Normally I'd ignore such short, comments which have not really been thought out, but due to the fact that it directly relates to my sig.... Please don't comment on the Bible until you've read it first (and if you've read it, you've missed big chunks of it if you believe that just being good gets you into heaven... see Ephesians 2:8-9, for example).
Being good has nothing to do with being allowed into heaven—the best person in the world has broken at least one of God's laws in their lifetime - ever disrespected your parents? You've broken the commandment to honor your father and mother! Breaking one law of God is the same as breaking them all, as God requires us to be perfect to enter heaven. Being good is a response to the loving gift of eternal life from God based solely on your belief that his son, Jesus, paid the required price for your sinful nature. It is the belief itself in Jesus, and the willingness to let him pay the fine (eternal death) for your sins, thereby making you perfect by proxy (think accounting: you owed a debt because of your actions which broke God's laws, Jesus pays the debt, your balance sheet is then balanced, making you perfect through no action of your own beyond letting Jesus bring the books into balance, or think courtroom justice: you were caught breaking a law, God is the judge... who is your advocate? If you accept Jesus as your advocate, he stands before the judge and says "he's guilty, but I volunteer to pay the penalty in his stead." The judge then metes out justice, but Jesus stands in your place, taking the punishment of death, while you remain free.).
Being good is not enough, you must be perfect (who but Jesus has ever been perfect, without sin?), and if you cannot be perfect, God allows for one (and only one) other alternative—you must allow Jesus to stand in your place since he is the only one who was perfect, and he paid the price to get you into heaven. Jesus freely offers to take your punishment. If you wish to waive his counsel, you are free to self represent, but then you have no defense, and will be found guilty, and receive appropriate punishment for your crimes against God. So, no, the bible does not "have you covered" if you think being good is all that is required. In contrast, the bible condemns anyone who thinks this way, calls them prideful, and clearly details that access to heaven is a gift from God to those who will receive it, and not based on good works, so that no man can boast that his works are better than another and therefore will get him better "positioning" in heaven.
tl;dr: Ephesians 2:8-9 clearly disagrees with the notion that being good gets you into heaven, so the bible does not "have you covered" if you believe goodness is what grants you entrance into heaven.
I barter in "non-barter-able" stores... sometimes you get lucky, other times you walk out empty handed. If someone is paid on commission, and it is a big ticket item (small stuff just doesn't have the margin available to slice in order to get the sale), they will gladly sell it to you discounted (essentially cutting into their commission) just to get the sale and some sort of commission*. Some money is better than none.
I'm surprised more people don't just ask. What's the worst that can happen... they say no? Oh well, walk out and try somewhere else until you get the price you want. I haven't paid full price for Comcast internet in over 8 years, and I haven't paid full price for over 80% of the electronics in my home. It's your hard earned money, refuse to hand it over without a meeting of the minds on the value of the item in question!
* Never pay full price for a car... they are always willing to negotiate!
I don't know about you, but I think there is some value to having the ability to forget. Once I've forgiven someone for something, I want my mind to slowly lose that information because it is no longer relevant. If I remembered everything I ever experienced, I think I'd go insane and become overly depressed as the memories of small infractions mounted (we all forget the little things people do every day that annoy us, or if we don't we resent others for their actions... this could be amplified with perfect memory, no?).
Just shooting the breeze here, but perhaps this has been selectively weeded out because those with perfect memory are miserable, or those with perfect memory annoy the crap out of others, and early man killed off the annoying members of society... just a thought.
I'd be interested to see some of this integrated with Ubiquity so that your home automation system actually knows where you are and can adjust accordingly. If you leave work, it knows, and based on previous experiences, predicts when you will be home, kicks in the heat at the right moment, etc., all without you manually doing anything.
All I have to say is that the number of ways in which you either accidentally or deliberately misunderstood and misstated my views is staggering. At this point, there is no chance for honest discourse, as each time I say something, it is misconstrued as something entirely different.
So I leave you with this: Please study the evidence, for your own sake, to come to an informed decision. Please do not blindly accept what others have told you is truth. Please do not throw out all that is taught about Christ and his message based on a few hours study, or just because you find a flaw with one or more of his followers or their translations of his words.
To be a free thinker does not require throwing out all religion and faith. On the contrary, to be a free thinker requires that one not blindly discount any information without proper review.
Really? Do historical accounts from multiple sources (not just the biblical account, but secular accounts as well), in addition to geological digs, predominantly supporting the historical accuracy of the biblical account not count as "outside sources" in your view? If they are not outside sources, then what in the world do you call them? They are not my internal wishes or thoughts, they are outside historical and physical evidence that confirm the theory that Christ rose from the dead. Note I did not say "prove," only "confirm" as in they support the theory.
All that humans believe to "know for a fact" about the world really boils down to a belief based on strong evidence and a lack of contradicting evidence. As contradicting evidence is brought to light, primary beliefs and "knowledge" is adjusted to this new information, and the theory is revised. This is a core part of the scientific method and of logical thinking. Even the theory of gravity is a belief. It is strongly confirmed by an overwhelming amount of evidence, but it is still a belief. If, tomorrow, it was found that gravity didn't exist, and some sort of generator was found at the core of the earth that was creating a field which kept us on this planet, like it or not, we'd be forced to change our belief in gravity based on the overwhelming evidence of the found artifact (assuming all the math correlated with this new find). An absurd example, but the point is made - all "facts" are a belief based on strong evidence.
I'm not sure how much more external evidence you require, but that seems like enough that I'm not just blowing smoke and making wishes to believe that the biblical accounts are historically accurate, and that a real person died and was seen alive 3 days later by hundreds of witnesses.
I am one of those you might call "truly" faithful, and I most definitely relied on outside confirmations of my faith to determine if the book I chose to hang my immortal soul upon was, in fact, a good historical document. I looked into geographic proofs, historical evidence that fit the data in the bible, threw out the Apocrypha because it was essentially "hearsay" in light of not being direct accounts or second hand accounts, and look at many sections of the "cannonized" bible as questionable due to conflicting translations and conflicting original sources. I settled on one core piece that is taught in all versions of the Christian bible, mentioned by the apostle Paul.
He taught that he chose to know only "Christ and him crucified."
I have chosen to believe the core points of Christ's sacrifice and resurrection from the dead, and that all of the rest of the bible is just details that do not determine my eternal soul's destination.
Christ's death saved me (the price God requires for sin is death... Christ died sinless, so he paid the debt on my behalf). Christ's primary command drives me: Love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. (paraphrased from memory, likely closest to the NIV or HCSB translation).
Anyone arguing about the details doesn't get it - read 1 Cor 1:10-17 and 1 Cor 8:1-6. We are not to be bogged down by the details, but rather are to focus on Christ and Christ alone.
But I digress. My point is that outside historical sources, outside translation information, outside geographical evidences, and outside personal experiences all influence my faith. I do not blindly believe the bible to be 100% infallible (how could any of the English translations be perfect? Translation itself is an art, and no translation will ever be 100% accurate due to the inherent issues with literal versus paraphrase translation methods). So no, "truly" faithful believers do not ignore outside validation, or at least this individual believer does not, and I know that I am not the only one to think this way in my small circle of close friends who truly believe alongside me.
Generalizations are generally wrong (and even this generalization likely has exceptions!).
This was ripped off from a Star Trek TNG episode "Remember Me" in which Beverly ends up in some sort of warp bubble universe where people keep disappearing and the universe shrinks but as the universe shrinks, no one remembers that there were ever more than how ever many people there currently are on the ship. Even when it ends up just Beverly and the Captian... he says "The computer handles everything. We've never had more than just a captain and a doctor."
Interesting episode, but obviously the scifi genre is running out of new ideas (and ST TNG probably ripped it from somewhere else, no doubt).
I am no fool, and if I am, then I stand among honorable fools like Albert Einstein. I may look something up the second or third time, but if I look it up enough times, it ends up memorized with no focused effort on my part. This has the benefit of my memorizing only those facts that I regularly have need of in my everyday life.
Learning by rote or learning by memorization may be useful, but you can dump me into almost any situation, most any career, or in one of many different fields, and in time, I can become an expert. The same cannot be said of many who go through what is called "education" in this nation. They just don't learn how to learn. That is what I am saying is wrong with "education."
Spoonfeed a person facts and figures, and he learns a set of facts and figures. Teach a person to learn, and he or she can learn far more than those facts and figures.
I don't see any value in wasting a decade of my life being forced to memorize dates of obscure historical events. If I need to know the date, I look it up. What I need to learn in history is history, how it impacts culture today, what mistakes were made so they will not be repeated, and the historical culture of other nations, not various dates or obscure facts and figures.
What I need to learn from literature is not to memorize the protagonist's name, or to be sure I can quickly spit out various plot points, but rather to understand that there is a protagonist in the first place, why that is important, what it means, and how the story impacts the culture in which I live.
What I need to learn from math is the foundational concepts of higher math, and when they apply, not memorizing the Pythagorean Theorum or Gaussian Integral calculation. I need to know when to apply the knowledge, and how to apply it, but the actual formula structure? That, I can look up if I don't remember it.
The goal of current day education is not to teach you how to learn, it is to teach you how to pass a test. This does not prepare you for life, it prepares you to only do what gets you your next paycheck (and only as little as is required to get it). This does not prepare you for life, it teaches you to fit in, to conform, to become like everyone else, to see your own ability to excel in one area as a problem and weakness because you happen to lack in other areas, instead of seeing it as a strength in which you can excel and outstrip all expectations over your life.
Where are the inventors, the creators, the makers of things? Where are the movers, the shakers, the thinkers, the creatives? They are squished into a mold that fits into the cogs of society. They are not given the chance to shine. That is what makes me the most sad about our educational system.
I barely survived our education system because of pure boredom. I love to learn, hate to memorize, and abhor parroting facts just because someone tells me it is true. I prefer to dig, to challenge, to think, and to finally come to my own conclusions. The current education system doesn't just ignore this, it punishes it!
Sorry for the rant, but education in this country is a joke, and I have a passion for true education that opens the mind to new ideas and truly gets us going in a direction of promise, hope, creativity, and inventiveness. I feel we are made for so much more than an 8-3 in a school desk followed by a 9-5 in a cube followed by a 6 feet under in a box. We are slipping as a nation, and I don't see public education bringing us back to what we used to be, leaders in science and mathematics.
TLDR: US Education teaches conformity and rote memorization, but should teach creativity, inventiveness, a thirst for learning, and how to learn.
Exactly... in my opinion, the point of learning is to learn how to learn, not to learn the subject matter. Culture, yes, teach that, but beyond that, teach how to find and assimilate information. Learning by memorization is just pointless time wasting.
Wonderful... I get locked out of my car, break in to get my keys, drive home, and the cops are waiting to arrest me. I spend the night in jail trying to prove that it's my car, but they don't care, they have to process their paperwork, fill their quota, etc. I'm released after 24 hours with a "warning" about doing suspicious activities and given no apology. That sounds like a great world to live in.
If Comcast redirected for my FTP upload of client data scheduled during the 1 hour downtime that we have worked 3 weeks to schedule... I'd sue for damages. Plain and simple.
I work from home. I am a contractor. I upload large amounts of data all at once, and do it late at night because the network uploads crawl during the afternoon and early evening. I'm trying to be conscientious to my neighbors who use Comcast by not overloading the upload bandwidth on our block during normal hours (as well as be efficient by avoiding sitting around waiting for files to upload), and Comcast decides to throttle or redirect my traffic because it was running at 1 AM and caused a large spike in traffic?
Trust me, I'd most definitely sue, and if I have a competent lawyer that can prove actual damages, I will win and hit them for all they are worth.
Ok, so I can't stick to two words... When a business is legally using their internet connection (a contractor uploading a very large set of files, including videos, etc., to update a client's live website, for example), and Comcast's actions cause that company to lose business or money due to breach of contract (deadlines are missed, live site goes down due to having only partially updated their files due to Comcast cutting the connection, etc.), there will be lawsuits, and Comcast will likely lose.
@Kjella, Love your sig, and it is absolutely true.
Of course even complex code can be debugged by a mediocre developer if properly documented with comments inside the code.
Oh, and to keep this post on-topic, does it really surprise anyone that a competitor would scoff at Windows offering free antivirus? They have to insist that this software can't compete with theirs, or they go out of business. I wonder if this could be considered Anti-Competitive to include it with the OS when really, it could be considered a "fix" or "patch" to their bad OS design...
If it's that much of a concern, why don't the schools have a set of TI calculators that are available for standardized tests? Stagger the testing properly, and you don't actually need one for each student. This way, the student has their own calculator, can do whatever they want with it for homework, etc, but for testing purposes, they are required to use the school's TI hardware and software.
If the school is concerned with the costs involved, I'm sure they could work a deal with TI to receive the "in-class only" calculators for free or at cost. I mean, if you think about it, free (pirated) copies of Windows is the main reason for the success of the Windows operating system... most likely, having easy access to TI calculators in school would get students comfortable with them, and would likely boost TI's market share... it's a win-win situation, and TI can wholeheartedly support the hack/homebrew crowd at the same time without worrying the teachers.
Slashdot Mirror
Normally I'd ignore such short, comments which have not really been thought out, but due to the fact that it directly relates to my sig.... Please don't comment on the Bible until you've read it first (and if you've read it, you've missed big chunks of it if you believe that just being good gets you into heaven... see Ephesians 2:8-9, for example).
Being good has nothing to do with being allowed into heaven—the best person in the world has broken at least one of God's laws in their lifetime - ever disrespected your parents? You've broken the commandment to honor your father and mother! Breaking one law of God is the same as breaking them all, as God requires us to be perfect to enter heaven. Being good is a response to the loving gift of eternal life from God based solely on your belief that his son, Jesus, paid the required price for your sinful nature. It is the belief itself in Jesus, and the willingness to let him pay the fine (eternal death) for your sins, thereby making you perfect by proxy (think accounting: you owed a debt because of your actions which broke God's laws, Jesus pays the debt, your balance sheet is then balanced, making you perfect through no action of your own beyond letting Jesus bring the books into balance, or think courtroom justice: you were caught breaking a law, God is the judge... who is your advocate? If you accept Jesus as your advocate, he stands before the judge and says "he's guilty, but I volunteer to pay the penalty in his stead." The judge then metes out justice, but Jesus stands in your place, taking the punishment of death, while you remain free.).
Being good is not enough, you must be perfect (who but Jesus has ever been perfect, without sin?), and if you cannot be perfect, God allows for one (and only one) other alternative—you must allow Jesus to stand in your place since he is the only one who was perfect, and he paid the price to get you into heaven. Jesus freely offers to take your punishment. If you wish to waive his counsel, you are free to self represent, but then you have no defense, and will be found guilty, and receive appropriate punishment for your crimes against God. So, no, the bible does not "have you covered" if you think being good is all that is required. In contrast, the bible condemns anyone who thinks this way, calls them prideful, and clearly details that access to heaven is a gift from God to those who will receive it, and not based on good works, so that no man can boast that his works are better than another and therefore will get him better "positioning" in heaven.
tl;dr: Ephesians 2:8-9 clearly disagrees with the notion that being good gets you into heaven, so the bible does not "have you covered" if you believe goodness is what grants you entrance into heaven.
I agree... they should use some random combination of four letters that are entirely unique... perhaps xkcd? That's got to be unique, right? right?
I barter in "non-barter-able" stores... sometimes you get lucky, other times you walk out empty handed. If someone is paid on commission, and it is a big ticket item (small stuff just doesn't have the margin available to slice in order to get the sale), they will gladly sell it to you discounted (essentially cutting into their commission) just to get the sale and some sort of commission*. Some money is better than none.
I'm surprised more people don't just ask. What's the worst that can happen... they say no? Oh well, walk out and try somewhere else until you get the price you want. I haven't paid full price for Comcast internet in over 8 years, and I haven't paid full price for over 80% of the electronics in my home. It's your hard earned money, refuse to hand it over without a meeting of the minds on the value of the item in question!
* Never pay full price for a car... they are always willing to negotiate!
Indeed, I agree with you, however after reading the comments, I found none of them to be libelous, threatening, or harassing in any way.
Nah, that's just Florida.
I don't know about you, but I think there is some value to having the ability to forget. Once I've forgiven someone for something, I want my mind to slowly lose that information because it is no longer relevant. If I remembered everything I ever experienced, I think I'd go insane and become overly depressed as the memories of small infractions mounted (we all forget the little things people do every day that annoy us, or if we don't we resent others for their actions... this could be amplified with perfect memory, no?).
Just shooting the breeze here, but perhaps this has been selectively weeded out because those with perfect memory are miserable, or those with perfect memory annoy the crap out of others, and early man killed off the annoying members of society... just a thought.
Good point.
I wasn't saying this could be avoided... just pointing out that the free market wasn't the actual biggest enemy in the example given. That's all.
No, the biggest enemy of the free market is the abused court system in this example...
I'd be interested to see some of this integrated with Ubiquity so that your home automation system actually knows where you are and can adjust accordingly. If you leave work, it knows, and based on previous experiences, predicts when you will be home, kicks in the heat at the right moment, etc., all without you manually doing anything.
All I have to say is that the number of ways in which you either accidentally or deliberately misunderstood and misstated my views is staggering. At this point, there is no chance for honest discourse, as each time I say something, it is misconstrued as something entirely different.
So I leave you with this:
Please study the evidence, for your own sake, to come to an informed decision. Please do not blindly accept what others have told you is truth. Please do not throw out all that is taught about Christ and his message based on a few hours study, or just because you find a flaw with one or more of his followers or their translations of his words.
To be a free thinker does not require throwing out all religion and faith. On the contrary, to be a free thinker requires that one not blindly discount any information without proper review.
No outside sources.
Really? Do historical accounts from multiple sources (not just the biblical account, but secular accounts as well), in addition to geological digs, predominantly supporting the historical accuracy of the biblical account not count as "outside sources" in your view? If they are not outside sources, then what in the world do you call them? They are not my internal wishes or thoughts, they are outside historical and physical evidence that confirm the theory that Christ rose from the dead. Note I did not say "prove," only "confirm" as in they support the theory.
All that humans believe to "know for a fact" about the world really boils down to a belief based on strong evidence and a lack of contradicting evidence. As contradicting evidence is brought to light, primary beliefs and "knowledge" is adjusted to this new information, and the theory is revised. This is a core part of the scientific method and of logical thinking. Even the theory of gravity is a belief. It is strongly confirmed by an overwhelming amount of evidence, but it is still a belief. If, tomorrow, it was found that gravity didn't exist, and some sort of generator was found at the core of the earth that was creating a field which kept us on this planet, like it or not, we'd be forced to change our belief in gravity based on the overwhelming evidence of the found artifact (assuming all the math correlated with this new find). An absurd example, but the point is made - all "facts" are a belief based on strong evidence.
For further study, try reading these:
Archeological and Historical Evidence - http://www.worldinvisible.com/library/ffbruce/ntdocrli/ntdocont.htm
Additional Archeological and Historical Evidence - http://www.irr.org/mit/bible-archaeology.html
Logical and Literary Evidence - http://www.allaboutjesuschrist.org/resurrection-proofs-faq.htm
Additional Historical Evidence:
- Cornelius Tacitus (55-120AD) Historian
- Pliny the Younger (62-114AD) Historian
- Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus (75-130AD) Historian
I'm not sure how much more external evidence you require, but that seems like enough that I'm not just blowing smoke and making wishes to believe that the biblical accounts are historically accurate, and that a real person died and was seen alive 3 days later by hundreds of witnesses.
I am one of those you might call "truly" faithful, and I most definitely relied on outside confirmations of my faith to determine if the book I chose to hang my immortal soul upon was, in fact, a good historical document. I looked into geographic proofs, historical evidence that fit the data in the bible, threw out the Apocrypha because it was essentially "hearsay" in light of not being direct accounts or second hand accounts, and look at many sections of the "cannonized" bible as questionable due to conflicting translations and conflicting original sources. I settled on one core piece that is taught in all versions of the Christian bible, mentioned by the apostle Paul.
He taught that he chose to know only "Christ and him crucified."
I have chosen to believe the core points of Christ's sacrifice and resurrection from the dead, and that all of the rest of the bible is just details that do not determine my eternal soul's destination.
Christ's death saved me (the price God requires for sin is death... Christ died sinless, so he paid the debt on my behalf). Christ's primary command drives me:
Love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. (paraphrased from memory, likely closest to the NIV or HCSB translation).
Anyone arguing about the details doesn't get it - read 1 Cor 1:10-17 and 1 Cor 8:1-6. We are not to be bogged down by the details, but rather are to focus on Christ and Christ alone.
But I digress. My point is that outside historical sources, outside translation information, outside geographical evidences, and outside personal experiences all influence my faith. I do not blindly believe the bible to be 100% infallible (how could any of the English translations be perfect? Translation itself is an art, and no translation will ever be 100% accurate due to the inherent issues with literal versus paraphrase translation methods). So no, "truly" faithful believers do not ignore outside validation, or at least this individual believer does not, and I know that I am not the only one to think this way in my small circle of close friends who truly believe alongside me.
Generalizations are generally wrong (and even this generalization likely has exceptions!).
Even though I develop in the states, this is the standard I use for all timestamps when creating files:
FilenameYYYYMMDDhhmmss.ext
I use it for the exact reasons you mention - alphanumeric sorting sorts it in a logical manner.
This was ripped off from a Star Trek TNG episode "Remember Me" in which Beverly ends up in some sort of warp bubble universe where people keep disappearing and the universe shrinks but as the universe shrinks, no one remembers that there were ever more than how ever many people there currently are on the ship. Even when it ends up just Beverly and the Captian... he says "The computer handles everything. We've never had more than just a captain and a doctor."
Interesting episode, but obviously the scifi genre is running out of new ideas (and ST TNG probably ripped it from somewhere else, no doubt).
I am no fool, and if I am, then I stand among honorable fools like Albert Einstein. I may look something up the second or third time, but if I look it up enough times, it ends up memorized with no focused effort on my part. This has the benefit of my memorizing only those facts that I regularly have need of in my everyday life.
Learning by rote or learning by memorization may be useful, but you can dump me into almost any situation, most any career, or in one of many different fields, and in time, I can become an expert. The same cannot be said of many who go through what is called "education" in this nation. They just don't learn how to learn. That is what I am saying is wrong with "education."
Spoonfeed a person facts and figures, and he learns a set of facts and figures. Teach a person to learn, and he or she can learn far more than those facts and figures.
I don't see any value in wasting a decade of my life being forced to memorize dates of obscure historical events. If I need to know the date, I look it up. What I need to learn in history is history, how it impacts culture today, what mistakes were made so they will not be repeated, and the historical culture of other nations, not various dates or obscure facts and figures.
What I need to learn from literature is not to memorize the protagonist's name, or to be sure I can quickly spit out various plot points, but rather to understand that there is a protagonist in the first place, why that is important, what it means, and how the story impacts the culture in which I live.
What I need to learn from math is the foundational concepts of higher math, and when they apply, not memorizing the Pythagorean Theorum or Gaussian Integral calculation. I need to know when to apply the knowledge, and how to apply it, but the actual formula structure? That, I can look up if I don't remember it.
The goal of current day education is not to teach you how to learn, it is to teach you how to pass a test. This does not prepare you for life, it prepares you to only do what gets you your next paycheck (and only as little as is required to get it). This does not prepare you for life, it teaches you to fit in, to conform, to become like everyone else, to see your own ability to excel in one area as a problem and weakness because you happen to lack in other areas, instead of seeing it as a strength in which you can excel and outstrip all expectations over your life.
Where are the inventors, the creators, the makers of things? Where are the movers, the shakers, the thinkers, the creatives? They are squished into a mold that fits into the cogs of society. They are not given the chance to shine. That is what makes me the most sad about our educational system.
I barely survived our education system because of pure boredom. I love to learn, hate to memorize, and abhor parroting facts just because someone tells me it is true. I prefer to dig, to challenge, to think, and to finally come to my own conclusions. The current education system doesn't just ignore this, it punishes it!
Sorry for the rant, but education in this country is a joke, and I have a passion for true education that opens the mind to new ideas and truly gets us going in a direction of promise, hope, creativity, and inventiveness. I feel we are made for so much more than an 8-3 in a school desk followed by a 9-5 in a cube followed by a 6 feet under in a box. We are slipping as a nation, and I don't see public education bringing us back to what we used to be, leaders in science and mathematics.
TLDR: US Education teaches conformity and rote memorization, but should teach creativity, inventiveness, a thirst for learning, and how to learn.
Exactly... in my opinion, the point of learning is to learn how to learn, not to learn the subject matter. Culture, yes, teach that, but beyond that, teach how to find and assimilate information. Learning by memorization is just pointless time wasting.
The number of eyes watching is likely to be considerably higher, and they have a financial incentive to report my activity because it looks illegal.
Not quick to sue, but ready to when my client sues me. I have a family to feed, and have to protect myself.
Wonderful... I get locked out of my car, break in to get my keys, drive home, and the cops are waiting to arrest me. I spend the night in jail trying to prove that it's my car, but they don't care, they have to process their paperwork, fill their quota, etc. I'm released after 24 hours with a "warning" about doing suspicious activities and given no apology. That sounds like a great world to live in.
If Comcast redirected for my FTP upload of client data scheduled during the 1 hour downtime that we have worked 3 weeks to schedule... I'd sue for damages. Plain and simple.
I work from home. I am a contractor. I upload large amounts of data all at once, and do it late at night because the network uploads crawl during the afternoon and early evening. I'm trying to be conscientious to my neighbors who use Comcast by not overloading the upload bandwidth on our block during normal hours (as well as be efficient by avoiding sitting around waiting for files to upload), and Comcast decides to throttle or redirect my traffic because it was running at 1 AM and caused a large spike in traffic?
Trust me, I'd most definitely sue, and if I have a competent lawyer that can prove actual damages, I will win and hit them for all they are worth.
Two words:
False Positives.
Ok, so I can't stick to two words... When a business is legally using their internet connection (a contractor uploading a very large set of files, including videos, etc., to update a client's live website, for example), and Comcast's actions cause that company to lose business or money due to breach of contract (deadlines are missed, live site goes down due to having only partially updated their files due to Comcast cutting the connection, etc.), there will be lawsuits, and Comcast will likely lose.
@Kjella, Love your sig, and it is absolutely true.
Of course even complex code can be debugged by a mediocre developer if properly documented with comments inside the code.
Oh, and to keep this post on-topic, does it really surprise anyone that a competitor would scoff at Windows offering free antivirus? They have to insist that this software can't compete with theirs, or they go out of business. I wonder if this could be considered Anti-Competitive to include it with the OS when really, it could be considered a "fix" or "patch" to their bad OS design...
If it's that much of a concern, why don't the schools have a set of TI calculators that are available for standardized tests? Stagger the testing properly, and you don't actually need one for each student. This way, the student has their own calculator, can do whatever they want with it for homework, etc, but for testing purposes, they are required to use the school's TI hardware and software.
If the school is concerned with the costs involved, I'm sure they could work a deal with TI to receive the "in-class only" calculators for free or at cost. I mean, if you think about it, free (pirated) copies of Windows is the main reason for the success of the Windows operating system... most likely, having easy access to TI calculators in school would get students comfortable with them, and would likely boost TI's market share... it's a win-win situation, and TI can wholeheartedly support the hack/homebrew crowd at the same time without worrying the teachers.
Nah...
He's just using the taxpayers' money to keep up his certs by using the available education system in jail.