Slashdot Mirror


User: PHPNerd

PHPNerd's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
134
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 134

  1. Re:Sure on Should a Mars Colony Be Independent? (bbc.com) · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Religion is one of those funny things that will crop up anyway, regardless of whether or not the colonists bring it with them.

  2. Don't put PhD in the resume on Ask Slashdot: Finding a Job After Completing Computer Science Ph.D? · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I know it's sad, but hide your PhD. Most employers are scared of PhD's for multiple reasons: (1) they don't want to pay them what their credentials demand , (2) many hiring bosses are intimidated or feel threatened to have an underling with more education than they do, and (3) they are probably hesitant to invest in someone who is so highly credentialed for fear of losing them when a sweet offer comes around. Sad, I know. But I'd go ahead and hide the PhD. (Disclaimer: I'm working on mine now)

  3. Re:Me too! on Book Review: Designing With the Mind In Mind · · Score: 1

    I'd be happy to work with you on this. Send me an email: jrp09a AT acu DOT edu

  4. Re:Great Book on Book Review: Designing With the Mind In Mind · · Score: 1

    I teach HCI at a college in Texas. I have used this book to provide background information for my lectures, but I've never had them read it. Frankly, we just don't have time in an undergrad class to read Design of Everyday Things (Norman) and Don't Make Me Think (Krug) and discuss and apply in a single undergrad semester. However, next year I'm going to teach a second semester of the course for the first time, and I think I'll finally get to dig into DWMIM (especially now that there's a second edition).

  5. Re:Knowledge on How the Internet Is Taking Away America's Religion · · Score: 1

    No one said anything about proof of "god." Obviously, you have never encountered the academic study of religion. I shall educate you.

    We don't deal in unreliable facts. We don't attempt to figure out "god's wants, plans, etc." Rather, we use history (as in real, verifiable evidence from outside of the sacred texts), archaeology, paleography, sociology, and textual criticism (the same that medieval scholars use when looking at manuscripts of Chaucer) in order to get at a best guess for the author's original intent. Perhaps it may surprise you, but we can actually arrive at some meaningful and verifiable conclusions with regard to how people perceived their world, their neighbors, their gods, and the rituals they performed. It's an invaluable window into the past. However, this does not in any way require proof of "god." It only requires people who believed in that particular deity and their texts (or artifacts) about him/her.

  6. Re:Knowledge on How the Internet Is Taking Away America's Religion · · Score: 4, Informative

    Hi there. I happen to have multiple graduate degrees in the field of Hebrew Bible. I'm an academic. Hopefully I can shed some light on this.

    At first glance, it does indeed seem like the God in the text is a giant a-hole. Why put the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil in the garden in the first place? To answer that, we need to lay some ground work to properly interpret the story:

    1) Remember that the ancients did not have a scientific worldview. Today we understand that things I drop to the ground fall because of gravity. Gravity works because the Earth is a huge sphere with an enormous amount of mass. The sun sets and rises because the Earth rotates. Seasons progress at the rate they do because the Earth rotates around the Sun. In other words, life is orderly and predictable because the laws of Physics, Chemistry, etc, are orderly and predictable. But the ancients had no knowledge of this. Instead, they explained the world through mythology. So, in the Ancient Near East, the reason the world is orderly is because a long time ago, the "good gods" came in and beat up/killed/banished the "bad gods" and then set up order in the universe (e.g. the Marduk/Tiamat myth of Babylon, or the Baal/Mot myth of Caanan).

    2) Genesis is written in the form of Ancient Near Eastern creation myths. Those ancient creation myths wanted to explain this fundamental question: "Why does the world work the way it does?" Genesis answers that question: A long time ago, God (YHWH) came upon pure chaos (the Hebrew of the passage makes that very clear. Google: "Genesis tohu vevohu"). He then systematically pushes it back to create perfect order. This is why the world works the way it does...because God set it up in order.

    3) The Bible never claims that God is omniscient. In fact, good Jewish/Christian theology claims that he's not. Does God have all power? If he does, then (low hanging fruit) he could make a rock so big that he couldn't lift it. But then that's a logical impossibility. Here's a better question: could the God of the Bible create a being with free will and force that being to love God? The answer is no. So by definition, there is at least one thing (maybe two, if you count the rock example) that God cannot do. So, a better formulation of God's state is that (according to the Hebrew Bible) "God has all the power that can be had, but some things cannot be accomplished by power."

    So now we're ready to talk about the garden (which is, remember, more like a story or a parable). God creates these two beings and puts them into paradise. Imagine a world where there is nothing bad and you KNOW that God exists (because you talk to him frequently). So now how exactly does God let them choose to love God or not? (Because remember: there must be a choice) The answer (at least, the ancient Hebrews) was to place a clear choice before Adam and Eve. The Tree represents free will. And the Tree represents the choice that everyone makes in whether or not they will love God or turn their backs. To the ancient Hebrews who wrote this story (probably finalized from earlier oral tradition around 500 BCE), the clear choice between following God or not had been made when the people of Judah chose to follow other gods. Thus, God kicked them out of the garden (the "promised land") and sent them into exile into a hurting world. The garden story is not just one which orients the reader to the world, but specifically to the present world (the one they lived in at the time).

    Let me know if you have any questions. This isn't a sacred cow to me. Cheers.

  7. Does anyone edit these posts? on Slashdot Asks: Will You Need the Windows XP Black Market? · · Score: -1, Redundant

    What does "As Whoever57 pointed out, there are some who will still get support for Microsoft Windows XP pointed out, there are some who will still get support for Microsoft Windows XP" mean?? Who's editing these stories?

  8. Btrfs definition on Facebook To Begin Deploying Btrfs · · Score: 4, Informative

    From wikipedia: Btrfs (B-tree file system) is a GPL-licensed experimental copy-on-write file system for Linux. (I'm sure a lot of people were wondering what it is, since TFA doesn't say)

  9. Then we'd be Tolkien elves on Transhumanist Children's Book Argues, "Death Is Wrong" · · Score: 2

    We'd be immortal, sure, but we'd be sad all the time, have incredibly low birthrates, watch some lesser race take over the world, and then sail into the west. What kind of life is that?

  10. Money on Silicon Valley's Youth Problem · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Why would they cure cancer when they can join a start-up and possibly get bought out by the titans? The draw of the Valley is that you can be a millionaire by the time you're 24. This isn't "rocket surgery."

  11. Yes, but only on older devices on Ask Slashdot: Is iOS 7 Slow? · · Score: 1

    I had an iPhone 4S and I upgraded to iOS7. I noticed the slower animations and choppier UI right away. It was one of the things that made me very happy that I was ready for an upgrade. My new iPhone 5S performs perfectly, with the smooth UI and animations that I have come to expect from Apple. It seems like the older hardware just can't support it.

  12. Oblig Zombo on Silicon Valley's Loony Cheerleading Culture Is Out of Control · · Score: 2

    Welcome to Zombocom! www.zombo.com

  13. This is a terrible idea on Aging Is a Disease; Treat It Like One · · Score: 1

    Everyone wants to live forever, but death is the natural way of selection within the species. If death was "cured" then the species would stagnate. Leadership would not change. Younger generations would continuously be stuck at the bottom of the heap (or, at least, in their place within the heap). Imagine working at the same job forever, never getting promoted or increased in pay. Now that wouldn't be eternal life. It'd be Hell.

  14. Re: Bad place to ask on Ask Slashdot: Typing Advice For a Guinness World Record Attempt? · · Score: 1

    Me too! Every blasted time.

  15. This article commits the same error on Conservatives' Trust In Science Has Fallen Dramatically Since Mid-1970s · · Score: 2

    This study laments that conservatives reject liberal culture and turn it into an "us" vs "them" mentality. However, this is exactly what this study is saying on the liberal side, e.g. Those conservatives don't believe in science. This conveniently lumps them all into a science-hating group and furthers the "us" vs "them" rhetoric. The comments so far on this page show a circle-jerk consisting of "Only stupid people don't believe in science!" in which they lap this study up as further proof that all conservatives are religiously extreme and don't believe in science. It's sad that the very article which points out the vitriolic conservative rhetoric against science (a truly lamentable thing) only furthers the rhetoric from the other side.

  16. Climate Change Argument Template UPDATED EDITION! on Climate Change Skeptic Results Released Today · · Score: 1

    A quick template for replying to anyone who disagrees with you in a climate change discussion:

    Paragraph one, "You are a moron!": Slander the person you are replying to (e.g. "wing-nut", "idiot", "retard", "moron", etc. Get creative!). Then call them a "denier" so that it seems like they're opposing something like evolution and gravity, which conveniently lumps them into the same category as people who question that too.

    Paragraph two, "How dare you question climate change???": Call their argument a "straw-man" and proceed to attack their audacity to question "hard scientific facts" (which you personally haven't seen). Feel free to ignore their argument altogether by calling it "half-truths". Make some sort of reference to this person's education level, mainly that they are not a climate scientist (even though you're not one either!) and as such they have no idea what they're talking about - so they should trust the true experts.

    Paragraph three, "Skeptics are coming over.": This is the meat of your argument! Although Richard Muller has actually been FOR climate change, this article claims that he was a skeptic but has now seen the light. If this skeptic has examined the evidence and come on over, why can't you? In fact, it's pretty obvious he was the last major credible holdout (even though if he was really a skeptic, we'd have said he was not credible in any way). We need to make it seem like there is a complete and united scientific consensus about climate change.

    Paragraph four, "Case closed.": End on a high note! Make sure to say that case is closed, and has been closed for a long time. The debate is over. Everyone but the person you are replying to believes in global warming. This will make them feel like they are just pushing against a closed door.

    Congratulations, you have won! If they are stupid enough to come back with real data, repeat this process until they feel so ashamed that they just shut up.

  17. Where is this guy's website? on Blizzard Won't Stop World of StarCraft Mod · · Score: 1

    Anyone have the website for this mod developer? I've tried looking, but all the search engines are chocked full of the news stories and none seem to link to his mod development site.

  18. Re:The true believer on Hawking Picks Physics Over God For Big Bang · · Score: 1

    I'll play your game. :) The real world has always existed with religion, whether formal or informal. The oldest piece of human creation that we have is a clay household god. We as humans (or at least as "human society") have never known a world without religion in some fashion. So this hypothetical world would have to have existed without religion from its start. But in a hypothetical world without religion, if you came up to me and told me this apparent nonsense, I would probably like to know more about this "man who lives in the sky", for it would truly be a novel idea, maybe even having some merit to help explain why bad things happen to good people, what happens when you die, and other existential problems that this hypothetical world without religion had so far left unanswered because it can't be empirically tested.

  19. Redundancy on ATM Hack Gives Cash On Demand · · Score: -1, Redundant

    Exploiting bugs in two different ATM machines at Black Hat...

    Really? Automated Teller Machine machines?

  20. I just did this on Cool, Science-y Masters Programs For Software Devs? · · Score: 1

    I was a CS undergraduate major and I also was looking for new areas of research. I recently completed a Masters of Applied Cognition and Neuroscience at the University of Texas at Dallas. I took a mixture of classes in neuroscience, computer science, and AI. The AI classes were focused on approaching the subject from the perspective of the human brain. It was very fascinating and I could have gone on for a PhD (which was my original plan) but then I discovered that I did not like the heavy research end of that subject. However, you might like it. They were doing some very interesting studies in bionics. Hope you find what you're looking for. Cheers.

  21. This has been happening to me for months on Microsoft Warns of Windows 7 Graphics Flaw · · Score: 1

    My box will randomly crash. The screen wigs out and then the box reboots. It's not even a BSoD, the whole screen goes completely crazy for about 5 seconds before it reboots, and it occurs at totally random times. I have triple (probably quadruple at this point) checked that all hardware is compatible, all software is completely up-to-date, all drivers are up-to-date, and I have paid top-of-the-line antivirus software. I finally gave up and chalked it up to Win7 64-bit....looks like I was right.

  22. Sequel? No, give us Silmarillion on Filming For The Hobbit Begins In July · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The planned sequel to The Hobbit is to be an original story not written by Tolkien, covering the 60 years between The Hobbit, and the Lord of the Rings."

    A sequel NOT written by Tolkien? Ew. How about instead another prequel taken from The Silmarillion? That would be full of awesome, almost guaranteed to win several internets.

  23. If you want the results... on Microsoft Sends Flowers To Internet Explorer 6 Funeral · · Score: 1

    The site has split up the article into a million pages. If you don't care to click a jillion times, here's the link for the results.

  24. At least it wasn't Texas this time on Utah Assembly Passes Resolution Denying Climate Change · · Score: 2, Funny

    As a Texan, I have been alarmed at the recent increase of the rate of retardedness coming out of my state. Let me be the first to say: I'm glad that this ridiculous news wasn't out of Texas this time. Thank God.

  25. You want good Star Wars episodes? on Star Wars TV Show Tainted By Memories of Jar Jar · · Score: -1

    One word: Joss.