Well, that entirely depends... How can you justify studying the Bible? As a work of literature? If so, I will humbly say that any person that studied it as a work of literature is more qualified to have an opinion on it than I am. Especially in the context of literature.
However, in the context of religion, it becomes guesswork. Which verse is more important than which, even if they contradict. How is this and that miracle to be interpreted. At that point, my guess is as good as yours. Like the verse above, that says "sell everything, or you won't be allowed into heaven". You can interpret it differently: JeanPaulBob gave a nice interpretation to it. What Jesus said is for that man only and illustrates that you should let go the most important thing in your life and embrace God. Fair enough. An Heremit might see it literally, sell everything and go live in a cave. Which interpretation is right? JeanPaulBob will of course say his interpretation is right, our Hermit will think JeanPaulBob is a heretic.
You see, interpretation of any text is pretty much guesswork. Unverifiable guesswork. Haven't you ever gotten a bad grade because you had to write an essay about a poem interpreting it and you got an F, because your interpretation didn't match the teachers interpretation? I most certainly did. However, in the case of my teacher giving me a bad grade, she probably had a good reason, namely she knew that the poet writing the poem was suicidal because it was recorded in history that shortly after that poem he committed suicide. Of course, I didn't have that piece of information (probably because I slept in class, literature wasn't my favourite subject). However, such contextual information is going to be very very hard with the Bible. A Bible scholar, should as such read the Bible, find independent sources to veryify the Bible and then draw conclusions. I will respect such a Bible scholar. Just taking bible and interpreting it on itself, is guesswork. However, this is what most theologists do.
So, yes, a theologist may know more verses and thump me into the ground with his Bible, but his opinion isn't worth more than mine.
You don't get to assume that one side is objective, decide to agree with them, and claim that your decision is based in rational skepticism.
Sure, but their (the skeptics) arguments are sure much stonger and must more based in reality and science than anything the other side has to offer. Considering that I'm a scientist by trade, my side is already chosen.
Essentially, in #3 you say that nobody can study the Bible: nobody is objective to it. The believers will believe and will match the Bible to what they think is good. The skeptics on the contrary will study it to discredit it and say it's humbug. Essentially, you are now providing me with a lose-lose situation. Either side of the story simply is wrong.
All in all, considering the above logic, studying the Bible is a loss of time, because in neither case I will be able to distill any truths nor verifiable facts. It simply is a collection of freely interpretable stories, that's it.... See, I even removed the "fairy tales" part. We can settle on "stories", because that's what they are.
Personally, from me you can believe any humbug in any book there is, as long as I have the freedom to say it's bullshit.
As for #2.... When I read those contradictions, I couldn't believe it and, I actually dug out my Bible to check them. They were there, I at least looked them up. That still isn't study, but I checked the facts. (As any true scientist would do). The phrases were there, there is no denying.
Except biology is scientifically verifiable. Try that with the Bible. There is no real way to study the Bible, except to guess "what is really meant". Your guess is as good as mine, because it's, ehm, "guessing".
My goodness. Do you have any idea what you just said?
Yes, I have a very good idea. I know that much smarter people than me actually did study the Bible and did come to that conclusion. I have more respect for those "Skeptics" than for any "Theologist". You see, I'd rather take the word of someone who stands skeptical to a certain issue and approaches it scientifically than someone who is already convinced of the truth of the Bible and only "needs to explain it". I mean, accepting what a theologist say about the bible, is the same as accepting what a used car salesman tells you about a used car. I'd rather have the information of an independent source, thank you very much.
I really don't see the worth of studying the Bible. What I saw, were a bunch of fairy tales and some pretty freaky hippy guy that did some miracles and as such putting it in the "fairy tale" category too. If for anything, you could study the bible as literature, but that's where it stops. Except for that, it really doesn't have any value.
I'm not sure what kind of Christianity you were involved in; from the look of how you treat Bible verses, I would guess it was a particularly fundamentalistic group.
Absolutely not. I pretty much grep up Catholic. We pretty much only got the nicer parts to hear like "love thy neighbour", etc... I got confronted with the fundamentalist nuts on the Internet and that pretty much turned me into an Atheist.
The problem is not that you can't tone down those verses. As you said, I could interpret that those sayings were just for one person. For what they were recorded is a mystery to me then, as they are not important to anyone except that long dead dude. The problem is that fundamentalists *do* interpret the Bible literally.
However, logically, the Bible is a big pile of inconsistent crap written by goat herders 2000 years ago. Really not worth my time and a shame that so many people model their life after it. I have never(*), and will never, study the Bible.
(*) Oddly enough, I don't think I ever studied the Bible. Mostly my Catholicism teacher told the story and we got the interpretation for free. No need to think about it. I can't call that "study".
In the early nineties, my dad was a high-privilege employee at a bank. Anyway, due to office politics, he pretty much got the boot because one of the higher ups didn't like him. (You know, how easy it is to fire someone if you really want). He had been working there for nearly 20 years, and according to local law he had 6 months notice. He was disallowed to go to the bank during those 6 months: from one day to another he sat at home.
I heard this is pretty much the rule with high-privilege employees. So, I'd suggest, sit back, enjoy yourself and troll on slashdot as if there were no tomorrow.
Exactly what I had in mind, and considering that the verse the AC cites is in the new testament versus the one cited by "The MAZZTer" which is in the old testament, it takes precedence according to the Christians.
Calm down, I know the difference. Trying to first post "on topic" isn't easy. However, look at the origins of large religions. I'm pretty sure brainwashing techniques were used.
Look at Jesus, he asks you to sell everything you have in order to gain entrance to heaven. You have to hate your family and only love God. (No really, you can even quote the bible on that)
Muslims? Not better: to this day, you can get death sentence for denying God (at least in Islamic countries)
These rules have been added to make sure that nobody would leave the cult. Sure, they were toned down over time, but initially they were there.
So, yes, a religion is less dangerous than a cult, but you can bet that any religion finds it origins in a cult and as such fundamentalism can set it back to "cult-status". This is the same as saying that a sleeping lion isn't dangerous since it's sleeping.
Oh, come on... 3 years out of a HP or Dell PC? In december 2005, I bought a second hand Fujitsu Siemens Lifebook E6550 from the employer I was leaving at the time. That machine was "decomissioned" because it already had served for 5 years in the company. I got it for 100€. Initial specs were P-III 600MHz RAM with 256Meg RAM. I still had a 256Meg laptop RAM stick lying around from a computer I had before. So, I had a P-III 600MHz RAM with 512Meg RAM and it ran Windows XP SP2 just fine. Multitasking was not a problem, neither was playing back multimedia. This machine got all the abuse you could think of: it was tossed in my backback, treated like shit. Begin 2007, the plastic case started to break apart. The hardware itself kept on chugging, but because of the case broken everywhere, I decided it was time for a replacement.
That's 7 years of useful life for a laptop!
My dads Dell laptop was bought in 2000, he still uses it to this day. Sure, we upgraded it a bit with scavenged parts (512Meg RAM instead of 256Meg RAM and be bigger and faster harddisk). He still uses it to this day and has no intention whatsoever to replace it. 8 years and going strong.
Oh, any you surely want to know where that 256Meg RAM stick came from? I'll tell you: from an iBook 600MHz G3/384Meg RAM (later upgraded to 640Meg RAM which is where the 256Meg RAM stick comes from), I bought in December 2000 and which died in June 2005. Logic board failure. That's only 4.5 years for the Apple.
Now, sure, I know this is anecdotal evidence and all, but I *used* to be a Mac user. The iBook experience didn't do much good. I would have bought a new one, but their timing sucked: the Intel Macs were around the corner and I could only buy G4 laptops. I wasn't in hell going to do that. When the Intel MacBooks came along, I had my second hand laptop and was happy, so why change?
No, my new laptop isn't an Apple. I went the cheapo way: for 799€, I got a Dual Core machine with 1Gig RAM, 160Gig harddisk DVD-RW with Windows XP SP2. (For that the specs are meager, but I bought it in January 2007, just before the dreaded Vista release) Apple simply had nothing comparable for that price. It runs Ubuntu now, so I don't even have to cope with Windows anymore.
Well, that depends on your own vision of things. One of the most useful software packages I found in the last 8 years (is it really already that long) was OpenBSD. At first I bought their CDs and T-Shirts occasionally. Then I started buying their CD on the 6 month release shedule and I just rounded it up to the next 100€ (back then CDs were 30€ or so) donating the difference. Now I even stopped doing that: I just have a monthly standing order to their account. I still buy the CDs occasionally, but it's not the rule anymore.
Why OpenBSD? Because I like the system (not on the desktop, but as a server it's nice). They created OpenSSH which benefits pretty much every Unix out there. Their security fixes propagate to other platforms and software.
So, no, "useful" is what you define it to be. I find OpenBSD useful because it's there, in the background, routing my packets, protecting my computers. I find that insanely more useful and important that anything else. (Note, that this has never stopped me from donating to other projects, including OpenOffice.org, Mozilla, OpenWebmail, and many others...)
Especially since in the real world you can hardly run any useful software unless you're logged on as admin
That is simply not true. All computers for all home users, I maintain have strict User/Admin separation and I'm the only one having Admin. Meaning, that I can log as Admin, but do have my normal Limited Account.
You install a program as Admin, then you test said program as a User. If it works, then you're done. If it doesn't go back as Admin, give the "Users" group "Full Control" on the folder where the misbehaving program lives and try again as User. Usually it will work, if it doesn't then you're in for more fun. Usually, granting full rights to the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/$APP where $APP is your misbehaving Application will do.
You could do it more fine grained, but this works for end-user machines. Do note that by punching holes in the Windows filesystem and/or Windows registry, you have provided the means to the user to destroy said application... but to nothing else. It's similar to punching open holes in a firewall: allow only what there is to allow.
This approach has worked for pretty much everything I installed bar two games. Some games (like The Sims 2) need a patch to make the work natively on Users and it is provided by Maxis. That said, I knew the patch existed and as such I didn't try the above method.
So, yes, in the real world you can run Limited User at all time.
Note: on Windows XP Home, you need to use a command line to change the ACLs on folders/files. It is called cacls.exe and if you're not used to the command line you're finished right there.
(or, presumably, other languages written in the roman alphabet)
Well, yes, it works fine in the languages I tried it (being English, Dutch, German and French), but since I often write texts in any of those languages, I simply turn T9 off. It's too much of a hassle to change it before every single text message you want to write. T9 is fine for people living in a mono-linguistic culture, for the rest of us it sucks. By the way, some phones make it extremely difficult to turn off T9.
One of the languages I know is not even supported on T9, which is no surprise with only 300k people speaking it.
I think the point here was that it's about "crap entry level jobs at well known big IT companies". Having Google on your resume is an asset. Your job, while absolutely sucky was not at a high-profile IT company.
Using a 14400 baud modem, my job was uploading large Microsoft Access DB files to non-networked
So, now, were they networked or weren't they? Because a modem connection still is a network connection. A slow one, over POTS, but still a network connection.
Java -- Also it really is easy to disable the update scheduler (jusched.exe). In Windows, simply go to the control panel, select the Java Console (sorry, I'm not on Windows, so I do this by memory), go to the "Updates" tab and just say "Never". Java will never bother you ever again.
Disabling the auto-update of Acrobat Reader is much harder (=less intuitive). By definition I disable auto-updates of my applications. I decied when to upgrade what. Besides, those auto-updates rarely work correctly when running "Limited User", which is what I do. (Strange, yes, I know, but it works and it's not that hard to do)
My first instinct was aluminium too. Better suited for controllers (and cases). It is damned expensive though, at least compared to steel. It also won't qualify as "green" because producing aluminium uses up extreme amounts of energy. (Aluminium mills are usually directly next to power plants) However, due to the following comment:
another little problem with steel: RUST
I really feel I need to introduce you to stainless steel. It will rust eventually, but not in the lifetime of your console.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, that entirely depends... How can you justify studying the Bible? As a work of literature? If so, I will humbly say that any person that studied it as a work of literature is more qualified to have an opinion on it than I am. Especially in the context of literature.
However, in the context of religion, it becomes guesswork. Which verse is more important than which, even if they contradict. How is this and that miracle to be interpreted. At that point, my guess is as good as yours. Like the verse above, that says "sell everything, or you won't be allowed into heaven". You can interpret it differently: JeanPaulBob gave a nice interpretation to it. What Jesus said is for that man only and illustrates that you should let go the most important thing in your life and embrace God. Fair enough. An Heremit might see it literally, sell everything and go live in a cave. Which interpretation is right? JeanPaulBob will of course say his interpretation is right, our Hermit will think JeanPaulBob is a heretic.
You see, interpretation of any text is pretty much guesswork. Unverifiable guesswork. Haven't you ever gotten a bad grade because you had to write an essay about a poem interpreting it and you got an F, because your interpretation didn't match the teachers interpretation? I most certainly did. However, in the case of my teacher giving me a bad grade, she probably had a good reason, namely she knew that the poet writing the poem was suicidal because it was recorded in history that shortly after that poem he committed suicide. Of course, I didn't have that piece of information (probably because I slept in class, literature wasn't my favourite subject). However, such contextual information is going to be very very hard with the Bible. A Bible scholar, should as such read the Bible, find independent sources to veryify the Bible and then draw conclusions. I will respect such a Bible scholar. Just taking bible and interpreting it on itself, is guesswork. However, this is what most theologists do.
So, yes, a theologist may know more verses and thump me into the ground with his Bible, but his opinion isn't worth more than mine.
Sure, but their (the skeptics) arguments are sure much stonger and must more based in reality and science than anything the other side has to offer. Considering that I'm a scientist by trade, my side is already chosen.
Essentially, in #3 you say that nobody can study the Bible: nobody is objective to it. The believers will believe and will match the Bible to what they think is good. The skeptics on the contrary will study it to discredit it and say it's humbug. Essentially, you are now providing me with a lose-lose situation. Either side of the story simply is wrong.
All in all, considering the above logic, studying the Bible is a loss of time, because in neither case I will be able to distill any truths nor verifiable facts. It simply is a collection of freely interpretable stories, that's it.... See, I even removed the "fairy tales" part. We can settle on "stories", because that's what they are.
Personally, from me you can believe any humbug in any book there is, as long as I have the freedom to say it's bullshit.
As for #2.... When I read those contradictions, I couldn't believe it and, I actually dug out my Bible to check them. They were there, I at least looked them up. That still isn't study, but I checked the facts. (As any true scientist would do). The phrases were there, there is no denying.
Except biology is scientifically verifiable. Try that with the Bible. There is no real way to study the Bible, except to guess "what is really meant". Your guess is as good as mine, because it's, ehm, "guessing".
Yes, I have a very good idea. I know that much smarter people than me actually did study the Bible and did come to that conclusion. I have more respect for those "Skeptics" than for any "Theologist". You see, I'd rather take the word of someone who stands skeptical to a certain issue and approaches it scientifically than someone who is already convinced of the truth of the Bible and only "needs to explain it". I mean, accepting what a theologist say about the bible, is the same as accepting what a used car salesman tells you about a used car. I'd rather have the information of an independent source, thank you very much.
I really don't see the worth of studying the Bible. What I saw, were a bunch of fairy tales and some pretty freaky hippy guy that did some miracles and as such putting it in the "fairy tale" category too. If for anything, you could study the bible as literature, but that's where it stops. Except for that, it really doesn't have any value.
Absolutely not. I pretty much grep up Catholic. We pretty much only got the nicer parts to hear like "love thy neighbour", etc... I got confronted with the fundamentalist nuts on the Internet and that pretty much turned me into an Atheist.
The problem is not that you can't tone down those verses. As you said, I could interpret that those sayings were just for one person. For what they were recorded is a mystery to me then, as they are not important to anyone except that long dead dude. The problem is that fundamentalists *do* interpret the Bible literally.
However, logically, the Bible is a big pile of inconsistent crap written by goat herders 2000 years ago. Really not worth my time and a shame that so many people model their life after it. I have never(*), and will never, study the Bible.
(*) Oddly enough, I don't think I ever studied the Bible. Mostly my Catholicism teacher told the story and we got the interpretation for free. No need to think about it. I can't call that "study".
In the early nineties, my dad was a high-privilege employee at a bank. Anyway, due to office politics, he pretty much got the boot because one of the higher ups didn't like him. (You know, how easy it is to fire someone if you really want). He had been working there for nearly 20 years, and according to local law he had 6 months notice. He was disallowed to go to the bank during those 6 months: from one day to another he sat at home.
I heard this is pretty much the rule with high-privilege employees. So, I'd suggest, sit back, enjoy yourself and troll on slashdot as if there were no tomorrow.
Why? It is supposed to be the word of God and a such infallible.
Okay, but I only pointed out something in their holy book, which they are supposed to believe and to follow. Why is pick 'n choose allowed?
Exactly what I had in mind, and considering that the verse the AC cites is in the new testament versus the one cited by "The MAZZTer" which is in the old testament, it takes precedence according to the Christians.
Calm down, I know the difference. Trying to first post "on topic" isn't easy. However, look at the origins of large religions. I'm pretty sure brainwashing techniques were used.
Look at Jesus, he asks you to sell everything you have in order to gain entrance to heaven. You have to hate your family and only love God. (No really, you can even quote the bible on that)
Muslims? Not better: to this day, you can get death sentence for denying God (at least in Islamic countries)
These rules have been added to make sure that nobody would leave the cult. Sure, they were toned down over time, but initially they were there.
So, yes, a religion is less dangerous than a cult, but you can bet that any religion finds it origins in a cult and as such fundamentalism can set it back to "cult-status". This is the same as saying that a sleeping lion isn't dangerous since it's sleeping.
Atheist here too...
Every religion is a cult, just a popular one. Scientology isn't popular in any definition of the world and as such "cult" is very appropriate.
That's 7 years of useful life for a laptop!
My dads Dell laptop was bought in 2000, he still uses it to this day. Sure, we upgraded it a bit with scavenged parts (512Meg RAM instead of 256Meg RAM and be bigger and faster harddisk). He still uses it to this day and has no intention whatsoever to replace it. 8 years and going strong.
Oh, any you surely want to know where that 256Meg RAM stick came from? I'll tell you: from an iBook 600MHz G3/384Meg RAM (later upgraded to 640Meg RAM which is where the 256Meg RAM stick comes from), I bought in December 2000 and which died in June 2005. Logic board failure. That's only 4.5 years for the Apple.
Now, sure, I know this is anecdotal evidence and all, but I *used* to be a Mac user. The iBook experience didn't do much good. I would have bought a new one, but their timing sucked: the Intel Macs were around the corner and I could only buy G4 laptops. I wasn't in hell going to do that. When the Intel MacBooks came along, I had my second hand laptop and was happy, so why change?
No, my new laptop isn't an Apple. I went the cheapo way: for 799€, I got a Dual Core machine with 1Gig RAM, 160Gig harddisk DVD-RW with Windows XP SP2. (For that the specs are meager, but I bought it in January 2007, just before the dreaded Vista release) Apple simply had nothing comparable for that price. It runs Ubuntu now, so I don't even have to cope with Windows anymore.
Well, that depends on your own vision of things. One of the most useful software packages I found in the last 8 years (is it really already that long) was OpenBSD. At first I bought their CDs and T-Shirts occasionally. Then I started buying their CD on the 6 month release shedule and I just rounded it up to the next 100€ (back then CDs were 30€ or so) donating the difference. Now I even stopped doing that: I just have a monthly standing order to their account. I still buy the CDs occasionally, but it's not the rule anymore.
Why OpenBSD? Because I like the system (not on the desktop, but as a server it's nice). They created OpenSSH which benefits pretty much every Unix out there. Their security fixes propagate to other platforms and software.
So, no, "useful" is what you define it to be. I find OpenBSD useful because it's there, in the background, routing my packets, protecting my computers. I find that insanely more useful and important that anything else. (Note, that this has never stopped me from donating to other projects, including OpenOffice.org, Mozilla, OpenWebmail, and many others...)
That's the best explanation of word processing software behaviour, I've ever heard!
That is simply not true. All computers for all home users, I maintain have strict User/Admin separation and I'm the only one having Admin. Meaning, that I can log as Admin, but do have my normal Limited Account.
You install a program as Admin, then you test said program as a User. If it works, then you're done. If it doesn't go back as Admin, give the "Users" group "Full Control" on the folder where the misbehaving program lives and try again as User. Usually it will work, if it doesn't then you're in for more fun. Usually, granting full rights to the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/$APP where $APP is your misbehaving Application will do.
You could do it more fine grained, but this works for end-user machines. Do note that by punching holes in the Windows filesystem and/or Windows registry, you have provided the means to the user to destroy said application... but to nothing else. It's similar to punching open holes in a firewall: allow only what there is to allow.
This approach has worked for pretty much everything I installed bar two games. Some games (like The Sims 2) need a patch to make the work natively on Users and it is provided by Maxis. That said, I knew the patch existed and as such I didn't try the above method.
So, yes, in the real world you can run Limited User at all time.
Note: on Windows XP Home, you need to use a command line to change the ACLs on folders/files. It is called cacls.exe and if you're not used to the command line you're finished right there.
You communicate with telepathy. Wow....
Well, yes, it works fine in the languages I tried it (being English, Dutch, German and French), but since I often write texts in any of those languages, I simply turn T9 off. It's too much of a hassle to change it before every single text message you want to write. T9 is fine for people living in a mono-linguistic culture, for the rest of us it sucks. By the way, some phones make it extremely difficult to turn off T9.
One of the languages I know is not even supported on T9, which is no surprise with only 300k people speaking it.
I think the point here was that it's about "crap entry level jobs at well known big IT companies". Having Google on your resume is an asset. Your job, while absolutely sucky was not at a high-profile IT company.
So, now, were they networked or weren't they? Because a modem connection still is a network connection. A slow one, over POTS, but still a network connection.
Mod up... Asbestosis is best described to the layman as "small needles" destroying the lungs.
Holy Maloney!
That pretty insane for a simple (and straightforward) joke.
{Citation Needed}
Java -- Also it really is easy to disable the update scheduler (jusched.exe). In Windows, simply go to the control panel, select the Java Console (sorry, I'm not on Windows, so I do this by memory), go to the "Updates" tab and just say "Never". Java will never bother you ever again.
Disabling the auto-update of Acrobat Reader is much harder (=less intuitive). By definition I disable auto-updates of my applications. I decied when to upgrade what. Besides, those auto-updates rarely work correctly when running "Limited User", which is what I do. (Strange, yes, I know, but it works and it's not that hard to do)
I love AVG, but the version 8 isn't really as good as the 7.5. It eats up CPU and is a bit more intrusive. Wish that I hadn't upgraded.
Not living in the US, I can't really believe it's *that* bad. If it is, ehm, I'm speechless.