What do you consider divine? Magic tricks and miracles? What about trees? Air? The emission and absorption spectrum of H2O? How about humor? Regret? Compassion? Humility? Service? Sacrifice? I would submit that the problem isn't the "God Meme", but your definition of "divine".
If I had to sum up The Bible in two words, it would have to be "Let go.", not "Hold on!"
I think that the most common misconception about Christ among athiests is that salvation is promised only after you run the gauntlet of errands, proselytizing and converting everything in your path to the offense of all.
But this is not true.
Salvation is granted the moment you ask. Period. The rest of your life is spent reconciling yourself with that gift by serving others. So, yeah, I wish the evangelical fundamentalists would step off the high horse and calm down about the apocolypse because I find their tactics offensive, often rude and occasionally void of any real spiritual enlightenment....
Except that what you are describing isn't salvation, not as Jesus promised it -- it is about preparing you to find God, not the other way around. I think that some Christians (including a few at my church) get this mixed up and read things too literally, and this causes unfortunate confrontations which are based as much on our own predjudices as any independently verifiable fact or ontological truth.
This might suprise you, but Christians are not a monolithic group of like-thinking robots. We have arguments! Often! Some read the scripture as the actual literal verbatim word of God, others (more toward my end of the theological spectrum) see the text as the recorded observations of ordinary people who lived through extraordinary events, and were compelled with the daunting task of putting those indescribable events into words. It is not a book about facts, it is a book about relationships! The way I see it, if you have gotten into an argument about whether the universe is 50 thousand or 50 billion years old, you've missed the point completely, no matter which side you are on.
I am a Christian, and I consider myself a scientist, but I am not a "Christian Scientist", if you get my meaning. I believe in the power of prayer -- I especially see the effects of its power in my wife every day. The burdens are not removed, but the relationship with them is changed. The result of faith is that these obstacles no longer have any dominion over her, or me, or anyone that chooses this path.
If that doesn't explain it, then consider this:
Knowing how books are physically printed and bound does not make writing them any easier. These are two different paths to two different places.
Actually, it's more like the phone book, where if you look up a name that isn't there, you aren't told it isn't there, in fact, YOU ARE TOLD IT IS THERE, but it turns out when you call the phone number it plays a recording with an ad for yellow pages advertising department.
Have you changed the theme? I ran into a bug in the prerelease a couple of weeks ago where exactly what you describe would happen when using certain themes (others work fine). Switch it back to the standard theme and restart and see what happens. I think the themes all have to be updated to include proper skinning for the new releases. I also noticed that a few months back the developers implemented a sort of version-control system for themes and extensions that only allows you to see versions compiled for your release of FB on the main download pages. That's probably not an accident.
Wait, didn't XP come out in late 2001? That means MS is projecting ACTIVE LIFESPAN OF 4-5 YEARS for WinXP with no significant upgrades to the OS? Isn't that just about the same length of time MS promises to support new OSs before sunsetting them?
There are two ways to look at this:
1) GREAT! Windows is basically stable and has all the features MS thinks people need!
2) Uh-oh... MS is running out of ideas worth releasing a new OS over.
Think about this. That's two years with no new APIs. No new UI features. No new OS-integrated components. In other words, no new GPL MS-emulation projects like Samba, Mono and SDL, etc.
With the way "Linux On The Desktop" projects like KDE have been advancing, this is a HUGE opportunity. MS is promising that they are going to let the primary target of the "alternative platform" STAND STILL for the next two years before Longhorn moves the goalposts back again.
UGH! This missing piece in this puzzle is that the hugest number of servers in the US is owned by the smallest of companies -- those who can't afford to maintain their own developer staff. The choice to use Windows is not made in a vacuum. If the industry-specific, third-party (can't afford my own programmers) accounting and customer service software I need to run my business required Linux instead of Windows, guess which OS my business would choose? There IS a reason Microsoft pays to hold all of these developer conferences, you know.
If the Linux community wants to pull end users over to Linux on the desktop, KDE is great, but it still isn't gonna happen until you get the deveopers off of Windows.
IIRC, there is historical precedence for this. Nobels are occasionally awarded for improvements or modifications of a theory without recognizing the original work. Nothing to see here except whining.
Yup, it's called "irony", and it's when you say something and mean the opposite.
BTW, if any of you know folks who read Fark, be sure to send 'em on over. I'm sure there are a lot of people over there who would love to see a real live working example!
Yeah, I agree with that, but let me add that I think the number portability issue, while nice, is not the most important determining factor in picking or switching carriers. Far more important to me is HARDWARE portability, so that a $270 phone has a lifespan extending even unto other carriers' networks at the end of the service contract. Why the hell we have to be forced to buy the phone WITH the service in this country is beyond me.
Talk about passe' -- hey, how come nobody in the spyware/drive-by-installer/adware discussion ever talks about cDc or Back-Orifice anymore? Have they been rendered totally irrelevant or are those bastards in the spyware "industry" the only ones who actually paid attention to the lessons they tried to teach about MS security?
Along the same lines of frustrating stupid 'big-bank' behavior:
I've sent bills through the mail two weeks ahead with a check dated the day the payment is due with the idea that I've sent it, so I don't have to remember to mail it later, and they'll hold on to it and process it on the due date because the bank won't honor it before then.
Well, guess what. The bank just goes ahead an pays it immediately, anyway! Hell, I don't even think they need a valid signature! I've toyed with the idea of just sending a blank one (completely blank - no sig, no amount, no payee: nothing) to see what would happen, but I'm too chicken to play roulette with my own money.
(Of course, the problem is that a bank or processing department that handles hundreds of thousands of checks and payments per day can't possibly be expected to pay for human staff to read each and every individual one, so their boilerplate policy and procedures automate everything to ensure that everything gets processed as what it should be, no exceptions. I hate that. The reason I have a bank in the first place is so that I can manage exceptions. It's not just impersonal, it's insulting. Luddism, HERE I COME!)
A kaleidoscope? You mean that tube-thingy you look through with the mirrors inside that make it look like the same thing is in a lot of different places, but really they're all just pale reflections of each other?
Yeah.... I think I can see how TV might eventually evolve into that. [grin]
Yeah, but the warning dialog is conspicuously missing a "Cancel" button.
...of course, you **could** go into the IE security config and set it to prompt you when loading signed and unsigned controls -- THAT one has a cancel button...
Crap, I may just have to break out the AMEX card for this. They have ATARI FOOTBALL.
For those of you who've never seen it, Atari Football is a two-player black-and-white arcade-only football game, where each player stands at the end of the horizontal videogame table with a trackball and a pass button. All the players on are little X's and Os (literally) and all motion is controlled with the trackball. (I believe this was the first arcade game to feature the trackball, if memory serves correctly.)
Gameplay is like bitch-slapping a bowling ball continuously for a half-hour or so until the pain in your hands becomes too great to bear and you give up.
My high-school chums and I got pretty good at it, though, and I have many fond memories of buying an ice-cold soda after an long session just to soothe the pain.
Yeah, that's a good point, but I'm sure it's possible to work around it somewhat with standard driver layers and backward compatability, assuming you don't want to go whole hog and make a whole new version available as an ISO.
The other option would be a two-CD system. One small CD (under 20MB) to boot the game console OS, the other that has the game code.
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What do you consider divine? Magic tricks and miracles? What about trees? Air? The emission and absorption spectrum of H2O? How about humor? Regret? Compassion? Humility? Service? Sacrifice? I would submit that the problem isn't the "God Meme", but your definition of "divine".
If I had to sum up The Bible in two words, it would have to be "Let go.", not "Hold on!"
I think that the most common misconception about Christ among athiests is that salvation is promised only after you run the gauntlet of errands, proselytizing and converting everything in your path to the offense of all.
But this is not true.
Salvation is granted the moment you ask. Period. The rest of your life is spent reconciling yourself with that gift by serving others. So, yeah, I wish the evangelical fundamentalists would step off the high horse and calm down about the apocolypse because I find their tactics offensive, often rude and occasionally void of any real spiritual enlightenment....
Except that what you are describing isn't salvation, not as Jesus promised it -- it is about preparing you to find God, not the other way around. I think that some Christians (including a few at my church) get this mixed up and read things too literally, and this causes unfortunate confrontations which are based as much on our own predjudices as any independently verifiable fact or ontological truth.
This might suprise you, but Christians are not a monolithic group of like-thinking robots. We have arguments! Often! Some read the scripture as the actual literal verbatim word of God, others (more toward my end of the theological spectrum) see the text as the recorded observations of ordinary people who lived through extraordinary events, and were compelled with the daunting task of putting those indescribable events into words. It is not a book about facts, it is a book about relationships! The way I see it, if you have gotten into an argument about whether the universe is 50 thousand or 50 billion years old, you've missed the point completely, no matter which side you are on.
I am a Christian, and I consider myself a scientist, but I am not a "Christian Scientist", if you get my meaning. I believe in the power of prayer -- I especially see the effects of its power in my wife every day. The burdens are not removed, but the relationship with them is changed. The result of faith is that these obstacles no longer have any dominion over her, or me, or anyone that chooses this path.
If that doesn't explain it, then consider this:
Knowing how books are physically printed and bound does not make writing them any easier. These are two different paths to two different places.
Actually, it's more like the phone book, where if you look up a name that isn't there, you aren't told it isn't there, in fact, YOU ARE TOLD IT IS THERE, but it turns out when you call the phone number it plays a recording with an ad for yellow pages advertising department.
IIRC,
"Firebird is just a better browser."
- The mozilla roadmap page.
(Apologies if I misquoted - don't have time to look it up now.)
Have you changed the theme? I ran into a bug in the prerelease a couple of weeks ago where exactly what you describe would happen when using certain themes (others work fine). Switch it back to the standard theme and restart and see what happens. I think the themes all have to be updated to include proper skinning for the new releases. I also noticed that a few months back the developers implemented a sort of version-control system for themes and extensions that only allows you to see versions compiled for your release of FB on the main download pages. That's probably not an accident.
Me too?
Wait, didn't XP come out in late 2001? That means MS is projecting ACTIVE LIFESPAN OF 4-5 YEARS for WinXP with no significant upgrades to the OS? Isn't that just about the same length of time MS promises to support new OSs before sunsetting them?
There are two ways to look at this:
1) GREAT! Windows is basically stable and has all the features MS thinks people need!
2) Uh-oh... MS is running out of ideas worth releasing a new OS over.
Think about this. That's two years with no new APIs. No new UI features. No new OS-integrated components. In other words, no new GPL MS-emulation projects like Samba, Mono and SDL, etc.
With the way "Linux On The Desktop" projects like KDE have been advancing, this is a HUGE opportunity. MS is promising that they are going to let the primary target of the "alternative platform" STAND STILL for the next two years before Longhorn moves the goalposts back again.
UGH! This missing piece in this puzzle is that the hugest number of servers in the US is owned by the smallest of companies -- those who can't afford to maintain their own developer staff. The choice to use Windows is not made in a vacuum. If the industry-specific, third-party (can't afford my own programmers) accounting and customer service software I need to run my business required Linux instead of Windows, guess which OS my business would choose? There IS a reason Microsoft pays to hold all of these developer conferences, you know.
If the Linux community wants to pull end users over to Linux on the desktop, KDE is great, but it still isn't gonna happen until you get the deveopers off of Windows.
IIRC, there is historical precedence for this. Nobels are occasionally awarded for improvements or modifications of a theory without recognizing the original work. Nothing to see here except whining.
I wasn't two hours ago. (shred.... shred.... shred.... )
Yup, it's called "irony", and it's when you say something and mean the opposite.
BTW, if any of you know folks who read Fark, be sure to send 'em on over. I'm sure there are a lot of people over there who would love to see a real live working example!
Yeah, I agree with that, but let me add that I think the number portability issue, while nice, is not the most important determining factor in picking or switching carriers. Far more important to me is HARDWARE portability, so that a $270 phone has a lifespan extending even unto other carriers' networks at the end of the service contract. Why the hell we have to be forced to buy the phone WITH the service in this country is beyond me.
Maybe she up and R-U-N-N-O-F-T?
- mad flaming props to the Coen brothers for OBWAT!
Talk about passe' -- hey, how come nobody in the spyware/drive-by-installer/adware discussion ever talks about cDc or Back-Orifice anymore? Have they been rendered totally irrelevant or are those bastards in the spyware "industry" the only ones who actually paid attention to the lessons they tried to teach about MS security?
Along the same lines of frustrating stupid 'big-bank' behavior:
I've sent bills through the mail two weeks ahead with a check dated the day the payment is due with the idea that I've sent it, so I don't have to remember to mail it later, and they'll hold on to it and process it on the due date because the bank won't honor it before then.
Well, guess what. The bank just goes ahead an pays it immediately, anyway! Hell, I don't even think they need a valid signature! I've toyed with the idea of just sending a blank one (completely blank - no sig, no amount, no payee: nothing) to see what would happen, but I'm too chicken to play roulette with my own money.
(Of course, the problem is that a bank or processing department that handles hundreds of thousands of checks and payments per day can't possibly be expected to pay for human staff to read each and every individual one, so their boilerplate policy and procedures automate everything to ensure that everything gets processed as what it should be, no exceptions. I hate that. The reason I have a bank in the first place is so that I can manage exceptions. It's not just impersonal, it's insulting. Luddism, HERE I COME!)
I suppose I could lend you my public encryption key for a while....
A kaleidoscope? You mean that tube-thingy you look through with the mirrors inside that make it look like the same thing is in a lot of different places, but really they're all just pale reflections of each other?
Yeah.... I think I can see how TV might eventually evolve into that. [grin]
Yeah, "CowboyNeal is my active-x control."
Yeah, but the warning dialog is conspicuously missing a "Cancel" button.
I dub thee....
Thank you, thank you, I'll be here all week!
...yeah, and still reading from their script, too!
Seriously. Just go laser. The Brother HL1440 can be had for under $150 new. Sure it's more expensive than inkjet, but only for the first year!
Yes, but either way, it's patently obvious you've never been to a QM lecture.
Trust me, after you've seen the gates of hell first-hand, you can mail the rest in.
"You don't understand quantum mechanics, you just get used to it." -- Richard Feynman
Crap, I may just have to break out the AMEX card for this. They have ATARI FOOTBALL.
For those of you who've never seen it, Atari Football is a two-player black-and-white arcade-only football game, where each player stands at the end of the horizontal videogame table with a trackball and a pass button. All the players on are little X's and Os (literally) and all motion is controlled with the trackball. (I believe this was the first arcade game to feature the trackball, if memory serves correctly.)
Gameplay is like bitch-slapping a bowling ball continuously for a half-hour or so until the pain in your hands becomes too great to bear and you give up.
My high-school chums and I got pretty good at it, though, and I have many fond memories of buying an ice-cold soda after an long session just to soothe the pain.
Yeah, that's a good point, but I'm sure it's possible to work around it somewhat with standard driver layers and backward compatability, assuming you don't want to go whole hog and make a whole new version available as an ISO.
The other option would be a two-CD system. One small CD (under 20MB) to boot the game console OS, the other that has the game code.
Heh... "FPSBuster 3000"... that's funny.