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User: Paladin128

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  1. Re:Big Deal on Pope Cancels Speech After Scientists Protest · · Score: 3, Insightful

    If you don't believe that contraception, abortion, homosexuality, premarital sex, etc. are immoral, you are not Catholic. Those are no more optional beliefs than the dogma of the immaculate conception, the transubstantiation of the Eucharist, and the resurrection.

  2. Re:Dialoge? on Pope Cancels Speech After Scientists Protest · · Score: 1

    If you're so rational, can you refute Aristotle's "first cause" argument? What of Thomas Aquinas' Five Ways?

  3. Re:Dialoge? on Pope Cancels Speech After Scientists Protest · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This is extremely misunderstood. Gallileo was told not to teach his theories as fact until they could be proven, and to not contradict the church in theological matters, not matters of science.

    One also forgets that the Church was Gallileo's employer (he taught at a Catholic university.)

  4. Re:Dialoge? on Pope Cancels Speech After Scientists Protest · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Define "ultraconservative". JPII was as liberal as a Catholic could be without being a heretic. Ratzinger was considered a liberal in his day as well.

    If by "ultraconservative", you mean he took the line that EVERY pope in history took that Catholic dogma cannot change, maybe you're right.

    I don't expect you to subscribe to Catholic beliefs, but this idea the the church should "change with the times" is silly, at best.

  5. Re:Oh boo hoo on The Morality of Web Advertisement Blocking · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Do you even understand the point of HTML and similar markup languages? The user agent which interprets the document has the option of ignoring tags that it doesn't support or doesn't want to. That's why we have non-graphical browsers, mobile browsers, and text-to-speech browsers. Other user agents include spiders (some of which only parse the first 500 bytes of text, removing most tags), validation engines, and mashups.

    The short story is, it's not theft; the user agent is just configured to ignore certain elements that match a pattern. It's the user agent doing it's job of presenting the content in an efficient manner to the user.

    If you want to force people to view the content so rigidly, use a PNG or PDF.

  6. Re:Obl. on Conservative Sarkozy Wins Presidency of France · · Score: 1

    As a very religious conservative, I'll have to agree with you there. I personally think that self-respecting religious organizations (including my own church) should stop accepting federal funds altogether. Even if it weren't unconstitutional for the government to do this, it would be unwise to accept such funds, as to do so, one also has to accept the government's terms. The first amendment is there even more to protect religions from the federal government than the federal government from religions.

    As the old saying goes, if you accept the king's pence, you play the king's tune. I think no self-respecting church should submit itself to the state in this way.

  7. Re:It isn't that simple. on 1080p, Human Vision, and Reality · · Score: 1

    My apologies; just read it again. I think I misunderstood what you wrote on first pass.

  8. Re:Yellow Submarine on Vonage Admits They Have No Workaround · · Score: 1

    Verizon already did this -- it's a service called VoiceWing. I think they launched it in 2004. It was virtually unadvertised. It has fewer than 20,000 customers. It doesn't offer many interesting features, only includes free calls to the US and Canada (Vonage and others offer free calling to selected areas around the world), and the VoIP network and service is actually provided by another company. They mostly sell it by trying to bundle it with DSL or FIOS. Considering that FIOS is just rolling out now, and Verizon doesn't offer DSL naked in most areas, of course people won't sign up for VoiceWing, since in order to get Verizon DSL, they have to have a land line anyway...

  9. Re:stalemate on Vonage Admits They Have No Workaround · · Score: 1

    The court found that Vonage did NOT willfully infringe on the patents, otherwise the stay of injunction would not be granted, and the damages awarded to Verizon would have been tripled.

  10. Re:It isn't that simple. on 1080p, Human Vision, and Reality · · Score: 4, Informative

    Though you are correct that human acuity degenerates near its edges of visual range, some people actually look around the screen a bit. I'm setting up my basement as a home theater, and I'll have a 6' wide screen, where I'll be sitting about 9' away. My eyes tend to wander around the screen, so the sharpness at the edges does matter.

  11. Re:Slashdot to Dvorak: Stop the Apple Trolling! on Dvorak to Apple - Stop The iPhone · · Score: 1
  12. Re:Sorry, but I had to on NASA May Have to Buy Trips to Space · · Score: 1, Interesting

    The military, at least, is a function of the government. Whether or not you agree with the justifications of war in Iraq (I certainly don't), a reasonable person must agree that a government has a right to maintain a military and defend a nation as it sees fit.

    I do not, however, believe space exploration is within the constitutionally defined limits of what the federal government should be doing.

    NASA is a huge, wasteful organization that should be dismantled. If there is value in space exploration, let that be done by the private sector, who has a fiduciary incentive to not waste money.

  13. Re:Integration vs. Cost effectiveness on OSS Web Stacks Outperformed by .Net? · · Score: 2

    I'm not convinced .Net has the advantage on speed. The test compared dissimillar codebases, and was light on details. It may be right, but may not.

    Where .Net has the advantage is a great IDE and developer tools. Many programmers like this kind of thing. I don't. I'm an old-school emacs guy, but I understand why other people like things all integrated and such.

  14. Re:Integration vs. Cost effectiveness on OSS Web Stacks Outperformed by .Net? · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Actually, I have a preference to individually installed and maintained components.

    For instance, if I write my code to run on PHP and MySQL, I can swap out the underlying OS and web server. I could run it on a Linux box, Sun blade server, Dell running Windows, Xserve running OS X server... it's kinda nice.

    If I go with .Net 2.0, I'm stuck with Windows 2003 running on x86.

    Plus, if each piece is seperate, it's less likely that any one piece will bring the whole OS down. I like being able to SSH to a box and just restart httpd (I'm assuming you can do similar under a Win32 server, just don't have much experience.)

    Plus, it's also nice for development. At work, our servers are Red Hat Linux running apache, PHP, and MySQL. My workstation runs XP. I installed Apache, MySQL, and PHP on my XP box to test new versions as I develop them. It's kinda nice having the flexibility of using the very portable OSS stack on Windows (or anything else, for that matter). We've used old Win98 machines, an old G3 towers running OS X.1, laptops running Linux, etc. as test servers.

  15. Re:The usual response on Cell Users As Bad As Drunk Drivers · · Score: 1

    "Driving is a privilege, not a right."

    That's crap. I have a liscence. That liscence gives me the right to drive.

    If the law treats driving as a privilege, the law should be changed.

  16. Re:The usual response on Cell Users As Bad As Drunk Drivers · · Score: 3, Insightful

    So any time any one does any thing that modifies the risk of a situation, we should pass a law? Sorry, I don't want my entire life ruled by obscure laws that no living being can bother to know.

    I hate the fact that I can't replace the carpet in my basement without a permit. Or the fact that if my business grows to more than 10 people I have to start making sure I hire someone of a different ethnicity even if there's no one qualified. Or the fact that I can't write a piece of software that can play a DVD without paying $10,000 to the DVD-CCA to liscence the CSS encryption scheme. Or get a concealed carry permit in my state.

    Add stiff deterrant penalties and charge people for it after they get in an accident. I hate the fact that innattentive and wreckless drivers that cause accidents get off with just insurance surcharges -- and possibly not even that in no-fault states -- while someone who uses a cell phone without a handsfree or drives with a 0.08 BAC can get jail time. That's seriously messed up.

  17. Re:The usual response on Cell Users As Bad As Drunk Drivers · · Score: 1

    Yes, I realize the study said that. No, I don't care. I listed my routine as part of a greater point -- i.e., I make sure to de-prioritize the phone conversation.

    It's not the matter of need to use the phone, it's a matter of personal freedom. I also support the repeal of many drunk driving laws for the same reason. If you do something bad, you should be punished. If, however, you do something that may or may not lead to bad consequences, you should be.

    I have no problem with cell phone use, or drunk driving, to be added as hefty fines if you get into an accident. I don't like the idea of being punished because I might cause one. There's any number of things I could do that may or may not affect my driving ability -- not get enough sleep, be angry, have a bad day at work, have a flu, listen to the radio, etc. You can't regulate every damn little thing.

  18. Re:The usual response on Cell Users As Bad As Drunk Drivers · · Score: 1

    The legal system isn't about people getting 'satisfaction'. In a free society, the legal system should maintain order while minimizing entrenvhment into personal freedoms. The state, in order to enforce any law, needs the legal ability to terminate a life. In other words, if you resist the police with every means you, you will die.

    Since every law can only be enforced with the threat of death, any law put on the books should be carefully considered -- does it infringe on an individual's freedoms? How does this mesh with maintaining public order?

    You obviously shouldn't allow a person to carry uncontained plutonium around town, as that has a really high probability of causing problems. Talking on the cell phone while driving? Not so much. It could cause a problem.

    Deterrance vs. preventative laws will ultimately have the same effect in the long run; people won't do risky actions because of percieved consequences. I'd prefere that those of us that can do certain actions safely should be allowed to.

  19. Re:The usual response on Cell Users As Bad As Drunk Drivers · · Score: 1, Interesting

    I disagree with a lot of drunk-driving laws as well. The law should punish bad and reckless actions, not actions that may or may not lead to bad and reckless actions.

  20. Re:The usual response on Cell Users As Bad As Drunk Drivers · · Score: 1, Interesting

    It's about priority of attention, NOT whether or not someone uses thier hands-free. I did read the article. Did you read my comment?

    As for the distraction argument, talking to someone who is in the car is a distraction, as is listening to the radio. There were all types of groups trying to ban using a radio while operating a car when they were first available. The country, at the time, was much less tolerant of stupid and useless laws that punish ordinary people that aren't doing anything wrong.

    And my argument was based on the principal that the law should punish those who actually do something wrong, not do something that might lead to doing something wrong. This is why I vote libertarian.

  21. Re:The usual response on Cell Users As Bad As Drunk Drivers · · Score: 0

    I did read the article.

    If you read my fucking comment, you would clearly see that I said the problem was behavioral -- I don't pay attention to the conversation, but instead the road.

  22. Re:The usual response on Cell Users As Bad As Drunk Drivers · · Score: 1, Interesting

    That's a behavioral problem that is under someone's control. I always use my hands-free set, which I plug in upon entering my car, and pay the physical phone itself no mind. Some of my friends wonder if I ignore them on the phone -- and I sometimes do if I'm driving. I pay attention to the road first, phone second.

    They should not punish or forbid driving while talking on the cell phone -- but there should be stiff penalties if they cause an accident via reckless driving. I know many states are strictly no-fault, but that should change. The person who caused the accident is and should be at fault! That person should pay for the damages. Let stiff fines and financial consequences be the factors that make people make decisions -- don't penalize me because some idiots can't prioritize thier behavior.

  23. Re:User friendly? on Mark Shuttleworth Proposes Delaying next Ubuntu · · Score: 1

    In absense of the bootloader, there is nothing. There is nothing to fall back to. So yes, it is impossible.

    What if you were told that it was unnacceptible for the helicopter you designed to fail even the blades were removed? Or if in case of the death of the pilots and all the crew, it still had to had to fail-over to another pilot?

  24. Re:User friendly? on Mark Shuttleworth Proposes Delaying next Ubuntu · · Score: 1

    You're asking the software guys to do something that CAN'T BE DONE on the given hardware. If it fails, there's nothing more it can do. You have to re-install GRUB or a different bootloader (like the one that Windows uses). There's no room on the first 512 bytes of disk for multiple boot loaders.

    Is it unfortunate that there was a bug in GRUB? Yup. That sucks. But the guys working on GRUB are almost all volunteers; they don't necessarily have access to your motherboard/hard drive/firmware combination.

    Why does the Windows bootloader support more hardware? Guess what happens if Dell builds a system that Windows can't boot? They don't release it, or they make Microsoft fix it. Most OEM's don't test Linux, so these problems don't get found.

  25. Re:Simple answer. on Home Network Data Storage Device · · Score: 1

    Really? The EPIA-VE5000A boards can be had for under $100. I can't find an Athlon 64 CPU for less than that, let alone a mobo. Sure, it doesn't come with a gigabit NIC, but that's a cheap addition.