Part of the problem is that NI really is a nice tool in shutting out the undesirables (you can't get a job, you can't travel, you can't use banks, can't rent or even pay a lot of your bills unless the Govt says you can). So yes, unfortunately National ID really does work against criminals. Since when can't a professional criminal get a fake ID? Biometrics just adds a database entry, it really doesn't make it any more difficult to fake IDs. Just a bit more expensive. And it's not like professional criminals are penniless.
This law targets one group and one group only: Illegal immigrants. This is an attempt by the anti-immigrant crowd to make life a little harder for the filthy wetbacks pouring across our borders by making them pay more for fake documents. Just like the increased border patrols are designed to make more of them die crossing the deep desert.
Whoever is selling this to the RIAA is selling snake oil.
It's basically impossible to design a watermarking system that survives compression because watermarks are "inaudible" effects applied to a track to uniquely identify that track and audio compression is designed to remove "inaudible" parts of a track, EXACTLY where the watermarks would be stored.
The only way to solve this is to have the compression algorithm and watermark work in tandem to not conflict with each other. So you could certainly sell, for example, AAC-encoded watermarked tracks on iTunes that were encoded with a special AAC encoder that would not damage the watermark. Of course, this watermark WILL NOT survive recompression to MP3 because the non-tuned MP3 encoder will mangle it. You're much better off inserting a binary tag with the buyer's information into the track so if that track is shared UNCHANGED on P2P you can identify the buyer. It's cheaper, easier, and more accurate.
Doesn't this seem incredibly paranoid to anyone else? Is it only modded up because it's anti-RIAA? It's completely ridiculous to think that they have it out for certain people and would "frame" them. Since they've done this in the past (frame people), it's not paranoid. However, it's difficult to see why the RIAA would want to spend that amount of time and effort to nail some kid or grandma sharing music. OTOH, they've spent thousands of dollars on lawyers to sue kids, so it's not as implausible as it sounds.
It's important to understand that the RIAA desperately wants to move into a "guilty until proven innocent" paradigm in regards to file sharing, because their lawsuits against sharers have been expensive, difficult, and unsuccessful. They also want to make it criminal, so the government will take over some of their enforcement burden.
Isn't more accuracy a good thing It would be, if they cared about that. Let's have a hypothetical. We've got 4 kinds of tracks:
1) Joe downloads a track from P2P ripped from a CD someone purchased. No watermark. 2) Joe legally purchases a track from iTunes WITH the watermark. 3) Joe rips a track from CD he bought himself. No watermark. 4) Joe downloads a DRM-free track from P2P that someone bought through iTunes WITH the watermark.
Do you really think that after the RIAA has gotten a subpoena and carefully examined all the tracks on his hard drive that they'll let Joe slide on #1, #2, and #3? I don't think so. They'll argue that he has to show sales receipts for every scrap of music in his collection AND that he can't rip his personal CDs.
The RIAA, as much as they're (rightfully) demonized here, is acting defensively, not offensively. You also don't seem to grasp that "anti-RIAA" means "anti-big record labels". I very much want people to steal music from the big labels with the intention of damaging their profits and driving them out of business. Hell, I very much want people to visit the board meetings of the big labels and gun down the boardmembers. They deserve it.
And don't whine about the artists. They are FUCKED HARD by the major labels and virtually every recording artist would be better off without them. The handful that aren't (Metallica) are greedy whining bitches that don't give a fuck about music, the music industry, or much of anything except themselves.
Many of my peers expect to graduate college and start off on the same level their parents are (who have worked for 30 years). If they went to college and are better trained than their parents this is a reasonable expectation. A lot of your friends may have massive student loans, so they need to earn as much money as possible right out of the gate. They have skills that are in demand and want to be well compensated for their work. The bastards.
The whole premise is of the article is warped.
"The issue is with retention, not hiring."
Exactly right. Millennials have learned that corporations do not give a fuck about them or their well-being, so they have absolutely no corporate loyalty whatsoever. They are ALWAYS looking for greener pastures. Most of them wouldn't think twice about selling company secrets if they could get away with it. Blame the modern business culture that treats workers like disposable razors, don't blame the workers.
Actually, a major reason why high fructose corn syrup is the sweetener of choice for many American food products is that the U.S. sugar lobby is so strong.
Lies. C&H, the California and Hawaii sugar cooperative, has nearly been driven out of business. The SOLE reason for this is massive corn subsidies and sugar import tariffs. The subsides block US sugar production, the tariffs prevent importing sugar. The subsidies DO NOT help small farmers. Virtually all the money (90%) goes to a handful of large agricultural conglomerates, the biggest being ADM and Cargill.
Part of the problem is that, for some reason, it is seen as somehow more acceptable, perhaps even noble to cheat for the sake of one's company. "Acceptable" isn't the right word. Executives bear the legal requirement to "maximize shareholder value" as much as possible within the law. This means that they're OBLIGATED to cheat and push the law right to the edge of legality. And, in practice, usually far beyond the edge.
You're expected to do as much unethical behavior as you can get away with without harming the company's reputation. This is usually done by outsourcing the "dirty tricks" to fly-by-night companies. There are lots of shady advertising companies that will do SEO, send spam, etc. for their clients.
Also known as STYLE. The word "style" appears about 10 times in the article you cited.
but you have set the bar pretty low. I'm just shooting for "not retarded.":)
It is retarded to believe ancient people had magical powers without ANY EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER except disputed (contemporaries of Jesus called him a fraud) third-hand accounts.
My point was that there do exist texts that suggest that Jesus said he was the son of God, these texts have been dated to before 325, and this idea was certainly floating around in the Chirstian community before Nicaea. Many of your previous arguments seemed to suggest this idea was concieved at Nicaea and the evidence was manufactured after the fact.
That's not what I said or even implied. My stance on this issue is thus:
The divine birth of Jesus is a Hellenistic idea (a la Hercules) added to the Christian tradition somewhere around 80 CE. The earliest Christians were messianic Jews. Eventually non-Jews converting to Christianity, unhappy with Jewish law and theology, developed Gnosticism and what would become "orthodox" Christianity as alternative views (around 80 CE). This is when the deification of Jesus occurs and the "salvation" theology of Christianity is clearly established. "Orthodox" Christianity was not formalized until the end of the 4th century, approximately 300 years later.
What I am trying to say is that their was MASSIVE debate and conflict between various sects of Christianity, particularly on the divinity of Jesus. These debates were eventually ended through FORCE. Constantine laid down the rules of "orthodox" Christianity (through the Council of Nicaea) and then sent the Roman army to suppress anyone who disagreed. This suppression was very effective, and basically brought an end to Gnostic Christianity and Messianic Judaism, the other two major strains of Christian thought. Most "orthodox" Christians assume Constantine was divinely guided in his actions, and the suppression of heretics IN GENERAL was divinely guided.
No, I don't think God had physical sex with Mary, but I think that Joseph might have been his father, or another man, and that he could still be the "son of God." Because "son of God" was never defined by Jesus. This seems... not hard to understand.
"Son of God" is defined as "The physical father of this male was YHWH, the divine/supernatural god of Abraham as described in the Torah". Or to put it in more modern terms "Jesus had YHWH's DNA". This is VERY clear from the Gospel of John, the Epistles, the Creeds (all of them), the arguments of the early church fathers, and millenia of Christian scholarship. If you deny this, if you believe Jesus' father was human, you ARE NOT Christian. At least not "orthodox" Christian. Your view is called "unitarianism" (as opposed to "trinitarianism") and is considered heretical.
This very issue was the key issue of the Council of Nicaea. Look up "Arian Controversy". The Nicaea Creed, which you say you accept, was created to say UNAMBIGUOUSLY that Jesus had the blood of YHWH in his veins.
But, still that's more than sticking your head in a hat 2000 years later.
I don't understand how. Joseph Smith claimed he was reading from "golden plates" (presumably inscribed by angels) and that he took DIRECT DICTATION from God (in the manner Moses did when he was writing the 10 Commandments). Why is an anonymous man relating third-hand stories other people heard about Jesus more accurate? I don't understand how you can regard a TEXT as divinely inspired when you admit the AUTHORS were not. If the anonymous author of Matthew was full of crap, shouldn't his WRITINGS therefore be full of crap?
But I suppose I shouldn't even consider what Jesus said because clearly it is useless for any spiritual contemplation whatsoever.
What I've been trying to illustrate is that "Jesus" didn't say anything. The anonymous
Lets say you don't include AACS, you still have to make it closed source because of billion dollar sound compression specs like Dolby, DTS won't open their formats just because some open source fanatics said so. There are DTS decoders for Linux right now, they're just not legal. I think you're hitting on a major long-term issue with Linux. Linux development is moving out of the United States precisely because of legal threats and entanglements against US Linux developers. I've often said that "Linux on the desktop" will never gain serious traction in the USA for this reason (among others).
I don't think they actually believe a non crackable format from start. They want people to hassle ripping the stuff and become legally responsible for their actions. Why did they keep shipping CSS? Are they that stupid not to figure one can deCss easily? I don't think so. They wanted people to issue "decss" command. It is same deal for AACS. You should also understand TV/Movie culture. No, they thought CSS would work because they do not understand security. They kept issuing DVDs with CSS long after it had been cracked because that was part of the "standard". It also took a LONG time for the studios to become convinced that CSS was really "broken", the DVD Forum was in denial about this for a very long time because it made their product look bad. A few DVDs in recent years HAVE been released without CSS because the studios let their keys expire and didn't bother to renew them. AACS has already been (mostly) cracked but they're still issuing encrypted HD-DVDs and Blu-ray disc for the same reason, nobody wants to ADMIT that their shiny new copy protection system has been easily defeated.
You don't seem to understand that while the studios care about "casual copying" they know that the vast majority of piracy takes place overseas where their legal threats don't mean dick. So, in practice, they are dependent on copy protection technology to prevent 95% of piracy. Knowing this, snake-oil security vendors pitch "uncrackable" copy protection technology to content owners with the hope of tricking them into believing their stuff actually works. This is what happened with CSS and SecuROM.
Since calls you make are now just "data" traversing your employer's system, somehow the legal issues around wiretapping evaporate, and your employer can now legally eavesdrop on any personal calls you make from work without your consent.... if you were using a regular landline, the eavesdropping would be illegal. You do know it was this way long before VoIP, right? Companies can and do monitor the conversations of employees on their private phone network, just as they can monitor your email. It's been this way as long as internal phone systems have existed. If the company doesn't have an internal phone system, then they CAN'T monitor your phone conversations. The limitation is practical, not legal. If you go over to a friend's house and use his phone HE can monitor your phone conversations as well, assuming he's equipped to do so. Generally, don't have privacy on things you don't own.
Lets say you don't include AACS, you still have to make it closed source because of billion dollar sound compression specs like Dolby, DTS won't open their formats just because some open source fanatics said so.
There are DTS decoders for Linux right now, they're just not legal. I think you're hitting on a major long-term issue with Linux. Linux development is moving out of the United States precisely because of legal threats and entanglements against US Linux developers. I've often said that "Linux on the desktop" will never gain serious traction in the USA for this reason.
If Sony was against Linux (as some think), why did they bother sponsoring/helping YDL vendor Terrasoft to ship a PS3 Linux for that -really strange- computer? You, and most of those who talk about this deal, are grossly mischaracterizing it. The deal basically amounted to Sony ALLOWING the Yellow Dog people to port to Cell, a Power4 variant. They basically gave them the specs and that's it. I consider this a pretty far cry from a Sony endorsement of Linux.
AACS has already been cracked. There are non-commercial players for Windows. I do not know of any non-commercial players for Linux, but I think that's largely a driver issue. AACS is largely dead. Device keys for almost every playback device have been leaked, including non-revocable keys embedded in hardware players. At this point Blu-ray makers either have to make discs that won't play in 90% of available players (FOREVER, new players will have their keys grabbed as they're released), or accept that the format is cracked.
You seem to be laboring under a number of misconceptions:
1. Carbon dating isn't applicable to Biblical texts. Carbon dating only narrows down dates to within a few centuries. You can't tell the difference between a 50 CE and a 350 CE document through carbon dating. Biblical documents are dated almost entirely based on STYLE. This is complicated by the fact that prophetic documents are often written in a deliberately anachronistic style to make them appear older than they really are. This is why there is significant real debate on the age of most of the gospels. For example: some scholars, such as myself, place the Gospel of John at around 150 CE rather than the "conventional" dating of around 80 CE.
2. The Gospel of Mark is widely regarded as the oldest of the canonical gospels. The earliest versions of the Gospel of Mark (there are large differences between exant copies) do not include the phrase "Son of God" and many scholars believe that the Resurrection was added to the end of Mark by later copyists.
As far as I know, there is NO proof that they altered any of the copies of Matthew. We have NO "before and after" texts, and certainly not for the divinity claim or the non-violence issue.
You can find numerous editorial and copyist changes to NT texts before the Council of Nicaea. There was no formal "canon" during the Council of Nicaea. The Council was formed to create a clear orthodoxy of belief regardless of what the texts said. During the arguments of the council various bishops argued that various texts supported their positions,
These bishops also do NOT claim anything miraculous happened at Nicaea, other than that everybody showed up on time, sober.
Absolutely incorrect. Every participant for which we have records claimed that the council, the bishops, and Constantine were divinely guided in their decisions.
I'm pretty sure you were not an eyewitness to Jesus, or knew anyone that was.
None of the gospels were written by an eyewitness to Jesus or knew anyone that was. And yes, that's a FACT. Mark was written in Rome in around 80 CE, meaning that the author lived too late to know Jesus and too late to know anyone who KNEW Jesus and he lived a great distance away. There is no good reason to believe the author of Mark had any more special knowledge of Jesus than I do.
Fact. We have no evidence or proof that Matthew was altered at Nicaea.
Fact: Matthew was altered by copyists and editors both before and after the Council of Nicaea. The Council of Nicaea probably included some of those copyists and editors.
If you were trying to convince me that Judas was a better (more accurate) account than Matthew... this line of reasoning would make sense.
Yes, based on modern standards of scholarship, Judas is clearly more accurate than Matthew. I'm arguing based on two lines here:
1. There is reason to believe that some of the non-canonical gospels are more accurate than the canonical gospels, which is a good argument for the rejection of orthodox Christianity in favor of Messianic Judaism. I believe Messianic Judaism to be most consistent with what Jesus actually taught.
2. There is no reason to believe that the supernatural events of either the canonical or non-canonical gospels ever happened, and very good reasons to believe they did not. Modern-day Christian miracle workers and prophets have proven to be frauds, for example.
Silly, I know, but you went there.
You redefined "accurate" as "perfect" by selectively quoting "free from defect" from the definition you found online. That was dishonest and I called you on it.
I do agree with the Nicaean Creed.... So according to you, I'm back to being a Christian.
Yup. Describing yourself as "Christian" strongly implies that you accept the divine inspiration of the New Testament but that isn't strictly necessary. You can be a Christian without ever hav
I just need one quote attributed to Jesus Christ from *any* source that suggests that I, me, myself, as a self-proclaimed follower of Jesus (or what is commonly referred to as a "Christian") kill another human being for any purpose whatsoever and I'll stop making the claim that he was clearly, 100% a proponent of non-violence.
Sure:
Jesus said that those who fail to accept his divinity should be put to the sword.
Source: Me, 5 minutes ago.
You can also find an extremely similar quote in the Book of Mormon.
Of course, you will reject both myself and Joseph Smith as legitimate prophets based on.... what exactly? You've given no criteria for what texts you consider "authentic".
No, sorry, I don't have to choose. Nothing, NOTHING in the world is like this. Ever.
Tell it to the catholic church. If you didn't accept their orthodoxy you were killed. Just because Christian sects in the USA no longer enforce orthodoxy as vigorously as they once did does not mean orthodoxy doesn't exist.
"Accurate" means "free from error or defect." If this is your definition, then how can we ever prove this?... But what historical account (of ANYTHING) have you been reading that is "free from error?"
It's not. You made up that definition to support your argument. Redefining terms is a common debating tactic.
I personally believe that they are "historically accurate" to the degree that the man lived and said most if not all of what we think he said.
Which is more honest. You obviously understand that "historically accurate" is a relative term. Most people would agree that Darwin's "Voyage of the Beagle" is more accurate that Josephus' "Antiquities of the Jews". Why do they think that? It is because Josephus makes extraordinary claims that conflict with their experience and common sense, like gods throwing lightning bolts and flying chariots. Likewise, many people believe Achilles existed and he was a Greek leader. Very few people believe that he was dipped in the river Styx and thereby invulnerable.
Likewise, most people would agree that their was a 1st century rabbi named Jesus. Most people would disagree that he was a divine being or had magical powers.
But I do believe that he said he was the "son of God."
I believe that lots of people have said this. I am the son of God. There, I just said it. Christians don't believe that Jesus SAID he was the Son of God, Christians (through the trinity) believe that Jesus WAS/IS God. If you don't believe that, you're not a Christian.
Do you have any evidence you would like to share that he did not say any of the things he is reported to have said?
Lots. For example: The Gospel of John makes numerous allusions to the fall of Jerusalem, mainly because it was written after the fall. But Jesus died long before the fall of Jerusalem. Unless one wishes to attribute prophetic powers to Jesus, how could he have talked about the fall of Jerusalem?
Many of the early Christians (if not most) clearly thought he did say that he was "the son of god". Their belief in this doctrine is well documented, no?
Not really, no. Most of the early followers of Jesus were Messianic Jews that explicitly DID NOT believe Jesus was the son of God.
If the gnostic texts were "DESTROYED" as you say they were... HOW COME I HAVE READ THEM?
Most of the Gnostic texts you have read sprang from the Dead Sea Scrolls, which where specifically hidden in response to various purges. It is sheer luck that they managed to survive in the desert for nearly 2000 years. Before then, for 1500 years, all the Gnostic texts WERE destroyed. We only knew about the Gnostics based on the few ANTI-Gnostic texts that were preserved.
What "facts" about Jesus do you claim that they covered up?
First and foremost, that he was NOT the Son of God, did not CLAIM he was the Son of
His idea was that if you happened to have XCorp as an ISP and another customer at XCorp sent some message that came under his definition of spam it was OK for him to blacklist every customer of the ISP because it was your responsibility as a customer to make sure that your ISP policed their customers to his personal satisfaction. Of course he was absolutely correct. It wasn't until these kinds of heavy-handed tactics that many ISPs made stopping spammers a priority. Effectively, Paul Vixie and other sysops blackmailed the ISPs into doing something about spam. If they HADN'T done these things email would be entirely unusable today. Anti-spam efforts take time and money. Time and money that wasn't going to be spent by rogue ISPs unless they were pushed into a corner.
Nobody uses blacklists in that way any more in a commercial anti-spam solution. Yes they do. If an ISP misbehaves badly they can be entirely blocked by SpamHaus, SORBS, and other DNS blacklists. Entire NATIONS are occasionally blocked.
What if blocking legitimate email interferes with REAL customers? It sucks to be you. You did something wrong, that's why you're blocked. What did you do wrong? You didn't police your network effectively enough so you are being punished for being negligent. I have no problem with this.
Spam is a social problem. Yes it is. The first part of solving social problems is convincing people that it IS a problem. That's what Paul Vixie was trying to do. Convince ISPs that spam is a problem and that they should police their networks. Nowadays a lot of spam comes from foreign nations with incompetent sysadmins that don't know or don't bother to secure their networks properly so they get rooted and their servers are turned into spam engines. In the US and elsewhere spammers use botnets to send spam, which AGAIN is the result of poor security by users.
At SOME point responsibility has to lie with the person that is ALLOWING their resources to be abused. If you leave your car unattended in the driveway with the keys in the ignition, the doors open, and a sign saying "This car is easy to steal" you shouldn't be surprised when it gets stolen and (here's the important part) the insurance company will tell you to fuck off when you make a claim because you were negligent.
And I am not the only person who has asked how we can tell if the SPEWS list was not being run by a spammer so that he could reduce the number of messages from competitors and make sure his own got out. Common fucking sense. You deploy SPEWS on your mail server and then you see if you get shitloads more spam. And even if you were right: WHO CARES? As long as it filters out the vast majority of the spam why should I care if it's run by a spammer who refuses to blacklist a small amount of spam? I could always use a different list to get THAT spam.
And it's not like the contents of these lists are mysterious black boxes. You can read them in plain text to find out what's being blocked. If it looks suspicious don't use it. Your complaint is akin to not using open source because the author of the app could theoretically be malicious. True, he could, but you can LOOK AT THE CODE TO CHECK.
The so called two party "rigging" is party responsible for the tremendous stability of the governments of the US and the UK. "Stability" and democracy are mutually exclusive. The most "stable" governments, if one looks at the course of human history, tend to be the most tyrannical. The Roman Empire and the Japanese shogunate come to mind.
First, Sony won with minidiscs and won big. It's a hugely profitable format. Like billion dollar profits. In the US, it's not so big. MiniDisc saw very little adoption outside of Japan. It was popular in Japan largely because it was a recordable format before recordable CDs became widely available. Users would make "mix discs" out of purchased or borrowed music that sounded a lot better than mix audio cassettes. Others would use it to do live recordings. Nobody actually BOUGHT music in the MiniDisc format and it was completely killed off by CD-R. If the record industry had allowed DAT as a consumer format, MiniDisc wouldn't have gotten off the ground AT ALL.
Second, downloads will not compete with blu-ray in this country. Sadly, there isn't going to be a great adoption of high speed internet for many years even if everything goes perfectly, which it will not. Downloads are already, by a wide margin, how most Americans view HD content. If you track the HD computer downloads from iTunes and elsewhere you'll find the numbers are quite large. Broadband adoption is already very high among the target demographic for HD (wealthy 18-35 year olds), much higher than adoption of HD sets and especially HD players. Clearly the future of TV is IPTV, one way or another. This is the opinion of almost everyone.
You really think every studio will make their entire library open online? And that enough people will download online to pay the kind of money we're talking about? And what about the royalties that the WGA is demanding? I think the studios worry their pie is smaller, and their cut is also smaller, with online distro. The major labels were reluctant to get involved in online music for EXACTLY the same reasons. They were dragged kicking and screaming into it and the movie studios will be as well.
If the PS3 continues to outsell the 360,... Sony is obviously beating the 360 every but NA, Where? The 360 has outsold the PS3 in every market except Japan where it is getting HAMMERED by Nintendo, which dominates every market but OWNS Japan with around 10 DS and Wii games sold for each PS3 game.
They aren't letting the bandwitdh hogs like Home and movie distro out yet, mainly I think to avoid a lot of the problems MS is having with an obviously overwhelmed online service. This is mainly because they don't work. I've seen Home and, at the moment, it's broken. XBOX Live is vastly more popular than PSN and during the holiday season XBL apparently nearly doubled it's subscribers, which is why the service has been having so many problems lately. And being Sony, a movie studio, DOES hurt Sony when trying to cut deals with other movie studios because they're perceived as a competitor. This was essentially why HD-DVD came into existence.
As long as IT is considered a mystic black-art that anybody who 'knows-computers' can do then it will never receive the respect that it deserves. All IT jobs should be considered on the same "Skilled Trade" tier as plumbers, welders, electricians, etc. As long as the PHB thinks that his son Johnny has a computer so anybody can do this job, then it will always be a dead-end position.
Many people seem to be working in different IT departments than I am. I find the notion that System Administrators are somehow equivalent to plumbers to be insulting.
Desktop computers are just about the most complicated devices on planet Earth. Let me repeat that: Desktop computers are the most complicated devices on planet Earth. They are, in fact, an order of magnitude more complex than ANYTHING other than sophisticated servers (another kind of computer). I've used laser tracking systems, lithography equipment, electron microscopes, sophisticated robotics systems, etc. They don't even come close. The only thing that makes them complicated is that most of what I just described is COMPUTER-CONTROLLED. But those are relatively simple single-purpose computers designed to do (basically) one thing. Desktop computers are hideously complicated multi-function tools potentially capable of doing THOUSANDS of different tasks. It's like comparing a Swiss Army knife with 100 attachments to a hammer. Which one is easier to use?
And it's not like these insanely complicated devices are getting easier to manage. Do you really believe that? Have you ever spent time in an office? Any PHB who thinks that his son Johnny can replace real IT management doesn't stay a PHB for long.
At this point, most people would be willing to settle for ANY standard since it's the cable companies' plan to NOT HAVE ONE. They WILL sabotage "OpenCable" or "Tru2Way" or whatever the fuck they're calling it now, just like they sabotaged CableCARD, and continue to use proprietary equipment. They're already talking about OUTRAGEOUS (on the order of $200 PER DEVICE) licensing terms for "Tru2Way", which will guarantee no consumer electronics manufacturer will touch it (by design).
The FCC spec is being pushed by Sony and other manufacturers, who actually have a business interest in interoperability. Hell, even a Sony proprietary format would be an improvement.
A Series 3 Tivo is a PVR, not a set-top box. Have you seen ANYTHING other than a Series 3 Tivo with CableCARD support? Have you ever tried to provision a Series 3 Tivo with a CableCARD? Comcast simply WILL NOT give you the cards here in California. I've tried. The fact that CableCARD hasn't been widely adopted in consumer devices due to the cable companies not being supportive is well known by just about everyone (except apparently you). Read the Ars Technica articles about CableCARD and grow a fucking brain.
I'm not sure what you mean about the Gospel of Thomas. There are a lot of "sayings" in it that have close analogs to the synoptic gospels. The Infancy Gospel of Thomas is a non-canonical gospel of Jesus that, essentially, describes Jesus' childhood. The child Jesus is portrayed as quite capricious. This is distinct from the "sayings" Gospel of Thomas.
I do not claim inerrancy, "historical accuracy" or any of that.
I do believe that there was a man named Jesus, he said some stuff, a lot of it survived, mostly accurate. These two statements, said right after one another, are direct contradictions. Either the Canonical Gospels are historically accurate or they're not. Christians, pretty much by definition, assume they are, and that assumption is based on faith in the divine inspiration of the Bible's editors. There is really no way around this.
Of what they did have, these men assumed certain things about authorship - I tend to agree. WHY? Why do you think they were more credible than, say, Plato?
If you are suggesting that in 325 there was a catholic conspiracy to supress certain truths and the 325 AD version of orwellian historical revisionism occurred It's not a "suggestion", it's a FACT. It's not a "conspiracy" if it's out in the open. The whole point of the Council of Nicaea was to determine the "truth" about Jesus and to suppress anyone who veered from orthodoxy. And they did, quite violently. The Arians, Gnostics, etc. were KILLED and their texts DESTROYED. They also engaged in tons of revisionism and fabrication of historical records to support their views. The Catholic/Orthodox church has made it completely impossible to determine any historical truths about Jesus due to corruption and destruction of the historical records.
I'm not claiming that anything written with human hands is sacred, innerant, was 100% authored by this person or that person. You are not a Christian and do not reflect the views of Christians. Christians certainly DO believe that the Gospels were sacred, divinely guided and written by the Apostles.
I'm simply saying that I can't find evidence in these texts (the words of Jesus) where he suggested that I kill people. You are selectively picking and choosing texts that support this view, which contradicts the early church fathers, the ancient catholic church, the modern Catholic church, and virtually all other modern Christian denominations.
She was trying to say how my little brother lied to her about the contents of Vice City when he was 13 (he's now 17) and if she'd had any idea what was in it she never would have let him get it at that age, etc Let me ask you a better question: Do you have any reason to believe your little brother was scarred for life because he played Vice City at age 13? Has he started running over (real) prostitutes for fun? I'm being serious.
Coleen Hannon reveals her real bias in this very interesting quote:
"The teens who want to play something with action in it are the ones that are in the danger zone and this list does nothing for them."
And I was reading Mark Saltzman's (GamerDad) review of God of War 2 that had this bit:
"The original God of War was one of the most violent, sexual, and intense old-school beat em up games ever made. Lots of fun, but filled to the brim with content not appropriate for kids. God of War II carries on this tradition proudly. Parents beware: your kids know about this game and they want it. Trust me, they're aware and they want it."
They clearly understand that it's not little kids "at risk" from violent games largely because those kids have LITTLE INTEREST in those games. This is an absolutely critical point that must be reiterated. Little kids have NO INTEREST in violent or sexual media. It's perfectly okay to show hardcore porn to little kids because they simply don't CARE about it. So, what they're trying to say in a roundabout way is:
Teenaged boys can't handle videogame (and film) sexuality and violence.
I have a big problem with this assumption in that it's obviously completely false. Teenaged boys will not see the violence in GTA III or God of War and act it out. The very notion is retarded. So what is the actual risk here? Teenagers are at the point in their development where they are seriously questioning arbitrary limits on their behavior and the JUDGMENT (this is critical) of their parents. Parents are trying to limit their teenager's EXPOSURE to different materials in the vain hope that it will make their teenagers less interested in sex and violence and less apt to question their authority. Teenagers are interested in sex and violence because they're HUMAN and no amount of sheltering will change that. Quite the contrary, sheltered teenagers are MORE attracted to sexual and violent media because of the novelty. Teenagers question authority because they're TEENAGERS, that's what they do.
He's a little cynical. India's problems with providing basic services to all citizens are not due to a lack of money, but due to political and ethnic conflict within India. It's the same reason all Americans don't have access to free college education, even though we have the money. It's a bit much to ask for foreign NGOs to be sensitive to those conflicts when providing aid, let alone the expectation that they are supposed to somehow resolve those problems. The hysteria that formula producers are somehow responsible for mass starvation is hilarious. It is not the fault of formula manufacturers that they try to provide cheap formula to the developing world and then developing world governments fuck it all up.
If Mr. Dey wants foreign governments to resolve their internal political problems then he and his fellow Indians shouldn't have kicked out the British and remained a colony. Independence comes with responsibility.
At one time there were interminable arguments as to the definition of 'spam'. There were grey areas.... When spam was first recognized as a problem there were plenty of people who were setting themselves up as the supreme arbiters of where exactly the line should be drawn and threatening 'zero-tollerance' of anyone who refused to comply with their demands. They were a bunch of self appointed little-Hittlers. It wasn't about stopping spam anymore, it was about projecting their control and authority. This is flatly wrong. Nobody actually WANTS mass-emailed advertisements in their inbox. In the past, relatively large corporations would send spam for their products ex. HP advertising a new desktop, and say it wasn't spam. They were wrong, as ISP sysops quickly informed them. Eventually, spam became a big enough problem on their networks that ISP sysops brought the ban hammer down in the form of blacklists and other tools.
The "little Hitlers" you're talking about are the sysops who wanted the spammers to stop fucking with their email servers. They were 100% absolutely right to say that if you do anything that even remotely hints at acting like spam you should be auto-banned permanently because 99% of people "on the edge" were spammers trying to game the system. Nobody has a divine right to send email, especially if it interferes with REAL customers. The blacklists are the only reason email is still usable.
yes, 100% true: society gets to choose which behaviors are permitted and which are not, based on a prudent risk assessment Fact: Cocaine was banned because "negro cocaine fiends" were out raping white women. At least that's what the press AND THE LEGISLATORS WHO PASSED THE LAWS said at the time. Cocaine was considered to have health BENEFITS at the time. Do you think "Reefer Madness" is a prudent risk assessment? Do you think raising the speed limit to 65 had anything to do with a prudent risk assessment?
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This law targets one group and one group only: Illegal immigrants. This is an attempt by the anti-immigrant crowd to make life a little harder for the filthy wetbacks pouring across our borders by making them pay more for fake documents. Just like the increased border patrols are designed to make more of them die crossing the deep desert.
Whoever is selling this to the RIAA is selling snake oil.
It's basically impossible to design a watermarking system that survives compression because watermarks are "inaudible" effects applied to a track to uniquely identify that track and audio compression is designed to remove "inaudible" parts of a track, EXACTLY where the watermarks would be stored.
The only way to solve this is to have the compression algorithm and watermark work in tandem to not conflict with each other. So you could certainly sell, for example, AAC-encoded watermarked tracks on iTunes that were encoded with a special AAC encoder that would not damage the watermark. Of course, this watermark WILL NOT survive recompression to MP3 because the non-tuned MP3 encoder will mangle it. You're much better off inserting a binary tag with the buyer's information into the track so if that track is shared UNCHANGED on P2P you can identify the buyer. It's cheaper, easier, and more accurate.
It's important to understand that the RIAA desperately wants to move into a "guilty until proven innocent" paradigm in regards to file sharing, because their lawsuits against sharers have been expensive, difficult, and unsuccessful. They also want to make it criminal, so the government will take over some of their enforcement burden. Isn't more accuracy a good thing It would be, if they cared about that. Let's have a hypothetical. We've got 4 kinds of tracks:
1) Joe downloads a track from P2P ripped from a CD someone purchased. No watermark.
2) Joe legally purchases a track from iTunes WITH the watermark.
3) Joe rips a track from CD he bought himself. No watermark.
4) Joe downloads a DRM-free track from P2P that someone bought through iTunes WITH the watermark.
Do you really think that after the RIAA has gotten a subpoena and carefully examined all the tracks on his hard drive that they'll let Joe slide on #1, #2, and #3? I don't think so. They'll argue that he has to show sales receipts for every scrap of music in his collection AND that he can't rip his personal CDs. The RIAA, as much as they're (rightfully) demonized here, is acting defensively, not offensively. You also don't seem to grasp that "anti-RIAA" means "anti-big record labels". I very much want people to steal music from the big labels with the intention of damaging their profits and driving them out of business. Hell, I very much want people to visit the board meetings of the big labels and gun down the boardmembers. They deserve it.
And don't whine about the artists. They are FUCKED HARD by the major labels and virtually every recording artist would be better off without them. The handful that aren't (Metallica) are greedy whining bitches that don't give a fuck about music, the music industry, or much of anything except themselves.
The whole premise is of the article is warped.
"The issue is with retention, not hiring."
Exactly right. Millennials have learned that corporations do not give a fuck about them or their well-being, so they have absolutely no corporate loyalty whatsoever. They are ALWAYS looking for greener pastures. Most of them wouldn't think twice about selling company secrets if they could get away with it. Blame the modern business culture that treats workers like disposable razors, don't blame the workers.
Actually, a major reason why high fructose corn syrup is the sweetener of choice for many American food products is that the U.S. sugar lobby is so strong.
Lies. C&H, the California and Hawaii sugar cooperative, has nearly been driven out of business. The SOLE reason for this is massive corn subsidies and sugar import tariffs. The subsides block US sugar production, the tariffs prevent importing sugar. The subsidies DO NOT help small farmers. Virtually all the money (90%) goes to a handful of large agricultural conglomerates, the biggest being ADM and Cargill.
You're expected to do as much unethical behavior as you can get away with without harming the company's reputation. This is usually done by outsourcing the "dirty tricks" to fly-by-night companies. There are lots of shady advertising companies that will do SEO, send spam, etc. for their clients.
Isn't business great?
using paleographical analysis
Also known as STYLE. The word "style" appears about 10 times in the article you cited.
but you have set the bar pretty low. I'm just shooting for "not retarded." :)
It is retarded to believe ancient people had magical powers without ANY EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER except disputed (contemporaries of Jesus called him a fraud) third-hand accounts.
My point was that there do exist texts that suggest that Jesus said he was the son of God, these texts have been dated to before 325, and this idea was certainly floating around in the Chirstian community before Nicaea. Many of your previous arguments seemed to suggest this idea was concieved at Nicaea and the evidence was manufactured after the fact.
That's not what I said or even implied. My stance on this issue is thus:
The divine birth of Jesus is a Hellenistic idea (a la Hercules) added to the Christian tradition somewhere around 80 CE. The earliest Christians were messianic Jews. Eventually non-Jews converting to Christianity, unhappy with Jewish law and theology, developed Gnosticism and what would become "orthodox" Christianity as alternative views (around 80 CE). This is when the deification of Jesus occurs and the "salvation" theology of Christianity is clearly established. "Orthodox" Christianity was not formalized until the end of the 4th century, approximately 300 years later.
What I am trying to say is that their was MASSIVE debate and conflict between various sects of Christianity, particularly on the divinity of Jesus. These debates were eventually ended through FORCE. Constantine laid down the rules of "orthodox" Christianity (through the Council of Nicaea) and then sent the Roman army to suppress anyone who disagreed. This suppression was very effective, and basically brought an end to Gnostic Christianity and Messianic Judaism, the other two major strains of Christian thought. Most "orthodox" Christians assume Constantine was divinely guided in his actions, and the suppression of heretics IN GENERAL was divinely guided.
No, I don't think God had physical sex with Mary, but I think that Joseph might have been his father, or another man, and that he could still be the "son of God." Because "son of God" was never defined by Jesus. This seems... not hard to understand.
"Son of God" is defined as "The physical father of this male was YHWH, the divine/supernatural god of Abraham as described in the Torah". Or to put it in more modern terms "Jesus had YHWH's DNA". This is VERY clear from the Gospel of John, the Epistles, the Creeds (all of them), the arguments of the early church fathers, and millenia of Christian scholarship. If you deny this, if you believe Jesus' father was human, you ARE NOT Christian. At least not "orthodox" Christian. Your view is called "unitarianism" (as opposed to "trinitarianism") and is considered heretical.
This very issue was the key issue of the Council of Nicaea. Look up "Arian Controversy". The Nicaea Creed, which you say you accept, was created to say UNAMBIGUOUSLY that Jesus had the blood of YHWH in his veins.
But, still that's more than sticking your head in a hat 2000 years later.
I don't understand how. Joseph Smith claimed he was reading from "golden plates" (presumably inscribed by angels) and that he took DIRECT DICTATION from God (in the manner Moses did when he was writing the 10 Commandments). Why is an anonymous man relating third-hand stories other people heard about Jesus more accurate? I don't understand how you can regard a TEXT as divinely inspired when you admit the AUTHORS were not. If the anonymous author of Matthew was full of crap, shouldn't his WRITINGS therefore be full of crap?
But I suppose I shouldn't even consider what Jesus said because clearly it is useless for any spiritual contemplation whatsoever.
What I've been trying to illustrate is that "Jesus" didn't say anything. The anonymous
You don't seem to understand that while the studios care about "casual copying" they know that the vast majority of piracy takes place overseas where their legal threats don't mean dick. So, in practice, they are dependent on copy protection technology to prevent 95% of piracy. Knowing this, snake-oil security vendors pitch "uncrackable" copy protection technology to content owners with the hope of tricking them into believing their stuff actually works. This is what happened with CSS and SecuROM.
Lets say you don't include AACS, you still have to make it closed source because of billion dollar sound compression specs like Dolby, DTS won't open their formats just because some open source fanatics said so.
There are DTS decoders for Linux right now, they're just not legal. I think you're hitting on a major long-term issue with Linux. Linux development is moving out of the United States precisely because of legal threats and entanglements against US Linux developers. I've often said that "Linux on the desktop" will never gain serious traction in the USA for this reason.
AACS has already been cracked. There are non-commercial players for Windows. I do not know of any non-commercial players for Linux, but I think that's largely a driver issue. AACS is largely dead. Device keys for almost every playback device have been leaked, including non-revocable keys embedded in hardware players. At this point Blu-ray makers either have to make discs that won't play in 90% of available players (FOREVER, new players will have their keys grabbed as they're released), or accept that the format is cracked.
1. Carbon dating isn't applicable to Biblical texts. Carbon dating only narrows down dates to within a few centuries. You can't tell the difference between a 50 CE and a 350 CE document through carbon dating. Biblical documents are dated almost entirely based on STYLE. This is complicated by the fact that prophetic documents are often written in a deliberately anachronistic style to make them appear older than they really are. This is why there is significant real debate on the age of most of the gospels. For example: some scholars, such as myself, place the Gospel of John at around 150 CE rather than the "conventional" dating of around 80 CE.
2. The Gospel of Mark is widely regarded as the oldest of the canonical gospels. The earliest versions of the Gospel of Mark (there are large differences between exant copies) do not include the phrase "Son of God" and many scholars believe that the Resurrection was added to the end of Mark by later copyists.
As far as I know, there is NO proof that they altered any of the copies of Matthew. We have NO "before and after" texts, and certainly not for the divinity claim or the non-violence issue.
You can find numerous editorial and copyist changes to NT texts before the Council of Nicaea. There was no formal "canon" during the Council of Nicaea. The Council was formed to create a clear orthodoxy of belief regardless of what the texts said. During the arguments of the council various bishops argued that various texts supported their positions,
These bishops also do NOT claim anything miraculous happened at Nicaea, other than that everybody showed up on time, sober.
Absolutely incorrect. Every participant for which we have records claimed that the council, the bishops, and Constantine were divinely guided in their decisions.
I'm pretty sure you were not an eyewitness to Jesus, or knew anyone that was.
None of the gospels were written by an eyewitness to Jesus or knew anyone that was. And yes, that's a FACT. Mark was written in Rome in around 80 CE, meaning that the author lived too late to know Jesus and too late to know anyone who KNEW Jesus and he lived a great distance away. There is no good reason to believe the author of Mark had any more special knowledge of Jesus than I do.
Fact. We have no evidence or proof that Matthew was altered at Nicaea.
Fact: Matthew was altered by copyists and editors both before and after the Council of Nicaea. The Council of Nicaea probably included some of those copyists and editors.
If you were trying to convince me that Judas was a better (more accurate) account than Matthew... this line of reasoning would make sense.
Yes, based on modern standards of scholarship, Judas is clearly more accurate than Matthew. I'm arguing based on two lines here:
1. There is reason to believe that some of the non-canonical gospels are more accurate than the canonical gospels, which is a good argument for the rejection of orthodox Christianity in favor of Messianic Judaism. I believe Messianic Judaism to be most consistent with what Jesus actually taught.
2. There is no reason to believe that the supernatural events of either the canonical or non-canonical gospels ever happened, and very good reasons to believe they did not. Modern-day Christian miracle workers and prophets have proven to be frauds, for example.
Silly, I know, but you went there.
You redefined "accurate" as "perfect" by selectively quoting "free from defect" from the definition you found online. That was dishonest and I called you on it.
I do agree with the Nicaean Creed. ... So according to you, I'm back to being a Christian.
Yup. Describing yourself as "Christian" strongly implies that you accept the divine inspiration of the New Testament but that isn't strictly necessary. You can be a Christian without ever hav
I just need one quote attributed to Jesus Christ from *any* source that suggests that I, me, myself, as a self-proclaimed follower of Jesus (or what is commonly referred to as a "Christian") kill another human being for any purpose whatsoever and I'll stop making the claim that he was clearly, 100% a proponent of non-violence.
Sure:
Jesus said that those who fail to accept his divinity should be put to the sword.
Source: Me, 5 minutes ago.
You can also find an extremely similar quote in the Book of Mormon.
Of course, you will reject both myself and Joseph Smith as legitimate prophets based on.... what exactly? You've given no criteria for what texts you consider "authentic".
No, sorry, I don't have to choose. Nothing, NOTHING in the world is like this. Ever.
Tell it to the catholic church. If you didn't accept their orthodoxy you were killed. Just because Christian sects in the USA no longer enforce orthodoxy as vigorously as they once did does not mean orthodoxy doesn't exist.
"Accurate" means "free from error or defect." If this is your definition, then how can we ever prove this? ... But what historical account (of ANYTHING) have you been reading that is "free from error?"
It's not. You made up that definition to support your argument. Redefining terms is a common debating tactic.
I personally believe that they are "historically accurate" to the degree that the man lived and said most if not all of what we think he said.
Which is more honest. You obviously understand that "historically accurate" is a relative term. Most people would agree that Darwin's "Voyage of the Beagle" is more accurate that Josephus' "Antiquities of the Jews". Why do they think that? It is because Josephus makes extraordinary claims that conflict with their experience and common sense, like gods throwing lightning bolts and flying chariots. Likewise, many people believe Achilles existed and he was a Greek leader. Very few people believe that he was dipped in the river Styx and thereby invulnerable.
Likewise, most people would agree that their was a 1st century rabbi named Jesus. Most people would disagree that he was a divine being or had magical powers.
But I do believe that he said he was the "son of God."
I believe that lots of people have said this. I am the son of God. There, I just said it. Christians don't believe that Jesus SAID he was the Son of God, Christians (through the trinity) believe that Jesus WAS/IS God. If you don't believe that, you're not a Christian.
Do you have any evidence you would like to share that he did not say any of the things he is reported to have said?
Lots. For example: The Gospel of John makes numerous allusions to the fall of Jerusalem, mainly because it was written after the fall. But Jesus died long before the fall of Jerusalem. Unless one wishes to attribute prophetic powers to Jesus, how could he have talked about the fall of Jerusalem?
Many of the early Christians (if not most) clearly thought he did say that he was "the son of god". Their belief in this doctrine is well documented, no?
Not really, no. Most of the early followers of Jesus were Messianic Jews that explicitly DID NOT believe Jesus was the son of God.
If the gnostic texts were "DESTROYED" as you say they were... HOW COME I HAVE READ THEM?
Most of the Gnostic texts you have read sprang from the Dead Sea Scrolls, which where specifically hidden in response to various purges. It is sheer luck that they managed to survive in the desert for nearly 2000 years. Before then, for 1500 years, all the Gnostic texts WERE destroyed. We only knew about the Gnostics based on the few ANTI-Gnostic texts that were preserved.
What "facts" about Jesus do you claim that they covered up?
First and foremost, that he was NOT the Son of God, did not CLAIM he was the Son of
At SOME point responsibility has to lie with the person that is ALLOWING their resources to be abused. If you leave your car unattended in the driveway with the keys in the ignition, the doors open, and a sign saying "This car is easy to steal" you shouldn't be surprised when it gets stolen and (here's the important part) the insurance company will tell you to fuck off when you make a claim because you were negligent. And I am not the only person who has asked how we can tell if the SPEWS list was not being run by a spammer so that he could reduce the number of messages from competitors and make sure his own got out. Common fucking sense. You deploy SPEWS on your mail server and then you see if you get shitloads more spam. And even if you were right: WHO CARES? As long as it filters out the vast majority of the spam why should I care if it's run by a spammer who refuses to blacklist a small amount of spam? I could always use a different list to get THAT spam.
And it's not like the contents of these lists are mysterious black boxes. You can read them in plain text to find out what's being blocked. If it looks suspicious don't use it. Your complaint is akin to not using open source because the author of the app could theoretically be malicious. True, he could, but you can LOOK AT THE CODE TO CHECK.
As long as IT is considered a mystic black-art that anybody who 'knows-computers' can do then it will never receive the respect that it deserves. All IT jobs should be considered on the same "Skilled Trade" tier as plumbers, welders, electricians, etc. As long as the PHB thinks that his son Johnny has a computer so anybody can do this job, then it will always be a dead-end position.
Many people seem to be working in different IT departments than I am. I find the notion that System Administrators are somehow equivalent to plumbers to be insulting.
Desktop computers are just about the most complicated devices on planet Earth. Let me repeat that: Desktop computers are the most complicated devices on planet Earth. They are, in fact, an order of magnitude more complex than ANYTHING other than sophisticated servers (another kind of computer). I've used laser tracking systems, lithography equipment, electron microscopes, sophisticated robotics systems, etc. They don't even come close. The only thing that makes them complicated is that most of what I just described is COMPUTER-CONTROLLED. But those are relatively simple single-purpose computers designed to do (basically) one thing. Desktop computers are hideously complicated multi-function tools potentially capable of doing THOUSANDS of different tasks. It's like comparing a Swiss Army knife with 100 attachments to a hammer. Which one is easier to use?
And it's not like these insanely complicated devices are getting easier to manage. Do you really believe that? Have you ever spent time in an office? Any PHB who thinks that his son Johnny can replace real IT management doesn't stay a PHB for long.
At this point, most people would be willing to settle for ANY standard since it's the cable companies' plan to NOT HAVE ONE. They WILL sabotage "OpenCable" or "Tru2Way" or whatever the fuck they're calling it now, just like they sabotaged CableCARD, and continue to use proprietary equipment. They're already talking about OUTRAGEOUS (on the order of $200 PER DEVICE) licensing terms for "Tru2Way", which will guarantee no consumer electronics manufacturer will touch it (by design).
The FCC spec is being pushed by Sony and other manufacturers, who actually have a business interest in interoperability. Hell, even a Sony proprietary format would be an improvement.
A Series 3 Tivo is a PVR, not a set-top box. Have you seen ANYTHING other than a Series 3 Tivo with CableCARD support? Have you ever tried to provision a Series 3 Tivo with a CableCARD? Comcast simply WILL NOT give you the cards here in California. I've tried. The fact that CableCARD hasn't been widely adopted in consumer devices due to the cable companies not being supportive is well known by just about everyone (except apparently you). Read the Ars Technica articles about CableCARD and grow a fucking brain.
I do believe that there was a man named Jesus, he said some stuff, a lot of it survived, mostly accurate. These two statements, said right after one another, are direct contradictions. Either the Canonical Gospels are historically accurate or they're not. Christians, pretty much by definition, assume they are, and that assumption is based on faith in the divine inspiration of the Bible's editors. There is really no way around this. Of what they did have, these men assumed certain things about authorship - I tend to agree. WHY? Why do you think they were more credible than, say, Plato? If you are suggesting that in 325 there was a catholic conspiracy to supress certain truths and the 325 AD version of orwellian historical revisionism occurred It's not a "suggestion", it's a FACT. It's not a "conspiracy" if it's out in the open. The whole point of the Council of Nicaea was to determine the "truth" about Jesus and to suppress anyone who veered from orthodoxy. And they did, quite violently. The Arians, Gnostics, etc. were KILLED and their texts DESTROYED. They also engaged in tons of revisionism and fabrication of historical records to support their views. The Catholic/Orthodox church has made it completely impossible to determine any historical truths about Jesus due to corruption and destruction of the historical records. I'm not claiming that anything written with human hands is sacred, innerant, was 100% authored by this person or that person. You are not a Christian and do not reflect the views of Christians. Christians certainly DO believe that the Gospels were sacred, divinely guided and written by the Apostles. I'm simply saying that I can't find evidence in these texts (the words of Jesus) where he suggested that I kill people. You are selectively picking and choosing texts that support this view, which contradicts the early church fathers, the ancient catholic church, the modern Catholic church, and virtually all other modern Christian denominations.
Coleen Hannon reveals her real bias in this very interesting quote:
"The teens who want to play something with action in it are the ones that are in the danger zone and this list does nothing for them."
And I was reading Mark Saltzman's (GamerDad) review of God of War 2 that had this bit:
"The original God of War was one of the most violent, sexual, and intense old-school beat em up games ever made. Lots of fun, but filled to the brim with content not appropriate for kids. God of War II carries on this tradition proudly. Parents beware: your kids know about this game and they want it. Trust me, they're aware and they want it."
They clearly understand that it's not little kids "at risk" from violent games largely because those kids have LITTLE INTEREST in those games. This is an absolutely critical point that must be reiterated. Little kids have NO INTEREST in violent or sexual media. It's perfectly okay to show hardcore porn to little kids because they simply don't CARE about it. So, what they're trying to say in a roundabout way is:
Teenaged boys can't handle videogame (and film) sexuality and violence.
I have a big problem with this assumption in that it's obviously completely false. Teenaged boys will not see the violence in GTA III or God of War and act it out. The very notion is retarded. So what is the actual risk here? Teenagers are at the point in their development where they are seriously questioning arbitrary limits on their behavior and the JUDGMENT (this is critical) of their parents. Parents are trying to limit their teenager's EXPOSURE to different materials in the vain hope that it will make their teenagers less interested in sex and violence and less apt to question their authority. Teenagers are interested in sex and violence because they're HUMAN and no amount of sheltering will change that. Quite the contrary, sheltered teenagers are MORE attracted to sexual and violent media because of the novelty. Teenagers question authority because they're TEENAGERS, that's what they do.
He's a little cynical. India's problems with providing basic services to all citizens are not due to a lack of money, but due to political and ethnic conflict within India. It's the same reason all Americans don't have access to free college education, even though we have the money. It's a bit much to ask for foreign NGOs to be sensitive to those conflicts when providing aid, let alone the expectation that they are supposed to somehow resolve those problems. The hysteria that formula producers are somehow responsible for mass starvation is hilarious. It is not the fault of formula manufacturers that they try to provide cheap formula to the developing world and then developing world governments fuck it all up.
If Mr. Dey wants foreign governments to resolve their internal political problems then he and his fellow Indians shouldn't have kicked out the British and remained a colony. Independence comes with responsibility.
The "little Hitlers" you're talking about are the sysops who wanted the spammers to stop fucking with their email servers. They were 100% absolutely right to say that if you do anything that even remotely hints at acting like spam you should be auto-banned permanently because 99% of people "on the edge" were spammers trying to game the system. Nobody has a divine right to send email, especially if it interferes with REAL customers. The blacklists are the only reason email is still usable.
IPTV is distinct from the rumor that their will be a new "PVR SKU" in the XBOX 360 lineup.