Good discussion about religion vs. science and Christianity is/is not a religion. The following will be somewhat of a paradox to some but might make sense to others besides myself in that while I would agree in principle that analytic thinking would tend to displace religious belief, I find that it enhances my Christian belief.
For me, Christianity is not a religion so I see no real paradox. I would think that if someone has a belief system that they operate under that can be displaced by analytic thinking, it is not a worthy belief system. That would include some who call themselves Christian because for them their Christianity may be more of a religion than a matter of faith. In that case they should absolutely not discard analytic thinking (nor should anyone, for that matter). Rather they should inspect their understanding of what it means to be called Christian.
Scientific thought is still operating under a belief system. As belief systems go, this would be a worthy one in that not only does analytic thinking enhance understanding but within the framework of scientific thought are concepts that are verifiable (measurable and repeatable) usually not only within that particular subject but quite often through other avenues as well (using Physics to explain Chemistry, for instance). But Science describes things that are material and temporal as found in nature, hence the term natural.
The term supernatural would describe phenomena that cannot be (at least readily) explained by the natural sciences. The concept of a supernatural being or beings causing something to occur outside of the natural order is something genetically hard-wired into our most base consciousness. To say that all things that are not readily explained by scientific precepts are therefore supernatural events is certainly folly and we have several people in history to thank for standing up against the religious establishment in order to advance the cause of Science. (Someone else in history had a habit of standing up against the religious establishment and they crucified him for it.)
But to completely discard the concept of a supernatural being in favor of Science is just as dangerous as the opposite case often held by those of simple intellectual means. Whereas we used to see the Church as impeding scientific progress (and indeed it did for much of western civilization for quite some time), we now see where Science is often actively and more often passively trying (unsuccessfully, I might add) to undermine religion.
But why argue if one can hold both belief systems, Christianity and Science? If somehow Science and Christianity could somehow complement each other in spite of (and sometimes because of) each other then would that not be a cause for alarm who (simply) think that there is so much conflict that they could not both possibly be true and only one can exist?
In my experience, every article printed by the press for which I have had intimate experience has been faulty in one regard or another. Inaccurate to the point of irresponsibility in some cases and I read these reports for which I do not have intimate knowledge of through these filters. We may never know the details enough to pass certain judgment.
As an anecdote, I recall reading the report of an acid tank trunk overturning and spilling it's load of "highly caustic acid".
The captain staying with the ship is one of the basic tenets of seamanship. Some of us have been there and can rightly make this call. You don't abandon your post. You take care of those under your charge. It's called being responsible even if it means losing your life. Don't want the responsibility? Don't sign up for the job, clear and simple.
And it'll be curtains for the data center's infrastructure.
Very, very poor location for a high level center people.
According to the article, the datacenter handles mobile traffic for the region it's in. Assuming the region is Florida (or most of it), where else would you put such a center?
Orlando, at least the center, is about 50 miles from the coast. Katrina made (Gulf Coast) landfall as a Cat 3. Even stronger windstorms degrade quickly due to frictional forces as the storm encounters terrain. So the probability of Cat 5 storm force winds being encountered at the data center are quite remote.
BTW, Katrina's most famous devastation was due to water, not wind.
We're just not conceived to be designers and we could just well have a go at astrology or at table arrangement.
You know, I had just finished arranging my new glass-top furniture last night and reflecting on my work and the night sky, I realized you were going to say just that.
You only check every three months? You either don't have enough money to worry about in the first place or you have lots of money and so little time to spend it that you forget to check your balance. On the off chance it's the latter, howz about you don't need to remember anything but ol' HD here. I can do it for you on a monthly basis and handle all yer details.
Did you perchance glance at the image as I first did? Upon closer inspection, the "NO" is there but only evident to me after a second look. Originally I asked the same question as you did.
For the record, I hold many a prejudice (or at least predilection) but not normally among any racial lines.
But what is the real question? Is it that those who are of a minority status are not welcome in Heaven or is it that in Heaven status will not be a point of matter?
Besides, if we set aside race as a determining factor in determining one's status as a member of a minority group, one could state that only those in the minority will be allowed in Heaven. But that would offend the very one's that claim that there is no Heaven. (Which I find rather entertaining.)
I'd like to see his reasoning. Or maybe not. For full disclosure, I am a Christian and mostly white. That said, the Bible is pretty clear on this issue. Race is most definitely not a deciding factor. Again, I'd like to see his reasoning. Right now my numbskull alarm is going off big time.
Why are you doing this? For the money? If so, grab it now. Is it for the love of what you do? Walk away from the offer and stay true to your dream.
Big money now is bigger than even bigger money later from a financial perspective, especially if it is a 99% probability now and a 90% probability later. But you are young and have plenty of time to make good and bad decisions about money.
What do you want to look back on in ten years? "Oh, I should have taken the money" or "Oh, I should have maintained control and developed this the way it should have been developed"?
If you do go for the corporate offer, get some sound legal and negotiating advice before you sign anything and always maintain a personal exit strategy.
I work for a large corporation doing something I really enjoy, so throwing in with a big company is not a death sentence. But if you have the passion and desire to do something different there will be plenty of time in your life to join a big company and you will be a better asset from your experience than if you were always wondering what might have been.
Your "I use Windows at work" is my experience as well and I whole-heartedly agree with your premise about the expense of a transition-- at least one without a reason to upgrade. But XP is at the end of it's life-cycle from an MS perspective. Many businesses will be slow to react. There are still businesses running WinNT on a daily basis.
But your paragraph above, while accurate, does nothing to say how Microsoft got there and what was available that was arguably superior to anything Microsoft could offer.
On the OS side, there was OS/2 which was originally a joint venture between Microsoft and IBM. Microsoft left the table, IBM developed the product into something that was very usable, very stable, and very secure (by NSA standards). However, IBM doesn't know how to market to the masses-- it is not their forte and they have never really been at the leading edge of anything that they could market successfully since the Selectric.
On the application side, MS Office is, in my opinion, one of the leading suites in ease of use but it is made up of several programs any one of which is inferior to a previous counterpart. Excel, for example, pales in comparison to Quattro Pro especially for technical (read: non-business) application. Ami Pro, later Lotus WordPro, was far easier to use than is MS Word today after years of development. MS' drawing program, Visio, is probably their only application that stands above the rest but they didn't code that, they bought it.
Microsoft's real genius has been their marketing but they've been slow to advance technologically being always a third-tier player when it comes to code smarts.
All that being said, I use Windows at work and have been impressed with XP since before SP1. Kudos to MS on this one. If I have my blinders on and look at only MS products, XP is king. Take the blinders off and I wonder why I'm here.
How much time did I spend supporting a small home network running Windows? Approximately 40% of the time I was on the computer at home was spent maintaining Windows security issues including "attacks" from within. How much of a performance hit did I suffer with the resident sniffers and snoopers running in the background? How often did I have to provide a work-around due to an aging infrastructure?
Faster, leaner, more secure: Linux saves me time. (And it's fun, too!:-D)
Bottom line, although I could probably lock down Windows to achieve the same effect, Linux makes it easy to let the children go on the computer and on to the Internet and not have to worry about them trashing the installation because they wanted to punch the monkey!
Am I the only one that has a problem with the 'pH of strong Clorox' statement? Assuming they are talking about household bleach, the active ingredient of which is sodium hypochlorite, an oxidizing agent (as opposed to a reducing agent). This is different chemistry than acid-base chemistry where pH would be a more appropriate measure. Perhaps they meant to say lye.
Your probably a great person and all that but your comments are not so great.
I used to live in Austin. Cool town. Great music. Your analogy of the NAACP in Austin being like a Jewish organization in Nazi Germany is pretty lame and without foundation. If you'd ever taken the time to get to know Austin you would have visited some of the music venues. You'd see people from all walks of life (and races if that's your best way to describe people) intermingled listening to whatever was up there (pick your style of music and it was performed to near perfection and always fun).
Are there 'racists' in Austin? Absolutely! I've lived in many areas of these great United States and have seen evidence of race-based prejudice everywhere I've been so it's not just the South or Texas that is to blame. Some of the more racially prejudicial individuals I've met were natives of the state I was living in up in the top right corner of the country -- one of the more 'progressive' states. I just hope they weren't representative of the rest of the people in the state. I found their assumption that I was prejudiced against black-skinned folk because I was from the South to be in and of itself a form of prejudice.
I'm becoming ever convinced that the ones that cry 'racist' the loudest are usually racist themselves but aren't smart enough to realize it.
Remember, there are always two types of people: us and them. If you're not one of us, you must be one of them. But what happens when we get to know them and realize they are just like us?
Hardness (Mohs) is NOT everything -- I agree. But the demonstration with the hammer (in a way) answers the question of breaking diamonds with hammers. Although, if you notice, the screen is struck with the hammer in the center where the surface will have the greatest ability to flex. I wonder if the same result would be seen if the hammer struck a side or a corner. Depending on how tightly mounted the "glass" was, this may prove too much for this material and it may snap, crack, or chip. Nevertheless, this is certainly a durable interface. Pretty neat.
Scratch sapphire? With sapphire being #9 on the Mohs hardness scale... not going to happen (except with a ruby, another sapphire, or of course a diamond). Maybe silicon carbide if you believe a certain wiki.
Incidentally, the "transparent aluminum" tag isn't too far off. Never thought about sapphire during, what was it, ST-4?
The thermal conductivity only tells half the story. I wish I could remember where I saw it but there was a set of diagrams that showed how fast an aluminum block came to thermal equilibrium as opposed to other metals. Not only was it good at conducting heat away from another body it was also very good at distributing the heat within itself.
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Good discussion about religion vs. science and Christianity is/is not a religion. The following will be somewhat of a paradox to some but might make sense to others besides myself in that while I would agree in principle that analytic thinking would tend to displace religious belief, I find that it enhances my Christian belief.
For me, Christianity is not a religion so I see no real paradox. I would think that if someone has a belief system that they operate under that can be displaced by analytic thinking, it is not a worthy belief system. That would include some who call themselves Christian because for them their Christianity may be more of a religion than a matter of faith. In that case they should absolutely not discard analytic thinking (nor should anyone, for that matter). Rather they should inspect their understanding of what it means to be called Christian.
Scientific thought is still operating under a belief system. As belief systems go, this would be a worthy one in that not only does analytic thinking enhance understanding but within the framework of scientific thought are concepts that are verifiable (measurable and repeatable) usually not only within that particular subject but quite often through other avenues as well (using Physics to explain Chemistry, for instance). But Science describes things that are material and temporal as found in nature, hence the term natural.
The term supernatural would describe phenomena that cannot be (at least readily) explained by the natural sciences. The concept of a supernatural being or beings causing something to occur outside of the natural order is something genetically hard-wired into our most base consciousness. To say that all things that are not readily explained by scientific precepts are therefore supernatural events is certainly folly and we have several people in history to thank for standing up against the religious establishment in order to advance the cause of Science. (Someone else in history had a habit of standing up against the religious establishment and they crucified him for it.)
But to completely discard the concept of a supernatural being in favor of Science is just as dangerous as the opposite case often held by those of simple intellectual means. Whereas we used to see the Church as impeding scientific progress (and indeed it did for much of western civilization for quite some time), we now see where Science is often actively and more often passively trying (unsuccessfully, I might add) to undermine religion.
But why argue if one can hold both belief systems, Christianity and Science? If somehow Science and Christianity could somehow complement each other in spite of (and sometimes because of) each other then would that not be a cause for alarm who (simply) think that there is so much conflict that they could not both possibly be true and only one can exist?
In my experience, every article printed by the press for which I have had intimate experience has been faulty in one regard or another. Inaccurate to the point of irresponsibility in some cases and I read these reports for which I do not have intimate knowledge of through these filters. We may never know the details enough to pass certain judgment.
As an anecdote, I recall reading the report of an acid tank trunk overturning and spilling it's load of "highly caustic acid".
The captain staying with the ship is one of the basic tenets of seamanship. Some of us have been there and can rightly make this call. You don't abandon your post. You take care of those under your charge. It's called being responsible even if it means losing your life. Don't want the responsibility? Don't sign up for the job, clear and simple.
According to the article, the datacenter handles mobile traffic for the region it's in. Assuming the region is Florida (or most of it), where else would you put such a center?
Orlando, at least the center, is about 50 miles from the coast. Katrina made (Gulf Coast) landfall as a Cat 3. Even stronger windstorms degrade quickly due to frictional forces as the storm encounters terrain. So the probability of Cat 5 storm force winds being encountered at the data center are quite remote.
BTW, Katrina's most famous devastation was due to water, not wind.
We're just not conceived to be designers and we could just well have a go at astrology or at table arrangement.
You know, I had just finished arranging my new glass-top furniture last night and reflecting on my work and the night sky, I realized you were going to say just that.
You only check every three months? You either don't have enough money to worry about in the first place or you have lots of money and so little time to spend it that you forget to check your balance. On the off chance it's the latter, howz about you don't need to remember anything but ol' HD here. I can do it for you on a monthly basis and handle all yer details.
Did you perchance glance at the image as I first did? Upon closer inspection, the "NO" is there but only evident to me after a second look. Originally I asked the same question as you did.
For the record, I hold many a prejudice (or at least predilection) but not normally among any racial lines.
But what is the real question? Is it that those who are of a minority status are not welcome in Heaven or is it that in Heaven status will not be a point of matter?
Besides, if we set aside race as a determining factor in determining one's status as a member of a minority group, one could state that only those in the minority will be allowed in Heaven. But that would offend the very one's that claim that there is no Heaven. (Which I find rather entertaining.)
I'd like to see his reasoning. Or maybe not. For full disclosure, I am a Christian and mostly white. That said, the Bible is pretty clear on this issue. Race is most definitely not a deciding factor. Again, I'd like to see his reasoning. Right now my numbskull alarm is going off big time.
Why are you doing this? For the money? If so, grab it now. Is it for the love of what you do? Walk away from the offer and stay true to your dream.
Big money now is bigger than even bigger money later from a financial perspective, especially if it is a 99% probability now and a 90% probability later. But you are young and have plenty of time to make good and bad decisions about money.
What do you want to look back on in ten years? "Oh, I should have taken the money" or "Oh, I should have maintained control and developed this the way it should have been developed"?
If you do go for the corporate offer, get some sound legal and negotiating advice before you sign anything and always maintain a personal exit strategy.
I work for a large corporation doing something I really enjoy, so throwing in with a big company is not a death sentence. But if you have the passion and desire to do something different there will be plenty of time in your life to join a big company and you will be a better asset from your experience than if you were always wondering what might have been.
Other than the fact that elemental lithium bursts into flame upon exposure to water. Talk about your hot sauce.
Your "I use Windows at work" is my experience as well and I whole-heartedly agree with your premise about the expense of a transition-- at least one without a reason to upgrade. But XP is at the end of it's life-cycle from an MS perspective. Many businesses will be slow to react. There are still businesses running WinNT on a daily basis.
But your paragraph above, while accurate, does nothing to say how Microsoft got there and what was available that was arguably superior to anything Microsoft could offer.
On the OS side, there was OS/2 which was originally a joint venture between Microsoft and IBM. Microsoft left the table, IBM developed the product into something that was very usable, very stable, and very secure (by NSA standards). However, IBM doesn't know how to market to the masses-- it is not their forte and they have never really been at the leading edge of anything that they could market successfully since the Selectric.
On the application side, MS Office is, in my opinion, one of the leading suites in ease of use but it is made up of several programs any one of which is inferior to a previous counterpart. Excel, for example, pales in comparison to Quattro Pro especially for technical (read: non-business) application. Ami Pro, later Lotus WordPro, was far easier to use than is MS Word today after years of development. MS' drawing program, Visio, is probably their only application that stands above the rest but they didn't code that, they bought it.
Microsoft's real genius has been their marketing but they've been slow to advance technologically being always a third-tier player when it comes to code smarts.
All that being said, I use Windows at work and have been impressed with XP since before SP1. Kudos to MS on this one. If I have my blinders on and look at only MS products, XP is king. Take the blinders off and I wonder why I'm here.
.wav file: record your favorite hard disk chirping and thrashing then play back on light and heavy "disk" activity (respectively).
and is it 'noise' if you like the sound?
if a married man is alone in the forest and he says something, is he still wrong?
How much time did I spend supporting a small home network running Windows? Approximately 40% of the time I was on the computer at home was spent maintaining Windows security issues including "attacks" from within. How much of a performance hit did I suffer with the resident sniffers and snoopers running in the background? How often did I have to provide a work-around due to an aging infrastructure?
:-D)
Faster, leaner, more secure: Linux saves me time. (And it's fun, too!
Bottom line, although I could probably lock down Windows to achieve the same effect, Linux makes it easy to let the children go on the computer and on to the Internet and not have to worry about them trashing the installation because they wanted to punch the monkey!
Am I the only one that has a problem with the 'pH of strong Clorox' statement? Assuming they are talking about household bleach, the active ingredient of which is sodium hypochlorite, an oxidizing agent (as opposed to a reducing agent). This is different chemistry than acid-base chemistry where pH would be a more appropriate measure. Perhaps they meant to say lye.
Your probably a great person and all that but your comments are not so great.
I used to live in Austin. Cool town. Great music. Your analogy of the NAACP in Austin being like a Jewish organization in Nazi Germany is pretty lame and without foundation. If you'd ever taken the time to get to know Austin you would have visited some of the music venues. You'd see people from all walks of life (and races if that's your best way to describe people) intermingled listening to whatever was up there (pick your style of music and it was performed to near perfection and always fun).
Are there 'racists' in Austin? Absolutely! I've lived in many areas of these great United States and have seen evidence of race-based prejudice everywhere I've been so it's not just the South or Texas that is to blame. Some of the more racially prejudicial individuals I've met were natives of the state I was living in up in the top right corner of the country -- one of the more 'progressive' states. I just hope they weren't representative of the rest of the people in the state. I found their assumption that I was prejudiced against black-skinned folk because I was from the South to be in and of itself a form of prejudice.
I'm becoming ever convinced that the ones that cry 'racist' the loudest are usually racist themselves but aren't smart enough to realize it.
Remember, there are always two types of people: us and them. If you're not one of us, you must be one of them. But what happens when we get to know them and realize they are just like us?
Hardness (Mohs) is NOT everything -- I agree. But the demonstration with the hammer (in a way) answers the question of breaking diamonds with hammers. Although, if you notice, the screen is struck with the hammer in the center where the surface will have the greatest ability to flex. I wonder if the same result would be seen if the hammer struck a side or a corner. Depending on how tightly mounted the "glass" was, this may prove too much for this material and it may snap, crack, or chip. Nevertheless, this is certainly a durable interface. Pretty neat.
Scratch sapphire? With sapphire being #9 on the Mohs hardness scale... not going to happen (except with a ruby, another sapphire, or of course a diamond). Maybe silicon carbide if you believe a certain wiki. Incidentally, the "transparent aluminum" tag isn't too far off. Never thought about sapphire during, what was it, ST-4 ?
Missing the point? I think the arrows are now missing their points.
The thermal conductivity only tells half the story. I wish I could remember where I saw it but there was a set of diagrams that showed how fast an aluminum block came to thermal equilibrium as opposed to other metals. Not only was it good at conducting heat away from another body it was also very good at distributing the heat within itself.