Which is just peachy if you run Linux and IE4Linux.
In case nobody has told you this, it's a really bad idea to QA websites on IE4Linux. You're introducing a completely new set of display bugs. Run it on a Windows box, and not a VM (that will create DIFFERENT bugs), but a real Windows box. If you haven't been bit trying to QA IE this way yet, you will eventually.
However, I only play 4 hours a day, four days a week.
"Only"? This is fucking ridiculous. You should be able to finish the entire game in 40 hours. The only reason it takes longer is all the grinding.
Leveling to the cap is easily possible with zero grinding sessions - nothing but quests.
Your definition of "grinding" is apparently some weird definition in which endless fetch quests don't count as "grinding". If it doesn't advance the plot it's grinding, period.
There is no penalty for death other than a small amount of money and a short walk - no experience hit, no de-leveling.
Why force players to waste hours their lives walking back to their corpse? And taking cash also eats up time. Why have any penalty AT ALL? Customers have already invested shitloads of time and money, why "punish" them at all?
In conclusion, WoW is not a grind unless you want it to be.
It's a grind. Simply because it's LESS of a grind than Everquest or Ultima Online doesn't mean it's not a grind.
So how do you click on the monsters or on screen elements?
The problem is not the number of buttons, but that MMOs are built around the vastly more flexible "point and click" mouse model. Is this as necessary in an MMO as, say, real-time strategy games? No.
It's possible to design a perfectly-functional MMO that uses a menu-driven interface. They just tend to lack depth and sophistication, like Phantasy Star Online.
A number of posters have already responded to this.
Contrary to what some people will tell you, SMS messages are safe. They are not cached or stored anywhere. I happen to know that the BILLING for SMS messages eats up an order of magnitude more bandwidth and storage space than the messages themselves. The companies that do SMS billing run on a shoestring and can just barely handle the billing capacity. They aren't even CONSIDERING any eavesdropping because doing so would require massive SMS caches that they aren't about to pay for. Wiretapping requirements would drive them out of business overnight, so you can expect them to fight it tooth and nail. In fact, the telcos are already trying to preempt this by having US SMS messages billed by Euro companies and Euro SMS messages billed by US companies to make it harder for intelligence agencies to determine who to go after.
In other words, it looks like if a law is passed requiring them to monitor SMS they'll probably just ignore it. Telecom immunity, remember? People seem to forget this applies to FUTURE crimes and is very broad. Including allowing telecoms to ignore eavesdropping requirements on new services, which is one of the big reasons they wanted the immunity. They want the power to say to the government "You want us to install new wiretapping gear? Fine, pay us big pile of money otherwise we aren't doing dick."
Mechanic work that one would surmise could be done to actually support himself.
Did the possibly ever dawn on you that he is? It's possible that this guy *IS* working full time but he wants the Social Security aid to cover medical expenses. I said before that I knew dozens of people on SSI. Some of them were working and hiding it because their work didn't provide any medical care and they needed the medical aid from SSI to keep working. I don't blame these people for being caught in a catch-22.
Social Security fraud is a drop in the bucket compared to corporate fraud, especially in the defense industry. We're talking about losses of thousands vs. losses of BILLIONS.
I know what the end point of my beliefs taken to an extreme would be. Little or no taxes with a hard stance against those that were able to help themselves and didn't. Also a dramatic lowering of the standard of living of some "deserving" families. And yes, occasionally some deserving folks going completely without.
AKA, feudalism. Your beliefs taken to an extreme would divide society into a elite, wealthy, heavily-armed, minority known ironically as "nobility" that brutally controls the rest of the population that lives in relative poverty, known as "peasants".
If I was being a bit kinder I'd say "fascism", but that would imply a unifying ideology other than greed.
But my question is, what is the endpoint of reckless out of control taxing and expenditures on social programs?
Denmark.
Ever been there? It's really nice.
What happens when the tax burden exceeds the ability of the middle class to make ends meet?
If you provide social services to compensate, this never seems to happen. I believe you could probably tax people 90% of their income without creating additional burden, basically leaving them with pocket money, if you provided adequate social services to compensate, like free food and housing.
Basically, if the taxes you pay go to reduce the cost of living expenses than you can tax a very high amount. If the taxes you pay DON'T reduce the cost of living, they impact your lifestyle.
Examples:
If 20% of your paycheck goes to a housing program that reduces the cost of homes by 50%, you've actually gained money because you've dramatically cut the cost of your major expense. See public housing.
If 20% of your paycheck goes to pay for the new XYZ Death Bomber you don't gain anything because your tax dollars are being spent on cocaine and whores.
Conservatives seem to be under the impression that social programs hurt the middle class when in fact the middle class are the most likely people to use many social programs AND such programs are the best way to move lower class people up the ladder. Especially education programs.
When does is stop though? I already have nurses at work that won't pick up extra shifts because they have taxes withheld at a higher rate for that check and it doesn't appear to be worth the return on their labor.
These nurses are wrong. The bracketing system NEVER results in a net loss.
(I tell them that they will get it back when they file their annual but that doesn't soothe them when they have to wait 11 months to get back the extra money they worked for that week.)
Tell them to declare extra deductions on their W2, including bogus ones, to reduce the withholding. The IRS doesn't care as long as you settle up at the end of the year. This might not be a good idea though, because they might not realize this means they will have to pay taxes at tax time.
I have no doubts, based on anecdotal evidence in my work place that the current tax system is a disincentive to production.
That fact that some of your workers don't understand how withholding works doesn't mean the tax system is broken.
But, one of the things they have a very good track record on is maintaining the integrity of their key books.
Which religions are you thinking of? The only really good example is the Book of Mormon. Most other religious have periodically revised their religious texts.
But to just say that religions have had their primary texts re-written many times? Well that is just wrong.
Some religions, sure. Judaism in particular. The Torah was re-written around 500BC to remove polytheistic references (as the Jews converted to monotheism) and to either re-wrote Genesis and Exodus to make Egyptians the bad guys (due to recent wars with them), or just made the story up at that time.
The Synoptic Gospels (Matthew and Luke) were revised, most scholars believe they were based on an earlier document called "Q". John is in many ways a revision of the narrative in Mark. Now, that's not "many times", but they were revised.
never said that atheists were doing anything of the kind, I was merely following the logical out-workings of the original post's line of reasoning, which placed the DSSs in the category of worthlessness due to their religious nature.
The OP, DogDude, was not trying to say that the documents were "worthless", but that Christian FAITH really isn't based on the authenticity of the ancient documents. Whether they are fake or real is far less important that whether or not they are consistent with existing Christian "tradition".
If Christian tradition says that Jesus was the son of God it doesn't matter that the Gospels and numerous other early Christian texts describe Joseph as his father. Modern Christians utterly rejected the revelations in the Nag Hammadi texts that revealed the suppressed views of Gnostic Christians, who predated "orthodox" Christians. Christians have totally ignored the revelations of the Dead Sea Scrolls which show that, at best, Jesus ripped off John the Baptist (and confirm that John the Baptist was a MUCH more important figure than Jesus).
Christians aren't fazed by these revelations because their faith was never really based on the Bible to begin with. It is based on highly effective indoctrination as children.
I mean, aren't these, like, some of, if not THE, oldest writings in the world?
Not even close. You could spend your entire life reading Greek and Chinese documents 1,000 years older than the Dead Sea Scrolls. The oldest writing comes from the Chinese, followed by the Sumerians and Babylonians.
I live in an apartment complex that has a PBX system that doesn't allow for data lines AND the apartment association doesn't allow satellite dishes. Not that I would have anywhere to put the dish.
I have know way of knowing if your traffic pattern is comparable to Comcast's because I don't know the demographic details of your users. You might have a lot of dead lines. Are you excluding all the lines that don't generate any traffic, or very little (less than 1 MB)? Where are you located? If the DSLAM is in Sun City and all your customers are little old ladies, I'd expect to see far less traffic than what you're seeing. If you're in a rural or semi-rural area I expect to see less traffic for any number of reasons. If you were near a major university I would expect to see a lot more. I just don't know enough to say if your pattern is comparable.
I am constantly amazed at how willing people are to tell you how to attack their own systems, particularly on Slashdot, where simply implying somebody is doing poorly will practically get you full description, network maps, and vulnerability reports.
It's called learning. There is nothing worse in IT than thinking you know everything. The simple reality is that the biggest threat to your IT infrastructure is your own incompetence, regardless of how competent you think you are. Having other people "check your work" is a GOOD thing and it's how IT security is actually improved in practice. Trying to apply a theoretical security model in the real world ALWAYS fails because your model will not account for all variables, even if you had an unlimited amount of time to plan it, which you don't.
The odds of running into a malicious hacker when looking for technical help are nearly nil. Hackers simply don't work this way. Do you really think there are hackers trolling web forums looking for tidbits of data that they could apply to attack RANDOM targets? Not even script kiddies have this kind of free time.
I've never understood that aspect of the US criminal justice system; it smacks somewhat of deliberate intimidation - "make it easy on yourself, confess - or else...".
"Smacks"? It *IS* flat-out intimidation comparable to death threats. Prosecutors do not want trials because they're far to lazy to gather evidence. Nowadays, some people are willing to roll the dice at the trial because they a beginning to understand how weak the cases prosecutors putting up are.
Rather than make their case, prosecutors now go after the families of defendants threating to change them with "conspiracy to commit". Guilt by association is a fact in the USA. Defendants usually cave when their spouse, parents, and children are threated with prison. In the case of kids, they ALWAYS threaten to take the children and lock them up if defendants don't cooperate.
Since when does the validity of a particular religious belief have anything to do with the relevance of a 2000-year-old document?
Did you really say that? Christianity is ENTIRELY based on the testimony recorded in early Christian texts and the teachings of early Church fathers. If you invalidate early Christian texts, you invalidate Christianity. Much the same is true of Judaism.
Christians tend to attribute psychotic hatred and irrationality to anyone who says "Christianity is nonsense" because it clashes so strongly with their point of view.
Atheists are not talking about smashing the Sistine Chapel, burning the books of William Blake, or killing modern "Christian rock" stars. Find me some quotes or news accounts. You will find people who attack religious art (like Michelangelo's David). They're all religious nuts, who find any depiction of religious figures sinful.
So now are we going to get a bunch of jokes on how it takes 2 years to have good 'fakes' made?
Nobody I'm aware of is claiming the Dead Sea Scrolls are not ancient documents.
As a Rational Christian, I am excited about this material being released.
Why? The Dead Sea Scrolls really say nothing, at least nothing positive, about Christianity. The Dead Sea Scrolls contain copies of some Old Testament works and works related to the Essenes, a Jewish Zealot group that vaguely resembled Christianity in some ways. If anything, the Dead Sea Scrolls weaken the arguments of orthodox Christianity by demonstrating that Christians were influenced by other Jewish reform movements as much as (or more) than Jesus.
The Dead Sea Scrolls are of enormous importance to Jews as they contain the oldest know copies of the Torah (the first 5 books of the Old Testament). But for the most part, the copies of the Torah in the DSS strictly conform to the current translations of the Torah.
Regardless of your Religious background, the dead sea scrolls are very important
I'm not sure why Hindus, Jains, Budhists, Taoists, Native Americans, Neopagans, etc. should care.
2 Years though, at least this shows you how seriously people take preserving historical documents like this.
It's more likely due to he massive egos and arguments surrounding the DSS, and archeology in general. To this day, over 60 years since their discovery, not all of the DSS have been published.
It then shows just how many people died to claim a beach. And for what purpose really?
To end the Nazi occupation of France. Regardless of how you feel about the Normandy invasion, it wasn't POINTLESS. There was a clear military/political objective.
I mean seriously, have you WATCHED this movie? Yes, the opening scene is bloody and realistic, but that's just pageantry. 'Saving Private Ryan' is really just human sacrifice on film. It's 'Passion of the Christ' with bombs. It's a rah-rah flick for the US military. It is certainly NOT an antiwar film. Go watch 'Grave of the Fireflies', 'All Quiet on the Western Front', 'Three Kings', or even 'Dr. Strangelove' to find out what an antiwar movie is.
Maybe you could point out the "selflessness" and "moral good" in the current wars raging on in Africa?
I didn't say that war in general is good. What I said is that 'Saving Private Ryan' is a jingoistic war movie that portrays fighting WWII as a moral good, and that American warmaking is good in general.
Someone on/. must really love GameStop. You might like them, but their business revolves around buying used video games from little kids that don't know they could do far better on ebay, or on craigslist, or trading with thier friends and then selling those used games hugely marked up. GameStop typically gives $3 for a game the sell for $25.
GameStop has a blatantly illegal return policy. They refuse to give you your money back on anything, ever. Those suits? Over getting them to return stuff. One of the things was a game that I had purchased 30 seconds earlier.
GameStop also destroyed the chain I actually liked, Funcoland.
A lot of people don't seem to grasp that MOST PEOPLE DO NOT HAVE BROADBAND CHOICES. I live in the heart of Silicon Valley and my ONLY possible internet provider is Comcast. I can't even get dial-up or satellite at my current residence. I can't get a T1 or fiber either, at any price. At my last two homes the only option was Comcast.
The reality is that a large number of accounts, say 15%, aren't registering any bandwidth at all. Comcast is real screwy when it comes to canceling, moving, or enabling service. Every time I have had to change service I had to contact them multiple times and was overcharged each time. They will charge you for service before it is installed. I know from insiders at the company that this is deliberate.
Another 25% are using the modems in USB mode which throttles their bandwidth to about 1 megabit or they are using very old computers or equipment which slows their connection. It's very difficult to go over the cap at these speeds.
About 3-5% are maxing out their connections, usually through downloading usenet feeds and, to a lesser extent, running bittorent trackers.
So what about the other 65%? I seriously doubt they're only downloading 85 MB per day. That's a handful of flash videos. I suspect it more in the 2-3 GB PER DAY range, or about 90GB per month. And it's rapidly going up.
This is headed for another FCC dust-up because I'm CERTAIN that Comcast is going to exclude their VoIP and their video download service (Comcast is partnered with Hulu) from this cap.
Um, I'm not a regular drug user but how are the effects of Cannabis beneficial to gaming?
Many people using marijuana find it easier to focus on a specific tedious task while high. This is similar to factory workers using opium to make the day go by faster. In essence, it reduces the effects of fatigue. Marijuana also reduces pain, much more effectively than many OTC painkillers, so it can reduce cramps and stress injuries from constant playing.
How does this affect "twitch" games? In the long term, consistency and keeping calm are probably more important that actual reaction time.
Or, to put it another way, IME all the guys at the top of the Halo 3 leaderboards are completely baked.
3DFx died because NVIDIA crushed them with the GeForce. 3Dfx had already released a very disappointing product in the Banshee (it was buggy and slower that the Voodoo 2 SLI that proceeded it). Hardware T&L, controversial at the time, proved to be a killer feature.
That it can't render it is a different argument entirely. It's particularly specious for proprietary shite like Flash which subverts the whole paradigm of the web being built around open protocols and formats.
Bitching about lack of support for proprietary protocols is a little laughable when talking about Apple, a proprietary company that has very close ties to both Adobe and Sun. Apple certainly has the ability to port Java and Flash to the iPhone, they have all the code they need from the vendors and from what I can tell the iPhone has enough CPU time, Apple just hasn't gotten around to it. Or maybe the iPhone doesn't have enough CPU time. Either way, the lack of Flash and Java support on the iPhone has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that these technologies are proprietary.
If the beneficiaries instead invested their money in reasonably conservative investment vehicles, along with employers matching funds, the could easily beat the ROI provided by the Social Security Administration. Furthermore that capital would help grow the economy.
So you're suggesting that we eliminate the Social Security tax and instead corporations should give employees a special "investment bonus", roughly equivalent to the current corporate Social Security tax, that employees must invest (in addition to whatever personal funds they wish to invest) in private investment accounts set up by the employers which allow employees to invest in whatever they wish, similar to 401k plans with matching? I don't think this is a bad idea. Hell, I think mandatory 401ks with 100% matching would also work well.
The key is the MATCHING and the CORPORATE CONTRIBUTIONS. "Privatizing" Social Security is a canard put forward by business interests that don't want to pay Social Security taxes and don't give a damn about social welfare. They don't care WHAT the plan is as long as they don't have to pay a dime.
I would say that Food Stamps, WIC, SSI and Medicaid are all forms of "welfare."
So you don't think disabled, sick, and elderly people shouldn't get aid?
If the safety net was not so readily available their would not be as many to take care of in the first place.
How does the "safety net" cause congenital birth defects? How does the "safety net" cause ANY illness? How does the "safety net" cause aging?
SSI could be replaced by commercially available disability insurance.
How many private disability insurance programs are available right now, with no premiums whatsoever? If what you're claiming is commercially viable, there should be companies out there right now doing it. There aren't. People with disabilities can't afford premiums and no healthy people are going to voluntarily play extremely high insurance premiums. Unless you make it mandatory, which sounds a lot like Social Security.
The system you promote means virtually nobody will have disability care.
Free education would soon become next to worthless. It would devolve into mediocrity as the government mandated every aspect of it.
Evidence proves you wrong. Nations with mandatory education systems and free or inexpensive higher education, like Germany and Japan, generally have well-educated, highly-productive citizens.
Remeber however that the government has no interest in trimming down and becoming efficient.
Business has no interest in trimming down or becoming efficent. Their only concern is profit. The problem is that ideologues like yourself buy into the notion that corporations are inherently more efficent 100% of the time regardless of the circumstances. This is simply wrong. As I said, there is no program as efficent as Social Security. I could come up with hundreds of other examples if you like.
One of my favorites is the guy in for his refill of 180 Oxycodone each month. He is totally disabled with chronic low back pain, on SSI, no copay for healthcare or for prescriptions (which he is known to sell around town.) When asked how he hurt his back the day before, "I hurt it pulling the engine out of my 5-0 Mustang."
So this guy was given SSI ONE DAY after he injured his back? I don't believe that. But let's say the rest of your story is true. So what? Studies show that less that 1% of Social Security and Medicare claims are fraudulent. I'll accept a 99% rate of legitimate claims. I could list literally dozens of people I've met that were on SSI and legitimately needed the aid.
In fact the problem is that we don't spend NEAR ENOUGH money. Your guy obviously needs drug treatment, he should have a free drug treatment plan. Many of the people I knew/know on SSI are on it for mental p
Slashdot Mirror
Which is just peachy if you run Linux and IE4Linux.
In case nobody has told you this, it's a really bad idea to QA websites on IE4Linux. You're introducing a completely new set of display bugs. Run it on a Windows box, and not a VM (that will create DIFFERENT bugs), but a real Windows box. If you haven't been bit trying to QA IE this way yet, you will eventually.
However, I only play 4 hours a day, four days a week.
"Only"? This is fucking ridiculous. You should be able to finish the entire game in 40 hours. The only reason it takes longer is all the grinding.
Leveling to the cap is easily possible with zero grinding sessions - nothing but quests.
Your definition of "grinding" is apparently some weird definition in which endless fetch quests don't count as "grinding". If it doesn't advance the plot it's grinding, period.
There is no penalty for death other than a small amount of money and a short walk - no experience hit, no de-leveling.
Why force players to waste hours their lives walking back to their corpse? And taking cash also eats up time. Why have any penalty AT ALL? Customers have already invested shitloads of time and money, why "punish" them at all?
In conclusion, WoW is not a grind unless you want it to be.
It's a grind. Simply because it's LESS of a grind than Everquest or Ultima Online doesn't mean it's not a grind.
It's easily the most casual MMO I've ever seen.
You're not looking very hard. Ever played a MUSH?
It's only the most popular MMO in Japan.
Console MMOs have been made. They have issues with UI and sophistication relative to PC RPGs. This is glaringly apparent with Final Fantasy XI.
So how do you click on the monsters or on screen elements?
The problem is not the number of buttons, but that MMOs are built around the vastly more flexible "point and click" mouse model. Is this as necessary in an MMO as, say, real-time strategy games? No.
It's possible to design a perfectly-functional MMO that uses a menu-driven interface. They just tend to lack depth and sophistication, like Phantasy Star Online.
Stop panicking, Chrome uses Webkit. It's basically just a skin for Safari, like Konquerer.
Why is this?
Gecko is slow.
That's basically it. Webkit and other solutions outperform Gecko, especially on mobile phones and other devices with tight hardware limitations.
A number of posters have already responded to this.
Contrary to what some people will tell you, SMS messages are safe. They are not cached or stored anywhere. I happen to know that the BILLING for SMS messages eats up an order of magnitude more bandwidth and storage space than the messages themselves. The companies that do SMS billing run on a shoestring and can just barely handle the billing capacity. They aren't even CONSIDERING any eavesdropping because doing so would require massive SMS caches that they aren't about to pay for. Wiretapping requirements would drive them out of business overnight, so you can expect them to fight it tooth and nail. In fact, the telcos are already trying to preempt this by having US SMS messages billed by Euro companies and Euro SMS messages billed by US companies to make it harder for intelligence agencies to determine who to go after.
In other words, it looks like if a law is passed requiring them to monitor SMS they'll probably just ignore it. Telecom immunity, remember? People seem to forget this applies to FUTURE crimes and is very broad. Including allowing telecoms to ignore eavesdropping requirements on new services, which is one of the big reasons they wanted the immunity. They want the power to say to the government "You want us to install new wiretapping gear? Fine, pay us big pile of money otherwise we aren't doing dick."
Mechanic work that one would surmise could be done to actually support himself.
Did the possibly ever dawn on you that he is? It's possible that this guy *IS* working full time but he wants the Social Security aid to cover medical expenses. I said before that I knew dozens of people on SSI. Some of them were working and hiding it because their work didn't provide any medical care and they needed the medical aid from SSI to keep working. I don't blame these people for being caught in a catch-22.
Social Security fraud is a drop in the bucket compared to corporate fraud, especially in the defense industry. We're talking about losses of thousands vs. losses of BILLIONS.
I know what the end point of my beliefs taken to an extreme would be. Little or no taxes with a hard stance against those that were able to help themselves and didn't. Also a dramatic lowering of the standard of living of some "deserving" families. And yes, occasionally some deserving folks going completely without.
AKA, feudalism. Your beliefs taken to an extreme would divide society into a elite, wealthy, heavily-armed, minority known ironically as "nobility" that brutally controls the rest of the population that lives in relative poverty, known as "peasants".
If I was being a bit kinder I'd say "fascism", but that would imply a unifying ideology other than greed.
But my question is, what is the endpoint of reckless out of control taxing and expenditures on social programs?
Denmark.
Ever been there? It's really nice.
What happens when the tax burden exceeds the ability of the middle class to make ends meet?
If you provide social services to compensate, this never seems to happen. I believe you could probably tax people 90% of their income without creating additional burden, basically leaving them with pocket money, if you provided adequate social services to compensate, like free food and housing.
Basically, if the taxes you pay go to reduce the cost of living expenses than you can tax a very high amount. If the taxes you pay DON'T reduce the cost of living, they impact your lifestyle.
Examples:
If 20% of your paycheck goes to a housing program that reduces the cost of homes by 50%, you've actually gained money because you've dramatically cut the cost of your major expense. See public housing.
If 20% of your paycheck goes to pay for the new XYZ Death Bomber you don't gain anything because your tax dollars are being spent on cocaine and whores.
Conservatives seem to be under the impression that social programs hurt the middle class when in fact the middle class are the most likely people to use many social programs AND such programs are the best way to move lower class people up the ladder. Especially education programs.
When does is stop though? I already have nurses at work that won't pick up extra shifts because they have taxes withheld at a higher rate for that check and it doesn't appear to be worth the return on their labor.
These nurses are wrong. The bracketing system NEVER results in a net loss.
(I tell them that they will get it back when they file their annual but that doesn't soothe them when they have to wait 11 months to get back the extra money they worked for that week.)
Tell them to declare extra deductions on their W2, including bogus ones, to reduce the withholding. The IRS doesn't care as long as you settle up at the end of the year. This might not be a good idea though, because they might not realize this means they will have to pay taxes at tax time.
I have no doubts, based on anecdotal evidence in my work place that the current tax system is a disincentive to production.
That fact that some of your workers don't understand how withholding works doesn't mean the tax system is broken.
But, one of the things they have a very good track record on is maintaining the integrity of their key books.
Which religions are you thinking of? The only really good example is the Book of Mormon. Most other religious have periodically revised their religious texts.
But to just say that religions have had their primary texts re-written many times? Well that is just wrong.
Some religions, sure. Judaism in particular. The Torah was re-written around 500BC to remove polytheistic references (as the Jews converted to monotheism) and to either re-wrote Genesis and Exodus to make Egyptians the bad guys (due to recent wars with them), or just made the story up at that time.
The Synoptic Gospels (Matthew and Luke) were revised, most scholars believe they were based on an earlier document called "Q". John is in many ways a revision of the narrative in Mark. Now, that's not "many times", but they were revised.
never said that atheists were doing anything of the kind, I was merely following the logical out-workings of the original post's line of reasoning, which placed the DSSs in the category of worthlessness due to their religious nature.
The OP, DogDude, was not trying to say that the documents were "worthless", but that Christian FAITH really isn't based on the authenticity of the ancient documents. Whether they are fake or real is far less important that whether or not they are consistent with existing Christian "tradition".
If Christian tradition says that Jesus was the son of God it doesn't matter that the Gospels and numerous other early Christian texts describe Joseph as his father. Modern Christians utterly rejected the revelations in the Nag Hammadi texts that revealed the suppressed views of Gnostic Christians, who predated "orthodox" Christians. Christians have totally ignored the revelations of the Dead Sea Scrolls which show that, at best, Jesus ripped off John the Baptist (and confirm that John the Baptist was a MUCH more important figure than Jesus).
Christians aren't fazed by these revelations because their faith was never really based on the Bible to begin with. It is based on highly effective indoctrination as children.
I mean, aren't these, like, some of, if not THE, oldest writings in the world?
Not even close. You could spend your entire life reading Greek and Chinese documents 1,000 years older than the Dead Sea Scrolls. The oldest writing comes from the Chinese, followed by the Sumerians and Babylonians.
I live in an apartment complex that has a PBX system that doesn't allow for data lines AND the apartment association doesn't allow satellite dishes. Not that I would have anywhere to put the dish.
I have know way of knowing if your traffic pattern is comparable to Comcast's because I don't know the demographic details of your users. You might have a lot of dead lines. Are you excluding all the lines that don't generate any traffic, or very little (less than 1 MB)? Where are you located? If the DSLAM is in Sun City and all your customers are little old ladies, I'd expect to see far less traffic than what you're seeing. If you're in a rural or semi-rural area I expect to see less traffic for any number of reasons. If you were near a major university I would expect to see a lot more. I just don't know enough to say if your pattern is comparable.
I am constantly amazed at how willing people are to tell you how to attack their own systems, particularly on Slashdot, where simply implying somebody is doing poorly will practically get you full description, network maps, and vulnerability reports.
It's called learning. There is nothing worse in IT than thinking you know everything. The simple reality is that the biggest threat to your IT infrastructure is your own incompetence, regardless of how competent you think you are. Having other people "check your work" is a GOOD thing and it's how IT security is actually improved in practice. Trying to apply a theoretical security model in the real world ALWAYS fails because your model will not account for all variables, even if you had an unlimited amount of time to plan it, which you don't.
The odds of running into a malicious hacker when looking for technical help are nearly nil. Hackers simply don't work this way. Do you really think there are hackers trolling web forums looking for tidbits of data that they could apply to attack RANDOM targets? Not even script kiddies have this kind of free time.
Don't hand out your passwords and you'll be fine.
I've never understood that aspect of the US criminal justice system; it smacks somewhat of deliberate intimidation - "make it easy on yourself, confess - or else...".
"Smacks"? It *IS* flat-out intimidation comparable to death threats. Prosecutors do not want trials because they're far to lazy to gather evidence. Nowadays, some people are willing to roll the dice at the trial because they a beginning to understand how weak the cases prosecutors putting up are.
Rather than make their case, prosecutors now go after the families of defendants threating to change them with "conspiracy to commit". Guilt by association is a fact in the USA. Defendants usually cave when their spouse, parents, and children are threated with prison. In the case of kids, they ALWAYS threaten to take the children and lock them up if defendants don't cooperate.
Since when does the validity of a particular religious belief have anything to do with the relevance of a 2000-year-old document?
Did you really say that? Christianity is ENTIRELY based on the testimony recorded in early Christian texts and the teachings of early Church fathers. If you invalidate early Christian texts, you invalidate Christianity. Much the same is true of Judaism.
Christians tend to attribute psychotic hatred and irrationality to anyone who says "Christianity is nonsense" because it clashes so strongly with their point of view.
Atheists are not talking about smashing the Sistine Chapel, burning the books of William Blake, or killing modern "Christian rock" stars. Find me some quotes or news accounts. You will find people who attack religious art (like Michelangelo's David). They're all religious nuts, who find any depiction of religious figures sinful.
So now are we going to get a bunch of jokes on how it takes 2 years to have good 'fakes' made?
Nobody I'm aware of is claiming the Dead Sea Scrolls are not ancient documents.
As a Rational Christian, I am excited about this material being released.
Why? The Dead Sea Scrolls really say nothing, at least nothing positive, about Christianity. The Dead Sea Scrolls contain copies of some Old Testament works and works related to the Essenes, a Jewish Zealot group that vaguely resembled Christianity in some ways. If anything, the Dead Sea Scrolls weaken the arguments of orthodox Christianity by demonstrating that Christians were influenced by other Jewish reform movements as much as (or more) than Jesus.
The Dead Sea Scrolls are of enormous importance to Jews as they contain the oldest know copies of the Torah (the first 5 books of the Old Testament). But for the most part, the copies of the Torah in the DSS strictly conform to the current translations of the Torah.
Regardless of your Religious background, the dead sea scrolls are very important
I'm not sure why Hindus, Jains, Budhists, Taoists, Native Americans, Neopagans, etc. should care.
2 Years though, at least this shows you how seriously people take preserving historical documents like this.
It's more likely due to he massive egos and arguments surrounding the DSS, and archeology in general. To this day, over 60 years since their discovery, not all of the DSS have been published.
It then shows just how many people died to claim a beach. And for what purpose really?
To end the Nazi occupation of France. Regardless of how you feel about the Normandy invasion, it wasn't POINTLESS. There was a clear military/political objective.
I mean seriously, have you WATCHED this movie? Yes, the opening scene is bloody and realistic, but that's just pageantry. 'Saving Private Ryan' is really just human sacrifice on film. It's 'Passion of the Christ' with bombs. It's a rah-rah flick for the US military. It is certainly NOT an antiwar film. Go watch 'Grave of the Fireflies', 'All Quiet on the Western Front',
'Three Kings', or even 'Dr. Strangelove' to find out what an antiwar movie is.
Maybe you could point out the "selflessness" and "moral good" in the current wars raging on in Africa?
I didn't say that war in general is good. What I said is that 'Saving Private Ryan' is a jingoistic war movie that portrays fighting WWII as a moral good, and that American warmaking is good in general.
Someone on /. must really love GameStop. You might like them, but their business revolves around buying used video games from little kids that don't know they could do far better on ebay, or on craigslist, or trading with thier friends and then selling those used games hugely marked up. GameStop typically gives $3 for a game the sell for $25.
GameStop has a blatantly illegal return policy. They refuse to give you your money back on anything, ever. Those suits? Over getting them to return stuff. One of the things was a game that I had purchased 30 seconds earlier.
GameStop also destroyed the chain I actually liked, Funcoland.
Yup, I'm in much the same boat as you.
A lot of people don't seem to grasp that MOST PEOPLE DO NOT HAVE BROADBAND CHOICES. I live in the heart of Silicon Valley and my ONLY possible internet provider is Comcast. I can't even get dial-up or satellite at my current residence. I can't get a T1 or fiber either, at any price. At my last two homes the only option was Comcast.
This is a lie.
The reality is that a large number of accounts, say 15%, aren't registering any bandwidth at all. Comcast is real screwy when it comes to canceling, moving, or enabling service. Every time I have had to change service I had to contact them multiple times and was overcharged each time. They will charge you for service before it is installed. I know from insiders at the company that this is deliberate.
Another 25% are using the modems in USB mode which throttles their bandwidth to about 1 megabit or they are using very old computers or equipment which slows their connection. It's very difficult to go over the cap at these speeds.
About 3-5% are maxing out their connections, usually through downloading usenet feeds and, to a lesser extent, running bittorent trackers.
So what about the other 65%? I seriously doubt they're only downloading 85 MB per day. That's a handful of flash videos. I suspect it more in the 2-3 GB PER DAY range, or about 90GB per month. And it's rapidly going up.
This is headed for another FCC dust-up because I'm CERTAIN that Comcast is going to exclude their VoIP and their video download service (Comcast is partnered with Hulu) from this cap.
Um, I'm not a regular drug user but how are the effects of Cannabis beneficial to gaming?
Many people using marijuana find it easier to focus on a specific tedious task while high. This is similar to factory workers using opium to make the day go by faster. In essence, it reduces the effects of fatigue. Marijuana also reduces pain, much more effectively than many OTC painkillers, so it can reduce cramps and stress injuries from constant playing.
How does this affect "twitch" games? In the long term, consistency and keeping calm are probably more important that actual reaction time.
Or, to put it another way, IME all the guys at the top of the Halo 3 leaderboards are completely baked.
3DFx died because NVIDIA crushed them with the GeForce. 3Dfx had already released a very disappointing product in the Banshee (it was buggy and slower that the Voodoo 2 SLI that proceeded it). Hardware T&L, controversial at the time, proved to be a killer feature.
That it can't render it is a different argument entirely. It's particularly specious for proprietary shite like Flash which subverts the whole paradigm of the web being built around open protocols and formats.
Bitching about lack of support for proprietary protocols is a little laughable when talking about Apple, a proprietary company that has very close ties to both Adobe and Sun. Apple certainly has the ability to port Java and Flash to the iPhone, they have all the code they need from the vendors and from what I can tell the iPhone has enough CPU time, Apple just hasn't gotten around to it. Or maybe the iPhone doesn't have enough CPU time. Either way, the lack of Flash and Java support on the iPhone has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that these technologies are proprietary.
If the beneficiaries instead invested their money in reasonably conservative investment vehicles, along with employers matching funds, the could easily beat the ROI provided by the Social Security Administration. Furthermore that capital would help grow the economy.
So you're suggesting that we eliminate the Social Security tax and instead corporations should give employees a special "investment bonus", roughly equivalent to the current corporate Social Security tax, that employees must invest (in addition to whatever personal funds they wish to invest) in private investment accounts set up by the employers which allow employees to invest in whatever they wish, similar to 401k plans with matching? I don't think this is a bad idea. Hell, I think mandatory 401ks with 100% matching would also work well.
The key is the MATCHING and the CORPORATE CONTRIBUTIONS. "Privatizing" Social Security is a canard put forward by business interests that don't want to pay Social Security taxes and don't give a damn about social welfare. They don't care WHAT the plan is as long as they don't have to pay a dime.
I would say that Food Stamps, WIC, SSI and Medicaid are all forms of "welfare."
So you don't think disabled, sick, and elderly people shouldn't get aid?
If the safety net was not so readily available their would not be as many to take care of in the first place.
How does the "safety net" cause congenital birth defects? How does the "safety net" cause ANY illness? How does the "safety net" cause aging?
SSI could be replaced by commercially available disability insurance.
How many private disability insurance programs are available right now, with no premiums whatsoever? If what you're claiming is commercially viable, there should be companies out there right now doing it. There aren't. People with disabilities can't afford premiums and no healthy people are going to voluntarily play extremely high insurance premiums. Unless you make it mandatory, which sounds a lot like Social Security.
The system you promote means virtually nobody will have disability care.
Free education would soon become next to worthless. It would devolve into mediocrity as the government mandated every aspect of it.
Evidence proves you wrong. Nations with mandatory education systems and free or inexpensive higher education, like Germany and Japan, generally have well-educated, highly-productive citizens.
Remeber however that the government has no interest in trimming down and becoming efficient.
Business has no interest in trimming down or becoming efficent. Their only concern is profit. The problem is that ideologues like yourself buy into the notion that corporations are inherently more efficent 100% of the time regardless of the circumstances. This is simply wrong. As I said, there is no program as efficent as Social Security. I could come up with hundreds of other examples if you like.
One of my favorites is the guy in for his refill of 180 Oxycodone each month. He is totally disabled with chronic low back pain, on SSI, no copay for healthcare or for prescriptions (which he is known to sell around town.) When asked how he hurt his back the day before, "I hurt it pulling the engine out of my 5-0 Mustang."
So this guy was given SSI ONE DAY after he injured his back? I don't believe that. But let's say the rest of your story is true. So what? Studies show that less that 1% of Social Security and Medicare claims are fraudulent. I'll accept a 99% rate of legitimate claims. I could list literally dozens of people I've met that were on SSI and legitimately needed the aid.
In fact the problem is that we don't spend NEAR ENOUGH money. Your guy obviously needs drug treatment, he should have a free drug treatment plan. Many of the people I knew/know on SSI are on it for mental p