Slashdot Mirror

Why the fuck would anyone want to piss on it? Don't like it? Shut up and go to a library.

Or get yourself an Encyclopedia Britannica. Only $1,100.00 new from a reseller.

I'm with you. I better get this out of my system while I have the freedom to:
"Die in a fire fueled by cow crap, you just cost me $7.95 today to take advantage of free speech before it gets shut down for yet more generic security reasons".

There's good hardware out there. You can buy more rugged phones, especially for Nextel's network. The Motorola i530 meets the MIL-STD-810F ruggedness specification. It has all the usual stuff (camera, Bluetooth, web browser, etc.), it's much tougher than most phones, it's about the same price as most phones, and it's not much thicker. Available in black or bright yellow.

Shuttle PCs, the little breadbox units, are very well made mechanically, with good internal rigidity, support for cards on multiple sides, and a liquid cooling heat pipe system that really works in high ambient temperature environments.

You don't have to buy the crap.

As an exercise in DVR-ology I worked out that by 2016 I should be able to buy enough hard drive space for < $500 (today's dollars) to hold all the video I'd want to watch for most of my life online, using a RAID mirror, by just scaling up Moore's Law. OK, so that much data could be un-RAID'ed on an iPod by then.

But that's just me. Given HD camcorders, YouTube and 6 Billion people on earth, rapidly becoming technological, "All the Video in The World" is about 6 billion times larger than what we can do next decade - that's several more decades of Moore's Law to contend with.

Barnes and Noble is selling this book for $31.99, but Amazon.com is only selling it for $26.39!
 
Save yourself $5.60 by buying the book here: Fedora Linux. That's a total savings of 17.51%!

Before there was copyright laws, companies were making buggy whips and butter churns. A. Those things didn't take billions of dollars in R&D to invent a new butter churn and B. Global communication wasn't instant.

And people who did innovate still tried to hide their inventions to keep rivals from stealing them. For example, they wrote their discoveries in code like the engineers described in Brunelleschi's Dome . Being able to file a patent for your invention beats writing it down in a secret glyph with invisible ink and stashing it in a hidden safe, and it also makes the documentation for future generations much simpler.

You are so very wrong. Online retailers are typically much less expensive than brick and mortar as they don't have the overhead of well, brick and mortar. Take a wander around http://www.amazon.com/ and you'll find the majority of the items for sale are much less than you would pay in a store. Oh, and if you live in a state (such as CA) where Amazon does not have a physical presence (e.g. shipping facility), you won't pay sales tax.

I'd much rather stay home, avoid the mobs, keep warm, browse on-line for my holiday gifts and have them wrapped and delivered directly to family members and friends and save money at the time.

Ooohhh! Ooohhh! I want my highly evolved descendants living in the Omega Centauri region a million years ...

Slightly OT, but it will fit your mindset :)

CC.

If you're getting into the kind of issues you mention, I highly recommend the book, "The Design of Everyday Things" by Donald Norman. He uses simple examples like door knobs, stove tops, etc., but all of his work is directly applicable to GUI design. The principles of good design are timeless.

I've been watching the ranking of the black Zune on Amazon's Bestsellers list and it has been dropping like a stone since its introduction. I first saw it in the top 30, then in the top 40, top 50 and now it is down to #93. This doesn't bode well for a new product. If it was really good, it would be climbing up into the top 10. Right now there are 5 iPods in the top 10 list and iPods take up positions 1, 2 and 3. There are three other non-iPod mp3 players in the top 25. At this rate, the Zune will fall from the top 100 list soon.

You could do a lot worse than to check out SWT / JFace / Eclipse RCP Framework.

If you haven't heard of these things:
* SWT is a relatively low-level cross-platform widget toolkit. It is at around the same level as Qt, GTK+, and the GUI bits of MFC.
* JFace adds a layer of abstraction on top of and is built to work with SWT...helping you effectively split your widgets and the data feeding them in nice ways. It also provides a whole lot of convenience classes for doing common things more easily.
* Eclipse RCP (Rich Client Platform) ties all the above together in a huge framework for building any sort of GUI application. This is where you will learn the most about design pattern applications to GUI projects. Eclipse itself is built using this framework.

The learning curve can be a bit steep if just starting, but I haven't come across anything so well put together before. It's full of lots of good ideas.

Even if you choose not to use it (or can't use for good reasons) you will learn a great deal about how to put together a GUI application and how to apply certain patterns and techniques effectively. A few well known "gurus" have been involved in the design and you can be sure that a lot of effort has been put into the architecture and deciding what works and what doesn't in terms of patterns and techniques.

This book is a really great way to get into it all:

http://www.amazon.com/Eclipse-Rich-Client-Platform -Applications/dp/0321334612/sr=1-1/qid=1164595827/ ref=pd_bbs_1/103-2317093-7394243?ie=UTF8&s=books

And for more info ...

http://wiki.eclipse.org/index.php/Rich_Client_Plat form

Wood screws have only been used in construction for the last 500 years, prior to that the screwdriver simply didn't exist. Cite 'One Good Turn' http://www.amazon.com/One-Good-Turn-History-Screwd river/dp/0684867303

It'll be dead and gone if no-one is buying them - which they aren't. When the Zune launched it went straight into the top 10 of Amazons Electronics best seller list http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/electronics. Now, less than two weeks after launch, the black Zune is down to number 83 at time of writing (and dropping each day). The Brown and White Zunes have both dropped out of the top 500. In comparison, there are no fewer than eleven iPods in the top 25 (five of them in the top 10). The Sandisk mp3 players are outselling Zune too. With sales like that, I can't see the Zune surviving long.

The last thing we need is a Britney Spears exercise video game.

I was reading Seven Seasons of Buffy: Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Discuss Their Favorite Television Show, and one of the writers mentioned he'd had a writing teacher say that there are only 2 basic plots--"a stranger comes to town," and "somebody goes on a journey." A fairly pointless oversimplification, but it does fit...

The THIRD-BRAIN project has significant 3 year and 5 year targets."

What peculiar terminology. Well, I certainly hope this plan is actually reasonable, unlike the Chinese Communist five-year planning, which just got millions killed for nothing.

I have several Sony products here which work perfectly well, and always have. One is a VAIO PCG-FXA36 laptop with a 1 GHZ AMD cpu, firewire, 15" screen, tv out, dvd/cdrewriter, and floppy drive, which I bought in december 2001. Another is a DCR-PC9 miniDV cam with nightshot, steadyshot, firewire, usb, memory stick, tv-out, 10x optical zoom, 120x digital zoom. bought at roughly the same time.

Both these items were taken on a long trip to various places, like across the US 3 times by car, around Australia, by car, plane, and train, to Singapore, Japan, New Zealand, where they were subjected to extremes of temperature, humidity, vibration stresses, and rain. They both operated flawlessly throughout that trip (duration 9 months) and I used the camera to capture video which was then transferred to the laptop, edited, and uploaded to my website as a kind of travel "blog" (the word didn't exist back then).

Since then they have continued to work flawlessly, and I have added a bullet cam and a LANC to the DV-cam so I can take video via a remote control whilst driving. Also, I have a Garmin sat nav which when connected to the laptop and running Infomap navigator I can plot and navigate routes full screen when driving. I am working on combining the two inputs (video and gps) to create a dbase that allows you to select a route and see the actual road that route consists of. Google Maps would be a nice interface.

The laptop has only one flaw now, and that is because while I was pissed I dropped it, and it landed on the wireless pcmcia card, breaking the connector right off the motherboard. I removed the broken bits to stop them rattling and possibly causing shorts and the laptop continues to run as well as it ever did.

So you may be correct when you diss Sony for their quality these days, but my Sony gear, which is coming up on 5 years old, is perfectly functioning. Of course the items mentioned weren't cheap to buy ($1600 laptop, $1400 DV-cam) but maybe if you pay for the higher spec, you actually get a higher spec of components, not just capability, and also better reliability. Which leads me to think that maybe Sony these days is trying to compete on price, which leads to lower spec equipment. I can't say for sure because I don't need to replace the items I have, they still work !

I have several Sony products here which work perfectly well, and always have. One is a VAIO PCG-FXA36 laptop with a 1 GHZ AMD cpu, firewire, 15" screen, tv out, dvd/cdrewriter, and floppy drive, which I bought in december 2001. Another is a DCR-PC9 miniDV cam with nightshot, steadyshot, firewire, usb, memory stick, tv-out, 10x optical zoom, 120x digital zoom. bought at roughly the same time.

Both these items were taken on a long trip to various places, like across the US 3 times by car, around Australia, by car, plane, and train, to Singapore, Japan, New Zealand, where they were subjected to extremes of temperature, humidity, vibration stresses, and rain. They both operated flawlessly throughout that trip (duration 9 months) and I used the camera to capture video which was then transferred to the laptop, edited, and uploaded to my website as a kind of travel "blog" (the word didn't exist back then).

Since then they have continued to work flawlessly, and I have added a bullet cam and a LANC to the DV-cam so I can take video via a remote control whilst driving. Also, I have a Garmin sat nav which when connected to the laptop and running Infomap navigator I can plot and navigate routes full screen when driving. I am working on combining the two inputs (video and gps) to create a dbase that allows you to select a route and see the actual road that route consists of. Google Maps would be a nice interface.

The laptop has only one flaw now, and that is because while I was pissed I dropped it, and it landed on the wireless pcmcia card, breaking the connector right off the motherboard. I removed the broken bits to stop them rattling and possibly causing shorts and the laptop continues to run as well as it ever did.

So you may be correct when you diss Sony for their quality these days, but my Sony gear, which is coming up on 5 years old, is perfectly functioning. Of course the items mentioned weren't cheap to buy ($1600 laptop, $1400 DV-cam) but maybe if you pay for the higher spec, you actually get a higher spec of components, not just capability, and also better reliability. Which leads me to think that maybe Sony these days is trying to compete on price, which leads to lower spec equipment. I can't say for sure because I don't need to replace the items I have, they still work !

I think the Book I read is Sleep Thieves by Stanley Coren. I read it back in the 90s. I was thinking closer to the early 90s than 1996, but 1996 actually seems about right. Mainly because I remember not having started to work in IT yet when I read the book and 1997 is when I started.

You are the first person I have seen claim they got the code. I didn't believe anyone did until now, but that's only because I also was able to make it to the question link...

...but when I answered the question (19 + 6), it turned me down. It was incredibly frustrating, because I was under the impression that I had already received a claim code (this is what the buying tips page said), and it was waiting for me to answer that question.


Screenshots: (1) The question | (2) The denial

Don't forget the shameless self-promotion that started this all. Use a referral link like this... http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect-home/pr ime1-20

Which leads me to think: was this a beta test for this EC2 system? I mean, there's no better bait for the millions of youngsters out there than a cheap top-o-the-line console. What better way to stress test your system than to have 100s of 1000s of people hit your site at the same time? If Amazon has logged the traffic data (and they'd be incredibly stupid not to), it would be a gold mine for their engineers. Eventually expect them to offer just such a service which can handle the such spikes, and pitch it to the Best Buys and Walmarts of the the world.

here evil grin

Time and again research has shown that people think of more new ideas on their own than they do in a group. The false belief that people are more creative in groups has been dubbed by psychologists the "illusion of group of productivity". But why does this illusion persist?

Putin was behind it.

You know this for a fact? How?

Certainly, it's possible...but there's no proof. Moreover, I fail to see how Litvinenko's very public death would benefit Putin. The old KGB apparat splintered into many pieces after the demise of the USSR. Some of them work for the present Russian government, some are self-employed, and some work for...other organizations. It's possible that Litvinenko's poking around was getting close to someone in the "Russian Mafia" who had the means to pull this off, or the motive may be something as banal as a personal grudge held by an ex-subordinate. Litvinenko certainly flouted one of the basic rules for enjoying a long life: avoid making enemies whenever possible. He not only had many enemies—his enemies were dangerous.

It does seem likely to me that Litvinenko's death can be attributed to the ex-KGB, if for no other reason than that they are one of the few organizations that would have had quantities of exotic poisons stashed away. The problem is which faction or members of the ex-KGB might be responsible. Russian mafia? Rogue clique within the present Russian secret police org? An old boy (or a whole pissed-off department of the defunct KGB) pulling in some favors and activating connections to finally get even? Insufficient facts, I'm afraid.

You might want to pick up Litvinenko's book: Blowing up Russia : Terror from Within.

Now if you're looking for another distinction that's not captured by these words - and perhaps this is what you're getting at - there are at least two types of agnostics: those who aren't sure whether there's no God, and those who aren't sure whether there are any gods. I.e., you can be agnostic and still think, "Well if there is a God, it's (probably) the Christian God." Such people might describe themselves as being "Christian agnostic". (I added the word "probably" because I think even self-described "Christian agnostics" might be willing to entertain the idea that it's a single God, but not necessarilyl the God of the Old and/or New Testaments.

Yea, a few weeks ago I read a good book on this, The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels, which she starts with the Nag Hammadi or Gospel of Thomas.

Now if you're looking for another distinction that's not captured by these words - and perhaps this is what you're getting at - there are at least two types of agnostics: those who aren't sure whether there's no God, and those who aren't sure whether there are any gods. I.e., you can be agnostic and still think, "Well if there is a God, it's (probably) the Christian God." Such people might describe themselves as being "Christian agnostic". (I added the word "probably" because I think even self-described "Christian agnostics" might be willing to entertain the idea that it's a single God, but not necessarilyl the God of the Old and/or New Testaments.

Yea, a few weeks ago I read a good book on this, The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels, which she starts with the Nag Hammadi or Gospel of Thomas.

The last work of Mandelbort (the 'fractals' father) 'The (Mis)behaviour of markets' http://www.amazon.com/Misbehavior-Markets-Benoit-M andelbrot/dp/0465043550/ is quite interesting.
Sigh, markets are chaotic, much more chaotic than current market analisis states.

Upper management loves stats; give them stats.

And here's where to get them.

This book, Excellence by Design, came out of the MIT School of Architecture and Planning's Space Planning and Organization Research Group (SPORG), and links the use of space in offices to productivity, within the domain of the kind of work being carried out.

Yes. I remember reading about a study by IBM (?) that it made a surprisingly large difference. I can't find the study itself right now though, but I read it in this book:

http://www.amazon.com/Peopleware-Productive-Projec ts-Teams-Ed/dp/0932633439

Read Peopleware and offer it to your manager for Christmas, this book is the bible about productivity in IT.

It is extensively implemented at Google (and Microsoft for instance) by letting each developer have his own desk - with the door shut - or have a small desk with 2 to 4 people inside, in order to improve focus as it is critical developers doesn't lose focus too often as it is very easy to do when you work in a open space.

A typical developer needs 15 minutes to get into the "mental flow" of productive work, so even if he is disturbed for only 3 minutes, he will really lose about 15+3 minutes because of the delay of being in the right/productive "mental flow" again.

Additionnaly this book is all about employee happiness == employee productivity.

Really, we need a new word, for news which isn't functional information, but just amusing/entertaining.

Filler

I actually enjoyed reading the article as I only recently became aware of the device. BT named a song after it on his new album, This Binary Universe.

Actually, Dawkins talks about the millions of Christians who don't oppose science all the time.

You obviously don't read many of his books (such as the latest one, The God Delusion), nor listen to many of his speeches (most of which can be found on YouTube or at RichardDawkins.net), because Dawkins has made that seemingly benign group of people the target of many of his criticisms.

In The God Delusion, Dawkins examines how he thinks these people are able to compartmentalize their lives in such a way that makes belief in God possible while also having a natural and healthy skepticism about other, non-religious claims. For instance, most people scoff at the idea that idea that there should be evidence of God's existance before they believe in him, yet would demand just such evidence if I were to claim I had a dragon in my garage.

While Dawkins certainly loves picking the low hanging fruit (the right-wing religious wackos), he is more than happy to address what he views as the hypocritical moderates. In fact, he has said numerous times that he almost has more respect for people who are steadfast in their religious beliefs than those who are willing to blend modern life with religious dogma.

Here's a link to a collection that has it on Amazon. It is now on my wishlist ;)

First, have you seen or are you subtly referring to Gattaca? Many of your ideas and concepts make appearances in this movie. If you haven't seen it, I'm sure that you'll be interested.

Of course, this movie involves a pre-screening genetic "defects". Of course, this concept is a very difficult debate topic, even without religious beliefs involved.

Start with the basics, what is a genetic "defect"? Could some set of combined genetic defects cause a cancellation and result in a "genetic advantage"? It's neat that we can identify certain congenital conditions (Down Syndrome), but this is far from absolute. This DNA thing is an insanely complicated machine of which we know very little.

If we harness the power of genetic modification, how successful will we be? Heck, again with the difficult words, what would be "success"?

You see the problem with this type of pre-selection lies solely in our ability to define our roles and goals (sound like a Covey book). By assuming the role of "genetic engineers", we are effectively saying that "we know what is best" or "we know what is better".

The problem is, I don't think that we do. How are we, as a society, going to agree on the genetic engineering that counts as better? We can barely agree on the definition of marriage (see same-sex laws), how are we going to agree on the definition of "better for humanity"?

Example: We've identified a child to be born with six fingers on each hand. Is this better for humanity? Should we remove the gene b/c of the social stigma this child will undergo? Should we consider 5-fingered humans to be lesser because of the advantages of 6-fingered humans? Who decides? Can the parents pick (it's their kid), or does the state have legislation rights (it's our kid)?

Even if we only want to "remove genetic defects", we're wading in a very dangerous quagmire. Our altruistic, slightly eugenic, goal is actually mired in dangers of which we know very little.

It doesn't really matter; the point was that programmers -- engineers in general, really -- prefer knobs and tunables and the general public doesn't. The general public will even pay more for simplicity; look how well AOL did, or the original iPod (when it was still selling at a big premium).

In software a lot of options does in fact confuse users; it doesn't take long handling customer support calls to figure this out. It pays huge dividends to build the simplest interface you possibly can without sacrificing functionality.

Apple does well with this; people point to their small market share relative to the whole PC market and say "but people usually buy PCs" and that's true, for a bunch of reasons, but Apple manages to pull price premiums that make the other PC vendors drool -- and do so even though they have a much more restricted application pool to draw users with.

Anyway if you want to know more about this subject I strongly recommend The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman. It's not only informative, it's even a good read.

I am 54 years old. 44 years ago, I remeber walking home from midnight mass in a blizzard. This was in NY City, and garbage trucks had to pile snow and the end of the streets since there was no where to plow it all. We had snow mountains for a month or so. All of this is anecdotal, and certainly not a "geological" time period.

And yet, I have noticed changes which seem to be born out by hard data that something is happening over a period of 29 years, namely that in certain key areas, such as Alaska in the western hemisphere, things seem to be warming significantly.

While I don't think anyone here is saying it's still okay to buy a Hummer because CO2 cannot be proven as yet to increase global warming, I think we need to take a really hard look at what we can do planetwide to decrease CO2 emissions at the very least.

Other comments in this thread sarcastically decry the "religion" of global warming. Let's see, I drive a Prius, have replaced all light bulbs in my house with low energy flourescents, and hope to be trained in the Climate Project's slide show that was the basis for "An Inconvenient Truth." Give me that old time religion...

It is well known amongst the more experienced software developers out there that all user input to ANY software system should be considered suspect and therefore must be checked for invalid inputs, boundary, and special cases. The solution has been around for decades, but it is really surprising how many developers out there have NOT heard of regular expressions or do not know how to properly use them. There are some cases, usually when widely variant free-form input is required, that are difficult to use with regular expresssions, but for the most part they have proven to be remarkably effective in my own experience and I use them regularly (pun intended) in my website and application development. If you have not gotten in on the regular expression game then consider picking up the O'Reilly Mastering Regular Expressions book or visiting Regular-Expressions.info before building your next project. The project you save might be your own!

You might reply with something about free will, but that's garbage. If you believe in heaven, then you believe in a perfect place, free of sin. Why didn't god create heaven on earth to start with, if he loved his people?

Heaven's not Heaven if it has people who don't want to be there, is it?

Also, isn't that basically what he did with the Garden? No problems, life of leisure. But he gave them the option of leaving and making it on their own if they so desired. Which they chose. The Apple was nothing more than a signifier of their choice.

About the free will thing, there's a book I've been meaning to finish: Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal. One thing I think is interesting in it is just how utterly annoying the Angels are. They are extremely literal and seem kind of dumb. But isn't this inevitable in a creature with no free will? How many SciFi stories are there where someone invents a world filled with others who conform to the creator's desire, and how hollow, empty and tragic that world necessarily turns out?

Are you sure there is no value in creating free will?

Peace be with you,
-jimbo

It isn't the theoretical aspects of Marx that are important so much as the practical. In practice, off-shoots of Marxist ideology were responsible for killing approximately 100,000,000 people in the last 100 years. Pound for pound, Marx's papers may be the most toxic substance ever created by mankind. I don't think that any Communist country has lasted more than 80 years yet. They generally implode, but only after causing almost untold misery and death. If we are fortunate, in the future Marx's theories will not only be unchallenged and unchanged, but also unused.

It isn't the theoretical aspects of Marx that are important so much as the practical. In practice, off-shoots of Marxist ideology were responsible for killing approximately 100,000,000 people in the last 100 years. Pound for pound, Marx's papers may be the most toxic substance ever created by mankind. I don't think that any Communist country has lasted more than 80 years yet. They generally implode, but only after causing almost untold misery and death. If we are fortunate, in the future Marx's theories will not only be unchallenged and unchanged, but also unused.

Barnes and Noble is selling this book for $19.99, but Amazon.com is only selling it for $16.49!

Save yourself $3.50 by buying the book here: In Search of Stupidity. That's a total savings of 17.51%!

Sounds interesting. I see some drawbacks, however. One would be that you may wake up looking like Yahoo Serious. The other drawback is that these shirts could easily become mandatory at the office, offering a quick 'encouraging' jolt to the system whenever productivity drops...

Businesses typically have volume licensing agreements that work out far cheaper.

Most of my customers are small business with fewer than 10 employees, so many of them are not eligible for big volume discounts (my nonprofit customers get MS products cheaply though). I was cabling a collision repair customer's shop yesterday and he had four MS Office SBE packages on his desk that he had purchased the previous day from Sam's Club. Why he didn't purchase OEM Versions from us is beyond me, since I ended up installing the software and will probably also end up supporting it. One of the reasons that he bought the Office suites is that it was in the "System Requirements" for his industry-specific software.

Of the small number of home users who do buy it separately, most are smart enough to buy an upgrade rather than a new product, having established a chain of previously licensed software back to the dawn of time.

Lol...probably true. However, upgrades are not that much cheaper, for example: http://www.samsclub.com/shopping/search.do?searcht ype=simple&catg=5678&simplesearchfor=Microsoft+Off ice&simpleitemtype=&x=0&y=0

What would be smarter--though not necessarily legal--is to buy a Teacher & Students Edition off the intarweb for next to nothing http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Office-Student-Tea cher-Macintosh/dp/B0001WN16M.

• If I run a server I also have a static IP
  
• They can charge for some of the services, with a pricing model similar to the Amazon EC2. I.e. 1$ per Gygabyte, .10 per hour CPU, .10 per hour static IP
  
• I guess they would charge for those who run the server option
  
• The web & db scale automatically
  
• Bandwidth is free within the provider's environment - this is very interesting for Google, they could absorve all the Web into their datacenters.
  

To the best of my knowledge, scholars of the Hebrew language do not consider the text of Genesis chapter one to be poetry, but rather documentary.

Messed up that URL. Here it is again:

The Bible as it Was

When Man and Dinosaur Walked in Paluxy

Following out the implications of the Genesis account of Creation, young-earth creationists claim that dinosaurs and humans lived together on the earth at the same time. Of course evolutionary theorists think that is true as well in the sense that contemporary birds are likely the descendants of and are classified in the same taxonomic group as the dinosaurs. But that is not what creationists have in mind. YECs hold that the picture of cavemen living in the Lost World with T-Rex and the other terrible lizards is no mere schoolchild's or Hollywood fantasy, and that the Bible tells us so.

Dinosaurs, they claim, are mentioned in the Bible as the Behemoth and the Leviathan. Institute for Creation Research (ICR) scientists say that the former was probably a dinosaur because of its Scriptural description. They give away posters of a seated man observing what appears to be an Apatosaurus with the scriptural passage from Job: "Behold now behemoth, which I made with thee; he eateth grass as an ox. Lo now, his strength is in his loins, and his force is in the navel of his belly. He moveth his tail like a cedar: the sinews of his stones are wrapped together" (40:15-17). At the Museum of Creation and Earth History, our guide drew the children's attention to the phrase "he moveth his tail like a cedar," noting that no animal we know of besides dinosaurs had a tail so large. Scholars of biblical Hebrew would have to stifle a chuckle if they heard this exegesis, for the King James translation utilizes the term "tail" as a common euphemism for the male genital member. Stephen Mitchell's authoritative translation of the book of Job removes the linguistic fig-leaf and renders the passage somewhat differently: "Look now: the Beast that I made: he eats grass like a bull. Look: the power in his thighs, the pulsing sinews of his belly. His penis stiffens like a pine; his testicles bulge with vigor."

Obviously, this is not the "proof text" that it might have appeared to be on its face. Similarly, the supposed physical evidence that creationists have pointed to that humans and dinosaurs lived contemporaneously has proven to be not quite what they purported it to be.

When Man and Dinosaur Walked in Paluxy

Following out the implications of the Genesis account of Creation, young-earth creationists claim that dinosaurs and humans lived together on the earth at the same time. Of course evolutionary theorists think that is true as well in the sense that contemporary birds are likely the descendants of and are classified in the same taxonomic group as the dinosaurs. But that is not what creationists have in mind. YECs hold that the picture of cavemen living in the Lost World with T-Rex and the other terrible lizards is no mere schoolchild's or Hollywood fantasy, and that the Bible tells us so.

Dinosaurs, they claim, are mentioned in the Bible as the Behemoth and the Leviathan. Institute for Creation Research (ICR) scientists say that the former was probably a dinosaur because of its Scriptural description. They give away posters of a seated man observing what appears to be an Apatosaurus with the scriptural passage from Job: "Behold now behemoth, which I made with thee; he eateth grass as an ox. Lo now, his strength is in his loins, and his force is in the navel of his belly. He moveth his tail like a cedar: the sinews of his stones are wrapped together" (40:15-17). At the Museum of Creation and Earth History, our guide drew the children's attention to the phrase "he moveth his tail like a cedar," noting that no animal we know of besides dinosaurs had a tail so large. Scholars of biblical Hebrew would have to stifle a chuckle if they heard this exegesis, for the King James translation utilizes the term "tail" as a common euphemism for the male genital member. Stephen Mitchell's authoritative translation of the book of Job removes the linguistic fig-leaf and renders the passage somewhat differently: "Look now: the Beast that I made: he eats grass like a bull. Look: the power in his thighs, the pulsing sinews of his belly. His penis stiffens like a pine; his testicles bulge with vigor."

Obviously, this is not the "proof text" that it might have appeared to be on its face. Similarly, the supposed physical evidence that creationists have pointed to that humans and dinosaurs lived contemporaneously has proven to be not quite what they purported it to be.

I'm quite sure that most of these bastards had/have a religion, so while I agree with your point that religion has been used and abused to murder in its name, that does not mean that the opposite of religion (atheism) is the true cause, nor does the above rant gives any argument why and how atheism leads to mass murder.

Communism in most countries has been militantly atheistic, engaging in harsh suppression of religion and programs for the spread of militant atheism. The Soviets even established an All-Union League of the Godless and museums of atheism in former churches. (North Korea still executes Christians.) At the same time, Communism was responsible for killing about 100,000,000 people in the last century. There were even incidents of cannibalism in the People's Republic of China to prove your loyalty to the party, literally eating the rich. The brutality of communism was one that repeated itself from country to country to country. Stalin outdid Hitler in body count, and Mao dwarfed Stalin. As a percentage of his country, Pol Pot outdid Mao. The vile regime of North Korea is still engaged in horror after horror after horror.

How is that that Communism, allegedly founded on a scientific basis, stressing rationality and scientific though, with principles regarded as altruistic (from each according to his ability to each according to his need), repeatedly produced such carnage and such leaders? Do you think it is possible that there is a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of man at work there?