I still think 6 was chosen because it's alliterative.
If standard deviation was called "phi", it would have been Four Phi or Five Phi.
Or Three Theta or Two Tau...
When I first heard of Six Sigma, just the name struck me as being irredeemably silly, and the fact that it implies such a fantastic level of accuracy (or success or whatever you want to call "lack of defects"), made me immediate assume it was just another stupid management fad.
Since I haven't had experience with it, I'll leave it to others to point out whether or not I was right.
The problem with Communism, which is also the problem with pure capitalism (with no governmental oversight or regulation) is that immoral people will (not just can, but will) wreck the system and enslave the less powerful and engage in tyranny. In fact, any system of government or economics that does not have a very meticulous system of checks and balances, as well as limited and decentralized power will suffer the same consequences.
If you read the Acts of the Apostles, you will see the early Christians communities lived in what is pretty much a text-book communal (or communist) society among themselves. With a small group of people who are like-minded, zealous about their beliefs (as any adherent to a new religion, particularly if he is being persecuted for it, would be), this can work, but of course it didn't last long, and once the Church became large and successful its wealth and power were often subverted for less-than-Christian ideals, which is one reason today why it specifically eschews political power and uses the vast majority of the wealth it maintains for good works.
Similarly, it's easy to have a startup company with, say, 8 people where everyone is top-notch, hard-working and delivers good results. It's impossible to have a company with 1000 people where everyone is the same. Communism doesn't scale. Socialism bypasses the corruption stage and goes straight to tyranny. Capitalism can be subverted for evil. No system is perfect as long as we flawed humans are a part of it.
That said however, I still find the conservative principals to be qualitatively more sound than the alternatives.
Here's my take on "conservative" principles, some of these are no doubt compatible with "liberal" principles or are at odds with "conservative" principles as espoused by some "conservative" politicians. I think that's a good thing.
1. Equalize opportunities, because you cannot equalize results. 2. People can generally take care of themselves, and should be left to, until they prove otherwise. 3. Help people when they truly need it, but if aid doesn't cost as well as provide, it will be abused. 4. The rights of the individual take precedence. Anything that compromises individual rights and opportunities will compromise the chances for success. However, it's often much easier to infringe on the rights of others than you realize. 5. Any aspect of government should be as local as possible, there are very few things that require implementation at the national level. 6. Real education is the best tool for any person. Investments in education will always pay off (but remember #3). 7. Humans are the best and most important natural resource on the planet. Human life, therefore, should be held in the highest regard. 8. We are stewards of the Earth, we neither own it or are owned by it. 9. There will always be evil. Be prepared to neutralize it, or you will be defeated by it. 10. Liberty is not license. Freedom necessitates responsibility and duty. 11. Sovereignty is a right. It cannot be denied to those who want it or forced upon people who do not wish to take part*.
#12 and #13 are specifically addressed to so-called liberals:
12. You have no right not to be offended by others. 13. Life isn't fair. Get over it.
#3 was the hardest to word succinctly. Here's what else I wanted to say:
Any social safety-net or entitlement will be gamed as much as possible and is guaranteed to be inefficient. Compassion is the most easily subverted intention, the easiest to take advantage of. People should not be allowed to starve or live without shelter, but without a real chance to fail, many people will let the system take care of them.
* Specifically, states should have the right to secede.
The problem with your strategy is that they are trying to intimidate you with losing your livelihood, and to go through all the trouble and expense you are describing you'd practically be doing that to yourself, and I doubt it would have any real effect.
Most people can't afford to go on a crusade no matter how just the cause.
The problem is that between planned obsolescence, user convenience and marketing (i.e. grotesquely oversized or elaborate packaging), we are generating trash at an ever-increasing rate every year.
It bothers me that there is apparently no market incentive to improve this situation, but many reasons to perpetuate it. I'm no environmental extremist, but I am constantly reminded and saddened about how much waste we generate, how almost nothing repairable, and how everything becomes more and more disposable.
My TV is almost 20 years old, and I'm dreading having to replace it. I have no intention of getting into HDTV or other technologies simply because the market seems to want to sort out which technologies are best by letting early adopters go through several models until they find what works best.
I kept my last car for 17 years, and my current one, which is 5 years old, is still "new" as far as I'm concerned (I drive Hondas). I keep my computers for a long time too, although in many cases a computer upgrade is gradual because after a couple years I've replaced everything but the case, one by one.
But I've gone through 3 laptops in 6 years and am on my 4th. One upgrade was strictly and upgrade, because my wife wanted my old one, but the other 2 cases was because it had become too expensive to fix compared to replacing, especially when repairing a laptop is a crapshoot because you never know when another major component (i.e. something bigger than a harddrive or memory) is going to go.
Then when it comes to the kids... some toys are practically pre-broken for your convenience, and any kind of cheap consumer electronic device is much the same. I've gone through several cordless phones in the past 5 years. I'm happy to repair rather than replace, but my time and effort is worth money too, and it doesn't make sense to spend two hours fixing something that you can replace for $5 or $10. It usually doesn't make sense to spend hours and pay shipping, etc, for something that costs less than $100, and I wouldn't even bother trying to get a VCR or DVD player repaired any more.
In cars, the tiniest malfunction can run to hundreds of dollars, because everything is packaged into sealed components that have to be replaced whole (and who knows if they are repaired and refurbed or just tossed). About 10 years ago, the car repairman told me an alternator problem I had was probably just a bad brush that he could replace for pennies, but it was a sealed unit, so there's $100 or so. I had to replace my entire steering column unit (the thing with the turn signal, light and wiper controls, etc, that wraps around the steering column) because the hazard light switch was busted and I needed that for the State Vehicle Inspection. $400+, and I'd taken the car in at the last minute, so I really had no choice or face fines from Maryland's finest. It was all one sealed unit (or I got totally ripped off by the repair place... either way I was screwed).
What's it going to take before we become sane in our usage of resources? I'm not talking about World War II style rationing, unless that somehow becomes necessary, but there is just so much excess, so much waste, that is completely unnecessary. We don't have to be Luddites or Scrooges to live a little more intelligently, but there are often no real alternatives that don't cost exorbitantly more, take up huge amounts of time or effort, or are simply not as advantageous as they would appear.
While your comparison is valid, I disagree because in this case, there are specific conservative values that were not being followed. The corruption is endemic to any powerful government, and if you don't think that's the case, then we have nothing to talk about.
To wit: Here are the conservative values that were flouted:
1. Leave the rest of the world alone unless it's in our vital and direct interest. An argument can be made that Bush was acting on this principle, but in retrospect, one has to wonder. Bush also made the mistake of trying to help make the U.N. relevant. The U.N. is corrupt and feckless, and it really doesn't bother me that various countries completely flout its resolutions because it has consistently demonstrated there are no consequences to doing so, so I can't blame them.
2. Small government. 'Nuff said.
3. Enforce existing laws before or rather than making new ones. The border issue is the perfect example.
4. Strive to maintain sovereignty. (There are a number of issues here, but this overlaps with #3 as well).
Reagan, for all his faults, made conservatism work, but no one has practiced it since. By your standard, which is a valid one, liberalism, as defined and practiced in the U.S. has also not only failed, but it cost more too.
The difference here is that unlike American conservatism or European liberalism, communism has never worked anywhere.
Good post. Hopefully the Yorkies won't get all torqued off and start hopping around and barking frenetically over Katz' book. I'm sure their owners would get upset, and the darn little things tend to pee when excited.
Conservatism is a failed ideology which has joined communism in the trash heap of history.
I hope you're not basing this claim on the past 6 years, because in the past 6 years there wasn't much conservatism going on.
Well, don't consider Java as your only example. I'd attack that kind of project with good old Visual C++ (i.e., MFC, but only for the GUI) with my class libraries and I would be just as productive. I'd just need a couple weeks to beef up some classes, since I haven't done much of that kind of stuff lately.
And if I had a couple months to finish my class library, I'd ditch all of MFC and be just as, if not more productive.
Java? Yeah, if you're a government bureaucrat you'd feel right at home. A usable language completely shackled in a class libraries and development environments that would choke a whale.
I misspoke. It was late and I was being too lazy to show my work, which would have allowed me to spot my boneheaded mistake.
I meant to say (number of colors) ^ 9. But the principle remains. I have no idea what you mean by unique selections of 2 colors from 256 colors (which would be 256 * 255, unless using the same color twice were allowed). If I have 9 pixels, each pixel can only represent 256 colors, or in terms of pure data, 1 standard, government-issue M1A1 _byte_. That's 9 bytes. There's no other way to do it. 72 bits.
If I have a piece of paper w x h inches in size and can print at a certain DPI (call it r) with z different colors, there is no way to encode more than
w * h * r^2 * ( log (base 2) z) bits, and that number is most certainly orders of magnitude less than 250GB.
In fact, let's do some numbers to see:
There appears to be some confusion as to what is meant by A4, so let's assume 9 x 12. Even if A4 is double that, the result will only be off by a factor of 4.
9 * 12 * 1200 * 1200 = 155,520,000 pixels on a 9 x 12 sheet of paper, assuming you can perfectly print and perfectly read at 1200 DPI, which would be a real feat for anything less than the kinds of presses they use for books and magazines, and a _really_ good scanner, not your $100 Best Buy bargain. Note that doesn't allow for any error correction.
Now, assuming 8-bit color you now have 155,520,000 * 8 bits or 155,520,000 bytes. That's not even a CD-R's worth of data and 3-and-change orders of magnitude less than this silly claim. ANd that's not taking into account the enormity of being able to flawlessly print and scan 1200DPI, 8 bit color, which would be unattainable with any consumer-grade equipment.
Ah, but what about compression? Who cares? It was BS when all the tape drive companies doubled their capacity claims based on the spurious claim that data you back up compresses to half its original size. Back when I used a tape drive, most of the stuff I was backing up was already compressed. Second, there is no compression algorithm that can compress arbitrary data by a factor of 1000. It's simply impossible.
The claim is complete and utter bull-plop, and your more detailed explanation makes no sense whatsoever. Check the story tags, and you'll see what the majority of people realize. To quote Futurama, "This is pure, weapons-grade Bolonium".
Your post reminds me of that old proof that the average person only works one day a year.
Your step 2 makes no sense. It looks like you are pulling numbers out of your nether regions. How can a square of 9 pixels hold more than 9 * number of colors values?
Just wait until your app needs something you can't do with drag-and-drop and you find out how useful all this Microsoft technology is. My experience with MS tools (15+ years) is that the application frameworks are brain-dead easy until you get outside its very narrow solution domain, then it's as hard or harder than than doing it from scratch.
It's the same old 10% active ingredient and 90% inert filler.
The hasn't been true for quite a few years. I don't know if you've noticed, but the washing powder companies have finally realized that reducing waste and excessive packaging and most products are significantly (2, 3 or 4x or more) more concentrated than they were 10-20 years ago.
Otherwise I agree with you and as far as I'm concerned, Word stopped improving about 10 years ago. Right now it's a huge, bloated, horribly buggy, (at least on OSX) and confusing mess.
I realized I could double my productivity by using OOo, but I could double or triple it again by using Restructured Text.
WYSIWYG Word processing is a dead-end. Markup is where the real power lies.
Re:Nothing inconvenient about the results
on
An Inconvenient Truth
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
hat part of being underwater in 100 years is a partisan issue?
It's the part where suggestions for preventing it always seems to correlate with a massive government power grab and assault on the free market, and specifically against the United States, which while producing a big chunk of the pollution, also manufactures the most stuff.
It's the part where the proposed solutions always seem like they will have huge and disastrous effects on the economy of developed nations while the developing countries who are actually the worst polluters always get a pass.
It's the part where environmentalism often seems more interested in punishing the rich than really protecting the environment.
It's really an empty argument because good works are an inescapable consequence of accepting Christ. If you accept Christ, then you perform good works. If you aren't performing good works then you haven't accepted Christ. As Bart Simpson says, "Ickso Fatso". I don't question their Christianity based on this point, or on many others with which I disagree.
The fact that your salvation depends solely on the merits of the sacrifice of Christ and not on anything you do, so long as you accept Him, is something we have in common, regardless of what they seem to think.
I'm convinced the differences are solely that of semantics, but I'll let the Southern Baptists say what they want because a.) It's a free country, and they are free to believe what they want. and b.) Some of them seem just a little oversensitive on the topic.
I would suggest that a sect whose tenets define other sects might have a bit of an identity crisis. Like I said before, if you are clear as to who you are, it doesn't matter what the other guy is, unless you have some kind of hang-up or an agenda against him.
Southern Baptists, by and large, are very good people worthy of respect, but I have a hard time accepting their reasoning on certain matters. Furthermore, if you look in the Bible, you will find it is, in fact, equivocal on the topic of faith vs. works, and it is easy to show that the Baptists, including the "Scripture is the literal truth" types are very selective in which verses they adhere to and which they kind of ignore.
Doesn't bother me none, but they are hardly in a position to comment on _my_ religion.
It's really pretty silly. "Christian" means someone who worships Jesus Christ as the Son of God. By that definition, Catholics and Protestants are Christian. Now there are some groups who redefine the basic concepts to mean something else than everyone else in the world takes them to mean, and therefore aren't really Christian as it is understood by the vast majority of the world.
I don't see what the big deal is, except for a few Protestants who seem much more interested in what they are not rather than what they are.
Well, if you market yourself as providing a safe, secure OS that anyone can use, but your product doesn't even come close to what you are advertising. I say that's fair game.
I use Windows some, and I actually like it. There are some apps and plenty of games that keep me from moving to Linux for anything, but most of the criticism given to Microsoft is well-deserved.
That you can't boot a new Windows installation connected to the Internet and not get pwned before you can download all the Service Packs is pretty sad. Microsoft never seemed to take security seriously until about 2000 and even then they were saddled with the fact the security was always an afterthough in all their designs, and from the sounds of it, continues to be so with Vista. It may work better, but it still sounds like a total kludge security-wise.
You can only blame the user so much when the vendor themselves claims that the software can take care of itself.
If the percentage of Windows machines were 90% or 95% or even 99% percent, you might have a point, but the fact is the only 1 machine out of 2000 spambots is not running Windows. That's 99.95%.
I think it's fair and meaningful to make this an indictment against Windows.
Slashdot Mirror
I still think 6 was chosen because it's alliterative.
If standard deviation was called "phi", it would have been Four Phi or Five Phi.
Or Three Theta or Two Tau...
When I first heard of Six Sigma, just the name struck me as being irredeemably silly, and the fact that it implies such a fantastic level of accuracy (or success or whatever you want to call "lack of defects"), made me immediate assume it was just another stupid management fad.
Since I haven't had experience with it, I'll leave it to others to point out whether or not I was right.
The problem with Communism, which is also the problem with pure capitalism (with no governmental oversight or regulation) is that immoral people will (not just can, but will) wreck the system and enslave the less powerful and engage in tyranny. In fact, any system of government or economics that does not have a very meticulous system of checks and balances, as well as limited and decentralized power will suffer the same consequences.
If you read the Acts of the Apostles, you will see the early Christians communities lived in what is pretty much a text-book communal (or communist) society among themselves. With a small group of people who are like-minded, zealous about their beliefs (as any adherent to a new religion, particularly if he is being persecuted for it, would be), this can work, but of course it didn't last long, and once the Church became large and successful its wealth and power were often subverted for less-than-Christian ideals, which is one reason today why it specifically eschews political power and uses the vast majority of the wealth it maintains for good works.
Similarly, it's easy to have a startup company with, say, 8 people where everyone is top-notch, hard-working and delivers good results. It's impossible to have a company with 1000 people where everyone is the same. Communism doesn't scale. Socialism bypasses the corruption stage and goes straight to tyranny. Capitalism can be subverted for evil. No system is perfect as long as we flawed humans are a part of it.
That said however, I still find the conservative principals to be qualitatively more sound than the alternatives.
Here's my take on "conservative" principles, some of these are no doubt compatible with "liberal" principles or are at odds with "conservative" principles as espoused by some "conservative" politicians. I think that's a good thing.
1. Equalize opportunities, because you cannot equalize results.
2. People can generally take care of themselves, and should be left to, until they prove otherwise.
3. Help people when they truly need it, but if aid doesn't cost as well as provide, it will be abused.
4. The rights of the individual take precedence. Anything that compromises individual rights and opportunities will compromise the chances for success. However, it's often much easier to infringe on the rights of others than you realize.
5. Any aspect of government should be as local as possible, there are very few things that require implementation at the national level.
6. Real education is the best tool for any person. Investments in education will always pay off (but remember #3).
7. Humans are the best and most important natural resource on the planet. Human life, therefore, should be held in the highest regard.
8. We are stewards of the Earth, we neither own it or are owned by it.
9. There will always be evil. Be prepared to neutralize it, or you will be defeated by it.
10. Liberty is not license. Freedom necessitates responsibility and duty.
11. Sovereignty is a right. It cannot be denied to those who want it or forced upon people who do not wish to take part*.
#12 and #13 are specifically addressed to so-called liberals:
12. You have no right not to be offended by others.
13. Life isn't fair. Get over it.
#3 was the hardest to word succinctly. Here's what else I wanted to say:
Any social safety-net or entitlement will be gamed as much as possible and is guaranteed to be inefficient. Compassion is the most easily subverted intention, the easiest to take advantage of. People should not be allowed to starve or live without shelter, but without a real chance to fail, many people will let the system take care of them.
* Specifically, states should have the right to secede.
The problem with your strategy is that they are trying to intimidate you with losing your livelihood, and to go through all the trouble and expense you are describing you'd practically be doing that to yourself, and I doubt it would have any real effect.
Most people can't afford to go on a crusade no matter how just the cause.
The problem is that between planned obsolescence, user convenience and marketing (i.e. grotesquely oversized or elaborate packaging), we are generating trash at an ever-increasing rate every year.
It bothers me that there is apparently no market incentive to improve this situation, but many reasons to perpetuate it. I'm no environmental extremist, but I am constantly reminded and saddened about how much waste we generate, how almost nothing repairable, and how everything becomes more and more disposable.
My TV is almost 20 years old, and I'm dreading having to replace it. I have no intention of getting into HDTV or other technologies simply because the market seems to want to sort out which technologies are best by letting early adopters go through several models until they find what works best.
I kept my last car for 17 years, and my current one, which is 5 years old, is still "new" as far as I'm concerned (I drive Hondas). I keep my computers for a long time too, although in many cases a computer upgrade is gradual because after a couple years I've replaced everything but the case, one by one.
But I've gone through 3 laptops in 6 years and am on my 4th. One upgrade was strictly and upgrade, because my wife wanted my old one, but the other 2 cases was because it had become too expensive to fix compared to replacing, especially when repairing a laptop is a crapshoot because you never know when another major component (i.e. something bigger than a harddrive or memory) is going to go.
Then when it comes to the kids... some toys are practically pre-broken for your convenience, and any kind of cheap consumer electronic device is much the same. I've gone through several cordless phones in the past 5 years. I'm happy to repair rather than replace, but my time and effort is worth money too, and it doesn't make sense to spend two hours fixing something that you can replace for $5 or $10. It usually doesn't make sense to spend hours and pay shipping, etc, for something that costs less than $100, and I wouldn't even bother trying to get a VCR or DVD player repaired any more.
In cars, the tiniest malfunction can run to hundreds of dollars, because everything is packaged into sealed components that have to be replaced whole (and who knows if they are repaired and refurbed or just tossed). About 10 years ago, the car repairman told me an alternator problem I had was probably just a bad brush that he could replace for pennies, but it was a sealed unit, so there's $100 or so. I had to replace my entire steering column unit (the thing with the turn signal, light and wiper controls, etc, that wraps around the steering column) because the hazard light switch was busted and I needed that for the State Vehicle Inspection. $400+, and I'd taken the car in at the last minute, so I really had no choice or face fines from Maryland's finest. It was all one sealed unit (or I got totally ripped off by the repair place... either way I was screwed).
What's it going to take before we become sane in our usage of resources? I'm not talking about World War II style rationing, unless that somehow becomes necessary, but there is just so much excess, so much waste, that is completely unnecessary. We don't have to be Luddites or Scrooges to live a little more intelligently, but there are often no real alternatives that don't cost exorbitantly more, take up huge amounts of time or effort, or are simply not as advantageous as they would appear.
While your comparison is valid, I disagree because in this case, there are specific conservative values that were not being followed. The corruption is endemic to any powerful government, and if you don't think that's the case, then we have nothing to talk about.
To wit: Here are the conservative values that were flouted:
1. Leave the rest of the world alone unless it's in our vital and direct interest. An argument can be made that Bush was acting on this principle, but in retrospect, one has to wonder. Bush also made the mistake of trying to help make the U.N. relevant. The U.N. is corrupt and feckless, and it really doesn't bother me that various countries completely flout its resolutions because it has consistently demonstrated there are no consequences to doing so, so I can't blame them.
2. Small government. 'Nuff said.
3. Enforce existing laws before or rather than making new ones. The border issue is the perfect example.
4. Strive to maintain sovereignty. (There are a number of issues here, but this overlaps with #3 as well).
Reagan, for all his faults, made conservatism work, but no one has practiced it since. By your standard, which is a valid one, liberalism, as defined and practiced in the U.S. has also not only failed, but it cost more too.
The difference here is that unlike American conservatism or European liberalism, communism has never worked anywhere.
Good post. Hopefully the Yorkies won't get all torqued off and start hopping around and barking frenetically over Katz' book. I'm sure their owners would get upset, and the darn little things tend to pee when excited.
Conservatism is a failed ideology which has joined communism in the trash heap of history.
I hope you're not basing this claim on the past 6 years, because in the past 6 years there wasn't much conservatism going on.
Well, don't consider Java as your only example. I'd attack that kind of project with good old Visual C++ (i.e., MFC, but only for the GUI) with my class libraries and I would be just as productive. I'd just need a couple weeks to beef up some classes, since I haven't done much of that kind of stuff lately.
And if I had a couple months to finish my class library, I'd ditch all of MFC and be just as, if not more productive.
Java? Yeah, if you're a government bureaucrat you'd feel right at home. A usable language completely shackled in a class libraries and development environments that would choke a whale.
I misspoke. It was late and I was being too lazy to show my work, which would have allowed me to spot my boneheaded mistake.
I meant to say (number of colors) ^ 9. But the principle remains. I have no idea what you mean by unique selections of 2 colors from 256 colors (which would be 256 * 255, unless using the same color twice were allowed). If I have 9 pixels, each pixel can only represent 256 colors, or in terms of pure data, 1 standard, government-issue M1A1 _byte_. That's 9 bytes. There's no other way to do it. 72 bits.
If I have a piece of paper w x h inches in size and can print at a certain DPI (call it r) with z different colors, there is no way to encode more than
w * h * r^2 * ( log (base 2) z) bits, and that number is most certainly orders of magnitude less than 250GB.
In fact, let's do some numbers to see:
There appears to be some confusion as to what is meant by A4, so let's assume 9 x 12. Even if A4 is double that, the result will only be off by a factor of 4.
9 * 12 * 1200 * 1200 = 155,520,000 pixels on a 9 x 12 sheet of paper, assuming you can perfectly print and perfectly read at 1200 DPI, which would be a real feat for anything less than the kinds of presses they use for books and magazines, and a _really_ good scanner, not your $100 Best Buy bargain. Note that doesn't allow for any error correction.
Now, assuming 8-bit color you now have 155,520,000 * 8 bits or 155,520,000 bytes. That's not even a CD-R's worth of data and 3-and-change orders of magnitude less than this silly claim. ANd that's not taking into account the enormity of being able to flawlessly print and scan 1200DPI, 8 bit color, which would be unattainable with any consumer-grade equipment.
Ah, but what about compression? Who cares? It was BS when all the tape drive companies doubled their capacity claims based on the spurious claim that data you back up compresses to half its original size. Back when I used a tape drive, most of the stuff I was backing up was already compressed. Second, there is no compression algorithm that can compress arbitrary data by a factor of 1000. It's simply impossible.
The claim is complete and utter bull-plop, and your more detailed explanation makes no sense whatsoever. Check the story tags, and you'll see what the majority of people realize. To quote Futurama, "This is pure, weapons-grade Bolonium".
Your post reminds me of that old proof that the average person only works one day a year.
Your step 2 makes no sense. It looks like you are pulling numbers out of your nether regions. How can a square of 9 pixels hold more than 9 * number of colors values?
You're exactly right.
KDE can be built and run on Windows fer cryin' out loud.
Yeah, that just insulted girl geeks everyone,
Geek girls? That choice insulted multi-cellular animals.
Even some of the protozoa are snickering.
Just wait until your app needs something you can't do with drag-and-drop and you find out how useful all this Microsoft technology is. My experience with MS tools (15+ years) is that the application frameworks are brain-dead easy until you get outside its very narrow solution domain, then it's as hard or harder than than doing it from scratch.
If it's artificially interfering with a normal function of life and it's not involved in preventing a life threatening disease, it's just a bad idea.
Funny, no one seems to feel that way when the normal function is fertility.
Actually, it was Philo Farnsworth of "inventing television" fame... although maybe the Professor did that too.
It's the same old 10% active ingredient and 90% inert filler.
The hasn't been true for quite a few years. I don't know if you've noticed, but the washing powder companies have finally realized that reducing waste and excessive packaging and most products are significantly (2, 3 or 4x or more) more concentrated than they were 10-20 years ago.
Otherwise I agree with you and as far as I'm concerned, Word stopped improving about 10 years ago. Right now it's a huge, bloated, horribly buggy, (at least on OSX) and confusing mess.
I realized I could double my productivity by using OOo, but I could double or triple it again by using Restructured Text.
WYSIWYG Word processing is a dead-end. Markup is where the real power lies.
hat part of being underwater in 100 years is a partisan issue?
It's the part where suggestions for preventing it always seems to correlate with a massive government power grab and assault on the free market, and specifically against the United States, which while producing a big chunk of the pollution, also manufactures the most stuff.
It's the part where the proposed solutions always seem like they will have huge and disastrous effects on the economy of developed nations while the developing countries who are actually the worst polluters always get a pass.
It's the part where environmentalism often seems more interested in punishing the rich than really protecting the environment.
Otherwise, no, it's not a partisan issue.
Did He say "Blessed are the Cheesemakers"?
It's really an empty argument because good works are an inescapable consequence of accepting Christ. If you accept Christ, then you perform good works. If you aren't performing good works then you haven't accepted Christ. As Bart Simpson says, "Ickso Fatso". I don't question their Christianity based on this point, or on many others with which I disagree.
The fact that your salvation depends solely on the merits of the sacrifice of Christ and not on anything you do, so long as you accept Him, is something we have in common, regardless of what they seem to think.
I'm convinced the differences are solely that of semantics, but I'll let the Southern Baptists say what they want because a.) It's a free country, and they are free to believe what they want. and b.) Some of them seem just a little oversensitive on the topic.
I would suggest that a sect whose tenets define other sects might have a bit of an identity crisis. Like I said before, if you are clear as to who you are, it doesn't matter what the other guy is, unless you have some kind of hang-up or an agenda against him.
Southern Baptists, by and large, are very good people worthy of respect, but I have a hard time accepting their reasoning on certain matters. Furthermore, if you look in the Bible, you will find it is, in fact, equivocal on the topic of faith vs. works, and it is easy to show that the Baptists, including the "Scripture is the literal truth" types are very selective in which verses they adhere to and which they kind of ignore.
Doesn't bother me none, but they are hardly in a position to comment on _my_ religion.
I think that falls into the "ignorant" category.
It's really pretty silly. "Christian" means someone who worships Jesus Christ as the Son of God. By that definition, Catholics and Protestants are Christian. Now there are some groups who redefine the basic concepts to mean something else than everyone else in the world takes them to mean, and therefore aren't really Christian as it is understood by the vast majority of the world.
I don't see what the big deal is, except for a few Protestants who seem much more interested in what they are not rather than what they are.
According to many Protestants in the US, Catholics are NOT Christian.
Yes, we call those people "ignorant"... or possibly "bigoted".
me too
Screw Microsoft.
Screw Apple.
I have an 80GB Neuros II, 1000 CD's ripped to OGG and about 150 albums I bought from eMusic.
iTunes doesn't even carry 90% of the music I would want (but don't already have), and who needs their stupid DRM.
eMusic is great for people who aren't afraid to go outside the Top 40, their price can't be beat, and their recommendation system is excellent.
DRM is for losers.
Well, if you market yourself as providing a safe, secure OS that anyone can use, but your product doesn't even come close to what you are advertising. I say that's fair game.
I use Windows some, and I actually like it. There are some apps and plenty of games that keep me from moving to Linux for anything, but most of the criticism given to Microsoft is well-deserved.
That you can't boot a new Windows installation connected to the Internet and not get pwned before you can download all the Service Packs is pretty sad. Microsoft never seemed to take security seriously until about 2000 and even then they were saddled with the fact the security was always an afterthough in all their designs, and from the sounds of it, continues to be so with Vista. It may work better, but it still sounds like a total kludge security-wise.
You can only blame the user so much when the vendor themselves claims that the software can take care of itself.
If the percentage of Windows machines were 90% or 95% or even 99% percent, you might have a point, but the fact is the only 1 machine out of 2000 spambots is not running Windows. That's 99.95%.
I think it's fair and meaningful to make this an indictment against Windows.
I voted for Joe Twelvepack. His decisions aren't any better, but at least he's funnier.