"What's to stop somebody from landing (a watercraft) somewhere along the enormous coastline of Hudson's Bay, and simply hoofing it through the Canadian wilderness"
Two words - Deer Flies.
They BITE! And when they bite, they also take a chunk of meat out of you.
Multiply that by a few hundred times an hour, for weeks on end. You'll be happy to turn yourself in to the nearest cop, if you haven't killed yourself first.
Actually, a lot of parents bought Apples for home use, until the price differential between an Apple and a no-namn clone became too large to ignore.
Of course, we're seeing the price differential has now vanished - for many users an iMac has a lower TCO than a Windows box, by the time you add in antivirus and antimalware and anti-flavoraid-of-the-day subscriptions, and the quicker obsolescence of the windows box. Throw in a copy of parallels and they have no reason to move their windows programs from xp.
I started seeing macs sitting on reception desks last year... business is starting to realize that windows is just too expensive to run on every desktop.
My point was that the motorola cpu was a much nicer one to program on - no segmented memory model - and that it wasn't only Apple that was using motorola cpus at the time. If you've ever written in assembler, you know how much of a PITA the segmented architecture was. Even if you didn't use assembler, you had to keep 6 different memory models in mind, TINY, SMALL, COMPACT, MEDIUM, LARGE, HUGE.
What a mess. Overlaying code? don't go beyond 64k (32k in some cases). Added a few lines or changed some compiler options and your program goes off the deep end? Check that you haven't exceeded your memory model's limits. Need to address more than 1 meg of ram? BWAHAHAHAHA!
Perfect DNA would not be subject to degrading. It would replicate perfectly. It would be the bio equivalent of digital duplication - so I guess it was never perfect, was it... Its only imperfect cellular mechanisms that don't replicate perfectly all the time. Or was your "perfect DNA" still somehow subject to the effects of mutations as per natural selection? You can't have it both ways. Perfect DNA would be able to replicate perfectly despite radiation or other mutagenic effects - the transcription mechanism would snip off and replace those chain sections that are not perfect duplicates, and restore damaged sections from another repeating backup sequence elsewhere in the chain. Or didn't you know that DNA has error-detection?
"Jesus came into the equation to save everyone's soul."
That's not what Jesus said - he said he was come to set brother against brother:
Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a man's foes shall be they of his own household." -Jesus
-- Matthew 10:34-36
Matthew 7:21 NKJV) "Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven.
So, since Jesus didn't come to save everyone, your arguments fail. Or do you believe Jeffrey Dahmer, David Berkowitz, atheists, unbelievers, gays and lesbians and transexuals all get saved?
"Just because he didn't say 'slavery is bad' doesn't mean he was ok with it.... and those commands were changed later."
Ether you're lying, or you're ignorant. The New Testament teaches that slaves should NOT actively seek their freedom. So much for the rules changing "because Jesus came." This was the teaching even after Jesus' death (1 Cor. 7:20ff).
20:Each man must remain in that condition in which he was called.
21:Were you called while a slave? Do not worry about it; but if you are able also to become free, rather do that.
In other words, if you became a believer while a slave, that's your lot in life. If you can become free, do so, but if not, tough.
There was no "rule change." Nowhere in the New Testament does it say "Slavery is wrong." Neither God nor Jesus condemned it, except for the case of owning a fellow hebrew. Sounds racist to me.
"Now it seems you are the less intelligent one for having such a narrow view."
Unlike you, who have obviously never read it, but STiLL accept it as "revealed truth" because someone tells you to. No wonder you post anonymously, coward.
Of course, belief in an afterlife for the obedient is nothing new - rulers have been using that to keep their subjects in their place since well before christianity popped up. In this respect mainline christianity is no different from the jehovah's witnesses, christian science, the mormons, pentacostalism, or other variants. The only real difference between it and other cults, such as scientology, is the methods used. The results are the same - loss of independent critical thougth.
Just tell them that the schools will offer to teach ID as a fact when the churches teach evolution and Darwinism as a fact.
Do you have insurance? Why do you need insurance, if God will protect you?
Do you have a job? Isn't it written "Ask and you shall receive."
Any kids? After all, there's less than a 100% chance that their kids will believe, so they have a chance of increasing the number of people condemned to hell. Shouldn't you be practicing birth control instead of making babies?
Is incest still okay? Adam and Eve's kids must have practiced incest.
Do you have more than one wife? King David had 300, and he was "a man after god's heart". the lech. and Solomon had 700.
Is slavery still okay? After all, God commanded his people to enslave their enemies, and even Jesus never condemned slavery.
Is racism and genocide still okay? After all, God commanded his people to kill off those who were not true believers.
Gee, that "Intelligent Design" doesn't look so intelligent any more... looked at in this light, the Bible looks like nothing so much as hate literature.
Do you really think anyone believes FireFox/IceWeasel is going away? Personally, I think its a "good thing" that he's portraying this as a "Safari will take market share from IE" thing... come to think of it, what would the community's reaction be if he had tried to show Safari taking market share away from FireFox? People would be dumping on him left and right - "Jobs Reality Distortion Field," etc...
I don't think it was even that - it was more like trying to show the relative market shares of the two browsers, without complicating the chart by introducing other elements (Opera, Firefox, IceWeasel, Konq, Lynx, Links, etc...).
"Is this the same country whose citizens have a negative savings rate?"
Yep - and a lot of people justify it by saying "If the government can't balance its chequebook, why should I?" The federal deficit corrupts the public indirectly in this fashion.
Those of us who see the crunch coming either are already out of debt or are paying down debt as fast as possible.
Nowadays, when people ask "Can I afford this?", they're really asking "Can I cover the monthly payments?" That's insane. If you have to pay off things like a washer or dryer or tv or living room set at "so much a month", the answer is NO, you obviously cannot afford it - and you should be looking to either put off the purchase until you can pay it cash, or buy something cheaper.
Even those "36 monthly payments with no interest" are total BS. You're paying ALL the interest up-front. The retailer sells the contract to the finance company at a 14% discount (it may be even greater depending on the deal). Pay it off ahead of time, and you don't get a rebate of those hidden finance charges.
Go in there with a wad of cash, tell them you know about the hidden interest, you're not interested in contracting debt, you're a serious buyer, you have [wave stack of bills in their face] the money, and see how much they're willing to drop the price, or what they'll throw into the deal. The sales droid on the floor might believe that there's really no interest, but you can be sure that someone higher up will say "throw in a second night table, microwave, or an extra set of chairs".
Its not yours until its paid for, at which point its old, obsolete, and you're about ready to get back on the stupid debt treadmill again because its only "so much a month."
Then you have a month where you're sick, or temporarily laid off, or an unexpected bill... no thanks. I'll stick with cash.
I agree that government spending has to be reduced, and more focused. I also believe that campaign finance reform is a part of this process. When people who benefit from pork-barrelling can no longer use your own money to continue to lobby for more pork-barrel projects, then maybe we'll see a change.
"Jesus will come in 5 years and take us all to heaven so there is no need to worry about budgets" suicide levels we are at today."
Unfortunately, that's the attitude of a lot of "true believers" - and why they're not really worried about deficits, the housing bubble, the environment, oil imports, etc - "Jeebus will fix all that because I BELIEVE"! Seems to me a lot of people died believing that...
Let them all come to a public hearing instead - its about transparency. Let the CEO voice his concerns in front of the voters' lobby group, and vice versa.
Or to put it into context, let lobbyists be required to meet with legislators only in public discussion forums. No backroom wheeling and dealing.
You asked if there was any poll that showed a difference between current law and public opinion. While its totally irrelevant to the need for campaign reform (I'll address that in a moment) even one counter-example should be sufficient.
Your response that it is an "either-or" is a "missing middle" logical fallacy. Spending would have been hundreds of billions less if it weren't for the BS that the US pulled on the "missing WMDs" in its headlong rush to go to war with Iraq at any cost. That's a simple fact, and the current polls back this understanding.
Now, back to electoral reform - for people to trust a system, it not only has to work - it has to be SEEN to work. Electoral reform is an essential ingredient to that. Is it that hard to understand?
Oops - disregard parent post, I thought the calendar said 2107, not 2007.
Come back in 50 years.
Well, gotta go feed the pygmy T-Rex. I really wish they hadn't brought out those "designer dinos" last year. Pink feathers and a voice box! Thing's worse than a frigging parrot! "Dino want a cracker! Dino want a cracker!" And now PETA wants to give them the vote under the "Sentient Recombinants Act" of '17! They can vote when they can pick up their own poop, I say!
Companies lobby all the time to get laws changed in their favor. This is just "business as usual."
The real cure is electoral reform, including campaign financing. As long as "lawmakers" (I use the term liberally) can be tempted by companies with deep pockets and the hope of a seat on the board of directors after the bums are thrown out, this will just keep happening.
Slashdot Mirror
"Yeah, I can't wait to install Microsoft software on my Linux systems."
Here you go - run Internet Explo[d|r]er under linux http://www.tatanka.com.br/ies4linux/page/Main_Page
Finally get into those IE-only sites using linux.
"What's to stop somebody from landing (a watercraft) somewhere along the enormous coastline of Hudson's Bay, and simply hoofing it through the Canadian wilderness"
Two words - Deer Flies.
They BITE! And when they bite, they also take a chunk of meat out of you.
Multiply that by a few hundred times an hour, for weeks on end. You'll be happy to turn yourself in to the nearest cop, if you haven't killed yourself first.
[_] "You can have my fingerprints when you pry them from my cold dead hands!"
[_] "I don't have any fingers, you insensitive clod."
[_] "Fingerprints? I'll give you the finger, all right ..."
[_] (prominently displaying copy of Hustler) "You really want to take my fingerprints? Do you know where my hands have just been?"
[_] "A...CHOO! Oops - do you have a hanky? The kids ain't gonna believe the size of this greener ..."
All this means is more people avoiding the US rather than submit to being treated like criminals unless proven otherwise.
Actually, a lot of parents bought Apples for home use, until the price differential between an Apple and a no-namn clone became too large to ignore.
Of course, we're seeing the price differential has now vanished - for many users an iMac has a lower TCO than a Windows box, by the time you add in antivirus and antimalware and anti-flavoraid-of-the-day subscriptions, and the quicker obsolescence of the windows box. Throw in a copy of parallels and they have no reason to move their windows programs from xp.
I started seeing macs sitting on reception desks last year ... business is starting to realize that windows is just too expensive to run on every desktop.
My point was that the motorola cpu was a much nicer one to program on - no segmented memory model - and that it wasn't only Apple that was using motorola cpus at the time. If you've ever written in assembler, you know how much of a PITA the segmented architecture was. Even if you didn't use assembler, you had to keep 6 different memory models in mind, TINY, SMALL, COMPACT, MEDIUM, LARGE, HUGE.
What a mess. Overlaying code? don't go beyond 64k (32k in some cases). Added a few lines or changed some compiler options and your program goes off the deep end? Check that you haven't exceeded your memory model's limits. Need to address more than 1 meg of ram? BWAHAHAHAHA!
It never worked for Apple? At one time the only computers you could find in schools were from Apple, from the student labs to the principal's desk.
If Apple hadn't screwed up price-wise, your PC would be running a motorola cpu, not an intel.
Apple called ... they want their 1980's marketing program back ...
"The DNA of the people back then was perfect.."
Perfect DNA would not be subject to degrading. It would replicate perfectly. It would be the bio equivalent of digital duplication - so I guess it was never perfect, was it ... Its only imperfect cellular mechanisms that don't replicate perfectly all the time. Or was your "perfect DNA" still somehow subject to the effects of mutations as per natural selection? You can't have it both ways. Perfect DNA would be able to replicate perfectly despite radiation or other mutagenic effects - the transcription mechanism would snip off and replace those chain sections that are not perfect duplicates, and restore damaged sections from another repeating backup sequence elsewhere in the chain. Or didn't you know that DNA has error-detection?
"Jesus came into the equation to save everyone's soul."
That's not what Jesus said - he said he was come to set brother against brother:
So, since Jesus didn't come to save everyone, your arguments fail. Or do you believe Jeffrey Dahmer, David Berkowitz, atheists, unbelievers, gays and lesbians and transexuals all get saved?
"Just because he didn't say 'slavery is bad' doesn't mean he was ok with it.... and those commands were changed later."
Ether you're lying, or you're ignorant. The New Testament teaches that slaves should NOT actively seek their freedom. So much for the rules changing "because Jesus came." This was the teaching even after Jesus' death (1 Cor. 7:20ff).
In other words, if you became a believer while a slave, that's your lot in life. If you can become free, do so, but if not, tough. There was no "rule change." Nowhere in the New Testament does it say "Slavery is wrong." Neither God nor Jesus condemned it, except for the case of owning a fellow hebrew. Sounds racist to me."Now it seems you are the less intelligent one for having such a narrow view."
Unlike you, who have obviously never read it, but STiLL accept it as "revealed truth" because someone tells you to. No wonder you post anonymously, coward.
Of course, belief in an afterlife for the obedient is nothing new - rulers have been using that to keep their subjects in their place since well before christianity popped up. In this respect mainline christianity is no different from the jehovah's witnesses, christian science, the mormons, pentacostalism, or other variants. The only real difference between it and other cults, such as scientology, is the methods used. The results are the same - loss of independent critical thougth.
"I got a BS in Astrology. What are you implying?"
You spelled it wrong - they award a BS of Astroturfology. In fact, if you get enough BS, you can have a Masters in Astroturfology.
Come to think of it, ID is a lot like astroturfing by the Beast from Redmond - they both espouse their own version of "get the facts."
Just tell them that the schools will offer to teach ID as a fact when the churches teach evolution and Darwinism as a fact.
-
Do you have insurance? Why do you need insurance, if God will protect you?
-
Do you have a job? Isn't it written "Ask and you shall receive."
-
Any kids? After all, there's less than a 100% chance that their kids will believe, so they have a chance of increasing the number of people condemned to hell. Shouldn't you be practicing birth control instead of making babies?
-
Is incest still okay? Adam and Eve's kids must have practiced incest.
-
Do you have more than one wife? King David had 300, and he was "a man after god's heart". the lech. and Solomon had 700.
-
Is slavery still okay? After all, God commanded his people to enslave their enemies, and even Jesus never condemned slavery.
-
Is racism and genocide still okay? After all, God commanded his people to kill off those who were not true believers.
Gee, that "Intelligent Design" doesn't look so intelligent any more"Some of us have to finish reading it, you insensitive clod!"
Don't bother - the last book sucked - which is probably why it was in the remainder bin at $5 for the hardcover edition.
Really, the last TWO were formulaic stinkers. Card didn't pull off a Rocky Balboa.
Do you really think anyone believes FireFox/IceWeasel is going away? Personally, I think its a "good thing" that he's portraying this as a "Safari will take market share from IE" thing ... come to think of it, what would the community's reaction be if he had tried to show Safari taking market share away from FireFox? People would be dumping on him left and right - "Jobs Reality Distortion Field," etc ...
So really, this IS just a storm in a teacup ...
I don't think it was even that - it was more like trying to show the relative market shares of the two browsers, without complicating the chart by introducing other elements (Opera, Firefox, IceWeasel, Konq, Lynx, Links, etc ...).
In other words, this is a tempest in a teacup.
The rest of us got a 417 response - "Expectation Failed"
What's the big deal - everything else is made in China - why not this "fool's gold"?
"Edward Norton as Bruce Banner"
"Is this the same country whose citizens have a negative savings rate?"
Yep - and a lot of people justify it by saying "If the government can't balance its chequebook, why should I?" The federal deficit corrupts the public indirectly in this fashion.
Those of us who see the crunch coming either are already out of debt or are paying down debt as fast as possible.
Nowadays, when people ask "Can I afford this?", they're really asking "Can I cover the monthly payments?" That's insane. If you have to pay off things like a washer or dryer or tv or living room set at "so much a month", the answer is NO, you obviously cannot afford it - and you should be looking to either put off the purchase until you can pay it cash, or buy something cheaper.
Even those "36 monthly payments with no interest" are total BS. You're paying ALL the interest up-front. The retailer sells the contract to the finance company at a 14% discount (it may be even greater depending on the deal). Pay it off ahead of time, and you don't get a rebate of those hidden finance charges.
Go in there with a wad of cash, tell them you know about the hidden interest, you're not interested in contracting debt, you're a serious buyer, you have [wave stack of bills in their face] the money, and see how much they're willing to drop the price, or what they'll throw into the deal. The sales droid on the floor might believe that there's really no interest, but you can be sure that someone higher up will say "throw in a second night table, microwave, or an extra set of chairs".
Its not yours until its paid for, at which point its old, obsolete, and you're about ready to get back on the stupid debt treadmill again because its only "so much a month."
Then you have a month where you're sick, or temporarily laid off, or an unexpected bill ... no thanks. I'll stick with cash.
I agree that government spending has to be reduced, and more focused. I also believe that campaign finance reform is a part of this process. When people who benefit from pork-barrelling can no longer use your own money to continue to lobby for more pork-barrel projects, then maybe we'll see a change.
"Jesus will come in 5 years and take us all to heaven so there is no need to worry about budgets" suicide levels we are at today."
Unfortunately, that's the attitude of a lot of "true believers" - and why they're not really worried about deficits, the housing bubble, the environment, oil imports, etc - "Jeebus will fix all that because I BELIEVE"! Seems to me a lot of people died believing that ...
Or to put it into context, let lobbyists be required to meet with legislators only in public discussion forums. No backroom wheeling and dealing.
missed the h in http
You asked if there was any poll that showed a difference between current law and public opinion. While its totally irrelevant to the need for campaign reform (I'll address that in a moment) even one counter-example should be sufficient.
Your response that it is an "either-or" is a "missing middle" logical fallacy. Spending would have been hundreds of billions less if it weren't for the BS that the US pulled on the "missing WMDs" in its headlong rush to go to war with Iraq at any cost. That's a simple fact, and the current polls back this understanding.
Now, back to electoral reform - for people to trust a system, it not only has to work - it has to be SEEN to work. Electoral reform is an essential ingredient to that. Is it that hard to understand?
"Could you name one issue where current law diverges from majority opinion, backed by some recent survey?"
Totally irrelevant to the issue at hand, which is that companies have more "access" to legislators than the electorate does.
Electoral laws need reform.
But since you asked - the current war in Iraq. Current law funds it - current public opinion is that the invasion was a mistake and to get out.
Another one - the deficit. Current law says its okay to run huge deficits, and to keep raising the legal deficit ceiling. public opinion is WTF
The debt ceiling was raised just over a year ago. It's going to have to be raised again in the VERY near future.
Ten trillion or bust? More like Ten trillion AND bust!
Oops - disregard parent post, I thought the calendar said 2107, not 2007.
Come back in 50 years.
Well, gotta go feed the pygmy T-Rex. I really wish they hadn't brought out those "designer dinos" last year. Pink feathers and a voice box! Thing's worse than a frigging parrot! "Dino want a cracker! Dino want a cracker!" And now PETA wants to give them the vote under the "Sentient Recombinants Act" of '17! They can vote when they can pick up their own poop, I say!
It depends on what you consider "you"?
Do you want to ship a "bag of meat" to the next star, or just the information that makes you, "you"?
Uploading yourself is now an everyday task ... not like a few generation ago, when only sci-fi junkies and computer nerds speculated about it.
Companies lobby all the time to get laws changed in their favor. This is just "business as usual."
The real cure is electoral reform, including campaign financing. As long as "lawmakers" (I use the term liberally) can be tempted by companies with deep pockets and the hope of a seat on the board of directors after the bums are thrown out, this will just keep happening.
This is a symptom, not the disease itself.
"Just get a Q-Tip. We don't need you to make up some disorder because you're too lazy to clean your ears."
[X] That's how I poked my eardrum out in the first place, you insensitive clod!