Interesting. I was unaware that there was so much controversy over the factuality of whether Jesus existed at all. I'm sorry you got so worked up over my comment. Obviously this is something you feel strongly about.
Given the fact that one of the world's largest religions says that he was not killed, I'd say doubting is unavoidable.
Which one is that? I thought that the Christians say that he was killed, but rose from the dead and all the other religions have no comment or don't care.
Then what? Personally, I like the idea of either paying for a supported thing from a big company like RedHat Enterprise Linux (for a business that doesn't mind paying for things) or taking advantage of the work of thousands of unemployed software engineers (for a cheap guy like me).
Can't we just debate whether Jesus was God or not (or maybe "was inspired by God")? Or can we just debate whether he was actually resurrected or just his teachings were resurrected and carried on by his followers? Do we have to doubt whether or not he actually existed and was actually killed at all?
You are so naive. You actually think that we went into Iraq to liberate those people from their dictator? You actually think that we went in there to disarm Saddam Husein of his weapons of mass destruction? Do you think we actually thought he had WMD's? That's insane. Can you imagine how hated this war would be if instead of 2000 dead U.S. soldiers total we had 50,000 dead U.S. soldiers on the first day due to chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons used? If we actually thought he had them, it would have been tactically irresponsible for us to invade like that. Our government only told us that he had WMD's to sell it to us. If we acutally thought he had them, we would have bombed them from the sky instead of going in on the ground. Actually, that might not be true. We might have thought that he had them, but wouldn't really have them ready to deploy if we attacked quickly. And we probably organized our troops into smaller units to minimize the effectiveness of mass weapons against us.
Anyway. our military strategy is not based on right and wrong or human rights or spreading freedom. It is based on one thing: always keeping the United States in a good position in the world.
By the way, most Iraqi's didn't like their dictatorship and most people in China don't care if the government controls all the corporations as long as they can make money and buy cell phones, bootleg DVD's, and knock-off Louis Vuitton handbags.
Will slashdot ever drag itself into the year 2005 and provide the ability to edit posts?
I have a feeling they argued about this for a while, but decided that letting people correct their spelling mistackes and reword their awkwardly-worded phrases wasn't worth the trouble of rerendering the static pages. Not to mention all the weirdness that would occur if a clever troll posts something that is insightful, has it modded up to +5, then replaces the text with either goatse guy or a GNAA press release.
We're way off topic here, but obviously Jesus was a human being. If you believe that the truth of the story is unknowable (because of all the hype afterwards), and you believe in Occam's Razor (go with the most likely explanation), then that's what you believe. Jesus was a revolutinoary Jew who wanted to totally reform Judaism. He wanted a religion open to anyone. He wanted to tear down the reliance on the Temple heirarchy (the irony of it is that some of his followers built that up again in a different form). Anyway, the rest of Jesus' teachings can be summed up as follows: "be good to others and good things will happen".
As for the other existance of God idea, it's absolutely impossible to know. I personally belive that it is fundamentally necessary for it to be impossible to know for sure. I mean, if there were irrefutable proof that there was a God and you just didn't know about it, you'd be pretty pissed off. So anyway, realizing that the answer is unknowable, the question is really whether to play the game or not, to believe in something or not to believe in anything. Personally, I like believing in things, in general even if it turns out I'm wrong later.
But anyway, the reason why what he said is still valid is basically because we humans are fundamentally the same as we were 2000 years ago. Evolution has pretty much been stopped. We can't rely on government or corporations or our friends to tell us how to live our lives. We still have to follow all the goals of the game of life (grow, learn, get job, get married, have children, have good experiences). But Jesus sort of says, "If you screw up, don't worry about it. Just be a good person and it'll work out in the end. Oh, and forgive other people who screw up." That's a good philosophy whatever year it is.
What the hell are you talking about; Football is just chess with real people.
Not really. Football is more like a real-time strategy game. All of the pieces can move at once and for both sides. In chess, you are limited to one move per player per turn. In chess, both players can see the entire field and the positions of all of the opposing team's pieces. In football, the players (because they are human) only see out of the front 180 degrees of their head and other players are sometimes obscured from their vision. Also, players will disobey orders sometimes. Not so in chess. Of course, with all these limitations, you would think that chess would be simple.
If you've got a Mac with an iSight camera, all you really need to add is software.
It's the software that's the hard part. The algorithms for pattern recognition work well when the images are very controlled (e.g., circuit boards that are all supposed to be the same under a very specific light with a specific camera at a specific position). Change the lighting or the angle of the target or add a little noise and things fall apart quickly. You either get "false positives" or you get "false negatives". Either way, it cuts down on the percentage correct of your algorighm.
Rotary phones had the 1 at the top because the number was determined by the number of "clicks" placed on the line. Putting your finger in the "1" hole and moving it down to the stop and letting it go would produce 1 "click" on the line. "2" would produce 2 "clicks", "3", 3 "clicks" and so on until "0", which actually produced 10 "clicks". If you have an old-fashioned (non-cordless) phone, you can still dial phone numbers by clicking the hookswitch the right number of times (pause for about a second or two in between each number). I do this every now and then. It realy freaks people out. Heh heh.
No. They're not. And they're not cultural either. There are absolutes. Some ways of life are better and more moral than others. The fact that you choose an immoral life means that you are an inferior person. Now, some people may choose to live in a morally reprehensible lifestyle, but that does not mean that the rest of us should condone it or accept it.
Hmm.. I think that if I were in that situation and had an understanding of it, I would prefer to endure the pain and live rather than be euthanized. It is very easy to criticize the "life is precious" crowd by taking the counter-position "life is not precious". However, when it comes to people's own lives, they generally feel that while their own life is precious at least to them, other people's lives are not. In other words, you might say, "that life is not worth living", but to that person you are referring, they might say "my life is absolutely worth living since it's the only one I've got".
As for your son, you could have chosen to terminate him at 24 weeks (assuming you are the mother). I am, however, certain that when he is older, he will be happy that you did not make that decision for him, and that whatever pain he went through or disabilities he has as a result of the problems are obstacles that are worth overcomming.
There are quite a lot of people who believe that either after the fetus is viable (i.e., could live on its own in an incubator or after the brain of the fetus starts to emit certain brain waves (a lack of those waves in an adult leads to them being called "brain dead") then it is at that point that the rights of the child/fetus need to be considered. According to a friend of mine, the brain waves condition occurs at around 4-5 months though, which the rabid "women must be able to kill their fetuses up to the day they would be born" people would never agree to.
Since the real way to stop abortions is for stupid women and girls to not get pregnant, and since that isn't going to happen, it looks like the anti-abortion people will be doing their thing for a while. However, I think that if a partial birth abortion ban were to pass, quite a few of the anti-abortion people would relax a bit. The pro-abortion people don't want to give them that concession though. It's sort of strange. Both sides have a strong distaste for partial birth abortion, but even though it is very rare, the pro abortion people don't want to give it up.
Attackers such as RIAA/MPAA could still saturate the network with corrupted nodes that record IP's and requests. Even if the communication is encrypted, presumably they have the keys since they are participating in the network. Sure, it would make it harder, but what would realy stop them? The real solution is what the warez dudes have been doing for 15 years, knowing personally all of the people they trade with. Of course, the warez groups still get infiltrated by FBI agents every now and then.
Slashdot Mirror
Interesting. That would make the whole "dying and rising from the dead" trick easier. Don't die, hide out, then just show up later.
Interesting. I was unaware that there was so much controversy over the factuality of whether Jesus existed at all. I'm sorry you got so worked up over my comment. Obviously this is something you feel strongly about.
Given the fact that one of the world's largest religions says that he was not killed, I'd say doubting is unavoidable.
Which one is that? I thought that the Christians say that he was killed, but rose from the dead and all the other religions have no comment or don't care.
until they run out of cash. :)
Then what? Personally, I like the idea of either paying for a supported thing from a big company like RedHat Enterprise Linux (for a business that doesn't mind paying for things) or taking advantage of the work of thousands of unemployed software engineers (for a cheap guy like me).
was supposedly nailed to.
Can't we just debate whether Jesus was God or not (or maybe "was inspired by God")? Or can we just debate whether he was actually resurrected or just his teachings were resurrected and carried on by his followers? Do we have to doubt whether or not he actually existed and was actually killed at all?
You are so naive. You actually think that we went into Iraq to liberate those people from their dictator? You actually think that we went in there to disarm Saddam Husein of his weapons of mass destruction? Do you think we actually thought he had WMD's? That's insane. Can you imagine how hated this war would be if instead of 2000 dead U.S. soldiers total we had 50,000 dead U.S. soldiers on the first day due to chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons used? If we actually thought he had them, it would have been tactically irresponsible for us to invade like that. Our government only told us that he had WMD's to sell it to us. If we acutally thought he had them, we would have bombed them from the sky instead of going in on the ground. Actually, that might not be true. We might have thought that he had them, but wouldn't really have them ready to deploy if we attacked quickly. And we probably organized our troops into smaller units to minimize the effectiveness of mass weapons against us.
Anyway. our military strategy is not based on right and wrong or human rights or spreading freedom. It is based on one thing: always keeping the United States in a good position in the world.
By the way, most Iraqi's didn't like their dictatorship and most people in China don't care if the government controls all the corporations as long as they can make money and buy cell phones, bootleg DVD's, and knock-off Louis Vuitton handbags.
It's way too silly to pronounce that ("May I see that Pentax starist camera please...")
If you read the Japanese pages, it's pronounced isuto, which is a Japanese way of pronouncing "ist" using their syllables. The * is silent.
Catnip.
Please assume that I am using Lynx on a HP48G calculator. Please tell me how to do it.
Will slashdot ever drag itself into the year 2005 and provide the ability to edit posts?
I have a feeling they argued about this for a while, but decided that letting people correct their spelling mistackes and reword their awkwardly-worded phrases wasn't worth the trouble of rerendering the static pages. Not to mention all the weirdness that would occur if a clever troll posts something that is insightful, has it modded up to +5, then replaces the text with either goatse guy or a GNAA press release.
We're way off topic here, but obviously Jesus was a human being. If you believe that the truth of the story is unknowable (because of all the hype afterwards), and you believe in Occam's Razor (go with the most likely explanation), then that's what you believe. Jesus was a revolutinoary Jew who wanted to totally reform Judaism. He wanted a religion open to anyone. He wanted to tear down the reliance on the Temple heirarchy (the irony of it is that some of his followers built that up again in a different form). Anyway, the rest of Jesus' teachings can be summed up as follows: "be good to others and good things will happen".
As for the other existance of God idea, it's absolutely impossible to know. I personally belive that it is fundamentally necessary for it to be impossible to know for sure. I mean, if there were irrefutable proof that there was a God and you just didn't know about it, you'd be pretty pissed off. So anyway, realizing that the answer is unknowable, the question is really whether to play the game or not, to believe in something or not to believe in anything. Personally, I like believing in things, in general even if it turns out I'm wrong later.
But anyway, the reason why what he said is still valid is basically because we humans are fundamentally the same as we were 2000 years ago. Evolution has pretty much been stopped. We can't rely on government or corporations or our friends to tell us how to live our lives. We still have to follow all the goals of the game of life (grow, learn, get job, get married, have children, have good experiences). But Jesus sort of says, "If you screw up, don't worry about it. Just be a good person and it'll work out in the end. Oh, and forgive other people who screw up." That's a good philosophy whatever year it is.
What the hell are you talking about; Football is just chess with real people.
Not really. Football is more like a real-time strategy game. All of the pieces can move at once and for both sides. In chess, you are limited to one move per player per turn. In chess, both players can see the entire field and the positions of all of the opposing team's pieces. In football, the players (because they are human) only see out of the front 180 degrees of their head and other players are sometimes obscured from their vision. Also, players will disobey orders sometimes. Not so in chess. Of course, with all these limitations, you would think that chess would be simple.
Compare the Walton family (collectively worth more than Bill) and you'll find some real tight-fisted bastards
Collectively they have a lot more fists than Bill though.
1. Invent goofy keyboard. ...
2. Write up a press release.
3. Get press release published as news by PC Magazine and posted on Slashdot.
4.
5. Profit?
If you've got a Mac with an iSight camera, all you really need to add is software.
It's the software that's the hard part. The algorithms for pattern recognition work well when the images are very controlled (e.g., circuit boards that are all supposed to be the same under a very specific light with a specific camera at a specific position). Change the lighting or the angle of the target or add a little noise and things fall apart quickly. You either get "false positives" or you get "false negatives". Either way, it cuts down on the percentage correct of your algorighm.
Rotary phones had the 1 at the top because the number was determined by the number of "clicks" placed on the line. Putting your finger in the "1" hole and moving it down to the stop and letting it go would produce 1 "click" on the line. "2" would produce 2 "clicks", "3", 3 "clicks" and so on until "0", which actually produced 10 "clicks". If you have an old-fashioned (non-cordless) phone, you can still dial phone numbers by clicking the hookswitch the right number of times (pause for about a second or two in between each number). I do this every now and then. It realy freaks people out. Heh heh.
The Soylent Democracy is people! Lots of stupid people!
Morals are a personal thing.
No. They're not. And they're not cultural either. There are absolutes. Some ways of life are better and more moral than others. The fact that you choose an immoral life means that you are an inferior person. Now, some people may choose to live in a morally reprehensible lifestyle, but that does not mean that the rest of us should condone it or accept it.
Hmm.. I think that if I were in that situation and had an understanding of it, I would prefer to endure the pain and live rather than be euthanized. It is very easy to criticize the "life is precious" crowd by taking the counter-position "life is not precious". However, when it comes to people's own lives, they generally feel that while their own life is precious at least to them, other people's lives are not. In other words, you might say, "that life is not worth living", but to that person you are referring, they might say "my life is absolutely worth living since it's the only one I've got".
As for your son, you could have chosen to terminate him at 24 weeks (assuming you are the mother). I am, however, certain that when he is older, he will be happy that you did not make that decision for him, and that whatever pain he went through or disabilities he has as a result of the problems are obstacles that are worth overcomming.
There are quite a lot of people who believe that either after the fetus is viable (i.e., could live on its own in an incubator or after the brain of the fetus starts to emit certain brain waves (a lack of those waves in an adult leads to them being called "brain dead") then it is at that point that the rights of the child/fetus need to be considered. According to a friend of mine, the brain waves condition occurs at around 4-5 months though, which the rabid "women must be able to kill their fetuses up to the day they would be born" people would never agree to.
Since the real way to stop abortions is for stupid women and girls to not get pregnant, and since that isn't going to happen, it looks like the anti-abortion people will be doing their thing for a while. However, I think that if a partial birth abortion ban were to pass, quite a few of the anti-abortion people would relax a bit. The pro-abortion people don't want to give them that concession though. It's sort of strange. Both sides have a strong distaste for partial birth abortion, but even though it is very rare, the pro abortion people don't want to give it up.
We would think differently if the roles were reversed, i.e., if it were a 11 year old girl sucking on the dick of a male babysitter.
Double standard? Yep. That's just the way it is.
Attackers such as RIAA/MPAA could still saturate the network with corrupted nodes that record IP's and requests. Even if the communication is encrypted, presumably they have the keys since they are participating in the network. Sure, it would make it harder, but what would realy stop them? The real solution is what the warez dudes have been doing for 15 years, knowing personally all of the people they trade with. Of course, the warez groups still get infiltrated by FBI agents every now and then.
...is loosing the war
You had me going there until "loosing".
You've been ripped off.
How many crappy cell-phone pictures do you need? Is it more than 100? If it's not, it makes more sense to email them to yourself for $0.25.