before anybody will make a note yes i may as well make a lift where up means that the lift goes down and down means that the lift goes up and put a note on this design solution to the manuals however even the manuals tells the correct situation it doesn t solve the problem americans the lift is just an example i think this is a bit of an exageration what you are actually saying is you got into a lift elevator if you are in the states and mistakenly pressed the down button to go up everyone else had no problem now you are trying to sue the manufacturer well my text may be a bit hard reading you bet hopefully you suggeeded to read it mostly leaving aside the language issue however it betrays some very wooly thinking as you yourself admit which is the same in any language go think some more chris lilley technical author itti computer graphics and visualisation training project computer graphics unit manchester computing centre oxford road manchester uk m pl internet c c lilley mcc ac uk voice fax janet c c lilley uk ac mcc
comp.graphics	drivers for diamond viper card i ve been away for a couple of weeks and have become out of touch with the latest information on the diamond viper card does anyone know if diamond has come out with any vesa driver updates lately also i was wondering what the latest windows driver version is up to now thanks in advance dan daniel t hotopp internet hotopp ami bwi wec com antenna microwave integration w vax tron hotopp ami westinghouse electric corp voice
comp.graphics	re lcd vga display i ve only had the computer for about months is that a reasonable life cycle for a lcd display my toshiba t lcd cga died in months replaced under the month warranty fortunately when it died it died instantly and completely
comp.graphics	surface contour plot ultrix x r to plot surfaces and contour plots from a set of x y z i would really appreciate any hint on the name of such a plotting program and where to find it thanks for your help
comp.graphics	full color image editor for sgi workstations i am happy to announce the first public release of the bit program an interactive full color image viewer and editor based on sgi gl besides typical touchup tasks such as crop rotate smooth etc bit offers some unique features not available in similar programs such as text and vector support and the separation of text and image the following is the relevant sections from the man page pre release of may bit l name bit bitmap image touchup for sgi workstations description bit is an interactive full color image viewer and editor based on silicon graphics gl as a full color program bit handles images of both bits and color index in a natural and efficient manner as an image viewer bit allows list of images to be displayed in their original type bits or color index in any order and in any of the many built in styles of display you can walk up and down the list using mouse and keyboard or you can let bit do the walk for you the slideshow with the pan and zoom features large images can be viewed in full without being limited by the window or screen size as an image editor bit performs a large number of image editing and processing tasks accurately and efficiently it keeps information loss at any stage of the editing process at an absolute minimum by performing subpixel sampling automatically while conserving the input image type whenever possible to avoid unnecessary promotion and or quantization of input images you can also cut a piece of an image and paste it into another in addition arbitrarily colored and sized text and simple geometric figures can be rendered on top of an image for annotation with the option to make them part of the bitmap or output separately to take advantage of the higher printer resolutions e g postscript bit can also be used as a graphical user interface to many existing image processing programs by defining external bindings which in essence turn command line oriented programs into bit subfunctions and can be accessed by a press of a button and best of all the processed image will be read back and displayed immediately convolution using exter nally defined matrices of arbitrary order can be performed dynamically giving great flexibility in processing an image features bit performs all of its image manipulations interactively with a continuous progress report and once the processing is complete the processed image will be displayed current features include o rotates an image by an arbitrary angle with the option of anti aliasing and filling the rotated out region with an arbitrary color o scales an image by arbitrary factors in x and or y directions with the option of subpixel sampling o renders text of arbitrary color size or orientation on top of an image with the option of rendering directly into the raster or saving the text and raster separately such as into a postscript file to take advantage of a higher printer resolution besides normal text strings many predefined special symbols can be input conveniently as in tex e g alpha small beta produces greek alphabet alpha followed by a slightly smaller greek alphabet beta o presents graphically the histogram of an image o performs arbitrary to pixel transformation the transformation function can be specified interactively and can be of arbitrary forms further the transformation can be applied to rgb channels separately or simultaneously and to the entire image or a portion of it many difficult tasks such as thresholding can be accomplished rather easily by to transformation in combination with the avai lability of graphical histograms of the image o places simple geometric figures sgfs e g arrows circles trian gles etc of arbitrary color size and orientation into an image at arbitrary locations addressed either in absolute pixels or in some user definable coordinate system units with the option of rendering directly into the raster or save the sgfs and raster separately e g postscript file all sgfs can be scaled in x and y directions independently or simultaneously this is how to get an ellipse from a circle o performs edge detection in combination with image histograms and to transformation very accurate result can be obtained o performs histogram equalization o performs convolution with externally defined square matrices of arbitrary order o crops a rectangular portion of an image o cuts and pastes across images o magnifies any portion of an image by any amount o displays a list of images in sequence with a user specifiable pause interval between images slideshow o measures rgb intensities of a pixel at any location or all pixels along an arbitrary line with the result presented as rgb intensities or as an intensity vs distance plot o performs image type conversions o converts image formats o smoothes an image special convolution o filters an image by external programs and read the filtered image back and display it o modify an individual pixel s rgb values o performs fft on the entire image or a portion of it and display the resulting power spectra o spray and brush paint in full color unavailable in this pre release supported formats o iris rgb native to sgi iris o jpeg jfif format o compuserv gif o pnm portable any map including ppm pgm and pbm o xbm x window bitmap o tiff o postscript write only hardware requirements any sgi workstation that supports rgbmode including indigoes where to get it anonymous ftp to monte svec uh edu pub bit bitxxx tar z where xxx is the version number current version is read src readme for installation instructions after unpacking acknowledgement jpeg support is based on the independent jpeg groups s library version forms library developed by mark overmars is used for gui both jpeg and forms library are included in this release bit is the program you will ever need to view and annotate images the built in editing features will satisfy most of your editing needs in addition the external filter and dynamical kernel will utilize any program you already have so try it and you will like it as always any comments bug reports are welcome
comp.graphics	stop this argument xv is bit was re oh make up your stop stop stop stop this argument is getting silly xv now handles bit images without quantizing them all these arguments are moot null and void please stop quibbling about a now obsolete version of the program besides you can now generate tons of verbiage about the new shareware licensing it uses instead mike mike ressler infrared photon jockey ressler cougar jpl nasa gov less science by dead guys ms dos ms dos windoze dr dos os linux x finally getting something useful done with my pet
comp.graphics	giant software yardsale software retail sale price graphics corel draw aldus photo styler image in color photo finish of these image in scan paint image in full pack picture publisher image prep snap pro images inc publisher s paintbrush deluxe paint enchance softtype font workshop vista pro optibase workshop gfa cad utilities x tree gold for win tnt anti virus salvation amish utilities multimedia smart text music clips audio tracks spinnaker plus mac spinnaker plus pc ask me multi media make your point madison ave interface mac mr sound effects music bytes tempra show storyboard plus programming m s windows dev kit full windows maker pro ms c top speed modula business the art of negotiating telemagic full impact mac approach database ascend games nfl pro league football eco saurus hardware modem baud assorted joysticks willows vga tv amiga trac ball misc the wedding planner software yard sale fri sat sun to e mail pbenson cscihp ecst csuchico edu location nunneley rd paradise ca phone terms cash check charge visa or mc accepted
comp.graphics	re oh make up your mind was re xv problems in article apr nessie mcc ac uk lilley v cgu mcc ac uk chris lilley writes re a true bit xv if you would come up with a solid logical well argued and lucid description of precisely how these proposed extensions would work feel free to post them don t mind if i do as someone who would love to see xv go to bit this would be plenty for me a xv can load a bit image and display it in all it s bit glory on bit x displays b all other operations crop dither smooth etc are not supported on bit images how hard would this be ken fishkin fishkin xerox com
comp.graphics	re anyone know use rayshade out there fineman stein u washington edu twixt your toes writes i m using rayshade on the u w computers here and i d like input from other users and perhaps swap some ideas i could post uuencoded gifs here or ray code if anyone s interested i m having trouble coming up with colors that are metallic i e brass steel from the rgb values sorry i m not a rayshade user but hey it looks like this group could use some traffic my guess is that metallic isn t a color in the rgb sense rather it s a matter of how the surface reflects light i m not sure what property metallic materials have that makes them recognizable as such but i m pretty sure any color material can look metallic
comp.graphics	d spline fit does anyone out there know of a site that might have a d spline fit routine useful for interpolation thanks for any help craig morioka craig cognet ucla edu
comp.graphics	what is do someone please fill me in on what do thanks bh
comp.graphics	re sci files and sco files in article apr daimi aau dk rued daimi aau dk writes hello there a week ago a guy asked what a sco file was sc character regards rued yes me why alex kiernan akiernan falcon demon co uk
comp.graphics	re tiff philosophical significance of silly rak crosfield co uk richard kirk writes it s the number of legs on a centipede so now you know is that the number of left legs or both left and right dave bushong wang laboratories inc amateur radio callsign kz o project leader recognition products kz o n ary noca ca na internet dbushong wang com
comp.graphics	looking for info on quadratic spline to bezier conversion hi i am looking for an algorithm or pointers to any papers on how to convert quadratic splines to cubic splines or beizeirs if source is available in the public domain please let me know thanks very much ks krishnan seetharaman e mail kseethar cs ulowell edu phone w snail mail department of computer science umass lowell lowell ma
comp.graphics	mode h does anyone know how to access and or display multiple pages in mode h while still maintaining the byte per pixel memory organization examples in c or assembly would be appreciated thanks scott
comp.graphics	re viewing jpeg files there are jpeg viewers that are windows based and therefore need no hardware specific drivers beyond those provided in windows i got mine from the library of congress in connection with their online exhibit of books from the vatican library see a previous message in this newgroup about that gerald edgar gwe atc boeing com the opinions expressed in this not may not represent those of his employer
comp.graphics	re looking for hot mac d anim software in c zd mxp news udel edu stern brahms udel edu garland stern writes i am interested in finding d animation programs for the mac i am especially interested in any programs that don t exist in a pc port and are so good that they would make me go buy a mac do any such exist thanks in advance howdy i think you would be interested in infini d for the mac there is no dos or windows version it s quite an amazing program some of the features bevel text timeline based animation sequencer realtime bounding box preview object linking phong shading ray tracing bounding box shading wireframe shading ghourad shading flat shading anti aliasing none low medium high environment maps quicktime support wrap a qt movie around an object procedural surfaces composed surfaces for layering surfaces alpha channel support import eps dxf and swivel d files export dxf and swivel d files spline based animation animation assistant for creating smooth movements and other stuff object morphing surfaces and bevels morph too and lots more that i can t remember right now anyway it s not as expensive as some of the other animation rendering packages i think you can get it for around from macwarehouse they also have educational discounts well hope that helps a bit see ya brendan duddridge internet umduddr ccu umanitoba ca america online brendand
comp.graphics	re acm siggraph and acm in general in article apr koko csustan edu rsc altair csustan edu steve cunningham writes and no siggraph has not skipped town we re preparing the best siggraph conference yet speaking of siggraph i just went through the ordeal of my annual registration for siggraph and re upping of membership in the acm last night and was i ever grossed out the new prices for membership are almost highway robbery for example siggraph basic fee went from last year to this year for the same thing a increase those facile enough to arrange a trip to the annual conference could reduce this to by selecting siggraph lite which means siggraph is charging an additional or so for the proceedings and the art show catalog essentially toplas went up in cost way outstripping the current inflation rate basic sigchi fees remainded the same but whereas before sigchi membership included uist and human factors conferences proceedings these are now an extra cost option bundling that back into the basic rate equivalent services have gone up in cost sigois membership cost has up but they ve also split out the computer supported cooperative work conference proceedings that used to be included with membership adding that cost back in means this sig also has doubled its membership fee what really galls me is that the acm sent out brochures a couple months ago touting their new approach to providing member services and tried to make it sound like they were offering new services but with the exception of a couple like siggraph all the plus services appear to be just splitting the costs into smaller piles so that they don t look so big but their recommended changes to my membership would have me paying more than last year for a increase in services measured by cost not by value and curiously a inflation rate on the publications i got last year is anyone out there as galled by this extortion as i am robert reed home animation ltd robert slipknot rain com first court west linn or shooting yourself in the foot in various languages and systems motif you spend days writing a uil description of your foot the trajectory the bullet and the intricate scrollwork on the ivory handles of the gun when you finally get around to pulling the trigger the gun jams
comp.graphics	re corel draw or harvard draw larry landwehr larry ducktales med ge com wrote my wife wants to publish a newsletter she s no artist so she intends to use comercial clipart and customise it a bit by drawing a circle or a box around it etc we have mspublisher for manipulating text but it is not suitable for doing much with graphics so she needs a more specialised tool right now she s looking at corel draw and harvard draw there seem to be more books in the stores on corel than on harvard so she s inclined to go with corel on the basis of popularity can anyone give us an informed opinion on which package would be more suitable or if there is an even better alternative available if this is a faq please withhold the flames and just send the location of the faq document thanks go with coreldraw pcmag just did a review a couple of issues ago and adobe illustrator and coreldraw were picked as the best three ps s is it ok to use clip art from harvard draw or whatever for commercial purposes other two deleted as far as i know it s okay you d have to read the licence agreement that comes with the package to be sure tmc tmc spartan ac brocku ca
comp.graphics	company info for graphics software within the next several months i ll be looking for a job in computer graphics software i m in need of info on graphics software companies i ve checked the faq the resource list and siggraph org haven t found anything the last computer graphics career handbook that i m aware of was published in it has a list of companies in it but no tremendously specific information on any of them can people please steer me towards more current and in depth informational resources thanks i ll post a summary if there s interest brandon the opinions expressed are not necessarily those of the university of north carolina at chapel hill the campus office for information technology or the experimental bulletin board service internet launchpad unc edu or
comp.graphics	gif to targa krzysztof muchorowski was asking about gif to tga conversion so that he could use dta to convert the tga files to fli animation files krzysztof update your copy of dta to a more recent release the current is g later versions of dta can read gif files dkm
comp.graphics	universal vesa driver some time ago about month there was a bit of discussion about a universal vesa driver for bit cards it was in the file uvesa zip well i can t find it does anyone know where it is gorilla something something au and what sort of cards it works for also would it be pushing my luck to ask for someone to post it to some appropriate group kingsley turner nsw australia
comp.graphics	re message for cgcad bart inescn pt sunil gupta cs ssg brunel ac uk wrote i cant get through to the author of rtrace his site is inaccessible can he upload the new version somewhere else please problem solved its on wuarchive graphics graphics ray rtrace why does it seg fault so often
comp.graphics	re real d i heard a friend who just return from nab from las vegas confirm that realsoft will be releasing a windows version of real d this summer he was told that the rendering speed on the dx isn t as fast as a however he was also told that they are switching from microsoft c to watcom to gain more speed for people who is looking for a powerful d animation software for pc the wait shouldn t be too long real d is absolutely the most powerful and flexible d package out there that sells for less than p s i heard a indigo version is also under development
comp.graphics	source to create fli or flc does anyone know if the source is available to create fli or flc animations i would ideally like dll s for windows but would settle for c source i ve heard they might be available on amiga forums somewhere the libraries currently distributed by autodesk aawin aaplay do not have fli creation capability only playback any pointers would be appreciated thanks andrew hudson abh genesis nred ma us
comp.graphics	video speed i am using an ibm dx with eisa and local bus and i need to get a local bus video card the only hitch is that i need one that will allow me to do the fastest anims or flics from ram i have megs of ram in meg simms i am using d studio from autodesk and imagine from impulse they both write out in the flc format so does anyone know what would be the best card for showing fast anims from ram ie like the orchid diamond stealth viper ati etc any help would be appreciated i am trying to circumvent the single frame route email me at trb ra msstate edu or just post back up here thanks
comp.graphics	re what has happened to dkb l trearn hi david k drum writes listserv told me that the list doesn t exist so i got a global list of groups from the listserv and nothing i grepped every string i could think of if frank ville saari andre beck or anyone else who s a regular on dkb l can tell me what is going on please do i just sent a mail to turgut kalfaoglu sp the maintainer of the list and asked him what s going on if the list is for whatever reason really dead we might have to put up a list ourselves but for now i want to wait for his answer frank ps and i just thought this would be just another period of silence
comp.graphics	help quicktime system problem i am unable to run quicktime on my iivx running system and i don t know why if there is a better group to post this to please let me know quicktime works fine but when i try to run a movie in any application that supports it like simple player canvas or word i get the message sorry a system error occurred application unimplemented trap continue restart i press continue and get the application unknown has unexpectedly quit because an error of type occurred substitute simple player or canvas or word for application and the messages are always the same if i restart with quicktime i have no problems any suggestions i am at a loss thanks in advance oh yah please email me as i don t check the newsgroups very often dan bradley deb uxa cso uiuc edu
comp.graphics	fractal terrain generator does anyone know of a fractal terrain generator for mac something i could hopefully import into a d program like swivel or stratavision i know infini d has built in capabilities but i don t have access to infini d i downloaded two programs from umich in graphics fractals but both were from and crashed under system i think they were black and white anyway please email me if you know of anything as i don t check the newsgroups very often thanks in advance dan bradley deb uxa cso uiuc edu
comp.graphics	where did the hacker ethic go a great many computer programmers read dr dobb s journal in a recent issue there was a paragraph in an article that pained me greatly to read it said there s nothing wrong if microsoft setting the standards for the computer industry the industry needs an ibm for the s where has the hacker ethic gone not the cracker ethic which is something entirely different and bad but the hacker ethic which tells us to value the free distribution of information and yield to the hands on imperative why is it that people and corporations like bill gates ibm and intel are able to have a virtual dead lock on the computer industry why is it that if a person like myself posts messages to usenet on how to get into the little nooks crannies and idiosyncrasies of a computer system they are not given any useful information by those who know just a badmouthing or are completely ignored why is it that people like steve jobs have to abandon their efforts to make truly innovative products i ask those of you who call yourselves hackers why is this and further how can you let it go on it is a fact that the computer industry has changed the world and shall continue to do so for a long time to come it has allowed the propagation of information in a volume unheard of even twenty years ago and has made this world even smaller than it was before i shudder to think what that world will be like if the corporations are allowed to have their way perpetuating more drivel like the windows and the ibm product line on the computer using public that is not to say i am against business per se people who profit off of innovative intelligent creative designs do not bother me in fact i applaud it that is the american way but those who manage to sell kludgy uncreative systems to the public and profit off of them are the ones who are the problem and unfortunately because they have enough money to make up for blunt stupidity they can keep doing it for a very long time i put it to you thus where has the hacker ethic gone if it still exists where and if it does exist why are those who call themselves hackers allowing this to perpetuate itself why are they not creating new innovative interesting ideas to stop the sos from maintaining its choke hold on the computer industry i await with interest what will probably be a resounding silence pstlb acad alaska edu revenge is a dish best served cold szechuan death khan singh star trek ii the wrath of khan
comp.graphics	re lcd vga display mike mattone mike nx mik uky edu wrote has anyone else experienced anything like this if this just means that i need to replace the screen then i guess i ll have to but i thought that the death of my lcd screen would be a little less dramatic when it eventually happened i didn t want to take it in to be repaired before i asked on the net about this because i already know what they ll say yep you gotta have this replaced and it s gonna cost you i ve only had the computer for about months only that s a long time echoing above posting the way the market is going nowadays your machine s obsolete two weeks before you buy it sounds like you ll have to sink some money into it for repair but that s sometimes necessary for equipment is that a reasonable life cycle for a lcd display i think months with nothing wrong until now is quite reasonable if you had bought a compaq or toshiba you might have reasonably expected the machine to last longer before something went wrong but that s a moot point perhaps sandy santra trevor netcom com berkeley california trevor well sf ca us
comp.graphics	re lcd vga display in article c bab llt vcd hp com edmoore vcd hp com ed moore writes i ve only had the computer for about months is that a reasonable life cycle for a lcd display my toshiba t lcd cga died in months replaced under the month warranty fortunately when it died it died instantly and completely i worked in support for a while at a company and we had problems with several toshiba s in a short space of time they were all around years old some screens went completely as above others were just dodgy this happened to about or out of maybe they were fairly reliable up to then and i don t think it was a special problem with tosh s no link to the company so i would think that months may not be unreasonable just unlucky regards kate kate kingman cstxqbe dcs warwick ac uk i leave the typos to the tall blonde esudb csv warwick ac uk occupy all the bored people out there
comp.graphics	creating fli flc animation files i am looking for a means to add fli and flc animation creation to a windows application i was hoping for something along the lines of aawin or aaplay by autodesk but for the creation of these delta compressed animations i have flilib but this seems to be coded for the large memory model of dos with turbo c ideally i would like a dll or medium model object library but would settle for anything really i ve seen other windows apps with fli flc creation did they hack the flilib code into submission any pointers would be appreciated please send mail directly to me and i will summarize the results if there is interest andrew hudson abh genesis nred ma us
comp.graphics	re where did the hacker ethic go in article may aurora alaska edu pstlb aurora alaska edu writes i put it to you thus where has the hacker ethic gone if it still exists where and if it does exist why are those who call themselves hackers allowing this to perpetuate itself why are they not creating new innovative interesting ideas to stop the sos from maintaining its choke hold on the computer industry how about the gnu people handing out very good free software i ve also distributed two decent sized programs myself the go player fumiko at ftp u washington edu and the genetic neural network programmer cerebrum somewhere out there i ve only had time to write these programs because of scholarships and grants the intended benefit to society or a loophole in the system peter dudey kyu lisp subguru order of the golden parentheses finger reformed church of james eric the half a bee dipped in curry me a shadowy flight into the dangerous world of a man who does not exist please mail me plastic spaceships state st c salem or
comp.graphics	re where did the hacker ethic go where did the hacker ethic go we hackers of the s and are now comfortably employed and supporting families the next generation takes the radical lead now don t look for radicalism among us old ones we re gone grady netcom com ef e ad d d c f fc ac f d f e f
comp.graphics	avs presentation university of toronto instructional and research computing is sponsoring a technical presentation on visualization software a d v a n c e d v i s u a l s y s t e m s a v s s o f t w a r e pm pm thursday may sandford fleming building room advanced visual systems will present this technical seminar on avs the world s leading visualization software package avs is a point and click module driven easy to use product that produces full color two or three dimensional rendered scenes for interactive observation it is supported on all current unix risc platforms from sun sgi ibm h p dg and dec it also runs under dec vms avs is in its fourth year on the street and is very mature all fields of science engineering medicine and even business applications now use avs this seminar will focus on its many features in technical detail during a half hour slide presentation following a question period there will be a live demonstration using a sun sparcstation in addition a new avs program called campus will be introduced at this meeting also discussed will be the international avs center which provides an on line repository of over graphics modules at the north carolina supercomputer center in raliegh nc avs has imbedded tools to write one s own customized modules should these not be available with avs or from avs international s p e a k e r s the scheduled speaker for this presentation is mr paul ecklund of ecklund associates the distributor of avs in canada t h i s p r e s e n t a t i o n i s o p e n t o t h e p u b l i c
comp.graphics	re adobe photo shop type software for unix x motif platforms in article c w xb iv world std com sci image processing comp graphics wdm world std com wayne michael writes i have been searching for a quality image enhancement and manipulation package for unix x motif platforms that is comparable to adobe photo shop for the mac stuff deleted i understand that adobe is working on making photoshop available for the sgi indigo but that is just rumor and i wouldn t bet on it until i see it but they are going to release illustrator for the sgi real soon now charles boesel diablo creative if pro for and con against cboesel diablo uu holonet net then what s the opposite of progress work what else congress
comp.graphics	re oh make up your mind was re xv problems in article apr nessie mcc ac uk c c lilley mcc ac uk writes xv allows this feature but i don t recommend to use it with the mentioned type images ah now we see thew problem first you want to extend xv to allow editing of bit previews of bit images then i point out problems with this now you are saying there is no problem because you personally happen not to use those parts of the program that cause the problem see previous article on this debate for the rests i can see xv agree with my view in cases you don t even i say my personal opinion as above it doesn t mean that it is not most obvious thing please if you use my previous writings as contradicting argument please do read them you have not saw them at all you just refered to text from which i wrote something and you make hard decisions from that without reading what exactly i have written it is really hard read when one writes a reply line by line method and don t understand include previously written material with the new sentences to give them meaning you seem to be one such you also start replying to my articles even you don t understand what is going on you ask me repeatedly to decsribe my views what were wrong with xv even i posted them within the article you did reply to believe me it is not nice to get flamed specially when i know that you have not read my article carefully in the first place xv and jpeg faq and users i have written to agree me with the places you didn t i m sure you just didn t undertand what about i wrote we can blame my writing skills in english for that or better stop the discussion and check what new ideas xv gives i allready mailed one to bradley juhana kouhia
comp.graphics	re fractal terrain generator deb uxa cso uiuc edu daniel e bradley writes does anyone know of a fractal terrain generator for mac something i could hopefully import into a d program like swivel or stratavision i know infini d has built in capabilities but i don t have access to infini d i downloaded two programs from umich in graphics fractals but both were from and crashed under system i think they were black and white anyway please email me if you know of anything as i don t check the newsgroups very often thanks in advance dan bradley deb uxa cso uiuc edu yes i have written something that creates meshed fractal terrain surfaces for exactly the purpose you require importing into d modelling packages be warned the data content is high and brings many packages to their knees we use it primarily for microstation but it exports dxf as well as other formats so you should be ok you can get it from my ftp mirror site in the us it is wuarchive wustl edu my stuff is located in the mirrors architec directory please ftp the readme file first paul d bourke school of architecture property planning pdbourke ccu auckland ac nz the university of auckland ph x private bag fax auckland new zealand paul d bourke school of architecture property planning pdbourke ccu auckland ac nz the university of auckland ph x private bag fax auckland new zealand
comp.graphics	direct acess to video memory hi i m looking for information on how to directly manipulate video memory i have an application that i would like to use this for because it is much faster than going through the bios i know that video memory ispart of the system area above the first k so i guess i am looking to find out exactly what section of memory it is and how it is layed out thanks regards gordon rogers gnr psuvm psu edu void signature void
comp.graphics	re is there an ftp achive for usgs terrain data in article apr welchgate welch jhu edu danj welchgate welch jhu edu dan jacobson writes a lot of interesting stuff about gopher deleted if you ve never heard of gopher don t worry it s free and on the net write me a note if you d like information on how to get started best of luck dan jacobson danj welchgate welch jhu edu i ve heard of it but lost the intro posting that came out a while back could you post it again i think it s of general interest ben ben olasov olasov cs columbia edu
comp.graphics	re universal vesa driver kintur scorch apana org au kingsley turner writes some time ago about month there was a bit of discussion about a universal vesa driver for bit cards it was in the file uvesa zip well i can t find it does anyone know where it is gorilla something something au and what sort of cards it works for also would it be pushing my luck to ask for someone to post it to some appropriate group kingsley turner nsw australia host swdsrv edvz univie ac at location pc dos graphics file rw r r mar uvesa zip host plaza aarnet edu au location micros pc garbo pc screen file r r r apr uvesa zip location micros pc oak graphics file r r r mar uvesa zip host godzilla cgl rmit oz au location kjb mgl file rw r r mar uvesa zip host nic switch ch location mirror msdos graphics file rw rw r mar uvesa zip location software pc simtel graphics file rw rw r mar uvesa zip host ipc rvs uni hannover de location pub msdos koeln graphics egavga file rw r r apr uvesa zip host sun urz uni heidelberg de location pub msdos simtel graphics file rw rw r mar uvesa zip host athene uni paderborn de location pcsoft msdos graphics file rw r r mar uvesa zip host compute cc ncsu edu location mirrors wustl mirrors msdos graphics file rw r r mar uvesa zip host rigel acs oakland edu location pub msdos graphics file rw r r mar uvesa zip host pc usl edu location pub msdos video and graphics file rw r r mar uvesa zip host isfs kuis kyoto u ac jp location mirrors simtel msdos graphics file rw rw r mar uvesa zip file rw rw r mar uvesa zip host ftp uu net location systems ibmpc msdos simtel graphics file rw rw r mar uvesa zip lance norskog thinman netcom com data is not information is not knowledge is not wisdom
comp.graphics	d graphics software company info within a few months i ll be looking for a job in d computer graphics software i m in need of info on companies that do it there s nothing in any of the faq s for this group and nothing at siggraph org at least i couldn t find anything the last computer graphics career handbook was dated had info on companies but nothing specific on any of them can people please direct me towards more current and detailed sources of information i ll post a summary of sources if there s interest also could you please e mail me our news server is on the fritz thanks brandon the opinions expressed are not necessarily those of the university of north carolina at chapel hill the campus office for information technology or the experimental bulletin board service internet launchpad unc edu or
comp.graphics	re d graphics software company info i believe many people will be happy to have this information so please post it to the comp graphics thanks changyaw
comp.graphics	re adobe photo shop type software for unix x motif platforms in article b b r diablo uucp diablo uucp cboesel charles boesel writes in article c w xb iv world std com sci image processing comp graphics wdm world std com wayne michael writes i have been searching for a quality image enhancement and manipulation package for unix x motif platforms that is comparable to adobe photo shop for the mac stuff deleted i understand that adobe is working on making photoshop available for the sgi indigo but that is just rumor and i wouldn t bet on it until i see it but they are going to release illustrator for the sgi real soon now charles boesel diablo creative if pro for and con against cboesel diablo uu holonet net then what s the opposite of progress work what else congress i was at an adobe seminar conference propaganda forum whatever you want to call it a couple months ago where they announced that display postscript was going to be included in the next release of sun s os presumably solaris sun was going to drop their development of newsprint and in return for this adobe was going to port illustrator and photoshop to sun other than the articles that appeared in the trade journals immediately after i haven t heard a peep about it i hope it s still in the works david farley the university of chicago library east th street jrl dgf midway uchicago edu chicago illinois
comp.graphics	need recommendations on imaging workstations i need recommendations on imaging workstations as a minimum i have the following requirements high resolution graphics black and white for display of fax images support the display of multiple simulataneous windows fax image emulation window to ibm host etc high speed network interface for image data etc mb token ring ethernet etc mouse any information experience would be appreciated thanks car
comp.graphics	re looking for polygon convexifier does anyone know where i can find a code which would take concave polygons and break them up into a set of convex polygons o i also would like code or algorithms to do this in fact i am interested in sources for code and or algorithms that convert d graphical objects into other d graphical objects that will render into the same image i e bezier curves to b splines or splines to circular arc segments or b splines to polgons etc michael dillon internet mpdillon halcyon halcyon com c powerhouse fidonet rr armstrong bc v e b voice canada bbs
comp.graphics	wanna scan bit colr picture my bit color dpi fladbed scanner can do the job for you gif tiff pcx bmp interested please write to me imagesyz aol com
comp.graphics	need specs for mpeg mpg file format i am looking for the specs for the mpg files that are floating around the alt binaries pictures groups on the net please lemme know where i can obtain the spec or email it to me thanks much james d murray add sciences sdsu edu
comp.graphics	re easy to translate jpeg code in article rfsqbinnc p shelley u washington edu stusoft hardy u washington edu stuart denman writes does anyone out there have any jpeg decompression code in pretty much any language that i can read and understand i have trouble understanding the jpeg group s code that i got from an ftp site if any one can send me some good code i will appreciate it a lot thanks the problem is that the process is inherently complicated the ijg s code is pretty good if you ask me and i have watched it go through many many cycles of revision try getting a good book on the subject that will explain the algorithms specifically jpeg still image compression standard by pennebaker mitchell vnr isbn btw i presume your comment about good code wasn t meant to sound as offensive as it does david a clunie dclunie pax tpa com au
comp.graphics	ftp site for pov files i know this has been asked a million time but what was the ftp site carrying zips of full pov source files including jack zip and kettle zip i ve once been there but unfortunately lost the address i m in a little hurry with it so please e mail me at jtheinon kruuna helsinki fi thanks jarkko
comp.graphics	re where did the hacker ethic go in article gradyc d ep awe netcom com grady netcom com ef writes where did the hacker ethic go we hackers of the s and are now comfortably employed and supporting families the next generation takes the radical lead now don t look for radicalism among us old ones we re gone and guess who s here in your place please finger xyzzy gnu ai mit edu for information or if you are a mail news only site mail xyzzy gnu ai mit edu with the subject line send finger daniel drucker n sxx xyzzy gnu ai mit edu forever forever my coda und dzd vaxc hofstra edu
comp.graphics	jpeg fif specification i recently got a document describing the jpeg fif jfif file format i was looking thru it but i didn t get the idea how to determine the size of a pic in pixel without decoding the whole image how do you get the height and width of a jpeg in a jfif how do you determine wether it is a color or a greyscale picture i wrote a small tool lsgif for gif that returns the filesize picture size and color resolution by analizing the header chunks the output looks like this bla gif x c i use this lsgif to create index files of my archive and since jpeg are getting more and more popular i would like to have a similar tool for jfif with an output like this bla jpg x c please respond by email because i don t read this news group very often i ll post a summary if it is useful thanx in advance larry lars larry michael mr gif if murphy s law lars itu sun ac za can go wrong it will lsmichae informatik uni erlangen de spec stud at univ of stellenbosch south afrika ham zr db bw grad stud at univ of erlangen nuremberg germany irc pit
comp.graphics	fractint on a speedstar x i m still looking for fractint drivers or a new release which supports the bit color mode of the diamond speedstar x there are some and million colros drivers but none work with the x any help would be appreciated thanks chad new in sea world of ohio chad cipiti shark cipiti bobcat ent ohiou edu encounter make contact af cleveland freenet edu
comp.graphics	re where did the hacker ethic go perhaphs what bill gates and steve jobs are now is the result of the natural evolution of a successful hacker either you make money go to jail lee feldenstein sp or just fade away as oh that s uncle so and so who really likes computers what a computer hacker is and does will change as long as the definition of the word computer continues to change james d murray add sciences sdsu edu
comp.graphics	re is there an ftp achive for usgs terrain data in article c dj wl cs columbia edu olasov cs columbia edu benjamin olasov writes in article apr welchgate welch jhu edu danj welchgate welch jhu edu dan jacobson writes a lot of interesting stuff about gopher deleted if you ve never heard of gopher don t worry it s free and on the net write me a note if you d like information on how to get started best of luck dan jacobson danj welchgate welch jhu edu i ve heard of it but lost the intro posting that came out a while back could you post it again i think it s of general interest ben ben olasov olasov cs columbia edu this is a heavily edited modified version of the gopher faq intended to give people just starting with gopher enough information to get a client and jump into gopher space a complete version can be obtained as described below once you have a gopher client point it at merlot welch jhu edu and welcome to gopher space dan jacobson danj welchgate welch jhu edu common questions and answers about the internet gopher a client server protocol for making a world wide information service with many implementations posted to comp infosystems gopher comp answers and news answers every two weeks the most recent version of this faq can be gotten through gopher or via anonymous ftp rtfm mit edu pub usenet news answers gopher faq those without ftp access should send e mail to mail server rtfm mit edu with send usenet news answers finding sources in the body to find out how to do ftp