Yea, you missed what I was arguing against. Good use of sarcasm, poor reading comprehension.
For the curious, I was arguing against his reasoning and the assumption he ended up with, as it is a remarkably weak argument. Had he framed his argument differently, I might not have posted in the first place.
FF catches this too, and allows you to stop the script even if it's internal to FF itself. Does chrome allow you to stop an internal Javascript?
Ive never run into that situation except (I think) in an addon, where it did. Im not sure I would be boasting that your browser's userland was asking a user if they wanted to terminate some of the code that the browser uses; that seems like that should get caught in qa. That seems a pretty good time to halt the browser and relaunch it.
FF add-ons are more flexible then Chrome add-ons, you can do pretty much anything in an FF add-on
No argument. They also allow massive memory leaks, hence the complaints for the last umpteen versions about firefox using gigs of memory (HINT-- its your addons). And honestly, as we now have before-the-resource-loads adblock now (yes, it works the SAME as it does in firefox), Im not sure what Im missing with Chromes extension API.
If Chrome extensions could tap into the internals, perhaps it would require regular restarting as well.
Thats NOT a safe assumption, as you can install NPAPI plugins without restarting the browser, too (worst case, tab reload is needed, sometimes not even that).
Chrome is inferior here. Sure, it comes a long way but it's not as good as Firebug yet. No extra pieces involved.
Not being a webdev, im not the person to argue this in detail, but about 1 month ago I was doing some site troubleshooting, and in order to do in Firebug what I did in Chrome's web dev tools, I did need to download an additional piece-- I believe it was JS related. Anyways, I gave you my reasons why I prefer Chrome's tools (much easier live editing, much better performance), and your retort is "youre wrong"? No reasons, or explanation? Care to expound on that?
I have 15 add-ons and the performance with all of them enabled is *better*. They don't slow down anything at all
Compared to a C++ implementation, yes, they do, and youd be foolish to argue that interpreted code could possibly outperform compiled code.
. There's no RequestPolicy for Chrome.
Well, we covered that above. Just because I think Chrome is generally a better browser doesnt mean that Firefox isnt superior in some areas; I just think tab performance and translation that "just work" are more important than the ability to roll your own custom browser. Sometimes I need a function that a Chrome plugin cant provide (dont remember such a scenario..), and then I launch firefox. When I just want to do some quick research or whatever, having a responsive browser that wont pause for 30+seconds checking if my plugins work with a new version, or waiting for the tabs to load is worth a whole lot more.
It doesn't leak memory, but the heap can get fragmented.
Not sure we're talking about the same thing. Im talking about addon-induced leaks, which the devs have LONG talked about (I remember an Asa Dotzler post from v3.0 about plugins being the cause of leaks). This isnt a hypothetical thing; its a real problem. Its also why when troubleshooting they ask for a clean profile with no addons.
Creation and removal imply a switch unless you do it in the background, but yes FF does it instantaneously just like Chrome does.
Just tried and both tab creation and tab-tear were much much better in Firefox 7.0 compared to prior versions. Kudos to the dev team, and as I said that is a good thing in my book, not a bad thing.
If you deploy the Chrome MSI package using a GPO and have a business policy only to publish new packages once every n weeks, users will end up with outdated versions for a while too.
No, because you do not need to update the MSI in order for the users to be on the up-to-date version. I assume the MSI installs a "chrome updater" which
So we see the strongest warming cycle in thousands of years.
What's more likely? That this unprecedented warming is natural and just happened to correspond with AGW.
Im gonna play devils advocate for a second. Lets say the warming trend started several thousand years ago, and is getting more and more "intense" over time. The moment we start gathering data on it, therefore, we will see it as a cycle "at its most intense". And that will continue to be the case, year after year.
It is in no way sufficient to prove that we were the cause. You would need quite a bit more comprehensive data for THAT, than a simple argument of "what are the chances".
Yeah, addons that added themselves outside the normal system weren't always removable (through Firefox) and Firefox never asked about them. Yahoo Toolbar, Bing, etc.
The toolbars were always extensions, and removable-- unless they were installed in a system-wide fashion, in which case you need to manually remove them from the firefox program folder.
However, they're talking addons at this point (Adblock Plus, BetterPrivacy, Greasemonkey, Skype etc.) - NOT plugins (Flash, Shockwave, Java [except the Console, which is an addon], etc.).
Addons is a parent category that includes Extensions (Adblock and the rest) and Plugins (flash, etc). You can see this when you go to the firefox menu-- the "addons" entry takes you to a list of extensions and plugins. The "get addons" is referring to the fact that all extensions are, in fact, addons. Think "square is a rectangle".
What they appear to be referring to is any addon that installs itself outside of the normal context, which would be specifically aimed at MS' dotNet crap and Java's "next gen console" crap that were snuck into firefox installations once upon a time.
You could always go back to the older browsers. You can still download Phoenix 0.5 (aka pre-firefox firefox) right here, and Firefox 1.0 here. Im pretty sure you will discover that its a case of "the grass is always greener", though.
This eats up a lot more memory and those processes are probably doing a lot of RPC all the time. (And besides, you shouldn't NEED to kill them in the first place.)
What about when some idiot JS dev had an infinite loop thats killing performance? Def a good idea to A) have Chrome catch it and ask if you want to halt it, and B) have the option to kill the page yourself if you dont want to wait that long.
So do FF add-ons written with the mozilla add-on SDK. Updates are done on startup and you can always opt out of a restart. So in practise, this isn't a concern.
Updates can only happen before the browser has fully loaded. Once the browser is fully loaded, any change requires a restart. With chrome, I can install and remove extensions instantly. Trying to argue that Chrome isnt better in this regard is ridiculous; why should it be a GOOD thing that I need to restart constantly if eg Im testing changes to an Extension's javascript? In chrome, I make my changes, save the javascript, and install the updated version, and can see changes immediately.
Good for you but I still prefer Firebug over Safaris/Webkits/Chromes view-source: any day.
Thats great, but you need more than just firebug to equal Chrome's dev tools. Pretty sure you need a few extra pieces to cover all the javascript, css, etc (dont remember which pieces exactly). There goes some of your hypothetical memory gains.
I want to be clear here. Youre worried about memory and inter-process communication, but your solution to deficiencies in firefox is "we can install an extension for that". Thats true, and is one of Firefox's strengths, but if all of your needs are native in Chrome, you will end up sacrificing a ton of performance trying to get them built in as CSS / JS / HTML based extensions. You also introduce the chance of massive memory leaks, which is probably (has LONG been believed to be) the cause of most people's complaints about Firefox.
This is fixed as of 8.0a2 (possibly earlier). Tab switches are instantaneous now.
Thats wonderful, and this isnt a "I hate firefox forever" thread. Its a "chrome is currently superior IMHO" thread. And I am hoping it also addresses tab tearing and creation speeds. I do want firefox to improve, because sometimes one site gives one browser a problem, so options are nice.
I've never needed this. If you want it, install the Google Toolbar. That is, "google.com/toolbar". Wow! That was SO hard to find!
Another piece of memory and screen real estate gone, for that once every 6 months need. And you missed the point, which was that I dont need to worry about installing it when such a 1-off situation arises.
I *HATE* flash (a pox on Adobe and Apple, hate them both) and FF is already bloated enough. No need for a built-in PDF reader when Evince does the job Just FineTM and quickly at that. Built-in flash would just be the first thing to rm -rf after install.
You are in the vast minority of people if you dont use it. Having the assurance at each Chrome startup that Im running the absolute latest version is a heck of a lot nicer than Firefox's situation. And by the way, if youre using rm -rf to delete flash, youre doin it wrong-- its a single.so file, using the recurse switch for one file is Bad Practice (TM).
FF doesn't update and doesn't need to update. There's apt for that. Chrome is updated exactly the same way.
That is not accurate. I have seen a number of 4.0, 5.0, and 6.0 installations floating around in the last week. On the other hand, I have NEVER seen a non-up-to-date Chrome installation (except when Chrome is left running for weeks, which I do sometimes). Look at the upgrade stats between Chrome and firefox, it is clear that theyre NOT the same. FURTHER, Firefox STILL doesnt have differential binary updates, so
One has to wonder whether some driving Firefox development are really in cahoots with Google with the objective of marginalizing Firefox as a Chrome clone.
One would also wonder, to what end? Really, what is the point?
Better built in insight into where the resources are going. Open the Chrome task manager, viola-- all the stats you could want, and even more if you click the "stats for nerds".
Better control over Extensions-- you can see extensions running in their separate process, and terminate them if theyre a problem.
Extension modifications dont require a browser restart-- installing, uninstalling, configging, activating, etc all happen immediately
Built in "view source" kicks the everloving crap out of Firefox's, and is only (somewhat) rivaled by Firebug (at least to my non-html coder eye). It is a breeze to modify a live HTML page, or execute javascript in the context of the page, or any number of other shady-business tricks you might want to do. I actually designed a splash screen for a simple launcher by going to my company webpage, and using Chrome to modify the look of it because it was easier than using paint.net.
Tab performance (creating, destroying, moving, tearing) is about twice as good as any browser except for Opera. Press and hold ctrl+t in firefox and in chrome, see which performs better.
Built in no-hassle translation that Just Works (TM). No need to hunt around for an extension that once in a blue moon I want to view a foreign webpage.
Built-in, auto-updating latest versions of Flash, and a PDF reader. The PDF reader is believed to be Foxit based, which is even better.
Much, Much, Much better auto-update system. Firefox is getting there, which will be wonderful, but its not there yet.
Native MSI support, with an official package (which Just Works-- even updating-- without everyone having to have admin!!!!), as well as official GPO templates, and the ability to push extensions to a whole network
It is also POSSIBLE that firefox js speed has caught up... but when I was designing a Debian based live CD for troubleshooting last year, chrome was a no-brainer because on low-performance systems I might be working on, its CPU usage was just plain lower.
There are a bunch of reasons, but it basically boils down to, Google has a ton of money, and can pay for full time devs to keep churning out massive progress every few weeks. googlechromereleases.blogspot.com is fun to visit and see what crazy thing theyre working on this week.
Er..... im using native flashblock, and adblock is available. Noscript, not sure, its a gigantic PITA to use since it breaks half the sites out there, so I neither know nor care.
Incidentally, I have only once had extension breakage when they were tinkering with the extension API on some dev versions around v4.
I think you have things kind of backwards. Its been a while since I read up on it, but I seem to recall the reformation playing a huge, gigantic role in things, and that it was a movement that occurred over several centuries. It wasnt that democracy overthrew religion, it was that (in part) religion (or specifically the reformation movements) overthrew the idea of a multinational theocracy and pushed towards democracy.
Most of your post hinges around the supposition that until the Enlightenment came around, the Church had an unceasing iron grip over politics. Looking at the course of history between the 15th and 17th centuries, I have to disagree somewhat. Again, Im not an expert, but there is a lot that screams out of your post as being over simplified, and a gross over-exaggeration of the role of the church by the time of the enlightenment.
He could be non-existent(his words entirely fabricated).
You would have to be historically ignorant to posit that.
He could be a conglomeration of several historical figures.
A little less crazy than the previous hypothesis, but still pretty far out there.
And he is in no way unique.
...Except in so far as his words are perhaps more famous than any other person's who has ever lived, perhaps?
You can make the same argument for every Messianic fool who has raised his head to proclaim himself a god.
Ok, I think it does hold. "Either God, or a bad man". I think it is manifestly obvious by simple reasoning which camp the vast majority would fall into.
He imparted no amazing objective knowledge.
It would be a pretty poor messiah whose chief aim was to impart scientific knowledge. He did display unusual objective knowledge on several occasions-- which was in fact the basis of some of his followers' belief (knowledge that he could not have reasonably had outside of "supernatural" insight).
The best you can take away from the whole wretched religion is a nice formulation of the Ethic of Reciprocity.
Noone can say that Jesus' message is summed up by "be a good person" without displaying an astounding ignorance of what he actually taught. It certainly wasnt summed up as the "Ethic of Reciprocity".
That's not much of an argument to support the monstrous ideas of heaven and hell.
Well, he wasnt arguing for their existence, he was simply stating them as an objective fact. If you accept that he is God, you would need no argument from him to support their existence, and if you do not, then no argument would suffice; THAT seems like a silly complaint to make.
Such a sentiment kind of falls flat on its face when the 2 big corps in question are kind of undeniably the good guys in this story. Possibly save your bile for the next time a MS anti-trust issue comes up, but in this article kindly keep your trap shut.
Good actions should be lauded, not condemned by ignorant slashdotters.
thanks to a sound neutering brought about by the Enlightenment
Are you referring to the Jeffersonian bible? I am unaware of anyone who actually follows that. As many (including Lewis) have pointed out, if Christ's words are false, he is a bad, wicked man indeed, as he elevated himself above all others. "Either God, or a bad man", i believe the quote goes.
I would be interested to know what you think the Enlightenment of all things did for Christianity. Was Aquinas' christianity brutal?
Meh, as a parent, I kinda see most religions as a bunch of stories you make up to get your kids to "listen to your parents", be "good", and do "good" work. Then the kids grow up and maybe rebel or become super-serious about it.
If as you seem to be assuming there is no rational basis for belief in those stories / reasons, it seems to create a few problems: 1) Would your children not eventually become wise to it, and learn to distrust what you say as suspect? 2) If there is no basis for moral behavior, what hope do you have that they will continue to act in a responsible and moral way once they realize that none of your teachings to them were sincere?
I don't really want to get semantic about it, but I'd certainly consider atheism as a form of religion/philosophy
I agree with this, as well as most of the second half of your post. I disagree that all belief systems can be false; one must be true.
Why are so many churches of today so hellbent on sticking exactly to the way things earlier were? It's simply not healthy.
Because with most religions, it would be completely intellectually dishonest to change the foundation of the faith, and then claim to still be part of that faith. What is the point of being a New Liberal Reformed Protestant whose creed denies that Christ actually died for sins? What is the point of a Christianity without a cross?
Whats not healthy is thinking that doctrine is unimportant and all that matters is the fuzzy feeling and the sense of community a "religion" brings. If they are not based on a desire for truth, they are worthless.
Its really amusing if your friends have a habit of saying things like "you will NEVER" or "They will ALWAYS". Ive taught one friend in particular how foolish that is after a few years of showing him how, actually, "never" usually gets replaced by "eventually".
It's not ridiculous; moral philosophy has been advancing since the bronze age, just like science.
Human knowlege has advanced, this is true, but if you think people have been getting better at "not being evil", you really dont understand the human condition.
Oh look-- you simultaneously took something out of its context to prove your point, and missed the point Christ was making with his life (ie, that no, youre not going to hell for specific sins), and ignored the remainder of the NT-- where food is later SPECIFICALLY addressed.
Exactly. They're "wrong" because YOU already "know" what is "right".
I love this. You completely misconstrue what hes saying and get modded +5 because you disagree with "the religious guy". In case it was an honest mistake, let me spell it out-- he was saying that "consensus" does not define fact. Just because you can find 1 billion people to say that the sky is actually rainbow-striped on thursdays, doesnt make it a "fact"; facts are independent of beliefs and opinions (they can of course coincide, but one does not cause the other).
And if they don't agree with you...
In case the above wasnt clear enough: Agreement has no relevance to truth.
And yet around 50% of the US population thinks that "intelligent design" should be taught in schools along with evolution.
Clearly, that statement indicates that religion thinks all science is false.
It's anyone who believes that his personal religion is "right" and that others are "wrong".
PSSSST-- look at your own post. You yourself are declaring your own personal beliefs to be right, and others wrong. It seems really odd, to attack someone because they actually believe what they say they believe, rather than going for some kind of post-modernist "we can all be right!"
Slashdot Mirror
Yea, you missed what I was arguing against. Good use of sarcasm, poor reading comprehension.
For the curious, I was arguing against his reasoning and the assumption he ended up with, as it is a remarkably weak argument. Had he framed his argument differently, I might not have posted in the first place.
FF catches this too, and allows you to stop the script even if it's internal to FF itself. Does chrome allow you to stop an internal Javascript?
Ive never run into that situation except (I think) in an addon, where it did. Im not sure I would be boasting that your browser's userland was asking a user if they wanted to terminate some of the code that the browser uses; that seems like that should get caught in qa. That seems a pretty good time to halt the browser and relaunch it.
FF add-ons are more flexible then Chrome add-ons, you can do pretty much anything in an FF add-on
No argument. They also allow massive memory leaks, hence the complaints for the last umpteen versions about firefox using gigs of memory (HINT-- its your addons). And honestly, as we now have before-the-resource-loads adblock now (yes, it works the SAME as it does in firefox), Im not sure what Im missing with Chromes extension API.
If Chrome extensions could tap into the internals, perhaps it would require regular restarting as well.
Thats NOT a safe assumption, as you can install NPAPI plugins without restarting the browser, too (worst case, tab reload is needed, sometimes not even that).
Chrome is inferior here. Sure, it comes a long way but it's not as good as Firebug yet. No extra pieces involved.
Not being a webdev, im not the person to argue this in detail, but about 1 month ago I was doing some site troubleshooting, and in order to do in Firebug what I did in Chrome's web dev tools, I did need to download an additional piece-- I believe it was JS related. Anyways, I gave you my reasons why I prefer Chrome's tools (much easier live editing, much better performance), and your retort is "youre wrong"? No reasons, or explanation? Care to expound on that?
I have 15 add-ons and the performance with all of them enabled is *better*. They don't slow down anything at all
Compared to a C++ implementation, yes, they do, and youd be foolish to argue that interpreted code could possibly outperform compiled code.
. There's no RequestPolicy for Chrome.
Well, we covered that above. Just because I think Chrome is generally a better browser doesnt mean that Firefox isnt superior in some areas; I just think tab performance and translation that "just work" are more important than the ability to roll your own custom browser. Sometimes I need a function that a Chrome plugin cant provide (dont remember such a scenario..), and then I launch firefox. When I just want to do some quick research or whatever, having a responsive browser that wont pause for 30+seconds checking if my plugins work with a new version, or waiting for the tabs to load is worth a whole lot more.
It doesn't leak memory, but the heap can get fragmented.
Not sure we're talking about the same thing. Im talking about addon-induced leaks, which the devs have LONG talked about (I remember an Asa Dotzler post from v3.0 about plugins being the cause of leaks). This isnt a hypothetical thing; its a real problem. Its also why when troubleshooting they ask for a clean profile with no addons.
Creation and removal imply a switch unless you do it in the background, but yes FF does it instantaneously just like Chrome does.
Just tried and both tab creation and tab-tear were much much better in Firefox 7.0 compared to prior versions. Kudos to the dev team, and as I said that is a good thing in my book, not a bad thing.
If you deploy the Chrome MSI package using a GPO and have a business policy only to publish new packages once every n weeks, users will end up with outdated versions for a while too.
No, because you do not need to update the MSI in order for the users to be on the up-to-date version. I assume the MSI installs a "chrome updater" which
So we see the strongest warming cycle in thousands of years.
What's more likely?
That this unprecedented warming is natural and just happened to correspond with AGW.
Im gonna play devils advocate for a second. Lets say the warming trend started several thousand years ago, and is getting more and more "intense" over time. The moment we start gathering data on it, therefore, we will see it as a cycle "at its most intense". And that will continue to be the case, year after year.
It is in no way sufficient to prove that we were the cause. You would need quite a bit more comprehensive data for THAT, than a simple argument of "what are the chances".
Nothing youve said changes the fact that the summary was a load of garbage. As GP pointed out, his conclusion in no way flowed from his premise
Yea, its so much better now that we got rid of all the porn, spam, and illegal stuff.
This is, of course, the REAL reason theyve moved to rapid release.
Yeah, addons that added themselves outside the normal system weren't always removable (through Firefox) and Firefox never asked about them. Yahoo Toolbar, Bing, etc.
The toolbars were always extensions, and removable-- unless they were installed in a system-wide fashion, in which case you need to manually remove them from the firefox program folder.
However, they're talking addons at this point (Adblock Plus, BetterPrivacy, Greasemonkey, Skype etc.) - NOT plugins (Flash, Shockwave, Java [except the Console, which is an addon], etc.).
Addons is a parent category that includes Extensions (Adblock and the rest) and Plugins (flash, etc). You can see this when you go to the firefox menu-- the "addons" entry takes you to a list of extensions and plugins. The "get addons" is referring to the fact that all extensions are, in fact, addons. Think "square is a rectangle".
What they appear to be referring to is any addon that installs itself outside of the normal context, which would be specifically aimed at MS' dotNet crap and Java's "next gen console" crap that were snuck into firefox installations once upon a time.
You could always go back to the older browsers. You can still download Phoenix 0.5 (aka pre-firefox firefox) right here, and Firefox 1.0 here. Im pretty sure you will discover that its a case of "the grass is always greener", though.
And of course, theres always lynx.
You probably want to get new drivers. If a userland piece of software is able to "crash your drivers", sounds like most of the blame goes to nVidia.
This eats up a lot more memory and those processes are probably doing a lot of RPC all the time. (And besides, you shouldn't NEED to kill them in the first place.)
What about when some idiot JS dev had an infinite loop thats killing performance? Def a good idea to A) have Chrome catch it and ask if you want to halt it, and B) have the option to kill the page yourself if you dont want to wait that long.
So do FF add-ons written with the mozilla add-on SDK. Updates are done on startup and you can always opt out of a restart. So in practise, this isn't a concern.
Updates can only happen before the browser has fully loaded. Once the browser is fully loaded, any change requires a restart. With chrome, I can install and remove extensions instantly. Trying to argue that Chrome isnt better in this regard is ridiculous; why should it be a GOOD thing that I need to restart constantly if eg Im testing changes to an Extension's javascript? In chrome, I make my changes, save the javascript, and install the updated version, and can see changes immediately.
Good for you but I still prefer Firebug over Safaris/Webkits/Chromes view-source: any day.
Thats great, but you need more than just firebug to equal Chrome's dev tools. Pretty sure you need a few extra pieces to cover all the javascript, css, etc (dont remember which pieces exactly). There goes some of your hypothetical memory gains.
I want to be clear here. Youre worried about memory and inter-process communication, but your solution to deficiencies in firefox is "we can install an extension for that". Thats true, and is one of Firefox's strengths, but if all of your needs are native in Chrome, you will end up sacrificing a ton of performance trying to get them built in as CSS / JS / HTML based extensions. You also introduce the chance of massive memory leaks, which is probably (has LONG been believed to be) the cause of most people's complaints about Firefox.
This is fixed as of 8.0a2 (possibly earlier). Tab switches are instantaneous now.
Thats wonderful, and this isnt a "I hate firefox forever" thread. Its a "chrome is currently superior IMHO" thread. And I am hoping it also addresses tab tearing and creation speeds. I do want firefox to improve, because sometimes one site gives one browser a problem, so options are nice.
I've never needed this. If you want it, install the Google Toolbar. That is, "google.com/toolbar". Wow! That was SO hard to find!
Another piece of memory and screen real estate gone, for that once every 6 months need. And you missed the point, which was that I dont need to worry about installing it when such a 1-off situation arises.
I *HATE* flash (a pox on Adobe and Apple, hate them both) and FF is already bloated enough. No need for a built-in PDF reader when Evince does the job Just FineTM and quickly at that. Built-in flash would just be the first thing to rm -rf after install.
You are in the vast minority of people if you dont use it. Having the assurance at each Chrome startup that Im running the absolute latest version is a heck of a lot nicer than Firefox's situation. And by the way, if youre using rm -rf to delete flash, youre doin it wrong-- its a single .so file, using the recurse switch for one file is Bad Practice (TM).
FF doesn't update and doesn't need to update. There's apt for that. Chrome is updated exactly the same way.
That is not accurate. I have seen a number of 4.0, 5.0, and 6.0 installations floating around in the last week. On the other hand, I have NEVER seen a non-up-to-date Chrome installation (except when Chrome is left running for weeks, which I do sometimes). Look at the upgrade stats between Chrome and firefox, it is clear that theyre NOT the same. FURTHER, Firefox STILL doesnt have differential binary updates, so
Fix tiny part of huge problem
So in your opinion, none of the security fixes in Vista / Seven count for anything?
As long as flash and java continue to have terrible security flaws, Microsoft is liable for the consequences?
One has to wonder whether some driving Firefox development are really in cahoots with Google with the objective of marginalizing Firefox as a Chrome clone.
One would also wonder, to what end? Really, what is the point?
List of reasons:
It is also POSSIBLE that firefox js speed has caught up... but when I was designing a Debian based live CD for troubleshooting last year, chrome was a no-brainer because on low-performance systems I might be working on, its CPU usage was just plain lower.
There are a bunch of reasons, but it basically boils down to, Google has a ton of money, and can pay for full time devs to keep churning out massive progress every few weeks. googlechromereleases.blogspot.com is fun to visit and see what crazy thing theyre working on this week.
I have seen it take up over 50GB of disk space for a cache, which is simply ridiculous
Im not sure what, but youre doing something wrong.
Er..... im using native flashblock, and adblock is available. Noscript, not sure, its a gigantic PITA to use since it breaks half the sites out there, so I neither know nor care.
Incidentally, I have only once had extension breakage when they were tinkering with the extension API on some dev versions around v4.
Democracy supplanted monarchies and theocracies.
I think you have things kind of backwards. Its been a while since I read up on it, but I seem to recall the reformation playing a huge, gigantic role in things, and that it was a movement that occurred over several centuries. It wasnt that democracy overthrew religion, it was that (in part) religion (or specifically the reformation movements) overthrew the idea of a multinational theocracy and pushed towards democracy.
Most of your post hinges around the supposition that until the Enlightenment came around, the Church had an unceasing iron grip over politics. Looking at the course of history between the 15th and 17th centuries, I have to disagree somewhat. Again, Im not an expert, but there is a lot that screams out of your post as being over simplified, and a gross over-exaggeration of the role of the church by the time of the enlightenment.
He could be non-existent(his words entirely fabricated).
You would have to be historically ignorant to posit that.
He could be a conglomeration of several historical figures.
A little less crazy than the previous hypothesis, but still pretty far out there.
And he is in no way unique.
...Except in so far as his words are perhaps more famous than any other person's who has ever lived, perhaps?
You can make the same argument for every Messianic fool who has raised his head to proclaim himself a god.
Ok, I think it does hold. "Either God, or a bad man". I think it is manifestly obvious by simple reasoning which camp the vast majority would fall into.
He imparted no amazing objective knowledge.
It would be a pretty poor messiah whose chief aim was to impart scientific knowledge. He did display unusual objective knowledge on several occasions-- which was in fact the basis of some of his followers' belief (knowledge that he could not have reasonably had outside of "supernatural" insight).
The best you can take away from the whole wretched religion is a nice formulation of the Ethic of Reciprocity.
Noone can say that Jesus' message is summed up by "be a good person" without displaying an astounding ignorance of what he actually taught. It certainly wasnt summed up as the "Ethic of Reciprocity".
That's not much of an argument to support the monstrous ideas of heaven and hell.
Well, he wasnt arguing for their existence, he was simply stating them as an objective fact. If you accept that he is God, you would need no argument from him to support their existence, and if you do not, then no argument would suffice; THAT seems like a silly complaint to make.
Such a sentiment kind of falls flat on its face when the 2 big corps in question are kind of undeniably the good guys in this story. Possibly save your bile for the next time a MS anti-trust issue comes up, but in this article kindly keep your trap shut.
Good actions should be lauded, not condemned by ignorant slashdotters.
thanks to a sound neutering brought about by the Enlightenment
Are you referring to the Jeffersonian bible? I am unaware of anyone who actually follows that. As many (including Lewis) have pointed out, if Christ's words are false, he is a bad, wicked man indeed, as he elevated himself above all others. "Either God, or a bad man", i believe the quote goes.
I would be interested to know what you think the Enlightenment of all things did for Christianity. Was Aquinas' christianity brutal?
Meh, as a parent, I kinda see most religions as a bunch of stories you make up to get your kids to "listen to your parents", be "good", and do "good" work. Then the kids grow up and maybe rebel or become super-serious about it.
If as you seem to be assuming there is no rational basis for belief in those stories / reasons, it seems to create a few problems:
1) Would your children not eventually become wise to it, and learn to distrust what you say as suspect?
2) If there is no basis for moral behavior, what hope do you have that they will continue to act in a responsible and moral way once they realize that none of your teachings to them were sincere?
I don't really want to get semantic about it, but I'd certainly consider atheism as a form of religion/philosophy
I agree with this, as well as most of the second half of your post. I disagree that all belief systems can be false; one must be true.
Please dont misuse legal words in a non-legal context. If they tell you they are doing this, it isnt fraud, whatever else it may be.
Why are so many churches of today so hellbent on sticking exactly to the way things earlier were? It's simply not healthy.
Because with most religions, it would be completely intellectually dishonest to change the foundation of the faith, and then claim to still be part of that faith. What is the point of being a New Liberal Reformed Protestant whose creed denies that Christ actually died for sins? What is the point of a Christianity without a cross?
Whats not healthy is thinking that doctrine is unimportant and all that matters is the fuzzy feeling and the sense of community a "religion" brings. If they are not based on a desire for truth, they are worthless.
Its really amusing if your friends have a habit of saying things like "you will NEVER" or "They will ALWAYS". Ive taught one friend in particular how foolish that is after a few years of showing him how, actually, "never" usually gets replaced by "eventually".
It's not ridiculous; moral philosophy has been advancing since the bronze age, just like science.
Human knowlege has advanced, this is true, but if you think people have been getting better at "not being evil", you really dont understand the human condition.
Sorry, buddy, you're going to hell.
Oh look-- you simultaneously took something out of its context to prove your point, and missed the point Christ was making with his life (ie, that no, youre not going to hell for specific sins), and ignored the remainder of the NT-- where food is later SPECIFICALLY addressed.
+3 fallacy? Can we make that mod?
It's not my problem if they're wrong. =)
Exactly. They're "wrong" because YOU already "know" what is "right".
I love this. You completely misconstrue what hes saying and get modded +5 because you disagree with "the religious guy". In case it was an honest mistake, let me spell it out-- he was saying that "consensus" does not define fact. Just because you can find 1 billion people to say that the sky is actually rainbow-striped on thursdays, doesnt make it a "fact"; facts are independent of beliefs and opinions (they can of course coincide, but one does not cause the other).
And if they don't agree with you ...
In case the above wasnt clear enough: Agreement has no relevance to truth.
And yet around 50% of the US population thinks that "intelligent design" should be taught in schools along with evolution.
Clearly, that statement indicates that religion thinks all science is false.
It's anyone who believes that his personal religion is "right" and that others are "wrong".
PSSSST-- look at your own post. You yourself are declaring your own personal beliefs to be right, and others wrong.
It seems really odd, to attack someone because they actually believe what they say they believe, rather than going for some kind of post-modernist "we can all be right!"