My emachines is like a tiny God, Chuck. I've got FreeBSD running this thing, with windows on the other partition ready for WoW at 1280x800 with an overclocked Radeon 9600 card, running at 4 times the speed of a TiBook with a 9700 card in it. And I actually have shader effects, so it doesn't look like 1996 up in this bitch. I've got tabs too, Chuck, for free.
I'm going to Europe again this summer with the money I saved. How cool is that Genie effect now?
This is the reason I am upset with the direction of the US. In nearly any other developed country, science versus religion isn't even an argument anymore. It makes me ill when people talk about "playing God." Please, wake me when He shows up. For now, the only person who has done anything revolutionary (beyond personal support) for the crippled are scientists, doctors, and other people who work instead of pray.
It's got something to do with the way I use computers, I guess. I'm a little bit ADD and switching between windows, scrolling (*especially* with a mouse wheel), opening new windows, and typing in general just seem more responsive on my x86 box, in XP and in Fedora (and FreeBSD). And no, I'm not one of the gentoo zealots bent on getting 1% performance boosts for three hours worth of work. I can live with a few trade-offs for convenience.
It might break down to just learning key combinations. I've turned on the "full keyboard access" since I wasn't raised on a mouse and a button, but I can't alt-tab between windows in the same program. A lot of the web buttons won't fire off when I hit enter, even though I'm using firefox on both OSs. I have no delete key. In half of the programs, trying to highlights lines of work with Shift+Command+Left/Right doesn't happen. It's the little things like having a scroll section on my trackpad that I miss.
I'm just really disappointed, I think, that the hardware feels so right, but the OS is the part that's too cushy. It holds my hand when I don't want it to.
I have an emachines laptop that includes an Athlon64, 512MB RAM and an ATI 9600 Mobile. I bought a 15" AlBook with an ATI 9700/128MB RAM.
Yet, WoW runs faster on my emachines laptop, without a doubt. And on the forums I've heard that people are getting less framerates than my x86 laptop while running Dual 2.5 G5s with 6800 Ultra cards.
My question is, where's the bottleneck? Is it poor optimization for PPC? Or driver design? Or simply RISC vs CISC?
I was going to throw YellowDog on the AlBook because I love the hardware, but YD4 still doesn't have a sleep function, which is the same problem I have on the emachines. I've since gone back to fedora on the x86 and the difference in opening programs, scrolling, etc, is huge. Anyone out there with anecdotes on YellowDog vs OS X?
Replacing an x86 motherboard: $70 Replacing an x86 processor: $100-200 Competition in the x86 component market: priceless
Replacing a logic board: $200-500 Replacing a slow as shit G4 processor: $200-500 Having shiny buttons: goddamn expensive
Linux is where the two shall meet. Open platform hardware running open source software. In a few years, for FREE, I'm sure at least one distro will have it down. Fedore is damn close already. And at the price of a CD-R or DVD-R, I'm sure there will be a lot of takers.
And look out for Apple to start kludging up their OS again once some people with bad ideas get stuck in their hierarchy. Pretty soon it will be obvious that no large business can compete with the meritocratic programming method.
Let's just hope Apple and Microsoft get themselves a DRM system. Their market share will drop by 30% within two years if people have to actually pay for their products.
I can't prove or disprove anything as far as the existence of God. It's very hard to prove that something doesn't exist.
I can say without hesitation that there have been no reliably recorded miracles, ever. So, if you think that they do exist, I'm going to say that you're wrong, or derisively, that you're kidding yourself.
I can also say with a great amount of certainty that you do not follow whatever religion you claim for yourself, nor have you read the entire text, but that's entirely typical of a religious person. Your reasoning is not based on fact, but emotional attachment or feeling. You don't feel the need to become completely familiar with the things you claim to believe, because you believe.
If all sins are the same, and you ignore any law of God for the sake of compatibility with your modern lifestyle, how can you pretend that you are a true believer? Either every word is true, or the whole thing is a suggestion like everything else. Trust me, I wish I could get everyone to fully read the Old and New Testament as well as the Qu'ran without someone biased for that religion "guiding" them through it, but the reality is that very few people have even read a tenth of any of them.
It's not comforting to see nothing beyond my natural life. It's not comforting to think that people are suffering with no chance of redemption, and that people who are truly evil will never be punished. On the other hand, it would be foolish to pretend things were different to make myself feel better.
Thus the difference between "justified" hate and ignorant hate. If you simply hate something you don't understand, you're ignorant. If you hate something you don't understand and you have some ancient text as your supposed basis for it, you're holy.
I don't care what race or sexual orientation you are - if you believe that the millions of tragedies that happen every day in this world are somehow guided by a supernatural being or force, you're absolutely kidding yourself.
Muslims are killing Hindus, Christians are killing Muslims, Jews are killing Muslims, Muslims are killing Jews, and no miracle has happened in favor or against anyone.
If God acts at all, it must be through people. So why waste time and resources doing anything but God's will? Is it God's will for me to get a new laptop? Is it God's will for some asshole on television to get another Bentley? Is it God's will for you to talk about how important it is to help the poor on Sunday, and do nothing every day? Is it God's will for us to kill 12,000 innocent Muslims in Iraq? Is it God's will for Muslims and Jews in Palestine to kill each other?
Religion is complete in it's comfort and completely untrue, because it allows you to believe you're right when you are wrong.
Homophobia is pro religion because there's no other way to justify ignorant hatred of something one doesn't understand.
Regardless of that, have you ever thought about why you find it wrong when someone, who has nothing to do with your life, does something to themselves or with someone else who wants the same thing? Taking someone else's life, property, or assaulting them sexually or physically are all wrong because a party is involved against their will. That's what all law is based on.
I picked homophobia because it's one of the easier arguments to make religion look silly.
Why are you against homosexuality? "Because it's wrong!" Why is it wrong? "Because it's not natural!" In what way is it not natural? It's been part of human history since there has been a history. There've been gay animals, including dolphins. Possibly all bonobo apes are bisexual. "But God said so!"
Naturalism is a crap argument anyhow, since animals are capable of atrocities close to those committed by humans. There is no reason to believe any religious text, except for self-interest, fear, or both. (Apologies to Mr. Bonaparte.)
Yes, "real" religion where people continue to do the same things they'd do without God. Here in the states, "living in sin" only includes homosexuality, while in reality it should include alcoholism, addiction, lust, covetous behavior, and not giving your heave offering. Once again, a culture has adapted certain rules from a religion in order to justify their actions. The Jews extracted ideas from Zoroastrianism. The Romans codified and extracted ideas from Christianity. The only culture that follows the full word of their religious text is
"Let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God's work must truly be our own." -JFK, 1961
That was forty three years ago. I'm always astonished that people refuse to realize that supernatural events have never, and will never exist. No one can present to me one miracle documented by modern technology and not hearsay.
Once you find your spiritual pockets empty, think about how many resources arrive at the dead-end of church building while the true salvation of food, medicine, and science wither throughout the third world.
You know how life kinda sucks? And it's hard and stuff? Well, there's this guy, named Jesus, or Mohammad, or Abraham or something, and all you have to do to receive his love is to give me 10% of everything you make. He'll make your life worth living. And he'll even bless you with economic prosperity. I promise. And after you die, he'll let you live forever!
Trust me. I'm holy! Unless you're 6,000 years old, you can't question my motives!
I was trying to explain what sovereignty was, and why it was important. Stalin did worse. Magnitudes worse crimes were committed during the Hutu-Tutsi genocidal wars. We didn't really send any of our boys over there then, did we?
Calling me ignorant and insane doesn't mean you have a point. You can't use the violation of UN rules as a basis to violate more because you think it's okay in that situation. The UN was doing it's job. If Bush had left well enough alone, and completely secured Afghanistan using less than half of what's in the Iraq now, Osama bin Laden would be dead, and we'd still be spreading freedom. We would be received as liberators, and we would have nothing but support around the world.
But Bush's plan failed, and failed miserably. So we're going to fire him.
Sovereignty is something that we're supposed to hold dear. Why? For example, if capital punishment were banned in China, and we still practiced it here, they couldn't invade our country legally under the guise if liberating us. It keeps smaller countries (Poland) safe from larger countries (Germany or Russia).
Iraq's people had the responsibility to free themselves. We only get involved when it suits us militarily or for resources. If we really cared about saving lives, Africa would be a more effective continent to start on.
Jon totally destroyed Clinton a show a few months ago when he was doing his little "kiss on the lips" interview with Dan Rather. I'm paraphrasing, but... (From the clip)Clinton: "If there hadn't been someone like Star hanging around, I would've admitted my mistake, told the American people, and said, 'Here's what happened.'"
Stewart: "I'll say this: Clinton's integrity is at it's highest with the situation is at it's most hypothetical."
Fact is, Bush and his administration are lying. Fact is, Stewart is pissed because Clinton was called out for a blowjob, and Bush doesn't get called out for the wrongful deaths of 13,000 Iraqi civilians, thousand of Afghan civilians, and just over a thousand of our men and women in uniform, and God knows how many who will come back without limbs.
What good is revenging 3,000 civilian lives when the response causes the deaths of five times that many? When will we realize that our lives are no more precious that those of people in other countries?
Being courageous has nothing to do with calling death "collateral damage." You would all feel differently if it were your wife and child under the rubble.
I'd have to say this pales in comparison to the actions of companies like Wal-mart, who knowingly lower the standard of living for millions of people here in America and abroad. All for the same motivation: more money.
Their actions might be technically legal, but they're more ethically wrong than some guy who writes software to spam.
Yeah. I sell Macs. Yet, my $1350 laptop can crunch more audio plugins (pure CPU) than a desktop dual 2.0 ghz G5.
That being said, I'm getting my girlfriend a PowerBook. Why? Because she surfs the web, does some e-mail, adores photography, and wants a laptop that will last. My eMachines is starting to crack around the hinge, even though it's only 7 or 8 months old. I use my laptop every day for hours on end, and so do my colleagues, but they've had their 17" Powerbooks for two years, and nothing - nothing - is falling apart on them.
For me, I have to have Linux for sanity, and Windows for work. But if you're a "casual" computer user, Macs will work. No problems, no viruses, no bugs, no esoteric error messages or random crashing. They turn on and compute.
That's why I like selling them - the customers don't call until two years later when they want another one.
I still don't get why Linux development leaders aren't understanding why Windows is so popular, regardless of appplication prevalence. Linux is still asking questions that aren't dumb, but still frighten anyone who isn't very familiar with computers. Modeline and resolution? Swap space? What are ext2, ext3, and reiser!? Does my keyboard have 104 keys or 105?
You have to give big, shiny, easy options because computing shouldn't require that kind of knowledge when people are trying to look at websites and use their e-mail. You've got to sell them the OS first, and then allow them to customize to their heart's content after they can see the utility in what you're offering.
Comparatively I'm dumb to a lot of the slashdot crowd, but I imagine there must be some way to provide full binaries that are LIBRARY INDEPENDENT. Bandwidth is cheap. Hard drive space is cheap. Trying to train everyone how to use symlinks and sort through thousands of libraries using arbitrary command line options is stupid at best. But the first time someone says, "I want to do X and Y is broken!" You can tell them how to do both, and explain to them how Open Source makes it possible.
And I know POSIX compliance is important to everyone, but the directory scheme will have to go someday. What is wrong with/system ("don't touch anything in the system folder!")/users/joecubicle ("Just backup the/users folder, and all your data and prefs are okay"), and/trash? ("you can delete anything in there")
Sad thing is, if OS X were released for the x86 platform, half of the Linux users I know would switch the next day.
You are the Commander in Chief. You are ultimately responsible for all of the actions of every branch of government and military that you oversee.
You were wrong about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Your administration was wrong about believing in a tie between Al Queda and Saddam Hussein. Furthermore, ignoring national sovereignty solely to end dictatorships is plainly illegal under international law.
Why won't you admit that you were wrong?
Changing the subject to "expanding freedom" does not count as an answer. Changing the subject to "Saddam Hussein was an evil dictator" doesn't count either.
This is laughable. You think that's where the money would go... you don't think that just maybe, it would be spent on some other "opiate of the masses?"
I'm a realist - of course it wouldn't all go to science. Perhaps some of it might. I'm just pointing out how poorly religion has done with all of the money and power it has commanded over the centuries.
How about mother Theresa?
How about Ghandi? A person's goodness has nothing to do with what religion they follow. I guess all of the work she accomplished would have been nothing without her faith. After all, feeding the poor isn't good enough for God - you have to accept Jesus/Mohommad/Abraham too, right?
you couldn't be much more wrong about Europe and North and South America
This article has some more concrete evidence about this. There is no denying that religion has declined rapidly in the last century throughout Europe. Judging by the history of social evolution, from outlawing slavery to accepting homosexuality, we usually follow in Europe's footsteps.
And if you don't think America is an empire, you aren't paying attention. I love it when someone says, "America hasn't taken an inch of ground in 200 years!" Um, Guantanamo Bay? The Sinai? Military bases and installations around the world? New Mexico, Arizona, California and Texas? Puerto Rico? The Marshall Islands?
You're wrong. They don't even have to intersect.
No, they don't intersect, so you don't believe that they have to. Why must religion always be full of promise and nothing else? Where are the miracles? Where are the blind men who see, and where are the cripples who walk only because someone prayed for them?
It's not intended to replace science, or even supplement it.
Of course it's not intended to replace science. The writers of those ancient texts had no idea that science would exist. That's why religions only last so long. Sooner or later, the complete lack of insight into modern daily life is too obvious to deny. Unless you're still giving your heave offering and not working on the Sabbath.
No less self assured than any of the other fanatics you bash for "fervently" believing that they are right.
If you become paralyzed from the neck down, does the ambulance take you to a hospital or to your church? If your child has the flu, do you give them antibiotics or do you simply have your pastor pray? If your mother is going blind, do you take her to an optometrist or to an exorcist?
I am assured by results, not by false promises. If someone questions my faith in the scientific method, I don't have to leave the room to find concrete examples of why it works. I don't have to get into some overbearing conversation, explaining to them how "Science is real, but just not in this life. Science will help you, but you have to believe in it first. Science will provide all of these blessings for you, but you can only be sure until you're dead."
Given the choice, most people will give up God before they give up even the tiniest modern conveniences provided by science. Most people already have.
That does sum it up. The thing we have in common is that we both have no good reason to start where we did. I gave everything an equal chance, and you decided that the Bible was beyond common criticism.
There is no difference between you and a devout Muslim, Jew, Hindi, Sikh, or Branch Davidian. You all believe fervently that you are right, and everyone else is wrong. You all believed in something because it "spoke" to you, and you followed the directions after you told yourself they were true.
I was saved once. Twice, if you count when my uncle dragged me into church when I was twelve. You know what changed my mind? My father's girlfriend was a follower of a Hindi Guru from India. I told her that he was not holy, and that Jesus was her only way to enlightenment. My father, who is a devout Catholic, looked at me and said, "Dean, it sounds like you wouldn't have followed Jesus if you were alive when he was."
And he's right, I wouldn't. I realized Jesus is just like any other prophet. They're fake. They claim miracles; they claim to know the way. But when you see them, you see a man. He may be wise, he may be loving, but he is still just a man. I'm glad they give hope to some people, but I wish it didn't have to involve an organization of lies.
There has never been a single reliable account of a supernatural event, and there never will be. No person rose from the dead until medics started resuscitating flatliners. No blind man ever started to see until science provided the technology. No cripple ever started to walk until science developed intelligent robotic appendages. No disease was cured until science developed vaccine and antibiotics.
There is a miracle happening around the world, but it has nothing to do with God, or Jesus, or going to church on Sunday. It has to do with people working, using the principles of science - not the ramblings of ancient desert tribes. I'd sooner shake the hand of the man who gets out and does something to make the world better, than a man who sits around and prays for it to happen.
Imagine if all of those billions and billions of dollars that go to build five story churches, and pastor's mansions, and Catholic monuments, and Buddhist Temples, and Mosques, and cheesy Christ Books and Movies - imagine if all that money was instead given to scientists to find cures for cancer, alzheimers, and AIDs.
The world would be a better place without religion. It's unfortunate that some people can't accept the finite nature of their lives, and contribute to the good of humanity. I take comfort in the fact that every religion dies along with it's ruling empire. Soon Jesus and Elijah will conjure no more emotion than Zeus and Orpheus did after the fall of the Greeks. Europe is already lost, and North and South America won't be far behind.
The enemy of religion will always be science, because science provides reality where religion fails every time.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, you don't know anything about computers? Try our Ignorant Housewife edition. See, it's for stupid people - like you.
You mean OS X?
Slashdotters said something was going to die, and it actually did...
I think I'm selling my iBook.
My emachines is like a tiny God, Chuck. I've got FreeBSD running this thing, with windows on the other partition ready for WoW at 1280x800 with an overclocked Radeon 9600 card, running at 4 times the speed of a TiBook with a 9700 card in it. And I actually have shader effects, so it doesn't look like 1996 up in this bitch. I've got tabs too, Chuck, for free.
I'm going to Europe again this summer with the money I saved. How cool is that Genie effect now?
This is the reason I am upset with the direction of the US. In nearly any other developed country, science versus religion isn't even an argument anymore. It makes me ill when people talk about "playing God." Please, wake me when He shows up. For now, the only person who has done anything revolutionary (beyond personal support) for the crippled are scientists, doctors, and other people who work instead of pray.
Thank you very much.
It's got something to do with the way I use computers, I guess. I'm a little bit ADD and switching between windows, scrolling (*especially* with a mouse wheel), opening new windows, and typing in general just seem more responsive on my x86 box, in XP and in Fedora (and FreeBSD). And no, I'm not one of the gentoo zealots bent on getting 1% performance boosts for three hours worth of work. I can live with a few trade-offs for convenience.
It might break down to just learning key combinations. I've turned on the "full keyboard access" since I wasn't raised on a mouse and a button, but I can't alt-tab between windows in the same program. A lot of the web buttons won't fire off when I hit enter, even though I'm using firefox on both OSs. I have no delete key. In half of the programs, trying to highlights lines of work with Shift+Command+Left/Right doesn't happen. It's the little things like having a scroll section on my trackpad that I miss.
I'm just really disappointed, I think, that the hardware feels so right, but the OS is the part that's too cushy. It holds my hand when I don't want it to.
My siblings are correct - I've got 512MB main memory, and 128M of video memory.
I have an emachines laptop that includes an Athlon64, 512MB RAM and an ATI 9600 Mobile. I bought a 15" AlBook with an ATI 9700/128MB RAM.
Yet, WoW runs faster on my emachines laptop, without a doubt. And on the forums I've heard that people are getting less framerates than my x86 laptop while running Dual 2.5 G5s with 6800 Ultra cards.
My question is, where's the bottleneck? Is it poor optimization for PPC? Or driver design? Or simply RISC vs CISC?
I was going to throw YellowDog on the AlBook because I love the hardware, but YD4 still doesn't have a sleep function, which is the same problem I have on the emachines. I've since gone back to fedora on the x86 and the difference in opening programs, scrolling, etc, is huge. Anyone out there with anecdotes on YellowDog vs OS X?
Replacing an x86 motherboard: $70
Replacing an x86 processor: $100-200
Competition in the x86 component market: priceless
Replacing a logic board: $200-500
Replacing a slow as shit G4 processor: $200-500
Having shiny buttons: goddamn expensive
Linux is where the two shall meet. Open platform hardware running open source software. In a few years, for FREE, I'm sure at least one distro will have it down. Fedore is damn close already. And at the price of a CD-R or DVD-R, I'm sure there will be a lot of takers.
And look out for Apple to start kludging up their OS again once some people with bad ideas get stuck in their hierarchy. Pretty soon it will be obvious that no large business can compete with the meritocratic programming method.
Let's just hope Apple and Microsoft get themselves a DRM system. Their market share will drop by 30% within two years if people have to actually pay for their products.
I can't prove or disprove anything as far as the existence of God. It's very hard to prove that something doesn't exist.
I can say without hesitation that there have been no reliably recorded miracles, ever. So, if you think that they do exist, I'm going to say that you're wrong, or derisively, that you're kidding yourself.
I can also say with a great amount of certainty that you do not follow whatever religion you claim for yourself, nor have you read the entire text, but that's entirely typical of a religious person. Your reasoning is not based on fact, but emotional attachment or feeling. You don't feel the need to become completely familiar with the things you claim to believe, because you believe.
If all sins are the same, and you ignore any law of God for the sake of compatibility with your modern lifestyle, how can you pretend that you are a true believer? Either every word is true, or the whole thing is a suggestion like everything else. Trust me, I wish I could get everyone to fully read the Old and New Testament as well as the Qu'ran without someone biased for that religion "guiding" them through it, but the reality is that very few people have even read a tenth of any of them.
It's not comforting to see nothing beyond my natural life. It's not comforting to think that people are suffering with no chance of redemption, and that people who are truly evil will never be punished. On the other hand, it would be foolish to pretend things were different to make myself feel better.
Thus the difference between "justified" hate and ignorant hate. If you simply hate something you don't understand, you're ignorant. If you hate something you don't understand and you have some ancient text as your supposed basis for it, you're holy.
I don't care what race or sexual orientation you are - if you believe that the millions of tragedies that happen every day in this world are somehow guided by a supernatural being or force, you're absolutely kidding yourself.
Muslims are killing Hindus, Christians are killing Muslims, Jews are killing Muslims, Muslims are killing Jews, and no miracle has happened in favor or against anyone.
If God acts at all, it must be through people. So why waste time and resources doing anything but God's will? Is it God's will for me to get a new laptop? Is it God's will for some asshole on television to get another Bentley? Is it God's will for you to talk about how important it is to help the poor on Sunday, and do nothing every day? Is it God's will for us to kill 12,000 innocent Muslims in Iraq? Is it God's will for Muslims and Jews in Palestine to kill each other?
Religion is complete in it's comfort and completely untrue, because it allows you to believe you're right when you are wrong.
Homophobia is pro religion because there's no other way to justify ignorant hatred of something one doesn't understand.
Regardless of that, have you ever thought about why you find it wrong when someone, who has nothing to do with your life, does something to themselves or with someone else who wants the same thing? Taking someone else's life, property, or assaulting them sexually or physically are all wrong because a party is involved against their will. That's what all law is based on.
I picked homophobia because it's one of the easier arguments to make religion look silly.
Why are you against homosexuality?
"Because it's wrong!"
Why is it wrong?
"Because it's not natural!"
In what way is it not natural? It's been part of human history since there has been a history. There've been gay animals, including dolphins. Possibly all bonobo apes are bisexual.
"But God said so!"
Naturalism is a crap argument anyhow, since animals are capable of atrocities close to those committed by humans. There is no reason to believe any religious text, except for self-interest, fear, or both. (Apologies to Mr. Bonaparte.)
Yes, "real" religion where people continue to do the same things they'd do without God. Here in the states, "living in sin" only includes homosexuality, while in reality it should include alcoholism, addiction, lust, covetous behavior, and not giving your heave offering. Once again, a culture has adapted certain rules from a religion in order to justify their actions. The Jews extracted ideas from Zoroastrianism. The Romans codified and extracted ideas from Christianity. The only culture that follows the full word of their religious text is
"Let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God's work must truly be our own." -JFK, 1961
That was forty three years ago. I'm always astonished that people refuse to realize that supernatural events have never, and will never exist. No one can present to me one miracle documented by modern technology and not hearsay.
Once you find your spiritual pockets empty, think about how many resources arrive at the dead-end of church building while the true salvation of food, medicine, and science wither throughout the third world.
Hey there, kid. I've got something for you.
You know how life kinda sucks? And it's hard and stuff? Well, there's this guy, named Jesus, or Mohammad, or Abraham or something, and all you have to do to receive his love is to give me 10% of everything you make. He'll make your life worth living. And he'll even bless you with economic prosperity. I promise. And after you die, he'll let you live forever!
Trust me. I'm holy! Unless you're 6,000 years old, you can't question my motives!
I was trying to explain what sovereignty was, and why it was important. Stalin did worse. Magnitudes worse crimes were committed during the Hutu-Tutsi genocidal wars. We didn't really send any of our boys over there then, did we?
Calling me ignorant and insane doesn't mean you have a point. You can't use the violation of UN rules as a basis to violate more because you think it's okay in that situation. The UN was doing it's job. If Bush had left well enough alone, and completely secured Afghanistan using less than half of what's in the Iraq now, Osama bin Laden would be dead, and we'd still be spreading freedom. We would be received as liberators, and we would have nothing but support around the world.
But Bush's plan failed, and failed miserably. So we're going to fire him.
Sovereignty is something that we're supposed to hold dear. Why? For example, if capital punishment were banned in China, and we still practiced it here, they couldn't invade our country legally under the guise if liberating us. It keeps smaller countries (Poland) safe from larger countries (Germany or Russia).
Iraq's people had the responsibility to free themselves. We only get involved when it suits us militarily or for resources. If we really cared about saving lives, Africa would be a more effective continent to start on.
Jon totally destroyed Clinton a show a few months ago when he was doing his little "kiss on the lips" interview with Dan Rather. I'm paraphrasing, but...
(From the clip)Clinton: "If there hadn't been someone like Star hanging around, I would've admitted my mistake, told the American people, and said, 'Here's what happened.'"
Stewart: "I'll say this: Clinton's integrity is at it's highest with the situation is at it's most hypothetical."
Fact is, Bush and his administration are lying. Fact is, Stewart is pissed because Clinton was called out for a blowjob, and Bush doesn't get called out for the wrongful deaths of 13,000 Iraqi civilians, thousand of Afghan civilians, and just over a thousand of our men and women in uniform, and God knows how many who will come back without limbs.
What good is revenging 3,000 civilian lives when the response causes the deaths of five times that many? When will we realize that our lives are no more precious that those of people in other countries?
Being courageous has nothing to do with calling death "collateral damage." You would all feel differently if it were your wife and child under the rubble.
I'd have to say this pales in comparison to the actions of companies like Wal-mart, who knowingly lower the standard of living for millions of people here in America and abroad. All for the same motivation: more money.
Their actions might be technically legal, but they're more ethically wrong than some guy who writes software to spam.
Yeah. I sell Macs. Yet, my $1350 laptop can crunch more audio plugins (pure CPU) than a desktop dual 2.0 ghz G5.
That being said, I'm getting my girlfriend a PowerBook. Why? Because she surfs the web, does some e-mail, adores photography, and wants a laptop that will last. My eMachines is starting to crack around the hinge, even though it's only 7 or 8 months old. I use my laptop every day for hours on end, and so do my colleagues, but they've had their 17" Powerbooks for two years, and nothing - nothing - is falling apart on them.
For me, I have to have Linux for sanity, and Windows for work. But if you're a "casual" computer user, Macs will work. No problems, no viruses, no bugs, no esoteric error messages or random crashing. They turn on and compute.
That's why I like selling them - the customers don't call until two years later when they want another one.
If a guy can't get something to work the first time on his home machine, what are the chances he's going to deploy it to his 10 or 20 boxes at work?
Small business is where the fight is. Enterprise can see past the relatively small issues with useability.
I still don't get why Linux development leaders aren't understanding why Windows is so popular, regardless of appplication prevalence. Linux is still asking questions that aren't dumb, but still frighten anyone who isn't very familiar with computers. Modeline and resolution? Swap space? What are ext2, ext3, and reiser!? Does my keyboard have 104 keys or 105?
/system ("don't touch anything in the system folder!") /users/joecubicle ("Just backup the /users folder, and all your data and prefs are okay"), and /trash? ("you can delete anything in there")
You have to give big, shiny, easy options because computing shouldn't require that kind of knowledge when people are trying to look at websites and use their e-mail. You've got to sell them the OS first, and then allow them to customize to their heart's content after they can see the utility in what you're offering.
Comparatively I'm dumb to a lot of the slashdot crowd, but I imagine there must be some way to provide full binaries that are LIBRARY INDEPENDENT. Bandwidth is cheap. Hard drive space is cheap. Trying to train everyone how to use symlinks and sort through thousands of libraries using arbitrary command line options is stupid at best. But the first time someone says, "I want to do X and Y is broken!" You can tell them how to do both, and explain to them how Open Source makes it possible.
And I know POSIX compliance is important to everyone, but the directory scheme will have to go someday. What is wrong with
Sad thing is, if OS X were released for the x86 platform, half of the Linux users I know would switch the next day.
Mr Bush,
You are the Commander in Chief. You are ultimately responsible for all of the actions of every branch of government and military that you oversee.
You were wrong about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Your administration was wrong about believing in a tie between Al Queda and Saddam Hussein. Furthermore, ignoring national sovereignty solely to end dictatorships is plainly illegal under international law.
Why won't you admit that you were wrong?
Changing the subject to "expanding freedom" does not count as an answer. Changing the subject to "Saddam Hussein was an evil dictator" doesn't count either.
This is laughable. You think that's where the money would go... you don't think that just maybe, it would be spent on some other "opiate of the masses?"
I'm a realist - of course it wouldn't all go to science. Perhaps some of it might. I'm just pointing out how poorly religion has done with all of the money and power it has commanded over the centuries.
How about mother Theresa?
How about Ghandi? A person's goodness has nothing to do with what religion they follow. I guess all of the work she accomplished would have been nothing without her faith. After all, feeding the poor isn't good enough for God - you have to accept Jesus/Mohommad/Abraham too, right?
you couldn't be much more wrong about Europe and North and South America
This article has some more concrete evidence about this. There is no denying that religion has declined rapidly in the last century throughout Europe. Judging by the history of social evolution, from outlawing slavery to accepting homosexuality, we usually follow in Europe's footsteps.
And if you don't think America is an empire, you aren't paying attention. I love it when someone says, "America hasn't taken an inch of ground in 200 years!" Um, Guantanamo Bay? The Sinai? Military bases and installations around the world? New Mexico, Arizona, California and Texas? Puerto Rico? The Marshall Islands?
You're wrong. They don't even have to intersect.
No, they don't intersect, so you don't believe that they have to. Why must religion always be full of promise and nothing else? Where are the miracles? Where are the blind men who see, and where are the cripples who walk only because someone prayed for them?
It's not intended to replace science, or even supplement it.
Of course it's not intended to replace science. The writers of those ancient texts had no idea that science would exist. That's why religions only last so long. Sooner or later, the complete lack of insight into modern daily life is too obvious to deny. Unless you're still giving your heave offering and not working on the Sabbath.
No less self assured than any of the other fanatics you bash for "fervently" believing that they are right.
If you become paralyzed from the neck down, does the ambulance take you to a hospital or to your church? If your child has the flu, do you give them antibiotics or do you simply have your pastor pray? If your mother is going blind, do you take her to an optometrist or to an exorcist?
I am assured by results, not by false promises. If someone questions my faith in the scientific method, I don't have to leave the room to find concrete examples of why it works. I don't have to get into some overbearing conversation, explaining to them how "Science is real, but just not in this life. Science will help you, but you have to believe in it first. Science will provide all of these blessings for you, but you can only be sure until you're dead."
Given the choice, most people will give up God before they give up even the tiniest modern conveniences provided by science. Most people already have.
I start with God, you start elsewhere.
That does sum it up. The thing we have in common is that we both have no good reason to start where we did. I gave everything an equal chance, and you decided that the Bible was beyond common criticism.
There is no difference between you and a devout Muslim, Jew, Hindi, Sikh, or Branch Davidian. You all believe fervently that you are right, and everyone else is wrong. You all believed in something because it "spoke" to you, and you followed the directions after you told yourself they were true.
I was saved once. Twice, if you count when my uncle dragged me into church when I was twelve. You know what changed my mind? My father's girlfriend was a follower of a Hindi Guru from India. I told her that he was not holy, and that Jesus was her only way to enlightenment. My father, who is a devout Catholic, looked at me and said, "Dean, it sounds like you wouldn't have followed Jesus if you were alive when he was."
And he's right, I wouldn't. I realized Jesus is just like any other prophet. They're fake. They claim miracles; they claim to know the way. But when you see them, you see a man. He may be wise, he may be loving, but he is still just a man. I'm glad they give hope to some people, but I wish it didn't have to involve an organization of lies.
There has never been a single reliable account of a supernatural event, and there never will be. No person rose from the dead until medics started resuscitating flatliners. No blind man ever started to see until science provided the technology. No cripple ever started to walk until science developed intelligent robotic appendages. No disease was cured until science developed vaccine and antibiotics.
There is a miracle happening around the world, but it has nothing to do with God, or Jesus, or going to church on Sunday. It has to do with people working, using the principles of science - not the ramblings of ancient desert tribes. I'd sooner shake the hand of the man who gets out and does something to make the world better, than a man who sits around and prays for it to happen.
Imagine if all of those billions and billions of dollars that go to build five story churches, and pastor's mansions, and Catholic monuments, and Buddhist Temples, and Mosques, and cheesy Christ Books and Movies - imagine if all that money was instead given to scientists to find cures for cancer, alzheimers, and AIDs.
The world would be a better place without religion. It's unfortunate that some people can't accept the finite nature of their lives, and contribute to the good of humanity. I take comfort in the fact that every religion dies along with it's ruling empire. Soon Jesus and Elijah will conjure no more emotion than Zeus and Orpheus did after the fall of the Greeks. Europe is already lost, and North and South America won't be far behind.
The enemy of religion will always be science, because science provides reality where religion fails every time.