God was punishing Pharaoh and the Egyptian people for enslaving the Israelites. In this comment [slashdot.org] I say something about this. People are still responsible for their actions, as they chose to do them, even while God is in charge. There are other example of this throughout the bible if you are really interested. God uses the Babylonians to destroy Judah as a judgment on Judah and then judges the Babylonians for destroying Judah. This is not something I will deny because it is clear in the bible that this is the case.
See, this just makes it clear that you haven't actually read the Bible. Or, if you have, you had on such blinders that anything that doesn't fit with your ``God is justice and love'' mantra gets ignored.
The Bible, in quite clear language, quotes God on his reasons for the Plagues. Justice, at best, is an afterthought.
You prefer the NIV? Fine. We'll get to that later, but I'll quote from it for now.
Exodus 7
1 Then the LORD said to Moses, "See, I have made you like God to Pharaoh, and your brother Aaron will be your prophet. 2 You are to say everything I command you, and your brother Aaron is to tell Pharaoh to let the Israelites go out of his country. 3 But I will harden Pharaoh's heart, and though I multiply my miraculous signs and wonders in Egypt, 4 he will not listen to you. Then I will lay my hand on Egypt and with mighty acts of judgment I will bring out my divisions, my people the Israelites. 5 And the Egyptians will know that I am the LORD when I stretch out my hand against Egypt and bring the Israelites out of it."
Here is the true reason for the Plagues.
God has an inferiority complex.
(In case it's not perfectly clear, I mean that the same way I mean ``Hamlet is suicidal.'' If you prefer, ``The God character in the Christian Bible has an inferiority complex.'')
See, God wants the Egyptians to know that he's this big and mighty LORD dude that you don't want to mess with. (The NIV softens that a lot, pulling many of the punches.) A simple booming voice from the heavens or some such isn't enough for him. Sure, that might make them believe that he's the big cheese, but it won't get them to fear him. To do that, he's got to unleash Hell on Earth.
But God's got a problem. For all that Pharaoh has done in the past, including enslaving the Israelites, he's now become reasonable. Perhaps his conscience is getting the better of him and he's hoping for a way out. God knows this, and further knows that, when he sends Moses and Aaron to demand freedom for their people, Pharaoh is quite ready to grant it to them.
But...if they do, then God won't have an excuse to try out all these shiny new Plague toys. So, what does he do?
God hardens Pharaoh's heart.
(It's worth noting, again, that the NIV once again chickens out. The original uses the rhetorical technique of repetition to emphasize the point that God is hardening Pharaoh's heart. The NIV only includes the line once; after that, Pharaoh does his own hardening. The KJV ends up in the same place--but that's no different from the Stockholm syndrome or Patti Hearst. Point is, Pharaoh's heart wasn't hard until God hardened it.)
So, here we have Pharaoh, all set to do the right thing. He's ready to do exactly what God wants him to do, and what God (through his proxies) tells him to do.
And then God steps in and uses mind control to change Pharaoh. God not only removes Pharaoh's free will, turning him into an unwilling puppet in God's sick game, but he changes Pharaoh from a flawed person trying to mend his ways into an evil, cruel, hard-hearted tyrant.
I can't think of any greater evil that has ever been perpetuated upon a human being.
Now that God's twisted Pharaoh into his fall guy, what does he do?
He unleashes the Plagues.
And what are those Plagues? Quite simply, some of the worst possible imaginable biological an
What are the best practices for managing Code Signing Digital IDs for Open Source projects
I'd have to say that you're over-thinking this. I doubt you need digital signatures at all.
First, should there be any questions at all, well--Use The Source, Luke! You've got it, so examine it and compile it yourself. That's one of the big selling points of open source, no?
For binary releases, just do it the OpenBSD way. Official releases are created and hosted on trusted servers, along with the hashes. A bunch of mirror sites copy the releases and the hashes. (And, there're these nifty CDs that come pre-packaged with the release and the hashes.)
Anybody who has any questions can verify the hashes on their own copies in any number of ways. You could get the hash off the trusted site, several of the mirrors, etc. You could email somebody you trust, asking them to confirm them. You could even use a telephone or meet in person.
Belive me, if there's any hanky-panky going on, it'll show up real quick. All sorts of people will raise a ruckus.
So, the end result is that you get secure code that everybody trusts and you don't have to muck around with digital signatures, secret sharing, and all that.
Don't get me worng--all those things have their places. Distributing free software just ain't one of them.
First, I think it's fascinating--and quite informative--that you chose to completely ignore my charges that your God murdered all the Egyptian first-born sons (a crime of which he boasts). If you care to reply to this note, I'd really appreciate a justification for that one. Be sure to address God's mind control game with Pharaoh--you know, where Pharaoh was all set, not once but all ten times, to let the Israelites go? And then ``God hardened Pharaoh's heart'' (Exodus 11:10 amongst several others).
You toss around terms like ``free will'' and ``God's love.'' If the Plagues don't demonstrate what God really thinks of them, I don't know what does.
Re Conquistadors: Do you really think this is the kind of behavour that Christian even condone? Do you even think that these people were Christians?
From all I know of them, they honestly believed themselves to be followers of Christ and his teachings. They claimed that their actions were in his name, and in accord with his teachings and his will. That, in my book, makes them Christians.
Further, we can plainly see that what they did was no different from what their (and your) God did himself (in the Plagues and elsewhere) and what their (and your) God caused, ordered, praised, or condoned far too many times to list in the Bible. That is, war, murder, torture, rape, pillage, and just basically be the scourge of the planet. Try 1 Samuel 15:3 and 7-8 for just one random example...of which there are scores.
When we then consider all the great crimes of the past two millennia, we discover that many of them have been done by Christians for Christ.
Finally, we see even today, with the Christian president of a once-atheist-but-now-Christian nation, how a Christian will lie and deceive for the sole purpose of launching an unprovoked and illegal war that has--surprise!--resulted in thousands of unnecessary civilian deaths and numerous acts of torture and various other atrocities.
So, yes, I think those people are Christians, and I think it's exactly the kind of behavior that Christians not only condone, but revel in and have perpetuated for thousands of years.
What you fail to understand is that everything is defined by God, not from our perspective. He created this world. He is also the source of all jsutice and love. Not that you are particulary interested in these it seems, you are more interested in calling love hate and justice injustice.
No. You define everything by God. If God created the world, who created God, and why can't I have a word with him about how God and his followers have run amok? Is it justice to murder a woman for looking over her shoulder (Genesis 19:26)? Is it love to force fathers and sons to eat each other (Ezekiel 5:10)?
It is not I that am perverting the words of the Bible by calling love hate and justice injustice. It is you, who insists that the greatest mass murderer in all of recorded fiction (Genesis 6:17) is loving and merciful.
Anyway, God had told them not to eat from the tree. They knew it was something they should not do.
They may have known that God didn't want them to do it, but they were incapable of knowing that it was evil to do so. By God's design. (This is, of course, ignoring the whole question of why God should think it a sin for Adam and Eve to know about good and evil in the first place.)
I wouldn't hound this point if it weren't for the fact that Christians have long favored similar tactics. For example, Conquistadors would read the Gospel to newly discovered natives. The readings would, of course, be in Latin--a language the natives had never even heard before in their lives. Upon concluding, the Conquistadors would demand that all the natives immediately accept Jesus. When none did...the Conquistadors took it upon themselves to conquer them by the sword.
God is God and we are not. Did you create the world? No? Have you always existed? No?
You would justify even the most horrifyingly depraved evil corruption--such as the slaughter of the Egyptian first-born after God hardened Pharaoh's heart to prevent Pharaoh from doing what he knew was right--simply because God is...well...God. And who are we to question God?
If your God were as harmless as the Easter Bunny, I would smile and nod and say, ``That's nice.'' But you choose to instead worship supreme vileness and to convince others to join you. For that I condemn you, along with your God.
I hope you (eventually) realize the error of your ways. The sooner Christians dump this worship of evil, the sooner the rest of us can stop wondering when the next Crusades or Inquisition or Witch Trials or Slavery or Holocaust or Trail of Tears or whatever is coming.
God gave mankind the gift of free will so that they could use that free will to obey him and thus show that they loved him as much as he loved them. After all, he did love them enough to give them life. That *one* tree that they were not to eat from was the *only* law that they had. They were perfect, and as such they would make no mistakes. They *chose* to disobey God. They decided they did not want to submit to Gods authority. That one tree was the only way that they had to prove that they were faithful to God. Without it, there would have been no opportunity to do so. They failed.
Er...not quite.
Simply, you're forgetting which tree it was that they were told not to eat.
That's right, it was the tree of knowledge of good and evil. (Genesis 2:9)
That Adam and Eve were forbidden to eat of the fruit of that tree, one can only conclude that Adam and Eve knew nothing of good and evil. Hardly perfect, wouldn't you say?
But, wait, there's more!
If Adam and Eve didn't know about good and evil, they were incapable--by God's own design--of knowing that it was an evil act to eat of the fruit of that tree. Incapable of knowing that disobeying God's direct order was evil.
God then punished Adam, Eve, and all the rest of humanity for a crime that God had deliberately made them incapable of knowing was a crime.
This, gentle readers, is the ultimate Catch-22.
Cheers,
b&
P.S. This incident is hardly unique. Read any of the so-called ``hard passages'' of the bible and substitute ``Joshua Gord of Topeka, Kansas'' for ``God'' and decide if those actions could, by any stretch of the imagination, still be considered moral or even tolerable. Especially read about the Flood, the Plagues, and the Crucifixion. b&
Let's say you're a terrorist. And, further, let's say you want to hurt Americans. What will you do?
1) try to get into a government facility with a faked ID to do your terrorizing;
b) get a job at said government facility and then do your terrorizing with legitimate access;
or III) strap a bunch of explosives to your body, go to a movie theatre, buy a ticket, sit down, and blow yourself up halfway through the opening credits?
Remember that human volunteers have a high chance at screwing up also.
Not if you do it right.
Separate ballots into stacks. Have three different people with differing political biases count each stack. When all three people agree on the totals for that stack, you're done.
You're not going to find higher accuracy in machines.
If all the sub-totals are published all the way up the line, the ballot-counters can confirm that they match what they counted. They can also confirm that the summing of all the ballots was done correctly.
Our current system is nowhere near this accurate or accountable.
Of course...the problem is that Americans like to vote too much. Here in Maricopa County, Arizona, we had close to a hundred things to vote on this last time around.
There was the presidential race, naturally, and a senator and a representative. There was also a state senator and representative. That's all well and good.
Then, there were a dozen or more more state, county, and local positions, from attorney general to sherriff to corporation commissioners to the local school board.
Next up were some fifty or sixty judges. Yes, here in Arizona we re-elect our judges. They're appointed in the first place, but every judge must get a majority of approving votes every so many years to stay on the bench.
Finally, there were a dozen ballot propositions.
Now, it's simply humanly impossible to hand-count a ballot like that. No way is it gonna happen. We need the machines.
Or, we could recognize that we're a representative democracy, and do things right.
We should never be voting for judges. If there's a problem with one of them, that's what impeachment is for. Having the public elect judges is simply a case of the legislature shirking its responsibilities.
The same goes for the public initiative process. If you can't get your representative to push through a bill you want, then vote for somebody else. Run yourself, if you have to. That's how the system is supposed to work.
If the only things that were on the ballot were those that are supposed to be on the ballot, and if local elections were held on a different day from the national elections, we'd have ballots that could be easily counted by hand.
But America is too obsessed with voting to care about democracy.
Here's something that's been bothering me for some time.
We keep hearing about all these ultra high-tech hydrogen cars of the future. And, I've heard persistent rumors of, for example, some guy in Tucson who's converted a regular old (and I do mean old) pickup truck to run off hydrogen gas.
So...why can't I buy a fuel tank and carburetor alternative for my '68 VW Camper? It would seem to be a natural. Keep the exact same car, the exact same engine, and just deliver aerated hydrogen to the intake manifold rather than aerated gasoline.
I've come across a few references, but only of people wanting to sell tickets to expensive seminars where they'll reveal the secrets of the technology. What secrets? It can't be worse than the technology all those buses running off of propane or natural gas are using, can it?
One of my first thoughts upon reading the article was that that's exactly what they've created--an optical transistor.
It gets even better. The original transistor originally played a huge role in replacing human operators in telephone network switches. That also seems to be the first target for this new breed of transistor.
Surely, the optical computer just became much more of a possibility. Yeah, we're still a long way from an optical IC, but this is a big step on that path.
The tap water here in Tempe, Arizona, is quite hard. If you don't dry the dishes, you'll get lots of spots on them. (Never bothers me, but some....)
Combine that with the very low humidity here and this kind of evaporative system and it wouldn't be long before, instead of tubing, you had solid bars of mineral salts covered in rubber.
Of course, you could buy de-ionized water, but, for me at least, that'd get old pretty quick.
I'm sorry, but if these data handling functions are business critical, then you need a proper database (sql, basically) combined with proper data in/out.
Absolutely correct.
However...it's also absolutely unrealistic. Accountants know Excel. Databases are mysterious black boxes, normal forms probably have something to do with Kung Fu or Yoga, and SQL is the second movie in the series.
As a result, it's quite common to find true nightmares of home-grown behemoths based on incredibly complex intertwined Excel spreadsheets. It's hard to prevent these sorts of things from coming into being in the first place. Once they're there, it's damned hard to just figure out what the heck they're doing, let alone replace them with a real solution.
So...I gotta agree. As much as I hate Excel, I just couldn't recommend any alternative spreadsheet to most any office that uses it extensively. The parasite's just too tightly wound through its host.
Could this be the solution to the problem of short battery life in high-end notebooks?
I have what many would describe as a high-end notebook, a PowerBook G4. I get about three hours on a charge. I can watch an entire DVD and all the trailers, etc., and still have at least a half-hour of battery left afterwards. If I were miserly--bump all power savings, dim the screen, and spend all my time in vi in the Terminal--I'm sure I could get four hours without trouble.
I'm sure other manufacturers must be able to do the same, if they want.
Re:Rumors of even *more* advanced stuff..
on
First HDTV Camcorder
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Blockquoth Mr. Poag:
The film is incredibly cheap to mass-produce.
Actually...no, film ain't cheap. It's damn expensive. Figure five bucks for a cheap roll and another five for cheesy one-hour development. That's $10/24 pictures, or $2.40/picture.
In contrast, I've got an Olympus C730 digital camera. It's 3.2 megapixels--enough to get better prints than you will from that cheesy one-hour place. I can fit a couple hundred photos on a single $120 256 Mbyte XD card. Even if the card were single-use, that's still the equivalent of close to $500 worth of film. And you can re-use and re-use and re-use that card for a looooong time.
The upshot is that I can blow the equivalent of a thousand buks of film in a day just to get a few good pictures and not even think twice about it. I'm sure that's important for a professional. For me, a realtively new amateur, it's truly invaluable. No way in Hell could I even think of this hobby if it weren't for the unbeliveable cheapness of digital.
Slashdot Mirror
There's no point. You're too drunk on the Kool-Aid.
You turn a blind eye to God's robbing Pharaoh of his soul, instead pointing to the mindless automoton that God turned Pharaoh into.
God boasts of his murder of thousands of innocent children, and you say the kids had it coming to them.
God repeatedly says that he lies, and you shut your eyes and pretend that he never said any such thing.
God tortures and murders the innocent, and you see it as love and beauty.
What else is there to say, but this?
You are evil.
b&
See, this just makes it clear that you haven't actually read the Bible. Or, if you have, you had on such blinders that anything that doesn't fit with your ``God is justice and love'' mantra gets ignored.
The Bible, in quite clear language, quotes God on his reasons for the Plagues. Justice, at best, is an afterthought.
You prefer the NIV? Fine. We'll get to that later, but I'll quote from it for now.
Here is the true reason for the Plagues.
God has an inferiority complex.
(In case it's not perfectly clear, I mean that the same way I mean ``Hamlet is suicidal.'' If you prefer, ``The God character in the Christian Bible has an inferiority complex.'')
See, God wants the Egyptians to know that he's this big and mighty LORD dude that you don't want to mess with. (The NIV softens that a lot, pulling many of the punches.) A simple booming voice from the heavens or some such isn't enough for him. Sure, that might make them believe that he's the big cheese, but it won't get them to fear him. To do that, he's got to unleash Hell on Earth.
But God's got a problem. For all that Pharaoh has done in the past, including enslaving the Israelites, he's now become reasonable. Perhaps his conscience is getting the better of him and he's hoping for a way out. God knows this, and further knows that, when he sends Moses and Aaron to demand freedom for their people, Pharaoh is quite ready to grant it to them.
But...if they do, then God won't have an excuse to try out all these shiny new Plague toys. So, what does he do?
God hardens Pharaoh's heart.
(It's worth noting, again, that the NIV once again chickens out. The original uses the rhetorical technique of repetition to emphasize the point that God is hardening Pharaoh's heart. The NIV only includes the line once; after that, Pharaoh does his own hardening. The KJV ends up in the same place--but that's no different from the Stockholm syndrome or Patti Hearst. Point is, Pharaoh's heart wasn't hard until God hardened it.)
So, here we have Pharaoh, all set to do the right thing. He's ready to do exactly what God wants him to do, and what God (through his proxies) tells him to do.
And then God steps in and uses mind control to change Pharaoh. God not only removes Pharaoh's free will, turning him into an unwilling puppet in God's sick game, but he changes Pharaoh from a flawed person trying to mend his ways into an evil, cruel, hard-hearted tyrant.
I can't think of any greater evil that has ever been perpetuated upon a human being.
Now that God's twisted Pharaoh into his fall guy, what does he do?
He unleashes the Plagues.
And what are those Plagues? Quite simply, some of the worst possible imaginable biological an
I'd have to say that you're over-thinking this. I doubt you need digital signatures at all.
First, should there be any questions at all, well--Use The Source, Luke! You've got it, so examine it and compile it yourself. That's one of the big selling points of open source, no?
For binary releases, just do it the OpenBSD way. Official releases are created and hosted on trusted servers, along with the hashes. A bunch of mirror sites copy the releases and the hashes. (And, there're these nifty CDs that come pre-packaged with the release and the hashes.)
Anybody who has any questions can verify the hashes on their own copies in any number of ways. You could get the hash off the trusted site, several of the mirrors, etc. You could email somebody you trust, asking them to confirm them. You could even use a telephone or meet in person.
Belive me, if there's any hanky-panky going on, it'll show up real quick. All sorts of people will raise a ruckus.
So, the end result is that you get secure code that everybody trusts and you don't have to muck around with digital signatures, secret sharing, and all that.
Don't get me worng--all those things have their places. Distributing free software just ain't one of them.
Cheers,
b&
First, I think it's fascinating--and quite informative--that you chose to completely ignore my charges that your God murdered all the Egyptian first-born sons (a crime of which he boasts). If you care to reply to this note, I'd really appreciate a justification for that one. Be sure to address God's mind control game with Pharaoh--you know, where Pharaoh was all set, not once but all ten times, to let the Israelites go? And then ``God hardened Pharaoh's heart'' (Exodus 11:10 amongst several others).
You toss around terms like ``free will'' and ``God's love.'' If the Plagues don't demonstrate what God really thinks of them, I don't know what does.
From all I know of them, they honestly believed themselves to be followers of Christ and his teachings. They claimed that their actions were in his name, and in accord with his teachings and his will. That, in my book, makes them Christians.
Further, we can plainly see that what they did was no different from what their (and your) God did himself (in the Plagues and elsewhere) and what their (and your) God caused, ordered, praised, or condoned far too many times to list in the Bible. That is, war, murder, torture, rape, pillage, and just basically be the scourge of the planet. Try 1 Samuel 15:3 and 7-8 for just one random example...of which there are scores.
When we then consider all the great crimes of the past two millennia, we discover that many of them have been done by Christians for Christ.
Finally, we see even today, with the Christian president of a once-atheist-but-now-Christian nation, how a Christian will lie and deceive for the sole purpose of launching an unprovoked and illegal war that has--surprise!--resulted in thousands of unnecessary civilian deaths and numerous acts of torture and various other atrocities.
So, yes, I think those people are Christians, and I think it's exactly the kind of behavior that Christians not only condone, but revel in and have perpetuated for thousands of years.
No. You define everything by God. If God created the world, who created God, and why can't I have a word with him about how God and his followers have run amok? Is it justice to murder a woman for looking over her shoulder (Genesis 19:26)? Is it love to force fathers and sons to eat each other (Ezekiel 5:10)?
It is not I that am perverting the words of the Bible by calling love hate and justice injustice. It is you, who insists that the greatest mass murderer in all of recorded fiction (Genesis 6:17) is loving and merciful.
Heck, your Bible even tells you so:
They may have known that God didn't want them to do it, but they were incapable of knowing that it was evil to do so. By God's design. (This is, of course, ignoring the whole question of why God should think it a sin for Adam and Eve to know about good and evil in the first place.)
I wouldn't hound this point if it weren't for the fact that Christians have long favored similar tactics. For example, Conquistadors would read the Gospel to newly discovered natives. The readings would, of course, be in Latin--a language the natives had never even heard before in their lives. Upon concluding, the Conquistadors would demand that all the natives immediately accept Jesus. When none did...the Conquistadors took it upon themselves to conquer them by the sword.
You would justify even the most horrifyingly depraved evil corruption--such as the slaughter of the Egyptian first-born after God hardened Pharaoh's heart to prevent Pharaoh from doing what he knew was right--simply because God is...well...God. And who are we to question God?
If your God were as harmless as the Easter Bunny, I would smile and nod and say, ``That's nice.'' But you choose to instead worship supreme vileness and to convince others to join you. For that I condemn you, along with your God.
I hope you (eventually) realize the error of your ways. The sooner Christians dump this worship of evil, the sooner the rest of us can stop wondering when the next Crusades or Inquisition or Witch Trials or Slavery or Holocaust or Trail of Tears or whatever is coming.
Cheers,
b&
Your God, according to your Bible, is a study in contradiction if nothing else. A short snippet from a longer list:
Er...not quite.
Simply, you're forgetting which tree it was that they were told not to eat.
That's right, it was the tree of knowledge of good and evil. (Genesis 2:9)
That Adam and Eve were forbidden to eat of the fruit of that tree, one can only conclude that Adam and Eve knew nothing of good and evil. Hardly perfect, wouldn't you say?
But, wait, there's more!
If Adam and Eve didn't know about good and evil, they were incapable--by God's own design--of knowing that it was an evil act to eat of the fruit of that tree. Incapable of knowing that disobeying God's direct order was evil.
God then punished Adam, Eve, and all the rest of humanity for a crime that God had deliberately made them incapable of knowing was a crime.
This, gentle readers, is the ultimate Catch-22.
Cheers,
b&
P.S. This incident is hardly unique. Read any of the so-called ``hard passages'' of the bible and substitute ``Joshua Gord of Topeka, Kansas'' for ``God'' and decide if those actions could, by any stretch of the imagination, still be considered moral or even tolerable. Especially read about the Flood, the Plagues, and the Crucifixion. b&
Today I almost find myself hoping for a Roland Piquepaille article, just to relieve the pace....
Cheers,
b&
...that we're currently experiencing a ROLAND PIQUEPAILLE swarm?
Cheers,
b&
Please, people, let's not feed him. We've got enough whores 'round here already.
Cheers,
b&
In thirty years, will Roland Piquepaille still be spamming Slashdot?
Cheers,
b&
Let's say you're a terrorist. And, further, let's say you want to hurt Americans. What will you do?
Cheers,
b&
...Apple.
Cheers,
b&
So...how much d'ya figure he paid for this one?
Cheers,
b&
Not if you do it right.
Separate ballots into stacks. Have three different people with differing political biases count each stack. When all three people agree on the totals for that stack, you're done.
You're not going to find higher accuracy in machines.
If all the sub-totals are published all the way up the line, the ballot-counters can confirm that they match what they counted. They can also confirm that the summing of all the ballots was done correctly.
Our current system is nowhere near this accurate or accountable.
Of course...the problem is that Americans like to vote too much. Here in Maricopa County, Arizona, we had close to a hundred things to vote on this last time around.
There was the presidential race, naturally, and a senator and a representative. There was also a state senator and representative. That's all well and good.
Then, there were a dozen or more more state, county, and local positions, from attorney general to sherriff to corporation commissioners to the local school board.
Next up were some fifty or sixty judges. Yes, here in Arizona we re-elect our judges. They're appointed in the first place, but every judge must get a majority of approving votes every so many years to stay on the bench.
Finally, there were a dozen ballot propositions.
Now, it's simply humanly impossible to hand-count a ballot like that. No way is it gonna happen. We need the machines.
Or, we could recognize that we're a representative democracy, and do things right.
We should never be voting for judges. If there's a problem with one of them, that's what impeachment is for. Having the public elect judges is simply a case of the legislature shirking its responsibilities.
The same goes for the public initiative process. If you can't get your representative to push through a bill you want, then vote for somebody else. Run yourself, if you have to. That's how the system is supposed to work.
If the only things that were on the ballot were those that are supposed to be on the ballot, and if local elections were held on a different day from the national elections, we'd have ballots that could be easily counted by hand.
But America is too obsessed with voting to care about democracy.
Cheers,
b&
Here's something that's been bothering me for some time.
We keep hearing about all these ultra high-tech hydrogen cars of the future. And, I've heard persistent rumors of, for example, some guy in Tucson who's converted a regular old (and I do mean old) pickup truck to run off hydrogen gas.
So...why can't I buy a fuel tank and carburetor alternative for my '68 VW Camper? It would seem to be a natural. Keep the exact same car, the exact same engine, and just deliver aerated hydrogen to the intake manifold rather than aerated gasoline.
I've come across a few references, but only of people wanting to sell tickets to expensive seminars where they'll reveal the secrets of the technology. What secrets? It can't be worse than the technology all those buses running off of propane or natural gas are using, can it?
Cheers,
b&
What makes you think that this law was written with the intent that you should obey it?
b&
I read that headline, thought it was a man-on-the-ground eyewitness report, and wondered: a missile's just been launched, pointed where?
b&
"Light" transistor, indeed!
One of my first thoughts upon reading the article was that that's exactly what they've created--an optical transistor.
It gets even better. The original transistor originally played a huge role in replacing human operators in telephone network switches. That also seems to be the first target for this new breed of transistor.
Surely, the optical computer just became much more of a possibility. Yeah, we're still a long way from an optical IC, but this is a big step on that path.
Cheers,
b&
What a shame that it's come to this. Once upon a time, we were all clamoring for all correspondence to be moved to email--and for good reason, too.
sigh
b&
The tap water here in Tempe, Arizona, is quite hard. If you don't dry the dishes, you'll get lots of spots on them. (Never bothers me, but some....)
Combine that with the very low humidity here and this kind of evaporative system and it wouldn't be long before, instead of tubing, you had solid bars of mineral salts covered in rubber.
Of course, you could buy de-ionized water, but, for me at least, that'd get old pretty quick.
Cheers,
b&
Absolutely correct.
However...it's also absolutely unrealistic. Accountants know Excel. Databases are mysterious black boxes, normal forms probably have something to do with Kung Fu or Yoga, and SQL is the second movie in the series.
As a result, it's quite common to find true nightmares of home-grown behemoths based on incredibly complex intertwined Excel spreadsheets. It's hard to prevent these sorts of things from coming into being in the first place. Once they're there, it's damned hard to just figure out what the heck they're doing, let alone replace them with a real solution.
So...I gotta agree. As much as I hate Excel, I just couldn't recommend any alternative spreadsheet to most any office that uses it extensively. The parasite's just too tightly wound through its host.
Cheers,
b&
I have what many would describe as a high-end notebook, a PowerBook G4. I get about three hours on a charge. I can watch an entire DVD and all the trailers, etc., and still have at least a half-hour of battery left afterwards. If I were miserly--bump all power savings, dim the screen, and spend all my time in vi in the Terminal--I'm sure I could get four hours without trouble.
I'm sure other manufacturers must be able to do the same, if they want.
Cheers,
b&
No...then you have chowder.
Cheers,
b&
Blockquoth Mr. Poag:
Actually...no, film ain't cheap. It's damn expensive. Figure five bucks for a cheap roll and another five for cheesy one-hour development. That's $10/24 pictures, or $2.40/picture.
In contrast, I've got an Olympus C730 digital camera. It's 3.2 megapixels--enough to get better prints than you will from that cheesy one-hour place. I can fit a couple hundred photos on a single $120 256 Mbyte XD card. Even if the card were single-use, that's still the equivalent of close to $500 worth of film. And you can re-use and re-use and re-use that card for a looooong time.
The upshot is that I can blow the equivalent of a thousand buks of film in a day just to get a few good pictures and not even think twice about it. I'm sure that's important for a professional. For me, a realtively new amateur, it's truly invaluable. No way in Hell could I even think of this hobby if it weren't for the unbeliveable cheapness of digital.
Cheers,
b&