If minors possessed the wisdom and maturity, or even the responsibility of adults, I could understand. However, they don't. There is nothing in the law that prevents a parent or guardian from intentionally exposing their children to the naked human body. If the parent deems it valuable, the parent can provide it. The issue is more a matter of letting the parents decide what their children see than of an absolute ban on porn.
What these kinds of laws really aim to address is the rampant discrimination against Christians and other moral peoples in the public sector. Most Christians, as well as Muslims and Jews, would consider it very offensive that our tax dollars would be used to publicly undermine our principles, even more offensive when the target is our own children. When schools and libraries allow children access to pornography, they seek to impose their (lack of) morals on our children, against our wishes. If using laws to impose your morals on someone else is somehow suspect, then how could laws imposing morality (or lack thereof) on someone else's children be any better?
If a library doesn't filter out this kind of content, it effectively denies the entire library to the child. Out of fear of exposure to pornography, most parents would simply refrain from letting their child wander the library, exploring their natural curiosity. When this kind of thing happens in schools, it is even more galling, because parents often don't have the option of removing their children from the public school system. Instead, the child become caught in a tug of war between his parents and school officials over an issue he barely understands - hardly a desirable childhood.
Some of my most cherished memories are of being left alone in a library, allowed to follow my curiosity wherever it led me. If my local library was a source of porn, I doubt the kids growing up today would be allowed the same kind of learning opportunity that I so cherished growing up.
Which is more important?
That children have access to educational opportunities outside the traditional classroom, or,
That minors have access to pornography.
Given that most parents, and even most societies, consider porn to be harmful, this really is an exclusive-or condition. If you bring porn into the library, parents will take their children out of it. The net result is that you deny learning opportunities to children for the sake of enforcing your principles on the children of others.
Why is a woman's nipple harmful but a man's nipple isn't?
Because it teaches young girls that their self-worth is dependent on their ability to arouse a man. It exposes children to issues which they should not have to deal, and distorts their perception of the primary purpose of sex.
The primary rationale behind outlawing porn is emotional, not religious. China actively persecutes Christians, yet they also outlaw porn. It isn't simply a religious issue - it is about the emotional well being of children. Even atheist China understands this.
Today, American teenagers have epidemic rates of emotional problems. Where did they come from? What changed from 100 years ago?
100 years ago, heck, even 50 years ago, teenage girls prided themselves on their ability to do domestic duties - cooking, cleaning, social graces, etc. Teenage boys thought of sports and college. Now, both seem to be preoccupied with their appeal to the opposite sex. Their sense of self is now defined by factors largely beyond their control - i.e. their appeal to the opposite sex. Their happiness is no longer within their own control - it is now controlled by a fickle population, one beyond their ability to understand.
Porn only reinforces the notion that a person's self worth is a matter not of their personality and intelligence, but of their sexual appeal to others. It's a subjective, ever changing standard.
How long before the terrorists figure out that your average microwave oven can be disassembled and turned around against US troops?
Did the Army ever consider the ease with which the terrorists could adopt such tactics? If this weapon is indeed effective, it will only provide the terrorists with yet another way to wreak havoc.
What if someone, in an otherwise peaceful demonstration, brought one of these devices, and trained it on the soldiers?
There is no adequate shielding for soldiers from such a weapon - the assailant could disable every soldier in a given area very quickly.
As abandoning one's post is a court martial offense, most soldiers would not leave the area, but instead be cooked alive until they could not take it anymore. They would not have any idea what is happening, and there would be no physical evidence which they could use in their defense should they leave.
The pain and aggravation of such a weapon could escalate an already tense situation, and could compel soldiers to fire on an apparently unarmed population.
There would be no physical proof of engagement. To the press, and the rest of the world, it would appear as if US troops fired on innocent civilians for no reason.
It's easy to recognize tear gas and stay away. But this weapon is invisible - it could be targeted against all of the soldiers in a given area, or merely one. How would you like to be that "one"?
Invisible weapons don't promote security - only escalated conflict.
Except that TPM could easily hide weaknesses, backdoors, or worse from the user. Furthermore, the nature of TPM would prevent the user from ever discovering said "features".
No, not pure evil. But still not trustworthy, either. This is the kind of thing the NSA would love to have in every computer.
So the new Vista looks flashy. But why would anyone buy it?
From Microsoft's website:
The Start menu features integrated desktop search through a new feature called Instant Search which can help you find and launch almost anything on your PC
Um, excuse me, but KDE has had this feature for the last, I don't know, maybe, FIVE YEARS! Alt-F2 strikes again.
I recently moved from a Linux based organization to a Windows based one. Two things have struck me:
The development pace is about an order of magnitude slower.
Even trivial tasks to which I've become accustomed in Linux are almost impossible or unusable in Windows.
Granted, the eye candy Vista provides is nice. But then, KDE and gnome have offered fully customizable, useful UIs for the past half-decade. And having grown accustomed to Linux, I'm used to getting things done with a computer, rather than just seeing it as some kind of flashy toy.
We never changed our position. All I cared about was, I lost a deal with a large retailer to Microsoft for the first time about 12 or 18 months ago. It was going to be an all-Linux deal, and I lost it because they were unduly influenced, in my opinion, to be fearful of these [IP and indemnity issues]. From my point of view that was really too bad, because Linux lost. Then I watched it happen three more times.
Perhaps he would have been better off reminding them that Microsoft customers don't get IP idemnity either. IIRC, Microsoft's customers were sued by Timeline for using code which Microsoft improperly integrated into SQL server. Then, the Eolas suit caused Microsoft to issue a patch which removed functionality from Internet Explorer. I am not aware of Microsoft compensating its customers in either case.
I think Ron really failed Novell with this recent Microsoft deal. Actions speak louder than words; no matter what he says, he's sent a clear message to the world that Novell believes Linux infringes on Microsoft IP. Microsoft agreed to the deal because they knew it had a strategic advantage against Linux, not because they wanted to help Novell.
It never was about IP - his lost customers were bluffing. He might have won the deals had he been a better salesman:
Remind the customer of the virus problems that plague Windows. How much, Mr. Customer, will you have to spend on virus cleanup if you use Windows?
Remind them of the cost of security: Are you willing to risk your trade secrets and IP to software that can be compromised by the mere insertion of a music CD? *cough* Sony *cough*.
Remind them that Microsoft's customers have been sued over IP issues in the past; that Microsoft has had to disable functionality due to patent infringements.
Yes, Rod Blagejovich is a Democrat. There's no fundamentalist frosties here, folks, just a good Ol' Democrat trying to force his morality on the rest of the state.
HD isn't about the consumer. It's about profiteering on the backs of the consumer.
HD represents the interests of the media companies.
HD represents the interests of the electronics companies - albeit to a lesser extent.
But it does not represent the interests of the consumer. It was specifically designed to leave the consumer out in the cold:
It comes with draconian DRM schemes. You need a special, expensive cable to hook it up.
You can't record HD tv shows and movies.
You can't afford an HD set without talking to a banker or maxing out your credit card.
With the exception of the resolution, 20 years ago a tv with a vcr was more enjoyable and offered more features than will be present in even the highest end HD systems. And it cost less in terms of real dollars.
No, HD isn't for the consumer; it's for the electronics and movie industries. And it's lack of adoption isn't a technical problem; it's a social problem. People want new features, not restrictions.
560 N. Moorpark Rd., #236
Thousand Oaks, CA. 91360
Jul 15, 1995
DIRECTOR
RADIO CITY MUSIC HALL
1260 Avenue of the Americas
New York, N.Y. 10020
Dear Sir or Madam:
Is it possible to rent Radio City Music Hall out for the week?
I would be putting on my production of "CINNAMON - A LIFE IN PROGRESS." This is a warm hearted family drama. It has been playing in the Maine and Minneapolis area.
Now it is ready for NEW YORK.
Please let me know how I would go about renting out Radio City Music Hall for my production of "CINNAMON - A LIFE IN PROGRESS."
There will be NO Bee Wrangler for these performances. (May hear loud barking).
Thank you. I remain...
Ted L. Nancy
- From Letter's From a Nut, by Ted L. Nancy. Avon books, 1997.
IBM's VSAM implemented this almost 40 years ago. The idea was that there was one set of pointers for sequential access of records, and another set for "indexed" access. In fact, IIRC, you could have multiple keys indexing a VSAM dataset - the canonical example being that you could access records by last name order, ssn order, or whatever else you chose. You didn't have separate lists - the pointers to the next block were on the block itself. So given any starting index, you could traverse in whatever order you chose.
Now that I think about it, almost every relational database implements some form of prior art for this patent.
As an interesting aside, I think the debate of evolution vs. creationism perhaps misses the point. One of the fundamental parts of Genesis, that God created man from "dust of the earth" certainly lends itself to interpretation as evolution. But, another, perhaps greater aspect is that man became Man when "God breathed his spirit into him". Maybe, just maybe, our definition of what constitutes human is different from what God sees as human. Perhaps God's definition of human is not merely the biological form, but rather, a being composed of both matter and spirit. So thus, from God's perspective, humanity is only a few millenia old. But his biological form may have been created over millions of years. If one takes the view that a human is not merely an animal, but rather an animal imbued with an eternal spirit and a sense of morality, the Biblical account of creation does not contradict evolution at all.
In fact, I would argue that it is more dangerous to define man simply in terms of his biological form. Such thinking usually tends to lend credence to the notion that certain races are naturally superior to others.
Well, my different interpretation comes from the fact that I, too, tried to trace the genealogies all the way back to Adam. And I found a problem: either the tree was broken, or the ages weren't listed. To get a figure of 4004 years, certain assumptions about the ages of some the forefathers have to be made.
It's not subject to interpretation. It's simple academic rigor: the 4004 year figure is based on assumptions which may not be true. When dealing with science, a certain amount of uncertainty is acceptable. However, this is theology; people expect it to be eternal, unchanging truth, not a tentative explanation subject to revision with the discovery of additional data.
The 4004 figure may be correct, or just close. But it lacks two fundamental aspects which would make it suitable for doctrine:
It is not fundamental to the understanding of God, and
It lacks the certainty necessary for doctrine.
The Church proclaims its doctrines as absolute truth. Who would place their complete faith and trust in something that might turn out to be untrue? Therefore, the standards for doctrine must be higher than those of scientific theory.
The Catholic Church (and I as well) consider Jesus to have started the church when he says to Peter in the Gospel of Matthew, "And so I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it."
We Catholics consider Peter as the first Pope, instituted by Christ himself. While Paul did spread the Gospel to the Gentiles, and was responsible for a considerable portion of the New Testament, his role was primarily the evangelization of the Gentiles. The interpretation of Paul as the progenitor of Christianity is popular in Protestant circles because Paul is generally recognized as performing much of the evangelization in the first century, and more importantly, because it sidesteps the issue of Papal authority.
Disclaimer: I do believe the Biblical account of creation. But these so called creationists do not follow the Bible!
Ok, so some creationists believe the earth is 6000 years old.
Strangely:
There is no literal account of these 6000 years in the Bible. There is no timeline given between the creation of Man, and his Fall from grace. Even a literal interpretation of the creation story doesn't preclude the first Adam living for 50 million years before being kicked out of the garden. According to Christian theology, death entered the world with Adam's fall; presumably Adam was immortal before that.
There are gaps in the genealogies which make it impossible to state the exact number of years between the Fall of Man and the birth of Christ. The 6000 year figure was produced by a heretic - the Catholic Church never officially published the 6000 year figure. Considering this was the church started by Christ, you'd think they would know.
Seven Days of Creation theory.
Um, no. God created the world in six days, and rested on the seventh. Look it up.
Sometimes I think atheists are secretly funding the creationists just to discredit Christianity. These folks (creationists) don't take the Bible as literal - if they did, they wouldn't believe such stupid nonsense.
But I think the government is very happy about this service. I'm sure the phone company would be more than happy to provide this information to the government, if requested, regardless of whether or not you agree to be tracked. Remember, if you irritate the government, you could lose your license to the radio spectrum on which your revenue depends.
After all, if you have nothing to hide why would you object to the government knowing where you are at all times? Don't you realize that this is for the safety of the children? Are you really going to object to technology that could help solve a kidnapping?
It is optional today. But not for long. As soon as the government figures out that this can be used to track everyone, in real time, it will become mandatory. They'll pass the law in the name of "protecting the children", or "fighting terrorism", etc...
The old adage, "Never trust the client..." certainly applies here. The warden should run on the server, not the client. It should authenticate the client across the network.
Granted, you don't want to saturate the network with every little move and detail of gameplay. But fortunately, you don't have to. There is only so much gameplay that a user can do in a given amount of time. The solution is to set a threshold for gameplay actions and client state - call it gameplay bandwidth - if it progresses too fast, it's scripted.
The solution isn't to ban the cheater, but to throttle the gameplay bandwidth, as it were, to a reasonable level. This defeats the advantage of scripting without the attendant possibility of a false positive kicking out a legitimate player.
With respect to altering packets mid stream - well, a good encryption scheme could take care of that. I suspect that most of the work has already been done with the operating system's SSL.
I think the most terrifying aspect of this whole thing is that she was arrested not because of anything she did, but rather because of her association with others the government doesn't like.
This isn't justice; it's not even close. It's more like vigilantism with official sanction.
How long will it be before merely showing an interest in "Terrorist Causes" or "Terrorist Methods" - however defined by the government - is enough to get one arrested? Or has it happened already?
Under the deal, Universal, the world's largest music corporation, will receive a percentage of both download revenue and digital player sales when the Zune and its related service are introduced next week.
So let me get this straight: you pay Universal when you buy the device, and then you pay them again for the music you load on to it?
What if I never listen to any of Universal's music?
What really strikes me as ridiculous is that Universal's terms seem to imply that even a legitimate music purchase is still piracy.
At this point, the only moral thing to do is to stop buying music. You aren't going to appease the record companies - they'll call you a pirate no matter what. If we all stopping funding the RIAA lawsuits, maybe they would go away.
Does this mean House Democrats will actually vote Democrat? After they've been voting Republican for the past 6 years?
Let's not forget that the Democrats voted for the PATRIOT act, too. Everytime you hear of Bush & Co. invading our personal liberties, remember that it was both the Democrats and the Republicans who passed the legislation allowing him to do so. The Republicans voted their conscience, however poorly formed it might be, while the Democrats simply betrayed both their principles and their constituents.
The primary difference between a Republican and a Democrat is that a Republican votes according to the principles which got him elected, where a Democrat doesn't care how he votes, as long as he can blame the Republicans should something go wrong.
This really means nothing. The Republicans are still running both the House and the Senate; they can always count on their "Democrat friends" to vote Republican.
Mainly you do not want to allow the buying of votes
Why not? How would the direct buying of votes be any different from politics as usual?
For example, when you hear a Republican candidate talk of lowering taxes, isn't this the same thing? - elect them, and you'll have more money in your wallet.
So why didn't you hold the vendor accountable for the poor quality? You seemed to expect Microsoft to fix its bugs, why didn't you expect the same service from vendor X?
While MS certainly did respond quickly, they always had the option of ignoring you. Fortunately for you, they paid attention to your problem. I'll bet that a lot of other people were also experiencing the same problem.
However, what do you do when you find yourself with a problem that you can't reliably reproduce, or one that the vendor doesn't think is worth the effort to fix?
With the source code, you can always bring in another engineer to work full time on the problem. Without the source code, your schedule is at the vendor's mercy.
Source code gives you options.
Object code gives the vendor options.
The difference is subtle, but important - especially if you have to meet a deadline.
I recently worked in a shop which did development in both WinCE and Linux. The source code has been available for WinCE for quite a while, under NDA.
Truth be told, they had to open the source code. The Linux group consistently delivered features before the WinCE guys. The problem was that anyone hired for WinCE development had a substantial ramp up time, whereas we could hire engineers who already knew Linux.
The open source nature of Linux allowed us to hire engineers already proficient in writing Linux drivers and code. Can't say the same for WinCE. In fact, while I think the shared source license is a step in the right direction, it won't bridge the gap between Linux and WinCE in the embedded sector. Linux is already a dominant player, and the shared source initiative won't put WinCE in the hands of budding engineers. Instead, they'll look at Linux, which is truly free.
A few years ago, when I mentioned that Linux was leaving Windows in the dust in regard to new technologies (like 64 bit computing), I received an interesting reply: "That may be true, but Windows on the desktop already has something Linux doesn't: inertia." Just as Windows gained inertia on the desktop, Linux has now achieved that "inertia" in the embedded world which will make it difficult to dislodge.
This move seems to indicate that Microsoft is becoming aware of how compelling Linux is to embedded developers.
(Disclaimer: I work with Linux in embedded multimedia players) One of the real problems I've had wrt to the IDE driver was that it would occasionally hold interrupts for 130 milliseconds! When you're playing video at 30 fps, 130 milliseconds is several frames. It creates a very difficult situation to work around.
I found a solution, but given the time pressure, was never able to formally verify it. I am kind of curious as to what you did, and if it was similar to my approach.
I think the issue is that of the user's right to fully use the hardware capabilities of their own system. DRM effectively grants ownership of your hardware to the big media corporations.
Granted, while this does protect against malware, Microsoft has incessantly provided upper-level access to malware writers, and shows no sign of stopping. It does little good to have a signed, verified OS layer if the mail layer will arbitrarily execute code without prompting the user*. This specific approach may prevent one type of malware attack, but the goal is DRM; that is, security for content providers, not for the end user. Security is just the moniker being used to deprive the end user of capability which is rightfully theirs.
* - granted, this may be patched, but you can count on the "Microsoft Mindset(TM)" to introduce yet more security holes in required components of the OS.
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If minors possessed the wisdom and maturity, or even the responsibility of adults, I could understand. However, they don't. There is nothing in the law that prevents a parent or guardian from intentionally exposing their children to the naked human body. If the parent deems it valuable, the parent can provide it. The issue is more a matter of letting the parents decide what their children see than of an absolute ban on porn.
What these kinds of laws really aim to address is the rampant discrimination against Christians and other moral peoples in the public sector. Most Christians, as well as Muslims and Jews, would consider it very offensive that our tax dollars would be used to publicly undermine our principles, even more offensive when the target is our own children. When schools and libraries allow children access to pornography, they seek to impose their (lack of) morals on our children, against our wishes. If using laws to impose your morals on someone else is somehow suspect, then how could laws imposing morality (or lack thereof) on someone else's children be any better?
If a library doesn't filter out this kind of content, it effectively denies the entire library to the child. Out of fear of exposure to pornography, most parents would simply refrain from letting their child wander the library, exploring their natural curiosity. When this kind of thing happens in schools, it is even more galling, because parents often don't have the option of removing their children from the public school system. Instead, the child become caught in a tug of war between his parents and school officials over an issue he barely understands - hardly a desirable childhood.
Some of my most cherished memories are of being left alone in a library, allowed to follow my curiosity wherever it led me. If my local library was a source of porn, I doubt the kids growing up today would be allowed the same kind of learning opportunity that I so cherished growing up.
Which is more important?
Given that most parents, and even most societies, consider porn to be harmful, this really is an exclusive-or condition. If you bring porn into the library, parents will take their children out of it. The net result is that you deny learning opportunities to children for the sake of enforcing your principles on the children of others.
Why is a woman's nipple harmful but a man's nipple isn't?
Because it teaches young girls that their self-worth is dependent on their ability to arouse a man. It exposes children to issues which they should not have to deal, and distorts their perception of the primary purpose of sex.
The primary rationale behind outlawing porn is emotional, not religious. China actively persecutes Christians, yet they also outlaw porn. It isn't simply a religious issue - it is about the emotional well being of children. Even atheist China understands this.
Today, American teenagers have epidemic rates of emotional problems. Where did they come from? What changed from 100 years ago?
100 years ago, heck, even 50 years ago, teenage girls prided themselves on their ability to do domestic duties - cooking, cleaning, social graces, etc. Teenage boys thought of sports and college. Now, both seem to be preoccupied with their appeal to the opposite sex. Their sense of self is now defined by factors largely beyond their control - i.e. their appeal to the opposite sex. Their happiness is no longer within their own control - it is now controlled by a fickle population, one beyond their ability to understand.
Porn only reinforces the notion that a person's self worth is a matter not of their personality and intelligence, but of their sexual appeal to others. It's a subjective, ever changing standard.
How long before the terrorists figure out that your average microwave oven can be disassembled and turned around against US troops?
Did the Army ever consider the ease with which the terrorists could adopt such tactics? If this weapon is indeed effective, it will only provide the terrorists with yet another way to wreak havoc.
What if someone, in an otherwise peaceful demonstration, brought one of these devices, and trained it on the soldiers?
It's easy to recognize tear gas and stay away. But this weapon is invisible - it could be targeted against all of the soldiers in a given area, or merely one. How would you like to be that "one"?
Invisible weapons don't promote security - only escalated conflict.
Except that TPM could easily hide weaknesses, backdoors, or worse from the user. Furthermore, the nature of TPM would prevent the user from ever discovering said "features".
No, not pure evil. But still not trustworthy, either. This is the kind of thing the NSA would love to have in every computer.
So the new Vista looks flashy. But why would anyone buy it?
From Microsoft's website:
The Start menu features integrated desktop search through a new feature called Instant Search which can help you find and launch almost anything on your PC
Um, excuse me, but KDE has had this feature for the last, I don't know, maybe, FIVE YEARS! Alt-F2 strikes again.
I recently moved from a Linux based organization to a Windows based one. Two things have struck me:
Granted, the eye candy Vista provides is nice. But then, KDE and gnome have offered fully customizable, useful UIs for the past half-decade. And having grown accustomed to Linux, I'm used to getting things done with a computer, rather than just seeing it as some kind of flashy toy.
We never changed our position. All I cared about was, I lost a deal with a large retailer to Microsoft for the first time about 12 or 18 months ago. It was going to be an all-Linux deal, and I lost it because they were unduly influenced, in my opinion, to be fearful of these [IP and indemnity issues]. From my point of view that was really too bad, because Linux lost. Then I watched it happen three more times.
Perhaps he would have been better off reminding them that Microsoft customers don't get IP idemnity either. IIRC, Microsoft's customers were sued by Timeline for using code which Microsoft improperly integrated into SQL server. Then, the Eolas suit caused Microsoft to issue a patch which removed functionality from Internet Explorer. I am not aware of Microsoft compensating its customers in either case.
I think Ron really failed Novell with this recent Microsoft deal. Actions speak louder than words; no matter what he says, he's sent a clear message to the world that Novell believes Linux infringes on Microsoft IP. Microsoft agreed to the deal because they knew it had a strategic advantage against Linux, not because they wanted to help Novell.
It never was about IP - his lost customers were bluffing. He might have won the deals had he been a better salesman:
Yes, Rod Blagejovich is a Democrat. There's no fundamentalist frosties here, folks, just a good Ol' Democrat trying to force his morality on the rest of the state.
No, the consumer does not matter!
HD isn't about the consumer. It's about profiteering on the backs of the consumer.
HD represents the interests of the media companies.
HD represents the interests of the electronics companies - albeit to a lesser extent.
But it does not represent the interests of the consumer. It was specifically designed to leave the consumer out in the cold:
With the exception of the resolution, 20 years ago a tv with a vcr was more enjoyable and offered more features than will be present in even the highest end HD systems. And it cost less in terms of real dollars.
No, HD isn't for the consumer; it's for the electronics and movie industries. And it's lack of adoption isn't a technical problem; it's a social problem. People want new features, not restrictions.
560 N. Moorpark Rd., #236
Thousand Oaks, CA. 91360
Jul 15, 1995
DIRECTOR
RADIO CITY MUSIC HALL
1260 Avenue of the Americas
New York, N.Y. 10020
Dear Sir or Madam:
Is it possible to rent Radio City Music Hall out for the week?
I would be putting on my production of "CINNAMON - A LIFE IN PROGRESS." This is a warm hearted family drama. It has been playing in the Maine and Minneapolis area.
Now it is ready for NEW YORK.
Please let me know how I would go about renting out Radio City Music Hall for my production of "CINNAMON - A LIFE IN PROGRESS."
There will be NO Bee Wrangler for these performances. (May hear loud barking).
Thank you. I remain...
Ted L. Nancy
- From Letter's From a Nut, by Ted L. Nancy. Avon books, 1997.
IBM's VSAM implemented this almost 40 years ago. The idea was that there was one set of pointers for sequential access of records, and another set for "indexed" access. In fact, IIRC, you could have multiple keys indexing a VSAM dataset - the canonical example being that you could access records by last name order, ssn order, or whatever else you chose. You didn't have separate lists - the pointers to the next block were on the block itself. So given any starting index, you could traverse in whatever order you chose.
Now that I think about it, almost every relational database implements some form of prior art for this patent.
As an interesting aside, I think the debate of evolution vs. creationism perhaps misses the point. One of the fundamental parts of Genesis, that God created man from "dust of the earth" certainly lends itself to interpretation as evolution. But, another, perhaps greater aspect is that man became Man when "God breathed his spirit into him". Maybe, just maybe, our definition of what constitutes human is different from what God sees as human. Perhaps God's definition of human is not merely the biological form, but rather, a being composed of both matter and spirit. So thus, from God's perspective, humanity is only a few millenia old. But his biological form may have been created over millions of years. If one takes the view that a human is not merely an animal, but rather an animal imbued with an eternal spirit and a sense of morality, the Biblical account of creation does not contradict evolution at all.
In fact, I would argue that it is more dangerous to define man simply in terms of his biological form. Such thinking usually tends to lend credence to the notion that certain races are naturally superior to others.
Well, my different interpretation comes from the fact that I, too, tried to trace the genealogies all the way back to Adam. And I found a problem: either the tree was broken, or the ages weren't listed. To get a figure of 4004 years, certain assumptions about the ages of some the forefathers have to be made.
It's not subject to interpretation. It's simple academic rigor: the 4004 year figure is based on assumptions which may not be true. When dealing with science, a certain amount of uncertainty is acceptable. However, this is theology; people expect it to be eternal, unchanging truth, not a tentative explanation subject to revision with the discovery of additional data.
The 4004 figure may be correct, or just close. But it lacks two fundamental aspects which would make it suitable for doctrine:
The Church proclaims its doctrines as absolute truth. Who would place their complete faith and trust in something that might turn out to be untrue? Therefore, the standards for doctrine must be higher than those of scientific theory.
The Catholic Church (and I as well) consider Jesus to have started the church when he says to Peter in the Gospel of Matthew, "And so I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it."
We Catholics consider Peter as the first Pope, instituted by Christ himself. While Paul did spread the Gospel to the Gentiles, and was responsible for a considerable portion of the New Testament, his role was primarily the evangelization of the Gentiles. The interpretation of Paul as the progenitor of Christianity is popular in Protestant circles because Paul is generally recognized as performing much of the evangelization in the first century, and more importantly, because it sidesteps the issue of Papal authority.
Disclaimer: I do believe the Biblical account of creation. But these so called creationists do not follow the Bible!
Ok, so some creationists believe the earth is 6000 years old.
Strangely:
Seven Days of Creation theory.
Um, no. God created the world in six days, and rested on the seventh. Look it up.
Sometimes I think atheists are secretly funding the creationists just to discredit Christianity. These folks (creationists) don't take the Bible as literal - if they did, they wouldn't believe such stupid nonsense.
Look it up.
It's only the most amazing invention ever. Geesh!
you have nothing to worry about.
But I think the government is very happy about this service. I'm sure the phone company would be more than happy to provide this information to the government, if requested, regardless of whether or not you agree to be tracked. Remember, if you irritate the government, you could lose your license to the radio spectrum on which your revenue depends.
After all, if you have nothing to hide why would you object to the government knowing where you are at all times? Don't you realize that this is for the safety of the children? Are you really going to object to technology that could help solve a kidnapping?
It is optional today. But not for long. As soon as the government figures out that this can be used to track everyone, in real time, it will become mandatory. They'll pass the law in the name of "protecting the children", or "fighting terrorism", etc...
There are still better ways of catching cheaters.
The old adage, "Never trust the client..." certainly applies here. The warden should run on the server, not the client. It should authenticate the client across the network.
Granted, you don't want to saturate the network with every little move and detail of gameplay. But fortunately, you don't have to. There is only so much gameplay that a user can do in a given amount of time. The solution is to set a threshold for gameplay actions and client state - call it gameplay bandwidth - if it progresses too fast, it's scripted.
The solution isn't to ban the cheater, but to throttle the gameplay bandwidth, as it were, to a reasonable level. This defeats the advantage of scripting without the attendant possibility of a false positive kicking out a legitimate player.
With respect to altering packets mid stream - well, a good encryption scheme could take care of that. I suspect that most of the work has already been done with the operating system's SSL.
I think the most terrifying aspect of this whole thing is that she was arrested not because of anything she did, but rather because of her association with others the government doesn't like.
This isn't justice; it's not even close. It's more like vigilantism with official sanction.
How long will it be before merely showing an interest in "Terrorist Causes" or "Terrorist Methods" - however defined by the government - is enough to get one arrested? Or has it happened already?
Democracy in Britain is officially dead.
Under the deal, Universal, the world's largest music corporation, will receive a percentage of both download revenue and digital player sales when the Zune and its related service are introduced next week.
So let me get this straight: you pay Universal when you buy the device, and then you pay them again for the music you load on to it?
What if I never listen to any of Universal's music?
What really strikes me as ridiculous is that Universal's terms seem to imply that even a legitimate music purchase is still piracy .
At this point, the only moral thing to do is to stop buying music. You aren't going to appease the record companies - they'll call you a pirate no matter what. If we all stopping funding the RIAA lawsuits, maybe they would go away.
Does this mean House Democrats will actually vote Democrat? After they've been voting Republican for the past 6 years?
Let's not forget that the Democrats voted for the PATRIOT act, too. Everytime you hear of Bush & Co. invading our personal liberties, remember that it was both the Democrats and the Republicans who passed the legislation allowing him to do so. The Republicans voted their conscience, however poorly formed it might be, while the Democrats simply betrayed both their principles and their constituents.
The primary difference between a Republican and a Democrat is that a Republican votes according to the principles which got him elected, where a Democrat doesn't care how he votes, as long as he can blame the Republicans should something go wrong.
This really means nothing. The Republicans are still running both the House and the Senate; they can always count on their "Democrat friends" to vote Republican.
Mainly you do not want to allow the buying of votes
Why not? How would the direct buying of votes be any different from politics as usual?
For example, when you hear a Republican candidate talk of lowering taxes, isn't this the same thing? - elect them, and you'll have more money in your wallet.
So why didn't you hold the vendor accountable for the poor quality? You seemed to expect Microsoft to fix its bugs, why didn't you expect the same service from vendor X?
While MS certainly did respond quickly, they always had the option of ignoring you. Fortunately for you, they paid attention to your problem. I'll bet that a lot of other people were also experiencing the same problem.
However, what do you do when you find yourself with a problem that you can't reliably reproduce, or one that the vendor doesn't think is worth the effort to fix?
With the source code, you can always bring in another engineer to work full time on the problem. Without the source code, your schedule is at the vendor's mercy.
The difference is subtle, but important - especially if you have to meet a deadline.
I recently worked in a shop which did development in both WinCE and Linux. The source code has been available for WinCE for quite a while, under NDA.
Truth be told, they had to open the source code. The Linux group consistently delivered features before the WinCE guys. The problem was that anyone hired for WinCE development had a substantial ramp up time, whereas we could hire engineers who already knew Linux.
The open source nature of Linux allowed us to hire engineers already proficient in writing Linux drivers and code. Can't say the same for WinCE. In fact, while I think the shared source license is a step in the right direction, it won't bridge the gap between Linux and WinCE in the embedded sector. Linux is already a dominant player, and the shared source initiative won't put WinCE in the hands of budding engineers. Instead, they'll look at Linux, which is truly free.
A few years ago, when I mentioned that Linux was leaving Windows in the dust in regard to new technologies (like 64 bit computing), I received an interesting reply: "That may be true, but Windows on the desktop already has something Linux doesn't: inertia." Just as Windows gained inertia on the desktop, Linux has now achieved that "inertia" in the embedded world which will make it difficult to dislodge.
This move seems to indicate that Microsoft is becoming aware of how compelling Linux is to embedded developers.
Did you ever get it fixed? If so, how?
(Disclaimer: I work with Linux in embedded multimedia players) One of the real problems I've had wrt to the IDE driver was that it would occasionally hold interrupts for 130 milliseconds! When you're playing video at 30 fps, 130 milliseconds is several frames. It creates a very difficult situation to work around.
I found a solution, but given the time pressure, was never able to formally verify it. I am kind of curious as to what you did, and if it was similar to my approach.
I think the issue is that of the user's right to fully use the hardware capabilities of their own system. DRM effectively grants ownership of your hardware to the big media corporations.
Granted, while this does protect against malware, Microsoft has incessantly provided upper-level access to malware writers, and shows no sign of stopping. It does little good to have a signed, verified OS layer if the mail layer will arbitrarily execute code without prompting the user*. This specific approach may prevent one type of malware attack, but the goal is DRM; that is, security for content providers, not for the end user. Security is just the moniker being used to deprive the end user of capability which is rightfully theirs.
* - granted, this may be patched, but you can count on the "Microsoft Mindset(TM)" to introduce yet more security holes in required components of the OS.