We need more such intolerant country clubs of cinemas. I would pay membership to such an establishment, where people with such poor control of their compulsions to check their phone are banned.
The reason I dislike going to the cinema is not the movies. It's the audience being completely unable to keep sound and light discipline.
There isn't anything fantastic about the technology in the F35, especially not for the price, but not even when ignoring the economical aspect.
Modern block designs of F16 and F/A18 have comparable avionics to the F35. The Silent Eagle F15 is just as good at avoiding enemy aircraft radar as the F35, and there is no reason the same technology could not be applied to F/A18's except lack of demand.
There is nothing wise about the F35 except throwing a bone to the US government. Which of course is a big part of any decision to buy fighter aircraft.
Avionics can be - and constantly are - upgraded. The block 60 F16 is just as advanced in the sensors and guided munitions as the F35 at a fraction of the cost, and with a superior airframe.
The point of the F35 is not advanced avionics - those are easy to replace and upgrade - but to lower cost through more common parts in the aircrafts while retaining airframe capability. And that is not what they're getting anymore.
So now the F35 is all about generating jobs in various states so the senators will keep the budget for it going. There are no technical advantages of the F35 program left.
There is rather a huge difference with a low unit cost assault rifle, which can be retooled or replaced with ease, and a modern fighter aircraft in general.
And the F35 is not in the middle lane of complexity of modern fighter aircrafts, it is leading the pack, both mechanically and electronically.
Further, the M16 core design was good (apart from the still present problem of direct gas actuation of the receiver bolt) and implementations details were the problem. The F35 is by design a compromise between competing demands. It is by design built, from the ground up, to not do any task well.
It has a body designed to accept the fan the Marines want to get sort-of VTOL capacity. This cripples it in other roles.
It has a half-baked stealth system, because of the fan and other trade-offs, and when in stealth it can't carry more load than an F15 rebuilt for stealth - an airplane costing much, much less in acquisition and operation.
And a pointy-nose in general is horrible for CAS. Almost no time over target, too little armor to go low and use direct fire weapons efficiently and too high speed to perform observation and guidance. The F35 solves none of those problems, except the speed one in the Marine version, but that plane is even more fragile than the non-fan version making it terrible for a CAS role.
There is no way to change that downstream on aircraft which are already built. The F35 will cripple US air capability, not directly because of its own problems directly, but because it removes aircraft more suited for the roles due to eating up their budget.
Quite correct, compiled code is scanned all the time. And in doing this, bugs are CONSTANTLY found. Big, bad ones which leave wide open holes.
And many of them are around for years before they are patched. Many years. Some are still not fixed, after many years.
And yet more of them are not possible to detect until other changes in the software or architecture exposes that part of the executable to a new environment. The bug could have been there for dozens of years - yes, there is code in Windows that old - and still not be patched today.
The difference is, with open source, we know exactly how long the bug has been there, and when it was fixed. With closed source, we have no way of knowing. None. Really. All we can know is what is exposed in the builds we have access to with the interfaces we have access to.
And you know, if "someone didn't look" then they didn't know. Srsly. What kind of brain damage produced that line of reasoning?
And you base this on what comparative statistics? How many security related bugs have the closed source developers found and fixed while these bugs were closed by a community scouring over the code?
Considering those are people, not sources, and at least one of them (Dawkins) holds (and justifies) a very strong stance in *my* argument's favour, not yours, well, you have yet to provide any sources!
And no, googling their names did not provide me with a handy bibliography listing where they explain the evidence. And anyway, you have already admitted you have not examined, nor care for, evidence. You only care about not questioning what you have been taught since childhood.
I deal with them by having my household accessible on the Internet.
And apparently the havoc I wreak is insufficient to bring the Internet down.
Maybe you're having lots of problems from my appliances, but the rest of the 'net seems to cope just fine. I suggest you look over your own setup before you start blaming me for your havoc!
Thermostat: I don't know when I come home, but when I do I will be tired from a ten hour plus flight, and I will not be going out to dinner. Laundry machine: I am busy doing other things and forget to check the time, so my clothes get wrinkled. No, I will not stop doing things just so I can remember the laundry. I literally can't do that. Broken fridge: How do I know it's broken so I have to plug a laptop into it? And I don't want LCD's on my whiteware! Freezing weather: I have no friend or neighbour who I trust to come by. Door opening: See above, plus, there is NO WAY I will leave a copy of my key outside the door when I am away. Where do you live that you can do that anyway? Out-of-reach window shades: I want to leave them open if it is cloudy. What if the weather changes faster than expected? What if I forgot to close them because the sun was not up when I left? What if I want to *open* them when I am away, because it turned cloudy? Dishwasher: No way I will keep that running while I try to sleep. And loading by USB is the worst idea ever; it means it will never get done.
To replace automation with manual operations - in many cases complex operations requiring memorized steps or check lists - is counterproductive and will end up with the tasks not being done at all, or at best done poorly.
The whole point of the Internet of things is to remove the need to remember to look at clocks, remember to contact friends and neighbours when planning to travel (and hoping they're not traveling at the same time) and to not have to manually examine and troubleshoot appliances.
"Minor inconveniences" add up. Even if something can "easily be replaced" by paying attention or performing a manual task does not mean doing so is a good use of time and attention. I, for one, have enough tasks in a day to keep me busy, and I don't need to add to that task burden with tasks which make my life more comfortable and can be done automatically.
Why should I spend the effort trying to guesstimate when I will come home from a service trip to Asia which will take me between one and three weeks, to have the thermostat scheduled at the most likely time? And what do I do if I guess wrong, and have to stay another two weeks? Why should I carry that inconvenience just because you feel my thermostat does not belong on the Internet?
But you can not provide the evidence you weighed. You just make nebulous claims about "mainstream historians" without being able to name a single one.
And yes, it is damn arrogant to claim to have done research, yet faltering on every point of explaining it. Immensely arrogant. You're quite a piece of work. Jesus would be proud.
Me: Research based on others, understands limitations, admits topics are controversial. You: Knows all the answer, knows topics are settled, because you've been told so, even though you have no evidence.
I have no idea what you're reading, but it's not what I wrote. You're replying to something you wish I had written, and not to anything I wrote.
You're proud and arrogant, holding as truth that which you have been told while claiming those who research and want to learn are "proving to themselves it's not true". You are what Jesus spoke out against, a pharisee sticking to dogma instead of using your brain and your skills to find out how things are.
And you're claiming *I* am arrogant, for seeking truth instead of just accepting "but I am told it's like this, so it is unqestionable!"
And yes, obviously your personal belief has no bearing on the truth. That's why I asked you how you know which gospels are true and which are false; I expected you had a criteria for that beyond belief. Apologies for expecting you to use your brain and not just to regurgitate what you've been told since childhood.
So you make forceful statements of existence, slamming anyone voicing disagreement and claiming they are "proving to themselves" that they can't find any evidence, based on - no research or understanding of your own, but on what you have been told since you were a kid.
Good show there. Really good show. You're the reason christians in general are considered ignorant loons who will not think for themselves or consider evidence, but simply accept what they are spoon fed.
By the by, by background in religious studies is not what you assume it is in order to dismiss me. I studied at a Christian school, with the goal of becoming a preacher and bible scholar. But do go ahead and sink your own point further, it's amusing to watch your flailing and your smearing attempts. "Who would Jesus smear", after all.
And you could have convinced me if you had actually ever convinced yourself. But since you haven't, there is indeed nothing you can do.
You are correct, I am not a native English speaker. I am, however, a student of the bible, of christianity and of religion in general, on a formal level.
"Mainstream historians" is suitably nebulous to hold a stance like yours. It means nothing at all, unless you can point to some of these "mainstream historians" which appear to hold a unanimous view in spite of the available evidence. I'm very curious, because all I find when I search is "christian historians", which is a far cry from "mainstream".
What I am asking for is a pointer to what made YOU so certain. Not everything you read to become certain, but a pointer to it. This being/. you ought to understand this, and why I am asking for it.
You keep stating that *I* have convinced myself of something, when I am the only one providing any arguments beyond "but but mainstream historians" and "but but the (right) gospels".
And if all you are doing is regurgitating what you have been told since you were a kid, then I seriously suggest you stop doing that and instead start reading up on what the evidence actually says.
That you believe you did not is very telling. But you were describing one of the ways a religious institution is formed. "Subjective experience" is the basis of pretty much every cult and religion out there, excepting the ones like Scientology.
This is the key problem; you have NOT given me any of the "many accounts written about him". I listed the ones which are useless, you countered with the gospels as primary sources - which either means you do not understand what "primary source" means, or you have no idea what we know about where the gospels came from.
So please, provide some of the "many accounts written about him" which you use as a basis to assert he exists?
Thanks for the admission you have no method to ascertain which gospels actually are historical. I appreciate the admission that they are useless for verification of historical truth.
That we have no record of Josephus writing about Jesus is not controversial at all - we do not. "The idea" that he did may be appealing, but it is not supported by available facts. The earliest available writings of Josephus about the time period have no mentions of Jesus. Later copies of the same writing get more and more elaborate descriptions of Jesus. All this provides is "the idea" that Josephus might have written something which was then cut away in the earliest copies of his writing we have. You enjoy invoking Occam's razor. Please apply it here.
Drawing on the claims on who Jesus was, he was an allegedly much more important man than a mere ruler of men. There would not be statues and coins, but there would be writings - lots of writings, from people who actually met and saw him, and were around him. And from Romans who noted what happened, and how he was executed, and the manner in which it happened. Pilates would have written to his superiors to clear his name, and this would be recorded. There would be immense amounts of documentation of such a momentous person.
As to the gospels, I dismiss their status as primary sources. They do not fill the criteria for those. None of them do.
And how do you know which gospels are "the false ones"? Can you please provide the selection criteria you apply? This is a serious question; no-one has ever managed to explain how they know which ones to trust and why, other than "I grew up trusting these, so I trust them", or "tradition says...".
And yes, people write about and die for imaginary persons all the time. Christianity is not the first nor the latest instance of this, and the fact that people do is evidence of nothing at all.
No. As you so eloquently explain with your gravity example, a law is not an observation. It is a conclusion based on a fact.
The fact of gravity is that two objects will exert an attractive force on one another. This is the observation. From this is generalized the law of gravity, which is a generalization based on the observation. Thus, the law is not the fact. It is the generalization from the fact.
Evolution is observed. It happens, whether we believe in it or not. That is the underlying fact. The fact of evolution. From that we create models and explanations, which are the theories.
I sincerely recommend a few basic courses in biology. None of this will appear as mysterious to you then.
Evolution is a fact to the same extent that the earth revolving around the sun is a fact. It is observed and recorded to the point that there exists no reasonable doubt it occurs. The only debate is in how it occurs.
That is the fact of evolution. You should take a few classes in biology, it will be quite an eye opener for you.
I hold Jesus to the exact same standard I would hold any historical character. No higher nor lower.
None of my listed examples are "theories". I stated known facts. None of them are in the slightest controversial. If you have better facts, please provide them.
The gospels (which ones, by the by? The gospel of Barnabus says very different things compared to Luke/Mark/Matthew, and John says something entirely different again) are NOT primary sources by any historical standard as they are all written a generation after the events by people who never met Jesus. However, Julius Caesar left behind coins, statues, hundreds of mentions in history books, plays and inscriptions, and in copies of accounts which were written in his time by people who met him.
In contrast, there exists NO mention of Jesus between 1 AD and 33 AD in any Roman (or other) writing, or a copy of any writing from that period. None. Not a single one.
Thus, holding Jesus to the standard of Julius Caesar, he never existed.
Now, please, I gave specifics. It's your turn to do so.
All religions start somewhere, that is true. Usually with someone not understanding something and making up an explanation, or with someone wanting to achieve a goal.
And I would like a definition of "an awakening", please.
Slashdot Mirror
We need more such intolerant country clubs of cinemas. I would pay membership to such an establishment, where people with such poor control of their compulsions to check their phone are banned.
The reason I dislike going to the cinema is not the movies. It's the audience being completely unable to keep sound and light discipline.
There isn't anything fantastic about the technology in the F35, especially not for the price, but not even when ignoring the economical aspect.
Modern block designs of F16 and F/A18 have comparable avionics to the F35. The Silent Eagle F15 is just as good at avoiding enemy aircraft radar as the F35, and there is no reason the same technology could not be applied to F/A18's except lack of demand.
There is nothing wise about the F35 except throwing a bone to the US government. Which of course is a big part of any decision to buy fighter aircraft.
Avionics can be - and constantly are - upgraded. The block 60 F16 is just as advanced in the sensors and guided munitions as the F35 at a fraction of the cost, and with a superior airframe.
The point of the F35 is not advanced avionics - those are easy to replace and upgrade - but to lower cost through more common parts in the aircrafts while retaining airframe capability. And that is not what they're getting anymore.
So now the F35 is all about generating jobs in various states so the senators will keep the budget for it going. There are no technical advantages of the F35 program left.
There is rather a huge difference with a low unit cost assault rifle, which can be retooled or replaced with ease, and a modern fighter aircraft in general.
And the F35 is not in the middle lane of complexity of modern fighter aircrafts, it is leading the pack, both mechanically and electronically.
Further, the M16 core design was good (apart from the still present problem of direct gas actuation of the receiver bolt) and implementations details were the problem. The F35 is by design a compromise between competing demands. It is by design built, from the ground up, to not do any task well.
It has a body designed to accept the fan the Marines want to get sort-of VTOL capacity. This cripples it in other roles.
It has a half-baked stealth system, because of the fan and other trade-offs, and when in stealth it can't carry more load than an F15 rebuilt for stealth - an airplane costing much, much less in acquisition and operation.
And a pointy-nose in general is horrible for CAS. Almost no time over target, too little armor to go low and use direct fire weapons efficiently and too high speed to perform observation and guidance. The F35 solves none of those problems, except the speed one in the Marine version, but that plane is even more fragile than the non-fan version making it terrible for a CAS role.
There is no way to change that downstream on aircraft which are already built. The F35 will cripple US air capability, not directly because of its own problems directly, but because it removes aircraft more suited for the roles due to eating up their budget.
Quite correct, compiled code is scanned all the time. And in doing this, bugs are CONSTANTLY found. Big, bad ones which leave wide open holes.
And many of them are around for years before they are patched. Many years. Some are still not fixed, after many years.
And yet more of them are not possible to detect until other changes in the software or architecture exposes that part of the executable to a new environment. The bug could have been there for dozens of years - yes, there is code in Windows that old - and still not be patched today.
The difference is, with open source, we know exactly how long the bug has been there, and when it was fixed. With closed source, we have no way of knowing. None. Really. All we can know is what is exposed in the builds we have access to with the interfaces we have access to.
And you know, if "someone didn't look" then they didn't know. Srsly. What kind of brain damage produced that line of reasoning?
And how long have the bugs in the Windows networking code been sitting there? Oh, right, you can't know, because they're not telling us.
Perhaps you should use some of that logic which you wish others to experience.
And you base this on what comparative statistics? How many security related bugs have the closed source developers found and fixed while these bugs were closed by a community scouring over the code?
Five or ten years ago I suffered from higher cognitive load and was less productive.
Problems are opportunities. Instead of whining, find out a way to gain something by providing a solution.
Considering those are people, not sources, and at least one of them (Dawkins) holds (and justifies) a very strong stance in *my* argument's favour, not yours, well, you have yet to provide any sources!
And no, googling their names did not provide me with a handy bibliography listing where they explain the evidence. And anyway, you have already admitted you have not examined, nor care for, evidence. You only care about not questioning what you have been taught since childhood.
I deal with them by having my household accessible on the Internet.
And apparently the havoc I wreak is insufficient to bring the Internet down.
Maybe you're having lots of problems from my appliances, but the rest of the 'net seems to cope just fine. I suggest you look over your own setup before you start blaming me for your havoc!
Thermostat: I don't know when I come home, but when I do I will be tired from a ten hour plus flight, and I will not be going out to dinner.
Laundry machine: I am busy doing other things and forget to check the time, so my clothes get wrinkled. No, I will not stop doing things just so I can remember the laundry. I literally can't do that.
Broken fridge: How do I know it's broken so I have to plug a laptop into it? And I don't want LCD's on my whiteware!
Freezing weather: I have no friend or neighbour who I trust to come by.
Door opening: See above, plus, there is NO WAY I will leave a copy of my key outside the door when I am away. Where do you live that you can do that anyway?
Out-of-reach window shades: I want to leave them open if it is cloudy. What if the weather changes faster than expected? What if I forgot to close them because the sun was not up when I left? What if I want to *open* them when I am away, because it turned cloudy?
Dishwasher: No way I will keep that running while I try to sleep. And loading by USB is the worst idea ever; it means it will never get done.
To replace automation with manual operations - in many cases complex operations requiring memorized steps or check lists - is counterproductive and will end up with the tasks not being done at all, or at best done poorly.
The whole point of the Internet of things is to remove the need to remember to look at clocks, remember to contact friends and neighbours when planning to travel (and hoping they're not traveling at the same time) and to not have to manually examine and troubleshoot appliances.
"Minor inconveniences" add up. Even if something can "easily be replaced" by paying attention or performing a manual task does not mean doing so is a good use of time and attention. I, for one, have enough tasks in a day to keep me busy, and I don't need to add to that task burden with tasks which make my life more comfortable and can be done automatically.
Why should I spend the effort trying to guesstimate when I will come home from a service trip to Asia which will take me between one and three weeks, to have the thermostat scheduled at the most likely time? And what do I do if I guess wrong, and have to stay another two weeks? Why should I carry that inconvenience just because you feel my thermostat does not belong on the Internet?
But you can not provide the evidence you weighed. You just make nebulous claims about "mainstream historians" without being able to name a single one.
And yes, it is damn arrogant to claim to have done research, yet faltering on every point of explaining it. Immensely arrogant. You're quite a piece of work. Jesus would be proud.
Me: Research based on others, understands limitations, admits topics are controversial.
You: Knows all the answer, knows topics are settled, because you've been told so, even though you have no evidence.
I have no idea what you're reading, but it's not what I wrote. You're replying to something you wish I had written, and not to anything I wrote.
You're proud and arrogant, holding as truth that which you have been told while claiming those who research and want to learn are "proving to themselves it's not true". You are what Jesus spoke out against, a pharisee sticking to dogma instead of using your brain and your skills to find out how things are.
And you're claiming *I* am arrogant, for seeking truth instead of just accepting "but I am told it's like this, so it is unqestionable!"
And yes, obviously your personal belief has no bearing on the truth. That's why I asked you how you know which gospels are true and which are false; I expected you had a criteria for that beyond belief. Apologies for expecting you to use your brain and not just to regurgitate what you've been told since childhood.
So you make forceful statements of existence, slamming anyone voicing disagreement and claiming they are "proving to themselves" that they can't find any evidence, based on - no research or understanding of your own, but on what you have been told since you were a kid.
Good show there. Really good show. You're the reason christians in general are considered ignorant loons who will not think for themselves or consider evidence, but simply accept what they are spoon fed.
By the by, by background in religious studies is not what you assume it is in order to dismiss me. I studied at a Christian school, with the goal of becoming a preacher and bible scholar. But do go ahead and sink your own point further, it's amusing to watch your flailing and your smearing attempts. "Who would Jesus smear", after all.
And you could have convinced me if you had actually ever convinced yourself. But since you haven't, there is indeed nothing you can do.
You are correct, I am not a native English speaker. I am, however, a student of the bible, of christianity and of religion in general, on a formal level.
"Mainstream historians" is suitably nebulous to hold a stance like yours. It means nothing at all, unless you can point to some of these "mainstream historians" which appear to hold a unanimous view in spite of the available evidence. I'm very curious, because all I find when I search is "christian historians", which is a far cry from "mainstream".
What I am asking for is a pointer to what made YOU so certain. Not everything you read to become certain, but a pointer to it. This being /. you ought to understand this, and why I am asking for it.
You keep stating that *I* have convinced myself of something, when I am the only one providing any arguments beyond "but but mainstream historians" and "but but the (right) gospels".
And if all you are doing is regurgitating what you have been told since you were a kid, then I seriously suggest you stop doing that and instead start reading up on what the evidence actually says.
Actually it's yours which are betraying you. But hey, what does it matter in a hundred years anyway!
That you believe you did not is very telling. But you were describing one of the ways a religious institution is formed. "Subjective experience" is the basis of pretty much every cult and religion out there, excepting the ones like Scientology.
This is the key problem; you have NOT given me any of the "many accounts written about him". I listed the ones which are useless, you countered with the gospels as primary sources - which either means you do not understand what "primary source" means, or you have no idea what we know about where the gospels came from.
So please, provide some of the "many accounts written about him" which you use as a basis to assert he exists?
Thanks for the admission you have no method to ascertain which gospels actually are historical. I appreciate the admission that they are useless for verification of historical truth.
A religion is a form of institution.
That we have no record of Josephus writing about Jesus is not controversial at all - we do not. "The idea" that he did may be appealing, but it is not supported by available facts. The earliest available writings of Josephus about the time period have no mentions of Jesus. Later copies of the same writing get more and more elaborate descriptions of Jesus. All this provides is "the idea" that Josephus might have written something which was then cut away in the earliest copies of his writing we have. You enjoy invoking Occam's razor. Please apply it here.
Drawing on the claims on who Jesus was, he was an allegedly much more important man than a mere ruler of men. There would not be statues and coins, but there would be writings - lots of writings, from people who actually met and saw him, and were around him. And from Romans who noted what happened, and how he was executed, and the manner in which it happened. Pilates would have written to his superiors to clear his name, and this would be recorded. There would be immense amounts of documentation of such a momentous person.
As to the gospels, I dismiss their status as primary sources. They do not fill the criteria for those. None of them do.
And how do you know which gospels are "the false ones"? Can you please provide the selection criteria you apply? This is a serious question; no-one has ever managed to explain how they know which ones to trust and why, other than "I grew up trusting these, so I trust them", or "tradition says ...".
And yes, people write about and die for imaginary persons all the time. Christianity is not the first nor the latest instance of this, and the fact that people do is evidence of nothing at all.
No. As you so eloquently explain with your gravity example, a law is not an observation. It is a conclusion based on a fact.
The fact of gravity is that two objects will exert an attractive force on one another. This is the observation. From this is generalized the law of gravity, which is a generalization based on the observation. Thus, the law is not the fact. It is the generalization from the fact.
Evolution is observed. It happens, whether we believe in it or not. That is the underlying fact. The fact of evolution. From that we create models and explanations, which are the theories.
I sincerely recommend a few basic courses in biology. None of this will appear as mysterious to you then.
Evolution is a fact to the same extent that the earth revolving around the sun is a fact. It is observed and recorded to the point that there exists no reasonable doubt it occurs. The only debate is in how it occurs.
That is the fact of evolution. You should take a few classes in biology, it will be quite an eye opener for you.
I hold Jesus to the exact same standard I would hold any historical character. No higher nor lower.
None of my listed examples are "theories". I stated known facts. None of them are in the slightest controversial. If you have better facts, please provide them.
The gospels (which ones, by the by? The gospel of Barnabus says very different things compared to Luke/Mark/Matthew, and John says something entirely different again) are NOT primary sources by any historical standard as they are all written a generation after the events by people who never met Jesus. However, Julius Caesar left behind coins, statues, hundreds of mentions in history books, plays and inscriptions, and in copies of accounts which were written in his time by people who met him.
In contrast, there exists NO mention of Jesus between 1 AD and 33 AD in any Roman (or other) writing, or a copy of any writing from that period. None. Not a single one.
Thus, holding Jesus to the standard of Julius Caesar, he never existed.
Now, please, I gave specifics. It's your turn to do so.
All religions start somewhere, that is true. Usually with someone not understanding something and making up an explanation, or with someone wanting to achieve a goal.
And I would like a definition of "an awakening", please.
I don't. I hold no beliefs, only conclusions based on observation.