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Obviously, however this is part of that religion, and the little fact that this religion is worse than nazism ... oh well "freedom of religion" is the highest good, right ? Well then you dress up killing others as a religion and you get at it !

But it gets worse : from its very, very beginning islam ("repression" literally) was already killing like this.

Google "asma bint marwan". Read about the "prophet" (of peace ?) sending out murderers in the night killing a mother in her tent, who fell asleep with her child on her chest. Needless to say, the child didn't survive islam's killer either.

You remember the story of Jesus and the woman that got brought before him, convicted to death because some men thought she had cheated, but they were not sure about killing her. Well "repression" (islam) has the same story :

Obviously they stoned the woman to death, and when one of the muslims regretted his actions, stood with her and shielded her with his body, they stoned him to death too

Don't forget he people. You are clearly "opressing people" if you don't let them do this to people. If things like this makes you think ill about islam, clearly you're a racist :

After all : they're "all the same" these religions. "It's all the same" ... except noone can ever seem to be able to point to an instance when Jesus, Buddha, Krishna, Joseph Smith, of even L.Ron Hubbard sending out murderers to advance their religion.

And now, for everyone's enjoyment. Islam killed a billion people in a thousand years. Communism killed a hundred million in less than 100 years.

So what do "progressives" do ? They progress ... they combine the two. Communism, now in limited edition with extra prophets ... because not enough people died last time !

"Yeah Right" - Sarcasm Recognition for Spoken Dialogue Systems

You're toast, man!

I use jungledisk on multiple systems running linux not only for backup but also to keep my svn versioned data synced on all systems. If I loose my laptop, I don't have to worry of data loss. The best part is that it is very affordable and hence I don't have to beg USC's IT dept every year to allocate more storage space. I pay about 70 cents a month to AWS :-).

BSD. http://sophieproject.cntv.usc.edu/about/license

I'd mod you RTFA, but instead I'll hold your hand.

From the website, the user docs for Sophie 1.0.3

The fact that the type of cloning mentioned in this article does not necessarily require cracking does not mean that it was not done or not doable. Quite the contrary. These stories have been all over the internet. First, a biometric passport issued by the Dutch government was cracked in under 2 hours (and read from a distance, by the way). An article about that was linked to right here on Slashdot:

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/08/07/0214220

This type of passport meets international standards and is accepted by the UK and the rest of the EU, as well as the US. In fact these are the standards that the United States insisted upon and uses itself. Here is another article about that (pdf):

http://www-scf.usc.edu/~sheetals/publications/RFID_epassport.pdf

And finally, if you do not believe that RFID chips that ARE IN USE in the United States are crackable, yet meet the standards of International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) -- which is the relevant standards body here -- here is yet another article explaining it:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2006/nov/17/news.homeaffairs

There are many, many articles out there about this, but these three should be enough to convince a reasonable person. Your claim that I don't know what I am talking about won't wash. It was done. It is demonstrable and provable.

The problem here is that YOU are confusing the encryption itself with the implementation. If the implementation is poor (as it is in the passports), any encryption is crackable. The UK passports that were cracked used 3DES. Big deal! They are so poorly implemented that they WERE cracked, and quite easily. So take off your own tinfoil blinders, and take a real look around you. Obviously you do not understand as much about this subject as you think. So go learn something yourself, before making such smug smart-assed remarks to other people.

Okay let me put it into pieces your mind can actually comprehend.

You claim all religions are the same. Muslims approve raping female prisoners, because they got direct permission for this from their paedophile prophet. In fact, God actually changed his mind explicitly to allow raping captive women, who are kidnapped into slavery by that capture, according to islam (link points to the primary source). more complete secondary source.

You claim "they're all the same". So let's see you pointing out in the new testament (or wherever in the bible) that Christians approve of making sex-slaves out of war captives, and rape those women against their will (hint you want to search exodus, if you're looking looking for a war story involving women, however you're not going to find anything nearly as bad as the above islamic stuff).

So let's have it ... put up or shut up. You claim moral equivalence, I bring up a moral issue, now you provide the equivalent.

Is this short enough for you ? Guess we'll know soon enough.

I am not saying anyone, or any ideology is without fault. I am merely stating facts about a specific religion. Please don't imply things I didn't say. Here's what I am saying, with references, even if they are low-quality references at best.

Everyone knows that the prophet is to islam what Jesus Christ is for christianity. For Christians, the question is "what would Jesus do ?" for muslims the question is "what would the prophet do ?" and the answers are somewhat ... different than those you're used to from christians :

the prophet raped a minor girl, fact (involuntary sex, whether within marriage or not is rape, especially if the girl did not know about the marriage)
he raided caravans, stealing, raping and kidnapping people into slavery, fact (none of these sources are very good themselves, please look up the primary sources yourself)
he comitted SEVERAL religious massacres, fact

Jihad means "holy war". Or at least that's what it meant from the 7th to the late 20th century, in every muslim source. The massacres in arabia, the muslim massacres that eradicated the blacks from north africa, and the utterly massive massacre muslim comitted in India are referred to, in any muslim historical source as "jihads". Whatever else jihad means, clearly to muslims it includes these massacres, so please have your translation include that fact. I realise calling jihad "holy war", with massacre implied, that that is very politically incorrect, but that IS what it means.

Just like "islam" means "submission" yes, but it very VERY strongly implies militarily enforced submission, and certainly does not mean voluntary submission. You are a muslim if you're militarily dominated by islam, if your family does that for example, not if you "believe". Most muslims don't believe, not in the sense that they have faith in God (if you read the quran you'll understand why faith in god is nonexistent in islam, you see allah is a vindictive asshole and the prophet even more, they kill for no reason at all, criminally insane and dangerous individuals, even by muslim standards, and certainly nothing like Jesus Christ in the new testament)

Read the primary sources. Draw your own conclusions. E.g.

When asked whether his soldiers should or should not rape female captives in war, the prophet answered, wait, let me just point you to the source and have you answer this yourself

http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/fundamentals/hadithsunnah/muslim/008.smt.html#008.3432

He said that, not only was raping them okay, but if they were impregnated, that would not matter.

Now my challenge to you, point me to the section of the new testament were Jesus orders his soldiers to rape captive women. Oh you can't ? Well well, isn't that interesting ?

Exactly. Luckily, people are working on devices that don't require glasses.

Spore is intended as a huge, open-ended game with user-created content and lots of gameplay "meat": the kind of game that should be lasting 5 or 10 years.

Sadly, Spore does not come anywhere close to this. The best parts of the game are the Cell stage and Creature Creator... and that's not really saying a lot. [TL;DR version of this review at bottom.]

First off, the cell stage plays almost exactly like flOw, so if you've ever played that game, you already know what this is like. You can try it out here for free.

Next is the Creature stage. You design your creature using very limited DNA points, and the most basic body parts, and then you go out into the world. This stage consists of avoiding any creatures tougher than you [Which is most of them.] and befriending or killing any creatures weaker than you, then doing this while looking for bones laying around on the ground. [Finding bones gives you additional bodyparts in the creature creator.] Killing creatures consists of clicking on them until they die. Befriending creatures consists of repeating a song, dance, charm or other emote, and doing it several times in a row. If your creature sucks at social things, you won't be able to befriend much of anything. Basically this stage is grind grind grind grind to find bones and kill things/befriend things for DNA points until you have the parts you want, and the brainpower needed to advance to the next stage.

After the creature stage comes the Tribal stage. Here you can change the outfits on your creatures to add to their gathering, hunting, or social skills. You spawn more creatures out of a hut, up to a maximum of 12 [once you've conquered a couple other tribes.] Once again, you can do two things: Conquer a tribe or befriend them. Befriending them is essentially the same as in the creature stage, except that you need to build musical buildings to give your creatures access to musical instruments so they can repeat what music the other tribe plays. The combat is essentially summed up as: click on an enemy and wait until he dies. If you die, respawn more creatures at your hut and do it again. There are no strategies involved beyond equipping your creatures with different weapons. [Axes, torches, or spears.] The difference between these weapons is pretty negligible, and don't really add to any strategies or tactics.

Once you've befriended/killed 5 other tribes, you move onto the Civilizations stage. Here you have a city where you add a couple buildings to change how happy your citizens are, or how much money you produce. You can also add turrets. You are also given 1 type of unit for each unit type, for a grand total of 3 different units. You use these to capture spice mines around the planet, or other cities. You can capture a city economically, religiously, or militarily. Economics involves buying the city out, religion you target unhappy cities and convert them, and with military you right click on a city and select 'capture city'. That's really about all there is to this stage. The AI generally doesn't defend itself.

Finally you get to the space stage. You're given a spaceship and told to go plant a colony on another planet. This stage has the most gameplay in the game, by far. But it has one incredibly annoying drawback: Every 3-5 minutes, [Literally. Sometimes even more often - I used a watch.] you will have one of your colonies attacked by pirates, unfriendly aliens, Grox, or you'll have to go and deal with ecological disasters on friendly alien planets. Typically the game tries to force you to do several of these all at once. I found myself going to an allied planet to stop an ecological disaster, only to find that my homeworld and colony are under attack by aliens. This stage would be fun if it weren't for these kinds of constant annoyances. Overall the gameplay for the space stage is similar to Star Control, though in my opi

A couple of items of interest displayed at Siggraph this year as well which I think have potential.

Microsoft's come up with a way of painting objects onto an object extracted from a video, then reinserted to the video that remains accurate when the camera angle's changed. Their research paper's called Unwrap Mosaics, and you can see a video on Youtube here (higher quality video on the reseach page).

A company called Image Metrics have made a video with actress Emily O'Brien, using Light Stage technology from USC's Institute of Creative Technologies (an example of this is on a Google presentation called New Techniques for Rendering Human Performances) to create a realistic animated virtual face, that has convinced an editor on VFXWorld that they've passed the uncanny valley. Article is here.

I've been thinking that it was only a matter of time until editing video would become similar to editing photos, I just though it would take a lot more time, but everything is already here. They can even create realistic hair based on photos, just think what technology we'll have in the next decade, this could be in our homes by then.

BINGO! http://isd.usc.edu/~karl/Bingo/ Woot, I win!

Meanings of words change over time. English has changed a LOT since the days of Chaucer.

As it is I think modern translations like NIV make a good effort of translating the Hebrew etc to "Modern English", when the meaning is uncertain most NIV Bibles do note it, and often also provide possible translations/interpretations.

Furthermore, whether it's in NIV or KJV the meaning of many verses in the Bible appear to be easily translated.

For example: John 13:34-35

http://www.greeknewtestament.com/B43C013.htm

NIV:
34 "A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.
35 By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another."

KJV:
34 A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.
35 By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.

Alternative link:
NIV: http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=john%2013:34-35&version=31
KJV: http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=john%2013:34-35&version=9

I can't read Greek but as far as I can tell, looking at those verses and other verses the "popular standard" English translations do not diverge significantly in meaning. Perhaps in some translations the emphasis is different.

Of course there are some "translations" that tend to add a lot more words (and even sentences) that very likely aren't in the original - like The Message and The Amplified Bible, but I regard those as rather dubious.

Most Christians thus have no qualms about relying on the "popular standard" translations (NIV, KJV, ASV).

If you want a religion where followers are supposed to only read their holy book in the original language, check out Islam. Most muslims don't really know what the Koran/Quran says - they think it is beyond them. So they rely on some imam to tell them (who often isn't that good at Arabic or knowledgeable about the Koran and the context of various verses).

That to me is a far worse scenario.

Translations appear to be discouraged in many Islamic countries. Maybe they are afraid of muslims finding out more about their own religion?

After all, Yusman Roy, a muslim preacher in Indonesia was jailed after he led his fellow muslims in prayer/worship in both Indonesian and Arabic instead of only Arabic. Yusman Roy thought that his fellow Indonesians should understand what they were saying in their prayers/worship to God.

So I wonder if the following page is blocked in some muslim countries:
http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/quran/001.qmt.html

Letting people read good translations of what they are supposed to believe is a good thing.

From Islamic "Hadith Bukhari":
I heard Allah's Apostle saying, "Whoever takes seven 'Ajwa (dates) in the morning will not be effected by magic or poison on that day."
http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/fundamentals/hadithsunnah/bukhari/071.sbt.html#007.071.671

From "Hadith Qudsi"

    Hadith Qudsi 35:

        On the authority of Abu Hurayrah (may Allah be pleased with him), who said that the Messenger of Allah (PBUH) said:
        Our Lord (glorified and exalted be He) descends each night to the earth's sky when there remains the final third of the night, and He says: Who is saying a prayer to Me that I may answer it? Who is asking something of Me that I may give it him? Who is asking forgiveness of Me that I may forgive him?

        It was related by al-Bukhari (also by Muslim, Malik, at-Tirmidhi and Abu Dawud).

        In a version by Muslim the Hadith ends with the words: "And thus He continues till [the light of] dawn shines."

Sooo, the earth is categorically flat, eating dates will save you from cyanide, and the earth was created before the universe was...

Favorable to science. Yeah, right. How low can P.C. go, anyway?

kidnapping kids, wives and old people and executing them en masse in hopes of demoralizing an enemy, have been normal features of muslim conquests everywhere.

Go evidence for that? Most historical texts I read talk about the tolerance of Muslims in the lands they aquired. And killing of women, children or elderly in war is directly forbidden, see this excrept from a hadith by prophet Muhammad(source):

"I advise you ten things: Do not kill women or children or an aged, infirm person. Do not cut down fruit-bearing trees. Do not destroy an inhabited place. Do not slaughter sheep or camels except for food. Do not burn bees and do not scatter them. Do not steal from the booty, and do not be cowardly."

when the muslim caliph ordered the library of alexandria burnt down

I doubt this. And multiple historians dismiss it as a hoax.Again, got evidence?

From the YouTube page (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKCUGQ-uo8c): "Added: August 31, 2007"

Good to see Slashdot is up to date and timely as always...

For much more detail and higher-res video / images, go to:

http://gl.ict.usc.edu/Research/3DDisplay/

Abandon the rule of law, honour and integrity and you are the enemy and you become the terrorists.

That's stupid. The terrorists are doing exactly what the prophet of a certain religion did.

They did not -at all- abandon the rule of law - quite the opposite. You will find the terrorists law a *lot* stricter than the current American law.

Honour and integrity are Christian concepts (at least that's how they were passed into America in the first place). If you're a muslim, you don't have them.

Honour in islam is nothing personal. You can do nothing to gain honor, you can only do things to lose it (especially as a woman). It has nothing to do with personal strength of character.

And integrity. I'll just let muhammad do the talking about integrity in islam. Muhammad the prophet actually states that he lies and doesn't respect promises :

'By Allah, and Allah willing, if I take an oath and later find something else better than that. then I do what is better and expiate my oath.' (Sahih Bukhari 7:67:427, but a trivial search for only these words immediately yields over 20 references)

Well in islam it isn't a sin to lie and go back on promises, in fact it's a virtue :
http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/fundamentals/hadithsunnah/muslim/015.smt.html#015.4052

Do you seriously think "the rule of law" is the problem with the terrorists ? Sure they don't follow their own laws, but neither did their prophet.

Islam, the name says it by itself, means military domination in arabic (submission would be astaslama). The first and foremost duty of any muslim is "hisbah". Which can be translated into forcing sharia onto others, without violence should be considered, but with violence is the normal option.

The islamic prophet fought over 11 wars. Even muslims only claim a single one of them to be defensive.

And this is how he fought : sending out killers in the night, murdering a mother in front of her children :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asma_bint_Marwan

Do you seriously think anything about the behavior of these terrorists violates any reasonable interpretation of islam ? (besides islam is meant literally, according to quran 3:7, and so killing means killing, and every muslim is a slave with orders to kill (9:111 in the quran)).

The enemy is not terrorism, the enemy is islam. Not muslims, they can be saved (I don't mean converted, I mean they don't have to be killed), but islam has to die if you want to stop terror.

Here it is in 3 common english translations :

http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/quran/008.qmt.html#008.055

Here are the (primary) rules specified for interpreting said statement. They are quite clear :

http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/quran/003.qmt.html#003.007

Needless to say the 8:55 statement is not allegorical (check for yourself and compare, for example, with the later chapters). So the verse is "of fundamental meaning" "clear" and "decisive". In any interpretation it is forbidden to go seek "hidden meanings", nor is any indirection allowed.

Here is one of the official "guides" for interpreting said statement. It, again, does not lack in clarity :

http://www.tafsir.com/default.asp?sid=8&tid=20426

"Allah states here that the worst moving creatures on the face of the earth are those who disbelieve, who do not embrace the faith, and break promises whenever they make a covenant, even when they vow to keep them," ...

(this is later further elaborated to mean that peace treaties between muslims and non-muslims have exactly 1 purpose : deception of the non-muslims, allowing the muslims to become militarily stronger, with the further stipulation that regardless of any treaty, every 10 years there must be at least 1 attack, no matter what it may cost the muslims. There can never be peace. Only temporary (max 10 years) cessation of hostilities)

("islam" means "opression" in the military sense, meaning it is enforced, not voluntary, so that it has stuff like this is hardly surprising, generally "submission" is taken as a translation, but it does not refer to the speaker (that would be istaslam if it is militarily enforced, or astaslam if it is done freely), but to a third party, nor does it mean peace (which is salaam). It means actively making others submit (by the practice of "hisbah" for example), not submitting yourself, like in Christianity)

Here it is in 3 common english translations :

http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/quran/008.qmt.html#008.055

Here are the (primary) rules specified for interpreting said statement. They are quite clear :

http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/quran/003.qmt.html#003.007

Needless to say the 8:55 statement is not allegorical (check for yourself and compare, for example, with the later chapters). So the verse is "of fundamental meaning" "clear" and "decisive". In any interpretation it is forbidden to go seek "hidden meanings", nor is any indirection allowed.

Here is one of the official "guides" for interpreting said statement. It, again, does not lack in clarity :

http://www.tafsir.com/default.asp?sid=8&tid=20426

"Allah states here that the worst moving creatures on the face of the earth are those who disbelieve, who do not embrace the faith, and break promises whenever they make a covenant, even when they vow to keep them," ...

(this is later further elaborated to mean that peace treaties between muslims and non-muslims have exactly 1 purpose : deception of the non-muslims, allowing the muslims to become militarily stronger, with the further stipulation that regardless of any treaty, every 10 years there must be at least 1 attack, no matter what it may cost the muslims. There can never be peace. Only temporary (max 10 years) cessation of hostilities)

("islam" means "opression" in the military sense, meaning it is enforced, not voluntary, so that it has stuff like this is hardly surprising, generally "submission" is taken as a translation, but it does not refer to the speaker (that would be istaslam if it is militarily enforced, or astaslam if it is done freely), but to a third party, nor does it mean peace (which is salaam). It means actively making others submit (by the practice of "hisbah" for example), not submitting yourself, like in Christianity)

Can you please stop equating every ideology with every other. After all if you say that then you are evil too, since whatever ideology you have, it is evil by this standard.

Sure, anyone can LIE about his intentions and use any religion to achieve personal ends. Sure. But there is also the truth. There are facts one can look up.

Obviously nobody vouches for the behavior of EVERY last man (or woman) who claims to follow some ideology. However for most ideologies one can easily assemble facts. A trivial example might be that any true socialist is to take the bus, and not to have his own car. If not, one is obviously not a principled socialist. That just about every socialist politician have multiple personal cars does not mean socialism allows for everyone to have a personal car, it is vehemenently opposed to it. Likewise, Al Gore isn't in favor of lowering HIS OWN co2 output, and thus isn't really concerned about the environment, at least not in principle. He's a career politician who will switch sides if he deems it wise. Does that mean that environmentalism doesn't have a message ? Does it mean that environmentalism wants to give everyone a personal private jet ? Obviously not. It exists, and it's message is quite clear, despite the fact that it's main proponent is such a big "environmental sinner". Real socialist exist (e.g. in Israel, the settler movement), and real enviromentalists exist.

The same can be said about a "true" Christian and a "true" muslim. They exist. Not merely someone who claims to be Christian or muslim, but one who truly is, and looks to the bible (or quran) for guidance. Those are books, who haven't been changed for X years (bible : 1900 years, quran : about 60 years now), and are considered constant. Their contents do not change, and cannot be turned into just anything. There may be some room for interpretation, but certainly not as much as you claim there is. The ten commandments are VERY clear, and their meaning, even if they are currently poorly translated, is a known constant for nearly 4000 years now.

Therefore "Christianity" (meaning Christians who follow the bible) will not use violence to achieve world domination in a honest interpretation (and by definition, people like that are honest). Islam will. Jesus did not attempt to conquer, nor did he kill people who doubted him. Muhammad DID, and those acts are accepted as sacred acts in the islamic faith.

Killing people for criticizing islam is the normal case in islam, not the exception. Google for "Asma bint marwan", and you will read that the islamic prophet sent out assasins in the night. Therefore, that is not an unacceptable act in islam, just like anything Jesus did is per definition not unacceptable (including insulting a woman (and her husband btw) for getting divorced, however everyone knows the story about the stoning, and utterly shaming a woman in public for "sleeping around", is perfectly acceptable Christian behavior, and this will never change, violence against a woman for that is unacceptable, and that too, will never change).

Well here is the islamic version of the stoning story :

(same story as in the bible until the judgement is made, and continues) Allah's Messenger (may peace be upon him) pronounced judgment about both of them and they were stoned. Abdullah b. 'Umar said: I was one of those who stoned them, and I saw him (the Jew) protecting her (the Jewess) with his body.

If you criticize this action, muslims are to try to kill you (which is specified in another hadith, see again the Asma Bint Marwan story). Needless to say, this law is still applied in many muslim countries, including Iran and a few others.

Note also that Christians (and ... "mostly" Jews, which today means nearly all of them) try to respect what they call God's law THEMSELVES.

Despite my previous post actually containing the truth you repeat this lie ... why ?

The first Crusade on wikipedia

Here is the reason for the first crusade :

By the early 8th century, the Umayyad Caliphate had rapidly captured North Africa, Egypt, Palestine, Syria, and Spain from a predominantly Christian Byzantine Empire. During the 12th century, the Reconquista picked up an ideological potency that is considered to be the first example of a concerted "Christian" effort to recapture territory lost to Muslims, as part of the expansion efforts of the Christian kingdoms along the Bay of Biscay. Spanish kingdoms, knightly orders and mercenaries began ...

The crusades, certainly the first three, were defensive in nature on the Christian side. The muslims were (as has been nearly always been true in their history) the agressors.

It gets worse. After a while a sort of peace was reached, a sort of balance, with some 5 christian kingdoms in Israel. They were the source of food for the muslims.

The muslims KNEW that attacking their only source of food would both cause a famine, and preclude any chance they might have had to defend themselves from the mongols. They attacked, 30 million muslims starved, and the mongols (also muslims) committed started the massacre that would later turn into the massacre of the Indians.

They also started the black slave trade, a practice that would continue to be organised by the muslims until 1923, when British forces defeated the last caliph (the muslim pope).

A Turkish homosexual (who is a hero in my book) proceeded to create the modern state of Turkey. You've probably heard of him : Atatuk. Just in case any Turks read this : I mean no disrespect (rather the reverse : it is truly amazing what he accomplished, given his situation) to Ataturk by this.

His unofficial "successor", Ay amin al Husseini is called "hitler's mufti" for a reason :

The last muslim "pope"

He was personally responsible to give the order to one of the two muslim regiments of the SS to execute 5000 children younger than 3 year, explicitly going against hitler's orders and risking his skin, because they were jews.

There are a few VERY low points in muslim history. And if you look up what sort of atrocities their prophet comitted, you become truly disgusted. But don't just accept what I say about that, rather, read it for yourself :

http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/fundamentals/hadithsunnah/muslim/008.smt.html#008.3371

And what is the goal of the muslims ? Don't let me keep that from you.

And fight them on until there is no more tumult or oppression, and there prevail justice and faith in Allah altogether and everywhere; but if they cease, verily Allah doth see all that they do.

In other words : muslim wars can never cease until there are only muslims left. This position is shared by all islamic schools, EVEN the sufi one.

I'm not saying every muslim wants to do this. However, it is what their religion says. If they follow it, this is what they'll do. Most muslims do indeed not follow it.

Despite my previous post actually containing the truth you repeat this lie ... why ?

The first Crusade on wikipedia

Here is the reason for the first crusade :

By the early 8th century, the Umayyad Caliphate had rapidly captured North Africa, Egypt, Palestine, Syria, and Spain from a predominantly Christian Byzantine Empire. During the 12th century, the Reconquista picked up an ideological potency that is considered to be the first example of a concerted "Christian" effort to recapture territory lost to Muslims, as part of the expansion efforts of the Christian kingdoms along the Bay of Biscay. Spanish kingdoms, knightly orders and mercenaries began ...

The crusades, certainly the first three, were defensive in nature on the Christian side. The muslims were (as has been nearly always been true in their history) the agressors.

It gets worse. After a while a sort of peace was reached, a sort of balance, with some 5 christian kingdoms in Israel. They were the source of food for the muslims.

The muslims KNEW that attacking their only source of food would both cause a famine, and preclude any chance they might have had to defend themselves from the mongols. They attacked, 30 million muslims starved, and the mongols (also muslims) committed started the massacre that would later turn into the massacre of the Indians.

They also started the black slave trade, a practice that would continue to be organised by the muslims until 1923, when British forces defeated the last caliph (the muslim pope).

A Turkish homosexual (who is a hero in my book) proceeded to create the modern state of Turkey. You've probably heard of him : Atatuk. Just in case any Turks read this : I mean no disrespect (rather the reverse : it is truly amazing what he accomplished, given his situation) to Ataturk by this.

His unofficial "successor", Ay amin al Husseini is called "hitler's mufti" for a reason :

The last muslim "pope"

He was personally responsible to give the order to one of the two muslim regiments of the SS to execute 5000 children younger than 3 year, explicitly going against hitler's orders and risking his skin, because they were jews.

There are a few VERY low points in muslim history. And if you look up what sort of atrocities their prophet comitted, you become truly disgusted. But don't just accept what I say about that, rather, read it for yourself :

http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/fundamentals/hadithsunnah/muslim/008.smt.html#008.3371

And what is the goal of the muslims ? Don't let me keep that from you.

And fight them on until there is no more tumult or oppression, and there prevail justice and faith in Allah altogether and everywhere; but if they cease, verily Allah doth see all that they do.

In other words : muslim wars can never cease until there are only muslims left. This position is shared by all islamic schools, EVEN the sufi one.

I'm not saying every muslim wants to do this. However, it is what their religion says. If they follow it, this is what they'll do. Most muslims do indeed not follow it.

I don't think you actually read what I said, because your first sentence contradicts something I didn't say. "Includes" != "means".

The issue of earthly punishment may not be quite so clear-cut as you suggest. And there's some rather clear support for killing apostates in the Hadith.

I don't think you actually read what I said, because your first sentence contradicts something I didn't say. "Includes" != "means".

The issue of earthly punishment may not be quite so clear-cut as you suggest. And there's some rather clear support for killing apostates in the Hadith.

No, you don't have to be born muslim to be punished for apostasy. A convert is equally guilty. Note though that there is no prescribed earthly penalty (016.109), punishment is to be dealt by god in the 'hereafter'.

Is it alright to rape women you've kidnapped for ransom ? (in case anyone doubted, the muslim prophet answered this literal question, and guess what his answer was ... Never mind whether it's okay to kidnap people for ransom in islam)

Let's see you defend that one. Btw, these are "sahih" (authentic) hadith, and they are part of the belEvery last one is accepted as an utterly moral beliefs of every last denomination of islam, including the "very moderate" baha'i and ahmadiyya sects. So please don't claim "this one is falsified".

I never said Muslims don't believe in the Quran. I am simply stating that the old testament has just as outdated lines in it and no one assumes Jews or Christians believe in any of them except a few fundamentalists. If you are so narrow minded to have never had the discussion with Muslims, then it would explain why you don't know that most Muslims do not believe in the literal meaning of those lines.

Again you start with unfounded assumptions. You really think I've never discussed this with muslims.

Here's how it generally goes :

"Is religious killing justified, for example killing all the men of a city and raping all the women, is that justified if they don't believe ?"

"No"

"So your prophet, who did this, is a monster ?"

"No"

"Here's the text describing it ..." * (note that the muslim prophet started over 10 major military campaigns, and several dozen smaller ones, each ending in genocide comitted by muslims, so there's more than enough material)

"He did it with permission from allah"

"Do you haver permission from allah ?"

At this point you generally get a "yes", "only in islamic countries", or an attack (once even a physical attack), generally ad-hominem, or like you crying "mistranslation". It is not mistranslated. None of the answers are anywhere near remotely acceptable.

Please be a bit more careful with making statements about what I have and have not done. Why don't you try for yourself to discuss this with some muslims.

The Open Source community could build something that would make a real difference in the developing world --

if we stopped dicking around with laptops and started collaborating on high-yield, low-input agricultural methods, water reclamation systems, sanitation, and low-conventional-energy devices generally. Great examples: the discovery that pouring water through silk provides enough filtration to substantially reduce the incidence of cholera; the development of solar cooking technologies to help stop deforestation and prevent women from having to gather firewood alone in regions with prevalent rape gangs.
THAT is the kind of tech that we should be working on collaboratively. Though there isn't any Linux involved.

OLPC is a great idea, but it doesn't actually address the real problems of the developing world--which aren't web browsing, intuitive programming, and videoconferencing, but security, environmental repair, and conventional-energy-independent development! All this talktalk about laptops has always been the well-meaning but sorely out of touch "help" provided by people who know tons about OSS but have no idea what people in developing countries really need.

So can you cite a reliable source for this story? It still sounds like an urban legend that has been contoured to fit Mr Lovins political theories.

University of Maryland Listserv has a message with the part from Lovins' "Natural Capitalism". Both provide the message and the book provide the sources they got the info from:

"Cheng, F.Y. 1963. Deterioration of thatch roofs by moth larvae after house spraying in the course of a malaria eradication programme in North Borneo. Bull. WHO 28:136-137."
"Conway, G.R. 1969. Ecological aspects of pest control in Malaysia, pp. 467-488 in Farvar, M.T. and J.P. Milton, eds. The Careless Technology. Natural History Press, New York, NY."
"Harrisson, T. 1965. Operation cat drop. Animals 5:512-513."

Try googling for just "thin egg shells lead" instead of leaded gas

Ok, I used leaded gas because that's what you used. Dropping "gas", wow too many results. Try thin egg shells lead birds OR eagles OR falcons, some of the first results were about fish eggs. The second result is from University of Southern California, The Brown Pelican which blames their "population decline and the threat of extinction" on DDT but says nothing about lead. Going through 8 pages of results looking for science or university, college, links I didn't find any saying or suggesting lead had anything to do with thin egg shells. You may wonder why I only checked science or educational links. That's because I wanted scientific links. Ah, here's one although how qualified it is I don' know. Anyway here's what ScienceMaster says on the influence of lead:

"In addition to the adverse effects of DDT, bald eagles also died from lead poisoning as a result of feeding on hunter-killed or crippled waterfowl containing lead shot and from lead shot that was inadvertently ingested by the waterfowl. (In 1991, a 5- year program to phase out the use of lead shot for waterfowl hunting was completed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.)"

I don't discount heavy metals and other things can affect egg shells, however I also think DDT does as well. I also believe spraying DDT to exterminate mosquitoes, and exterminating them, does have unforeseen cascading effects. Such as killing parasitic wasps, which allows their prey wood eating caterpillars to increase their population.

Perhaps I've been going through this the wrong way as I don't oppose controlling mosquitoes, what I oppose is how they are controlled and what causes their numbers to increase. Studies, including a United Nations study, concluded mosquito populations increase where dams are built. And the economic reasons for dams have been shot down as well. Dams cost more than they were originally sold as costing and the benefits are less than they were sold for. The study Incidence of malaria among children living near dams in northern Ethiopia: community based incidence survey" shows the incidence of malaria in children is significantly higher, sevenfold, near dams than away from them. WCD To Study Brazil's Tucurui Dam and Amazon/Tocantins River Basin says dams are "creating a vast reservoir in which disease-bearing mosquitoes breed". Methods of controlling mosquitoes, other than not creating places they can breed, are available. Though not used alone, bats can help control mosquitoes. As can birds, frogs, and lizards. From University of Florida:

Narrated 'Ubada bin As-Samit:

who took part in the battle of Badr and was a Naqib (a person heading a group of six persons), on the night of Al-'Aqaba pledge: Allah's Apostle said while a group of his companions were around him, "Swear allegiance to me for:

1. Not to join anything in worship along with Allah.

2. Not to steal.

3. Not to commit illegal sexual intercourse.

4. Not to kill your children.

5. Not to accuse an innocent person (to spread such an accusation among people).

6. Not to be disobedient (when ordered) to do good deed."

The Prophet added: "Whoever among you fulfills his pledge will be rewarded by Allah. And whoever indulges in any one of them (except the ascription of partners to Allah) and gets the punishment in this world, that punishment will be an expiation for that sin. And if one indulges in any of them, and Allah conceals his sin, it is up to Him to forgive or punish him (in the Hereafter)." 'Ubada bin As-Samit added: "So we swore allegiance for these." (points to Allah's Apostle)

YUSUFALI
88 : Why should ye be divided into two parties about the Hypocrites? Allah hath upset them for their (evil) deeds. Would ye guide those whom Allah hath thrown out of the Way? For those whom Allah hath thrown out of the Way, never shalt thou find the Way.

89 : They but wish that ye should reject Faith, as they do, and thus be on the same footing (as they): But take not friends from their ranks until they flee in the way of Allah (From what is forbidden). But if they turn renegades, seize them and slay them wherever ye find them; and (in any case) take no friends or helpers from their ranks

PICKTHAL
88 : What aileth you that ye are become two parties regarding the hypocrites, when Allah cast them back (to disbelief) because of what they earned? Seek ye to guide him whom Allah hath sent astray? He whom Allah sendeth astray, for him thou (O MUhammad) canst not find a road.
89 : They long that ye should disbelieve even as they disbelieve, that ye may be upon a level (with them). So choose not friends from them till they forsake their homes in the way of Allah; if they turn back (to enmity) then take them and kill them wherever ye find them, and choose no friend nor helper from among them,

SHAKIR
88 : What is the matter with you, then, that you have become two parties about the hypocrites, while Allah has made them return (to unbelief) for what they have earned? Do you wish to guide him whom Allah has caused to err? And whomsoever Allah causes to err, you shall by no means find a way for him.

89 : They desire that you should disbelieve as they have disbelieved, so that you might be (all) alike; therefore take not from among them friends until they fly (their homes) in Allah's way; but if they turn back, then seize them and kill them wherever you find them, and take not from among them a friend or a helper.

An article that explains the islamic perspective in detail: http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/notislam/misconceptions.html#HEADING7

"
Misconception 7

Islam tolerates the killing of innocents because:

o Muslims can be terrorists

o Muslims engage in `holy wars' (jihad)

o Islam spread by the sword

o it has a harsh and cruel judicial system

This misconception is one of the most widely held misconceptions about Islam today. And yet in the Qur'an, the Creator unambiguously states (translation),

[17:33] Nor take life - which Allah has made sacred - except for just cause. And if anyone is slain wrongfully, we have given his heir authority (to demand retaliation or to forgive): but let him not exceed bounds in the matter of taking life, for he is helped (by the Law)

Based on this verse, it is Islamically unlawful to murder anyone who is innocent of certain crimes. It is well to remember at this point the distinction made above between Qur'an and Sunnah, and the Muslims: only the Qur'an and Sunnah are guaranteed to be in accordance with what the Creator desires, whereas the Muslims may possibly deviate. Hence, if any Muslim kills an innocent person, that Muslim has committed a grave sin, and certainly the action cannot be claimed to have been done "in the name of Islam."

It should be clear, then, that "Muslim terrorist" is almost an oxymoron: by killing innocent people, a Muslim is commiting an awesome sin, and Allah is Justice personified. This phrase is offensive and demeaning of Islam, and it should be avoided. It is hoped that as the general level of public awareness and understanding of Islam increases, people will keep "terrorism" and "Islam" separate from each other, not to be used in the same phrase.

Another reason advanced in support of the misconception is that the Creator has imposed `jihad' on us. The term "holy war" is from the time of the Crusades and originated in Europe as a rallying cry against the Muslims in Jerusalem. Jihad is an Arabic word meaning struggle, but in the context of many verses in the Qur'an, it carries the meaning of military struggle, or war. Allah gradually introduced the obligation of military struggle to the Muslim community at the time of the Messenger (saas). The first verse ever revealed in that connection is as follows (translation),

[22:39] Permission (to fight) is given to those upon whom war is made because they are oppressed, and most surely Allah is well able to assist them;

This verse lays down the precondition for all war in Islam: there must exist certain oppressive conditions on the people. The Creator unequivocally orders us to fight oppression and persecution, even at the expense of bloodshed as the following verse shows (translation),

[2:190-192] And fight in the cause of Allah with those who fight with you, and do not exceed the limits, surely Allah does not love those who exceed the limits. And kill them wherever you find them, and drive them out from where they drove you out, and persecution is severer than slaughter, and do not fight with them at the Sacred Mosque (in Makkah) until they fight with you in it, but if they do fight you, then slay them; such is the reward of the unbelievers. But if they desist, then surely Allah is Forgiving, Merciful. And fight with them until there is no persecution, and religion should be only for Allah, but if they desist, then there should be no hostility except against the oppressors.

As one might imagine, the method of military struggle has been clearly and extensively defined in the Qur

The above 'hadeeth' is false propaganda, the mentioned situations did not happen and are more than likely made up by the curators of the 'answering islam' web page. I'm Christian myself and am sad to see this type of non-sense posted in public forums. Total false propaganda. ALL hadeeths are available for search here:

http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/reference/searchhadith.html

Doxygen is my favorite tool for C/C++/Java programming. It also handles some other random languages as well. Its main purpose is to create documentation (think javadoc but Open Source, handles more than just java, and better results). Here's an example of what it can do.

Anyways, related to your post, doxygen can map out the call graph from functions and dependency/include graphs of files. It may be helpful in understanding the structure.

Doxygen is my favorite tool for C/C++/Java programming. It also handles some other random languages as well. Its main purpose is to create documentation (think javadoc but Open Source, handles more than just java, and better results). Here's an example of what it can do.

Anyways, related to your post, doxygen can map out the call graph from functions and dependency/include graphs of files. It may be helpful in understanding the structure.

Doxygen is my favorite tool for C/C++/Java programming. It also handles some other random languages as well. Its main purpose is to create documentation (think javadoc but Open Source, handles more than just java, and better results). Here's an example of what it can do.

Anyways, related to your post, doxygen can map out the call graph from functions and dependency/include graphs of files. It may be helpful in understanding the structure.

Well how about this little tidbit to explain it to you. They know only one culture, built on one man.

And that man was a terrorist, even in his own opinion. How does he differ from other prophets ? Well he said that he was a terrorist, and the other prophets were not.

Want to understand ? Check this out

Mmm. Sura 9 is interesting: if you read the very start:

Freedom from obligation (is proclaimed) from Allah and His messenger toward those of the idolaters with whom ye made a treaty.

You see that it refers to a specific group of "idolators" who had (we are told) broken a treaty with the early Muslims - and it's at least arguable that the infamous verse 9:5 is referring specifically to them. 9:13-14 is the same.

I feel 9:29 is more problematic. I don't really see a way out of that one. It does say that at least many non-Muslims are to be subjugated by force.

Last I checked, my Bible didn't say to wage jihad against the infidels.

Neither does the Quran

Last I checked, my Bible didn't say to wage jihad against the infidels.

Neither does the Quran

Last I checked, my Bible didn't say to wage jihad against the infidels.

Neither does the Quran

Last I checked, my Bible didn't say to wage jihad against the infidels.

Neither does the Quran

I found this paper:

http://atrak.usc.edu/~massoud/Papers/IEICE-leakage-review-journal.pdf

which gives four main sources of leakage. The two big ones are subthreshold current (which you pointed out) and gate oxide tunneling, both of which are related to Vdd-Vt.

I saw a talk a few years ago by a researcher claiming that a "mirror system" in the brain is responsible for the development of language. The "mirror system" is a structure that activates in the same way both for performing a grasping action and for seeing a grasping action. It allows the brain to learn grasping more quickly by helping imitation. His theory was that this enabled to gestural languages which lead to spoken language.

For some reason the wikipedia article about this has an odd name: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minde_alterig_drugs

Here is a 2000 paper covering the theory: http://www-scf.usc.edu/~csci564/lec-notes_fall2001/28.%20Mirror%20System%20and%20Language%20Evolution.pdf

You do understand that as far as the Japanese are concerned "much stricter safety requirement" mean not trying to fix it with a hammer for more than an hour before asking someone higher in the hierarchy.
They can make simple things right. But operating a nuclear powerplant is still out of the reach of their rice-farmer level corporate mentality.

THEY have a long history of nuclear accident where the trigger was someone acting like a total redneck for no understandable reason. Tokaimura was one of the great example of how far this can go http://www-bcf.usc.edu/~meshkati/tefall99/toki.html

Yes - I have used doxygen for both C and C++ code. When using the full-source option it can be quite slow, but in conjunction with the "dot" tool it produces quite nice call graphs.

See http://www.stack.nl/~dimitri/doxygen/diagrams.html for info.

http://www-scf.usc.edu/~peterchd/doxygen/example/main_8c.html (to pick a random example found on google) has an example of a doxygen-produced page giving both an include-file graph (at the top) and a call graph (at the bottom).

As you can see it gives a quite nice at-a-glance overview of the program's structure. It will happily produce individual pages for each function in your program showing a graph of functions that call into it and all of the functions it calls.

Note that the boxes in the diagrams are hyperlinked to the corresponding page for that function/header-file.

Wow, I could have screamed bingo after the first line... http://isd.usc.edu/~karl/Bingo/about.html/