If you think literature that exploits and objectifies women is OK, then that's fine, but don't foist your ire on religion.
The fact of the matter is, if people adhered to Christian morality regarding sex there would be no STD's, no out-of-wedlock pregnancies, AIDS would be extremely rare (or might have never gotten past a few isolated incidents), no women or children being enslaved to prositution, no sexual predators kidnapping children, no president Clinton and Monica in the Oval Office. The list goes on.
Furthermore, if those ancient fertility cults and Roman religions are so good, where are they now? The fact of the matter is Christianity and Judaism for thousands of years have had a logical, consistent, natural and workable morality of sex that, if followed, would eliminate a whole lot of suffering.
No, we don't use technology to save jobs. We use technology to free us from things we don't want to have to do. I'm not suggesting that you simply cut unskilled people loose in a high-tech marketplace... there needs to be a good infrastructure of education and training, and, of course, basic assistance for those most in need. As far as I'm concerned... the education's not there. Given the pathetic level at which most people can communicate... including those in professions and the media, I am forced to conclude that our education system sucks.
We've been throwing more good money after bad for decades... it's time for some real reform, because the next time a country like Japan eats our economic lunch, we might not be able to catch up.
Read John 6... Jesus points out rather bluntly that people can only be saved through Him. If you are a believer, than it follows that it is your duty to try to bring this truth to others.
Despite what most people think and say, it is not "imposing your morality" to evangelize. It's interesting that the tolerance crowd happily impose their "morality" of "I think anthing is fine and so should you", while decrying the imposition of morality on others.
Jesus was a pretty decent guy, certainly, but he never shied away from condemning people who were wrong, often in very blunt ways. He had a message to give us, and was willing to make sure people understood it. He didn't exercise "tolerance" of people who rejected him, but rather called them to change their lives. Anyone who sought forgiveness was given it, but those who didn't are condemned to Gehenna... (I can't quote the exact Gospel passage since I need to get back to work... but it's not hard to find.)
Therefore, freedom of religion allows for Christians to call for an end to things that are explicitly prohibited by Christ such as violence, fornication, stealing, et al, as well as those that logically follow like abortion, pr0nography, using Visual Basic (wink), etc.
There are certainly a few who do act unChristian in the name of Christianity, but they are the typical noisy fringe that every group has (especially/.)... don't judge all Christians on a few corrupt or hypocitical examples.
Back on topic, my reaction was the same as others... Bush only listed religions relatively closely related to Christianity. However, there is a danger in taking "freedom" of religion to an extreme... such as the prisoner that stated his religion required he eat gourmet food. Anyone can claim anything is a religion to manipulate the First Amendment protections. We need to decide which of these are legitimate, and which are not. So while it is important to include Eastern and Pagan religions as worthy of protection, but if the KKK calls itself a church and lynching as a religious service that doesn't change a thing about them being a bunch of murderous thugs. If NAMBLA calls itself a church, it's still an organization bent on highly illegal, immoral and repulsive practices.
I always hear the phrase you can't legislate morality. That's a complete crock!
All legislation is morality: It's immoral to kill someone. It's immoral to steal from someone. It's immoral to have sex with children.
Just remember: there is no "wall of separation" in the Constitution. The federal government is prohibited from establishing a state religion, but there's nothing that says it has to be hostile to all religions. I guess the real question is: What constitutes a religion? This question is not as easy to answer as you might think.
Sorry for the rambling post... but it seems that this knee-jerk condemnation of Christians or the "Right Wing" always seems to pop up. Remember this: just because someone disagrees with you doesn't make them bad.
Why in the world would you want to not use a technology that the perform a task more cheaply and accurately than people?! Are you insinuating that someone who loses a job to technology cannot get another?
It sounds to me like you are saying we should not use technology because it would put people out of work who, I assume, could not be employed in other ways. Should we keep a certain percentage of shit jobs around just so these unemployable people will have somewhere to work?
I hate to break the news to you, but business are run to make money, not employ people. Here's a note from the clue train: economics is not a zero-sum game... increased technology opens up far more jobs than it eliminates, as you pointed out. Should we keep some people doing dull grunt work so the rest of us technology-haves can live in our ivory towers or should we work to educate, train and enrich everyone.
Again, how is this any different from the ridiculous examples in my previous post? If I am so ignorant... please enlighten me.
You're right. We should also eliminate bulldozers, because they put so many ditchdiggers out of work. Cars put all those horse-and-buggy manufacturers out of work. Those stupid electronic telephone switches put a lot of operators out of work. All those horrible robots in car factories... my goodness.
How insensitive of us!
Gee, we could give a hundred million people toe-nail clippers and have them cut grass instead of a few lawnmowers... that would put more people to work than any government program yet conceived!
What planet are you living on? Check out Bruce Sterling's "Hacker Crackdown". Once your suspected, you're always suspected, regardless of any inconvenient reality. It was clear, based on the letter, that there only the most tenuous circumstantial evidence to link him to the site in the first place.
I'm sure a time will come when any Internet activity other than a browser or e-mail package will be looked on as suspicious, if not criminal.
> If you "know" the code key we maintain that your brain is an illegal device by the definition excepted by the DMCA and you are now a criminal. Offenders will prosocuted.
Please report immediately to the Ministry of Truth to surrender your illegal device. Any further use of this illegal device is punishable by death.
Fluorescent lights at 60Hz certainly make 60Hz refresh much worse, but 60 Hz is very flickery for me in any light (or none). It's clear this perception is different for different people.
Yes, but God hasn't told you you don't have the right to do so. Nor does His work fall under the rights of a higher governmental power (there being none!).
It's a good thing the Universe isn't patented or copyrighted!:)
You could reprogram those giant boards like they use at the Stock Exchange and play a giant game of Nethack. It would be no more cryptic to the traders than what they do is to us nerds.
Does it bug anyone else that even Reuters doesn't recognize that bacteria is a plural word (singular: bacterium). It's pretty pathetic when a computer geek like me has better grammar and spelling than the newspapers and magazines... just what the heck do these people learn in their education?
My vague memory is that he's around 4%, but with a high voter turnout (which we won't have, of course), 4% is millions of votes. That's nothing to sneeze at.
Of course Nader won't win. But he's an outspoken person with a lot of ideas, that a lot of people happen to agree with, who is running for president. He has a non-trivial amount of support (not the unrealistic 15% set by the Republicrats as a criterion to get on the stage) and should have been allowed to debate.
I don't agree with Nader, nor do I support him, but I do believe he could have added some much-needed content to the debate. Likewise for Buchanan and Browne.
The Demopublicans have set up a system where no one can get in because they can't get enough support, but they can't get enough support because they can't get it. If they actually had confidence in their ideas, rather than just trying to win based on FUD, they would happily welcome serious third-party candidates with non-trivial amounts of support. Obviously you can't let any kook on stage, but there is surely room for someone other than Big Two.
I personally feel a real dilemma different from voting dumbo/ass parties vs. third parties in that I think the best candidate wasn't nominated: John McCain. Do I vote Republican because I generally agree with them the most even though I don't like their nominee? DO I write in McCain even though he's not running (a real throw-away vote if I ever saw one)? Do I punt? I don't know...
In any event I'm glad/. did a good job researching some of the smaller third parties. There are some interesting people and ideas out there in addition to "Britney Gore" and the "Backstreet Bush" to make a music analogy...
You can get the same effect by looking at a common LED clock from across the room while using an electric toothbrush. I have a Braun electric with the little round head, and I can stand 15-20 feet away from the clock, move the toothbrush to the right part of my mouth and a very stong illusion appears of the LED elements sliding back and forth in relation to each other (I guess the toothbrush is vibrating my head at 60Hz!). Very cool!
There's nothing wrong with it if that's what you want. That's what Space Invaders was. I personally enjoy Descent when I want some mindless action.
It's just that I hear so much news about each latest FPS like it's some kind of great new innovation, and they're all basically the same thing.
Does anyone remember what Quake was originally described as by id in the early days? It was radically different from the warned-over Doom it became. They went on and on about physics simulations, elaborate hand-to-hand combat, actually story elements in the games like puzzle or role-playing. What did it end up as? More shotgun shuffle with endless zombies and demons... ho hum. I just like a little imagination in my games rather than running around endless brown labyrinths with the computer congratulating me in terms of gay sex.
We certainly are remembering the best 10%, but I cannot go in an arcade today and find even 10% of the games worth playing. There are really only 3 kinds of video games being made any more:
derivatives of Mortal Combat (which in fact do have a truly classic game in their ancestry: Karate Champ)
driving games, which are fun, but you play one you've played them all and nothing interesting like Spy Hunter has been done in many years, well, since Spy Hunter
shooting games with the plastic Uzi attached to the console... ho hum!
Compared to those choices, I would take almost anything from the mid 80's.
As far as PC games go, I agree with the thought that id (and many other companies haven't done anything truly original since Wolf3D). Some one was oozing about "rocket jumps" or whatever... big whoop! How about a reason for you to care about what happens in the game, rather than just twitching at pixels.
Nothing id has ever produced will match the immersion of System Shock, which is about 10 years old now. System Shock 2 had lots of new graphics, etc, but was still basically the same game, and yet I also found it deeply engaging. There was a forboding sense of horror and isolation combined with a rich environment that let you go about your tasks in a fairly flexible way. It wasn't just "shoot anything that moves and go to the next level when the smoke clears".
I haven't played Fallout, but two other games I found highly immersive were Baldur's Gate and Roller Coaster Tycoon. Guess what, neither is even a true 3D game, and both run on quite modest machines. My kids play RCT on a pentium 100. However, both games have a richness to them that is lacking in most games. You have a wide variety of choices for going about what you want to accomplish, rather then only having a crosshair and some silly moves. Nethack fits into this perfectly, I bet even the dev team hasn't figured out all the bizarre effects you can create in that game.
There are immersive creative games out there, but not always where you would expect them... and most of them are _not_ 3D.
So DialPad spams timothy and then e-mails him again, with an apology, followed by an advertisment to visit their site. Gee, Tim, sounds like you got spammed twice. Call me a cynic, but it's quite possible that DialPad intended to spam everyone and then "apologize" to keep everyone from not getting angry (also reaching many eyeballs that would otherwise automatically toss spam), in effect spamming them again, and achieve the same results while probably not angering the recipients of the spam as much.
Now maybe it was an honest mistake, but I wouldn't necessarily call it "enlightened self-interest", but rather trying to recover after a bonehead manuever. Oh well. Viva la spam!
I never said it was. I was just trying to defend a post I didn't really agree with. Nonetheless, it could be argued that he was an influence on technology....
Slashdot Mirror
Nice troll, Chester.
If you think literature that exploits and objectifies women is OK, then that's fine, but don't foist your ire on religion.
The fact of the matter is, if people adhered to Christian morality regarding sex there would be no STD's, no out-of-wedlock pregnancies, AIDS would be extremely rare (or might have never gotten past a few isolated incidents), no women or children being enslaved to prositution, no sexual predators kidnapping children, no president Clinton and Monica in the Oval Office. The list goes on.
Furthermore, if those ancient fertility cults and Roman religions are so good, where are they now? The fact of the matter is Christianity and Judaism for thousands of years have had a logical, consistent, natural and workable morality of sex that, if followed, would eliminate a whole lot of suffering.
Gee, those are some pretty dangerous ideas.
>America - the small former colony that refuses to act anything more than a child in its playpen of international affairs.
That may be, but remember... our country can beat up your country any day. Nyah!
No, we don't use technology to save jobs. We use technology to free us from things we don't want to have to do. I'm not suggesting that you simply cut unskilled people loose in a high-tech marketplace... there needs to be a good infrastructure of education and training, and, of course, basic assistance for those most in need. As far as I'm concerned... the education's not there. Given the pathetic level at which most people can communicate... including those in professions and the media, I am forced to conclude that our education system sucks.
;)
We've been throwing more good money after bad for decades... it's time for some real reform, because the next time a country like Japan eats our economic lunch, we might not be able to catch up.
... Hmmm... is that off-topic enough?
Rick
Nor is anyone else here.
/.)... don't judge all Christians on a few corrupt or hypocitical examples.
Read John 6... Jesus points out rather bluntly that people can only be saved through Him. If you are a believer, than it follows that it is your duty to try to bring this truth to others.
Despite what most people think and say, it is not "imposing your morality" to evangelize. It's interesting that the tolerance crowd happily impose their "morality" of "I think anthing is fine and so should you", while decrying the imposition of morality on others.
Jesus was a pretty decent guy, certainly, but he never shied away from condemning people who were wrong, often in very blunt ways. He had a message to give us, and was willing to make sure people understood it. He didn't exercise "tolerance" of people who rejected him, but rather called them to change their lives. Anyone who sought forgiveness was given it, but those who didn't are condemned to Gehenna... (I can't quote the exact Gospel passage since I need to get back to work... but it's not hard to find.)
Therefore, freedom of religion allows for Christians to call for an end to things that are explicitly prohibited by Christ such as violence, fornication, stealing, et al, as well as those that logically follow like abortion, pr0nography, using Visual Basic (wink), etc.
There are certainly a few who do act unChristian in the name of Christianity, but they are the typical noisy fringe that every group has (especially
Back on topic, my reaction was the same as others... Bush only listed religions relatively closely related to Christianity. However, there is a danger in taking "freedom" of religion to an extreme... such as the prisoner that stated his religion required he eat gourmet food. Anyone can claim anything is a religion to manipulate the First Amendment protections. We need to decide which of these are legitimate, and which are not. So while it is important to include Eastern and Pagan religions as worthy of protection, but if the KKK calls itself a church and lynching as a religious service that doesn't change a thing about them being a bunch of murderous thugs. If NAMBLA calls itself a church, it's still an organization bent on highly illegal, immoral and repulsive practices.
I always hear the phrase you can't legislate morality. That's a complete crock!
All legislation is morality: It's immoral to kill someone. It's immoral to steal from someone. It's immoral to have sex with children.
Just remember: there is no "wall of separation" in the Constitution. The federal government is prohibited from establishing a state religion, but there's nothing that says it has to be hostile to all religions. I guess the real question is: What constitutes a religion? This question is not as easy to answer as you might think.
Sorry for the rambling post... but it seems that this knee-jerk condemnation of Christians or the "Right Wing" always seems to pop up. Remember this: just because someone disagrees with you doesn't make them bad.
Why in the world would you want to not use a technology that the perform a task more cheaply and accurately than people?! Are you insinuating that someone who loses a job to technology cannot get another?
It sounds to me like you are saying we should not use technology because it would put people out of work who, I assume, could not be employed in other ways. Should we keep a certain percentage of shit jobs around just so these unemployable people will have somewhere to work?
I hate to break the news to you, but business are run to make money, not employ people. Here's a note from the clue train: economics is not a zero-sum game... increased technology opens up far more jobs than it eliminates, as you pointed out. Should we keep some people doing dull grunt work so the rest of us technology-haves can live in our ivory towers or should we work to educate, train and enrich everyone.
Again, how is this any different from the ridiculous examples in my previous post? If I am so ignorant... please enlighten me.
You're right. We should also eliminate bulldozers, because they put so many ditchdiggers out of work. Cars put all those horse-and-buggy manufacturers out of work. Those stupid electronic telephone switches put a lot of operators out of work. All those horrible robots in car factories... my goodness.
How insensitive of us!
Gee, we could give a hundred million people toe-nail clippers and have them cut grass instead of a few lawnmowers... that would put more people to work than any government program yet conceived!
You missed the point...
These days it's controversial _not_ to have sex and violence.
Rick
What planet are you living on? Check out Bruce Sterling's "Hacker Crackdown". Once your suspected, you're always suspected, regardless of any inconvenient reality. It was clear, based on the letter, that there only the most tenuous circumstantial evidence to link him to the site in the first place.
I'm sure a time will come when any Internet activity other than a browser or e-mail package will be looked on as suspicious, if not criminal.
> If you "know" the code key we maintain that your brain is an illegal device by the definition excepted by the DMCA and you are now a criminal. Offenders will prosocuted.
Please report immediately to the Ministry of Truth to surrender your illegal device. Any further use of this illegal device is punishable by death.
The Computer is your friend!
Fluorescent lights at 60Hz certainly make 60Hz refresh much worse, but 60 Hz is very flickery for me in any light (or none). It's clear this perception is different for different people.
Rick
Yes, but God hasn't told you you don't have the right to do so. Nor does His work fall under the rights of a higher governmental power (there being none!).
:)
It's a good thing the Universe isn't patented or copyrighted!
You could reprogram those giant boards like they use at the Stock Exchange and play a giant game of Nethack. It would be no more cryptic to the traders than what they do is to us nerds.
Rick
That's 3 _seconds_, although it's still probably too much to allow you to play.
The speed of light is c. 186,000 miles/second
The moon is c. 242,000 miles away
Rick
Try "cypherpunks"/"cypherpunks"... works lots of places.
Rick
Does it bug anyone else that even Reuters doesn't recognize that bacteria is a plural word (singular: bacterium). It's pretty pathetic when a computer geek like me has better grammar and spelling than the newspapers and magazines... just what the heck do these people learn in their education?
My vague memory is that he's around 4%, but with a high voter turnout (which we won't have, of course), 4% is millions of votes. That's nothing to sneeze at.
Of course Nader won't win. But he's an outspoken person with a lot of ideas, that a lot of people happen to agree with, who is running for president. He has a non-trivial amount of support (not the unrealistic 15% set by the Republicrats as a criterion to get on the stage) and should have been allowed to debate.
/. did a good job researching some of the smaller third parties. There are some interesting people and ideas out there in addition to "Britney Gore" and the "Backstreet Bush" to make a music analogy...
I don't agree with Nader, nor do I support him, but I do believe he could have added some much-needed content to the debate. Likewise for Buchanan and Browne.
The Demopublicans have set up a system where no one can get in because they can't get enough support, but they can't get enough support because they can't get it. If they actually had confidence in their ideas, rather than just trying to win based on FUD, they would happily welcome serious third-party candidates with non-trivial amounts of support. Obviously you can't let any kook on stage, but there is surely room for someone other than Big Two.
I personally feel a real dilemma different from voting dumbo/ass parties vs. third parties in that I think the best candidate wasn't nominated: John McCain. Do I vote Republican because I generally agree with them the most even though I don't like their nominee? DO I write in McCain even though he's not running (a real throw-away vote if I ever saw one)? Do I punt? I don't know...
In any event I'm glad
Rick
You can get the same effect by looking at a common LED clock from across the room while using an electric toothbrush. I have a Braun electric with the little round head, and I can stand 15-20 feet away from the clock, move the toothbrush to the right part of my mouth and a very stong illusion appears of the LED elements sliding back and forth in relation to each other (I guess the toothbrush is vibrating my head at 60Hz!). Very cool!
Rick
There's nothing wrong with it if that's what you want. That's what Space Invaders was. I personally enjoy Descent when I want some mindless action.
It's just that I hear so much news about each latest FPS like it's some kind of great new innovation, and they're all basically the same thing.
Does anyone remember what Quake was originally described as by id in the early days? It was radically different from the warned-over Doom it became. They went on and on about physics simulations, elaborate hand-to-hand combat, actually story elements in the games like puzzle or role-playing. What did it end up as? More shotgun shuffle with endless zombies and demons... ho hum. I just like a little imagination in my games rather than running around endless brown labyrinths with the computer congratulating me in terms of gay sex.
Wow! Between my reading your two posts, Voyager sped up dramatically!
Rick
Agreed. I dpn't mind subsidizing CSPAN, but why must I pay for MTV and all that other dreck...
Of course, I have DirecTV, which gives me more channels and orders of magnitude better reception for about 2/3 the price.
Rick
We certainly are remembering the best 10%, but I cannot go in an arcade today and find even 10% of the games worth playing. There are really only 3 kinds of video games being made any more:
derivatives of Mortal Combat (which in fact do have a truly classic game in their ancestry: Karate Champ)
driving games, which are fun, but you play one you've played them all and nothing interesting like Spy Hunter has been done in many years, well, since Spy Hunter
shooting games with the plastic Uzi attached to the console... ho hum!
Compared to those choices, I would take almost anything from the mid 80's.
As far as PC games go, I agree with the thought that id (and many other companies haven't done anything truly original since Wolf3D). Some one was oozing about "rocket jumps" or whatever... big whoop! How about a reason for you to care about what happens in the game, rather than just twitching at pixels.
Nothing id has ever produced will match the immersion of System Shock, which is about 10 years old now. System Shock 2 had lots of new graphics, etc, but was still basically the same game, and yet I also found it deeply engaging. There was a forboding sense of horror and isolation combined with a rich environment that let you go about your tasks in a fairly flexible way. It wasn't just "shoot anything that moves and go to the next level when the smoke clears".
I haven't played Fallout, but two other games I found highly immersive were Baldur's Gate and Roller Coaster Tycoon. Guess what, neither is even a true 3D game, and both run on quite modest machines. My kids play RCT on a pentium 100. However, both games have a richness to them that is lacking in most games. You have a wide variety of choices for going about what you want to accomplish, rather then only having a crosshair and some silly moves. Nethack fits into this perfectly, I bet even the dev team hasn't figured out all the bizarre effects you can create in that game.
There are immersive creative games out there, but not always where you would expect them... and most of them are _not_ 3D.
Rick
So DialPad spams timothy and then e-mails him again, with an apology, followed by an advertisment to visit their site. Gee, Tim, sounds like you got spammed twice. Call me a cynic, but it's quite possible that DialPad intended to spam everyone and then "apologize" to keep everyone from not getting angry (also reaching many eyeballs that would otherwise automatically toss spam), in effect spamming them again, and achieve the same results while probably not angering the recipients of the spam as much.
Now maybe it was an honest mistake, but I wouldn't necessarily call it "enlightened self-interest", but rather trying to recover after a bonehead manuever. Oh well. Viva la spam!
Rick
I never said it was. I was just trying to defend a post I didn't really agree with. Nonetheless, it could be argued that he was an influence on technology....
Yes, but was the A10 ever used in combat? I understood that it was never really used in battle. Perhaps I am completely wrong.