"So you are suggesting then that everytime one makes a claim they should qualify it."
No, just that it should be clear what they are claiming. Google does not have the biggest stock market value.
"For commonly adhered to scales of measurement it is more than appropriate not to qualify statements"
Absolutely. What commonly adhered to scale of measurement puts Google in the "top spot" over Time Warner? What categorization or measurement system does so whether common or not? I have no idea. The headline is idiotic, because its obvious meaning is false, and even thinking about it, I can't come up with what it's actual meaning might be. Maybe Google has the highest market cap of companies with less market cap than both Time Warner and Google?
"I'm sure there are some sites that legitimately use this feature"
No, there are not. This "feature" is not used because it has not existed for years; ever since it was eradicated from browsers because it's a nasty security hole.
It is actually something to do with malicious code. It is not about making a fake site, it is about letting you navigate to a real site (like your bank), without you ever knowing you are actually doing so in a frame. And it's about that frame containing javascript that is continually scanning the pages you're looking at and reporting stuff (like your password) back to the bad guys.
I'm a Windows user, and as you say, I don't care what processor is in my box. This move will not cause me to switch to Apples OS. However, if I could run Windows on it, I'd love to switch to Apple hardware. They make most excellent hardware.
No one except college admissions ever wanted to look at my high school GPA, and no one at all has ever wanted to look at my college GPA. Good thing I guess, since I failed Calc 1 before I decided to become a Math major. I did actually minor in CS. The stuff I learned in the courses has been helpful, but it's never mattered to an employer.
What has mattered to my employers? Let's see, in school I worked a little for the computing center, and my boss there recomended me to a friend who gave me a summer job doing tech support for an obscure sub-department at Harvard University. Note here that I didn't go there, I just (mostly) sat in one of their basements replacing network cards for a while. Yet I'm absolutely sure that what got me past the HR screen at my first "real" job was the word "Harvard" on my resume.
So: take classes that teach you stuff you enjoy knowing. Having taken those classes may (but probably wont) help you some minor ammount in getting your first job; which will probably be a lousy job, but will hopefully be somewhat related to something you like doing. Having taken those classes in stuff you enjoy knowing might help you do well at something you enjoy doing, and thus, indirectly help you get a good job you like. But that job will probably be your second or third, and the person who hirese you for it won't care (directly) what classes you took.
"I don't think man made diamonds are ever going to eclipse natural ones for jewelry"
Eclipse, maybe not. But they certainly may drag them down to the same level. As long as DeBeers continues to succeed in keeping diamond prices stupid, the motivation to make artificial ones that are indistinguishable will remain.
If someone can stamp out tons of them cheap, and only a trained proffesional with special equiptment can possible tell the difference, it will be hard to keep the price of natural ones up. When the trained professional can't tell the difference, it will be impossible.
They are real ones. Their charachteristics are those of diamonds, because they are diamonds.
"Diamond" specifies carbon atoms in a particular crystaline structure. The only distinction to be made between one sort of diamond and another is the extent to which they are not diamond.
Yes. He shouted himself hoarse, in genuine over-the-top, "Yee-Haw!" excitement; In response to losing the Iowa caucus rather badly. His camapaign looked very good early, because his supporters tended to be gung-ho activists who got involved early. But actual voting brings out people who are a lot more mainstream, which he was not. So he went from the far and away leader in early polls, to getting crushed in the first actual vote. That's not gaining momentum, it's running out of steam.
He probably couldn't turn it around at that point, but if he wanted to try, the start would have been a sober speach about how his campaign is going to knuckle down, etc. Maybe even some about the caucus system being a hard venue for a relative outsider such as himself. The mass of mainstream Democrats were already worried about whether he was sufficiently in touch with reality. Then he went out and said "We LOST! WOOO-HOOO! KICK-ASS!" Case closed.
Oh, and the Politburo disolved with the fall of the Soviet Union. They didn't kill Deans campaign. Iowa Democrats did, to the extent that he ever had a chance.
Bottom line, the press is not the well orchestrated unit you imagine. It's a messy, competitive group that largely reflects the atttitudes of society as a whole, because that's how they stay in business. Was much of the press watching closely for a "Dean-is-a-whack-job" moment? Sure. Because a lot of their readers were wondering if he was a whack-job, and watching closely for such a moment. And Dean handed it to them on a silver platter.
"The corporations literally get to decide who even has a chance of running and who doesn't."
I hate, hate, hate it when people misuse "literally". Perhaps you mean "effectively"? Literally, any natural citizen over the age of 35 can run for President. Effectively, getting your message to enough voters to matter is hard enough to do, that even assuming the media had some united agenda to keep third parties down, they wouldn't need to. Without a full scale major party fundraising apparatus behind you, you're not going anywhere. Perot got lots of media attention, partly because he spent lots of money, but also because he was interesting enough to generate ratings. What we need is a third party candidate who can be that interesting without being a complete fruitcake.
"Republican or Democrat doesn't matter anymore."
And I really hate it when people say that. Of course it matters. They may agree about things you don't like, but they also disagree about a great many things, many of them important.
"the 'Dean Scream' is a media fabrication and is primarily responsible for Howard Dean's fall from favor"
That's your big example? Because it sure looked like the real Howard up there screaming to me; I wonder why he's never accused the media of faking it? Besides, the screaming in question was part of his "concession" speach in Iowa. He was already falling from favor. I liked Dean, but there were already lots of people wondering if he had the experience and temperment to be a serious presidential contender. The scream became a big deal because it was so perfectly iconic of the answer.
I want to simulate a regular desktop when I'm NOT in the office.
Obviously, people who carry their laptop around all day, and/or travel constantly probably won't want this. It will not, as some posters have suggested, be a status symbol for CEOs. The status symbol there is the tiniest, lightest machine.
This is for people for whom "laptop" is not actually accurate. I never use mine on my lap anyway, and I go on one trip a year where I take it along. I move it around to different parts of my house all the time, but I'm thinking it's unlikely to be so heavy that I can't handle that. I've particularly noticed that a lot of non-geeks like laptops as home computers, because they want to use them wherever they feel like it.
In short, this is a portable desktop computer; which I see plenty of market for. Don't compare it's portability to smaller laptops. Compare it's portability to desktops.
I'm a left wing bicyclist, but I'm telling you he doesn't have the evidence, because it's hogwash. Break out those estimation skills. Do some ballpark calculations of how much gas you'll buy in the life of a car, multiply by the price of gas, divide by some wild guess as to how much cheaper the car factory can buy energy (somewhat, but not crazy-cheap). Multiply by 2 (to fit the 'gas is 1/3' claim). Tell me if the number you get sounds reasonable as the cost of just the energy put into making a car. Is the minimum price of even the cheapest new car significantly higher than your number?
The number I came up with was several times what I paid for my last new car. Maybe the automakers are just taking a big loss on inexpensive cars?
" may also create a 'democracy' in the strict sense of the word, but it is not what we technically are."
Technically, we are a democracy. Read the definition.
Technically, we are also a Republic, as is China, or the former Soviet Union, Cuba, all of South America, most of Africa, and Australia. Anywhere not headed by a King, Prince, Emperor, etc. is a Republic. Anyone who tells you we are not a republic is deluded, no question. Anyone who thinks saying we are a republic is particularly informative is an idiot. Particularly if they think it implies we are not something else (besides a Monarchy).
I have read the Federalist Papers and the Communist Manifesto. The idea that the US today implements Marxian Communism is not worth serious discussion.
"The amount of energy used by an average automobile over its lifetime (manufacture, operation, maintenance and disposal) that comes from the gasoline used to drive it is only a fraction (around 1/5 to 1/3) of the total."
"or through their elected representatives" - such as the electoral college. Electors are elected by the people. I'm not sure why you say "elitist". It gives diproportionate power to residents of less populous states, and to closely devided ones. In any case, the US really is a real democracy. It has (IMO) a stupid way of adding an unecessary level of not-quite-proportional indirection to Presidential elections. For that matter, the Senate is much worse in terms of making representation non-proportional. But that does not make it not a democracy. It is not a direct democracy, but I don't know of any of those composed of more than say, 50,000 people.
Pretty much every significant indirect democracy has some quirks, and sometimes they suck, but that alone does not make them non-democracies.
RTFA. The legislation sets required standards for state-issued drivers licenses.
This slashdot article is assuring us there is still time, if we act now! We must fight! We must not allow state drivers licenses to become the equivalent of an identity card! Um, yeah.
I think he means, it is hard to imagine how a third dimension would improve the usability or clarity of interfaces for most tasks. You mention 3D games, but the point of a game is not to give you the clearest, most efficient interface possible. You want the monsters in Doom to be hidden behind the corner; you want slight difficulties in predicting how a complex system will react to your actions to cause you to fail. If Doom were an office productivity app, I'd want to pull down the monsters menu, pick select-all, and hit the "Kill" button. Done; but not much fun.
"Name an earthly "interface" (and things like your car, the television, the stove, etc.) that would be improved by a 2D interface."
Thre tech obviously isn't there, but my car could be improved by clcicking on a 2-D map, and having it drive me there. It's a lot easier to find your way somewhere from an overhead 2-d view than a ground-level 3-d one. Not sure what you mean about the TV; mine is 2D currently. My stoves functions are controled by a 2D panel; My stove is 3D only in ways required for it to function (it must be a box you can put things in, with a door you can open), but the control interface is entirely 2D.
" in a 3D interface, I'd expect to pick up a piece of paper (an OpenOffice document), write on it (edit the document), draw a picture (import a graphic), make a paper airplane of it and toss it through a portal labeled BOSS (e-mail it to my boss). "
I agree that's too much fun for most offices. But it also sounds like you're looking for a more real-world-metaphor based interface, not a 3D one; at the least, the writing on a peice of paper sounds pretty 2-d to me. And I really don't see the advantage of the process you describe over how I create and email a document currently. Fold a paper airplane every time I want to send an email? And do I have a "portal" for every person I might want to email? You must throw planes more accurately thean me.
Aramaic. I don't know why you'd bother reading the words of Jesus is something other than the language he spoke.
"Mostly I was referring to contemporary Greek and Roman texts - Homer, Caesar, etc. And I stand by my original statement - please provide documentation to the contrary."
I'll gladly concede the Bible is on equal or better footing than the Illiad, for example. I guess it sounds good to you to be on firmer footing than an orally-transmitted tale told (and embellished) purley for entertainment value, where the identity, or even existence, of the original textual author is not clearly established.
Sorry if I wasn't clear. I'll gladly agree that the bible is on firmer footing than all sorts of ancient texts. People have built a religion on it, and hence it has received much more attention than texts that were never meant to be more than fireside tales.
The only point I was trying to make is that it is not on nearly as sound footing as the texts that are important to, let's see, Jews, Muslims, Buddists, Hindus, Discordians, Mormons, or Confucians. As far as I can tell, basically anyone with a textually based religion.
"There are somewhere around 5000 manuscripts that we've found - which is a couple orders of magnitude more than most ancient texts that are regarded to be authoritative."
You hit my pet peeve. In response to the obvious fact that the bible has been repeatedly mistranslated, and that no really good authoritative version exists, someone made up the meme that it is on firmer footing than other "ancient texts". This is repeated by persons such as yourself, who assume it must be true because it supports your desired conclusion. Perhaps it is beleived by some, but to anyone who has made even the most cursory study of other religions, it only reveals that you have not made even the slightest attempt to verify it.
Which "Ancient texts" is the Bible on firmer footing than accurate-translation wise? I could go through all the religions I know something about, and discuss how their foundational texts compare to the Bible in terms of access to the original language. But instead I'll just note that I don't know of any on worse footing than the Bible, and jump straight to the most glaringly obvious example you would have found out about if you had made any attempt what so ever to verify your assumption:
Modern Arabic copies of the Koran contain the exact text of the original. You may be willing to read the words of your favored proffet second or third hand and you may figure, heck, stuff gets translated all the time. Muslims apparently have higher standards. When they read what Mohammed said, they read what he said word for word, verbatim. Muslims still find all sorts of things to disagree with eachother about, but what the Koran says, down to the last letter, isn't one of them.
In contrast, amongst Christians there isn't even agreementas to which books are actually part of the bible in the first place. The "original" Greek texts you refer to don't agree with each other, and many of them are, get this, translations! Those greek texts are the best you've got in several instances, but here's a hint how good that is: Jesus didn't speak Greek. Not a word of it.
"You can't prove that something does not exist, not if you have a limited range for searching that is."
I have not searched at all for a number bigger than 3 but smaller than 2, yet I can prove it does not exist.
If something is logically impossible, I can prove it does not exist without looking at all.
So, whether God's existence can be disproven depends on your definition of the word "God". If that definition is too vauge to discuss logically (like most I've heard), you can't prove anything. If it is sufficiently detailed, it usually involves concepts I would consider logically impossible or incompatible, and so God, by those definitions, can be proven to not exist.
"Is it illegal to sell a rated-R movie to a minor?"
No. But vendors, for the most part, refrain from doing it voluntarily.
"Why should it be illegal to sell a rated-M game to a minor?"
Well, that depends. If you don't want minors to buy rated-M games, you should make it illegal, because vendors, for the most part, do not refrain from doing it voluntarily.
There is no problem with the majority of Christians in this country. The majority of them are nice folks, and while they beleive some things I think are kooky, they're not too pushy about it.
The problem is with the vocal minority of Christians who think they speak for a lot more people than they do, just because they call themselves Christian.
Quick test for whether they are the problematic kind: Do they insist on refering to themselves only as "Christian" even in contexts where refering to a particular denomination would make more sense? To pick a random example, Lutherans generally have no problem with the fact that what they beleive is slightly different that what Presbyterians (sp?) beleive, even though they are both Christian. Watch out for the ones who know that there own beleifs are the true Christianity.
Anyway, the problem with the problematic kind is the same as the problem with all religious extremists. It's the arrogance. They beleive whatever they want to, but they refuse to admit that. Rather they posit that what they beleive is not what they wish, but what GOD wishes. If they just thought I disagreed with them, that would be one thing. But if I disagree with GOD, that's a different matter! No point in considering what I have to say in that case, heck it would probably be wrong to even listen. And the actions that might be justifiable in forcing ones own opinion on others are rather limited; at least compared to what's reasonable when enacting the will of GOD.
"Instead because we are 'weird religious people' we obviously can't know what we are talking about"
Not at all. Even weird religious people certainly can know what they are talking about, and frequently they do. The reason I'm not going to spend much time considering your arguments is because I have read them. When they touch on subjects I know something about, (such as geology), it is clear that while you presumably could know what you are talking about, in this case you clearly do not.
I don't need to learn everything about what you think to discount it. I'd never do anything else if I tried to fully understand all the ideas of everyone, even when it was clear they were wrong right from the start. There's a lot of kooks out there you know, and Creationist are not among the more plausible ones. I have thought about it with an open mind; I have in fact wracked my brain, trying to think of any possible peice of evidence one could find that would not be explainable by Creationism. There isn't any. "God did it that way" explains anything, predicts nothing, cannot be tested, and is hence not science. So for those who call it science, "pseudoscientist" and "wrong" are merely accurate descriptions, so I'll go ahead and say so.
That sums it up pretty well. Lisp is a great language for writing languages, and a fabulous language for talking about algorithms. So if you want to examine and discuss the theory behind languages and algorithms, I'd definitely recomend Lisp.
If you don't care about writing languages or theoretical discussion, and just want a good language for writing actual software, I'd reccomend C++, but even the much-hated Java will probably serve you better than Lisp.
"Is it possible to take CDDL code and place it in a GPL'd project? I know GPL > CDDL 'no workie'."
No. You don't have rights to release CDDL code under the GPL, so you can't release code from each together, because to release code together with GPL code, you need to be able to release it all as GPL.
"they said in the article that a proprietary vendor could take their code... why would an open one not be able to?"
Because the open developer would need to redistribute the code under the GPL, which they don't have rights to do. The proprietary vendor can just not redistribute the code at all. Don't blame the CDDL, both developers can do all the same things with the CDDL code; but the open developer can't do as many things with the GPL'd code as the proprietary vendor can do with code he owns.
The GPL places restrictions on what you can do with the code. That's absolutely fine if those restrictions are what the author wants, but they are definitely restrictions.
Slashdot Mirror
"So you are suggesting then that everytime one makes a claim they should qualify it."
No, just that it should be clear what they are claiming. Google does not have the biggest stock market value.
"For commonly adhered to scales of measurement it is more than appropriate not to qualify statements"
Absolutely. What commonly adhered to scale of measurement puts Google in the "top spot" over Time Warner? What categorization or measurement system does so whether common or not? I have no idea. The headline is idiotic, because its obvious meaning is false, and even thinking about it, I can't come up with what it's actual meaning might be. Maybe Google has the highest market cap of companies with less market cap than both Time Warner and Google?
"I'm sure there are some sites that legitimately use this feature"
No, there are not. This "feature" is not used because it has not existed for years; ever since it was eradicated from browsers because it's a nasty security hole.
It is actually something to do with malicious code. It is not about making a fake site, it is about letting you navigate to a real site (like your bank), without you ever knowing you are actually doing so in a frame. And it's about that frame containing javascript that is continually scanning the pages you're looking at and reporting stuff (like your password) back to the bad guys.
I'm a Windows user, and as you say, I don't care what processor is in my box. This move will not cause me to switch to Apples OS. However, if I could run Windows on it, I'd love to switch to Apple hardware. They make most excellent hardware.
No one except college admissions ever wanted to look at my high school GPA, and no one at all has ever wanted to look at my college GPA. Good thing I guess, since I failed Calc 1 before I decided to become a Math major. I did actually minor in CS. The stuff I learned in the courses has been helpful, but it's never mattered to an employer.
What has mattered to my employers? Let's see, in school I worked a little for the computing center, and my boss there recomended me to a friend who gave me a summer job doing tech support for an obscure sub-department at Harvard University. Note here that I didn't go there, I just (mostly) sat in one of their basements replacing network cards for a while. Yet I'm absolutely sure that what got me past the HR screen at my first "real" job was the word "Harvard" on my resume.
So: take classes that teach you stuff you enjoy knowing. Having taken those classes may (but probably wont) help you some minor ammount in getting your first job; which will probably be a lousy job, but will hopefully be somewhat related to something you like doing. Having taken those classes in stuff you enjoy knowing might help you do well at something you enjoy doing, and thus, indirectly help you get a good job you like. But that job will probably be your second or third, and the person who hirese you for it won't care (directly) what classes you took.
"I don't think man made diamonds are ever going to eclipse natural ones for jewelry"
Eclipse, maybe not. But they certainly may drag them down to the same level. As long as DeBeers continues to succeed in keeping diamond prices stupid, the motivation to make artificial ones that are indistinguishable will remain.
If someone can stamp out tons of them cheap, and only a trained proffesional with special equiptment can possible tell the difference, it will be hard to keep the price of natural ones up. When the trained professional can't tell the difference, it will be impossible.
They are real ones. Their charachteristics are those of diamonds, because they are diamonds.
"Diamond" specifies carbon atoms in a particular crystaline structure. The only distinction to be made between one sort of diamond and another is the extent to which they are not diamond.
Yes. He shouted himself hoarse, in genuine over-the-top, "Yee-Haw!" excitement; In response to losing the Iowa caucus rather badly. His camapaign looked very good early, because his supporters tended to be gung-ho activists who got involved early. But actual voting brings out people who are a lot more mainstream, which he was not. So he went from the far and away leader in early polls, to getting crushed in the first actual vote. That's not gaining momentum, it's running out of steam.
He probably couldn't turn it around at that point, but if he wanted to try, the start would have been a sober speach about how his campaign is going to knuckle down, etc. Maybe even some about the caucus system being a hard venue for a relative outsider such as himself. The mass of mainstream Democrats were already worried about whether he was sufficiently in touch with reality. Then he went out and said "We LOST! WOOO-HOOO! KICK-ASS!" Case closed.
Oh, and the Politburo disolved with the fall of the Soviet Union. They didn't kill Deans campaign. Iowa Democrats did, to the extent that he ever had a chance.
Bottom line, the press is not the well orchestrated unit you imagine. It's a messy, competitive group that largely reflects the atttitudes of society as a whole, because that's how they stay in business. Was much of the press watching closely for a "Dean-is-a-whack-job" moment? Sure. Because a lot of their readers were wondering if he was a whack-job, and watching closely for such a moment. And Dean handed it to them on a silver platter.
"The corporations literally get to decide who even has a chance of running and who doesn't."
I hate, hate, hate it when people misuse "literally". Perhaps you mean "effectively"? Literally, any natural citizen over the age of 35 can run for President. Effectively, getting your message to enough voters to matter is hard enough to do, that even assuming the media had some united agenda to keep third parties down, they wouldn't need to. Without a full scale major party fundraising apparatus behind you, you're not going anywhere. Perot got lots of media attention, partly because he spent lots of money, but also because he was interesting enough to generate ratings. What we need is a third party candidate who can be that interesting without being a complete fruitcake.
"Republican or Democrat doesn't matter anymore."
And I really hate it when people say that. Of course it matters. They may agree about things you don't like, but they also disagree about a great many things, many of them important.
"the 'Dean Scream' is a media fabrication and is primarily responsible for Howard Dean's fall from favor"
That's your big example? Because it sure looked like the real Howard up there screaming to me; I wonder why he's never accused the media of faking it? Besides, the screaming in question was part of his "concession" speach in Iowa. He was already falling from favor. I liked Dean, but there were already lots of people wondering if he had the experience and temperment to be a serious presidential contender. The scream became a big deal because it was so perfectly iconic of the answer.
I want to simulate a regular desktop when I'm NOT in the office.
Obviously, people who carry their laptop around all day, and/or travel constantly probably won't want this. It will not, as some posters have suggested, be a status symbol for CEOs. The status symbol there is the tiniest, lightest machine.
This is for people for whom "laptop" is not actually accurate. I never use mine on my lap anyway, and I go on one trip a year where I take it along. I move it around to different parts of my house all the time, but I'm thinking it's unlikely to be so heavy that I can't handle that. I've particularly noticed that a lot of non-geeks like laptops as home computers, because they want to use them wherever they feel like it.
In short, this is a portable desktop computer; which I see plenty of market for. Don't compare it's portability to smaller laptops. Compare it's portability to desktops.
I'm a left wing bicyclist, but I'm telling you he doesn't have the evidence, because it's hogwash. Break out those estimation skills. Do some ballpark calculations of how much gas you'll buy in the life of a car, multiply by the price of gas, divide by some wild guess as to how much cheaper the car factory can buy energy (somewhat, but not crazy-cheap). Multiply by 2 (to fit the 'gas is 1/3' claim). Tell me if the number you get sounds reasonable as the cost of just the energy put into making a car. Is the minimum price of even the cheapest new car significantly higher than your number?
The number I came up with was several times what I paid for my last new car. Maybe the automakers are just taking a big loss on inexpensive cars?
" may also create a 'democracy' in the strict sense of the word, but it is not what we technically are."
Technically, we are a democracy. Read the definition.
Technically, we are also a Republic, as is China, or the former Soviet Union, Cuba, all of South America, most of Africa, and Australia. Anywhere not headed by a King, Prince, Emperor, etc. is a Republic. Anyone who tells you we are not a republic is deluded, no question. Anyone who thinks saying we are a republic is particularly informative is an idiot. Particularly if they think it implies we are not something else (besides a Monarchy).
I have read the Federalist Papers and the Communist Manifesto. The idea that the US today implements Marxian Communism is not worth serious discussion.
"The amount of energy used by an average automobile over its lifetime (manufacture, operation, maintenance and disposal) that comes from the gasoline used to drive it is only a fraction (around 1/5 to 1/3) of the total."
Bullshit.
"Though I'm still not comfortable writing 'for' loops..."
Which would explain why you think writing a sufficiently full-featured, yet secure, web browser shouldn't be hard.
"or through their elected representatives" - such as the electoral college. Electors are elected by the people. I'm not sure why you say "elitist". It gives diproportionate power to residents of less populous states, and to closely devided ones.
In any case, the US really is a real democracy. It has (IMO) a stupid way of adding an unecessary level of not-quite-proportional indirection to Presidential elections. For that matter, the Senate is much worse in terms of making representation non-proportional. But that does not make it not a democracy. It is not a direct democracy, but I don't know of any of those composed of more than say, 50,000 people.
Pretty much every significant indirect democracy has some quirks, and sometimes they suck, but that alone does not make them non-democracies.
RTFA. The legislation sets required standards for state-issued drivers licenses.
This slashdot article is assuring us there is still time, if we act now! We must fight! We must not allow state drivers licenses to become the equivalent of an identity card! Um, yeah.
The only thing worse than a pedant, is a pedant who is WRONG.
"We're a republic, NOT a democracy."
Let's grab the top definitions out of my dictionary (the other definitions are along the lines of "A country that has such a political order."):
Republic: A political order whose head of state is not a monarch and in modern times is usually a president
So the US is a Republic, but that's hardly very specific.
Democracy: Government by the people, exercised either directly or through elected representatives.
What do you know, we're ALSO a democracy!
"What the hell do you mean 3D interfaces suck?"
I think he means, it is hard to imagine how a third dimension would improve the usability or clarity of interfaces for most tasks. You mention 3D games, but the point of a game is not to give you the clearest, most efficient interface possible. You want the monsters in Doom to be hidden behind the corner; you want slight difficulties in predicting how a complex system will react to your actions to cause you to fail. If Doom were an office productivity app, I'd want to pull down the monsters menu, pick select-all, and hit the "Kill" button. Done; but not much fun.
"Name an earthly "interface" (and things like your car, the television, the stove, etc.) that would be improved by a 2D interface."
Thre tech obviously isn't there, but my car could be improved by clcicking on a 2-D map, and having it drive me there. It's a lot easier to find your way somewhere from an overhead 2-d view than a ground-level 3-d one. Not sure what you mean about the TV; mine is 2D currently. My stoves functions are controled by a 2D panel; My stove is 3D only in ways required for it to function (it must be a box you can put things in, with a door you can open), but the control interface is entirely 2D.
" in a 3D interface, I'd expect to pick up a piece of paper (an OpenOffice document), write on it (edit the document), draw a picture (import a graphic), make a paper airplane of it and toss it through a portal labeled BOSS (e-mail it to my boss). "
I agree that's too much fun for most offices. But it also sounds like you're looking for a more real-world-metaphor based interface, not a 3D one; at the least, the writing on a peice of paper sounds pretty 2-d to me. And I really don't see the advantage of the process you describe over how I create and email a document currently. Fold a paper airplane every time I want to send an email? And do I have a "portal" for every person I might want to email? You must throw planes more accurately thean me.
"In what language? English? Greek? French?"
Aramaic. I don't know why you'd bother reading the words of Jesus is something other than the language he spoke.
"Mostly I was referring to contemporary Greek and Roman texts - Homer, Caesar, etc. And I stand by my original statement - please provide documentation to the contrary."
I'll gladly concede the Bible is on equal or better footing than the Illiad, for example. I guess it sounds good to you to be on firmer footing than an orally-transmitted tale told (and embellished) purley for entertainment value, where the identity, or even existence, of the original textual author is not clearly established.
Sorry if I wasn't clear. I'll gladly agree that the bible is on firmer footing than all sorts of ancient texts. People have built a religion on it, and hence it has received much more attention than texts that were never meant to be more than fireside tales.
The only point I was trying to make is that it is not on nearly as sound footing as the texts that are important to, let's see, Jews, Muslims, Buddists, Hindus, Discordians, Mormons, or Confucians. As far as I can tell, basically anyone with a textually based religion.
"There are somewhere around 5000 manuscripts that we've found - which is a couple orders of magnitude more than most ancient texts that are regarded to be authoritative."
You hit my pet peeve. In response to the obvious fact that the bible has been repeatedly mistranslated, and that no really good authoritative version exists, someone made up the meme that it is on firmer footing than other "ancient texts". This is repeated by persons such as yourself, who assume it must be true because it supports your desired conclusion. Perhaps it is beleived by some, but to anyone who has made even the most cursory study of other religions, it only reveals that you have not made even the slightest attempt to verify it.
Which "Ancient texts" is the Bible on firmer footing than accurate-translation wise? I could go through all the religions I know something about, and discuss how their foundational texts compare to the Bible in terms of access to the original language. But instead I'll just note that I don't know of any on worse footing than the Bible, and jump straight to the most glaringly obvious example you would have found out about if you had made any attempt what so ever to verify your assumption:
Modern Arabic copies of the Koran contain the exact text of the original. You may be willing to read the words of your favored proffet second or third hand and you may figure, heck, stuff gets translated all the time. Muslims apparently have higher standards. When they read what Mohammed said, they read what he said word for word, verbatim. Muslims still find all sorts of things to disagree with eachother about, but what the Koran says, down to the last letter, isn't one of them.
In contrast, amongst Christians there isn't even agreementas to which books are actually part of the bible in the first place. The "original" Greek texts you refer to don't agree with each other, and many of them are, get this, translations! Those greek texts are the best you've got in several instances, but here's a hint how good that is: Jesus didn't speak Greek. Not a word of it.
"You can't prove that something does not exist, not if you have a limited range for searching that is."
I have not searched at all for a number bigger than 3 but smaller than 2, yet I can prove it does not exist.
If something is logically impossible, I can prove it does not exist without looking at all.
So, whether God's existence can be disproven depends on your definition of the word "God". If that definition is too vauge to discuss logically (like most I've heard), you can't prove anything. If it is sufficiently detailed, it usually involves concepts I would consider logically impossible or incompatible, and so God, by those definitions, can be proven to not exist.
"Is it illegal to sell a rated-R movie to a minor?"
No. But vendors, for the most part, refrain from doing it voluntarily.
"Why should it be illegal to sell a rated-M game to a minor?"
Well, that depends. If you don't want minors to buy rated-M games, you should make it illegal, because vendors, for the most part, do not refrain from doing it voluntarily.
I mostly agree with your sentiments, but:
There is no problem with the majority of Christians in this country. The majority of them are nice folks, and while they beleive some things I think are kooky, they're not too pushy about it.
The problem is with the vocal minority of Christians who think they speak for a lot more people than they do, just because they call themselves Christian.
Quick test for whether they are the problematic kind: Do they insist on refering to themselves only as "Christian" even in contexts where refering to a particular denomination would make more sense? To pick a random example, Lutherans generally have no problem with the fact that what they beleive is slightly different that what Presbyterians (sp?) beleive, even though they are both Christian. Watch out for the ones who know that there own beleifs are the true Christianity.
Anyway, the problem with the problematic kind is the same as the problem with all religious extremists. It's the arrogance. They beleive whatever they want to, but they refuse to admit that. Rather they posit that what they beleive is not what they wish, but what GOD wishes. If they just thought I disagreed with them, that would be one thing. But if I disagree with GOD, that's a different matter! No point in considering what I have to say in that case, heck it would probably be wrong to even listen. And the actions that might be justifiable in forcing ones own opinion on others are rather limited; at least compared to what's reasonable when enacting the will of GOD.
"Instead because we are 'weird religious people' we obviously can't know what we are talking about"
Not at all. Even weird religious people certainly can know what they are talking about, and frequently they do. The reason I'm not going to spend much time considering your arguments is because I have read them. When they touch on subjects I know something about, (such as geology), it is clear that while you presumably could know what you are talking about, in this case you clearly do not.
I don't need to learn everything about what you think to discount it. I'd never do anything else if I tried to fully understand all the ideas of everyone, even when it was clear they were wrong right from the start. There's a lot of kooks out there you know, and Creationist are not among the more plausible ones. I have thought about it with an open mind; I have in fact wracked my brain, trying to think of any possible peice of evidence one could find that would not be explainable by Creationism. There isn't any. "God did it that way" explains anything, predicts nothing, cannot be tested, and is hence not science. So for those who call it science, "pseudoscientist" and "wrong" are merely accurate descriptions, so I'll go ahead and say so.
"Lisp is a language for writing languages"
That sums it up pretty well. Lisp is a great language for writing languages, and a fabulous language for talking about algorithms. So if you want to examine and discuss the theory behind languages and algorithms, I'd definitely recomend Lisp.
If you don't care about writing languages or theoretical discussion, and just want a good language for writing actual software, I'd reccomend C++, but even the much-hated Java will probably serve you better than Lisp.
On your wholly unrelated note:
"Is it possible to take CDDL code and place it in a GPL'd project? I know GPL > CDDL 'no workie'."
No. You don't have rights to release CDDL code under the GPL, so you can't release code from each together, because to release code together with GPL code, you need to be able to release it all as GPL.
"they said in the article that a proprietary vendor could take their code... why would an open one not be able to?"
Because the open developer would need to redistribute the code under the GPL, which they don't have rights to do. The proprietary vendor can just not redistribute the code at all. Don't blame the CDDL, both developers can do all the same things with the CDDL code; but the open developer can't do as many things with the GPL'd code as the proprietary vendor can do with code he owns.
The GPL places restrictions on what you can do with the code. That's absolutely fine if those restrictions are what the author wants, but they are definitely restrictions.