Reputation is one thing, availability and mindshare is another.
Apple squandered an insane amount of positive free press and a killer lead by initially releasing a "Mac Only" service. They could have gotten such a big headstart that people would think "Apple = Music" the same way they think "eBay = Auctions" -- that sort of mindshare is absolute *gold*.
Anyhow, Apple has a history of being "sexy". Unfortunately, they also have a history of being "stupid", at least in regards to capitalizing on their innovative triumphs.
I can understand why Apple decided to release their service as a Mac-only affair for the first couple of months, but I absolutely can't agree with it.
Apple's stockholders should be storming Infinite Loop right now with pitchforks and torches -- in excluding Windows users, they went out and squandered the sort of lead (time-to-market wise) that CEOs have wet dreams about. And do you think they sold any more Macs than they would have otherwise? I doubt it...
All in all, I think Dell is in a great position on this one *assuming* that Microsoft doesn't get away with another violation of antitrust law ("You must include a desktop link to our music software or we won't sell you any copies of Windows").
I wonder what Dell will become if they escape from being Just Another Wintel vendor...
Re:Looking forward... mostly
on
Quicksilver
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· Score: 1
My impression was that Snow Crash ended with Raven escaping the airport in a stolen car with the Mafia goons on his heels. Given Raven's general approach to life, I'd have to put my bets on him over the Mafia guys....
Microsoft is betting millions that someday it will be as well known for search as Google is.
(golf clap)
Millions, eh? For Microsoft that's, what, the cost of a month's worth of the tonnes of live pigs they feed Balmer (it's true! I swear!).
Anyhow, this is a Good Thing. Given that this is a situation where Microsoft can't strangle Google with it's OS dominance (at least, not in any way I can think of), more competition > less competition.
You don't need to terraform the whole planet to live there quite successfully.
You basically need two things: Power (as in energy) and manpower. You can make air and water from the locally-available supply, you can grow food in greenhouses and you can live underground or in shielded areas to get away from the radiation on the surface.
Terraforming would be cool long-term, but it hardly required.
That's not exactly a Sherlock Holms-level observation there.
The trouble is that the News has stopped being about the News and has instead become about pandering to the lowest common denominator's interests (there are an awful lot of stupid people out there, and they just happen to be the ones most impacted by advertising).
It's like Bill Murray's character in Scrooged pointed out: "[People wanting to see the program] isn't good enough! They have got to be *so* *scared* to miss it!"
Watch any news program tonight and you'll see it. If you want to avoid it, I recommend something halfway intelligent like News Hour on PBS.
I think it's important to realize that eventually we *will* get pegged pretty seriously by an asteroid. The scares are one thing, but eventually the numbers are gonna catch up with us.
It's depressing to think that we continue to keep all of mankind's eggs in one basket when we don't have to. Zubrin says $20 billion and 10 years to get to Mars and $2B a launch after that -- that's 70+ Mars missions just for what we're spending for W's war in Iraq, which I suspect would do a lot towards addressing the idea of permanent colonization.
Get some puny dictator who poses no threat to the US or do something so great that it'd be remembered forever so long as humans draw breath...
I worry mostly about the Barney-the-Dinosaur looking icon they have next to the job...
Skyshadow's Late Summer Reading List
on
Blind Lake
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· Score: 0, Offtopic
I always look at the book review forums as a good place to pick up on authors I haven't read yet (other than the one actually reviewed), so I usually post this thread to get things started. Please feel free to add onto it; this is what I'd recommend reading right now.
On reflection, I've spent most of the summer reading nonfiction for a change...
Jarhead by Anthony Swofford
Swofford was a Marine sniper during Gulf War I, and this book talks about that experience and his experience in the Corps. It's an extremely good read, and unlike most "military" theme books it is neither "pro" nor "anti" war, but instead lays the whole deal on the table with a tremendous amount of honesty and self-awareness from one grunt's somewhat nihilistic point of view.
Seabiscuit by Laura Hillenbrand
I know what you're thinking: I only read the book when the movie came out. You're right. That doesn't change the fact that this is an extremely interesting read, which is especially impressive given the lack of embellishment and the attention to historical detail. If you just saw the movie, you're missing out -- some of the most interesting parts of the book come as Hillenbrand sets up the reader's understanding of 1920-30's horseracing and introduces the people around Seabiscuit.
Holy War: The Crusades and their Impact on Today's World by Karen Armstrong
This is a bit more challenging than my previous two selections, but is more than worth the effort. Just after the second anniversary of 9-11, the vast majority of Americans still have no understanding of the history of east/west emnity (which probably explains how Bush Jr. can paint the whole complex affair in simplistic terms of good and evil without getting laughed at). This book covers the root causes of the Crusades and follows the results all the way to modern day. Written in 1988, this book seems almost eerie today in predicting the renewal of this ancient conflict. Armstrong takes hard history and makes it approachable without talking down to the reader -- she's one of those rare authors who can really get your brain in gear with an understanding of complex events rather than just awareness of them. As I mentioned, this book is somewhat of a challenge to read, but the understanding it will impart will leave you much more capable of understanding our modern world.
Everyone prefers not to kill (except the murderous bastards). This is a straw-man position, and politically naive.
It's not a straw-man position. We kill people all the time because it's easy to do. Do you think that George Bush Jr. would have invaded Iraq if there was going to be a 1:1 casualty rate, or even a 1:5 or 1:10? Of course not -- the whole point of the Iraq war was to distract the nation from the fact that we've lost more jobs than under any President since Hoover and, at the same time, make it seem like we were out getting the people responsible for bringing down the WTC, part of the Pentagon and crashing four passenger planes.
The only time peace occurs is when overwhelming force exists on one side (the benevolent side).
You're on crack. Long-term peace never occurs when one group is overwhelmingly stronger than another; you either get horrible oppression, drawn-out guerilla wars or genocides (or, sometimes, all three). History provides literally hundreds of examples of this; I don't see how you can seriously question it.
How does political trolling like this get modded up to +5?
What was the trolling you were referring to? The part about 70% of Americans beliving that Iraq was directly involved with 9-11 or the part about the Iraq war being a wag-the-dog move? Do you really think you can win that arguement in a forum where people are willing to think past flag-waving and chanting "support our troops" (it always strikes me as odd that saying we shouldn't send the troops to get shot at without good reason, or at least thinking it out carefully first, doesn't count as "support")?
"Most geeks" is a spurious term. If you think they are all left-leaning pinkos, you`re wrong. If you think they`re Edvard Teller madmen, you`re wrong. Geeks are all over the spectrum.
There are undoubtibly right-wing war mongering geeks, thus my use of the word "most". It's not hard to see that most geeks, at least those represented here on/., are considerably left of "center".
Further, I'd be willing to bet that if you could go back and poll the inventors of each advance in human history, asking if they'd have liked the fruit of their efforts to be used to inflict suffering on other people or not, you'd come up with a pretty overwhelming "no".
I would imagine there are some geeks who lost their brothers/fathers/sisters/mothers in 9-11, and would have no qualms in putting the hurt on some goat-farking terrorist camp via remote control.
I would imagine that there are some geeks who lost loved ones in 9-11 who would, similar to my original point, prefer that it was harder to kill people so that you'd only do it when you really had to.
Would you prefer they just drop a 5,000lb bomb instead? A side effect of more efficient mechanisms for killing is that there are less inadvertant civilian casualties. Just compare the fire bombings of Dresden to the wars in Kosovo and Iraq. Which method do you prefer?
I would prefer it be very difficult to kill people in general. That way, we'd only do it when we really needed to.
If you look at history, anytime one side was able to kill the other without having to really risk themselves, the shitty side of history results -- genocide, oppression, etc. Just because it's your side that happens to have the better guns, tech, germs or whatever doesn't mean it's a Good Thing.
Hell, look at us: We've been way out ahead for, what, 20 years now and already we're invading other nations so our political leaders can distract the masses from economic problems or the fact that they can't stop terrorism (70% of Americans believe Iraq sponsored 9-11, and why not? They're ay-rabs, ain't they?).
Anyhow, I understand that we live in reality and that these things happen. I just don't think that most geeks would want to be a part of it if they really thought it over, which is why I said what I did.
Or you could have it roll into a network of caves and shoot the people inside without exposing your own guys to risk.
Or you could send it over to an enemy location and transmit a "bomb me" signal to the smart bombs to hit.
Or you could have it crawl in and set fire to a compound where a bunch of religious extremists are held up.
Or you could use it to wait in a ditch for a month until the car of a political leader rolls by and blow it up.
These aren't all necessarily *bad* things -- it's always been reality that we kill each other, sometimes with good reason. But it *is* another step away from the old days when you'd have to risk your own life to kill another person, which IMO makes it a lot easier to do.
I thought that Sandman was concluded nicely with two of the last three stories in The Wake arc -- the Wake Epilogue and Exiles.
At this point, it seems like the whole Morpheus story was so well settled that even prequals do the ending somewhat of a disservice. Even The Tempest, the last Wake story, seemed like a bit of a shame; the story should have ended with Master Li's thoughts at the end of Exiles (echoing the Roman ghost riders: Only the Phoenix arises and does not descend. And everything changes. And nothing is truly lost.)
Anyhow, I don't mean to sound as stupidly fanboy as I do, and I don't mean that I don't welcome the chance to dive into some more Sandman, but I suppose I do sort of long for authors to know when they've reached the end of their time with their characters, when they've reached the best end they're going to find...
As a proud grad of the University of Wisconsin at Eau Claire, I can say that throwing house parties for $5-toting freshmen has given me a huge experience jump on others my age.
As an example, consider just management skills: You try and get five 21/22 year-old guys to work together sometime, especially when there are a large number of time sensetive, mission critical tasks (keg aquisition, music selection, advertising, etc) and without any sort of heirarchy (everyone pays the same rent, nobody gets paid until the end of the party). Two years of house parties taught me to deal with people's individual quirks and work to reconcile disagreements. Moreover, I picked up skills in event planning and coordination, dealing with the legal system, accounting, first aid, security and advertising.
It may sound like I'm being sarcastic, but these skills translate over to the Real World extremely well.
Does anyone else think that Netgear owes the UW reparations? Bandwidth costs, time spent by the admins, loss of service, etc. seems like a good place to start...
(trying in vain for a good Badger or "When you say Weh-scahn-sen, you said it all" joke, but it just ain't happening today)
if you are truly serious you'll go for the source...
If you're truly serious, you'll find that the exact words are unimportant if you're able to understand their intent. That's what the NIV Bible is trying to accomplish (although I don't agree with their results, but that's another matter). This ain't easy, however -- it generally requires a pretty good understanding of the era in which the sources were written, the sorts of mythology from which certain portions are lifted or evolved from, etc.
It seems to me that adherants to western religions are stymied by their need for a literal instruction manual to their faith. It tends to lead to less of an appreciation of the nuances of their beliefs and bogs them down in the literal interpretations, many of which were originally intended to be metaphors to begin with.
It's odd that the progression in the Axial Age moved from what I'd consider the "best" take on religion -- Buddhism, which stresses the style of thinking and individual pursuit of enlightenment versus attachment to single interpretations -- to Christianity to Islam, which is the worst offender in terms of demanding literal interpretation (since the Koran is supposed to be the end-all-be-all Word directly from the Big Guy's mouth).
I suspect that literal, close-to-source literature is attractive to a lot of people because it's easy. "God created heaven and earth, here's what he wants you to do" is a lot easier than approaches to spirituality which demand that you figure a lot out on your own.
Personally, I think it was a mistake to translate the gospels from Aramaic, too.
Realistically, this Bible is less useful for the study of modern theology than it is other things -- art, the history of print and bookbinding, the evolution of the scriptures, etc. I mean, look at the cover of the thing -- it's a stunning piece of work.
If you are truly serious about studying the Bible as a living book, and not as a museum piece, then pick up a New King James or NIV version.
IMO, the King James versions still suffer from their poisioned past. The NIV makes a good effort, but I disagree with some of the interpretations they make (although I do agree with the need to draw those interpretations).
The key to really understanding the Bible is to understand its sources and inspiration, examining the roots of the mythology being presented and the way in which things would have been intended. This isn't easy to do, but IMO is worthy of at least ameature study.
Seriously, can anyone think of a comperable like of work in terms of the sort of work and the salary?
I'm not going to get stuck like people in the muscle industries have in the last few decades, clinging to the shrinking number of jobs for less pay for more work. I'm still in a good position, it's time to start gearing up to switch to an industry that's not getting shipped overseas.
Whadya think? Management's probably good -- those fuckers will never reduce their own numbers or salaries, but I hate sitting in meetings and being useless. Health care? Big barrier to entry, though... What else isn't going away?
A better question would be:
"Why don't you give to the other open-source software projects?"
I figured someone would ask that.
First, you should know that I'm by no stretch of the imagination a rich man. I can pay my bills, make my car payments (I don't drive an expensive car), set aside a little money but that leaves me pretty much broke.
Given that, I have to carefully prioritize where my money goes. Last year, I contributed to the ACLU, the EFF and to my public radio station, KQED. These are all good causes which, in my opinion, do demonstratively good things with my money and they all are tax deductible donations.
That's what any OSS project or company needs to contend with when they look at me for money. To be included on my list, then, they'd better (A) prove they need it, (B) prove they're using it for substantially good reasons and not wasting it, and (C) preferably set things up so I can take a tax deduction for it.
I don't see anything wrong with looking at it that way -- if I had another $5 a paycheck to give away, it'd go to the people on my list, anyhow...
1. Why should I give money to Mozilla when I don't give money to and other open-source software I use? Why do they need it? What will they use it for?
2. Would said contribution be tax-deductible (not all non-profit donations are)?
Unfortunately for them, they're competing for my donated dollar against the EFF, the ACLU and (this year) whoever tries to unseat George Bush Jr. They need to make a lot better case for themselves if they're going to warrent a piece of that pie...
I just looked into this the other day. One of the requirements for broadcasting is that you can't use the same band as somebody else within X distance. This prevents you from getting coverage through lots and lots of low power emitters.
That would impact people driving around, but would still make my idea workable in terms of people who listen to the radio at home.
Does this mean we'll be getting good radio stations now?
No, it doesn't. Have you ever heard a pirate radio station? Generally it's someone with their MP3s on random play who cuts in for the occassional rant about how cool this is or how the FCC sucks or whatever. I can't imagine why the average low-power station would see an increase in quality just by going legit, except that it might drive away some of the more untalented people who aer just doing it because it's illegal.
No, *I* wonder if you might not be able to think different here.
Picture this: Rather than just a transmitter, you also set up a web feed of your programming. Other people who find your show can set up their own low power transmitters and rebroadcast it, and maybe add their own shows and content to the "network" (so I'd be on for a few hours, then the owner of another transmitter would be on for a while, making it possible to have live content for larger portions of the day -- this'd be trivial to set up).
This would hopefully lead to a situation where democratic radio stations would emerge. If enough people like your content, the area in which it could be heard would grow as more transmitters are added. This could snowball to the point where, at least in urban areas, you'd have something like a real coverage area. If your show quality drops off, well, transmitter owners can go elsewhere.
Would it work? You got me -- there might be technical or regulatory issues, and certainly there's no accounting for the taste of the masses, but it's still a more interesting concept than just having many pirate-wannabes broadcasting...
I have a Vaio F430 laptop. The day after the warrenty ran out (seriously), the screen died on me.
Searching around the net, I guess this is a common problem with that particular model, and even if you get the screen replaced it'd probably just have happed again. A few months later, the battery died and I discovered that a new one would run $250(!) even if I bargain-hunted.
This was four years ago or so, so I paid like $2300 (and this is $2300 in college-student dollars, which works out to approximately 383 pizzas) for the damned thing, and Sony wouldn't lift a finger to help me.
Anyhow, last year I bought a LCD screen and the thing's my kitchen term now. Still highly annoyed.
T2: Despite Skynet beeing built earlier, humans still win in the future. Another Terminator is sent back (T-1000). Rebels from future manage once again to save their leader AND this time Sarah and John manage to destroy everything related to this new revolutionary CPU. This only delays the coming of Skynet, again, timeline is changed.
Not quite true.
At the end of T2: the T1000, the original T101's chip and arm and the second T101 were all melted in the steel.
The second T101's arm, however, was left in the machinery where it lost it (remember, the T1000 jams it into some gears, then leaves the T101 stuck there while he goes off to kill John -- the T101 severs it to get loose).
Slashdot Mirror
Apple squandered an insane amount of positive free press and a killer lead by initially releasing a "Mac Only" service. They could have gotten such a big headstart that people would think "Apple = Music" the same way they think "eBay = Auctions" -- that sort of mindshare is absolute *gold*.
Anyhow, Apple has a history of being "sexy". Unfortunately, they also have a history of being "stupid", at least in regards to capitalizing on their innovative triumphs.
Apple's stockholders should be storming Infinite Loop right now with pitchforks and torches -- in excluding Windows users, they went out and squandered the sort of lead (time-to-market wise) that CEOs have wet dreams about. And do you think they sold any more Macs than they would have otherwise? I doubt it...
All in all, I think Dell is in a great position on this one *assuming* that Microsoft doesn't get away with another violation of antitrust law ("You must include a desktop link to our music software or we won't sell you any copies of Windows").
I wonder what Dell will become if they escape from being Just Another Wintel vendor...
My impression was that Snow Crash ended with Raven escaping the airport in a stolen car with the Mafia goons on his heels. Given Raven's general approach to life, I'd have to put my bets on him over the Mafia guys....
(golf clap)
Millions, eh? For Microsoft that's, what, the cost of a month's worth of the tonnes of live pigs they feed Balmer (it's true! I swear!).
Anyhow, this is a Good Thing. Given that this is a situation where Microsoft can't strangle Google with it's OS dominance (at least, not in any way I can think of), more competition > less competition.
You basically need two things: Power (as in energy) and manpower. You can make air and water from the locally-available supply, you can grow food in greenhouses and you can live underground or in shielded areas to get away from the radiation on the surface.
Terraforming would be cool long-term, but it hardly required.
The trouble is that the News has stopped being about the News and has instead become about pandering to the lowest common denominator's interests (there are an awful lot of stupid people out there, and they just happen to be the ones most impacted by advertising).
It's like Bill Murray's character in Scrooged pointed out: "[People wanting to see the program] isn't good enough! They have got to be *so* *scared* to miss it!"
Watch any news program tonight and you'll see it. If you want to avoid it, I recommend something halfway intelligent like News Hour on PBS.
It's depressing to think that we continue to keep all of mankind's eggs in one basket when we don't have to. Zubrin says $20 billion and 10 years to get to Mars and $2B a launch after that -- that's 70+ Mars missions just for what we're spending for W's war in Iraq, which I suspect would do a lot towards addressing the idea of permanent colonization.
Get some puny dictator who poses no threat to the US or do something so great that it'd be remembered forever so long as humans draw breath...
I worry mostly about the Barney-the-Dinosaur looking icon they have next to the job...
On reflection, I've spent most of the summer reading nonfiction for a change...
Jarhead by Anthony Swofford
Swofford was a Marine sniper during Gulf War I, and this book talks about that experience and his experience in the Corps. It's an extremely good read, and unlike most "military" theme books it is neither "pro" nor "anti" war, but instead lays the whole deal on the table with a tremendous amount of honesty and self-awareness from one grunt's somewhat nihilistic point of view.
Seabiscuit by Laura Hillenbrand
I know what you're thinking: I only read the book when the movie came out. You're right. That doesn't change the fact that this is an extremely interesting read, which is especially impressive given the lack of embellishment and the attention to historical detail. If you just saw the movie, you're missing out -- some of the most interesting parts of the book come as Hillenbrand sets up the reader's understanding of 1920-30's horseracing and introduces the people around Seabiscuit.
Holy War: The Crusades and their Impact on Today's World by Karen Armstrong
This is a bit more challenging than my previous two selections, but is more than worth the effort. Just after the second anniversary of 9-11, the vast majority of Americans still have no understanding of the history of east/west emnity (which probably explains how Bush Jr. can paint the whole complex affair in simplistic terms of good and evil without getting laughed at). This book covers the root causes of the Crusades and follows the results all the way to modern day. Written in 1988, this book seems almost eerie today in predicting the renewal of this ancient conflict. Armstrong takes hard history and makes it approachable without talking down to the reader -- she's one of those rare authors who can really get your brain in gear with an understanding of complex events rather than just awareness of them. As I mentioned, this book is somewhat of a challenge to read, but the understanding it will impart will leave you much more capable of understanding our modern world.
It's not a straw-man position. We kill people all the time because it's easy to do. Do you think that George Bush Jr. would have invaded Iraq if there was going to be a 1:1 casualty rate, or even a 1:5 or 1:10? Of course not -- the whole point of the Iraq war was to distract the nation from the fact that we've lost more jobs than under any President since Hoover and, at the same time, make it seem like we were out getting the people responsible for bringing down the WTC, part of the Pentagon and crashing four passenger planes.
The only time peace occurs is when overwhelming force exists on one side (the benevolent side).
You're on crack. Long-term peace never occurs when one group is overwhelmingly stronger than another; you either get horrible oppression, drawn-out guerilla wars or genocides (or, sometimes, all three). History provides literally hundreds of examples of this; I don't see how you can seriously question it.
How does political trolling like this get modded up to +5?
What was the trolling you were referring to? The part about 70% of Americans beliving that Iraq was directly involved with 9-11 or the part about the Iraq war being a wag-the-dog move? Do you really think you can win that arguement in a forum where people are willing to think past flag-waving and chanting "support our troops" (it always strikes me as odd that saying we shouldn't send the troops to get shot at without good reason, or at least thinking it out carefully first, doesn't count as "support")?
"Most geeks" is a spurious term. If you think they are all left-leaning pinkos, you`re wrong. If you think they`re Edvard Teller madmen, you`re wrong. Geeks are all over the spectrum.
There are undoubtibly right-wing war mongering geeks, thus my use of the word "most". It's not hard to see that most geeks, at least those represented here on /., are considerably left of "center".
Further, I'd be willing to bet that if you could go back and poll the inventors of each advance in human history, asking if they'd have liked the fruit of their efforts to be used to inflict suffering on other people or not, you'd come up with a pretty overwhelming "no".
I would imagine there are some geeks who lost their brothers/fathers/sisters/mothers in 9-11, and would have no qualms in putting the hurt on some goat-farking terrorist camp via remote control.
I would imagine that there are some geeks who lost loved ones in 9-11 who would, similar to my original point, prefer that it was harder to kill people so that you'd only do it when you really had to.
I would prefer it be very difficult to kill people in general. That way, we'd only do it when we really needed to.
If you look at history, anytime one side was able to kill the other without having to really risk themselves, the shitty side of history results -- genocide, oppression, etc. Just because it's your side that happens to have the better guns, tech, germs or whatever doesn't mean it's a Good Thing.
Hell, look at us: We've been way out ahead for, what, 20 years now and already we're invading other nations so our political leaders can distract the masses from economic problems or the fact that they can't stop terrorism (70% of Americans believe Iraq sponsored 9-11, and why not? They're ay-rabs, ain't they?).
Anyhow, I understand that we live in reality and that these things happen. I just don't think that most geeks would want to be a part of it if they really thought it over, which is why I said what I did.
It sucks.
Or you could send it over to an enemy location and transmit a "bomb me" signal to the smart bombs to hit.
Or you could have it crawl in and set fire to a compound where a bunch of religious extremists are held up.
Or you could use it to wait in a ditch for a month until the car of a political leader rolls by and blow it up.
These aren't all necessarily *bad* things -- it's always been reality that we kill each other, sometimes with good reason. But it *is* another step away from the old days when you'd have to risk your own life to kill another person, which IMO makes it a lot easier to do.
Sucks.
At this point, it seems like the whole Morpheus story was so well settled that even prequals do the ending somewhat of a disservice. Even The Tempest, the last Wake story, seemed like a bit of a shame; the story should have ended with Master Li's thoughts at the end of Exiles (echoing the Roman ghost riders: Only the Phoenix arises and does not descend. And everything changes. And nothing is truly lost.)
Anyhow, I don't mean to sound as stupidly fanboy as I do, and I don't mean that I don't welcome the chance to dive into some more Sandman, but I suppose I do sort of long for authors to know when they've reached the end of their time with their characters, when they've reached the best end they're going to find...
As an example, consider just management skills: You try and get five 21/22 year-old guys to work together sometime, especially when there are a large number of time sensetive, mission critical tasks (keg aquisition, music selection, advertising, etc) and without any sort of heirarchy (everyone pays the same rent, nobody gets paid until the end of the party). Two years of house parties taught me to deal with people's individual quirks and work to reconcile disagreements. Moreover, I picked up skills in event planning and coordination, dealing with the legal system, accounting, first aid, security and advertising.
It may sound like I'm being sarcastic, but these skills translate over to the Real World extremely well.
Does anyone else think that Netgear owes the UW reparations? Bandwidth costs, time spent by the admins, loss of service, etc. seems like a good place to start... (trying in vain for a good Badger or "When you say Weh-scahn-sen, you said it all" joke, but it just ain't happening today)
If you're truly serious, you'll find that the exact words are unimportant if you're able to understand their intent. That's what the NIV Bible is trying to accomplish (although I don't agree with their results, but that's another matter). This ain't easy, however -- it generally requires a pretty good understanding of the era in which the sources were written, the sorts of mythology from which certain portions are lifted or evolved from, etc.
It seems to me that adherants to western religions are stymied by their need for a literal instruction manual to their faith. It tends to lead to less of an appreciation of the nuances of their beliefs and bogs them down in the literal interpretations, many of which were originally intended to be metaphors to begin with.
It's odd that the progression in the Axial Age moved from what I'd consider the "best" take on religion -- Buddhism, which stresses the style of thinking and individual pursuit of enlightenment versus attachment to single interpretations -- to Christianity to Islam, which is the worst offender in terms of demanding literal interpretation (since the Koran is supposed to be the end-all-be-all Word directly from the Big Guy's mouth).
I suspect that literal, close-to-source literature is attractive to a lot of people because it's easy. "God created heaven and earth, here's what he wants you to do" is a lot easier than approaches to spirituality which demand that you figure a lot out on your own.
Personally, I think it was a mistake to translate the gospels from Aramaic, too.
Realistically, this Bible is less useful for the study of modern theology than it is other things -- art, the history of print and bookbinding, the evolution of the scriptures, etc. I mean, look at the cover of the thing -- it's a stunning piece of work.
If you are truly serious about studying the Bible as a living book, and not as a museum piece, then pick up a New King James or NIV version.
IMO, the King James versions still suffer from their poisioned past. The NIV makes a good effort, but I disagree with some of the interpretations they make (although I do agree with the need to draw those interpretations).
The key to really understanding the Bible is to understand its sources and inspiration, examining the roots of the mythology being presented and the way in which things would have been intended. This isn't easy to do, but IMO is worthy of at least ameature study.
I'm not going to get stuck like people in the muscle industries have in the last few decades, clinging to the shrinking number of jobs for less pay for more work. I'm still in a good position, it's time to start gearing up to switch to an industry that's not getting shipped overseas.
Whadya think? Management's probably good -- those fuckers will never reduce their own numbers or salaries, but I hate sitting in meetings and being useless. Health care? Big barrier to entry, though... What else isn't going away?
I figured someone would ask that.
First, you should know that I'm by no stretch of the imagination a rich man. I can pay my bills, make my car payments (I don't drive an expensive car), set aside a little money but that leaves me pretty much broke.
Given that, I have to carefully prioritize where my money goes. Last year, I contributed to the ACLU, the EFF and to my public radio station, KQED. These are all good causes which, in my opinion, do demonstratively good things with my money and they all are tax deductible donations.
That's what any OSS project or company needs to contend with when they look at me for money. To be included on my list, then, they'd better (A) prove they need it, (B) prove they're using it for substantially good reasons and not wasting it, and (C) preferably set things up so I can take a tax deduction for it.
I don't see anything wrong with looking at it that way -- if I had another $5 a paycheck to give away, it'd go to the people on my list, anyhow...
1. Why should I give money to Mozilla when I don't give money to and other open-source software I use? Why do they need it? What will they use it for?
2. Would said contribution be tax-deductible (not all non-profit donations are)?
Unfortunately for them, they're competing for my donated dollar against the EFF, the ACLU and (this year) whoever tries to unseat George Bush Jr. They need to make a lot better case for themselves if they're going to warrent a piece of that pie...
That would impact people driving around, but would still make my idea workable in terms of people who listen to the radio at home.
No, it doesn't. Have you ever heard a pirate radio station? Generally it's someone with their MP3s on random play who cuts in for the occassional rant about how cool this is or how the FCC sucks or whatever. I can't imagine why the average low-power station would see an increase in quality just by going legit, except that it might drive away some of the more untalented people who aer just doing it because it's illegal.
No, *I* wonder if you might not be able to think different here.
Picture this: Rather than just a transmitter, you also set up a web feed of your programming. Other people who find your show can set up their own low power transmitters and rebroadcast it, and maybe add their own shows and content to the "network" (so I'd be on for a few hours, then the owner of another transmitter would be on for a while, making it possible to have live content for larger portions of the day -- this'd be trivial to set up).
This would hopefully lead to a situation where democratic radio stations would emerge. If enough people like your content, the area in which it could be heard would grow as more transmitters are added. This could snowball to the point where, at least in urban areas, you'd have something like a real coverage area. If your show quality drops off, well, transmitter owners can go elsewhere.
Would it work? You got me -- there might be technical or regulatory issues, and certainly there's no accounting for the taste of the masses, but it's still a more interesting concept than just having many pirate-wannabes broadcasting...
Searching around the net, I guess this is a common problem with that particular model, and even if you get the screen replaced it'd probably just have happed again. A few months later, the battery died and I discovered that a new one would run $250(!) even if I bargain-hunted.
This was four years ago or so, so I paid like $2300 (and this is $2300 in college-student dollars, which works out to approximately 383 pizzas) for the damned thing, and Sony wouldn't lift a finger to help me.
Anyhow, last year I bought a LCD screen and the thing's my kitchen term now. Still highly annoyed.
Not quite true.
At the end of T2: the T1000, the original T101's chip and arm and the second T101 were all melted in the steel.
The second T101's arm, however, was left in the machinery where it lost it (remember, the T1000 jams it into some gears, then leaves the T101 stuck there while he goes off to kill John -- the T101 severs it to get loose).