What you say is only true about the New Testament books. And it's only partially true.
The Old Testament is pretty much just the Torah, the Hebrew holy book. So you claims on the "Bible" are patently false in the regard to them fudging the Old Testament.
The New Testament is a compilation of multiple books that were written by the Apostles and various other people that were close to Jesus. Not all of them were included - books such as The Book of Mary and The Book of Steven were excluded. These excluded books are called the aprocraphal books of the Bible. The books they included were the ones they were the most legit - that is, the ones that could be verified to be the most original, written by people that could be traced by association to Christ, and in posession of reputable Church leaders. The earliest manuscripts of various books of the NT have been found, and it's been shown that what was put into the canonized Bible indeed meshes with the original manuscripts.
Now, the legitimacy of the books they did pick is likely suspect, in my opinion. It is claimed by the modern Church that the Bible was dictated by God, to man, and that the selection of books was also dictated by God.
I don't personally buy this, due to the various political motivations, as well as the unlikelyhood. I think it far more likely that the choice of books was strongly influenced by the aspiring political motivations and religious beliefs of those picked to select the included books. I don't recall whether the people selected were Jewish rabis, priests of the old order of religions, or even the leaders of the Christian church of the day. I don't doubt that depending on which group, or combination of group members, selected the Bible, it had an outcome on the final books chosen. For instance, there are books that talk about Christ potentially being married, and kissing Mary Magdeline "passionately" on the lips, and him saying that man should treat his fellow man in such a fashion. I don't recall if this was a legit book (chronologically), but it obviously wasn't included.
I'd say that there's certainly a lot of truth in the Bible, and that it presents a good moral guideline, or handbook, if you will, for living. I don't think that serious alteration attempts were made, in the least. I do think that it was made from a composition of stories, written by mortals, and that, when taken in it's componet parts, it is imperfect. As a whole, it provides a template to live by, which if taken as the whole that it is, will provide someone with the knowledge and wisdom to live a spiritually fruitful life.
That said, I am a Christian, believing Jesus was the Son of God, and that he died for my sins. I don't know whether the definition of 'sin' is definate, or if it's an abstract principle. I do know that my observations of the world lead me to believe that Christianity, in it's purest form (Love God with your whole being; love man as yourself) is the best thing out there and that it is Truth. You can have truth without being completely factual - look at any ficticious story with a moral.
What is the point of upgrading, really? I mean, if the software offers a substantial, useful upgrade, then go for it. However, if you're just doing it for more widgets and later version with minimal changes, what's the point?
There's a negligible difference between Mandrake 10.x and Debian Sid or Sarge. One is supposedly cutting edge, while debian gets hell for being 'behind'. The only 'behind' I see is that debian doesn't tend to set everything for the user up automatically - good or bad, your call. That's all
I really see in new releases of distros like mandrake and fedora - more automation and 'seamless' operation for the newbie type. That's all good, I guess, if you're looking to get Windows-like acceptance and saturation one day, but I guess it's not for me. Hell, I don't even use hotplug because it irritates me. *g*
It's probably the case that they're ignoring it intentionally. "If we don't acknowledge it, it'll go away."
That, and it's one of those things that simply can't be refuted, so it's twice in their interest to not acknowledge it, so as to not give it more attention than it's already gotten. If EA makes a refutal, then it's likely to get in the mainstream media, resulting in many of their paying customers hearing about it, etc.
If you had several hundred ROMs of games made 15+ years ago, many of which (let's say 20) you still find quite enjoyable to play, would you shell out $150 for a new system, and $40+ for supplimental games?
Probably not.
Just like MS's main competition is old versions of their own software, a large part of Nintendo's competition comes from their older games and systems. Quite likely to a similar extent, as Nintendo seems to have a fairly niche market, compared to the Playstation and Xbox, with dedicated "Nintendo" fans.
It makes a lot of sense to me, in a "humans are stupid" kind of way, that a spammer would get 9 years, while a rapist or murderer would get off after 5 for 'good behavior'. When your average citizen gets hundreds of spam a day and doesn't know how to tell the real email from the spam, it tends to hit closer to home than someone they've never known getting raped or murdered - it's something they hear about all the time in the news, and is No Big Deal. It didn't happen to them, so they don't have an emotional response.
I think that this past presidential election proved quite well that Americans are, overall, an emotionally - not intellectually - responsive populace. Most citizens respond to things with an emotional association for them.
Then I had a kid. I don't think the selfishness claim you made really holds. The only way it could conceiveably be selfish, would be if you're doing it for selfish motivations. Now, I find myself wanting to do better - not for myself - but for my son.
You're missing a critical element in your assessment of the boom that occured in the 90's. Yes, there was a lot of innovation. There was also a lot of hype. Most importantly, though, there was a lot more competition, largely from companies that no longer exist.
The combination of hype, many companies just getting into the computerized operations, and many more companies making computer products resulted in many more people being employed creating those products. The destruction of competition resulted in what we've got now, in part.
Yes, OCRing would also be a nice preventative measure. I'd just thought that when the data reached the internet (containing the ballot number and how the ballot was linked, having no correlation to the actual voter itself outside the slip of paper the voter has), the voter could then verify their vote online and would provide a "if we goof around, it'll be easier for the plebians to catch us" incentive. However, it would definately be better to have as many technical preventions as possible, as you say.
It's interesting how the original Gameboy isn't on that list. That thing was built to -last- and -last-. I still have one. It's been run over by a truck, thrown out of a moving vehicle to land on the cement, and God only knows thrown against the wall how many times. Still works without any problems. Lots of scatches in the plastic case, though.:P
Sad how there are a number of new game systems on there. Companies don't make products like they used to - and that's not just nestalgia.
Nonsense. This is an age-old concept. Rome and Alexandria were both large hubs of commerce, setting the value of the $currency, and trade went on between the cities. London and Paris in centuries past traded. This is the same damned thing that's been going on for millenia: people congregate into larger groups of habitating individuals, and they become a "city". Having a larger wealth of human resources, they naturally become a focal point in all trade. People in outlying communities around these cities use the city culture and economy to suppliment their livelyhood in various manners, getting goods from "far off" places (whether it's the tribe 100 miles to the north that has the nice beads, or Hong Kong's finest... whatever) through proxy of their local city.
Probably nothing to it? Probably nothing to it, you say!
Then I guess it's just a big coincidence that exit polls have been fairly reliable, up until the point that digital voting machines began to be used. Starting then, exit polls stopped being used as a 'reliable' predictor for the vote.
I should also add that this method would provide complete voter privacy ("I don't want people to know who I voted for because if they lose the evil overlords will hunt me down") while maintaining a much higher level of reliability and accountability for those that handle the vote stubs.
Nothing this important should ever be left in the hands of a single person. This is one such instance, and thus, just like you'd send more than one person to carry a box full of paper ballots to the counters, you'd have more than one company/group of people responsible for the creation of such records.
And this is why the printouts have both a vote ID number and the voter's choices, as well as a bar code for easy re-scanning and authentication. Two are printed - one for the voter to place in a 'black box' full of them, and the other for the voter to take home with them for personal records, and so they can validate. (More on that later)
Then, when the recount is done (ie, not if they count them - they still count the paper ballots to validify the digital results), they can make sure there's no fuck-ups, intentional or otherwise. The voting process will still be easier for voters, and there will be an automatic record made.
Hell, we could even make it one step easier for the people that have to do the 'recount'. The "printer" would be very much like the printers that are used by fast food restraunts, printing one recept and giving an identical receipt to the customer (in this case, voter) with the order number/vote number. The voter could see the 'poll copy', while verifying their own copy is legit.
Then, have the voting machine made by one company, and the printer made by another company. There would yet be another company that makes a scanner, which would be the rough equivilant of the bar code scanner that's in grocery stores. Into this 3rd device the roll of paper poll results would be fed. It would not interface at all with the voting machine (which would and should be completely independent of all networks of any kind). This third device (the 'scanner') would then be able to upload the results from the paper to a server located centrally somewhere, which the voters could access via a web interface (and then verify their vote with the vote stub). This would catch any foul play by any of the parties involved, as a lack of paper trail would incriminate the voting machine company, and an improper recount would incriminate the company that makes the scanner/software somewhere along the line.
Of course, this solution is entirely too open for our society, and those in charge would never go for it, despite it providing a mechanism to keep things 'closed' for companies, prevent any one company from altering the results, and provide the voters with the reliability they should expect, all while being about as secure as could possibly be.
Bah, get an IBM Thinkpad. They're superior, cost about the same amount (or as little as half as much), come with a standard 3-year full parts warranty, have customer-replaceable parts (they ship you the easily-replaceable part, you replace it, and ship the broken one to them), don't use shitty and unstable hardware, have high-quality keyboards (I'm sure you've seen some shitty, untypeable laptop keyboards before) and all work with linux perfectly (in all cases I've seen, and ot the best of my knowledge).
I prefer the X series - they've got good battery life (4+ hours for P-M based models), weigh hardly anything (my P3-M X30 weighs 3.4lb - I'm typing on it now), and are well built and sexy. IBM Thinkpads have the geek appeal, minus the goddamn trendy/yuppy factor that powerbooks have that results in every idiot art geek coming up to you to start a conversation. That, and IBM kit have always had techie appeal in general - they're well built and don't fail.
Oh, and IBM at least supports Linux commercially, as opposed to this company which seems to want support from the Linux community. Ie, milk the community with shitty products.
In my opinion, the best thing you could do to get a quality laptop manufacturer to produce "made for Linux" laptops would be to buy an IBM laptop, and then write their corporate office and tell them that you really, really appreciate their high-quality laptop hardware, and that you only wish you weren't required to pay for Windows. If you're in charge of a network install base (and in association, the responsibility of making choices on kit - I know, this is slashdot, that's a bit of a stretch) or any other situation where money is involved, let them know - they'd likely care a good deal that their customers aren't entirely satisfied with their products.
It'd be a better choice for a desktop CPU, too, if it weren't so damned expensive and Intel would simply admit that the P4 is shit in comparison.
Re:Stephen King's short story about teleportation
on
USAF Studies Teleportation
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Don't waste your time on Stephen King's short story. I suspect he culled most of his information from The Stars, My Destination, written by Alfred Bester sometime before 1977. It's much more than just a story about jaunting (his term, afaik), it's a story that involves jaunting with a rich science fiction scenery, good characters and development, plot, and rich background. It might be considered steam punk to a degree by some.
No, but there's admitted intent on the part of a party that has executive power over the voting machines to do everything he can to give Bush the win.
It wouldn't be acceptable to a gambler if he were playing at a roulette table and the dice were weighted. He'd have been cheated, and that would only be for money. The election isn't supposed to be a gamble - it's supposed to be an election process and not predetermined. This kind of behavior isn't allowed in gambling (except for slot machines, I s'pose), so why is it allowed in something this important?
Slashdot Mirror
And how much of that oral tradition (ie, unwritten material) made it into the finished Bible?
None.
What you say is only true about the New Testament books. And it's only partially true.
The Old Testament is pretty much just the Torah, the Hebrew holy book. So you claims on the "Bible" are patently false in the regard to them fudging the Old Testament.
The New Testament is a compilation of multiple books that were written by the Apostles and various other people that were close to Jesus. Not all of them were included - books such as The Book of Mary and The Book of Steven were excluded. These excluded books are called the aprocraphal books of the Bible. The books they included were the ones they were the most legit - that is, the ones that could be verified to be the most original, written by people that could be traced by association to Christ, and in posession of reputable Church leaders. The earliest manuscripts of various books of the NT have been found, and it's been shown that what was put into the canonized Bible indeed meshes with the original manuscripts.
Now, the legitimacy of the books they did pick is likely suspect, in my opinion. It is claimed by the modern Church that the Bible was dictated by God, to man, and that the selection of books was also dictated by God.
I don't personally buy this, due to the various political motivations, as well as the unlikelyhood. I think it far more likely that the choice of books was strongly influenced by the aspiring political motivations and religious beliefs of those picked to select the included books. I don't recall whether the people selected were Jewish rabis, priests of the old order of religions, or even the leaders of the Christian church of the day. I don't doubt that depending on which group, or combination of group members, selected the Bible, it had an outcome on the final books chosen. For instance, there are books that talk about Christ potentially being married, and kissing Mary Magdeline "passionately" on the lips, and him saying that man should treat his fellow man in such a fashion. I don't recall if this was a legit book (chronologically), but it obviously wasn't included.
I'd say that there's certainly a lot of truth in the Bible, and that it presents a good moral guideline, or handbook, if you will, for living. I don't think that serious alteration attempts were made, in the least. I do think that it was made from a composition of stories, written by mortals, and that, when taken in it's componet parts, it is imperfect. As a whole, it provides a template to live by, which if taken as the whole that it is, will provide someone with the knowledge and wisdom to live a spiritually fruitful life.
That said, I am a Christian, believing Jesus was the Son of God, and that he died for my sins. I don't know whether the definition of 'sin' is definate, or if it's an abstract principle. I do know that my observations of the world lead me to believe that Christianity, in it's purest form (Love God with your whole being; love man as yourself) is the best thing out there and that it is Truth. You can have truth without being completely factual - look at any ficticious story with a moral.
What is the point of upgrading, really? I mean, if the software offers a substantial, useful upgrade, then go for it. However, if you're just doing it for more widgets and later version with minimal changes, what's the point?
There's a negligible difference between Mandrake 10.x and Debian Sid or Sarge. One is supposedly cutting edge, while debian gets hell for being 'behind'. The only 'behind' I see is that debian doesn't tend to set everything for the user up automatically - good or bad, your call. That's all
I really see in new releases of distros like mandrake and fedora - more automation and 'seamless' operation for the newbie type. That's all good, I guess, if you're looking to get Windows-like acceptance and saturation one day, but I guess it's not for me. Hell, I don't even use hotplug because it irritates me. *g*
Looks like this puts Google on the "bad list" company. So much for a company full of benevolent, educated philanthropists.
It's probably the case that they're ignoring it intentionally. "If we don't acknowledge it, it'll go away."
That, and it's one of those things that simply can't be refuted, so it's twice in their interest to not acknowledge it, so as to not give it more attention than it's already gotten. If EA makes a refutal, then it's likely to get in the mainstream media, resulting in many of their paying customers hearing about it, etc.
Simple: they want more money.
If you had several hundred ROMs of games made 15+ years ago, many of which (let's say 20) you still find quite enjoyable to play, would you shell out $150 for a new system, and $40+ for supplimental games?
Probably not.
Just like MS's main competition is old versions of their own software, a large part of Nintendo's competition comes from their older games and systems. Quite likely to a similar extent, as Nintendo seems to have a fairly niche market, compared to the Playstation and Xbox, with dedicated "Nintendo" fans.
DEAR GOD, I have NO idea what you just said.
1) Learn English
2) Post to slashdot
3) ???
4) Don't look like a sodding idiot
How in the world did you get modded up?
Or, they could find the holes, write an exploit, and tell it for $50,000 multiple times to high-flinging spammers and ad/malware companies.
It makes a lot of sense to me, in a "humans are stupid" kind of way, that a spammer would get 9 years, while a rapist or murderer would get off after 5 for 'good behavior'. When your average citizen gets hundreds of spam a day and doesn't know how to tell the real email from the spam, it tends to hit closer to home than someone they've never known getting raped or murdered - it's something they hear about all the time in the news, and is No Big Deal. It didn't happen to them, so they don't have an emotional response.
I think that this past presidential election proved quite well that Americans are, overall, an emotionally - not intellectually - responsive populace. Most citizens respond to things with an emotional association for them.
I used to think like that.
Then I had a kid. I don't think the selfishness claim you made really holds. The only way it could conceiveably be selfish, would be if you're doing it for selfish motivations. Now, I find myself wanting to do better - not for myself - but for my son.
You're missing a critical element in your assessment of the boom that occured in the 90's. Yes, there was a lot of innovation. There was also a lot of hype. Most importantly, though, there was a lot more competition, largely from companies that no longer exist.
The combination of hype, many companies just getting into the computerized operations, and many more companies making computer products resulted in many more people being employed creating those products. The destruction of competition resulted in what we've got now, in part.
Privacy and the 'secret ballot' as it were, would not need to be violated. Read this.
Yes, OCRing would also be a nice preventative measure. I'd just thought that when the data reached the internet (containing the ballot number and how the ballot was linked, having no correlation to the actual voter itself outside the slip of paper the voter has), the voter could then verify their vote online and would provide a "if we goof around, it'll be easier for the plebians to catch us" incentive. However, it would definately be better to have as many technical preventions as possible, as you say.
It's interesting how the original Gameboy isn't on that list. That thing was built to -last- and -last-. I still have one. It's been run over by a truck, thrown out of a moving vehicle to land on the cement, and God only knows thrown against the wall how many times. Still works without any problems. Lots of scatches in the plastic case, though. :P
Sad how there are a number of new game systems on there. Companies don't make products like they used to - and that's not just nestalgia.
Nonsense. This is an age-old concept. Rome and Alexandria were both large hubs of commerce, setting the value of the $currency, and trade went on between the cities. London and Paris in centuries past traded. This is the same damned thing that's been going on for millenia: people congregate into larger groups of habitating individuals, and they become a "city". Having a larger wealth of human resources, they naturally become a focal point in all trade. People in outlying communities around these cities use the city culture and economy to suppliment their livelyhood in various manners, getting goods from "far off" places (whether it's the tribe 100 miles to the north that has the nice beads, or Hong Kong's finest... whatever) through proxy of their local city.
Probably nothing to it? Probably nothing to it, you say!
Then I guess it's just a big coincidence that exit polls have been fairly reliable, up until the point that digital voting machines began to be used. Starting then, exit polls stopped being used as a 'reliable' predictor for the vote.
I should also add that this method would provide complete voter privacy ("I don't want people to know who I voted for because if they lose the evil overlords will hunt me down") while maintaining a much higher level of reliability and accountability for those that handle the vote stubs.
Nothing this important should ever be left in the hands of a single person. This is one such instance, and thus, just like you'd send more than one person to carry a box full of paper ballots to the counters, you'd have more than one company/group of people responsible for the creation of such records.
And this is why the printouts have both a vote ID number and the voter's choices, as well as a bar code for easy re-scanning and authentication. Two are printed - one for the voter to place in a 'black box' full of them, and the other for the voter to take home with them for personal records, and so they can validate. (More on that later)
Then, when the recount is done (ie, not if they count them - they still count the paper ballots to validify the digital results), they can make sure there's no fuck-ups, intentional or otherwise. The voting process will still be easier for voters, and there will be an automatic record made.
Hell, we could even make it one step easier for the people that have to do the 'recount'. The "printer" would be very much like the printers that are used by fast food restraunts, printing one recept and giving an identical receipt to the customer (in this case, voter) with the order number/vote number. The voter could see the 'poll copy', while verifying their own copy is legit.
Then, have the voting machine made by one company, and the printer made by another company. There would yet be another company that makes a scanner, which would be the rough equivilant of the bar code scanner that's in grocery stores. Into this 3rd device the roll of paper poll results would be fed. It would not interface at all with the voting machine (which would and should be completely independent of all networks of any kind). This third device (the 'scanner') would then be able to upload the results from the paper to a server located centrally somewhere, which the voters could access via a web interface (and then verify their vote with the vote stub). This would catch any foul play by any of the parties involved, as a lack of paper trail would incriminate the voting machine company, and an improper recount would incriminate the company that makes the scanner/software somewhere along the line.
Of course, this solution is entirely too open for our society, and those in charge would never go for it, despite it providing a mechanism to keep things 'closed' for companies, prevent any one company from altering the results, and provide the voters with the reliability they should expect, all while being about as secure as could possibly be.
Worms and Worms 2 were both classic, "fun because they're funny" games, as well as having some excellent two-player game play.
:P
IMO, the best games of yore were the ones that allowed two people to sit next to each other and blow the other person's shit up, so to speak.
No. It's a LinuxCertified laptop with an ATi card.
I'd strongly recommend you don't get this pile of crap, and get a Thinkpad X31 instead.
Bah, get an IBM Thinkpad. They're superior, cost about the same amount (or as little as half as much), come with a standard 3-year full parts warranty, have customer-replaceable parts (they ship you the easily-replaceable part, you replace it, and ship the broken one to them), don't use shitty and unstable hardware, have high-quality keyboards (I'm sure you've seen some shitty, untypeable laptop keyboards before) and all work with linux perfectly (in all cases I've seen, and ot the best of my knowledge).
I prefer the X series - they've got good battery life (4+ hours for P-M based models), weigh hardly anything (my P3-M X30 weighs 3.4lb - I'm typing on it now), and are well built and sexy. IBM Thinkpads have the geek appeal, minus the goddamn trendy/yuppy factor that powerbooks have that results in every idiot art geek coming up to you to start a conversation. That, and IBM kit have always had techie appeal in general - they're well built and don't fail.
Oh, and IBM at least supports Linux commercially, as opposed to this company which seems to want support from the Linux community. Ie, milk the community with shitty products.
In my opinion, the best thing you could do to get a quality laptop manufacturer to produce "made for Linux" laptops would be to buy an IBM laptop, and then write their corporate office and tell them that you really, really appreciate their high-quality laptop hardware, and that you only wish you weren't required to pay for Windows. If you're in charge of a network install base (and in association, the responsibility of making choices on kit - I know, this is slashdot, that's a bit of a stretch) or any other situation where money is involved, let them know - they'd likely care a good deal that their customers aren't entirely satisfied with their products.
It'd be a better choice for a desktop CPU, too, if it weren't so damned expensive and Intel would simply admit that the P4 is shit in comparison.
Don't waste your time on Stephen King's short story. I suspect he culled most of his information from The Stars, My Destination, written by Alfred Bester sometime before 1977. It's much more than just a story about jaunting (his term, afaik), it's a story that involves jaunting with a rich science fiction scenery, good characters and development, plot, and rich background. It might be considered steam punk to a degree by some.
Nonsense. People killed prior to 'civilized society' much like they do today: with knives, poison, their bare hands, guns. Nothing much has changed.
I will say, however, that there was more convention made in society for the pathologically deranged. I imagine that's what we've got politics for now.
No, but there's admitted intent on the part of a party that has executive power over the voting machines to do everything he can to give Bush the win.
It wouldn't be acceptable to a gambler if he were playing at a roulette table and the dice were weighted. He'd have been cheated, and that would only be for money. The election isn't supposed to be a gamble - it's supposed to be an election process and not predetermined. This kind of behavior isn't allowed in gambling (except for slot machines, I s'pose), so why is it allowed in something this important?