1) Zaid was his adopted son (and one of his most devoted followers), not a slave girl.
2) They did not take over Medina, but were invited to move there to escape the persecution of the Kuraish aristocrats who were in control of Mecca. The two major Jewish tribes of Medina were particularly interested in Mohammed (PBUH) to help mediate their disagreements. Sure, he kicked a bunch of them out of Medina after they conspired against him, but that's a different story.
3) Anthony Quinn played the role of Hamzah "Lion of the Desert", Mohammed's uncle who converted to Islam. BTW, it not only doesn't portray Mohammed on the screen, but other important figures such as his best friend Abu Bakr, and his cousin Ali (to be the first and second Caliphs of Islam, respectively, after Mohammad's death). This belief also extends to all of the other Prophets, including Jesus and Moses. I don't believe this effect detracts at all from the film, on the contrary, I believe the film actually works better this way.
4) The movie's title is actually "The Message". It's not only on the cover of the video in English, but also the Arabic "Ar-risallah" written on a flag in the artwork. Sidepoint: this movie was filmed both in English and Arabic separately, with different actors for each language (both with an impressive cast billing for their respective audience). I wish they released both versions on the DVD instead of just English.
5) As far as I know, "The Message" was banned in various Arab countries, especially Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. I don't know if this still is the case. Despite its carefulness in respecting beliefs of the most conservative Muslims, it apparantly wasn't enough.
Yeah, sure. Iraq's reserves are estimated to be between 120 to 220 billion barrels. Their oil fields are currently capable of producing 2.8 million bpd, so if we assume that all the wells are blown up, then 2.8 million bpd will go up in smoke. That's, at most, 0.00002% of Iraq's reserves depleted per day. This is less than an annoyance, not even an itch to Bush.
Besides, the fields were going to require a lot of rebuilding anyway, since they're in pretty bad shape to start with and utilizing old technology. It'll just cost a little to get those badass oil fire fighters to put the fires out, but then again most of them are Americans and will pump money back in the economy. American oil service companies will then come in and rebuild, revamp and upgrade all the oil fields. There's a lot of money to be had that'll go into American oil-related companies because of this.
I don't believe for one second that this is primarily about oil
Except for the fact that the price of oil is the highest its been since the Gulf War at almost $40 per barrel, driven up by Bush's threat of war... and I don't think it's merely coincidence that Bush and Cheney have ties to the oil industry.;) We don't even hear about the corporate accountability that Bush used to speak about, much less Enron, anymore. He's just sweeping the dust under the floormat and making his buddies some money; screw the rest of the economy.
> You cannot drink fab quality water because it a large concentration gradient would form and minerals from the other fluids in your body would be depleted by the migration into the ultra pure water.
This has made my BS detector twitch. As soon as the pure water hits my mouth, it becomes impure because it mixes with my spit, so there's really no such thing as "drinking ultra-pure water."
Yep, it's a myth that pure water leaches minerals from your body. Once it comes into contact with impurities (such as spit, like you mentioned), the water is no longer "pure". So how can pure water stay pure and do damage to our body? Even so, it will only remove minerals that are body has not used, not what has already been absorbed by our cells, which our body didn't need anyway. And our minerals aren't absorbed from water anyway, they're absorbed from food.
The only other way pure water can kill you is in a massive quantity, which would kill you even if it was normal drinking water.
I'd like to explore more into the economics of this subject. You said that telemarketting offers jobs that many people may not otherwise have. Fine, I can completely sympathize that the people are only doing this to bring bread to the table and buy nice things for themselves like the rest of us.
However (and telemarketting isn't by any means the only industry that is guilty for this), their job is to get consumers to "consume" more by aggressive/shady tactics (rather than allowing traditional economics like the marginal propensity to consume to act itself out). What happens when consumption goes up is that the price of goods also have to go up, and thus inflation follows.
Get rich quick schemes, telemarketting, credit card companies... they make some people filthy rich by making average consumers spend more than they would normally have. So by doing so, consumers have to earn more money in order to afford products at rising prices, and therefore have to get jobs that are even more aggressive in getting other consumers to spend their money (whether they have it or if it's debt). For this reason, I think it's economically irresponsible to condone telemarketting as a valuable source for jobs. I think we're measuring some of our economic successes in the wrong ways.
OBD-I and OBD-II are the Federally mandated codes that auto manufacturer must make available to any standard reader; this is mostly for emissions-related fault codes, and doesn't cover other components of the car that may not have a direct effect on emissions. The point is that an owner may have some mechanical or electrical problem with their car, which might not be diagnosable by an independent shop due to proprietary codes, and the car would then need to be taken to a dealer to make the diagnosis and repair.
Oh, I see... when a credit card company gets away with sending a billing statement within such a short amount of time before the billing period ends that it is physically impossible to mail the payment to them, thus getting away with charging late fees, this is called business. But when people send back little paper-clip gifts to those companies in postage-paid envelopes, this is called fraud.
Remembers kids, companies are always good boys. Consumers are criminals.
I'm thoroughly convinced that 'unsolicited' is cancelled out by the word 'consumer.' Somehow, just because we've bought a certain product, offers sent to us for related products are considered solicited by twisted corporate logic.
And even if it's an unrelated product, surely we must be at fault for opting-in for those offers (how can we prove otherwise?).
No-one seems to be complaining about the folks in Moldova who got.MD, you'd think doctors would be lining up for that one. And the folks in Tonga just sold off the rights to.TO to some corporation. Tuvalu went for the big bucks with.TV, what did they do to deserve a good name for free? That sort of thing seems far more unfair than some desparate internet company trying to cash in on a new TLD by charging higher rates.
Let's see how well off these countries in the first place and weigh that with their TLD "fortune" (based off of figures from the CIA World Factbook):
Moldova has just over 4 million people, has no significant natural mineral or hydrocarbon resources (it has to import 100% of its oil, natural gas, and coal) and their only significant export is agricultural, but much of their lands are contaminated by chemicals and pesticides while they were under Soviet rule. They import $761 million and export $500 million.
Tonga has only around 100,000 people. They export mainly agriculture and fish, which accounts for 30% of their GDP, but their primary source of income is tourism. They export $8 million and import $69 million. They rely on external aid from Tongan communities overseas to make up for their trade deficit. Their inflation (7%) is higher than their GDP growth rate (5%). 100% of the electricity is generated from fossil fuels, which they probably import all of.
Tuvalu: 11,000 people strong. Inflation higher than GDP growth. Import $4.4 million and export $165,000. Merchandise exports are falling.
For these countries, their TLD behaves much like a new natural resource that they can export. In the case of Tuvalu, their revenue is enhanced greatly by their exploits with the.tv domain and telephone fees from their "900" are code.
In contrast, other countries are blessed with lucrative resources such as oil, gold and diamonds. Are all these fortunes unfair while other countries suffer with lack of their own resources they can export? Sure. But I fail to see how one can complain against Tuvalu for their.tv domain because of unfairness, when we see countries like Saudi Arabia using its wealth acquired from oil by spoiling their royal family members and leaving the rest of its citizens in poverty. Or countries like the various African countries blessed with some of the biggest diamond deposits in the world, yet their own citizens don't get to see any of the wealth, and are in fact killed by their own governments, all for the benefit of the diamond industry corporations. You can't say that the.tv or.to domains have resulted in the slaughter of children and women.
Good for Tuvalu, Moldova, and Tonga! I say. Let them take advantage of their tech resource to help them live better. They were smart enough to exploit it without harming anyone.
Well, considering that he never mentioned purely singleplayer qualities in the first place, I would have to say he's right. Half-Life gave rise to Counterstrike (a mod of a mod of the Quake engine), which I am sure became much more played in the last two years than Quake and Quake II combined; and before Counterstrike was Team Fortress Classic, which I remember being the rage in early 1999.
And by the same token, I'm sure all the Quake III-based games (such as RtCW) are getting much more multiplayer action than Quake III itself.
Quake III has been boooooring for multiplayer. Its only strong point was a good mix of weapons and to-the-point deathmatch levels. Other than that, it's not much to write home about. It's more for the purist, serious type of deathmatchers like Thresh.
All the real multiplayer innovations have come from above mentioned games (Counterstrike for its counter-terrorist vs. terrorist conflicts; and RtCW for objective-based play... and don't forget all the innovative multiplayer modes of Unreal Tournament).
Many commenters have said, during a discussion about Loki employees not getting paid for months, that generally when a company starts paying its employees late, it is almost a sure sign that the company is going under (i.e., if that's it's last-resort way of keeping it financially above water). I'd suggest searching for a new job just in case, and I'm not sure what legal action you can take (I'll leave that to other IANALs to answer for).
No state agency has started using the Oracle software under the licensing agreement, signed almost a year ago. But the tab by June is expected to be $17 million. (emphasis mine)
How does the current recession and layoffs have any bearing towards a contract that has already been signed for, back when both the State of California and the Federal government were posting significant budget surpluses? Do you expect California to break its agreement just because it's now in a deficit? (that would fit with your 'fiscal responsibility,' huh? I'm sure that'll help out all the employees at Oracle and any related industries.)
Now let's do some math here: The 6-year contract costs the state $95M. Break that up into yearly payments, and that's ~$15.8M/year. The contract is said to cost $41M more than what the State currently has been paying for database software, so that's the real cost of the contract. Divide that yearly, and the true additional cost to each year's budget is $6.8M/year. While it's not insignificant, it isn't nearly the catastrophe that you're implying it is, requiring the "idiots" to be fired "as easily as we elect them." (I won't even touch that silly proposition--for the Republic of California--with a 10-foot pole...).
The I.N.S. sending green-cards to a dead terrorist isn't a security threat... It's the point that they have such a crappy system that they would send green-cards to obviously known terrorists.
Couple of points here:
They were not green cards, but an extension to their student visas.
The visas were already processed before 9/11. The paperwork was in a backlog waiting to be sent out.
I don't see how people like Bush got so upset at the INS for this. First of all, it's a government beauracracy; and although I know the Republicans are always in favor of smaller governments, what organization would go to the lengths of cross-referencing already processed applications against a long list of names of terrorists, felons, suspicious people, etc. etc., and who get to decide what names should appear on this list? I would imagine putting this extra burdon on an already backlogged process would make problems worse, not better (i.e., head of INS decides to expedite visas because the backlog gets so tremendous and the cross-checking is taking too long, thus rushing forms out even faster without checking them).
I just fail to see why some people are getting so upset at situations like these. There's only so much an agency can do for national security...
The beef here is about Amazon selling used but new IP that returns no profit to them but competes against the sales of that which does turn a profit.
If there is enough "used" new IP being sold back in the market to undermine the sale of the new IP, then there is something wrong with that new IP. I can't imagine a "good" book being sold back on the market as a used book so fast that it actually affects its sales as a brand new item. If the book was bad enough that everybody wants to rid themselves of the humiliation of owning such a book in such mass numbers that affect a publisher's revenue from new books, then that's the publisher/author's fault. Why should the market continue creating excess new books if the book wasn't all the great in the first place, and exclude that book from being sold used? This is a waste of resources, and is environmentally and productively unsound.
If the used book market can provide a supply that can meet the demand for that book, then new books are unnecessary. However, if the book was good enough, the demand for it would far exceed the supply of used books and keep new book sales going. The publishers need to catch up with the rest of the economy and switch to a just-in-time business model (like shown on those Xerox ads), if they want to be able to squeeze as much revenue as they can out of a book without generating excess inventories, and be able to continually meet the demand for their books into the future so that books don't have to go out-of-print, further realizing additional future revenue that wouldn't have been realized otherwise.
I don't think, under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, that they could just take you off their list, per se. Otherwise, your name could pop back on their list since they couldn't track if you were previously on the list. Instead, Telemarketers must put you on their "do-not-call" list when you ask them to, and they have to keep your name on that list for 10 years. Then if you still get a call from them, you can sue for $500.
I'd prefer 256M, but Win2K will be fine with 128M if you're just running Office-type apps. Honestly, it seems to me that people contrive to create situations in which Windows will fail just to complain about it on/.
Wow, you must be using the mystical self-managed office machine... because my NT 4.0 workstation, with IE, Lotus Notes, and Word open (along with all the little tasktray stuff like Novell and McAfee), I'm using 167MB of RAM. This is my typical setup every single day. My machine has 128MB of RAM and it thrashes all the time, programs crashing here and there, etc. Yes, if I had control of my own workstation, it would be a much tighter setup. But those of us working for big organizations with administered machines don't have that luxury.
Don't be so quick to accuse people of contriving situations, which we have to deal with in the *real* work environment. 256MB should be the minimum system configuration on today's workstations, considering software bloat from both our applications and the stuff our system administrators make us run.
Slashdot Mirror
1) Zaid was his adopted son (and one of his most devoted followers), not a slave girl.
2) They did not take over Medina, but were invited to move there to escape the persecution of the Kuraish aristocrats who were in control of Mecca. The two major Jewish tribes of Medina were particularly interested in Mohammed (PBUH) to help mediate their disagreements. Sure, he kicked a bunch of them out of Medina after they conspired against him, but that's a different story.
3) Anthony Quinn played the role of Hamzah "Lion of the Desert", Mohammed's uncle who converted to Islam. BTW, it not only doesn't portray Mohammed on the screen, but other important figures such as his best friend Abu Bakr, and his cousin Ali (to be the first and second Caliphs of Islam, respectively, after Mohammad's death). This belief also extends to all of the other Prophets, including Jesus and Moses. I don't believe this effect detracts at all from the film, on the contrary, I believe the film actually works better this way.
4) The movie's title is actually "The Message". It's not only on the cover of the video in English, but also the Arabic "Ar-risallah" written on a flag in the artwork. Sidepoint: this movie was filmed both in English and Arabic separately, with different actors for each language (both with an impressive cast billing for their respective audience). I wish they released both versions on the DVD instead of just English.
5) As far as I know, "The Message" was banned in various Arab countries, especially Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. I don't know if this still is the case. Despite its carefulness in respecting beliefs of the most conservative Muslims, it apparantly wasn't enough.
Besides, the fields were going to require a lot of rebuilding anyway, since they're in pretty bad shape to start with and utilizing old technology. It'll just cost a little to get those badass oil fire fighters to put the fires out, but then again most of them are Americans and will pump money back in the economy. American oil service companies will then come in and rebuild, revamp and upgrade all the oil fields. There's a lot of money to be had that'll go into American oil-related companies because of this.
Besides, I remember seeing almost exactly what was presented in the article on a show on the Discovery channel a couple of years ago.
Now when there's farting sounds in the room, I can point to the fridge when my wife gives me a scornful glance.
The only other way pure water can kill you is in a massive quantity, which would kill you even if it was normal drinking water.
However (and telemarketting isn't by any means the only industry that is guilty for this), their job is to get consumers to "consume" more by aggressive/shady tactics (rather than allowing traditional economics like the marginal propensity to consume to act itself out). What happens when consumption goes up is that the price of goods also have to go up, and thus inflation follows.
Get rich quick schemes, telemarketting, credit card companies... they make some people filthy rich by making average consumers spend more than they would normally have. So by doing so, consumers have to earn more money in order to afford products at rising prices, and therefore have to get jobs that are even more aggressive in getting other consumers to spend their money (whether they have it or if it's debt). For this reason, I think it's economically irresponsible to condone telemarketting as a valuable source for jobs. I think we're measuring some of our economic successes in the wrong ways.
OBD-I and OBD-II are the Federally mandated codes that auto manufacturer must make available to any standard reader; this is mostly for emissions-related fault codes, and doesn't cover other components of the car that may not have a direct effect on emissions. The point is that an owner may have some mechanical or electrical problem with their car, which might not be diagnosable by an independent shop due to proprietary codes, and the car would then need to be taken to a dealer to make the diagnosis and repair.
If Microsoft keeps stomping everywhere, sooner or later they'll end up with $h*t all over their feet.
The Blair Witch Project on IMAX, of course! How else are we supposed to compete for projectile vomitting distances?
... and this is where our cars start singing, "let's all go to Chevron..."
And $20k cars? How about $35k SUVs and Beemers? $20k is what they buy for the kids.
Remembers kids, companies are always good boys. Consumers are criminals.
And even if it's an unrelated product, surely we must be at fault for opting-in for those offers (how can we prove otherwise?).
Bah
Let's see how well off these countries in the first place and weigh that with their TLD "fortune" (based off of figures from the CIA World Factbook):
- Moldova has just over 4 million people, has no significant natural mineral or hydrocarbon resources (it has to import 100% of its oil, natural gas, and coal) and their only significant export is agricultural, but much of their lands are contaminated by chemicals and pesticides while they were under Soviet rule. They import $761 million and export $500 million.
- Tonga has only around 100,000 people. They export mainly agriculture and fish, which accounts for 30% of their GDP, but their primary source of income is tourism. They export $8 million and import $69 million. They rely on external aid from Tongan communities overseas to make up for their trade deficit. Their inflation (7%) is higher than their GDP growth rate (5%). 100% of the electricity is generated from fossil fuels, which they probably import all of.
- Tuvalu: 11,000 people strong. Inflation higher than GDP growth. Import $4.4 million and export $165,000. Merchandise exports are falling.
For these countries, their TLD behaves much like a new natural resource that they can export. In the case of Tuvalu, their revenue is enhanced greatly by their exploits with theIn contrast, other countries are blessed with lucrative resources such as oil, gold and diamonds. Are all these fortunes unfair while other countries suffer with lack of their own resources they can export? Sure. But I fail to see how one can complain against Tuvalu for their .tv domain because of unfairness, when we see countries like Saudi Arabia using its wealth acquired from oil by spoiling their royal family members and leaving the rest of its citizens in poverty. Or countries like the various African countries blessed with some of the biggest diamond deposits in the world, yet their own citizens don't get to see any of the wealth, and are in fact killed by their own governments, all for the benefit of the diamond industry corporations. You can't say that the .tv or .to domains have resulted in the slaughter of children and women.
Good for Tuvalu, Moldova, and Tonga! I say. Let them take advantage of their tech resource to help them live better. They were smart enough to exploit it without harming anyone.
And by the same token, I'm sure all the Quake III-based games (such as RtCW) are getting much more multiplayer action than Quake III itself.
Quake III has been boooooring for multiplayer. Its only strong point was a good mix of weapons and to-the-point deathmatch levels. Other than that, it's not much to write home about. It's more for the purist, serious type of deathmatchers like Thresh.
All the real multiplayer innovations have come from above mentioned games (Counterstrike for its counter-terrorist vs. terrorist conflicts; and RtCW for objective-based play... and don't forget all the innovative multiplayer modes of Unreal Tournament).
Many commenters have said, during a discussion about Loki employees not getting paid for months, that generally when a company starts paying its employees late, it is almost a sure sign that the company is going under (i.e., if that's it's last-resort way of keeping it financially above water). I'd suggest searching for a new job just in case, and I'm not sure what legal action you can take (I'll leave that to other IANALs to answer for).
Now let's do some math here: The 6-year contract costs the state $95M. Break that up into yearly payments, and that's ~$15.8M/year. The contract is said to cost $41M more than what the State currently has been paying for database software, so that's the real cost of the contract. Divide that yearly, and the true additional cost to each year's budget is $6.8M/year. While it's not insignificant, it isn't nearly the catastrophe that you're implying it is, requiring the "idiots" to be fired "as easily as we elect them." (I won't even touch that silly proposition--for the Republic of California--with a 10-foot pole...).
- They were not green cards, but an extension to their student visas.
- The visas were already processed before 9/11. The paperwork was in a backlog waiting to be sent out.
I don't see how people like Bush got so upset at the INS for this. First of all, it's a government beauracracy; and although I know the Republicans are always in favor of smaller governments, what organization would go to the lengths of cross-referencing already processed applications against a long list of names of terrorists, felons, suspicious people, etc. etc., and who get to decide what names should appear on this list? I would imagine putting this extra burdon on an already backlogged process would make problems worse, not better (i.e., head of INS decides to expedite visas because the backlog gets so tremendous and the cross-checking is taking too long, thus rushing forms out even faster without checking them).I just fail to see why some people are getting so upset at situations like these. There's only so much an agency can do for national security...
Dude, you're havin' a cow!
If the used book market can provide a supply that can meet the demand for that book, then new books are unnecessary. However, if the book was good enough, the demand for it would far exceed the supply of used books and keep new book sales going. The publishers need to catch up with the rest of the economy and switch to a just-in-time business model (like shown on those Xerox ads), if they want to be able to squeeze as much revenue as they can out of a book without generating excess inventories, and be able to continually meet the demand for their books into the future so that books don't have to go out-of-print, further realizing additional future revenue that wouldn't have been realized otherwise.
I don't think, under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, that they could just take you off their list, per se. Otherwise, your name could pop back on their list since they couldn't track if you were previously on the list. Instead, Telemarketers must put you on their "do-not-call" list when you ask them to, and they have to keep your name on that list for 10 years. Then if you still get a call from them, you can sue for $500.
Don't be so quick to accuse people of contriving situations, which we have to deal with in the *real* work environment. 256MB should be the minimum system configuration on today's workstations, considering software bloat from both our applications and the stuff our system administrators make us run.