The first question I would ask you is, who decides which culture is better?, or, who has the right to say so? you're right, each person should decide which culture is better, but for him/herself, not for somebody else.
IMHO there is one solution that might work, but this is just a dream, and this solution will not come without education.
Things are not so relative. There are "better" cultures and I'd say technological and social innovation is a good benchmark. The cultures that have resulted in growth in technology and social well being are the ones China/Japan/Russia/US/Europe and Canada use. Fairly progressive, possibly authoratarian, and a clear seperation from dogma and policy. China was incredibly backwards for the just after WWII when the communists valued idealogy over all else. Now with a more progressive culture their thriving. Historically, Conservative cultures tend to suffer a lack of innovation and invention and only get minor refinement of exsisting technology. Also, it's a sign of the decline of that civilization. It will continue to declien until some new idea reverts the cuture to a more progressive one.
I do not mean Democrat vs Republican but more of favoring change vs favoring old values.
Anglo-American cultural influence over the Islamic Middle East has always been shallow because of Anglo-American support for the genocide of the Palestinians. That's the root of the issue here. Without it, the very concept of terrorism as we know it today would never have developed.
Bull-shit. The palastinians aren't that important. It's a cause celebre. It goes beyond such a simplistic issue. It's a fairly deep seated racial hate mixed with a long history of broken promises (europes fault), topped off by colonization(also europe), and a huge amount of local scape goating. The palastinian cause is just a spoonfull of shit on the shit pile.
The best defense is, in fact, to Westernize the globe so that everyone joins the Western world. For example, if Middle Easterners accept Western values, then they will value human rights, democracy, etc. If the most pressing issue of the day in Syrian become "Gay Marriage: Yes or No?" instead of "Suicide Bomber: Here We Go", then the world is safe. A Westernized Damascus itself would hunt down any nutcases trying to build a nuclear weapon.
I agree with your points, but the reason why the nutcases want us dead, is basically because they hate the majority of the things that come with westernization. They whole "gay marriage: yes/no" thing is exactly why they want us dead. The "we use them for oil" thing isn't such a huge deal to them since they do get moeny for it.
correct - easier and cheaper, and gets better results - from THEIR perspective...
Nuke: I will kill hundreds of thousands, maim and permantly disfigure hundreds of thousands more and millions will suffer through the radiation sickness. Because you are infidels.
Dirty bomb: I will moderatly harm a few people, panic the eaisly panicked, and spreada small amount of a substance about as harmful as lead over a large area much like heavy industry. BEcause you are infidels and stupid.
Not understanding why one is your enemy is even worse.
Because they need a target for their displaced aggression. The evils of the West are no worse or better then the evils of the Rest. The west is the islamic scape goat. Sure the West takes advantage of the middle east and supports brutal regimes, but those regimes are no worse then the ones they install themselves (IRAN). The injustices the west (the US) does is no worse then the ones they do to themselves (Iraq Massacre of kurds). The only difference is we're not muslims which makes us easier to hate.
I'm 25, so 5 years short. I've been through adolecence and not been there. I won't pretend it isn't hard, particularly in a society that pushes against Christian values. It is harder now for me than it has ever been, I am engaged, and will be married probably at the end of this year. My fiance and I got engaged 3 months ago, and went out for 2 years before that. It is hard, very hard.
I'm not trying to blow my own trumpet and say I am doing everything right. Just that it is not a forgone conclusion that this is an area in which everyone will slip up.
ME and my ex. She said it was important, so for 3 years I didn't pressure her into sex. She's stilla virgin. She's 24 now. But I myself was a bit less strong. I lost it sometime before that. There is tremendous pressure, and in urban center beign a vrigin and a guy is tantamount to being homosexual in the eyes of society. You get the same taunting and abuse for both. So while I'm straight I was a virgin till 18 so I know what it is to be taunted about it and many of my gay friends got the same taunting.
I'm usually not a grammar Nazi, and maybe English isn't your first language. But the word you are searching for is "predictive," not "predictable." I mention it because I think your word choice here probably indicates something about your general level of experience in this discussion. People who've bothered to educate themselves get the "vocabulary words" right.
I ahve both dylexia and a high typing speed but I look at my fingers, leading to lots of typos.
Nice selective editing to undermine what I was saying. The question I was referring to, and indeed that I made explicit, is "Where did we come from?"
That question is only on the minds of stoners and "philosiphers"... most people think about "how am I eating" and "where will I sleep" much much more.
Anyway, in your final paragraph you once again demonstrate a complete misunderstanding of what I wrote. And I know it's not because I wasn't clear, because other people "got" it. Hint: I wasn't advocating creationism or attacking evolution as science.
Fairly easy to misconstrue. Giving both side equal weight when one side has no weight can been seen as favorign one side or bias. for example.
"The tough issue of eating babies or not eating babies is a serious one on the minds of a lot of people. I would say both sides have their points"
and yes, predictive. As I said dyslexia, speed, and laziness makes for sloppy posts. I do have to correct that. But it doesn't negate my points.
PS. Jesus hung out with prostitutes, it's nto the sin, but the attitude of the sinner. God hates those who would cast stones far more then those who have sinned and are repentant.
Define tolerance. This is a much overused word in current society. I am interested to know how you are using the word.
Live and let live.
I do think a lot of christians don't see that it might not be a choice.
I'm one of them. The same way that I believe that molesting children is a choice. You may be predisposed to it (for example you were molested as a child), but that does not change the fact that you had a choice in the matter. The key here is moelesting children hurts someone. A person who cannot give consent is done harm. For two gay men they both consent.
God has described how he wants us to live. We choose to go our own way. I'm not saying to approve. Just saying treat it as you would any other sinner, with forgiveness and a little annoyance. Like seeing someone who doens't tithe.
Just to put this in context, I will equally condemn sex outside of a marriage relationship. It's easy in some circles. Very hard in others. It is easy for small communities where marriage at 17 18 or even 20 is possible. But to go through all of the adolecence and not to do anythign is very very hard. To wait till your 30 is even harder. I can agree that it's wrong. But I will not cast a stone since I myself am guilty of it.
For the gay issue it means while we may say what they do is wrong, we can't punish them for beign gay. And beign gay is no worse then being greedy or being selfish but we seem to tolerate that.
I am not and have never advocated punishement for people who are gay.
Do you then support tolerance? I do think a lot of christians don't see that it might not be a choice. I know a lot of gay and bi people. Bi people always always end up with a long term partner of the opposite sex. For them they had the choice and chose the easy route, for gays... it will be difficult.
I couldn't agree with what you have to say about the bible. Effectively what you say makes the bible one among many books inspired by God, all of which aim to get you closer to God. Once you take that step, the teaching of the church become the grounds for authority, which is largely where the catholic church is now.
The next step after that is that it largely becomes a "tribal" thing, that is my family was so I am . A couple of generations and a change in societal structure later and there is nothing there at all.
A idea being uncomfotable doesn't make it wrong. It does kick out the legs of what we have to argue with against the athiests but we have to just work harder... besides, faith isn't arguing on slashdot. Faith is beleiveing.
The bible can't be used literally. It is a important book thought and has a lot of repition on the important points.. being gay is mentioned only a few times. Being charitable and helping others is mentioned more. Jesus walked amount the sinners to help them, Judas despised them and put them down. For the gay issue it means while we may say what they do is wrong, we can't punish them for beign gay. And beign gay is no worse then being greedy or being selfish but we seem to tolerate that.
On look foolish, your spelling makes you look foolish.
My mispelling is a function of my typing, your logical fallacies are a result of a closed mind. Your also using another logical fallacy and that is trying to discredit the other side by picking on something unrelated to the argument.
And yes the interpretations of the bible have changed a lot over time.
They say you can transfer the software, so yeah you can run it. But you must inform them and terminate your account... They didn't say that if terminating was impossibel the rest held true. They just made one side impossibly and made the implication false. Thus they havent' broke their eula although they did fuck up and reneged on something they implied they allowed. SO I'd hazzard a guess and say your lawsuit might have some merit, but it's too easy to fight and neither you nor blizzard wants to go there. I suspect if you called them and had a manager handle it They would have accepted an account to be made in yrou name, and let you play under a new cd-key (after-you bought 6 mo)... but that is only if it is at all possible. It may not be possible to create a account before having a cd-key and they will problbly not want to giev keys out freely under this circumstance so your SOL in that case because they'd be dumb to give you one and you were dumb to buy it used.
Besides, I can choose not to buy something, for any reason I choose. I can choose not to buy a Honda because I like the shape of the Toyota bumpers better. You might think that's a dumbass reason, but it's me that's buying the item. Of course, if you like Hondas, you're still free to get one of those.
Thats ture, so you can feel free to boycott blizzard/honda and I'm free to call you a fucktard.
The ideas Creationism deals with are a great deal more important in nearly everyone's minds than whether mercury can be transmuted into gold
Actually thats only in your mind. Creationism has no bearing in anyones mind except the fundementalists and the scientists.
As a result, I suspect that even in the minds of most scientists, it's taken on the status of a myth.
No it doesn't. It's a idea with support. Like a lot of the important ideas it has some inertia but it faces ocassional scientific challenges about it's details but has genarally foudn support int he evidence we find. It's body of support is so large now that it would require an significant body to debunk it if it were false.
What they do know is that they've thrown their hat in the ring with a certain myth, and that creationism is a competing myth. Their myth, the story they've identified with, is the framework through which everything passes.
Outside a few political circles and soem notable countries creationism isn't "competing", it's a laughable idea with no support and no predictabel power. So basically it can't be proved or disproved and is of no value to anyone. IF I were to say "we have extra terrestial origins" that could be supported by exploring the universes and tyring to find DNA samples that are too close to ours for it to be coincidence. Or disproved by finding close relatives here. That woudl be a competing idea.
You try to equate the two but they are not equal. You try to use various rhetorical devices and logical fallacies but they are shallow and unconvincing... And I am also a christian, just not one of the "fundementalists".
The kings james bible and the new international version differ a lot on phrasing and the meaning of a lot of phrases. Mostly from new insight into the original languages.
The seperatiosn between christian groups tend to be on theological gorunds but also along political grounds. Notice how the different sect of european protistants tend to follow nationalistic lines.
I'm a dutch baptist myself. I find churhc history facinating, but much of the "the book is god" thing that fundies (even my own church) enjoy is relatively recent. The catholic church does not buy into this, and I would favor "inspired by god" rather then "penned by god" when refering to the bible. The problem with making it literal is basically it's not. A collection of verbal histories and stories that are meant to make you closer to god.
You said that Science is ever changing and thus you must have faith to beleive in it, you said it's easier to beleive int he bible.
heres abreakdown: 1- Science changes thus you need faith to beleive in it.
2- Beleiving in the bible is easier.
These two impy that the bible is unchanging.
He pointed out that the bible changes in interpretation when new information on languages and sources come out and thus your implication makes you look foolish.
I stopped buying Blizzard games for this reason. I still like StarCraft though - but after they shutdown FreeCraft and/or the Battlenet server project, I made myself a promise to never give them another cent.
Slashdot is certainly a place to be heard - but sometimes you have to make a statement with your wallet.
I would FU*(#@$_ING love to see a boycott of Blizzard -
This woudl be a okay reason to boycott blizzard. It's unethical and they lied out right. Your two examples are dumb reasons to boycott blizzard. It's like boycotting Oracle because they shut down a few firms tryign to reverse engineer their product, or boy cotting apple because they object to companies making a clone of their product or making a x86 version of their OS. This protecting their interests in a legal way just liek blizzard. This particular case seems to be a little fuck up on blizzards part that may or may not get rememdies but applies to so few that it is in general beneath consideration. But it's soemthign to gribe about that I can understand and support.... your two are just fucktard reasons to bitch.
how is this defending blizzard's best interests? this guy is offering to pay them a monthly subscription fee. sure if they ignore him, and don't piss him off to much in the process, he might buy a new version in the store. (once it's available in stores again- who knows when that will be...) what's blizzard's cut on a retial box sale after the store and the distributor take their cut? a month's subscription? two? sounds to me like blizzard's 'best interest' here is to get this guy paying a monthly subscription fee as soon as possible, since the person who bought the box is no longer doing so...
Bluzzard is in a bad spot, their don't want to support accoutn transfers, but cd-keys swaps introduces the possibility of fruad. If someone stole a key and had no password, then no real harm done now, if they stole both, tech support can reset it. Some harm done but the "paying" customer is generally ok. IF they did allow it, then 1- it introduces a human element (their front line support) into it and allows for human engineering to do a lot of damage (ie. Steal a key, report the account to be closed and resell the copy, blizzard makes 0$ and one of their customers is irate).
2- It allows people to grief others by randomly reporting keys and killign accounts (big domain space but with enough keys to compare I'm sure you can make some guesses.)
Neither is oevrly strong, but the sale of used copies is of such minor importance to the company and happens so rarly (with a game of this nature) that they problably don't care to throw much resources into it... and their publisher wouldn't either.. since their publisher doesn't get much of that %15/mo as they do out of the upfront $50.
Blizzard has proven themselves nothing but a bunch of dicks over their treatment of FreeCraft/Ale and the alternative server networks.
Right... shutting people down for making derivatives of yrou works is just being an asshole, and reporting that B&E or reporting that fruduelent advertising is being a jerk....
Freeraft and battle net d had good intentions but they really shoudl hve put the effort to make somethign new instead of deriving somethign from someone else work without their permission.
They haven't yet. They have simply had one profitable quarter. Their still a ways from breaking even. I'm not bashing MS directly, their Xbox initiative is exactly what they need. I'm bashing the rest fo corprate america. MS does do long term projects and looks to the future. Their fairly progressive. The other corps generally are not.
Look at these things on a quarter by quarter basis The horrible fallacy for which the US economy is based... one quarter means nothing. It's long run consideratiosn that shoudl matter but the stock market tends to be severly myopic.
Now, I'm no huge fan of the XBox, nor Microsoft. But I will give credit where it is due. The XBox (a year after launch) brought the best online connectivity solution out, passing what Sega was starting to do on the Dreamcast. The XBox live service blows away gaming online on any other console. GameCube has what, one true online game? Playstation has a few, but they don't link in any way, so I can't see if my friends are playing game A or B. Lastly on the online area, the XBox shipped standard with ethernet for online play. Dreamcast shipped standard with a modem. Gamecube ships with no connectivity option, and only recently were PS2s being sold with the networking built in (the mini PS2), or with an adaptor in the box.
Network play has it's nice features but it also isn't fun getting pwned by "1337n00bst0mp3r" over and over again. I myself have no problem with online compitition, I'm even ranked in one of the RTS's (top 20 on two coasts). But the vast majority of my friends avoid that. They hate losing. And none of the xbox owners subscribe to live. They just dont' want to get shit stomped online. Online play much less attractive to normal people then it is to nerds like us. It didn't help the xbox move that much more units.
Slashdot Mirror
The first question I would ask you is, who decides which culture is better?, or, who has the right to say so? you're right, each person should decide which culture is better, but for him/herself, not for somebody else.
IMHO there is one solution that might work, but this is just a dream, and this solution will not come without education.
Things are not so relative. There are "better" cultures and I'd say technological and social innovation is a good benchmark. The cultures that have resulted in growth in technology and social well being are the ones China/Japan/Russia/US/Europe and Canada use. Fairly progressive, possibly authoratarian, and a clear seperation from dogma and policy. China was incredibly backwards for the just after WWII when the communists valued idealogy over all else. Now with a more progressive culture their thriving. Historically, Conservative cultures tend to suffer a lack of innovation and invention and only get minor refinement of exsisting technology. Also, it's a sign of the decline of that civilization. It will continue to declien until some new idea reverts the cuture to a more progressive one.
I do not mean Democrat vs Republican but more of favoring change vs favoring old values.
Anglo-American cultural influence over the Islamic
Middle East has always been shallow because of
Anglo-American support for the genocide of the
Palestinians. That's the root of the issue here.
Without it, the very concept of terrorism as we
know it today would never have developed.
Bull-shit. The palastinians aren't that important. It's a cause celebre. It goes beyond such a simplistic issue. It's a fairly deep seated racial hate mixed with a long history of broken promises (europes fault), topped off by colonization(also europe), and a huge amount of local scape goating. The palastinian cause is just a spoonfull of shit on the shit pile.
The best defense is, in fact, to Westernize the globe so that everyone joins the Western world. For example, if Middle Easterners accept Western values, then they will value human rights, democracy, etc. If the most pressing issue of the day in Syrian become "Gay Marriage: Yes or No?" instead of "Suicide Bomber: Here We Go", then the world is safe. A Westernized Damascus itself would hunt down any nutcases trying to build a nuclear weapon.
I agree with your points, but the reason why the nutcases want us dead, is basically because they hate the majority of the things that come with westernization. They whole "gay marriage: yes/no" thing is exactly why they want us dead. The "we use them for oil" thing isn't such a huge deal to them since they do get moeny for it.
correct - easier and cheaper, and gets better results - from THEIR perspective ...
Nuke: I will kill hundreds of thousands, maim and permantly disfigure hundreds of thousands more and millions will suffer through the radiation sickness. Because you are infidels.
Dirty bomb: I will moderatly harm a few people, panic the eaisly panicked, and spreada small amount of a substance about as harmful as lead over a large area much like heavy industry. BEcause you are infidels and stupid.
Not understanding why one is your enemy is even worse.
Because they need a target for their displaced aggression. The evils of the West are no worse or better then the evils of the Rest. The west is the islamic scape goat. Sure the West takes advantage of the middle east and supports brutal regimes, but those regimes are no worse then the ones they install themselves (IRAN). The injustices the west (the US) does is no worse then the ones they do to themselves (Iraq Massacre of kurds). The only difference is we're not muslims which makes us easier to hate.
WTF? How the fuck are my two posts trolling? I think some bnet-d fans are just ganging up on me.
I'm 25, so 5 years short. I've been through adolecence and not been there. I won't pretend it isn't hard, particularly in a society that pushes against Christian values. It is harder now for me than it has ever been, I am engaged, and will be married probably at the end of this year. My fiance and I got engaged 3 months ago, and went out for 2 years before that. It is hard, very hard.
I'm not trying to blow my own trumpet and say I am doing everything right. Just that it is not a forgone conclusion that this is an area in which everyone will slip up.
ME and my ex. She said it was important, so for 3 years I didn't pressure her into sex. She's stilla virgin. She's 24 now. But I myself was a bit less strong. I lost it sometime before that. There is tremendous pressure, and in urban center beign a vrigin and a guy is tantamount to being homosexual in the eyes of society. You get the same taunting and abuse for both. So while I'm straight I was a virgin till 18 so I know what it is to be taunted about it and many of my gay friends got the same taunting.
I'm usually not a grammar Nazi, and maybe English isn't your first language. But the word you are searching for is "predictive," not "predictable." I mention it because I think your word choice here probably indicates something about your general level of experience in this discussion. People who've bothered to educate themselves get the "vocabulary words" right.
I ahve both dylexia and a high typing speed but I look at my fingers, leading to lots of typos.
Nice selective editing to undermine what I was saying. The question I was referring to, and indeed that I made explicit, is "Where did we come from?"
That question is only on the minds of stoners and "philosiphers"... most people think about "how am I eating" and "where will I sleep" much much more.
Anyway, in your final paragraph you once again demonstrate a complete misunderstanding of what I wrote. And I know it's not because I wasn't clear, because other people "got" it. Hint: I wasn't advocating creationism or attacking evolution as science.
Fairly easy to misconstrue. Giving both side equal weight when one side has no weight can been seen as favorign one side or bias. for example.
"The tough issue of eating babies or not eating babies is a serious one on the minds of a lot of people. I would say both sides have their points"
and yes, predictive. As I said dyslexia, speed, and laziness makes for sloppy posts. I do have to correct that. But it doesn't negate my points.
PS. Jesus hung out with prostitutes, it's nto the sin, but the attitude of the sinner. God hates those who would cast stones far more then those who have sinned and are repentant.
Do you then support tolerance?
Define tolerance. This is a much overused word in current society. I am interested to know how you are using the word.
Live and let live.
I do think a lot of christians don't see that it might not be a choice.
I'm one of them. The same way that I believe that molesting children is a choice. You may be predisposed to it (for example you were molested as a child), but that does not change the fact that you had a choice in the matter.
The key here is moelesting children hurts someone. A person who cannot give consent is done harm. For two gay men they both consent.
God has described how he wants us to live. We choose to go our own way.
I'm not saying to approve. Just saying treat it as you would any other sinner, with forgiveness and a little annoyance. Like seeing someone who doens't tithe.
Just to put this in context, I will equally condemn sex outside of a marriage relationship.
It's easy in some circles. Very hard in others. It is easy for small communities where marriage at 17 18 or even 20 is possible. But to go through all of the adolecence and not to do anythign is very very hard. To wait till your 30 is even harder. I can agree that it's wrong. But I will not cast a stone since I myself am guilty of it.
For the gay issue it means while we may say what they do is wrong, we can't punish them for beign gay. And beign gay is no worse then being greedy or being selfish but we seem to tolerate that.
I am not and have never advocated punishement for people who are gay.
Do you then support tolerance? I do think a lot of christians don't see that it might not be a choice. I know a lot of gay and bi people. Bi people always always end up with a long term partner of the opposite sex. For them they had the choice and chose the easy route, for gays... it will be difficult.
As opposed to what you do, which is putting words in someone else's mouth?
I apologize for that. According to the quote I read it does seem that you wrote the whoel thing. If you didn't then I'm sorry.
I couldn't agree with what you have to say about the bible. Effectively what you say makes the bible one among many books inspired by God, all of which aim to get you closer to God. Once you take that step, the teaching of the church become the grounds for authority, which is largely where the catholic church is now.
The next step after that is that it largely becomes a "tribal" thing, that is my family was so I am . A couple of generations and a change in societal structure later and there is nothing there at all.
A idea being uncomfotable doesn't make it wrong. It does kick out the legs of what we have to argue with against the athiests but we have to just work harder... besides, faith isn't arguing on slashdot. Faith is beleiveing.
The bible can't be used literally. It is a important book thought and has a lot of repition on the important points.. being gay is mentioned only a few times. Being charitable and helping others is mentioned more. Jesus walked amount the sinners to help them, Judas despised them and put them down. For the gay issue it means while we may say what they do is wrong, we can't punish them for beign gay. And beign gay is no worse then being greedy or being selfish but we seem to tolerate that.
On look foolish, your spelling makes you look foolish.
My mispelling is a function of my typing, your logical fallacies are a result of a closed mind. Your also using another logical fallacy and that is trying to discredit the other side by picking on something unrelated to the argument.
And yes the interpretations of the bible have changed a lot over time.
They say you can transfer the software, so yeah you can run it. But you must inform them and terminate your account... They didn't say that if terminating was impossibel the rest held true. They just made one side impossibly and made the implication false. Thus they havent' broke their eula although they did fuck up and reneged on something they implied they allowed. SO I'd hazzard a guess and say your lawsuit might have some merit, but it's too easy to fight and neither you nor blizzard wants to go there. I suspect if you called them and had a manager handle it They would have accepted an account to be made in yrou name, and let you play under a new cd-key (after-you bought 6 mo)... but that is only if it is at all possible. It may not be possible to create a account before having a cd-key and they will problbly not want to giev keys out freely under this circumstance so your SOL in that case because they'd be dumb to give you one and you were dumb to buy it used.
Besides, I can choose not to buy something, for any reason I choose. I can choose not to buy a Honda because I like the shape of the Toyota bumpers better. You might think that's a dumbass reason, but it's me that's buying the item. Of course, if you like Hondas, you're still free to get one of those.
Thats ture, so you can feel free to boycott blizzard/honda and I'm free to call you a fucktard.
The ideas Creationism deals with are a great deal more important in nearly everyone's minds than whether mercury can be transmuted into gold
Actually thats only in your mind. Creationism has no bearing in anyones mind except the fundementalists and the scientists.
As a result, I suspect that even in the minds of most scientists, it's taken on the status of a myth.
No it doesn't. It's a idea with support. Like a lot of the important ideas it has some inertia but it faces ocassional scientific challenges about it's details but has genarally foudn support int he evidence we find. It's body of support is so large now that it would require an significant body to debunk it if it were false.
What they do know is that they've thrown their hat in the ring with a certain myth, and that creationism is a competing myth. Their myth, the story they've identified with, is the framework through which everything passes.
Outside a few political circles and soem notable countries creationism isn't "competing", it's a laughable idea with no support and no predictabel power. So basically it can't be proved or disproved and is of no value to anyone. IF I were to say "we have extra terrestial origins" that could be supported by exploring the universes and tyring to find DNA samples that are too close to ours for it to be coincidence. Or disproved by finding close relatives here. That woudl be a competing idea.
You try to equate the two but they are not equal. You try to use various rhetorical devices and logical fallacies but they are shallow and unconvincing... And I am also a christian, just not one of the "fundementalists".
The kings james bible and the new international version differ a lot on phrasing and the meaning of a lot of phrases. Mostly from new insight into the original languages.
The seperatiosn between christian groups tend to be on theological gorunds but also along political grounds. Notice how the different sect of european protistants tend to follow nationalistic lines.
I'm a dutch baptist myself. I find churhc history facinating, but much of the "the book is god" thing that fundies (even my own church) enjoy is relatively recent. The catholic church does not buy into this, and I would favor "inspired by god" rather then "penned by god" when refering to the bible. The problem with making it literal is basically it's not. A collection of verbal histories and stories that are meant to make you closer to god.
No I didn't. Got any facts for that?
You said that Science is ever changing and thus you must have faith to beleive in it, you said it's easier to beleive int he bible.
heres abreakdown:
1- Science changes thus you need faith to beleive in it.
2- Beleiving in the bible is easier.
These two impy that the bible is unchanging.
He pointed out that the bible changes in interpretation when new information on languages and sources come out and thus your implication makes you look foolish.
I stopped buying Blizzard games for this reason. I still like StarCraft though - but after they shutdown FreeCraft and/or the Battlenet server project, I made myself a promise to never give them another cent.
Slashdot is certainly a place to be heard - but sometimes you have to make a statement with your wallet.
I would FU*(#@$_ING love to see a boycott of Blizzard -
This woudl be a okay reason to boycott blizzard. It's unethical and they lied out right. Your two examples are dumb reasons to boycott blizzard. It's like boycotting Oracle because they shut down a few firms tryign to reverse engineer their product, or boy cotting apple because they object to companies making a clone of their product or making a x86 version of their OS. This protecting their interests in a legal way just liek blizzard. This particular case seems to be a little fuck up on blizzards part that may or may not get rememdies but applies to so few that it is in general beneath consideration. But it's soemthign to gribe about that I can understand and support.... your two are just fucktard reasons to bitch.
how is this defending blizzard's best interests? this guy is offering to pay them a monthly subscription fee. sure if they ignore him, and don't piss him off to much in the process, he might buy a new version in the store. (once it's available in stores again- who knows when that will be...) what's blizzard's cut on a retial box sale after the store and the distributor take their cut? a month's subscription? two? sounds to me like blizzard's 'best interest' here is to get this guy paying a monthly subscription fee as soon as possible, since the person who bought the box is no longer doing so...
Bluzzard is in a bad spot, their don't want to support accoutn transfers, but cd-keys swaps introduces the possibility of fruad. If someone stole a key and had no password, then no real harm done now, if they stole both, tech support can reset it. Some harm done but the "paying" customer is generally ok. IF they did allow it, then
1- it introduces a human element (their front line support) into it and allows for human engineering to do a lot of damage (ie. Steal a key, report the account to be closed and resell the copy, blizzard makes 0$ and one of their customers is irate).
2- It allows people to grief others by randomly reporting keys and killign accounts (big domain space but with enough keys to compare I'm sure you can make some guesses.)
Neither is oevrly strong, but the sale of used copies is of such minor importance to the company and happens so rarly (with a game of this nature) that they problably don't care to throw much resources into it... and their publisher wouldn't either.. since their publisher doesn't get much of that %15/mo as they do out of the upfront $50.
Blizzard has proven themselves nothing but a bunch of dicks over their treatment of FreeCraft/Ale and the alternative server networks.
Right... shutting people down for making derivatives of yrou works is just being an asshole, and reporting that B&E or reporting that fruduelent advertising is being a jerk....
Freeraft and battle net d had good intentions but they really shoudl hve put the effort to make somethign new instead of deriving somethign from someone else work without their permission.
Because they've broken even finally,
They haven't yet. They have simply had one profitable quarter. Their still a ways from breaking even. I'm not bashing MS directly, their Xbox initiative is exactly what they need. I'm bashing the rest fo corprate america. MS does do long term projects and looks to the future. Their fairly progressive. The other corps generally are not.
Look at these things on a quarter by quarter basis
The horrible fallacy for which the US economy is based... one quarter means nothing. It's long run consideratiosn that shoudl matter but the stock market tends to be severly myopic.
Now, I'm no huge fan of the XBox, nor Microsoft. But I will give credit where it is due. The XBox (a year after launch) brought the best online connectivity solution out, passing what Sega was starting to do on the Dreamcast. The XBox live service blows away gaming online on any other console. GameCube has what, one true online game? Playstation has a few, but they don't link in any way, so I can't see if my friends are playing game A or B. Lastly on the online area, the XBox shipped standard with ethernet for online play. Dreamcast shipped standard with a modem. Gamecube ships with no connectivity option, and only recently were PS2s being sold with the networking built in (the mini PS2), or with an adaptor in the box.
Network play has it's nice features but it also isn't fun getting pwned by "1337n00bst0mp3r" over and over again. I myself have no problem with online compitition, I'm even ranked in one of the RTS's (top 20 on two coasts). But the vast majority of my friends avoid that. They hate losing. And none of the xbox owners subscribe to live. They just dont' want to get shit stomped online. Online play much less attractive to normal people then it is to nerds like us. It didn't help the xbox move that much more units.