Slashdot Mirror
Slashback: Disputes, Clones, Audio
Needed: One referee. Quixotic1 writes "A small company I work for has discovered that a domain name has been registered with their U.S.-trademarked (since 1980) name. Requests to the owner of the site (a U.S. citizen) have gone unanswered, so we're now moving on to filing an ICANN dispute. There was a query last week about inexpensive alternatives to the $1000+ UDRP arbiters. The discussion ended up revolving around whether the author had a valid claim or not, but I'd still like to know -- are there inexpensive alternatives?"
I bet there's money to be made if someone can come up with cheaper means of settling such disputes.
Store in the ammunition box. leonbrooks writes "Recently, images from a presentation by Microsoft Belgium were published on the web. The presentation made some startling (for Microsoft) concessions to Open Source, then set about FUDding the GPL into the ground. I whacked together a point-by-point answer to the anti-GPL FUD. Happy linking ..."
Tithe 10 percent. Luke Francl writes "Inspired by Lawrence Lessig's OSCON remarks, Lessig's Challenge is a way for people concerned by the attempts by the entertainment industry to close off the net to fight back. The challenge is to spend more on those who fight for the open network than you do on its enemies. Since it appeared on Slashdot last month, 10 people have joined me and we've raised over $2300 for good causes (organizations like the EFF, the ACLU, the FSF, along with free software/open source programmers and online artists). And that's just the ones I know about! Cory Doctorow wrote to tell me that many people were inspired by the challenge to join the EFF. ... Check out the list of suggested recipients."
Like obsidian, and coal, and dirt ... salimfadhley writes "Today BBC Radio 4 began serialising Phillip Pullman's popular "Dark Materials" trilogy. The beeb will be broadcasting one episode per week, with a RA stream of the latest episode that can be found on the promotional site. You can find "The Golden Compass" (called "Northern Lights" in Europe) on the website now. This stream will be replaced with episode 2 next Saturday.
The Dark Materials series was originally intended as children's fiction, however owing to excellent storytelling and a significantly darker theme than Harry Potter, has done rather well in U.S. and UK adult market.
The central premise of the series is that God is evil, a celestial impostor who pretends to have created the universe and who so intensely hates flesh and blood that he wants people to live a repressed, joyless existence. Unsurprisingly this theme has upset fundamentalist Christians."
Unfamiliar? Read the Slashdot review of the trilogy.
The clones I meet are mostly in pairs. PizzaFace writes "The Washington Post reports that the Raelian clone claim echoes a hoax of 25 years ago. And while we have better technology now for testing the claim quickly, there is still room for deception, and some people don't trust the science (and pseudoscience) reporter the Raelians appointed to test their claim."
"Oh shit! A plane just hit the WTC!"
"See? We told you guys MS was evil."
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
I'm an athiest. Well, more honestly I suppose you could call me an "apathetic agnostic"; I don't know if there's a God, and I really can't be troubled to care. None the less, shite like this served up as if it were a news story makes me want to vomit.
If it were clearly marked as an editorial piece, then fine; flame on. This, however, was clearly listed under "News". Reprehensable.
Anybody who has studied early Christianity knows that there were two groups. The Apostlics and the Gnostics.
;)
The two of the many differences being that
1)Apostlic Christianity is more along the lines of what is present today. A hierarchy within a church structure. Example -- I believe (don't quote me) that Catholics have a Pope, then Cardinals, then Bishops, Deacons, etc. with power decreasing further down the line.
2) As I said Apostlic Christianity believes in the apostles, Jesus son of god, etc. like the majority of Christians believe today.
The Gnostics on the other hand
1) Have no hierarchy whatsoever. It doesn't matter if you have been a member for 5 minutes or 50 years, your opinion and input are equal. It doesn't matter if you are adult/child, young/old, man/woman, your opinion and input are equal.
2) They also had many other writtings, of which many came earlier than what people have in there bibles, and took a completely different point of view with the teachings of Jesus. BTW, I will not argue whether he existed or not -- for the sake of arguement let's assume he did. They heard what he said to mean that, and I'm really summermizing here, this world is a fake and rather unplesant. It is presented by a quasi-god(not the devil) and that Jesus came to tell everyone to wake up so they can return to heaven(not as people picture it now) and stop the suffering of which we were all accidently placed.
The Gnostics were actually a much larger group after Jesus, but failed to become the present day Christianity because of the Romans declaring the Apostlic Christianity the one true Christianity because they had a hierarchy similar to the Romans. After all when you hold a meeting to discuss the matter, who from the Gnostics will represent them? They are all equal.
Now, many Christians when they have this first explained to them take the demi-god to be the devil and that sounds an awful lot like what this "Dark Material" story is going for. I don't know, I haven't read it. But if it is a source of material. I find it funny that any Christian who gets upset, is getting upset over a common believe about a misunderstanding of the Gnostic CHRISTIANITY religion by Apostlic CHRISTIANITY that has been turned into a story.
History lesson over.