I said in one of my posts last night that I feel that it's an indictment of the Christian community that needs go unmet.
The instruction "give all your money to the poor," if I recall correctly was the solution given to the rich youg ruler. In terms of biblical interpretation I would suggest to you that was a specific command given to a particular person to solve his specific spiritual need - having made money his idol. If you look at his list of qualifications that he gives to Christ - he claims to have kept every other point og the law except having worshiped only the Lord.
Jesus also said "the poor will lways be with you."
We should help people, and it is sad that hungry people have trouble eating, that truly ill people who desire help don't get help. WRT the Christian organizations not helping those in need, I have seen many people abuse the offers of help. These organizations have very limited money to dispense compared to the needs so they put checks in place to make it harder to be abused.
Ultimately the resource problem in this area is the fault of individual Christians who are unwilling to trust God enough to give generously. As a rule, we believe in God, but trust our bank accounts. That is a tragedy.
I could easily say that your experience does not make for a trend, either.
I agree that an unwillingness to help others is a sign of an unhealthy society. I think that many of the well-intentioned people who build social programs fail to grasp the fact that one simply cannot legislate morality.
When the checks and balances are put in place that will provide accountability of the programs and of the participants it is merely human nature that some number of them will find a loophole thereby to game the system.
It's unfortunately not a simple solution. How do you provide services to people who need help and at the same time make people personally responsible for their choices?
My father in law is a smart cookie, and I'm sure he could find a way to take the "easy" path - regardless of the amount of work it took to avoid work.
The man I knew when I was in college - who worked as a waiter so that he could have some means of support other than the income he derived from dealing crack was another example of our social services gone awry. I don't recall the exact number, but he had something like seven kids - all from the same mother. They would not get married because she would lose her WIC benefits.
Something is wrong with our "safety net" when it bears the weight of people who refuse to play by the rules.
Sure there are sick people - who need meds to alter their brain chemistry - who need a shoulder to cry on - who need a helping hand of food or cash to make it through a dark period. We have an obligation as members of a civil society to reach out and help others.
Finally - I believe that some of the social services issues in the US are an indictment against the Christian community - Christians should take the lead in providing for the downtrodden in society. The fact that the government has so many takers for social programs shows that needs are going unmet.
I don't believe that Christians should carry the weight of those who will not provide for themselves. The Bible says "if a man will not work, he should not eat." If you are capable but are lazily taking advantage of the social system, shame on you, and shame on us for not figuring out how to keep from giving you a handout.
I just said that some folks like to scam the system.
I have no problem with provision of treatment for people who want help, but I really believe that many folks take advantage of the system due to low accountability and the fallacy that substance abuse is entirely a medical problem.
e.g. It's not my fault.....I'm genetically predisposed to [alcoholism,cocaine,crack,other chemical] -
puhleeze - I have the apparent genetic tendency for alcoholism in my family. This is not an issue for me. I simply don't drink. Problem avoided.
Thankfully my lovely wife has had the courage to address the issues in question.
With the help of Christ and wise counselors she has overcome them. There are lifetime effects, of course, but she's quite healthy and a wonderful mate to me.
Certainly there is an aspect of cehmical dependence, but I drink Mt. Dew because I like the effect that it has on me. It provides a chemical stimulant that gives me some positive results, and some negative results.
When I have quit caffiene, I have headaches and lethargy - once my body adjusts, those things go away. When I have started to use caffiene again, it was by my free will.
Some people are quite happy to live in a state of chemical dependence - no matter what programs you make available to them at the taxpayer's expense.
My father in law is homeless and it is his choice. He has family that would take him in, but he is unwilling to: a) get a job b) pay taxes c) stop smoking pot d) stay sober
Programs are not a solution for someone who does not want to be helped. He can't wait until he can start collecting SS checks that can help him sustain his "lifestyle." According to the SSA, he's scheduled to collect more benefits during the first year of eligibility than he has paid in taxes during his entire lifetime!
Free medical and mental help won't help someone who doesn't want to change.
Because when they get a $30K charge, they "approve" only a small portion of that amount - 50% or so and the hospital writes off the rest.
It's a way around cost controls - the providers know that insurance will only pay a portion of the costs so they jack up the fees.
The down side is if you don't have insurance and you get billed the "insurance" price. My aunt recently needed treatments that were not covered by her insurance company and was able to negotiate the discounted prices from the providers ahead of time. If she had not asked, she would have been paying much more than the fair market value for the rendered services.
There's nothing stopping you from exploiting the weaknesses of this system.
For example, you could leave your cell phone plugged in and turned on in an appropriate place and have your calls forwarded to another number.
For the truly paranoid, implement a VoIP solution and have the audio traffic bounced off an anonymizer service so that people can't tell where you really are.
Don't forget that there's a large group of people out there who have no interest in cell phones and therefore they won't be trackable. If we become like them, we won't need to worry about being tracked. This is definitely not Orwellian because we CHOOSE to use the tech that can track us. We choose to use credit cards, ATM cards, wireless data networks, PCs, and cell phones. You have the power to stop this. Stop using the things that can track you.
Have a mandated cell phone for work? Need to be on call? You could choose to go to the office and wait by the landline. Don't like that? Too bad. Nothing's free, and the markets expand to take advantage of the nooks and crannies that technology provides.
This commonly available resource has some additional potential for use to make money. People will do just that. That's just the way it is.
I have a friend who is an attorney for the DOJ. He's VERY smart, and could make 10X as much money in the private sector as he does working for the government. He has the highest integrity of anyone I know, and I cannot imagine that he would do anything that would compromise the rights of American citizens. In fact, if he was aware of abuses, I'm sure that he would do all that he could to make it public and fix the problem with a rogue DOJ lawyer intent on compromising civil rights.
It's easy and tempting to attack the vague "government workers" as being evil and incompetent, but it's not rational. Not everyone who works for the government is corrupt and sqaunders resources. Some do, and I'm sure that there are rogues within the government but they are the exception rather than the norm.
"possible execution" or "possible life imprisonment" are valid punishments for guilty people, and it makese sense to threaten that in the process of prosecuting the accused.
You might consider prototyping the solution that you have in mind.
For example, if you had in mind to use a mailing list to solve a comms problem within your company (or provide a comms channel to your customers) you could build one as a prototype from freely available tools and make that a first step toward a real solution. If the prototype bombs because people don't want to be bothered to use it or because it doesn't work well, then perhaps your organization (or the tool you are using) is not ready for prime time.
Once you have a working prototype you'll need to determine whether the as-built solution would scale to work for the whole company.
I work for a fairly large company. When we started talking about linux deployment the operations folks asked some good questions - What problem is it solving for our company? - Can we solve that problem with a platform we already own? Is it necessary to add yet another platform to the environment? (more to support means more costs.) - Can we monitor these servers with the tools we already own? - Can we back it up with the tools we already have? - What part of the IT org will own and support it?
Sometimes what seems to make sense at your house, or what might make sense to a department just won't cut it for "prime-time."
On the other hand, Netware made its fortunes on departmental rollouts because the business problems that it solved were so compelling that it was worth the money that was paid for the equipment and licenses.....
With all due respect, the question of origins is a philosophical one rather than a scientific one. It is not possible to use the scientific method to determine origins.
The creationist and the evolutionist are in the same boat. Neither can observe, record, repeat the process.
Both are constrained to collect extant data and propose theories about what caused the universe. In that respect, they are limited to speculation.
Speculation is unlikely to provide an answer. On this idea, CS Lewis said: "It's like expecting that the accidental shape taken by a splash when you upset a milk jug should give you a correct account of how the jug was made and why it was upset."
Studying the shape of the splash is science, and that I do not oppose. Having scientists comment of meaning (the why question) as a result of their "splash" studies is laughable.
For that matter, it is not possible for scientists to say with certainty how the universe was prior to its existence. This is not science, but speculation and should be named as such.
I've been running both with a Belkin OmniCube 4. I have seen that problem in the past, but I've had it working fine for so long that I don't recall what I did to fix it.
If you're interested in seeing my configs, send me an email. tom_cooper@bigfoot.com.
I still have a problem with my ThinkPad 390X where it won't recognize the wheel on my mouse (because the BIOS sees the trackpoint that handler doesn't support a wheel.) If anyone has a fix for that, please let me know!
We've recently consolidated operational components from different parts of our business. This meant relocation of facilities and staff to the HQ area (about 800 miles away.)
The staff in the area to be relocated decided that the parent company couldn't live without their services during the transition and played the following game: 1. We'll move. 2. We won't move, but we will provide excellent documenation and help transition to the folks at HQ. 3. We won't provide any docs. 4. We're quitting now before the transition, but our services are available on a per-hour basis at a rate of 5x our current salaries.
Management felt that they had been deceived and that the team was jerking them around. As a result management decided to tell the team to take a long walk off a short pier.
The HQ team has had to scramble to try to understand the infrastructure and architecture at the remote location, but all in all the transition has gone fairly well.
It surely could have gone more smoothly with the assistance of the remote team, but they made their bed.
I believe it was DeGalle who said something to the effect of "The graveyards are full of indespensible men."
Food for thought. Don't let them exploit you, don't exploit them. Look for a positive resolution to the problems.
You might get screwed, but at least it won't hurt when you look in the mirror while shaving. You've got to live with the choices that you make.
With respect to large numbers of people not being able to receive the content, the issue is personal economics rather than infrastructure. There are multiple suppliers for satellite-fed television channels that allow all of North America to receive major media content.
Now there is competition in the area of satellite-based radio content - again meaning that the folks without local stations can receive information from "Major" media outlets.
At any rate, even if it is 40M people, that's just 13% of the estimated 291M people in the states today. 13% is not that many people, although apparently just 50M votes is enough to contend for the presidency.:)
(The fact that only 100M votes are cast in this country is another indication of problems we face. We're too entertained and unplugged to be motivated to express our opintions. - except on Slashdot.)
Those people without cable, satellite TV or radio can go to the public library to get government-funded access to alternative sources of media.
People have choices. Hopefully the dearth of difference between the major content producers will spark others to create.
If not, perhaps bland programming will get people in our country to break the addiction we have to entertainment and start to engage in real relationships again. Or maybe I'm just hopelessly optimistic.
Is that this is a good thing for content producers. Think of it this way: When consumers major media outlets completely cease to produce anything other than plain gelatin in terms of content, who will fill the void? More and more media choices are available every day. Even through the mainstream channel of cable and satellite options, there are more choices and more content produced.
When people find something creative and appealing, it will give a leg up on the regurgitated reality fare offered by the major players.
Anyone who thinks that they get the straight scoop from any major outlets - NY Times, Washington Post, CNN, Fox News, slashdot.... - needs to have their preconceptions evaluated.
The future of broadcasting is not to be found in the major media outlets. They will be left behind by the next generation of media. It's coming, and making programming more mindless will only hasten the death of TV as we know it.
The Bible says that we were created for the purpose of worship.
It's not just Sunday morning for a couple of hours. Recognizing that God is God and I was made for the purpose of bringing Him glory means that "whether you eat or drink or whatever you do - do it for the glory of God."
I don't worship only on Sunday. I worship God as I live my life to please Him - optimally it's 168 hours per week.
Sadly the vast majority of so-called Christians merely attend church. They are missing the point.
I've been poking at this to do something similar for my company, and I have to say that PXES offers much more flexibility than a locally installed OS on the HDD.
If the box doesn't support PXE, you can probably create an etherboot floppy that will work similar to PXES and get you up and running even with low hardware - processor and RAM.....
Slashdot Mirror
I said in one of my posts last night that I feel that it's an indictment of the Christian community that needs go unmet.
The instruction "give all your money to the poor," if I recall correctly was the solution given to the rich youg ruler. In terms of biblical interpretation I would suggest to you that was a specific command given to a particular person to solve his specific spiritual need - having made money his idol. If you look at his list of qualifications that he gives to Christ - he claims to have kept every other point og the law except having worshiped only the Lord.
Jesus also said "the poor will lways be with you."
We should help people, and it is sad that hungry people have trouble eating, that truly ill people who desire help don't get help. WRT the Christian organizations not helping those in need, I have seen many people abuse the offers of help. These organizations have very limited money to dispense compared to the needs so they put checks in place to make it harder to be abused.
Ultimately the resource problem in this area is the fault of individual Christians who are unwilling to trust God enough to give generously. As a rule, we believe in God, but trust our bank accounts. That is a tragedy.
I could easily say that your experience does not make for a trend, either.
I agree that an unwillingness to help others is a sign of an unhealthy society. I think that many of the well-intentioned people who build social programs fail to grasp the fact that one simply cannot legislate morality.
When the checks and balances are put in place that will provide accountability of the programs and of the participants it is merely human nature that some number of them will find a loophole thereby to game the system.
It's unfortunately not a simple solution. How do you provide services to people who need help and at the same time make people personally responsible for their choices?
My father in law is a smart cookie, and I'm sure he could find a way to take the "easy" path - regardless of the amount of work it took to avoid work.
The man I knew when I was in college - who worked as a waiter so that he could have some means of support other than the income he derived from dealing crack was another example of our social services gone awry. I don't recall the exact number, but he had something like seven kids - all from the same mother. They would not get married because she would lose her WIC benefits.
Something is wrong with our "safety net" when it bears the weight of people who refuse to play by the rules.
Sure there are sick people - who need meds to alter their brain chemistry - who need a shoulder to cry on - who need a helping hand of food or cash to make it through a dark period. We have an obligation as members of a civil society to reach out and help others.
Finally - I believe that some of the social services issues in the US are an indictment against the Christian community - Christians should take the lead in providing for the downtrodden in society. The fact that the government has so many takers for social programs shows that needs are going unmet.
I don't believe that Christians should carry the weight of those who will not provide for themselves. The Bible says "if a man will not work, he should not eat." If you are capable but are lazily taking advantage of the social system, shame on you, and shame on us for not figuring out how to keep from giving you a handout.
Respectfully,
Anomaly
I just said that some folks like to scam the system.
I have no problem with provision of treatment for people who want help, but I really believe that many folks take advantage of the system due to low accountability and the fallacy that substance abuse is entirely a medical problem.
e.g. It's not my fault.....I'm genetically predisposed to [alcoholism,cocaine,crack,other chemical] -
puhleeze - I have the apparent genetic tendency for alcoholism in my family. This is not an issue for me. I simply don't drink. Problem avoided.
Thankfully my lovely wife has had the courage to address the issues in question.
With the help of Christ and wise counselors she has overcome them. There are lifetime effects, of course, but she's quite healthy and a wonderful mate to me.
Substance abuse has a component of volition.
Certainly there is an aspect of cehmical dependence, but I drink Mt. Dew because I like the effect that it has on me. It provides a chemical stimulant that gives me some positive results, and some negative results.
When I have quit caffiene, I have headaches and lethargy - once my body adjusts, those things go away. When I have started to use caffiene again, it was by my free will.
Some people are quite happy to live in a state of chemical dependence - no matter what programs you make available to them at the taxpayer's expense.
Respectfully,
Anomaly
My father in law is homeless and it is his choice. He has family that would take him in, but he is unwilling to:
a) get a job
b) pay taxes
c) stop smoking pot
d) stay sober
Programs are not a solution for someone who does not want to be helped. He can't wait until he can start collecting SS checks that can help him sustain his "lifestyle." According to the SSA, he's scheduled to collect more benefits during the first year of eligibility than he has paid in taxes during his entire lifetime!
Free medical and mental help won't help someone who doesn't want to change.
Respectfully,
Anomaly
Because when they get a $30K charge, they "approve" only a small portion of that amount - 50% or so and the hospital writes off the rest.
It's a way around cost controls - the providers know that insurance will only pay a portion of the costs so they jack up the fees.
The down side is if you don't have insurance and you get billed the "insurance" price. My aunt recently needed treatments that were not covered by her insurance company and was able to negotiate the discounted prices from the providers ahead of time. If she had not asked, she would have been paying much more than the fair market value for the rendered services.
There's nothing stopping you from exploiting the weaknesses of this system.
For example, you could leave your cell phone plugged in and turned on in an appropriate place and have your calls forwarded to another number.
For the truly paranoid, implement a VoIP solution and have the audio traffic bounced off an anonymizer service so that people can't tell where you really are.
Sheesh!
Don't forget that there's a large group of people out there who have no interest in cell phones and therefore they won't be trackable. If we become like them, we won't need to worry about being tracked. This is definitely not Orwellian because we CHOOSE to use the tech that can track us. We choose to use credit cards, ATM cards, wireless data networks, PCs, and cell phones. You have the power to stop this. Stop using the things that can track you.
Have a mandated cell phone for work? Need to be on call? You could choose to go to the office and wait by the landline. Don't like that? Too bad. Nothing's free, and the markets expand to take advantage of the nooks and crannies that technology provides.
This commonly available resource has some additional potential for use to make money. People will do just that. That's just the way it is.
Respectfully,
Anomaly
I have a friend who is an attorney for the DOJ. He's VERY smart, and could make 10X as much money in the private sector as he does working for the government. He has the highest integrity of anyone I know, and I cannot imagine that he would do anything that would compromise the rights of American citizens. In fact, if he was aware of abuses, I'm sure that he would do all that he could to make it public and fix the problem with a rogue DOJ lawyer intent on compromising civil rights.
It's easy and tempting to attack the vague "government workers" as being evil and incompetent, but it's not rational. Not everyone who works for the government is corrupt and sqaunders resources. Some do, and I'm sure that there are rogues within the government but they are the exception rather than the norm.
"possible execution" or "possible life imprisonment" are valid punishments for guilty people, and it makese sense to threaten that in the process of prosecuting the accused.
Respectfully,
Anomaly
just the bunny
You might consider prototyping the solution that you have in mind.
For example, if you had in mind to use a mailing list to solve a comms problem within your company (or provide a comms channel to your customers) you could build one as a prototype from freely available tools and make that a first step toward a real solution. If the prototype bombs because people don't want to be bothered to use it or because it doesn't work well, then perhaps your organization (or the tool you are using) is not ready for prime time.
Once you have a working prototype you'll need to determine whether the as-built solution would scale to work for the whole company.
I work for a fairly large company. When we started talking about linux deployment the operations folks asked some good questions
- What problem is it solving for our company?
- Can we solve that problem with a platform we already own? Is it necessary to add yet another platform to the environment? (more to support means more costs.)
- Can we monitor these servers with the tools we already own?
- Can we back it up with the tools we already have?
- What part of the IT org will own and support it?
Sometimes what seems to make sense at your house, or what might make sense to a department just won't cut it for "prime-time."
On the other hand, Netware made its fortunes on departmental rollouts because the business problems that it solved were so compelling that it was worth the money that was paid for the equipment and licenses.....
With all due respect, the question of origins is a philosophical one rather than a scientific one. It is not possible to use the scientific method to determine origins.
The creationist and the evolutionist are in the same boat. Neither can observe, record, repeat the process.
Both are constrained to collect extant data and propose theories about what caused the universe. In that respect, they are limited to speculation.
Speculation is unlikely to provide an answer. On this idea, CS Lewis said: "It's like expecting that the accidental shape taken by a splash when you upset a milk jug should give you a correct account of how the jug was made and why it was upset."
Studying the shape of the splash is science, and that I do not oppose. Having scientists comment of meaning (the why question) as a result of their "splash" studies is laughable.
For that matter, it is not possible for scientists to say with certainty how the universe was prior to its existence. This is not science, but speculation and should be named as such.
Respectfully,
Anomaly
I've got the same unit in a closet in my "office."
The house has AC, but the "office" has at least 4 computers running full time in there, so it stays several degees warmer than the rest of the hosue.
The closet where the AP lives has the doors closed all of the time, and there's a notebook running in the closet, too. (My webserver.)
I had some range issues with it until I added the directional antenna. Now I get strong signal everywhere in the house.
Hmmm. now that I think about it, I wonder what kind of signal I'd get if I looked at the operating temp of the unit.....
I've been running both with a Belkin OmniCube 4. I have seen that problem in the past, but I've had it working fine for so long that I don't recall what I did to fix it.
If you're interested in seeing my configs, send me an email. tom_cooper@bigfoot.com.
I still have a problem with my ThinkPad 390X where it won't recognize the wheel on my mouse (because the BIOS sees the trackpoint that handler doesn't support a wheel.) If anyone has a fix for that, please let me know!
Regards,
Anomaly
This message was posted over my RCN cable modem connection. I use them for local phone service, too, and have been very satisfied with their service.
I'm thrilled that none of my money goes to verizon.....
We've recently consolidated operational components from different parts of our business. This meant relocation of facilities and staff to the HQ area (about 800 miles away.)
The staff in the area to be relocated decided that the parent company couldn't live without their services during the transition and played the following game:
1. We'll move.
2. We won't move, but we will provide excellent documenation and help transition to the folks at HQ.
3. We won't provide any docs.
4. We're quitting now before the transition, but our services are available on a per-hour basis at a rate of 5x our current salaries.
Management felt that they had been deceived and that the team was jerking them around. As a result management decided to tell the team to take a long walk off a short pier.
The HQ team has had to scramble to try to understand the infrastructure and architecture at the remote location, but all in all the transition has gone fairly well.
It surely could have gone more smoothly with the assistance of the remote team, but they made their bed.
I believe it was DeGalle who said something to the effect of "The graveyards are full of indespensible men."
Food for thought. Don't let them exploit you, don't exploit them. Look for a positive resolution to the problems.
You might get screwed, but at least it won't hurt when you look in the mirror while shaving. You've got to live with the choices that you make.
Respectfully,
Anomaly
I'm running 2 deskstars at home - both 45GB models, both in Linux systems.
They are working perfectly for me.
With respect to large numbers of people not being able to receive the content, the issue is personal economics rather than infrastructure. There are multiple suppliers for satellite-fed television channels that allow all of North America to receive major media content.
:)
Now there is competition in the area of satellite-based radio content - again meaning that the folks without local stations can receive information from "Major" media outlets.
At any rate, even if it is 40M people, that's just 13% of the estimated 291M people in the states today. 13% is not that many people, although apparently just 50M votes is enough to contend for the presidency.
(The fact that only 100M votes are cast in this country is another indication of problems we face. We're too entertained and unplugged to be motivated to express our opintions. - except on Slashdot.)
Those people without cable, satellite TV or radio can go to the public library to get government-funded access to alternative sources of media.
People have choices. Hopefully the dearth of difference between the major content producers will spark others to create.
If not, perhaps bland programming will get people in our country to break the addiction we have to entertainment and start to engage in real relationships again. Or maybe I'm just hopelessly optimistic.
Respectfully,
Anomaly
Is that this is a good thing for content producers. Think of it this way:
When consumers major media outlets completely cease to produce anything other than plain gelatin in terms of content, who will fill the void? More and more media choices are available every day. Even through the mainstream channel of cable and satellite options, there are more choices and more content produced.
When people find something creative and appealing, it will give a leg up on the regurgitated reality fare offered by the major players.
Anyone who thinks that they get the straight scoop from any major outlets - NY Times, Washington Post, CNN, Fox News, slashdot.... - needs to have their preconceptions evaluated.
The future of broadcasting is not to be found in the major media outlets. They will be left behind by the next generation of media. It's coming, and making programming more mindless will only hasten the death of TV as we know it.
This could be a great thing.
Respectfully,
Anomaly
Brilliant!
The Bible says that we were created for the purpose of worship.
It's not just Sunday morning for a couple of hours. Recognizing that God is God and I was made for the purpose of bringing Him glory means that "whether you eat or drink or whatever you do - do it for the glory of God."
I don't worship only on Sunday. I worship God as I live my life to please Him - optimally it's 168 hours per week.
Sadly the vast majority of so-called Christians merely attend church. They are missing the point.
Respectfully,
Anomaly
I've been poking at this to do something similar for my company, and I have to say that PXES offers much more flexibility than a locally installed OS on the HDD.
If the box doesn't support PXE, you can probably create an etherboot floppy that will work similar to PXES and get you up and running even with low hardware - processor and RAM.....
http://pxes.sourceforge.net/
If there is no absolute truth, then might makes right.
What Saddam did to his people was right, and by definition, what we are doing in Iraq is right.
In fact, if I'm more powerful than you, then I get to define what is right - even if it means killing you!
And - how can you know that "the only absolute truth is that absolute truth is a myth to comfort the simpleminded"?
One of the tests of a worldview is whether its adherents can live integrally - according to the consequenses of their views.
Relativism collapses under its own weight. It cannot stand.
You may claim to be a relativist, but I submit to you that you must live your life according to absolutes.
Respectfully,
Anomaly
You say "truth cannot be known"
:)
Can you say that absolutely?
BTW - I would submit to you that the Inquisition was *not* about truth, but rather a corruption of the teachings of Christ.
Respectfully,
Anomaly