Yup, that's probably because the story only appeared on the "developer" sidebar. So it didn't get the usual attention that main page storied get. And to think I had MaxClients set to 40 in anticipation of a true Slashdotting! Oh well.
There's also a nifty Outlook to Evolution conversion utility. It does a good job on contacts, tasks, etc, and gives pointers on how to convert email folders.
I used it to convert from Outlook to Evolution and it worked pretty well.
> if the services provided by the government > only help the rich anyway
I don't understand... how do govt services only help the rich?
> [various poverty-related stats]
While reviewing any poverty-related stats, it's important to keep in mind that a poor person in the U.S. earns a lot more than most rich people in other countries.
> decide that slavery itself is wrong > was the decision of man?
Hm. Certainly, some people decided it was wrong. Were they right? Now we come back to a previous point - how do we decide what's right and wrong? Is is simply whatever people think is right and wrong at a given time? Surely not...
> Should a man be killed for not keeping the > sabbath holy? > Should women never speak in church? > Should we burn wiccas?
Nope, although not keeping the Sabbath holy is a sin. Nope, although that passage does have consequences - i.e., it raises the question of whether women should be preachers. Nope, although the Bible says that attemping to communicate with the dead is a sin.
> Just as blood letting has been ignored > as it's premise and usefulness is ludicrous
A thought on this... many religions have thought that sacrifice - whether animal or human - was necessary to propitiate God. It's a common theme. It seems that there's a two-part theme here - that sin exists, and that someone must be punished for it.
I'm not sure what I'm getting at there... that just kind of rose to the surface.
> as humanity evolves towards an even > more beautiful, equitable world.
I don't know... the 20th century seems to provide evidence that man is not evolving towards anything more beautiful. If anything, we're just figuring out more efficient ways to kill each other at a distance.
> Divine scripture wouldn't be so riddled > with silly errors of details.
Which errors are these?
> to disregard the church is to disregard > the religion
Your point about the Catholic Church going astray is well taken... however, the Catholic Church - including the Pope - is composed of sinful humans.
I should read up on the Council of Nicea and all that; my knowledge of how the current Bible was settled on is pretty thin.
> The book either says it's OK, or it isn't
Well, the Bible doesn't talk much about either abortion or Norplant or the birth control pill. But it does say that killing is wrong, and it does say that children are a gift from the Lord, and it does talk about "knitting me together in my mother's womb". It's our resposibility to use our brains to puzzle things out from there.
> mankind has reached a position where > without birth control
Nah... plenty of room still abounds. Take a drive across the U.S.; lots of open land. Let alone good ol' Russia.
> Africa is a good example of what happens > when contraceptives aren't used regularly
Africa's problems are worse than simple overpopulation - if overpopulation was the problem, Hong Kong would be a charnel house.
> if god is omnibenevolent
God is good, but he's also just. And man sinned, and continues to sin. If God were to be fair, no one would go to heaven.
> The pope says now that fire isn't > nessessarily fire and brimstone
Does he? Hm. The Bible doesn't seem to spell out temperature ranges, much less a Dante-ish leveling strategy - "you have entered a maze of twisty passages, all alike" - but it makes it clear that Hell will be unpleasant.
C.S. Lewis thinks that Hell will be a place apart from God - where man is alone with himself and his sin. Knowing what goes on in the inside of my own head.... yikes.
> We are afraid of our morality
Yes, we are. We feel like life has meaning, and that we have significance. And we're right. We do. Every person is created in the image of God.
> StackOverflow I was thinking about this again and thought "oh, I should have responded with 'what is the sound of one hand clapping?' or some such". But I always think of that stuff about 3 days after the opportunity is lost:-)
> I hope this doesn't mean the conversation > has ended
Not at all! Sorry to have given that impression. Yeah, I think everyone else has gone home. That's fine, though, just keeps us from getting modded -1 Offtopic:-)
> I'm finding this very enlightening
Ditto. It's forcing me to examine assumptions on which I've coasted for a long time.
> I would split it with the other people
> who make the most contribution
If PMD gets one of these, I'll use some of the money to buy a nice compiler theory book for anyone who's willing to write a better symbol table implementation.
> religious texts have a great deal > of significance to anthropology
Oh certainly, I agree - Shakespeare, and the Illiad, and Beowulf are interesting cultural/anthropological documents. But we don't look to those texts for a definitive moral code.
I probably should have said "morally important" or... I don't know, something else other than "meaningful".
Right, the Santa Claus argument. I agree, that's not a good one.
> who have led decent lives yet do not > believe in him
To turn the question around, why should God accept any of us? I mean, we all sin... at least, I sure do.
Why does God owe anyone anything?
> whole first cause fallacy again
Hmmm... I'm not familiar with this...
> God Exists [...] which is a "not proven"
Hm. Googling produces a bunch of pages talking about proofs of God. We could plow into some of those. I agree that it seems impossible to prove that God does not exist, but, of course, the same applies to purple elephants.
> Man is Sinful [..] Another circular reference
Hm. I think I fell into the mistake of stating tenets of the Bible vs proofs of God's existence. Same applies to "God speaks to us thru the Bible".
> If it were proven that Jesus didn't exist
I agree wholeheartedly. It all hangs on Jesus having existed and risen from the dead. The Bible says this too.
> you've still got Judaism and Islam > to fall back on
And a host of others as well.
> referred to "slaves and livestock"
Sure did, because that was the way people ran things then. It didn't mean it was right.
> There's plenty of places in the Bible > where slaves are just fine [...] here are > some links
I began reading thru those links and found myself mentally rebutting the various arguments made... is there a particular one you find most convincing?
> BIG flashy Chariot of Fire in the Sky
Yup, I don't know why God doesn't work that way anymore. I don't understand it.
In Colossians, the Bible says "Slaves, obey your masters" and "Masters, provide your slaves what is right and fair". That's because Paul wasn't advocating the overthrow of the government - he was telling people how they should act in whatever situation they found themselves in. There may have been many slaves in the church of Colosse.
That passage doesn't praise slavery or say it's right, though - it just tells people how to act when they're in that situation. There are other verses that speak against mistreating others - such as the "Golden Rule" verse which you quoted earlier.
> How is this different from any of the > morality from religious texts > people conveniently forget about
If people ignore truth, that doesn't make it untrue. It just means they're ignoring the truth.
> your "word of god"
Ah, but it's not mine, and that's what makes it valuable - it wasn't made up by a human.
> Do you think that God didn't want > commoners reading bibles? > Do you think he wanted the bible to only be > availible in Latin?
God wants everyone to read his word.
> Do you think he cares if you wear a rubber?
Hey, Biblical teachings on birth control! Ah, an excellent topic there... we could go on for days.
> what happens in this "Hell"?
It's a place removed from God. Just Man and Sin. !good.
> Officially, it's not fire and brimstone > anymore
Why officially? Is that what the Catholic church teaches?
> Maybe there are no more faithful anymore
Nah, the Bible says there'll always be a remnant.
> Either way, the evidence, and logic, > point to the idea that either there is > no god, you're worshipping the wrong one, > or he's so indifferent it doesn't really > matter.
Actually, evidence and logic point towards a God who is there and who is not silent.
> You've got that right!
I puzzled for a while over which one to throw... some sort of Error subclass would probably have been more appropriate, but the recursive nature of "who created God?" lead me inexorably to StackOverflow. I bet Gosling never thought that'd come up in this context...
See ya,
tom
Mod parent down, please
on
Opengroupware
·
· Score: 1
As evidence of trollage I give you this excerpt from the last paragraph:
> Let them know that SMP may make or break > whether you can efficiently deploy OpenBSD
Check out KarmaWarrior's posting history - like this post.
Re:Still not good enough for enterprise...
on
Opengroupware
·
· Score: 1
> blackberry
No problem there; a BlackBerry plugin could be written for OpenGroupware. Just a SMOP - Simple Matter Of Programming.
>>> For some reason I can't post anymore to our previous discussion... it's say that I moderated the discussion! How bizarre. Anyhow:
> as long as you don't sin too much.:-). Yeah, I think I'm over my limit:-)
> watching children grow up that conscience > is a learned trait
Well... I don't know. My kids seem to know when they're doing something my wife and I have told them not to do... they kind of sneak around. And my oldest is only 3.
> no expectation on my part that there > should be any consistency.
Oh definitely, right, if it's just a collection o' stories, it's no big deal to find inconsistencies. But if it is purported to be the word of God... it should be consistent... or else it's not. God's word, that is.
> point of view this person expresses.
Whew, that's quite a page. We could extend our current discussion another 50 posts on that one:-)
> I don't *know* enough of the details > of the bible
Yup, I'm feeling like my Biblical knowledge is pretty lacking as well...
> The big deal in our agency was to spend ALL > of the money that was allotted to us
When I was working for the government I learned to request training - usually from Learning Tree - in August, before the fiscal year ended. I could get signed up for Advanced C, Oracle, you name it - because we "had to spend this year's training budget or it would get cut". Crikey.
Cool. This is kind of neat stuff - I mean, the whole control flow analysis thing. Seems like a good optimizing compiler could do quite a bit of work. I wonder how much it actually does, and how much gets pushed off into the JVM?
Slashdot Mirror
Nah, it's an instance of GForge, which is a fork of SourceForge. Lots of forging going on. Hammers and such-like.
Lots of little utilities and glue usages out there too. Like this site - an hourly build system using Java and Ant, driven by Ruby. Fun stuff!
> yet only one single, trollish comment so far.
Yup, that's probably because the story only appeared on the "developer" sidebar. So it didn't get the usual attention that main page storied get. And to think I had MaxClients set to 40 in anticipation of a true Slashdotting! Oh well.
And for a sample of what unused and duplicated code PMD has found in various SourceForge apps, check out the PMD scoreboard.
> It's amazing what work will do to you
"My advice to you is to start drinking heavily."
Surely I need no attribution for this reference.
> use it bring about world peace
Touche!
I demand that you refer to me in the future as "He Who Posts That Which Is Very Obvious". Or HWPTWIVS for short.
There's also a nifty Outlook to Evolution conversion utility. It does a good job on contacts, tasks, etc, and gives pointers on how to convert email folders.
I used it to convert from Outlook to Evolution and it worked pretty well.
> if the services provided by the government
> only help the rich anyway
I don't understand... how do govt services only help the rich?
> [various poverty-related stats]
While reviewing any poverty-related stats, it's important to keep in mind that a poor person in the U.S. earns a lot more than most rich people in other countries.
> Per dollar, per earner, or per person
I don't know. Actually, I've found other statistics now that show that the rich pay an even higher percentage than I thought.
> numbers should be looked at for fairness
> in per-dollar only.
Hm, that's an interesting distinction. Cool.
And people making under $30K make out better than both. Yay tax cuts!
> The US doesn't have free health care,
Right. Exactly. And in countries where health care is free, it's worth it. I mean, it's usually not very good health care.
> I'd like to see your reference for that.
Here ya go
> The US is the only G7 country without
> public health care
Free healthcare is worth it.
> The top 1% in the US has more wealth
> than the bottom 95%
And the top 1% pays 25% of the taxes.
> Bush's tax cut for the top 5%
People earning from $20K to $27K had their tax burden reduced by 10% with the tax cut.
> decide that slavery itself is wrong
:-)
:-)
> was the decision of man?
Hm. Certainly, some people decided it was wrong. Were they right? Now we come back to a previous point - how do we decide what's right and wrong? Is is simply whatever people think is right and wrong at a given time? Surely not...
> Should a man be killed for not keeping the
> sabbath holy?
> Should women never speak in church?
> Should we burn wiccas?
Nope, although not keeping the Sabbath holy is a sin. Nope, although that passage does have consequences - i.e., it raises the question of whether women should be preachers. Nope, although the Bible says that attemping to communicate with the dead is a sin.
> Just as blood letting has been ignored
> as it's premise and usefulness is ludicrous
A thought on this... many religions have thought that sacrifice - whether animal or human - was necessary to propitiate God. It's a common theme. It seems that there's a two-part theme here - that sin exists, and that someone must be punished for it.
I'm not sure what I'm getting at there... that just kind of rose to the surface.
> as humanity evolves towards an even
> more beautiful, equitable world.
I don't know... the 20th century seems to provide evidence that man is not evolving towards anything more beautiful. If anything, we're just figuring out more efficient ways to kill each other at a distance.
> Divine scripture wouldn't be so riddled
> with silly errors of details.
Which errors are these?
> to disregard the church is to disregard
> the religion
Your point about the Catholic Church going astray is well taken... however, the Catholic Church - including the Pope - is composed of sinful humans.
I should read up on the Council of Nicea and all that; my knowledge of how the current Bible was settled on is pretty thin.
> The book either says it's OK, or it isn't
Well, the Bible doesn't talk much about either abortion or Norplant or the birth control pill. But it does say that killing is wrong, and it does say that children are a gift from the Lord, and it does talk about "knitting me together in my mother's womb". It's our resposibility to use our brains to puzzle things out from there.
> mankind has reached a position where
> without birth control
Nah... plenty of room still abounds. Take a drive across the U.S.; lots of open land. Let alone good ol' Russia.
> Africa is a good example of what happens
> when contraceptives aren't used regularly
Africa's problems are worse than simple overpopulation - if overpopulation was the problem, Hong Kong would be a charnel house.
> if god is omnibenevolent
God is good, but he's also just. And man sinned, and continues to sin. If God were to be fair, no one would go to heaven.
> The pope says now that fire isn't
> nessessarily fire and brimstone
Does he? Hm. The Bible doesn't seem to spell out temperature ranges, much less a Dante-ish leveling strategy - "you have entered a maze of twisty passages, all alike" - but it makes it clear that Hell will be unpleasant.
C.S. Lewis thinks that Hell will be a place apart from God - where man is alone with himself and his sin. Knowing what goes on in the inside of my own head.... yikes.
> We are afraid of our morality
Yes, we are. We feel like life has meaning, and that we have significance. And we're right. We do. Every person is created in the image of God.
> StackOverflow
I was thinking about this again and thought "oh, I should have responded with 'what is the sound of one hand clapping?' or some such". But I always think of that stuff about 3 days after the opportunity is lost
> I hope this doesn't mean the conversation
> has ended
Not at all! Sorry to have given that impression. Yeah, I think everyone else has gone home. That's fine, though, just keeps us from getting modded -1 Offtopic
> I'm finding this very enlightening
Ditto. It's forcing me to examine assumptions on which I've coasted for a long time.
> who make the most contribution
If PMD gets one of these, I'll use some of the money to buy a nice compiler theory book for anyone who's willing to write a better symbol table implementation.
> religious texts have a great deal
> of significance to anthropology
Oh certainly, I agree - Shakespeare, and the Illiad, and Beowulf are interesting cultural/anthropological documents. But we don't look to those texts for a definitive moral code.
I probably should have said "morally important" or... I don't know, something else other than "meaningful".
> the bet-hedging argument
Right, the Santa Claus argument. I agree, that's not a good one.
> who have led decent lives yet do not
> believe in him
To turn the question around, why should God accept any of us? I mean, we all sin... at least, I sure do.
Why does God owe anyone anything?
> whole first cause fallacy again
Hmmm... I'm not familiar with this...
> God Exists [...] which is a "not proven"
Hm. Googling produces a bunch of pages talking about proofs of God. We could plow into some of those. I agree that it seems impossible to prove that God does not exist, but, of course, the same applies to purple elephants.
> Man is Sinful [..] Another circular reference
Hm. I think I fell into the mistake of stating tenets of the Bible vs proofs of God's existence. Same applies to "God speaks to us thru the Bible".
> If it were proven that Jesus didn't exist
I agree wholeheartedly. It all hangs on Jesus having existed and risen from the dead. The Bible says this too.
> you've still got Judaism and Islam
> to fall back on
And a host of others as well.
> referred to "slaves and livestock"
Sure did, because that was the way people ran things then. It didn't mean it was right.
> There's plenty of places in the Bible
> where slaves are just fine [...] here are
> some links
I began reading thru those links and found myself mentally rebutting the various arguments made... is there a particular one you find most convincing?
> BIG flashy Chariot of Fire in the Sky
Yup, I don't know why God doesn't work that way anymore. I don't understand it.
> I'd call that an endorsement of slaves
In Colossians, the Bible says "Slaves, obey your masters" and "Masters, provide your slaves what is right and fair". That's because Paul wasn't advocating the overthrow of the government - he was telling people how they should act in whatever situation they found themselves in. There may have been many slaves in the church of Colosse.
That passage doesn't praise slavery or say it's right, though - it just tells people how to act when they're in that situation. There are other verses that speak against mistreating others - such as the "Golden Rule" verse which you quoted earlier.
> How is this different from any of the
> morality from religious texts
> people conveniently forget about
If people ignore truth, that doesn't make it untrue. It just means they're ignoring the truth.
> your "word of god"
Ah, but it's not mine, and that's what makes it valuable - it wasn't made up by a human.
> Do you think that God didn't want
> commoners reading bibles?
> Do you think he wanted the bible to only be
> availible in Latin?
God wants everyone to read his word.
> Do you think he cares if you wear a rubber?
Hey, Biblical teachings on birth control! Ah, an excellent topic there... we could go on for days.
> what happens in this "Hell"?
It's a place removed from God. Just Man and Sin. !good.
> Officially, it's not fire and brimstone
> anymore
Why officially? Is that what the Catholic church teaches?
> Maybe there are no more faithful anymore
Nah, the Bible says there'll always be a remnant.
> Either way, the evidence, and logic,
> point to the idea that either there is
> no god, you're worshipping the wrong one,
> or he's so indifferent it doesn't really
> matter.
Actually, evidence and logic point towards a God who is there and who is not silent.
> You've got that right!
I puzzled for a while over which one to throw... some sort of Error subclass would probably have been more appropriate, but the recursive nature of "who created God?" lead me inexorably to StackOverflow. I bet Gosling never thought that'd come up in this context...
See ya,
tom
As evidence of trollage I give you this excerpt from the last paragraph:
> Let them know that SMP may make or break
> whether you can efficiently deploy OpenBSD
Check out KarmaWarrior's posting history - like this post.
> blackberry
No problem there; a BlackBerry plugin could be written for OpenGroupware. Just a SMOP - Simple Matter Of Programming.
> Most open source projects have been
> non-profitable so far.
Perhaps not profitable for the project owner... but quite profitable for the users.
>>>> For some reason Slashdot won't let me post to our previous discussion... it says that I've moderated the thread. How bizarre. Anyhow:
:-)
> advocates owning slaves
Really? How's that?
> It was man who decided that all men
> should be free
Did man deciding anything make it right? What if man decided that slavery was OK again?
> There would be recordings and scientific
> data on it this time
Do you believe Nero existed? Why?
> How does that change if God is the source?
Because a moral code promulgated by a person is just that - a moral code promulgated by a person. It has no authority.
> all things can be achieved through prayer
All things that are in God's will, yes.
> the nonexistance of demonstratable miracles
Yup, I too would be happy if a big sign were to appear occasionally. I don't know why God hasn't done that.
> Who created God?
throw new StackOverflowException();
>>> For some reason I can't post anymore to our previous discussion... it's say that I moderated the discussion! How bizarre. Anyhow:
:-). Yeah, I think I'm over my limit :-)
:-)
> as long as you don't sin too much.
> watching children grow up that conscience
> is a learned trait
Well... I don't know. My kids seem to know when they're doing something my wife and I have told them not to do... they kind of sneak around. And my oldest is only 3.
> no expectation on my part that there
> should be any consistency.
Oh definitely, right, if it's just a collection o' stories, it's no big deal to find inconsistencies. But if it is purported to be the word of God... it should be consistent... or else it's not. God's word, that is.
> point of view this person expresses.
Whew, that's quite a page. We could extend our current discussion another 50 posts on that one
> I don't *know* enough of the details
> of the bible
Yup, I'm feeling like my Biblical knowledge is pretty lacking as well...
> The big deal in our agency was to spend ALL
> of the money that was allotted to us
When I was working for the government I learned to request training - usually from Learning Tree - in August, before the fiscal year ended. I could get signed up for Advanced C, Oracle, you name it - because we "had to spend this year's training budget or it would get cut". Crikey.
> Most of the project's time is
> probably spent learning the difference
> between JDBC and EJB
Don't forget to reserve some time for talking about how great Oracle is.
Cool. This is kind of neat stuff - I mean, the whole control flow analysis thing. Seems like a good optimizing compiler could do quite a bit of work. I wonder how much it actually does, and how much gets pushed off into the JVM?
Anyhow, fun stuff!