A tenet is a religious doctrine that is proclaimed as true without proof. Atheism proclaims that there is no god yet does not offer any proof. Sounds like a tenet.
One of the definitions of religion is "a pursuit or interest to which someone ascribes supreme importance". Atheist appear to ascribe to the fact that there is no god with supreme importance.
Logic dictates that you can never prove a negative. It is therefore impossible to prove a lack of God; one could always argue an increasingly more subtle God that hides itself within its own omnipotent powers. It is therefore ALWAYS incumbent on those who believe something does exist to prove it. We cannot ask Atheists to produce proof in the lack of something, for they will never be able to do so. Personally I don't care enough about the matter to worry about it. I think that there are beings, akin to if not actually Gods, that have some influence over the world (perhaps the Universe, perhaps not), but I also think those beings are largely beyond caring whether we believe in them or worship them (though they may be willing to help us out if we ask nicely). So be whatever you want to be, as long as you aren't trying to enforce your beliefs as laws.
Unfortunately, you can not tell a segment of the population to judge what is meant instead of what is being said. It doesn't help that some of those people take things literally (and I do mean literally).
You can't expect to accomplish your goal if you give potential supporters a reason to feel slighted, or worse give your opposition something to galvanize their political base against you
No one is asking them to judge what is meant rather than what is said. What we're asking is for them to listen to what is said. If I say "America is not a "Christian Nation", but rather a nation of many people with many faiths (and sometimes none at all)" I am in no way saying anything bad about Christians. Not literally, not figuratively, not at all. Unless it is offensive to imply that not everyone agrees with them. If that's the case, I'm not sure where my ground for further argument lies, so I may as well just give up. If I "Make people feel slighted" simply by stating the bedrock argument upon which all of my other logic or rhetoric might be built, I'm never going to win anyway, so I need to be talking to other "people" with a more reasonable worldview.
I can't, but only because religion is so often used as an excuse for doing things that we wanna do anyway. I'm no kind of seriously religious, so I'm not offended by the idea that religion is the cause of terrorism, but no more do I believe it. I spent a year in Iraq. One of the things that the Army learned early is that a happy young man with a food on his table, a safe place to send his kids or younger siblings, and prospects for the future is almost never a terrorist. (Note the "almost". It does happen, but very, very rarely) Terrorist organizations recruit from the poorest of the poor, and they make concrete promises that a young man can understand and appreciate:
DRAMATIZATION:
"Go kill yourself blowing up the Americans. We will take care of your family, give them money, food, and protection. Also blah blah blah blah Allah, blah blah."
"Oh, yes? Blah, blah Allah? Yes! So um, you'll take care of may family? They'll be safe and have food?"
"Of course, we honor the families of Martyrs! Blah Allah!"
"Well as long as my sacrifice will make them happy... Oh, yeah, blah Allah, blah blah."
Look at any conflict which appears to have religion at its root, and mostly likely you will find that there are economic, political, racial, and/or cultural roots so deeply intertwined with the religion that you can't really separate them. A lot of the reason religion appears to be the source of so much tension is the natural tendency of religious people to assume that their God must support what they are doing. Look at Northern Ireland. Catholics vs Protestants, yes? When do the think the last time most IRA bombers were in a Church? Catholic vs Protestant is just easier to demark than "Native Gaelic Residents Who have a Bit of Norse and Some Germanic in Them" vs "Recently (in the last 400 or years) Immigrated Gaelic (With a Good Bit More Germanic and a Very Germanic Culture) Residents Who Also Have a Bit of Norse in Them" which is really what the fighting is about.
You are completely legally correct, but you are the one missing the point. The FCC fined CBS legally (as defined by law at that time). The courts are considering whether the FCC actually has that legal authority (based on higher law). The parent of my original post argues that the FCC should have this legal authority, because a "bad" thing happened and the FCC should have the legal authority to prevent it from happening again and punish those who perpetrate it. I counter that:
a) The thing that happened wasn't actually all that bad, and parent makes it sound worse than it was for effect. b) Leaving the FCC with the authority to fine networks would not have prevented it, because c) They did not and cannot fine those actually responsible. Only the network that (inadvertently) broadcast the results.
Therefore parents arguments are invalid. No one (or at least I am not) is saying that the FCC acted inappropriately according to the laws as they were understood at the time. Merely that the parent's reason for why those laws should continue to be interrupted as they are is not valid.
It's still ridiculous for live TV to try to pass the buck that way. It's fine for produced television, you know who is ultimately responsible for every word Spongebob says so there's no problem. Likewise there's little enough issue with the people on produced television saying or doing unexpected things.
The problem is live TV. OK, so as part of their contract with the NFL, CBS makes the NFL responsible for any indecency fines that might accrue during the Super Bowl. Now you can feel comfortable knowing the responsible party is punished. Except the people in the halftime show don't work for the NFL, they work for some entertain group. So the NFL pushes the contractual requirement for fines down to the Entertain group, who then have to push them down to the entertainers... Who are prima-donas, pretty much by definition of playing the Superbowl halftime show, and they don't WANNA sign that that, so now you have to find *different* entertainers... and mean while some random fan in the stands flashes the camera and now the NFL has to pay an indecency fine for the action of some random unidentified person in the stands.
Live TV is live. You never know what may happen, what zany person might do what crazy thing. Most if not all of the people in any live shot have no obligation AT ALL to the TV station. If you're really THAT worried about random people doing random stuff on live TV, don't watch live TV.
1) Atheism is not a Religion. It has no tenants, and the lack of belief in something cannot be considered a "tenant". It's a state of belief. Now "Secular Humanism" is a set of beliefs exposed by many (though by no means all) Atheists, and it could be a called a "Godless Religion". Not all Atheists are Secular Humanists though, and Atheism cannot, by any reasonable definition of the word, be called a religion. It's vaguely insulting to the term "religion" to imply that it can be. (No, I am not an Atheist)
2) The reason the term "Christian Nation" is so widely mocked outside of "Christian Nation" circles is not merely because the far right seems to love using it so much, but because it is factually inaccurate. (And as a point of fact here, something on the order of eight or nine percent of the population is neither Christian nor Atheist, it may not be a humongous number, but it's hardly "nobody" either. On top of this many believing Christians mock the "Christian Nation" concept. Putting the entire blame on "Atheists" probably ignores the majority of the people who actually mock this concept.) The Constitution, in the one place that it makes mention religion at all, does so to declaim that there is no official religion of this country, and all people shall have to right to practice their own religion. Something on the order of 20-30% (depending on the polls) of the population claims either a lack of religious affiliation, or a specifically non-Christian affiliation. So while it may be accurate to say that the US is a majority Christian nation, that's not what is meant by those who proclaim it a "Christian Nation". Those people are therefore wrong.
3) People who are offended by others mocking the "Christian Nation" concept are either: (a) In the first group you describe above, and therefore among those being mocked, or (b) not comprehending what is being mocked. Mocking the concept espoused by puffed up, self appointed guardians of morality is not the same as mocking the values of the religion being used. Jesus himself mocked these people, see Mathew 6:5 for details.
Did you really *see* Janet's nipple? Really? I was watching, I saw a sudden movement from Justin Timberlake, some clothing pull away, and what may or make not have been a flash of jewelry. The actual nipple was on screen for less than 3 seconds, on a pulled away shot, and covered in a very large piece of jewelry. So far as I remember it took an hour or more for there to be verification that there actually *was* a nipple in the shot, after someone isolated the 30-40 frames where it was visible and zoomed in on it.
So essentially you're saying that kids can be mentally damaged but a second or two of viewing something that may or may not from the actual visual evidence on screen have been partial nudity. Regardless, the network (who got fined for indecency) had nothing to do with the plan that Justin and Janet came up with to get themselves some publicity. So even the most stringent fining system in the world would not have prevented the occurrence, because the people who were fined were not the people who planned and executed the stunt (and Justin and Janet couldn't have ever been fined because they're under no obligation to the TV station or the public to act a certain way just because cameras happen to be on them. Their contract is with the NFL).
One thing to keep in mind is that FCC decency standards are extremely broadly implemented. Imagine if the restrictions the BBC places on it's kids networks were in place on all networks until the end of Prime Time (which on the coasts doesn't end until 2200). After which most networks still self enforce a slightly less stringent version because they fear that if anyone complains the FCC itself might decide to just apply the same rules to all 24 hours a day. I'm not normally a "The Market will fix it" kind of guy, but in this case I think that there's a good chance this could be left to the market. Unlike in a lot of areas where the actual mechanisms of a process are hidden, the nature of TV is particularly "what you see is what you get".
You don't really have to worry that there was a nipple involved somewhere in the the productions of the children's TV show you're watching. It's not like cell phones providers or ISPs who could be hiding something nefarious in the network that you can't see, or the stock market where people are doing mysterious things with other people's money. It's completely visible and transparent. Don't like it? Don't want your kids to see it? Don't watch it. It would be patently foolish to start putting sexual content in a family sitcom or a kids cartoon. People would simply not watch it. Kid's channels are not going to suddenly get adult content. "Family Hour Fridays on ABC" is not suddenly going to include porn. It's particularly easy to vote with your feet when it come to television, and I really think the FCC's stance on this is archaic.
The airport's Fire Rescue squad responded first, maybe they didn't get the training. You'd think they'd give it to all likely first responders, but who knows. Government bureaucracy is often about doing the minimum you can: "Huh, regulation says we gotta get special training and equipment for the Fire Dept... what's minimum we can spend doing that and still be legal?"
Course the submitter was just speculating, so maybe that wasn't eh problem at all.
One of the Federal agencies got hit by this several years back. A group scattered infected drives around in the parking lot of a Federal Building and at least one person picked one up and infected the network. Another group tried it at DoJ, but failed because the employees turned the drives in. (See? Sometimes user education DOES work.)
Be realistic here. Most users don't know what the registry is, let alone how to edit it. This is a viable solution for corporate desktops, but it's hardly "easy" in the sense that it's something I'd think to do after I first installed my machine at home (or mor likely got it home preinstalled). It's not much of a problem now of course, SP2 to XP disabled this feature and neither Vista nor 7 have it, but until XP SP2 it was a difficult thing for a normal home user to disable.
Or more likely they have their own research labs, and they have white and gray hat hackers who send them exploits that they discover. HTis allows them to try and stay ahead of the game, instead of reacting to every new virus several hours or days after it's been released by someone malicious. If a white hat sends the AV company the latest virus he's written and the AV company said, "oh, that's vera nice... we'll include it in a definition file if anyone bad ever discovers it" how would you feel?
iTunes has a check box option to open automatically when an iDevice is plugged in, and it will, but you'll still get the dialog box. It's kinda weird. When I plug in my phone I get both iTunes and the dialog. It's a tad annoying, but I can't find any way to make the dialog stop coming up. I believe the check box is in the general tab for the device itself (so you could set it up so that your tablet always opened iTunes, but your phone didn't, for instance).
As someone already pointed out, it's faster for large data transfers, but I don't think that's a majority of the problem. It's mostly just convenience. Let's say I have a presentation to give to your company. It's the same presentation I give to every company that has shown an interest in my product. I could e-mail each and every company a copy of my presentation before I show up (and hope that the person I e-mailed it to remembers to put it on the presentation machine), or I can carry it on a thumb drive. Or maybe I was working on the presentation on the flight, and didn't have Internet access to send it to you. Or I'm a tech support guy who carries a bunch of diagnostic tools around with me. There's a ton of reasons why people carry these things around, speed not a huge factor for most of them.
More to the point, I got the impression that this was after hours, so he wasn't necessarily carrying "at work". He essentially went to some local "Concert at the Park" deal that evening, got drunk, and went back to work specifically to shoot the computer. At least that's how I read the story.
Now that I think about it, that's probably why they were willing to hire me and pay me much more than the job would appear to be worth. A more senior level analyst probably looked good on the project. Or more to the point, they could charge the government for a senior systems analyst, as opposed to a more junior (and less profitable) position. Ah well, not important really, I did the grunt work, they paid me, I moved on when the project started winding down. I have a much more pleasant job now.
If what you need is a trained monkey just literate enough to follow a script: advertise for, hire, and (I would think most importantly to a business) pay for a trained monkey just literate enough to follow a script. Don't advertise for, hire, and pay for a systems analyst and designer with 10 years experience designing, building, and troubleshooting high end Unix systems. I shouldn't complain really. They paid me pretty well, I had an idea what I was getting into from the interview, and I needed the job at the time. None the less, it was boring, I hated doing it (though I was happy to get my paycheck from it), and I can't get over the idea that it was foolish as Hell to hire me for so much money to do such pathetic work (not that I'm not grateful they did).
You work for Boeing don't you? God I hated that place. Needed 4 people looking over my shoulder while I followed a script designed for a monkey. If you wanted a monkey, why did you hire an experienced HPC analyst/engineer?
I posted this way farther up, but I'll say it again. Linux, Mac or Windows really don't matter (except that Windows is targeted and the other two aren't right now). Why? Because you're thinking about this the wrong way. Is is harder to "root" a Linux box or a Mac than Windows (especially older Windows), yes. In some cases significantly. It doesn't matter. You don't need to run a botnet client from an "administrator" or "root" account. You can run it from any normal users account. What does a botnet client "do" really? It run as a piece of software (users can do that), it initiates client communications back to the "master" (users can do that), it sends e-mail (users can do that). Are there some things that might be nice to get admin access for? Sure. I'm sure setting up a "listen" port will make the job easier, being able to whilly-nilly change permission and ownerships might make it easier to hide, but in general all the basic things a botnet needs to do can be done in userspace.
Since whatever small amount of skill users may have gotten in avoiding "bad stuff" in Windows would be useless in Linux ("I can click on this attachment! It doesn't say exe!"), if anything users would be more vulnerable to social engineering attacks. If Linux or MacOS ever becomes a significant enough presence on the Internet to be worth the effort, I'm quite certain that you'll see botnets using them. The essential problem with computers is users, and all the things that users want their computers to do. As long as users: a) need to use the computer to run programs, write files, and access the network and b) like shiny things, we're pretty much screwed.
In the highly unlikely event that every person in the world switched to Linux tomorrow, I guarantee there would be a Linux botnet running in a matter of weeks. Remember that you don't have to "root" a box to get it working as a part of a botnet. Running software, initiating client side network connections, sending e-mail, these are all things that can be done as a regular user. Use a flash vulnerability, or just get the user to run a script (in some ways even easier with an unwary user in Linux, since there is no need for a telltale file extension), install botnet software in a.directory on the user's home, edit their shell start-ups scripts to get it running. Presto, botnet client.
Would it work on you? Probably not. Would it work on a normal user? Especially a normal user who just switched to a new OS and is finding that they know even less about this new system than the little they know about the old system? Absolutely. The chances of such a person even knowing to look in.bashrc for a rogue start up, or how to do an "ls -al" to find an extra hidden directory are minuscule.
Linux is, in general, a more secure OS than Windows in many ways (not as much so as in the past, but still more secure), but a Linux box admined by a complete neophyte in a world where people were actually targeting Linux, would be just as vulnerable as a Windows box being admined by a complete neophyte in a world where people target Windows. In the end, all OSes are vulnerable to the simple fact that normal users must be allowed (at a minimum) to run their software, save their data, and use the network. Take that away, and the computer is little more than an expensive paper weight/space heater combination device. Leave it there and users will find a way to do something stupid.
I think what he's saying is, "We have this incredibly sensitive sensor array, in good light it can do 13,280 x 9,184 pixels; or, if the light isn't that good we can cut it to 6640 x 4592 and combine pixels to get a more accurate image despite the lack of light." It's like anything else, when conditions aren't ideal you lose stuff. In this case if your light isn't good you can (in theory) go from phenomenally high resolution to merely really high resolution by combining pixels. You're only getting 2.5 times as high a resolution as the best current cameras on the market instead of 5 times, but hopefully the image will be better.
Even operating at a quarter of its normal capability this sensor is a little better than the best currently on the market, so if it could (again theoretically) produce a more accurate (if lower resolution) image in low light situation, while producing a higher resolution image in normal light situations, that's a pretty good compromise.
I used to agree with you. Then I realized that I'd lost my folder of "Play disks" in the last move. And I could get most of the games I lost from Steam for $5-10 each. I'm sold. I'll never lose another disk again, and if Steam ever goes under (which seems highly unlikely at this point) I'm not out much money. Plus they install hella faster, even with the download time. I've often wondered why games seem to take forever to install, are they just that significantly compressed?
This has to be one of the stupidest things I've ever read. It's comparable in stupidity to the equally stupid far left commentators who blamed Bush for 9/11. I'm no fan of GWB, but blaming a man for a disaster than happened within a year or two of his taking office is just insane. It takes time to realign Federal bureaucracy. In the case of 9/11 the blame lies as much or more with Clinton, Bush Sr. and even Reagan as with GWB. More really, GWB *might* have improved the non-traditional intelligence community had he been given a chance (he probably wouldn't have, but it's moot since he wasn't given the opportunity). Same thing here. Obama inherited a broken regulatory system and hasn't had a chance to fix it (again, he may or may not have actually done so if the disaster hadn't happened, we'll never know now).
Presidents are responsible for the things that happen on their watch, certainly. In both cases the President took responsibility, and vowed to fix what was broken (success or failure not withstanding), but that doesn't mean it was the current President's fault. Being stuck with the bag doesn't make you a bank robber, though it makes you responsible for some of the consequences of the bank robbery.
No one except you is probably going to see this by now, but anyway... I agree with you, but I don't think you're going to find a large company like Valve willing to be either the chicken or the egg. They want to see that there is a market before they spend the money to develop for that market. It's unfortunate, perhaps, but it's the way companies like that think. If some start-up comes along and makes a few million selling games on Linux, then Valve will say "Hey, I wanna get me some of that!" and you'll see real movement. So far the only real examples are Loki (Bankrupt), Crossover (Who do OK, but have pretty low expenses since they're more just tailoring WINE rather than developing or porting anything), and Id (who have never apparently actually made money on a Linux port but do it for the love or the street cred).
It's arguable that of the listed companies only Id really does (or did) a good job. Loki's ports were notoriously buggy and Crossover is, well, Crossover is running in WINE, which is a brave attempt but still trying to run one OS's programs in a completely different OS while essentially guessing at the APIs. I don't see the big boys making that fine a distinction though. They see a string of failures or low profit operations and don't see any reason to play.
Before they went in with Activision I thought there was a chance that Blizzard might make the jump. They've always cross developed for Mac and PC, and these days Mac and Linux game programming aren't that far apart. It probably wouldn't have cost that much more (as compared to a PC only company) to add Linux to the mix. Sadly I don't see it happening now. Activision has bee very hands off with Blizz, but I think they'd object pretty strongly to taking a chance like that.
That was his point. He was being sarcastic. Not only is your sarcasm detector completely broken, you apparently only read half of the post directly above this one where he says "But I was being ironic with the word irrefutable." Jeez, I used to think *I* was thick about understanding humor... then I came here.
The other problem is that because they are willing to compromise, chances are they are willing to compromise on other matters. Like having a separate game box or being willing to dual boot. While Steam being ported to Linux might make them happier, in many cases it won't do anything for Steam. They already have these customers, the customers would just be happier if they didn't have to deal with the expense/hassle of maintaining a Windows system of some sort. It's harder to make a business case for "happier customers" than it is for "new customers".
The only "new customers" that Steam would get out of porting would be those few who are willing to compromise to the extent of using proprietary drivers/software, but not willing to compromise to the extent of just keeping a Windows partition. I suspect that while their are a fair number of "non-political" Linux users who would be thrilled by this development because it made their lives a bit easier (and I include myself in this number), the vast majority of them currently just deal with having a Windows box/partition around for gaming. The actual amount of "new business" generated by what would doubtless be a costly port process (remember that they'd have to port games as well as the actual Steam client) seems like it would be fairly small to me.
I'd personally love to see this happen, don't get me wrong, I just don't see it being worth Steam's time and money at this point.
Slashdot Mirror
A tenet is a religious doctrine that is proclaimed as true without proof. Atheism proclaims that there is no god yet does not offer any proof. Sounds like a tenet.
One of the definitions of religion is "a pursuit or interest to which someone ascribes supreme importance". Atheist appear to ascribe to the fact that there is no god with supreme importance.
Logic dictates that you can never prove a negative. It is therefore impossible to prove a lack of God; one could always argue an increasingly more subtle God that hides itself within its own omnipotent powers. It is therefore ALWAYS incumbent on those who believe something does exist to prove it. We cannot ask Atheists to produce proof in the lack of something, for they will never be able to do so. Personally I don't care enough about the matter to worry about it. I think that there are beings, akin to if not actually Gods, that have some influence over the world (perhaps the Universe, perhaps not), but I also think those beings are largely beyond caring whether we believe in them or worship them (though they may be willing to help us out if we ask nicely). So be whatever you want to be, as long as you aren't trying to enforce your beliefs as laws.
Unfortunately, you can not tell a segment of the population to judge what is meant instead of what is being said. It doesn't help that some of those people take things literally (and I do mean literally).
You can't expect to accomplish your goal if you give potential supporters a reason to feel slighted, or worse give your opposition something to galvanize their political base against you
No one is asking them to judge what is meant rather than what is said. What we're asking is for them to listen to what is said. If I say "America is not a "Christian Nation", but rather a nation of many people with many faiths (and sometimes none at all)" I am in no way saying anything bad about Christians. Not literally, not figuratively, not at all. Unless it is offensive to imply that not everyone agrees with them. If that's the case, I'm not sure where my ground for further argument lies, so I may as well just give up. If I "Make people feel slighted" simply by stating the bedrock argument upon which all of my other logic or rhetoric might be built, I'm never going to win anyway, so I need to be talking to other "people" with a more reasonable worldview.
I can't, but only because religion is so often used as an excuse for doing things that we wanna do anyway. I'm no kind of seriously religious, so I'm not offended by the idea that religion is the cause of terrorism, but no more do I believe it. I spent a year in Iraq. One of the things that the Army learned early is that a happy young man with a food on his table, a safe place to send his kids or younger siblings, and prospects for the future is almost never a terrorist. (Note the "almost". It does happen, but very, very rarely) Terrorist organizations recruit from the poorest of the poor, and they make concrete promises that a young man can understand and appreciate:
DRAMATIZATION:
"Go kill yourself blowing up the Americans. We will take care of your family, give them money, food, and protection. Also blah blah blah blah Allah, blah blah."
"Oh, yes? Blah, blah Allah? Yes! So um, you'll take care of may family? They'll be safe and have food?"
"Of course, we honor the families of Martyrs! Blah Allah!"
"Well as long as my sacrifice will make them happy... Oh, yeah, blah Allah, blah blah."
Look at any conflict which appears to have religion at its root, and mostly likely you will find that there are economic, political, racial, and/or cultural roots so deeply intertwined with the religion that you can't really separate them. A lot of the reason religion appears to be the source of so much tension is the natural tendency of religious people to assume that their God must support what they are doing. Look at Northern Ireland. Catholics vs Protestants, yes? When do the think the last time most IRA bombers were in a Church? Catholic vs Protestant is just easier to demark than "Native Gaelic Residents Who have a Bit of Norse and Some Germanic in Them" vs "Recently (in the last 400 or years) Immigrated Gaelic (With a Good Bit More Germanic and a Very Germanic Culture) Residents Who Also Have a Bit of Norse in Them" which is really what the fighting is about.
You are completely legally correct, but you are the one missing the point. The FCC fined CBS legally (as defined by law at that time). The courts are considering whether the FCC actually has that legal authority (based on higher law). The parent of my original post argues that the FCC should have this legal authority, because a "bad" thing happened and the FCC should have the legal authority to prevent it from happening again and punish those who perpetrate it. I counter that:
a) The thing that happened wasn't actually all that bad, and parent makes it sound worse than it was for effect.
b) Leaving the FCC with the authority to fine networks would not have prevented it, because
c) They did not and cannot fine those actually responsible. Only the network that (inadvertently) broadcast the results.
Therefore parents arguments are invalid. No one (or at least I am not) is saying that the FCC acted inappropriately according to the laws as they were understood at the time. Merely that the parent's reason for why those laws should continue to be interrupted as they are is not valid.
It's still ridiculous for live TV to try to pass the buck that way. It's fine for produced television, you know who is ultimately responsible for every word Spongebob says so there's no problem. Likewise there's little enough issue with the people on produced television saying or doing unexpected things.
The problem is live TV. OK, so as part of their contract with the NFL, CBS makes the NFL responsible for any indecency fines that might accrue during the Super Bowl. Now you can feel comfortable knowing the responsible party is punished. Except the people in the halftime show don't work for the NFL, they work for some entertain group. So the NFL pushes the contractual requirement for fines down to the Entertain group, who then have to push them down to the entertainers... Who are prima-donas, pretty much by definition of playing the Superbowl halftime show, and they don't WANNA sign that that, so now you have to find *different* entertainers... and mean while some random fan in the stands flashes the camera and now the NFL has to pay an indecency fine for the action of some random unidentified person in the stands.
Live TV is live. You never know what may happen, what zany person might do what crazy thing. Most if not all of the people in any live shot have no obligation AT ALL to the TV station. If you're really THAT worried about random people doing random stuff on live TV, don't watch live TV.
1) Atheism is not a Religion. It has no tenants, and the lack of belief in something cannot be considered a "tenant". It's a state of belief. Now "Secular Humanism" is a set of beliefs exposed by many (though by no means all) Atheists, and it could be a called a "Godless Religion". Not all Atheists are Secular Humanists though, and Atheism cannot, by any reasonable definition of the word, be called a religion. It's vaguely insulting to the term "religion" to imply that it can be. (No, I am not an Atheist)
2) The reason the term "Christian Nation" is so widely mocked outside of "Christian Nation" circles is not merely because the far right seems to love using it so much, but because it is factually inaccurate. (And as a point of fact here, something on the order of eight or nine percent of the population is neither Christian nor Atheist, it may not be a humongous number, but it's hardly "nobody" either. On top of this many believing Christians mock the "Christian Nation" concept. Putting the entire blame on "Atheists" probably ignores the majority of the people who actually mock this concept.) The Constitution, in the one place that it makes mention religion at all, does so to declaim that there is no official religion of this country, and all people shall have to right to practice their own religion. Something on the order of 20-30% (depending on the polls) of the population claims either a lack of religious affiliation, or a specifically non-Christian affiliation. So while it may be accurate to say that the US is a majority Christian nation, that's not what is meant by those who proclaim it a "Christian Nation". Those people are therefore wrong.
3) People who are offended by others mocking the "Christian Nation" concept are either: (a) In the first group you describe above, and therefore among those being mocked, or (b) not comprehending what is being mocked. Mocking the concept espoused by puffed up, self appointed guardians of morality is not the same as mocking the values of the religion being used. Jesus himself mocked these people, see Mathew 6:5 for details.
Did you really *see* Janet's nipple? Really? I was watching, I saw a sudden movement from Justin Timberlake, some clothing pull away, and what may or make not have been a flash of jewelry. The actual nipple was on screen for less than 3 seconds, on a pulled away shot, and covered in a very large piece of jewelry. So far as I remember it took an hour or more for there to be verification that there actually *was* a nipple in the shot, after someone isolated the 30-40 frames where it was visible and zoomed in on it.
So essentially you're saying that kids can be mentally damaged but a second or two of viewing something that may or may not from the actual visual evidence on screen have been partial nudity. Regardless, the network (who got fined for indecency) had nothing to do with the plan that Justin and Janet came up with to get themselves some publicity. So even the most stringent fining system in the world would not have prevented the occurrence, because the people who were fined were not the people who planned and executed the stunt (and Justin and Janet couldn't have ever been fined because they're under no obligation to the TV station or the public to act a certain way just because cameras happen to be on them. Their contract is with the NFL).
One thing to keep in mind is that FCC decency standards are extremely broadly implemented. Imagine if the restrictions the BBC places on it's kids networks were in place on all networks until the end of Prime Time (which on the coasts doesn't end until 2200). After which most networks still self enforce a slightly less stringent version because they fear that if anyone complains the FCC itself might decide to just apply the same rules to all 24 hours a day. I'm not normally a "The Market will fix it" kind of guy, but in this case I think that there's a good chance this could be left to the market. Unlike in a lot of areas where the actual mechanisms of a process are hidden, the nature of TV is particularly "what you see is what you get".
You don't really have to worry that there was a nipple involved somewhere in the the productions of the children's TV show you're watching. It's not like cell phones providers or ISPs who could be hiding something nefarious in the network that you can't see, or the stock market where people are doing mysterious things with other people's money. It's completely visible and transparent. Don't like it? Don't want your kids to see it? Don't watch it. It would be patently foolish to start putting sexual content in a family sitcom or a kids cartoon. People would simply not watch it. Kid's channels are not going to suddenly get adult content. "Family Hour Fridays on ABC" is not suddenly going to include porn. It's particularly easy to vote with your feet when it come to television, and I really think the FCC's stance on this is archaic.
The airport's Fire Rescue squad responded first, maybe they didn't get the training. You'd think they'd give it to all likely first responders, but who knows. Government bureaucracy is often about doing the minimum you can: "Huh, regulation says we gotta get special training and equipment for the Fire Dept... what's minimum we can spend doing that and still be legal?"
Course the submitter was just speculating, so maybe that wasn't eh problem at all.
One of the Federal agencies got hit by this several years back. A group scattered infected drives around in the parking lot of a Federal Building and at least one person picked one up and infected the network. Another group tried it at DoJ, but failed because the employees turned the drives in. (See? Sometimes user education DOES work.)
Be realistic here. Most users don't know what the registry is, let alone how to edit it. This is a viable solution for corporate desktops, but it's hardly "easy" in the sense that it's something I'd think to do after I first installed my machine at home (or mor likely got it home preinstalled). It's not much of a problem now of course, SP2 to XP disabled this feature and neither Vista nor 7 have it, but until XP SP2 it was a difficult thing for a normal home user to disable.
Or more likely they have their own research labs, and they have white and gray hat hackers who send them exploits that they discover. HTis allows them to try and stay ahead of the game, instead of reacting to every new virus several hours or days after it's been released by someone malicious. If a white hat sends the AV company the latest virus he's written and the AV company said, "oh, that's vera nice... we'll include it in a definition file if anyone bad ever discovers it" how would you feel?
iTunes has a check box option to open automatically when an iDevice is plugged in, and it will, but you'll still get the dialog box. It's kinda weird. When I plug in my phone I get both iTunes and the dialog. It's a tad annoying, but I can't find any way to make the dialog stop coming up. I believe the check box is in the general tab for the device itself (so you could set it up so that your tablet always opened iTunes, but your phone didn't, for instance).
As someone already pointed out, it's faster for large data transfers, but I don't think that's a majority of the problem. It's mostly just convenience. Let's say I have a presentation to give to your company. It's the same presentation I give to every company that has shown an interest in my product. I could e-mail each and every company a copy of my presentation before I show up (and hope that the person I e-mailed it to remembers to put it on the presentation machine), or I can carry it on a thumb drive. Or maybe I was working on the presentation on the flight, and didn't have Internet access to send it to you. Or I'm a tech support guy who carries a bunch of diagnostic tools around with me. There's a ton of reasons why people carry these things around, speed not a huge factor for most of them.
More to the point, I got the impression that this was after hours, so he wasn't necessarily carrying "at work". He essentially went to some local "Concert at the Park" deal that evening, got drunk, and went back to work specifically to shoot the computer. At least that's how I read the story.
Now that I think about it, that's probably why they were willing to hire me and pay me much more than the job would appear to be worth. A more senior level analyst probably looked good on the project. Or more to the point, they could charge the government for a senior systems analyst, as opposed to a more junior (and less profitable) position. Ah well, not important really, I did the grunt work, they paid me, I moved on when the project started winding down. I have a much more pleasant job now.
If what you need is a trained monkey just literate enough to follow a script: advertise for, hire, and (I would think most importantly to a business) pay for a trained monkey just literate enough to follow a script. Don't advertise for, hire, and pay for a systems analyst and designer with 10 years experience designing, building, and troubleshooting high end Unix systems. I shouldn't complain really. They paid me pretty well, I had an idea what I was getting into from the interview, and I needed the job at the time. None the less, it was boring, I hated doing it (though I was happy to get my paycheck from it), and I can't get over the idea that it was foolish as Hell to hire me for so much money to do such pathetic work (not that I'm not grateful they did).
You work for Boeing don't you? God I hated that place. Needed 4 people looking over my shoulder while I followed a script designed for a monkey. If you wanted a monkey, why did you hire an experienced HPC analyst/engineer?
I posted this way farther up, but I'll say it again. Linux, Mac or Windows really don't matter (except that Windows is targeted and the other two aren't right now). Why? Because you're thinking about this the wrong way. Is is harder to "root" a Linux box or a Mac than Windows (especially older Windows), yes. In some cases significantly. It doesn't matter. You don't need to run a botnet client from an "administrator" or "root" account. You can run it from any normal users account. What does a botnet client "do" really? It run as a piece of software (users can do that), it initiates client communications back to the "master" (users can do that), it sends e-mail (users can do that). Are there some things that might be nice to get admin access for? Sure. I'm sure setting up a "listen" port will make the job easier, being able to whilly-nilly change permission and ownerships might make it easier to hide, but in general all the basic things a botnet needs to do can be done in userspace.
Since whatever small amount of skill users may have gotten in avoiding "bad stuff" in Windows would be useless in Linux ("I can click on this attachment! It doesn't say exe!"), if anything users would be more vulnerable to social engineering attacks. If Linux or MacOS ever becomes a significant enough presence on the Internet to be worth the effort, I'm quite certain that you'll see botnets using them. The essential problem with computers is users, and all the things that users want their computers to do. As long as users: a) need to use the computer to run programs, write files, and access the network and b) like shiny things, we're pretty much screwed.
In the highly unlikely event that every person in the world switched to Linux tomorrow, I guarantee there would be a Linux botnet running in a matter of weeks. Remember that you don't have to "root" a box to get it working as a part of a botnet. Running software, initiating client side network connections, sending e-mail, these are all things that can be done as a regular user. Use a flash vulnerability, or just get the user to run a script (in some ways even easier with an unwary user in Linux, since there is no need for a telltale file extension), install botnet software in a .directory on the user's home, edit their shell start-ups scripts to get it running. Presto, botnet client.
Would it work on you? Probably not. Would it work on a normal user? Especially a normal user who just switched to a new OS and is finding that they know even less about this new system than the little they know about the old system? Absolutely. The chances of such a person even knowing to look in .bashrc for a rogue start up, or how to do an "ls -al" to find an extra hidden directory are minuscule.
Linux is, in general, a more secure OS than Windows in many ways (not as much so as in the past, but still more secure), but a Linux box admined by a complete neophyte in a world where people were actually targeting Linux, would be just as vulnerable as a Windows box being admined by a complete neophyte in a world where people target Windows. In the end, all OSes are vulnerable to the simple fact that normal users must be allowed (at a minimum) to run their software, save their data, and use the network. Take that away, and the computer is little more than an expensive paper weight/space heater combination device. Leave it there and users will find a way to do something stupid.
I think what he's saying is, "We have this incredibly sensitive sensor array, in good light it can do 13,280 x 9,184 pixels; or, if the light isn't that good we can cut it to 6640 x 4592 and combine pixels to get a more accurate image despite the lack of light." It's like anything else, when conditions aren't ideal you lose stuff. In this case if your light isn't good you can (in theory) go from phenomenally high resolution to merely really high resolution by combining pixels. You're only getting 2.5 times as high a resolution as the best current cameras on the market instead of 5 times, but hopefully the image will be better.
Even operating at a quarter of its normal capability this sensor is a little better than the best currently on the market, so if it could (again theoretically) produce a more accurate (if lower resolution) image in low light situation, while producing a higher resolution image in normal light situations, that's a pretty good compromise.
I used to agree with you. Then I realized that I'd lost my folder of "Play disks" in the last move. And I could get most of the games I lost from Steam for $5-10 each. I'm sold. I'll never lose another disk again, and if Steam ever goes under (which seems highly unlikely at this point) I'm not out much money. Plus they install hella faster, even with the download time. I've often wondered why games seem to take forever to install, are they just that significantly compressed?
This has to be one of the stupidest things I've ever read. It's comparable in stupidity to the equally stupid far left commentators who blamed Bush for 9/11. I'm no fan of GWB, but blaming a man for a disaster than happened within a year or two of his taking office is just insane. It takes time to realign Federal bureaucracy. In the case of 9/11 the blame lies as much or more with Clinton, Bush Sr. and even Reagan as with GWB. More really, GWB *might* have improved the non-traditional intelligence community had he been given a chance (he probably wouldn't have, but it's moot since he wasn't given the opportunity). Same thing here. Obama inherited a broken regulatory system and hasn't had a chance to fix it (again, he may or may not have actually done so if the disaster hadn't happened, we'll never know now).
Presidents are responsible for the things that happen on their watch, certainly. In both cases the President took responsibility, and vowed to fix what was broken (success or failure not withstanding), but that doesn't mean it was the current President's fault. Being stuck with the bag doesn't make you a bank robber, though it makes you responsible for some of the consequences of the bank robbery.
No one except you is probably going to see this by now, but anyway... I agree with you, but I don't think you're going to find a large company like Valve willing to be either the chicken or the egg. They want to see that there is a market before they spend the money to develop for that market. It's unfortunate, perhaps, but it's the way companies like that think. If some start-up comes along and makes a few million selling games on Linux, then Valve will say "Hey, I wanna get me some of that!" and you'll see real movement. So far the only real examples are Loki (Bankrupt), Crossover (Who do OK, but have pretty low expenses since they're more just tailoring WINE rather than developing or porting anything), and Id (who have never apparently actually made money on a Linux port but do it for the love or the street cred).
It's arguable that of the listed companies only Id really does (or did) a good job. Loki's ports were notoriously buggy and Crossover is, well, Crossover is running in WINE, which is a brave attempt but still trying to run one OS's programs in a completely different OS while essentially guessing at the APIs. I don't see the big boys making that fine a distinction though. They see a string of failures or low profit operations and don't see any reason to play.
Before they went in with Activision I thought there was a chance that Blizzard might make the jump. They've always cross developed for Mac and PC, and these days Mac and Linux game programming aren't that far apart. It probably wouldn't have cost that much more (as compared to a PC only company) to add Linux to the mix. Sadly I don't see it happening now. Activision has bee very hands off with Blizz, but I think they'd object pretty strongly to taking a chance like that.
That was his point. He was being sarcastic. Not only is your sarcasm detector completely broken, you apparently only read half of the post directly above this one where he says "But I was being ironic with the word irrefutable." Jeez, I used to think *I* was thick about understanding humor... then I came here.
The other problem is that because they are willing to compromise, chances are they are willing to compromise on other matters. Like having a separate game box or being willing to dual boot. While Steam being ported to Linux might make them happier, in many cases it won't do anything for Steam. They already have these customers, the customers would just be happier if they didn't have to deal with the expense/hassle of maintaining a Windows system of some sort. It's harder to make a business case for "happier customers" than it is for "new customers".
The only "new customers" that Steam would get out of porting would be those few who are willing to compromise to the extent of using proprietary drivers/software, but not willing to compromise to the extent of just keeping a Windows partition. I suspect that while their are a fair number of "non-political" Linux users who would be thrilled by this development because it made their lives a bit easier (and I include myself in this number), the vast majority of them currently just deal with having a Windows box/partition around for gaming. The actual amount of "new business" generated by what would doubtless be a costly port process (remember that they'd have to port games as well as the actual Steam client) seems like it would be fairly small to me.
I'd personally love to see this happen, don't get me wrong, I just don't see it being worth Steam's time and money at this point.