How on earth do you define "Not as bad"? Last I heard, the "Christian Right" didn't try to muzzle people who spoke out against it. Or use what amounts to brainwashing and cult-like behaviour in order to control it's members (see the definition of a "cult" before responding). Or flat out endanger people's lives!
First, I consider "Christian Right" to be synonymous with "Christian Fundamentalists", so when I speak of the former, remember that I am not talking about moderate or liberal Christians. Christian Fundamentalism may not be as bad, per member, as Scientology, but due to its greater membership it has a higher total amount of badness. The CoS is small and relatively puny (although disproportionately powerful). The Christian Right has both presidential candidates trying to please them (although Bush more than Kerry).
Going by total badness, Scientology is not as bad the the Christian Right. Going by badness density, it's the other way around.
BTW, did you know that Usenet has a foaming-at-the-mouth scientologist who is determined to post a copied and pasted rant against Dave Touretzky whenever his name is mentioned? That's creepy.
I was in a bad mood, and I apologize for the tone of my remark, but just sticking "GNU/" in front of the topic of an article does not make something funny.
EarthLink believes an open Internet is a good Internet. An open Internet means users have full end-to-end connectivity to say to each other whatever it is they say, be that voice, video, or other data exchanges, without the help of mediating servers in the middle whenever possible. We believe that if peer-to-peer flourishes, the Internet flourishes. SIPshare helps spread the word that SIP is more than a powerful voice over IP enabler --- much more. SIP is a protocol that enables peer-to-peer in a standards-based way.
How about, "no performance hit on the order of what you get with CPU emulation? CPUs are generally fast enough that you can accept a relatively small performance hit on all but the most demanding programs.
But it's so much more inconvenient to measure by weight that flour measurements are mostly done by volume in home cooking. As usual, it's a design tradeoff.
Last time I checked, you do what you would ordinarily do without bothering with religion. It's relaxing.
That aside, I do think that strong atheism gets fairly close to religion, in that it's a firmly held belief with no factual base - just like theism. But weak atheism is nowhere near that, it's as much a religion as baldness is a hairstyle. You should at least make a distinction between them.
There is a sort of middle position which, while at its core is weak atheism, dismisses the existance of god(s) as so improbable as not to be worthy of serious consideration. See Invisible Pink Unicorn for a good example of this kind of thinking.
As usual, Wikipedia gives good information.
And that, friends, is how this conversation is somehow vaguely on topic. I was starting to wonder.
Regarding your sig, I think it would be nice if we could all agree on our definitions of atheism and agnosticism. I could fall into either category depending on which of the various definitions are used, but I prefer to call myself an atheist in its weak (and literal) definition: one who lacks a belief in a god or gods. Confusion in the definitions of those words is a pet peeve of mine.
Look, gmail invites aren't that hard to get any more. I have five left at the time of this writing; just email sketerpot@gmail.com if you want one. Chances are that the moment you sign up, you'll have six invites.
While there's a difference between "most people" and "most people here", the number of people jumping on the article about it is excessive. Hopefully you can figure out what was meant.
And why should we hate a file format? Because GIFs don't support more than 256 colors without resorting to nasty hacks, they usually are larger than PNG files, and they have very primitive support for transparency. They're a pain, and they should be relegated forever to the past.
Bravo. You've read a science fiction book and assumed that it applies to real life. Perhaps you should read about the actual proposal to build a space elevator instead of just blindly posting "in the mars series it WRAPPED AROUND TEH PLANET!!!".
I'm sorry if this is unusually harsh, but I'm sick to death of this reply. Whenever anybody brings up the plans to build a space elevator, some bozo says that it's a bad idea because of something that happened in that series. I like to think that most people can tell fiction from reality, but this is seriouslly making me reconsider.
How does "pathetic nanny state" refer to anything other than the state? I myself think that the French government is being a pathetic nanny state on this issue, but I am entirely neutral with respect to anything else France-related.
Calling everyone who speaks harshly of the French government a "Frankophobe" is as bad as calling anyone who criticises the actions of Israel an "anti-semite".
By that standard, your post is spam. The "v1agr4" token would outweigh a normal message body (the sort spammers pad their messages with), but your post mentioned "Bayesian", "filters", and "discarded", which balance it out by virtue of being the sorts of tokens spam would not use but which legitimate messages do use.
Having once participated in Odyssey of the Mind, I can say that, in my case, the name was very appropriate. My mind was trying to go home the whole time, but it was unable to do so. Seriously, it sucked. I discovered how much I hate working in groups dominated by idiots.
A small university in Nebraska held an event called the Rat Olympics, but the Olympics Committee apparently owns a trademark on the name of an ancient contest, and threatened to sue. There was no sense behind it, since the Rat Olympics was just a little event held by the Phychology department, but apparently the Olympics people are determined to prove to everyone that they sold their consciences.
It only had depth because it was loosely based on one of Heinlein's suckiest books. If you want depth, read the book. If you want something that didn't quite manage to entirely shed its beginnings, then the movie will do.
Yet he sent his son to die for our sins. Odd, isn't it?
Everything just has to be settled by someone dying, doesn't it?
There's nowhere else to go. He is, as it were, the only game in town.
Interestingly enough, there are some morals that seem pretty much universal, such as not murdering or stealing, being polite and respectful, the work ethic, and the golden rule. These arose spontaneously in many cultures, even the many cultures that didn't have your God. It's no surprise; they have inherent utility in any society. I think it's pretty clear that He isn't the "only game in town". There's a phrase for assuming, despite all the evidence, that your religion is the sole source of morality: religious egocentrism. Don't let it happen to you (tm)!
Don't [ignore the old testament], or you'll miss out on the lyrics to U2's song "40".
I'll also miss out on a lot of rascism, sexism, and stuff that seems downright evil and non-Jesuslike. It's a tradeoff I'm willing to make.
Slashdot Mirror
In other words, Earthlink has a good motive to continue supporting P2P filesharing? Great!
First, I consider "Christian Right" to be synonymous with "Christian Fundamentalists", so when I speak of the former, remember that I am not talking about moderate or liberal Christians. Christian Fundamentalism may not be as bad, per member, as Scientology, but due to its greater membership it has a higher total amount of badness. The CoS is small and relatively puny (although disproportionately powerful). The Christian Right has both presidential candidates trying to please them (although Bush more than Kerry).
Going by total badness, Scientology is not as bad the the Christian Right. Going by badness density, it's the other way around.
BTW, did you know that Usenet has a foaming-at-the-mouth scientologist who is determined to post a copied and pasted rant against Dave Touretzky whenever his name is mentioned? That's creepy.
GNU/Humor. Are you laughing?
EarthLink believes an open Internet is a good Internet. An open Internet means users have full end-to-end connectivity to say to each other whatever it is they say, be that voice, video, or other data exchanges, without the help of mediating servers in the middle whenever possible. We believe that if peer-to-peer flourishes, the Internet flourishes. SIPshare helps spread the word that SIP is more than a powerful voice over IP enabler --- much more. SIP is a protocol that enables peer-to-peer in a standards-based way.
GNU does not run on beer. No software runs on beer. Beer is a beverage. Halfwit.
It's hard to kill a component of yourself. A9 uses Google inside, with some other stuff added on.
How about, "no performance hit on the order of what you get with CPU emulation? CPUs are generally fast enough that you can accept a relatively small performance hit on all but the most demanding programs.
But it's so much more inconvenient to measure by weight that flour measurements are mostly done by volume in home cooking. As usual, it's a design tradeoff.
Nobody wants to measure any amount of flour by weight. By volume, sure---if I could find metric measuring cups.
Last time I checked, you do what you would ordinarily do without bothering with religion. It's relaxing.
That aside, I do think that strong atheism gets fairly close to religion, in that it's a firmly held belief with no factual base - just like theism. But weak atheism is nowhere near that, it's as much a religion as baldness is a hairstyle. You should at least make a distinction between them.
There is a sort of middle position which, while at its core is weak atheism, dismisses the existance of god(s) as so improbable as not to be worthy of serious consideration. See Invisible Pink Unicorn for a good example of this kind of thinking.
As usual, Wikipedia gives good information.
And that, friends, is how this conversation is somehow vaguely on topic. I was starting to wonder.
Regarding your sig, I think it would be nice if we could all agree on our definitions of atheism and agnosticism. I could fall into either category depending on which of the various definitions are used, but I prefer to call myself an atheist in its weak (and literal) definition: one who lacks a belief in a god or gods. Confusion in the definitions of those words is a pet peeve of mine.
Look, gmail invites aren't that hard to get any more. I have five left at the time of this writing; just email sketerpot@gmail.com if you want one. Chances are that the moment you sign up, you'll have six invites.
NX isn't a new idea, it's a good implementation. They claim to be bringing X into modern times. And they support RDP, as well as whatever VNC uses.
And why should we hate a file format? Because GIFs don't support more than 256 colors without resorting to nasty hacks, they usually are larger than PNG files, and they have very primitive support for transparency. They're a pain, and they should be relegated forever to the past.
Rather than using your hand to block out annoying ads, use the Adblock and/or "Nuke Anything" extensions. They work very well.
That would be like bombing a nuclear reactor: don't try it. You won't get near it.
I'm sorry if this is unusually harsh, but I'm sick to death of this reply. Whenever anybody brings up the plans to build a space elevator, some bozo says that it's a bad idea because of something that happened in that series. I like to think that most people can tell fiction from reality, but this is seriouslly making me reconsider.
"pathetic nanny state" = "pathetic nanny government".
Calling everyone who speaks harshly of the French government a "Frankophobe" is as bad as calling anyone who criticises the actions of Israel an "anti-semite".
By that standard, your post is spam. The "v1agr4" token would outweigh a normal message body (the sort spammers pad their messages with), but your post mentioned "Bayesian", "filters", and "discarded", which balance it out by virtue of being the sorts of tokens spam would not use but which legitimate messages do use.
Having once participated in Odyssey of the Mind, I can say that, in my case, the name was very appropriate. My mind was trying to go home the whole time, but it was unable to do so. Seriously, it sucked. I discovered how much I hate working in groups dominated by idiots.
The Fox Family Channel seems to take the moon landing hoax theory relatively seriously. Make of that what you will.
A small university in Nebraska held an event called the Rat Olympics, but the Olympics Committee apparently owns a trademark on the name of an ancient contest, and threatened to sue. There was no sense behind it, since the Rat Olympics was just a little event held by the Phychology department, but apparently the Olympics people are determined to prove to everyone that they sold their consciences.
It only had depth because it was loosely based on one of Heinlein's suckiest books. If you want depth, read the book. If you want something that didn't quite manage to entirely shed its beginnings, then the movie will do.
Everything just has to be settled by someone dying, doesn't it?
There's nowhere else to go. He is, as it were, the only game in town.
Interestingly enough, there are some morals that seem pretty much universal, such as not murdering or stealing, being polite and respectful, the work ethic, and the golden rule. These arose spontaneously in many cultures, even the many cultures that didn't have your God. It's no surprise; they have inherent utility in any society. I think it's pretty clear that He isn't the "only game in town". There's a phrase for assuming, despite all the evidence, that your religion is the sole source of morality: religious egocentrism. Don't let it happen to you (tm)!
Don't [ignore the old testament], or you'll miss out on the lyrics to U2's song "40".
I'll also miss out on a lot of rascism, sexism, and stuff that seems downright evil and non-Jesuslike. It's a tradeoff I'm willing to make.