but when people confuse a translator's judgement call about the Bible with the Bible itself, then they are being ignorant. I disagree. I was brought up in a Catholic school, and throughout my education I was constantly read passages from The Bible. No-one said anything to me about this being a translation; I was told (by people who doubtless believed it themselves) that this was The Bible. If I had to guess, I'd say that at least 80% of people consider their holy book to be The Bible. Chances are none of them reads Aramaic, or would have any interest in doing so even if they were told their copy of the bible was off in a few places. This doesn't make them any less christian to my mind (nor theirs, I would imagine).
My question still stands, by the way: which English language translation of the bible would you consider to be closest to canonical?
I'm not a religious man myself, but I can see that people who try to live up to a code of moral and ethical standards don't appear to be 'wasting their time.' Religion doesn't have a monopoly on morality. We all have our own moral and ethical standards which we strive to live up to. Neither is there anything wrong with listening to what others have to say about the best way to live; the best opinions are those which have been formed through debate. But none of this has anything to do with religion.
If there is an omnipotent, omniscient deity running the cosmos, why would he have to answer to you? If he expects me to live my life in fear of eternal torment if I get it wrong, then he fucking better make clear what he has in mind.
Tell me again when Christians stopped being fallable human beings and started being Perfect? It's not a question of being perfect; none of us is. But there's a religious bookshop down the road from where I used to work, and they had a big problem with people stealing bibles. I found this hilarious. My point is (again) that a religion is more than a philosophy. If you truly believe, you're not going to act in a way that'll cause you to burn in hell for all eternity.
I'm an atheist. That doesn't mean I'm a bastard to all I meet. It means that when I do good I do it because I choose to, not because I'm being threatened with damnation if I act otherwise. I know this is true for most christians too, btw, but my point remains. A question. If I walked up to you and hit you for being a christian, and reminded you on the spot that Jesus told you to turn the other cheek, would you do so? Bearing in mind that to do otherwise would be to go against the word of god. You could call the cops with a clear conscience, of course, but after you asked me to whack you again.
Years of religious classes taught me that to 'turn the other cheek' meant to offer the other cheek to be struck as well. This was my interpretation from reading the bible as well. However, it's been over a decade since I read the bible (and nearly two since I paid attention in religion class) so it's possible that I'm in error.
I too would appreciate clarification on this point.
Katz makes entirely too many ties to the 'mistakes' of religion You've got to take the context into account. This was an article on religion, so inevitably Katz' personal beliefs are going to influence it in a major way. I wouldn't argue (neither, I imagine, would Katz) that "good/bad acts are aspects of the world bot in and out of religion", but given that this was an article with a religious theme, it was inevitable that Katz focus on religion.
ignorant twits think that because they've read one translation of the Bible, they've read "the Bible". So the millions of people out there who believe they're christians because they follow their bible are... what? Simply deluded?
I'd resolved to make no personal attacks, but for you I'll make an exception. This is the dumbest, most arrogant post on the topic I've yet read. Perhaps you should enlighten us as to which bible all those pseudo-christians should have been using?
I recognise that few (if any) of the bibles that exist today contain the full meaning of the original (if indeed there was one original). But this simply reinforces my belief that religion is a waste of time; if God created the universe and gave us such a central role in it, surely he could make sure we at least got his message passed on correctly?
What I mean is, a non-Christian or non-religious person has their own value system and their own morality. Everytime they do something that is counter to this system, they are being a hypocrite.
Agreed. But religion is, IMO, different. Christianity is more than just a philosophy; it's a belief that a God created the universe, and that he demands something of us; that we spend our three-score-and-ten years being nice to others, or we'll burn in hell. Hyprocisy in this case means not that you're saying one thing and doing another, but that you're saying one thing and believing another. I can't accept that Christians who believe absolutely in hell would act against the bible's teaching. If you belive god's threats, you'll behave accordingly.
Though far from perfect, I rarely attack someone back Do you invite them to attack you again, or do you believe that Jesus didn't really mean what he said?
There are some amazing followers of God both in the Protestant and Catholic churches No argument there. But the same can be said of Buddhists, scientologists and moonies. Religion (or anything that purports to have a higher meaning) brings out the best and worst in people. The best -- Mother Theresa for example -- would probably help others even if they weren't bullied into it by god. The worst would be assholes anyway.
Please don't take this as an ad hominem attack; I recognise absolutely that religion isn't an excuse for picking on an individual; IMO there's only one way to counter it, and that's education.
Nice tie, but it doesn't explain a few people like Gangis Kahn, Napolean, or Hitler (who prosecuted the Jewish RACE much more so than the religion) I don't remember Jon saying that religion was responsible for all the world's ills. If I were to try and excuse Hitler's behaviour by pointing to the spanish inquisition, would you accept that as a valid argument?
Warning: this post may meander. I've also decided for the duration that 'nice' is a waste of time
I spent many years thinking that we should respect the religions of others; that people have the right to worship what and/or who they want. As I've grown older (and more dogmatic), I see this atitude as harmful. Pandering to superstition does nothing except encourage redneck savages to remove evolution from schools' curriculum. In the main, this change in attitude comes from the staggering hypocrisy displayed by most Christians (the religion with which I'm most familiar. I'm Irish). Hands up all the Christians out there who turn the other cheek? Hands up the christians who've never copied someone else's CD (Thou Shalt Not Steal)?
The violence, its creators claim, is merely a role-playing depiction of "spiritual warfare," the notion that non-physical agents of good and evil (which might well include TV, movies, the Net, animation and recorded music) are constantly at war and that their behavior affects people on earth. Sheer sophistry. The bible says 'thou shalt not kill.' It doesn't say 'thou shalt only kill if it's a metaphor' or 'thou shalt only kill demons.' If this is viewed as okay because it's a only computer game, then bang goes any argument against Doom et al.
Religion and freedom have never really gotten along, from the persecution of Galileo to the demands by Orthodox Jews that Jerusalem shut down its cinemas on Friday night to Islamic attacks on writers and reporters in some Middle Eastern countries. Technology, a disseminator of so much information, a force for freedom, has always come under fire as Satan's ally. Galileo's persecution was a personal, not religious thing, but the argument stands. Tyrrany, be it religious or political, is the enemy of education. We should tolerate people's irrational beliefs only insofar as they don't affect the rest of us.
The bad news is that if "The War In Heaven" sells, expect a slew of Christian (and soon, no doubt, Jewish and Muslim) save-the-soul games marketed by greedy Web entrepeneurs who want to appear wholesome while raking in big money This isn't bad news. I doubt that resources will be diverted from other games, so it's simply a case of giving the people what they want. Just because you don't want it as well doesn't make it bad.
I could go on, but I'd only get abusive.
To finish: this isn't meant as flamebait; It's my -- if you will -- religious opinion. It's as valid an opinion as the myriad 'Jesus is Lord' opinions that permeate the web (and billboards everywhere).
I got these pictures earlier, and must confess that the closest pic was a bit of an anticlimax. This is my own fault, I suppose; I don't know what I was expecting. Cooler by far is the image with the rather cool title of MO3811ED8E20C261B.tif (the page is slashdotted at the moment, so I can't find a link. Sorry). 9m per pixel? Wow. Congrats to all at NASA.
It just occurred to me to check out my own registration; I was number 109251 when I registered on 24th February this year. According to the pretty graph, 110000 was reached in (approximately) July/august. And if linux is taking off geometically as the graph here would seem to suggest, then there should have been considerably more than 10,000 in the last six months. IANA statistician, but something looks dodgy. I'm not implying that microsoftian tactics were used, but it does seem a little sloppy; elucidation would be appreciated from anyone who's involved.
I guesstimate that between 0.2% and 5% of all Linux users have registered with the Linux Counter. So the total number of Linux users is probably between 2,396,400 and 59,910,000 people.
Apart from the use of the appalling word 'guesstimate', my only reservation is the calculation of percentages; I'd suspect that the percentage of linux users is slightly higher than the given ceiling of 5%. Linux users are a different breed to Windows users; the majority have at least some inclinations towards zealotry/active advocacy. I'd say that it's more likely that 10% have registered. The number of linux users worldwide is left as an exercise for the reader.
This is almost exactly the same sort of thing that happened with Windows Refund Day. It's a great -- and noble -- idea, but one that's hampered by the facts. On Refund Day, loads of people went to microsoft with the intention of getting their money back, despite the fact that the EULA stated clearly that it was the vendors who'd have to fork out. Here, we have lots of people using sentences like "My dog is called fatwa, and I put him down with an AK-47 in the name of Allah" in an attempt to crash the NSA's snoopers. One difference is that in this case, most people realise that the attempt is ineffectual, and it's being done solely for the publicity. However, I fear that the result will be the same in both cases; it's looked on as a bunch of zealots who don't really know what they're doing. As well as laughing at everyone, I suspect that there are some spooks who were delighted to see this sort of paranoia discrediting valid attempts at openness.
So, if I go for a woman who holds her head up and doesn't giggle, then I won't have to put up with competition from other geeks. Then after I impress her with my vast knowledge of the Periodic Table, I'll be in like Flynn. Bwhahahahaha!
I suspect it will be a niche product for a long time Possibly. But even without AI, I suspect that there'll be one critical step that be the Cambrian explosion of nanotech. Those small steps that have been made include a working lever; with a few more small steps (each of which could of course take years), all the components for something useful will exist. Then all Foresight has to do is call in the Lego Mindstorm fans and stick them in front of an STM, and voila! This is horribly simplified, of course. But I still expect to see functional, everyday nanotech in the next 30-50 years.
how 1) you can read a story that says 'this will change the world' and you think to yourself that he hasn't really grasped all the implications, and 2) that star trek's enduring legacy to earth culture will be the word 'nanites'?
Disclaimer that probably won't be believed This is a question. I'd like to know the answer. Flame if you must, but this isn't flamebait.
The amiga was cool in its day. That day is now long past. Any proposed new machine will bear little relation to the original, so why bother? I'm all for new computers if they do something no exising one does, but the Amiga (in any of its guises) seem to do nothing a PC running Linux or BeOS can't do.
Yes, I'm sure that people sitting at a computer checking the Public list of items for sale at ebay and other Aution sites are going to read your email. That was my first thought as well. But after a bit of consideration I began to wonder if this is actually the case. "Stock for sale" or "company for sale" are specific phrases, and ones that would be hard to search for; when you consider not just variations of the phrase but the scale of the search operations (they can't just be checking ebay) something begins to smell fishy. I don't think it is a conspiracy-level snooping operation, but I would like to know how they found out.
What precisely is the difference between selling stocks on Ebay and selling them in those cattle market places For years we've been clamouring for equal opportunity for the internet; if it's allowed IRL it should on the internet. If this were true encryption, censorship and pretty much everything would be lovely. Conversely, if it's not allowed in meatspace, its shouldn't be allowed in cyberspace (whether it should be disallowed in the first place is another argument). The SEC stops scam artists (to a certain extent), and this has to be done in (another metaphor for outdoors) as well as cyberspace.
Slashdot Mirror
but when people confuse a translator's judgement call about the Bible with the Bible itself, then they are being ignorant.
I disagree. I was brought up in a Catholic school, and throughout my education I was constantly read passages from The Bible. No-one said anything to me about this being a translation; I was told (by people who doubtless believed it themselves) that this was The Bible.
If I had to guess, I'd say that at least 80% of people consider their holy book to be The Bible. Chances are none of them reads Aramaic, or would have any interest in doing so even if they were told their copy of the bible was off in a few places. This doesn't make them any less christian to my mind (nor theirs, I would imagine).
My question still stands, by the way: which English language translation of the bible would you consider to be closest to canonical?
I'm not a religious man myself, but I can see that people who try to live up to a code of moral and ethical standards don't appear to be 'wasting their time.'
Religion doesn't have a monopoly on morality. We all have our own moral and ethical standards which we strive to live up to. Neither is there anything wrong with listening to what others have to say about the best way to live; the best opinions are those which have been formed through debate. But none of this has anything to do with religion.
If there is an omnipotent, omniscient deity running the cosmos, why would he have to answer to you?
If he expects me to live my life in fear of eternal torment if I get it wrong, then he fucking better make clear what he has in mind.
Tell me again when Christians stopped being fallable human beings and started being Perfect?
It's not a question of being perfect; none of us is. But there's a religious bookshop down the road from where I used to work, and they had a big problem with people stealing bibles. I found this hilarious.
My point is (again) that a religion is more than a philosophy. If you truly believe, you're not going to act in a way that'll cause you to burn in hell for all eternity.
I'm an atheist. That doesn't mean I'm a bastard to all I meet. It means that when I do good I do it because I choose to, not because I'm being threatened with damnation if I act otherwise. I know this is true for most christians too, btw, but my point remains.
A question. If I walked up to you and hit you for being a christian, and reminded you on the spot that Jesus told you to turn the other cheek, would you do so? Bearing in mind that to do otherwise would be to go against the word of god. You could call the cops with a clear conscience, of course, but after you asked me to whack you again.
Years of religious classes taught me that to 'turn the other cheek' meant to offer the other cheek to be struck as well. This was my interpretation from reading the bible as well. However, it's been over a decade since I read the bible (and nearly two since I paid attention in religion class) so it's possible that I'm in error.
I too would appreciate clarification on this point.
Katz makes entirely too many ties to the 'mistakes' of religion
You've got to take the context into account. This was an article on religion, so inevitably Katz' personal beliefs are going to influence it in a major way. I wouldn't argue (neither, I imagine, would Katz) that "good/bad acts are aspects of the world bot in and out of religion", but given that this was an article with a religious theme, it was inevitable that Katz focus on religion.
ignorant twits think that because they've read one translation of the Bible, they've read "the Bible".
So the millions of people out there who believe they're christians because they follow their bible are... what? Simply deluded?
I'd resolved to make no personal attacks, but for you I'll make an exception.
This is the dumbest, most arrogant post on the topic I've yet read.
Perhaps you should enlighten us as to which bible all those pseudo-christians should have been using?
I recognise that few (if any) of the bibles that exist today contain the full meaning of the original (if indeed there was one original). But this simply reinforces my belief that religion is a waste of time; if God created the universe and gave us such a central role in it, surely he could make sure we at least got his message passed on correctly?
What I mean is, a non-Christian or non-religious person has their own value system and their own morality. Everytime they do something that is counter to this system, they are being a hypocrite.
Agreed. But religion is, IMO, different. Christianity is more than just a philosophy; it's a belief that a God created the universe, and that he demands something of us; that we spend our three-score-and-ten years being nice to others, or we'll burn in hell. Hyprocisy in this case means not that you're saying one thing and doing another, but that you're saying one thing and believing another.
I can't accept that Christians who believe absolutely in hell would act against the bible's teaching. If you belive god's threats, you'll behave accordingly.
Though far from perfect, I rarely attack someone back
Do you invite them to attack you again, or do you believe that Jesus didn't really mean what he said?
There are some amazing followers of God both in the Protestant and Catholic churches
No argument there. But the same can be said of Buddhists, scientologists and moonies. Religion (or anything that purports to have a higher meaning) brings out the best and worst in people. The best -- Mother Theresa for example -- would probably help others even if they weren't bullied into it by god. The worst would be assholes anyway.
Please don't take this as an ad hominem attack; I recognise absolutely that religion isn't an excuse for picking on an individual; IMO there's only one way to counter it, and that's education.
Nice tie, but it doesn't explain a few people like Gangis Kahn, Napolean, or Hitler (who prosecuted the Jewish RACE much more so than the religion)
I don't remember Jon saying that religion was responsible for all the world's ills. If I were to try and excuse Hitler's behaviour by pointing to the spanish inquisition, would you accept that as a valid argument?
Warning: this post may meander. I've also decided for the duration that 'nice' is a waste of time
I spent many years thinking that we should respect the religions of others; that people have the right to worship what and/or who they want. As I've grown older (and more dogmatic), I see this atitude as harmful. Pandering to superstition does nothing except encourage redneck savages to remove evolution from schools' curriculum.
In the main, this change in attitude comes from the staggering hypocrisy displayed by most Christians (the religion with which I'm most familiar. I'm Irish). Hands up all the Christians out there who turn the other cheek? Hands up the christians who've never copied someone else's CD (Thou Shalt Not Steal)?
The violence, its creators claim, is merely a role-playing depiction of "spiritual warfare," the notion that non-physical agents of good and evil (which might well include TV, movies, the Net, animation and recorded music) are constantly at war and that their behavior affects people on earth.
Sheer sophistry. The bible says 'thou shalt not kill.' It doesn't say 'thou shalt only kill if it's a metaphor' or 'thou shalt only kill demons.' If this is viewed as okay because it's a only computer game, then bang goes any argument against Doom et al.
Religion and freedom have never really gotten along, from the persecution of Galileo to the demands by Orthodox Jews that Jerusalem shut down its cinemas on Friday night to Islamic attacks on writers and reporters in some Middle Eastern countries. Technology, a disseminator of so much information, a force for freedom, has always come under fire as Satan's ally.
Galileo's persecution was a personal, not religious thing, but the argument stands. Tyrrany, be it religious or political, is the enemy of education. We should tolerate people's irrational beliefs only insofar as they don't affect the rest of us.
The bad news is that if "The War In Heaven" sells, expect a slew of Christian (and soon, no doubt, Jewish and Muslim) save-the-soul games marketed by greedy Web entrepeneurs who want to appear wholesome while raking in big money
This isn't bad news. I doubt that resources will be diverted from other games, so it's simply a case of giving the people what they want. Just because you don't want it as well doesn't make it bad.
I could go on, but I'd only get abusive.
To finish: this isn't meant as flamebait; It's my -- if you will -- religious opinion. It's as valid an opinion as the myriad 'Jesus is Lord' opinions that permeate the web (and billboards everywhere).
I've stuck the picture (now a jpg, and considerably smaller) here. I hope NASA don't mind.
The number you get is WAY ahead of the count (some 40.000 at last measure)
D'oh. I remember reading this at the time. My apologies to all concerned.
I got these pictures earlier, and must confess that the closest pic was a bit of an anticlimax. This is my own fault, I suppose; I don't know what I was expecting.
Cooler by far is the image with the rather cool title of MO3811ED8E20C261B.tif (the page is slashdotted at the moment, so I can't find a link. Sorry).
9m per pixel? Wow. Congrats to all at NASA.
It just occurred to me to check out my own registration; I was number 109251 when I registered on 24th February this year. According to the pretty graph, 110000 was reached in (approximately) July/august.
And if linux is taking off geometically as the graph here would seem to suggest, then there should have been considerably more than 10,000 in the last six months.
IANA statistician, but something looks dodgy. I'm not implying that microsoftian tactics were used, but it does seem a little sloppy; elucidation would be appreciated from anyone who's involved.
I guesstimate that between 0.2% and 5% of all Linux users have registered with the Linux Counter. So the total number of Linux users is probably between 2,396,400 and 59,910,000 people.
Apart from the use of the appalling word 'guesstimate', my only reservation is the calculation of percentages; I'd suspect that the percentage of linux users is slightly higher than the given ceiling of 5%. Linux users are a different breed to Windows users; the majority have at least some inclinations towards zealotry/active advocacy. I'd say that it's more likely that 10% have registered. The number of linux users worldwide is left as an exercise for the reader.
This is almost exactly the same sort of thing that happened with Windows Refund Day. It's a great -- and noble -- idea, but one that's hampered by the facts.
On Refund Day, loads of people went to microsoft with the intention of getting their money back, despite the fact that the EULA stated clearly that it was the vendors who'd have to fork out.
Here, we have lots of people using sentences like "My dog is called fatwa, and I put him down with an AK-47 in the name of Allah" in an attempt to crash the NSA's snoopers.
One difference is that in this case, most people realise that the attempt is ineffectual, and it's being done solely for the publicity. However, I fear that the result will be the same in both cases; it's looked on as a bunch of zealots who don't really know what they're doing.
As well as laughing at everyone, I suspect that there are some spooks who were delighted to see this sort of paranoia discrediting valid attempts at openness.
Check out Foresight.
So, if I go for a woman who holds her head up and doesn't giggle, then I won't have to put up with competition from other geeks. Then after I impress her with my vast knowledge of the Periodic Table, I'll be in like Flynn.
Bwhahahahaha!
I suspect it will be a niche product for a long time
Possibly. But even without AI, I suspect that there'll be one critical step that be the Cambrian explosion of nanotech.
Those small steps that have been made include a working lever; with a few more small steps (each of which could of course take years), all the components for something useful will exist. Then all Foresight has to do is call in the Lego Mindstorm fans and stick them in front of an STM, and voila!
This is horribly simplified, of course. But I still expect to see functional, everyday nanotech in the next 30-50 years.
how 1) you can read a story that says 'this will change the world' and you think to yourself that he hasn't really grasped all the implications,
and 2) that star trek's enduring legacy to earth culture will be the word 'nanites'?
Disclaimer that probably won't be believed
This is a question. I'd like to know the answer. Flame if you must, but this isn't flamebait.
The amiga was cool in its day. That day is now long past. Any proposed new machine will bear little relation to the original, so why bother?
I'm all for new computers if they do something no exising one does, but the Amiga (in any of its guises) seem to do nothing a PC running Linux or BeOS can't do.
Yes, I'm sure that people sitting at a computer checking the Public list of items for sale at ebay and other Aution sites are going to read your email.
That was my first thought as well. But after a bit of consideration I began to wonder if this is actually the case. "Stock for sale" or "company for sale" are specific phrases, and ones that would be hard to search for; when you consider not just variations of the phrase but the scale of the search operations (they can't just be checking ebay) something begins to smell fishy.
I don't think it is a conspiracy-level snooping operation, but I would like to know how they found out.
What precisely is the difference between selling stocks on Ebay and selling them in those cattle market places
For years we've been clamouring for equal opportunity for the internet; if it's allowed IRL it should on the internet. If this were true encryption, censorship and pretty much everything would be lovely.
Conversely, if it's not allowed in meatspace, its shouldn't be allowed in cyberspace (whether it should be disallowed in the first place is another argument). The SEC stops scam artists (to a certain extent), and this has to be done in (another metaphor for outdoors) as well as cyberspace.
they say patterns are a new thing. I though the idea had been around for ages.
I never heard of them before, so they're definitely new.
A micron is a 1,000th of a meter
Mental note: don't let ZDNet have anything to do with navigating Mars probes.