...but this will dog him his entire life. He's one extreme example of how someone can leverage the internet to abuse someone else and cause irrepairable damage.
My guess is that whoever modded the parent funny didn't *really* understand how serious the problem is.
Are you kidding me? My guess is that they see the list of absolutely horrible affects for what it is: funny. Do you seriously believe that he's going to be a shut-in and remembered for being the "Star Wars Kid", made fun of for the rest of his life? You don't think that if he were to just let it drop and get an apology, that it may well have been over by now? Or even with the recent behavior, that it won't be over within another year or so?
By the time this kid gets out of being a teenager, he's not going to be approached by a 2 or 3 people on the street (it's not like he's getting mobbed, people), and he'll probably have at least one other thing in life that depresses him even more.
I'm sorry, but as much as what the other kids did *was* wrong, this guy's no better.
He had to drop out of school due to harassment. The kid didn't *have* to drop out of school. The proper action is to go to the administration. If nothing happens there, then you keep going. Their job is to provide a learning environment. If that's not being done, you keep going up, and enforce their job. It works. Been there. Done that.
He still gets approached by people on the streets about it. He's not exactly getting mobbed. It's easy enough to develop a quick line to say and then walk away. Period.
His parents had to hire a private tutor for him. How horrible. Homeschooling was enough for many of my friends. Hell, the public school system sucks so much I'd bet he has a better education now after the private tutor.
He ended up on anti-depression medication. And? Seriously, this is not exactly something new. Little things can set off chemical imbalances. He'll have a hell of a lot worse things to get depressed about soon enough, I'm sure.
Not directed at the parent since I don't know it's position, but I have to respond to a common thought process.
So at least one of them will barely be affected.
And this makes it perfectly alright?
Thanks to the plentiful linking of other posters, I've finally seen the video for the first time, and to be honest, I'm not impressed, nor amused. It's just sorta stupid. He's acting out a fantasy and that's it. It's not really a whole lot to worry about. Demanding compensation for something like this is should be even more embarrassing.
I hope that he has problems finding a job, and that other people use it as a lesson to not use the court system for little things like being embarrassed. I sure as hell won't hire anyone with a record like his. Psycological damage, my foot...
Someone should mod the parent anonymous coward up.
"How many great minds are not being spent looking for food on garbage dumps in Africa?"
In fact, based on what the GP said, looking at it from what the parent post pointed out, you could make a reasonable argument that while we are helping to slow down evolution in 1st world countries by helping everyone survive, in places where this action is not the case, we may be speeding up evolution, by the normal means of "survival of the fittest".
I'm not advocating killing off the homeless or anything like that mind you. Just want to warn everyone of the impending super-intelligent beings that will be coming out of the 3rd world countries in a couple years.:)
With ours, it was likely also a problem with the requirements, which I should have also mentioned earlier. The requirement was that we could only use certain materials in our construction. If my memory's right (this was 15 or so years ago), we could use paper, straws, and scotch tape. We dropped them about 9 feet as well, certainly not enough for a paper parachute to unfurl properly. People also tried to start with it unfurled as much as possible, but there's only so much you can do.
I would agree. I remember the same competition at our school, the rules being fairly explicit, still not disallowing parachutes. In fact, it wasn't even an uncommon solution. About 50% of the class used parachutes. Interestingly enough, the parachutes performed fairly poorly, given the high representation.
I mean, granted, this change merely takes the squatter business and adds more legitimacy, but at least it will hopefully have some semblance of order. Using the lottery idea, it would be absolute chaos.
If I've got a company and I want to register foobar.com, then should I not have more of a chance than some random guy who may just want the name so he can auction the domain off as well?
I suppose that would take the profit away from Verisign and into individuals, but why is that better in this case rather than a controlling point of authority, legitimate or not.
Ahh, yes. The old "I read it on the internet, so it must be true!" Are you so sure it's legit?
I will tell you that 5 seconds of searching gives you little information, besides a bunch of articles referencing the one you linked. Many of them, such as http://www.ioerror.us/2005/12/09/bush-constitution -just-a-goddamned-piece-of-paper/ rightfully expresses the need for some verification, rather than just a single person's dramatizing article. My short searching was unable to find any verification.
Wishing something was true doesn't make it so.
People on both sides need to cut this sort of thing out. They need to cool off and be reasonable with each other again. Both Democrats and Republicans are guilty of open hostility and attacks.
See, that just wouldn't be pretty. I mean, if they did that, then Bill would end up as Supreme Ruler of France, and he'd actually start building an army, probably end up taking over.
You have a theory, and I don't agree with it. That's fine, of course, we're both entitled to our opinions of what happened. However, why is it that you bring up the theory in the middle of discussions when it has nothing to do with it?
Editing out the Pentagon theory, your post was excellent, and had a point directly within the boundaries of the article and the following discussion. It really made me rethink some of my ideas about letting my TV security go to the dogs. But the mention of the Pentagon theory sorta made me wonder what the hell was going on.
For instance, if I'm talking about internet security, and how people should pay more attention to their computer settings, get the latest patches, etc., and I bring up the opinion that the Kansas school system is really sort of silly sometimes, I've brought no more value into the discussion about internet security. I've actually made myself look a little more like an obsessed crackpot, regardless of what I'm arguing about, even if the idea I inserted is completely true. Is that the impression you're wanting to make, or are you trading off some of the topical value of your post in order to bring up an issue that you feel needs to be raised?
Just trying to ask an honest question about your motives, no offense intended (seriously). I'm just curious about that kind of stuff.
Yes, I imagine that the free version will have the "same weak Oracle password encryption scheme" that requires admin access (or at least select on a restricted table that wouldn't be granted in the first place unless the DBA wants a security hole).
What is people's problem? Yes, security is weaker in this than in some other systems, due to a hole that doesn't exist until someone with admin privilges explicitly grants it. Oracle actually admits to the security risks of granting privs on dictionary tables/views or to certain roles that have those privs. They suggest that you don't use them by default, but create what you need.
I duplicated several of the techniques that they describe for actual use in our own system last year (under tightly controlled conditions). Yes, they are security risks, but by default, they are controlled. Oracle will let you shoot yourself in the foot, but so will most other systems.
I'll be happy to burn Oracle on their installer, OEM, any other interface, install documentation, and even support (Metalink's running at being able to answer about 50% of my questions so far for the last several years). But the security bit in that CNet article is purely alarmist, and shouldn't have surprised or alarmed any competant Oracle DBA.
People have gotten nausea from games for a long time now, and different things affect different people.
For instance, for FPS games, I could play Wolfenstein and Heretic, but not Doom. All of the ones after that made me sick until Dark Forces, and that one still affected me after a while. Then I was pretty much stuck getting sick with all of them until the Unreal Tournament line came out. I don't know why, but the UT line is the only one out of the current lines that doesn't make me ill (even after very long sessions). The Doom engine, Elite Force, etc, all make me sick. Deus Ex made me slightly ill, but was slow paced enough for me to fight through it a couple hours at a time (at most).
To this day, I'll try out about any game, but most FPS games still affect me, though some take longer to make me ill than others. Other people I know have had worse experiences. UT seems to have the least affect on people, and it still kills a few of my friends.
I haven't noticed the realism really helping or hurting. Doom made me sick faster than Dark Forces, and the UT still doesn't make me sick, though games of lesser graphics do. Based on that, I think it's all in how the engine works, not how realistic it looks.
Sorry about that, guess I do run in some of the less known circles then. I know a good many fundamentalists, but I guess I don't really associate much with those guys anymore (my ex was one). I do live in Georgia, which seems to have a pretty fair number of nuts, but didn't think it was quite that bad. Looks like I was a bit wrong there.
Thanks for posting those polls. I've seen the CNN poll, but I don't generally believe their polls because they aren't very clear on what they ask. The other poll seems to be a lot more informative indeed, and I trust it a bit more.
I'm really quite surprised based on the clergy and other people I talk to. Really disappointing to me, personally. But thanks for pointing it out and correcting me.
Maybe it's just me being United Methodist, but most of the pastors, ministers, priests, and other christians (most of them NOT of my own denomination) I talk to actually don't fit into this group you're showing as the "majority". Now granted, I've never seen any stats on this one way or another, but my belief is that the majority of American Christians are less than convinced that though they believe in a God creating the universe, they have to believe that it happened explicitly as written.
Hell, almost every preacher I've talked to (except one of the fire-and-brimstone types I talked to) thinks that the bible was yes, written with divine guidance, but humans screwed it up in places, so you have to use a little bit of logic or prayer (or both) to interpret the bible in the way that is most aligned with your idea of God. Quite a few of the preachers I've talked to have been very scholarly and have been more than happy to point out how things can be interpreted different ways. These guys have made a living out of studying the bible, and they're more aware than most of it's flaws. They all say that it's vital to your understanding of God and of the Christian faith, but it's even more vital to pray and get your own guidance on how the text is to be interpreted.
I will say that I know that group that you're talking about is extremely vocal (and quite annoying to many of us), but we typically just pat them on the head and go on our way, since we usually see them as the loud and extreme few.
I'd say that while it's important to know that those beliefs in the 6000-year-old Earth are out there, it's also vitally important to know that a ton of people out there don't really jump at that thinking, and would rather we all just get along.:-)
I think that's where people are screwing up with eachother.
You've got several different thoughts here: 1. Creationism, as exactly told in the bible. God used 6 days and rested the 7th day. Mind you, a lot of people take this to mean 6 24 hour days. 2. Anti-Creationism, saying that science "obviously" disproves God, or at the very least disproves the bible, as there is evidence that it's older than the bible says, etc. 3. Interpretations. The bible is a document written by men, and interpreted through multiple minds and languages. God created the world in 6 days and rested on the 7th could just mean that it "took a while for everything to form, then He waited." Or it could just be some guy wanting justification for a day off...:-)
Personally, I fit more in the last group. I consider myself a Christian, and I do believe that the bible is a useful book, but I don't think anyone ever intended for it to be taken literally. I don't think I have a right to tell God that His days have to be 24 hours as well.:-) Am I a Creationist? I believe that God created the universe, but I don't hold to the 6000 years old, or 6 day event, either.
I agree that the existance of God is outside the realm of science, but I think there are people of both extremes (though I'll admit that if there aren't more people on the Creationist side that are extreme, they are certainly louder) that are trying to force those ideas on others.
I think the GP was thinking much the same way, it's just that people aren't seeing things with the same definition of the word.
I agree with you, and enjoy my GMail account tremendously ("Hooray, no spam here!"), but figured I should probably bring up the fact that GMail does currently have an inactivity period as well. Granted, it is 9 months, but a time limit is a time limit. Yahoo seems to have much the same system going with theirs, but I was able to reactivate the mailbox automatically. I don't know if either Hotmail or GMail will do that yet.
I'll agree that Oracle is riding on Linux, but I think it was more than a "because it was popular" decision. According to people I've talked to, there were quite a few factors involved. I can safely say that there is at least one case where Oracle's move to use Linux internally has helped a company move to using Linux servers for an Oracle database.
We had been using Windows boxes for a very busy production OLTP database, and had been looking for a way off. There were a lot of factors involved, but not the least of which was that Oracle was now developing on the Linux platform.
I'd like to raise another point here. While smart people won't necessarily make more money than dumb people, they may be able to do more with their money than the dumb person would. I know plenty of smart people who make less, but live much more comfortably, or have much more security in their savings than dumb people who make a lot of money.
One particular person I know was making 4 times the amount of another person I know, yet the first person had almost no savings, they had no idea why they had less money either.
So we've got four Groups here, from least to most successful.
No saving, low income No saving, high income Savings, low income Savings, high income
I don't care HOW well you brace your feet and how strong/indestructible you are, your not going to just put out your hands and neatly stop a mini-van
THANK you. Uugh, I can't tell you how many times I've asked where the hell the inertia went in those movies. The best one I can remember in this vein is Robocop. He stood in front of the car and shot ram-rods into the road, and STILL looked like there was an impact.
"other than really flat acting it was a pretty good movie"
Umm, did we see the same Revenge of the Sith? The acting was really pretty good, there's only so much an actor can do with that horrendous dialog. I can only imagine how many times the someone uttered the words, "I'm supposed to say what?"
Re:Are they completely out of touch?
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Gates on Google
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· Score: 4, Insightful
This quote from Gates is just like all their recent releases comparing Longhorn to Tiger.. their perception of what MS's products offer is way inflated from what they actually do, and they seem to be persuading themselves that empty promises of what a future product will do is somehow better than a product which is available here and now, today.
That really seems to be one of the keys to not only the folks at Microsoft, but a lot of the die-hard fans too.
For instance, one of the developers here is a die-hard Microsoft fan, and he loves Visual Basic. But the frightening thing I've found is that whenever he talks about it, he always talks about "the next version." We should go ahead and use more of it in our production systems because of what they're going to put into it "soon." Nevermind that all the features he's pushing already exist in other languages, ones that we already know and use. He also talks about other apps that Microsoft has made. Unfortunately, they are all either in Alpha or Beta, or are planned to come out soon.
Fortunately, the head of development is a sharp guy, and a programmer himself. We'll stick with features we know and can test right now, thanks.
No, Clinton and Bush should not be compared at all. It just doesn't make sense. I agree with you on that.
But wow. Pulling Mordor out and saying that Bush killed 100,000 Iraqi (sorry, "irakee") *civilians* just because it was good for the economy, and calling him evil, etc.. Just wow.
Dude. Calm down. Relax a little bit. Your blood pressure must be through the roof.
I guess I should hand it to you that at least you don't call yourself objective.:-)
That is true, he was letting them in again right as the US told the inspectors to get out, they were being let in again. And yes, I actually do agree that they really should have let the inspectors do their job and avoided the whole thing.
I realize that we should have just told him "Okay, we let them try this one more time, but if you kick them out again before their job is done, we're coming in, regardless." You can't just continually say "If he lets the inspectors back in, you don't have an excuse for invasion," because he can continually only be letting inspectors in to the country, not allowing them to see anything.
However, as much as I would have liked them to wait, I also realize that we may not have been getting the whole picture. I'm really not sure if we had already told Saddam that we weren't giving him any more chances. I do suspect that we might have. And we had to make sure that doing what Saddam was doing as far as wasting inspector's time was known to be not acceptable. Perhaps there was good reason to believe that Saddam was close enough so that he could make it to nuclear before the inspectors could get find it. I don't actually know, and unless you were involved, you probably don't actually know either.
I'll admit I voted for Bush (thought it felt like it was a vote between Twiddledee and Twiddledum), but I don't believe it was a cut-and-dry case like they were trying to make it out to be. I also believe we haven't heard the full truth yet. Not from Bush, not from Kerry, and certainly not from CNN or Fox.
Ahh, thanks. That is kinda funny though, considering I don't even have Fox (Dropped the waste of time that is known as "TV" a long time ago) I generally have to get my news through blatantly liberal news sites.
So, in your opinion, which is based on the complete truth, what DO you think ended the first Iraq war? Politically speaking, that is.
And if you had paid attention, you would know that Saddam had done the same move 15 other times. He's kicked the inspectors out, then let them back in, then kicked them out, then let them back in. That's the problem with the boy who cried wolf. Eventually no one believes you anymore and ignores your plea.
Any idea how long it takes to start the inspection path again? Do you think that maybe Saddam thought that he could continue delaying the inspector's work by kicking them out and then letting them back in after dragging his feet for a while so that inspectors couldn't get the work done, and he could just delay the UN time and time again?
The problem is that no one knows what he's hiding when he kicks them out. A decent explanation, true or not, is that he's hiding WMD. Now, we're pretty sure that's not true NOW, but I'd like to think that we could agree that the general consensus by the people involved at the time (not just Bush, mind you) was that he was hiding them.
I'd be interested to know what it is you mean. I'm not sure where I alluded to the first amendment, and I'm pretty sure I know more about it than most high school students by now.
What I was talking about was the cease-fire and treaty that Saddam signed. Oh, I see, you must be saying that the name of the treaty was "First Amendment." My, what a curious name. Thanks for clearing that up.
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...but this will dog him his entire life. He's one extreme example of how someone can leverage the internet to abuse someone else and cause irrepairable damage.
My guess is that whoever modded the parent funny didn't *really* understand how serious the problem is.
Are you kidding me? My guess is that they see the list of absolutely horrible affects for what it is: funny. Do you seriously believe that he's going to be a shut-in and remembered for being the "Star Wars Kid", made fun of for the rest of his life? You don't think that if he were to just let it drop and get an apology, that it may well have been over by now? Or even with the recent behavior, that it won't be over within another year or so?
By the time this kid gets out of being a teenager, he's not going to be approached by a 2 or 3 people on the street (it's not like he's getting mobbed, people), and he'll probably have at least one other thing in life that depresses him even more.
I'm sorry, but as much as what the other kids did *was* wrong, this guy's no better.
He had to drop out of school due to harassment.
The kid didn't *have* to drop out of school. The proper action is to go to the administration. If nothing happens there, then you keep going. Their job is to provide a learning environment. If that's not being done, you keep going up, and enforce their job. It works. Been there. Done that.
He still gets approached by people on the streets about it.
He's not exactly getting mobbed. It's easy enough to develop a quick line to say and then walk away. Period.
His parents had to hire a private tutor for him.
How horrible. Homeschooling was enough for many of my friends. Hell, the public school system sucks so much I'd bet he has a better education now after the private tutor.
He ended up on anti-depression medication.
And? Seriously, this is not exactly something new. Little things can set off chemical imbalances. He'll have a hell of a lot worse things to get depressed about soon enough, I'm sure.
Not directed at the parent since I don't know it's position, but I have to respond to a common thought process.
So at least one of them will barely be affected.
And this makes it perfectly alright?
Thanks to the plentiful linking of other posters, I've finally seen the video for the first time, and to be honest, I'm not impressed, nor amused. It's just sorta stupid. He's acting out a fantasy and that's it. It's not really a whole lot to worry about. Demanding compensation for something like this is should be even more embarrassing.
I hope that he has problems finding a job, and that other people use it as a lesson to not use the court system for little things like being embarrassed. I sure as hell won't hire anyone with a record like his. Psycological damage, my foot...
Someone should mod the parent anonymous coward up.
:)
"How many great minds are not being spent looking for food on garbage dumps in Africa?"
In fact, based on what the GP said, looking at it from what the parent post pointed out, you could make a reasonable argument that while we are helping to slow down evolution in 1st world countries by helping everyone survive, in places where this action is not the case, we may be speeding up evolution, by the normal means of "survival of the fittest".
I'm not advocating killing off the homeless or anything like that mind you. Just want to warn everyone of the impending super-intelligent beings that will be coming out of the 3rd world countries in a couple years.
With ours, it was likely also a problem with the requirements, which I should have also mentioned earlier. The requirement was that we could only use certain materials in our construction. If my memory's right (this was 15 or so years ago), we could use paper, straws, and scotch tape. We dropped them about 9 feet as well, certainly not enough for a paper parachute to unfurl properly. People also tried to start with it unfurled as much as possible, but there's only so much you can do.
I would agree. I remember the same competition at our school, the rules being fairly explicit, still not disallowing parachutes. In fact, it wasn't even an uncommon solution. About 50% of the class used parachutes. Interestingly enough, the parachutes performed fairly poorly, given the high representation.
Getting an F for original thinking, my foot.
Why is having a lottery the right thing to do?
I mean, granted, this change merely takes the squatter business and adds more legitimacy, but at least it will hopefully have some semblance of order. Using the lottery idea, it would be absolute chaos.
If I've got a company and I want to register foobar.com, then should I not have more of a chance than some random guy who may just want the name so he can auction the domain off as well?
I suppose that would take the profit away from Verisign and into individuals, but why is that better in this case rather than a controlling point of authority, legitimate or not.
Ahh, yes. The old "I read it on the internet, so it must be true!" Are you so sure it's legit?
n -just-a-goddamned-piece-of-paper/ rightfully expresses the need for some verification, rather than just a single person's dramatizing article. My short searching was unable to find any verification.
I will tell you that 5 seconds of searching gives you little information, besides a bunch of articles referencing the one you linked. Many of them, such as http://www.ioerror.us/2005/12/09/bush-constitutio
Wishing something was true doesn't make it so.
People on both sides need to cut this sort of thing out. They need to cool off and be reasonable with each other again. Both Democrats and Republicans are guilty of open hostility and attacks.
invade Redmond with the French Foreign Legion
See, that just wouldn't be pretty. I mean, if they did that, then Bill would end up as Supreme Ruler of France, and he'd actually start building an army, probably end up taking over.
Then again, maybe that's what he wants.....
Quick question, off the topic of the main story.
You have a theory, and I don't agree with it. That's fine, of course, we're both entitled to our opinions of what happened. However, why is it that you bring up the theory in the middle of discussions when it has nothing to do with it?
Editing out the Pentagon theory, your post was excellent, and had a point directly within the boundaries of the article and the following discussion. It really made me rethink some of my ideas about letting my TV security go to the dogs. But the mention of the Pentagon theory sorta made me wonder what the hell was going on.
For instance, if I'm talking about internet security, and how people should pay more attention to their computer settings, get the latest patches, etc., and I bring up the opinion that the Kansas school system is really sort of silly sometimes, I've brought no more value into the discussion about internet security. I've actually made myself look a little more like an obsessed crackpot, regardless of what I'm arguing about, even if the idea I inserted is completely true. Is that the impression you're wanting to make, or are you trading off some of the topical value of your post in order to bring up an issue that you feel needs to be raised?
Just trying to ask an honest question about your motives, no offense intended (seriously). I'm just curious about that kind of stuff.
Yes, I imagine that the free version will have the "same weak Oracle password encryption scheme" that requires admin access (or at least select on a restricted table that wouldn't be granted in the first place unless the DBA wants a security hole).
What is people's problem? Yes, security is weaker in this than in some other systems, due to a hole that doesn't exist until someone with admin privilges explicitly grants it. Oracle actually admits to the security risks of granting privs on dictionary tables/views or to certain roles that have those privs. They suggest that you don't use them by default, but create what you need.
I duplicated several of the techniques that they describe for actual use in our own system last year (under tightly controlled conditions). Yes, they are security risks, but by default, they are controlled. Oracle will let you shoot yourself in the foot, but so will most other systems.
I'll be happy to burn Oracle on their installer, OEM, any other interface, install documentation, and even support (Metalink's running at being able to answer about 50% of my questions so far for the last several years). But the security bit in that CNet article is purely alarmist, and shouldn't have surprised or alarmed any competant Oracle DBA.
People have gotten nausea from games for a long time now, and different things affect different people.
For instance, for FPS games, I could play Wolfenstein and Heretic, but not Doom. All of the ones after that made me sick until Dark Forces, and that one still affected me after a while. Then I was pretty much stuck getting sick with all of them until the Unreal Tournament line came out. I don't know why, but the UT line is the only one out of the current lines that doesn't make me ill (even after very long sessions). The Doom engine, Elite Force, etc, all make me sick. Deus Ex made me slightly ill, but was slow paced enough for me to fight through it a couple hours at a time (at most).
To this day, I'll try out about any game, but most FPS games still affect me, though some take longer to make me ill than others. Other people I know have had worse experiences. UT seems to have the least affect on people, and it still kills a few of my friends.
I haven't noticed the realism really helping or hurting. Doom made me sick faster than Dark Forces, and the UT still doesn't make me sick, though games of lesser graphics do. Based on that, I think it's all in how the engine works, not how realistic it looks.
Sorry about that, guess I do run in some of the less known circles then. I know a good many fundamentalists, but I guess I don't really associate much with those guys anymore (my ex was one). I do live in Georgia, which seems to have a pretty fair number of nuts, but didn't think it was quite that bad. Looks like I was a bit wrong there.
Thanks for posting those polls. I've seen the CNN poll, but I don't generally believe their polls because they aren't very clear on what they ask. The other poll seems to be a lot more informative indeed, and I trust it a bit more.
I'm really quite surprised based on the clergy and other people I talk to. Really disappointing to me, personally. But thanks for pointing it out and correcting me.
Maybe it's just me being United Methodist, but most of the pastors, ministers, priests, and other christians (most of them NOT of my own denomination) I talk to actually don't fit into this group you're showing as the "majority". Now granted, I've never seen any stats on this one way or another, but my belief is that the majority of American Christians are less than convinced that though they believe in a God creating the universe, they have to believe that it happened explicitly as written.
:-)
Hell, almost every preacher I've talked to (except one of the fire-and-brimstone types I talked to) thinks that the bible was yes, written with divine guidance, but humans screwed it up in places, so you have to use a little bit of logic or prayer (or both) to interpret the bible in the way that is most aligned with your idea of God. Quite a few of the preachers I've talked to have been very scholarly and have been more than happy to point out how things can be interpreted different ways. These guys have made a living out of studying the bible, and they're more aware than most of it's flaws. They all say that it's vital to your understanding of God and of the Christian faith, but it's even more vital to pray and get your own guidance on how the text is to be interpreted.
I will say that I know that group that you're talking about is extremely vocal (and quite annoying to many of us), but we typically just pat them on the head and go on our way, since we usually see them as the loud and extreme few.
I'd say that while it's important to know that those beliefs in the 6000-year-old Earth are out there, it's also vitally important to know that a ton of people out there don't really jump at that thinking, and would rather we all just get along.
I think that's where people are screwing up with eachother.
:-)
:-) Am I a Creationist? I believe that God created the universe, but I don't hold to the 6000 years old, or 6 day event, either.
You've got several different thoughts here:
1. Creationism, as exactly told in the bible. God used 6 days and rested the 7th day. Mind you, a lot of people take this to mean 6 24 hour days.
2. Anti-Creationism, saying that science "obviously" disproves God, or at the very least disproves the bible, as there is evidence that it's older than the bible says, etc.
3. Interpretations. The bible is a document written by men, and interpreted through multiple minds and languages. God created the world in 6 days and rested on the 7th could just mean that it "took a while for everything to form, then He waited." Or it could just be some guy wanting justification for a day off...
Personally, I fit more in the last group. I consider myself a Christian, and I do believe that the bible is a useful book, but I don't think anyone ever intended for it to be taken literally. I don't think I have a right to tell God that His days have to be 24 hours as well.
I agree that the existance of God is outside the realm of science, but I think there are people of both extremes (though I'll admit that if there aren't more people on the Creationist side that are extreme, they are certainly louder) that are trying to force those ideas on others.
I think the GP was thinking much the same way, it's just that people aren't seeing things with the same definition of the word.
I agree with you, and enjoy my GMail account tremendously ("Hooray, no spam here!"), but figured I should probably bring up the fact that GMail does currently have an inactivity period as well. Granted, it is 9 months, but a time limit is a time limit. Yahoo seems to have much the same system going with theirs, but I was able to reactivate the mailbox automatically. I don't know if either Hotmail or GMail will do that yet.
I'll agree that Oracle is riding on Linux, but I think it was more than a "because it was popular" decision. According to people I've talked to, there were quite a few factors involved. I can safely say that there is at least one case where Oracle's move to use Linux internally has helped a company move to using Linux servers for an Oracle database.
We had been using Windows boxes for a very busy production OLTP database, and had been looking for a way off. There were a lot of factors involved, but not the least of which was that Oracle was now developing on the Linux platform.
I'd like to raise another point here. While smart people won't necessarily make more money than dumb people, they may be able to do more with their money than the dumb person would. I know plenty of smart people who make less, but live much more comfortably, or have much more security in their savings than dumb people who make a lot of money.
One particular person I know was making 4 times the amount of another person I know, yet the first person had almost no savings, they had no idea why they had less money either.
So we've got four Groups here, from least to most successful.
No saving, low income
No saving, high income
Savings, low income
Savings, high income
You can do a lot with very little money.
I don't care HOW well you brace your feet and how strong/indestructible you are, your not going to just put out your hands and neatly stop a mini-van
THANK you. Uugh, I can't tell you how many times I've asked where the hell the inertia went in those movies. The best one I can remember in this vein is Robocop. He stood in front of the car and shot ram-rods into the road, and STILL looked like there was an impact.
"other than really flat acting it was a pretty good movie"
Umm, did we see the same Revenge of the Sith? The acting was really pretty good, there's only so much an actor can do with that horrendous dialog. I can only imagine how many times the someone uttered the words, "I'm supposed to say what?"
This quote from Gates is just like all their recent releases comparing Longhorn to Tiger.. their perception of what MS's products offer is way inflated from what they actually do, and they seem to be persuading themselves that empty promises of what a future product will do is somehow better than a product which is available here and now, today.
That really seems to be one of the keys to not only the folks at Microsoft, but a lot of the die-hard fans too.
For instance, one of the developers here is a die-hard Microsoft fan, and he loves Visual Basic. But the frightening thing I've found is that whenever he talks about it, he always talks about "the next version." We should go ahead and use more of it in our production systems because of what they're going to put into it "soon." Nevermind that all the features he's pushing already exist in other languages, ones that we already know and use. He also talks about other apps that Microsoft has made. Unfortunately, they are all either in Alpha or Beta, or are planned to come out soon.
Fortunately, the head of development is a sharp guy, and a programmer himself. We'll stick with features we know and can test right now, thanks.
Wow. Bitter much?
:-)
No, Clinton and Bush should not be compared at all. It just doesn't make sense. I agree with you on that.
But wow. Pulling Mordor out and saying that Bush killed 100,000 Iraqi (sorry, "irakee") *civilians* just because it was good for the economy, and calling him evil, etc.. Just wow.
Dude. Calm down. Relax a little bit. Your blood pressure must be through the roof.
I guess I should hand it to you that at least you don't call yourself objective.
That is true, he was letting them in again right as the US told the inspectors to get out, they were being let in again. And yes, I actually do agree that they really should have let the inspectors do their job and avoided the whole thing.
I realize that we should have just told him "Okay, we let them try this one more time, but if you kick them out again before their job is done, we're coming in, regardless." You can't just continually say "If he lets the inspectors back in, you don't have an excuse for invasion," because he can continually only be letting inspectors in to the country, not allowing them to see anything.
However, as much as I would have liked them to wait, I also realize that we may not have been getting the whole picture. I'm really not sure if we had already told Saddam that we weren't giving him any more chances. I do suspect that we might have. And we had to make sure that doing what Saddam was doing as far as wasting inspector's time was known to be not acceptable. Perhaps there was good reason to believe that Saddam was close enough so that he could make it to nuclear before the inspectors could get find it. I don't actually know, and unless you were involved, you probably don't actually know either.
I'll admit I voted for Bush (thought it felt like it was a vote between Twiddledee and Twiddledum), but I don't believe it was a cut-and-dry case like they were trying to make it out to be. I also believe we haven't heard the full truth yet. Not from Bush, not from Kerry, and certainly not from CNN or Fox.
Ahh, thanks. That is kinda funny though, considering I don't even have Fox (Dropped the waste of time that is known as "TV" a long time ago) I generally have to get my news through blatantly liberal news sites.
So, in your opinion, which is based on the complete truth, what DO you think ended the first Iraq war? Politically speaking, that is.
And if you had paid attention, you would know that Saddam had done the same move 15 other times. He's kicked the inspectors out, then let them back in, then kicked them out, then let them back in. That's the problem with the boy who cried wolf. Eventually no one believes you anymore and ignores your plea.
Any idea how long it takes to start the inspection path again? Do you think that maybe Saddam thought that he could continue delaying the inspector's work by kicking them out and then letting them back in after dragging his feet for a while so that inspectors couldn't get the work done, and he could just delay the UN time and time again?
The problem is that no one knows what he's hiding when he kicks them out. A decent explanation, true or not, is that he's hiding WMD. Now, we're pretty sure that's not true NOW, but I'd like to think that we could agree that the general consensus by the people involved at the time (not just Bush, mind you) was that he was hiding them.
I'd be interested to know what it is you mean. I'm not sure where I alluded to the first amendment, and I'm pretty sure I know more about it than most high school students by now.
What I was talking about was the cease-fire and treaty that Saddam signed. Oh, I see, you must be saying that the name of the treaty was "First Amendment." My, what a curious name. Thanks for clearing that up.