Abstinence doesn't work? That's news to me. I waited until marriage, and I'm happy I did, so abstinence worked in my case. My wife is my only measuring stick by which to compare, and it only gets better each and every time.
So, maybe abstinence doesn't work for everyone, but should I be forced to teach my children that it's ok to have sex, as long as they use protection? It's against the core of my faith to even condone such an action, let alone teach my child to behave in this manner. With my faith, and for my child's sake, abstinence is the only option. Being forced by the school system to teach them otherwise is what I mean by the schools being in my religion. Additionally, they are telling students that it is ok to do yoga (yoga is spiritually based, and against my religious views), meditation in Psychology (secular forms of meditation, plus other religious forms of meditation are against my faith, and my child should not be forced to participate), insist on showing nude pictures and videos of sex to children (pornography and lusting after another's body are sins in my faith, though they do let me opt my future children out of that, at least!), and teach evolution in Science class as if it were indisputable fact, glossing over the fact that it is a theory, and as such, can and should be questioned continuously, and not blindly accepted as fact. School most certainly is in my religion, and is telling me how to raise my future children.
As to the "good information coupled with themes of integrity, equality and reason" blasting comment, if that is what they were teaching, I'd be all for it, but the teaching is not limited to integrity, equality, and reason. It is often coupled with personal opinions about sexual behavior, opinions on how to handle the desires, and even instructs students that it is healthy to masturbate in order to "release the tension and keep the organs functioning properly." This is in direct contradiction with my faith!
This sensitive of a topic should be taught by parents to their children. I'm fine with the school providing curriculum, offering the course as an add-on, especially if they detail exactly what will be taught, but to include it as part of the standard curriculum and force parents to either give in and have their students attend, or put their students through the embarrassing experience of being "that kid" whose parents opted him out of the required session due to religious beliefs just seems wrong.
See, I think that the education of which you speak is important, but it should come from the parents, not the school. I'm tired of the school system teaching their versions of morals and sexuality to children. I want to see parents teach their children about morals and sexuality.
Get the schools out of our religion, out of our homes, and out of the bedroom.
School is to educate a student on how to learn, to provide a basic foundation of math, science, reading, writing, and other basic skills, not to provide step by step instructions on how to have sex, tell them how to avoid the "side effects" of sex (pregnancy, STDs), and then hand out sample condoms—that's the job of their parents!
When did the State become the parent and the parent become nothing more than a provider of food, clothing, and shelter for their child?
A. Please cite the source - I believe these stats were from a Barna Group study? See more Barna Group Study facts below.
B. Do these studies identify a person's religion simply based on self-identification alone, or do they perform the more accurate assessment of checking how active that person is in their self identified religion?
A person who goes to Catholic Mass on Easter and Christmas only is technically a "christian" but do they really practice the religion? Do they really love others as they would love themselves, sacrifice their own time and desires to help the poor and the widows? The difference in behavior between an active believer, passive believer, and inactive believer are significant:
In listing groups of people in relation to their activity in faith communities, the Barna Group defined the unattached as "people who had attended neither a conventional church nor an organic faith community (e.g., house church, simple church, intentional community) during the past year" Barna Group "Six out of ten adults in the Unattached category (59%) consider themselves to be Christian." Barna Group "[The unattached] are more likely . . . to have been divorced at some point" Barna Group (Emphasis mine)
This is just one set of facts that makes the other statistics questionable.
See, vague facts suck, and statistics can lie as well as they can tell the truth.
Yes. Without math knowledge, how will you code that Tax application or build out the Accounts Payable and Accounts Receivable applications? Without math, how would you make those minor tweaks to a game's physics engine? Without math, how would you develop the code that operates an aircraft or spacecraft? You might get away with not having math to code simple stuff, but to do the real coding, there is no way around it, math is required.
I like having one computer do everything, it saves me money. Problem is, I have need of the output from that computer in 4 rooms (bedroom, living room, basement, and the actual office where the computer resides), and rarely need access to that computer from more than one or two of those locations at any given time. This looks like it might solve that problem nicely for me.
dedicated computer to run the desktop - if you've got one of them, WTF would you want to surf the web from your TV instead of using the actual computer itself?
My couch in the living room with my 42" TV, or my home entertainment theatre in the basement with a 7'8" diagonal screen and many recliners is a lot more comfortable for watching Hulu or playing games. I'm slowly transferring my entire DVD collection onto my 1TB external drive which is connected to the same computer, so my wife can watch anime on the TV or surf youtube in the living room with friends - kinda difficult to do that in a small office with a 21" monitor and only 2 chairs. Honestly, the computer in the office only has a monitor for doing business related activities like spreadsheets and web development.
Imagine now that there's a reasonable, level-headed, senior Al-Qaida leader that wants to open talks. Can he trust our government to not simply stuff him in a secret Cuban prison?
Not necessarily (and I don't blame him), but he can trust the UN, Pakistan, and a couple of other options that could open up legitimate talks.
How do we know that there aren't already detainees of this type??
Honestly, we don't, and that bothers me greatly. If those in "gitmo" get their fair trials, or are moved to more sane secure locations where torture doesn't occur, as Obama is trying to get done, then perhaps we'll hear of these poor souls, and talks will begin.
What if, though, we selected the option where we did the least amount of killing, and suffered the least amount of loss of life? Let them kill each other for a while? Why not?
I think it's beyond that point now. I think that if we pulled out now, that while they'd start fighting each other eventually, right now, we'd be the target. We've given the multiple terrorist organizations a single large threat to focus on, which has a way of unifying otherwise mortal enemies.
Toyota software code is causing cars to accelerate in spite of the human operator slamming on the brakes and not pressing the gas. If that is 'sophisticated, highly tested' software... then way too many non-combatants will be killed by these things.
This is, of course, assuming these things are 100% autonomous, which it appears they are not.
I'm all for civil talks, but that takes two. I believe we've been trying to contact some portions of the Taliban, and Pakistan has started to work with us to achieve the same goal? All that the Taliban and Al Qaida need to do to end this is show up and talk to us.
I can see your point, and I agree that we went in on wrong premises, but at this point, without both sides being willing to sit down to talk, if we back off, they retaliate hard, if we stay, we're the bad guys, so we're screwed either way.
Unfortunately I only come here from an RSS feed, so that setting is completely useless to me. Come on Slashdot... lets get a feed for each editor so we can pick and choose even in RSS!
Pay for a plane ticket with a fraudulent form of payment
become a steward/stewardess
hide in someone's very large shipping container (remember the breathing holes!)
Ok, so maybe not "foolproof", but I'm sure there are many other ways to fly for free that follow these lines.
Just because there are free ways to fly^H^H^H get music doesn't mean that suddenly I say "hey, if I break the law or become a DJ, I can get all the free music I want, so I don't think that music is worth more than a penny per song to me!"
What? You say this isn't the same thing because it's not convenient for you to get the free airfare, but torrenting is convenient?
Well, it may seem convenient to you to torrent things (and to most of us on this forum), but others see the value and convenience of buying a CD. They don't have to learn about torrenting, worry about getting viruses or fake files, hassle with printing the cd jacket art or lyrics, their CDs have longer shelf lives, no effort was required to burn the music onto CDs, and being completely honest and legal is a value added for many people (including myself, though much of the new music is crap, so I just listen to my collection of legally purchased music, get songs sent to my by my friends who are independent artists, and listen to Pandora to find the occasionally good new band whose music I generally buy so I have a copy to play whenever I want).
There is one major difference between a license to drive and a license to work. If I wanted to, I can drop off the grid. I can just not renew my license, get a bicycle, stop using credit cards, do odd jobs for cash or barter, pay cash for everything, and completely disappear. There is nothing illegal about this (other than tax evasion, if you are earning more than $8000 per year, but I'm sure there are legal ways to deal with paying taxes while not having an official address), as there is nothing mandating that I have a driver's license, nor anything forcing me to use credit/debit cards.
If, however, a license to work is created, then the step "do odd jobs for cash or barter" becomes illegal if I don't have this license to work. Now, there is no option for me to drop off the grid. I have no choice.
I know at this point it's a small difference (almost to the point of not existing), and that 99.99% of society likely has some form of ID that allows the government to track them, but the point is that, to date, all forms of ID are effectively voluntary. Take away my ability to get paid to work, a basic requirement for survival, and we've got a serious problem. It's the principle of the thing—Right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. This inability to work stifles my ability to pursue happiness (a starving man cannot be happy - see Maslow's hierarchy of needs), and in the long run, through starvation, would remove my right to Life itself. Essentially, the government is trying to get me to give up part of my right to Life and my right to pursue happiness in exchange for eliminating the illegal immigrant problem. Screw that. I'd rather let the whole world in than give up the last vestiges of my freedom to choose whether or not I wish to have "papers" to identify myself.
1. I am about to get my 4 year degree, however, I will have no idea which algorithms have the best run time in O() notation, nor do I need to know off the top of my head. 2. I have been learning to code since I was 6, and have been professional developer for the last two years, and I'm leaps ahead of some of the "schooled" developers in my company (in simple comprehension of development, coding, UI design...). I'm not "vain" - I know I have a lot of gaps in my knowledge, but what I don't know, I know how to find.
So, from what I've learned, having a four year degree has nothing to do with abilities to code or understanding of development concepts. Some with 4 year degrees are horrible developers, some with no degree at all are amazing, and both of those statements can be made about the reverse situation. It's all about the developer himself/herself, and the drive to self teach, not about the piece of paper.
Your comment makes it clear that you completely missed my point. He doesn't "contain" you... any more than if you cut me with a knife that I "contain" you in having the right to demand justice. If, however, after the court proceedings find you guilty of harming me, I choose to offer you forgiveness if you only would accept it, and you reject it, the courts are certainly going to "contain" you... by putting you in a cell to pay for your crime. God is no different. Your pride will be what puts you in the prison, even though God is standing there offering you the option of walking free.
Good luck with that. To fix it requires that you be God. This is because only God can forgive the infraction against him (just as the plaintiff is the only one who can forgive and release the defendant from punishment if the defendant is found guilty). You have no authority to forgive yourself for doing something that hurts God (or breaks his laws), only he has that authority (and Jesus, whom he authorized to forgive on his behalf). So, try to fix it all you want, but without that free gift from God, you are not forgiven by God. You can't fix this by yourself because the thing that needs fixing is that you have offended God by rebelling against him, and the only thing that will fix that is him forgiving you, and he will only do that if you accept his forgiveness. Nothing else will allow you into heaven.
If you are found guilty (we all are), and the plaintiff offers to not press charges, but requires that you say you're sorry, and you accept their forgiveness, but you refuse, are you guilty or free? Without accepting the forgiveness, you have rejected the plaintiffs offer of freedom and have opted to willfully take the charge of "guilty" and all the punishment that goes with it. Who in their right mind would not accept the mercy and instead willfully take the guilty charge even knowing the consequences? To reject the mercy is now doubly insulting to the plaintiff, as you not only harmed them initially, but you then allow your own pride to take over and you swat away the mercy because you're "better than that."
If I get caught for speeding and my dad chooses to pay the fine, is this scapegoating, or is this love? The judge only requires that the fine be paid. My dad chooses to pay for me so that I remain free because I cannot afford the fine. This is love, not scapegoating.
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Abstinence doesn't work? That's news to me. I waited until marriage, and I'm happy I did, so abstinence worked in my case. My wife is my only measuring stick by which to compare, and it only gets better each and every time.
So, maybe abstinence doesn't work for everyone, but should I be forced to teach my children that it's ok to have sex, as long as they use protection? It's against the core of my faith to even condone such an action, let alone teach my child to behave in this manner. With my faith, and for my child's sake, abstinence is the only option. Being forced by the school system to teach them otherwise is what I mean by the schools being in my religion. Additionally, they are telling students that it is ok to do yoga (yoga is spiritually based, and against my religious views), meditation in Psychology (secular forms of meditation, plus other religious forms of meditation are against my faith, and my child should not be forced to participate), insist on showing nude pictures and videos of sex to children (pornography and lusting after another's body are sins in my faith, though they do let me opt my future children out of that, at least!), and teach evolution in Science class as if it were indisputable fact, glossing over the fact that it is a theory, and as such, can and should be questioned continuously, and not blindly accepted as fact. School most certainly is in my religion, and is telling me how to raise my future children.
As to the "good information coupled with themes of integrity, equality and reason" blasting comment, if that is what they were teaching, I'd be all for it, but the teaching is not limited to integrity, equality, and reason. It is often coupled with personal opinions about sexual behavior, opinions on how to handle the desires, and even instructs students that it is healthy to masturbate in order to "release the tension and keep the organs functioning properly." This is in direct contradiction with my faith!
This sensitive of a topic should be taught by parents to their children. I'm fine with the school providing curriculum, offering the course as an add-on, especially if they detail exactly what will be taught, but to include it as part of the standard curriculum and force parents to either give in and have their students attend, or put their students through the embarrassing experience of being "that kid" whose parents opted him out of the required session due to religious beliefs just seems wrong.
See, I think that the education of which you speak is important, but it should come from the parents, not the school. I'm tired of the school system teaching their versions of morals and sexuality to children. I want to see parents teach their children about morals and sexuality.
Get the schools out of our religion, out of our homes, and out of the bedroom.
School is to educate a student on how to learn, to provide a basic foundation of math, science, reading, writing, and other basic skills, not to provide step by step instructions on how to have sex, tell them how to avoid the "side effects" of sex (pregnancy, STDs), and then hand out sample condoms—that's the job of their parents!
When did the State become the parent and the parent become nothing more than a provider of food, clothing, and shelter for their child?
A. Please cite the source - I believe these stats were from a Barna Group study? See more Barna Group Study facts below.
B. Do these studies identify a person's religion simply based on self-identification alone, or do they perform the more accurate assessment of checking how active that person is in their self identified religion?
A person who goes to Catholic Mass on Easter and Christmas only is technically a "christian" but do they really practice the religion? Do they really love others as they would love themselves, sacrifice their own time and desires to help the poor and the widows? The difference in behavior between an active believer, passive believer, and inactive believer are significant:
In listing groups of people in relation to their activity in faith communities, the Barna Group defined the unattached as "people who had attended neither a conventional church nor an organic faith community (e.g., house church, simple church, intentional community) during the past year" Barna Group
"Six out of ten adults in the Unattached category (59%) consider themselves to be Christian." Barna Group
"[The unattached] are more likely . . . to have been divorced at some point" Barna Group (Emphasis mine)
This is just one set of facts that makes the other statistics questionable.
See, vague facts suck, and statistics can lie as well as they can tell the truth.
Yes. Without math knowledge, how will you code that Tax application or build out the Accounts Payable and Accounts Receivable applications? Without math, how would you make those minor tweaks to a game's physics engine? Without math, how would you develop the code that operates an aircraft or spacecraft? You might get away with not having math to code simple stuff, but to do the real coding, there is no way around it, math is required.
I've been using one of these for quite a while now and I've been happy with it. I got it off of ebay a couple years back for about $35.
I like having one computer do everything, it saves me money. Problem is, I have need of the output from that computer in 4 rooms (bedroom, living room, basement, and the actual office where the computer resides), and rarely need access to that computer from more than one or two of those locations at any given time. This looks like it might solve that problem nicely for me.
dedicated computer to run the desktop - if you've got one of them, WTF would you want to surf the web from your TV instead of using the actual computer itself?
My couch in the living room with my 42" TV, or my home entertainment theatre in the basement with a 7'8" diagonal screen and many recliners is a lot more comfortable for watching Hulu or playing games. I'm slowly transferring my entire DVD collection onto my 1TB external drive which is connected to the same computer, so my wife can watch anime on the TV or surf youtube in the living room with friends - kinda difficult to do that in a small office with a 21" monitor and only 2 chairs. Honestly, the computer in the office only has a monitor for doing business related activities like spreadsheets and web development.
It's not meant for you. It's only a competitor to Google in the Chinese speaking/reading part of the world. Sorry, no Baidu for you.
Baidu = China's #1 search site
MS = Microsoft (I'm assuming that's who the GP was referring to)
Alibaba = Wholesale manufacturer search site
Unless you're using the sun? Yeah, I know, that's fusion powered, but not exactly what you meant by "powered."
Sheesh... did I need to add a couple dozen :-P faces to my post so people got that I was saying the "correction" as a joke?
Whoosh! Obviously you've never heard of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy?
Come on man, get your facts straight:
4*9 = 36
It's 6 * 9 that equals 42.
Imagine now that there's a reasonable, level-headed, senior Al-Qaida leader that wants to open talks. Can he trust our government to not simply stuff him in a secret Cuban prison?
Not necessarily (and I don't blame him), but he can trust the UN, Pakistan, and a couple of other options that could open up legitimate talks.
How do we know that there aren't already detainees of this type??
Honestly, we don't, and that bothers me greatly. If those in "gitmo" get their fair trials, or are moved to more sane secure locations where torture doesn't occur, as Obama is trying to get done, then perhaps we'll hear of these poor souls, and talks will begin.
What if, though, we selected the option where we did the least amount of killing, and suffered the least amount of loss of life? Let them kill each other for a while? Why not?
I think it's beyond that point now. I think that if we pulled out now, that while they'd start fighting each other eventually, right now, we'd be the target. We've given the multiple terrorist organizations a single large threat to focus on, which has a way of unifying otherwise mortal enemies.
Toyota software code is causing cars to accelerate in spite of the human operator slamming on the brakes and not pressing the gas. If that is 'sophisticated, highly tested' software... then way too many non-combatants will be killed by these things.
This is, of course, assuming these things are 100% autonomous, which it appears they are not.
I'm all for civil talks, but that takes two. I believe we've been trying to contact some portions of the Taliban, and Pakistan has started to work with us to achieve the same goal? All that the Taliban and Al Qaida need to do to end this is show up and talk to us.
I can see your point, and I agree that we went in on wrong premises, but at this point, without both sides being willing to sit down to talk, if we back off, they retaliate hard, if we stay, we're the bad guys, so we're screwed either way.
Unfortunately I only come here from an RSS feed, so that setting is completely useless to me. Come on Slashdot... lets get a feed for each editor so we can pick and choose even in RSS!
Ok, so maybe not "foolproof", but I'm sure there are many other ways to fly for free that follow these lines.
Just because there are free ways to fly^H^H^H get music doesn't mean that suddenly I say "hey, if I break the law or become a DJ, I can get all the free music I want, so I don't think that music is worth more than a penny per song to me!"
What? You say this isn't the same thing because it's not convenient for you to get the free airfare, but torrenting is convenient?
Well, it may seem convenient to you to torrent things (and to most of us on this forum), but others see the value and convenience of buying a CD. They don't have to learn about torrenting, worry about getting viruses or fake files, hassle with printing the cd jacket art or lyrics, their CDs have longer shelf lives, no effort was required to burn the music onto CDs, and being completely honest and legal is a value added for many people (including myself, though much of the new music is crap, so I just listen to my collection of legally purchased music, get songs sent to my by my friends who are independent artists, and listen to Pandora to find the occasionally good new band whose music I generally buy so I have a copy to play whenever I want).
There is one major difference between a license to drive and a license to work. If I wanted to, I can drop off the grid. I can just not renew my license, get a bicycle, stop using credit cards, do odd jobs for cash or barter, pay cash for everything, and completely disappear. There is nothing illegal about this (other than tax evasion, if you are earning more than $8000 per year, but I'm sure there are legal ways to deal with paying taxes while not having an official address), as there is nothing mandating that I have a driver's license, nor anything forcing me to use credit/debit cards.
If, however, a license to work is created, then the step "do odd jobs for cash or barter" becomes illegal if I don't have this license to work. Now, there is no option for me to drop off the grid. I have no choice.
I know at this point it's a small difference (almost to the point of not existing), and that 99.99% of society likely has some form of ID that allows the government to track them, but the point is that, to date, all forms of ID are effectively voluntary. Take away my ability to get paid to work, a basic requirement for survival, and we've got a serious problem. It's the principle of the thing—Right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. This inability to work stifles my ability to pursue happiness (a starving man cannot be happy - see Maslow's hierarchy of needs), and in the long run, through starvation, would remove my right to Life itself. Essentially, the government is trying to get me to give up part of my right to Life and my right to pursue happiness in exchange for eliminating the illegal immigrant problem. Screw that. I'd rather let the whole world in than give up the last vestiges of my freedom to choose whether or not I wish to have "papers" to identify myself.
Gotta love it: http://xkcd.com/350/
Well, I've got two points to that comment:
1. I am about to get my 4 year degree, however, I will have no idea which algorithms have the best run time in O() notation, nor do I need to know off the top of my head.
2. I have been learning to code since I was 6, and have been professional developer for the last two years, and I'm leaps ahead of some of the "schooled" developers in my company (in simple comprehension of development, coding, UI design...). I'm not "vain" - I know I have a lot of gaps in my knowledge, but what I don't know, I know how to find.
So, from what I've learned, having a four year degree has nothing to do with abilities to code or understanding of development concepts. Some with 4 year degrees are horrible developers, some with no degree at all are amazing, and both of those statements can be made about the reverse situation. It's all about the developer himself/herself, and the drive to self teach, not about the piece of paper.
Your comment makes it clear that you completely missed my point. He doesn't "contain" you... any more than if you cut me with a knife that I "contain" you in having the right to demand justice. If, however, after the court proceedings find you guilty of harming me, I choose to offer you forgiveness if you only would accept it, and you reject it, the courts are certainly going to "contain" you... by putting you in a cell to pay for your crime. God is no different. Your pride will be what puts you in the prison, even though God is standing there offering you the option of walking free.
Good luck with that. To fix it requires that you be God. This is because only God can forgive the infraction against him (just as the plaintiff is the only one who can forgive and release the defendant from punishment if the defendant is found guilty). You have no authority to forgive yourself for doing something that hurts God (or breaks his laws), only he has that authority (and Jesus, whom he authorized to forgive on his behalf). So, try to fix it all you want, but without that free gift from God, you are not forgiven by God. You can't fix this by yourself because the thing that needs fixing is that you have offended God by rebelling against him, and the only thing that will fix that is him forgiving you, and he will only do that if you accept his forgiveness. Nothing else will allow you into heaven.
If you are found guilty (we all are), and the plaintiff offers to not press charges, but requires that you say you're sorry, and you accept their forgiveness, but you refuse, are you guilty or free? Without accepting the forgiveness, you have rejected the plaintiffs offer of freedom and have opted to willfully take the charge of "guilty" and all the punishment that goes with it. Who in their right mind would not accept the mercy and instead willfully take the guilty charge even knowing the consequences? To reject the mercy is now doubly insulting to the plaintiff, as you not only harmed them initially, but you then allow your own pride to take over and you swat away the mercy because you're "better than that."
This is scapegoating, not justice.
If I get caught for speeding and my dad chooses to pay the fine, is this scapegoating, or is this love? The judge only requires that the fine be paid. My dad chooses to pay for me so that I remain free because I cannot afford the fine. This is love, not scapegoating.
Unless it is a baking pan full of brownies... 4 hours at 175*F makes for a nice treat for lunch!