I was wondering what Christians on/. thought. I find websites like christiananswers.net to be arrogant, since the implication is that they have "THE Christian answer" for various questions, when, in fact, truth is not quite so cut-and-dry. Even amoung Christians, there is quite a bit of disagreement and dialog on many different subjects.
If you are a Christian, then what do YOU think about my questions?
This is not a troll -- I'm genuinely very curious.
What do Christians think about stories like this? I ask becuase, in discussions with Christians, I've heard Christians tell me that there is no intelligent life on other planets. This was usually in response to my questions like, "Did Jesus die for aliens on other planets?" Perhaps a silly question for me to ask, but the "There is no intelligent life on other planets" was not an uncommon belief among the Christians I've met.
So I've often wondered what Christians (particularly Christian nerds, who are probably significantly more friendly to science than some of the Christians I've met) think when stories like thit surface and hint at the possibility of finding other "Earth-like" planets that may have intelligent life on them.
As usual, it's even simpler than that. As James says, if your faith is not working (producing righteous deeds) then it is dead, ie, not faith in the living One.
Yes, Paul (faith alone) and James (faith and works) disagree on the issue of how to be saved.
What, pray tell, does this mean? I have heard people tell me that they thought that perl was not "enterprise ready." When I asked them what that meant I got highly-subjective and conflicting answers.
Is the charge that perl is not "enterprise ready" just manager-speak for expressing the prejudiced opinion that perl is merely a "hacker tool"?
software != air. Its not like there's all this naturally growing software out there that Microsoft is trying to charge us to access... Jeez.
I read it like this:
information is like air
Information, like air, is all around us. Owned by no one. Free to be gathered and used by anyone who stumbles upon it. Arranging and organizing it does not mean that you own it. And that is what software is: merely a particular arrangement of information.
When privacy stories come up involving the government's right to peek into citizens' lives, there are always some people who state, "If you're not doing anything wrong, then what do you have to worry about?"
Well, this is clearly one thing we should worry about. What happens when the government, which is composed of fallible humans, goofs in its actions and accidentally destroys the citizens' property? Now no one could say that "that wouldn't happen."
Re:Design patterns and Lisp
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Other languages don't have this problem. Spanish, for instance, has su. As a bonus, it also doesn't have the "free" ambiguity.
Spanish has its own inherent sexism. For instance, a musician is "el musico" (inherently masculine). The word for music is "la musica" (inherently feminine). So what do you call a female musician in Spanish? "El musico mujer" ("the (inherently-masculine) musician woman").
I think it's a problem common to all romance languages. English has the benefit of not insisting that inanimate objects must have figurative penises or vaginas.
Nothing... except a small bit of your personal information which they will use depending on which way their "Privacy Policy" wind blows. Not that such a thing may bother you, but the service is most definately not free.
The bulk of early Marvel comics, well into the 1980's if not further, were highly sanatized due to the Code.
Back in the 80s when I read "The Uncanny X-Men" I remember Wolverine killing people all the time. There was one series with him and havok where he shoved one of his claws through the back of a guard's head so that the tip emerged from the guard's eye socket.
If anything was "sanitized," it was the X-Men cartoon of the 90s. Wolverine was even more harmless than Jubilee, making sure only to use his claws on enemies that cannot possibly be harmed by them (Omega Red, Juggernaut) but making sure to growl threatening sentences and extend/retract his claws about ten times per episode.
Come to think of it, Wolverine in "X-Men: Evolution" is pretty much the same way. I'd really like to see a rated-R version of "The Uncanny X-Men," animated or live-action. In particular, I'd love to see a full-length animated or live-action feature based on the 6-issue "Kitty Pryde and Wolverine" series. That would rock.
And if thats the case, big companies therefore are bad for the economy, thanks for proving my point,
I'm hardly convinced. I notice that you failed to answer my question about how you arrived at 1 year's operating costs being the maximum amount of money a company should be allowed to save. I also notice that your contention that a company's purpose was to "benefit the economy" was shown to be wrong, and you made no effort to argue against it.
Perhaps your argument would fare better if you had more facts and reason on your side.
the economy cares about jobs and people,
"The economy" is not a sentient being and therefore does not "care" about anything.
not the top 1 percent
Ahh, yes. The "top 1 percent," preferred punching-bag of leftists and socialists everywhere, rears its ugly head. I have two questions for you: In the United States, how much of the available income does the top 1 percent income earners make? And how much income tax does the top 1 percent income earners pay?
How much money is too much? They need enough money to run their company. A years supply of money is enough.
How did you arrive at one year being "enough"? I'm guessing it was completely arbitrary.
Companies should NOT be allowed to "save" money. The economy does not benifit from corporate saving.
This is a poor reason to disallow companies from saving money. It is not the job of corporations to benefit the economy. If you argue that it *IS* the job of corporations to help the economy, then the only question that remains is "how much"?
You know, Microsoft and others could be creating recessions on purpose to make the market hostile for the competition, did you ever think of that?
The idiotic idea of one company being responsible for something as complicated as a recession certainly did not cross my mind.
Reccession happen not because companies dont pay taxes, its because companies arent spending.
Where is the economic data to support this?
The solution to the recession isnt to do tax cut after tax cut, its to literally FORCE microsoft to spend its money,
We need less taxes and government regulation so that entrepreneurs are free to create jobs. This can only happen if there is true competition in the marketplace. This is why I support antitrust laws. (Enforcement is separate and much more difficult issue.)
Microsoft should not be allowed to have 40 billion dollars sitting in the bank
So how much money should they be allowed to have? Please be specific as to how much government regulation is required here.
Now think about all the other companies who have too much money sitting in the bank
A person is a legal entity designed to make money.
What gives you the power to decide what persons are "designed" for?
Your premise is flawed.
Ok, so which is it? Do "corporations" pay taxes, or do "people"? Well, the answer is both.
Incorrect. Individuals pay taxes. Corporations collect taxes on behalf of the government. The money that government gets has to come from somewhere. Whether or not one individual is trying to get more money to pay their higher taxes does not change the fact that, ultimately, money goes from individuals to government.
Since corporations are legally a "person" and can own property, they need the protection of the national defense, and they use the nation's infrastructure, etc. there is no reason they shouldn't pay taxes.
What's the point? They don't pay taxes. They collect taxes.
It could be argued that it would be fairer if we taxed both people and corporations exactly the same and instead of taxing only some transactions, we tax all transactions the same.
Since when was taxation about making things "fair"? It has much more to do with money and power than it has to do with any humanitarian goal. To think otherwise is naive.
This needs to be repeated over and over again because many people do not understand it. Corporations do not pay taxes. Corporations collect taxes.
Here's how it works. A corproation is a legal entity designed to make money. It has a list of expenses and a list of revenues. One of those expenses is "taxes." When the government raises taxes on a corporation, the corporation has to make up for the higher costs. It does this by increasing the price of its products or services. I.e., the consumer has to bear the brunt of the higer cost of the corporation's tax. I.e., the corporation is merely a tax proxy for the government.
All wealth in the country is held by two groups: individuals and government. People talk about "Microsoft's $40 billion," but Microsoft is owned by individuals. It does not exist without the individuals who make it run.
Right now, if someone gets a hold of your SSN, they can screw you over....Your SSN maybe a good identification number
It sounds like you damn the SSN in one sentence and then praise it in the other.
On the other hand, a retinal scan, as I said above, makes an excellent ID/password, because it is so difficult to duplicate.
With our currently technology, yes. Humans are ingenious creatures though. It's only a matter of time until that, too, becomes both theoretically and economically feasible.
It's been about a month since my Mac has even been REBOOTED
And others have had less pleasent experiences. Just read some of the posts attached to this story. Certainly you are not suggesting that 100% Macs are perfectly free of crashes or freezes, are you? Unless 100% of Macs are 100% free of crashes and freezes, then they do not "just work."
If you consider macs unreliable, it can only be because you have not used one in a long, long time.
I never said Macs were unreliable. In fact, I probably agree with you that Mac OSX is very reliable, even as much so as any BSD variant. My argument is this: you cannot argue that a Mac "just works" if even one of them crashes or freezes just once for any reason.
I wonder if you've used OS X? I use it all the time and it never crashes.
And others have posted that OS X has crashed, and has crashed many times. If OS crashes even once, then it does not "just work."
When I first plugged in my digital camera I understood what "It just works" means. It recognized the camera the first time and with a single mouse click all my photos were downloaded.
I will agree that using your digital camera with your Macintosh was easy. Kudos to Apple for making it that way. But if the system crashes, even once, for any reason, then it does not "just work." If the system crashes then nothing is working!
The only thing I'm opposed to is people saying that their technology "just works" when they know that their technology freezes and/or crashes.
I explained what I meant by "it just works". I didn't mean "nothing will ever go wrong". I meant, if you want to do something, it is straightforward and quick.
Then don't say "everything just works." Instead say, "if you want to do something, it is straightforward and quick." The former implies stability (since system stability is certainly contained within "everything") while the latter does not. How can "everything just work" if the system crashes? When that happens, nothing is working!
What I'm trying to say is that the moment a Macintosh locks up, freezes, or crashes, then it no longer "just works." Comparing the difficully of setting up a Macintosh vs. setting up a Linux system is not the issue (in fact, I'll agree with you that setting up a Mac is light-years easier than setting up Linux). What is the issue is the validity of the claim "it just works." You can't claim that something "just works" if it crashes or freezes. I don't think there has ever been a computer* that did not crash or freeze, and this includes computers that run MacOSX, Linux, *BSD, whatever. Thus, the "it just works" claim is a lie disguised as marketing hype.
*Ok, maybe OS/390 is an exception, but that's comparing apples (pun intended) to oranges.
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Thanks for your thoughtful response!
if aliens exist, why do we assume that it would be intelligent life and not like a martian dog or rat or something?
I think because people get excited about the possibility of communication with alien races.
if the life is intelligent, does it have a soul that is saveable, according to Christian theology?
Or, conversely, if the alien does *not* have a soul, then is it a sin to kill said alien?
I was wondering what Christians on /. thought. I find websites like christiananswers.net to be arrogant, since the implication is that they have "THE Christian answer" for various questions, when, in fact, truth is not quite so cut-and-dry. Even amoung Christians, there is quite a bit of disagreement and dialog on many different subjects.
If you are a Christian, then what do YOU think about my questions?
This is not a troll -- I'm genuinely very curious.
What do Christians think about stories like this? I ask becuase, in discussions with Christians, I've heard Christians tell me that there is no intelligent life on other planets. This was usually in response to my questions like, "Did Jesus die for aliens on other planets?" Perhaps a silly question for me to ask, but the "There is no intelligent life on other planets" was not an uncommon belief among the Christians I've met.
So I've often wondered what Christians (particularly Christian nerds, who are probably significantly more friendly to science than some of the Christians I've met) think when stories like thit surface and hint at the possibility of finding other "Earth-like" planets that may have intelligent life on them.
Thoughts?
As usual, it's even simpler than that. As James says, if your faith is not working (producing righteous deeds) then it is dead, ie, not faith in the living One.
Yes, Paul (faith alone) and James (faith and works) disagree on the issue of how to be saved.
...and is not a enerprise suited language.
What, pray tell, does this mean? I have heard people tell me that they thought that perl was not "enterprise ready." When I asked them what that meant I got highly-subjective and conflicting answers.
Is the charge that perl is not "enterprise ready" just manager-speak for expressing the prejudiced opinion that perl is merely a "hacker tool"?
software != air. Its not like there's all this naturally growing software out there that Microsoft is trying to charge us to access... Jeez.
I read it like this:
information is like air
Information, like air, is all around us. Owned by no one. Free to be gathered and used by anyone who stumbles upon it. Arranging and organizing it does not mean that you own it. And that is what software is: merely a particular arrangement of information.
When privacy stories come up involving the government's right to peek into citizens' lives, there are always some people who state, "If you're not doing anything wrong, then what do you have to worry about?"
Well, this is clearly one thing we should worry about. What happens when the government, which is composed of fallible humans, goofs in its actions and accidentally destroys the citizens' property? Now no one could say that "that wouldn't happen."
Other languages don't have this problem. Spanish, for instance, has su. As a bonus, it also doesn't have the "free" ambiguity.
Spanish has its own inherent sexism. For instance, a musician is "el musico" (inherently masculine). The word for music is "la musica" (inherently feminine). So what do you call a female musician in Spanish? "El musico mujer" ("the (inherently-masculine) musician woman").
I think it's a problem common to all romance languages. English has the benefit of not insisting that inanimate objects must have figurative penises or vaginas.
and the subscriptions costs you.... nothing.
Nothing... except a small bit of your personal information which they will use depending on which way their "Privacy Policy" wind blows. Not that such a thing may bother you, but the service is most definately not free.
The bulk of early Marvel comics, well into the 1980's if not further, were highly sanatized due to the Code.
Back in the 80s when I read "The Uncanny X-Men" I remember Wolverine killing people all the time. There was one series with him and havok where he shoved one of his claws through the back of a guard's head so that the tip emerged from the guard's eye socket.
If anything was "sanitized," it was the X-Men cartoon of the 90s. Wolverine was even more harmless than Jubilee, making sure only to use his claws on enemies that cannot possibly be harmed by them (Omega Red, Juggernaut) but making sure to growl threatening sentences and extend/retract his claws about ten times per episode.
Come to think of it, Wolverine in "X-Men: Evolution" is pretty much the same way. I'd really like to see a rated-R version of "The Uncanny X-Men," animated or live-action. In particular, I'd love to see a full-length animated or live-action feature based on the 6-issue "Kitty Pryde and Wolverine" series. That would rock.
And if thats the case, big companies therefore are bad for the economy, thanks for proving my point,
I'm hardly convinced. I notice that you failed to answer my question about how you arrived at 1 year's operating costs being the maximum amount of money a company should be allowed to save. I also notice that your contention that a company's purpose was to "benefit the economy" was shown to be wrong, and you made no effort to argue against it.
Perhaps your argument would fare better if you had more facts and reason on your side.
the economy cares about jobs and people,
"The economy" is not a sentient being and therefore does not "care" about anything.
not the top 1 percent
Ahh, yes. The "top 1 percent," preferred punching-bag of leftists and socialists everywhere, rears its ugly head. I have two questions for you: In the United States, how much of the available income does the top 1 percent income earners make? And how much income tax does the top 1 percent income earners pay?
How much money is too much? They need enough money to run their company. A years supply of money is enough.
How did you arrive at one year being "enough"? I'm guessing it was completely arbitrary.
Companies should NOT be allowed to "save" money. The economy does not benifit from corporate saving.
This is a poor reason to disallow companies from saving money. It is not the job of corporations to benefit the economy. If you argue that it *IS* the job of corporations to help the economy, then the only question that remains is "how much"?
government doesn't exist without the individuals who run it. eh.
Individuals do not run government. Elected officials run government.
You know, Microsoft and others could be creating recessions on purpose to make the market hostile for the competition, did you ever think of that?
The idiotic idea of one company being responsible for something as complicated as a recession certainly did not cross my mind.
Reccession happen not because companies dont pay taxes, its because companies arent spending.
Where is the economic data to support this?
The solution to the recession isnt to do tax cut after tax cut, its to literally FORCE microsoft to spend its money,
We need less taxes and government regulation so that entrepreneurs are free to create jobs. This can only happen if there is true competition in the marketplace. This is why I support antitrust laws. (Enforcement is separate and much more difficult issue.)
Microsoft should not be allowed to have 40 billion dollars sitting in the bank
So how much money should they be allowed to have? Please be specific as to how much government regulation is required here.
Now think about all the other companies who have too much money sitting in the bank
How much is "too much"?
I suppose you think they're being "greedy."
But I wasn't talking about Microsoft avoiding taxes. I was talking about Bill Gates using Microsoft as a tax shelter to avoid taxes.
As much as I dislike Bill Gates, I have no problem with his doing this.
A person is a legal entity designed to make money.
What gives you the power to decide what persons are "designed" for?
Your premise is flawed.
Ok, so which is it? Do "corporations" pay taxes, or do "people"? Well, the answer is both.
Incorrect. Individuals pay taxes. Corporations collect taxes on behalf of the government. The money that government gets has to come from somewhere. Whether or not one individual is trying to get more money to pay their higher taxes does not change the fact that, ultimately, money goes from individuals to government.
Since corporations are legally a "person" and can own property, they need the protection of the national defense, and they use the nation's infrastructure, etc. there is no reason they shouldn't pay taxes.
What's the point? They don't pay taxes. They collect taxes.
It could be argued that it would be fairer if we taxed both people and corporations exactly the same and instead of taxing only some transactions, we tax all transactions the same.
Since when was taxation about making things "fair"? It has much more to do with money and power than it has to do with any humanitarian goal. To think otherwise is naive.
This needs to be repeated over and over again because many people do not understand it. Corporations do not pay taxes. Corporations collect taxes.
Here's how it works. A corproation is a legal entity designed to make money. It has a list of expenses and a list of revenues. One of those expenses is "taxes." When the government raises taxes on a corporation, the corporation has to make up for the higher costs. It does this by increasing the price of its products or services. I.e., the consumer has to bear the brunt of the higer cost of the corporation's tax. I.e., the corporation is merely a tax proxy for the government.
All wealth in the country is held by two groups: individuals and government. People talk about "Microsoft's $40 billion," but Microsoft is owned by individuals. It does not exist without the individuals who make it run.
Over 190 Million people have been killed by their own governments in the past 150 years. How many have been killed by "the alarmists"?
It isn't as if your DNA is being sampled
Yet.
Right now, if someone gets a hold of your SSN, they can screw you over....Your SSN maybe a good identification number
It sounds like you damn the SSN in one sentence and then praise it in the other.
On the other hand, a retinal scan, as I said above, makes an excellent ID/password, because it is so difficult to duplicate.
With our currently technology, yes. Humans are ingenious creatures though. It's only a matter of time until that, too, becomes both theoretically and economically feasible.
Just ride the dog [greyhound.com].
Ride greyhound? I think a three-way with Alan Greenspan and Yassir Arafat would be about a million times more enjoyable!
Make it illegal to copy the information w/o consent.
And we all know how effectively laws have stopped criminals in the past!
It's been about a month since my Mac has even been REBOOTED
And others have had less pleasent experiences. Just read some of the posts attached to this story. Certainly you are not suggesting that 100% Macs are perfectly free of crashes or freezes, are you? Unless 100% of Macs are 100% free of crashes and freezes, then they do not "just work."
If you consider macs unreliable, it can only be because you have not used one in a long, long time.
I never said Macs were unreliable. In fact, I probably agree with you that Mac OSX is very reliable, even as much so as any BSD variant. My argument is this: you cannot argue that a Mac "just works" if even one of them crashes or freezes just once for any reason.
I wonder if you've used OS X? I use it all the time and it never crashes.
And others have posted that OS X has crashed, and has crashed many times. If OS crashes even once, then it does not "just work."
When I first plugged in my digital camera I understood what "It just works" means. It recognized the camera the first time and with a single mouse click all my photos were downloaded.
I will agree that using your digital camera with your Macintosh was easy. Kudos to Apple for making it that way. But if the system crashes, even once, for any reason, then it does not "just work." If the system crashes then nothing is working!
The only thing I'm opposed to is people saying that their technology "just works" when they know that their technology freezes and/or crashes.
I explained what I meant by "it just works". I didn't mean "nothing will ever go wrong". I meant, if you want to do something, it is straightforward and quick.
Then don't say "everything just works." Instead say, "if you want to do something, it is straightforward and quick." The former implies stability (since system stability is certainly contained within "everything") while the latter does not. How can "everything just work" if the system crashes? When that happens, nothing is working!
What are you trying to say?
What I'm trying to say is that the moment a Macintosh locks up, freezes, or crashes, then it no longer "just works." Comparing the difficully of setting up a Macintosh vs. setting up a Linux system is not the issue (in fact, I'll agree with you that setting up a Mac is light-years easier than setting up Linux). What is the issue is the validity of the claim "it just works." You can't claim that something "just works" if it crashes or freezes. I don't think there has ever been a computer* that did not crash or freeze, and this includes computers that run MacOSX, Linux, *BSD, whatever. Thus, the "it just works" claim is a lie disguised as marketing hype.
*Ok, maybe OS/390 is an exception, but that's comparing apples (pun intended) to oranges.