Exactly. It demonstrates just how flawed the pure capitalist economic system is. In order to combat inflation, we've had to rely on wage-slavery. When domestic wage-slavery became relatively unprofitable, we began to rely on foreign sources - economic colonialism. That system is just not sustainable.
The very clothes we wear are cheap to us (a fraction of a day's wage, in general), but would take many day's wages to buy for the Asian and Latin American workers who actually make them. Even the lowest peasants of feudal Europe - even men whose job in life was to load dung carts - could buy a pair of shoes on just two days wages. A pair of the sneakers made by Chinese slaves would take those same slaves months, or even years, to afford.
How much longer will the country with the world's biggest army stand for that? American workers have long since become unprofitable to use, because they rightly expect to be able to afford the products they make. When will the Chinese expect the same? For now, certainly, the Chinese government is quite satisfied to make money for themselves while their workers suffer worse than European serfs or American slaves ever did. If things change, who are we going to rely on for cheap labor? No one: the system will fail. The gravy train is over indeed.
...the goal being two class society run as technofeudalism....
Worse than that. In fuedal societies, even the serfs knew what rights they really had, and what rights they didn't; and when anyone trod on those rights, there was a revolt. There has never been a successful revolt in the U.S.A.
Whether you agree with the arangement or not, people in fuedal societies were demonstrably better off than those in our current democracies. An English scholar named William Cobbett published quite a bit of information about that, back in the 19th century, in a book about the Protestant Reformation: "The History of the Reformation in England." He showed that the English peasant in the late 15th century was far better off than the wage-slave of 19th century oligarchic England.
To be sure, the average American today is better off than that, but only at the expense of Asian and Latin American wage-slaves, and now the Arabs.
While I agree with you, I hope you're not suggesting that the U.S. federal government staged 9/11, as the Nazis staged the Reichstag fire. Then again, we now know that the U.S. & U.K. governments conspired to deliberately send the R.M.S. Lusitania into harm's way in 1915, resulting in her being sunk by a U-Boat with significant loss of life - all in order to try to draw the U.S. into WWI. I suppose if they were capable of it then, they are even more capable now. Certainly, the way it has been used for propaganda after the fact is nearly identical.
BTW, elections being hijacked is nothing new. Kennedy wasn't likely the first, either. Just remember also, the electors (you know, the people we are actually voting for on election day - as opposed to the candidates whose names are on the ballot) don't have any obligation to vote for who they're pledged to vote for (other than one of honor, and who was the last honorable man you saw in politics?). They could all go in and decide to elect someone who isn't even on the ballot if they wanted to!
This system was devised for a reason, and not for practicality: the founders never really believed in democracy, they were just "new money" who wanted to be rid of the incovenience of the king (or, more to the point, the incovenience of the king's taxes). To be blunt, American democracy has never worked the way it is billed to work, and still works exactly the way the founders intended. It was, and is, a boldfaced lie - a charade to delude the ignorant by making them believe they have a voice in government. Marx said religion was the opiate of the masses, but I say democracy is the real culprit.
Aristotle held that all republics eventually degrade into oligarchy. Some would say they all start that way, too.
I used to watch it daily too, and I have to say TSS was headed downhill well before Leo left. IMHO, the turning point was when they cut it to an hour from 90 min. After that, it was much faster-paced; and, instead of cutting out some of the fluff spots, they cut out or rushed a lot of the meaty or particularly geeky parts instead. In addition, there was no longer room for the same size cast as before, thus Martin and Morgan were eventually out.
It's really too bad: TSS was a fine show when it was a leisurely, 90-min. affair. After they sped up the pace, it just wasn't the same show.
Perhaps, if one were so inclined, one might even trace the beginning of the downward spiral to the move to the new set, or to Megan's departure.
Well, in my religion, one of the absolute truths we believe is that the Church can interpret what the truth is infalibly. In other words, the belief is that the Church (specificaly popes and ecumenical councils) can interpret the truth infalibly, a power which was given by GOD himself, and is under His protection, but is very rarely used (the last time it was explictly invoked was in 1950, when the doctrine of the Assumption of Mary was formally defined). There are restrictions on this, because it can't be an innovation, it has to be at least implicit in prior Church teaching and in Scripture. It's never been used to teach science. Religion isn't about abandoning science, religion and science complement eacother.
As to whether one person's absolute revealed truth is the same as another's, logically, they must agree, or else one or the other is not truth (at least not absolute truth). Logically, only one religion can be true. Others may hold some of the truth, but not all of it.
Ultimately, one probably cannot prove through reason alone which religon is true. That is where faith comes in. Faith is a choice, one which we are free to make or not make. I choose to believe in Christ, because I judge it better than the alternative (as Pascal did). Christianity is in many ways unique, and in one in particular: in no other faith did GOD become a man for the sole purpose of suffering and dying as an offering to Himself for our sins - sins which only He could atone for.
In the end, Christianity isn't about the ark, or the geographical extent of the flood, or whether the World was made in six-24 hour days: these things we are free to ponder to a degree. Christianity is about GOD loving us so much that He became one of us, in order to offer a sacrifice we couldn't offer. It's about a GOD who made man in full knowledge that He would have to die for him. Next to that, everything else is ultimately meaningless.
Well, I'm not sure it would have been hypocritical to say: "it's too late in the game now to change Sarge, so these changes will have to go into effect in the next version." As you said, changes of that scale really should take place in unstable, not testing.
Trying to see it from their point of view, though, I guess they had to weigh the importance of the changes against the importance of releasing on schedule, and the changes won. I'm still not positive that I agree with that, but I can see why they did. If you have to deal with the FDL stuff personally, I'm sure it really does matter.
Thanks for understanding. I'll put you down as a friend too. It's good to see this doesn't have to be a flamewar, just good discussion of an issue.
I think you're pretty much right. I really do understand that these issues are important for some people (mostly the people who have to deal with them), and that for those people the really do make a difference. I do think the Invariant Sections are a problem, for instance (especially for those who actually have to deal with them), I think it's just unfortunate it had to come at a time which holds up the release cycle.
Like you, I wish testing were testing and unstable were unstable. Perhaps that is really the root of the problem here. Testing ought to have minor bugs, not big one which break the system. I'm not saying it should be guarantied to work, but it would be nice if it were guarantied to mostly work. If it worked the way it was supposed to, I would use testing and probably wouldn't be complaining as much about the holdup.
As it is, because Sarge was only incrementaly newer than Woody in the first place (on some fronts, anyhow), it's going to be very much obsolete by the time it comes out. Maybe they should pull a "Netscape 5" here: ditch Sarge as it is, and start over with the cycle as of now. Then at least we'd get some of the things we weren't going to get in Sarge if it came out this year. On the other hand, maybe that isn't very practical.
Yes, I'm not suggesting they should have moved the stuff in non-free to free at this point. I just wish that the current changes didn't have to hold up Sarge.
After cooling down a bit, I suppose that is somewhat selfish of me, anyhow, as I don't have to deal with any of the "bureaucratic hassle" myself. I understand that others do, and I just wish some of those hassles weren't such a hassle.
No one is redefining words here, it's just that many words have more than one meaning. This is especially true when one is dealing with words which have been translated (often multiple times: e.g., from the Ancient Hebrew original to the Ancient Greek LXX to the Late Latin Vulgate to the English versions). Sometimes the word which has been used in English isn't the best fit for the word in the original Hebrew, Greek, or Aramaic (depending on the book of the Bible). Sometimes the original word has no exact English equivalent. Even the word in English can have multiple meanings.
Lastly, many of these books are over 3000 years old. Words often change their meanings over time, even in the same language. This has happened in English even over the last few hundred years - imagine how much it can have happened in Hebrew over 3000 years. You simply can't get the eaxct, literal meaning of every passge of scripture looking at English translations through twenty-first century glasses. Even lifelong scholars in the ancient tongues cannot always agree on exact meanings.
It is wholy rational, that if there is absolute truth to be found, that it will have to be revealed truth. Only an outside observer can see things from a fixed reference point, and only that observer could make it known to us. Anything a scientist finds is doomed to be theory, because he cannot have a fixed reference. Religion is the only possible outlet for revealed, absolute truth in the universe. Which religion is the only question.
If they were trying to be "an unofficial organ of the FSF", or "for GNU zealots only", then they wouldn't be ditching glibc documentation, would they?
Touche.
Whether everyone who voted for it really thought that one through or not is a whole other discussion....
Ah, but that is my point. Debian has shown a rather FSF-like interpretation of what "free" means. I don't mind them having that opinion, but they need to understand that not everyone who uses Debian agrees with that fairly narrow definition. So they should also know that to suddenly hold up what had been promised to be a quick(er) release cycle over this issue might not sit well with all Debian users.
Well, they could stop holding up the release cycle over debates about "what does free mean." Some of the stuff in non-free is, IMHO, free/OSS. It just seems silly that some things which were considered free when Woody came out, all of a sudden aren't now. Are they going to go back and excise all of it from Woody? No. So leave it in Sarge, then.
Well, as I said, I was blowing off steam before. I understand that Debian aims to make a totally free OS, and I love that. It's just that I don't always agree with their definition of "free." I'm pretty sick of drawn-out aguments of this "free" license vs. that "free" license. I really think that, as long as you give someone credit for their work (and pay them if they want money), it oughtn't be an issue what you do with it. I know the issue is more complicated than that, I'm just frustrated at the holdup over what I consider a non-issue.
Using stable has been part of my problem, but I've gotten the impresion that unstable and testing are far too often totally broken. I would rather be able to use a stable version that is a bit more up-to-date. I'm not clamoring for the latest GNOME version the day it comes out, but it would be nice to have it before it becomes obsolete. Woody released with a GNOME version which was already obsolete. At the time, they said something to the effect of "we want a quick turn-around for Sarge, because Woody took too long." Now Sarge is apt to take just as long.
As for why I don't use FreeBSD, it's mostly the issue of the core system. If, for instance, I want to use vim istead of nvi and gawk instead of mawk, that's fairly easy on any Linux system; but on BSD, if I understand rightly, you are stuck with whichever implementation that the project decided to use. Sure you can run the other version as well, but you can't subtitute it. I like the fact that Linux is more modular. I would have gone to Gentoo last year, but for being on 56k.
Agreed. The DMCA is the problem there, not closed-source. I hate the DMCA just as much as the next guy. The DMCA is most certainly evil (as are patents on algorithims), because it infringes on the inherent right of fair use. Here's hoping it will be found unconstitutional.
Don't get me wrong, all else being equal, I prefer free/OSS. I'm just not opposed to authors having an inherent right to not share their code if they don't want to. While I may not always agree with their decision, I don't think it's an evil one.
Not exactly. Everything in the Bible is literally true, but only in the sense and context it was meant to be understood in. That's a fine distinction, but an important one. For instance, it is certainly possible that there are gaps in the geneologies in Genesis, because "begat" may just mean "was ancestor to," rather than "was the father of." Either way, it's literally true, it's just a different sense of the word.
It seems to me that Debian can't decide what it is these days. Half the time, the just want to be the most secure and stable Linux distro out there. The other half of the time, all that matters is the licensing aspect.
I really wish they would make up their minds. Are they trying to provide the most stable distro out there, or are they trying to be an unofficial organ of the FSF? Both perhaps? If this last is the case, then they ought to have been more balanced about this decision. Why push back the release cycle by a whole year just to make the GNU zealots happy? Why not wait until the next release for these change and bring Sarge out on time? At least the message there would have been that "we agree with FSF/GNU ideals in principal, but we have other goals which are as important as far as this release goes."
Instead, the message they are sending is that "Debian is for GNU zealots only. We don't give a damn about anyone else. If you have a need for any closed-source program or proprietary hardware, you are evil." I am sick of this attitude, frankly.
Don't get me wrong, I respect what RMS and FSF/GNU have done for the cause of free/OSS software, but I simply can't agree with the notion that closed-source is evil. I prefer Linus' approach which is essentially to say that we think free/OSS is a better idea, but that authors have a right to go closed-source if they want. Personally, I tend to think that the BSD license is often, maybe even generally, superior to the GPL. I use Linux because it ofers more choices than BSD, not because I dislike BSD or its license. I had thought that Debian was distancing itself from GNU, but I guess they've done a 180.
I have used Debian for over three years, because I like the package system. I am not a GNU zealot. Over the last two years, I have become increasingly annoyed with holdups in the release cycle, but promises of a quick Sarge release went a long way to apease me. This is the last straw. There are other distros (Gentoo for one) with as good or better package/ports systems, and that at least pretend to care about real-world users. Goodbye Debian.
P.S. Before anyone flames me, keep in mind that in part I am blowing off steam out of utter frustration. If I spoke overly harshly, I apologize to anyone I offended.
Mostly because traditon has ascribed the place the Mt. Ararat. The traditions could certainly be wrong, of course, but where else are you going to look? If it isn't there, you aren't going to find it anywhere unless you just happen to trip over it. In point of fact, that's probably true even if it is there. Most reputable scholars agree with the rectangular box theory. The boat-shaped indentations theory was heavily influenced by fanciful, and rather ridiculous, Mediaeval and early modern artwork.
I understand that this is a common sticking point, but it needn't be. This passage is clearly speaking in round measurements. Would you be any happier if it said 31 cubits? I doubt it. Some people would balk even if it said 31.4159 cubits. The Bible is not a textbook. It is full of rounded measurements and symbolic numbers.
I don't think this is off-topic, as it is at least tangential to the issue at hand.
One thing which often causes people problems is trying to read the Bible as a science or history textbook. Most devout Christians belive there are no errors in the Bible, but that doesn't mean we understand every passage rightly (not to mention that there are copyists' and translators' errors which have crept in over the last 3000+ years). We have to understand passages the way they were intended to be understood, which isn't always easy to determine. For instance, is the Bible really trying to say that pi is exactly 3, or just taking that as the closest possible approximation in whole-number terms?
You are right that most churches (including the Catholic church, to which I belong) can be incredibly political, and their leaders and members often act wrongly. I myself am quite scandalised by many things which occur in the Church today: the pederasty problem among priests and bishops, the litugical crisis, and especially the aparent unwillingness of the pope to lead and to deal with these matters instead of delegating them to a bearaucracy from Hell. I guess all one can do is take that to indicate the truth of the message that all men are fallen and imperfect.
Ultimately, you are right: you need to come to believe for yourself - not because the ark is there, not because the shroud is there, but because GOD is there. You have to feel GOD's presence. Nobody else can believe for you.
I myself know GOD exists. It's a feeling that I can't readily describe, but I just know it. Do I still have moments of doubt, yes, but I always come back.
I really enjoyed a book called "The Journey" by a Boston College proffessor named Peter Kreeft. It starts with Plato's cave and asking why to believe in any god at all, follows on to discuss pantheism vs. monotheism, then the GOD of Abraham specificaly, and finally to the Cross of Christ. It dicusses the issues involved rationally, but without getting bogged down in formal logic.
In the end, reason can only show you the door, though. Stepping through is a leap of faith.
Actually, much bigger than "modern day" Armenia. Modern Armenia is only that part of Armenia which Russia controlled until 1991, and is but a small fraction of ancient Armenia. Ancient Armenia included most of what is now eastern Turkey and some of northern Iran, northern Iraq, and western Azerbaijan. The center of ancient Armenia was the region around Lake Van, in Turkey.
Like you, I consider myself a young-Earth creationist. I hope they find evidence of the ark, but likewise am doubtful that they will.
It is concieveable that Noah and his family, aware of the significance of what had occured (the flood) would have preserved the ark intact, considering it a holy relic. However, as time passed, it would likely have been scavenged by the residents of the region, both for relics and for more mundane purposes.
As you say, we cannot be certain that this is theArarat. The passage in Genesis actually reads "the mountains of Ararat" or (in the Douay-Rheims translation, which I use) "the mountains of Armenia." Note the plurality. In other words, when Moses wrote these words (ca.1400 B.C.), "Ararat" applied to the whole region of classical Armenia Minor, which included much of the area around Lake Van in eastern Turkey (coincidently, also a leading candidate for the location of Eden).
We do have ancient testimony that the ark was still visible (IIRC, Flavius Josephus speaks of this sometime after A.D.70), but these were nearly all based on hearsay, and some of it tends to indicate that the ark was down in the foothills, not high on the mountain. Likewise, there was the monastery on Ararat which claimed to house several relics from the ark, but that has since been buried by earthquake. Much of the modern testimony seems to conflict on some points.
I really do hope they find it. Not because it will prove the flood happened - as you say, those who do not believe still would not - but because it is a holy relic, not only to Christians, but to Jews and Muslims as well, and ought to be preserved as best we can. On the other hand, given the 5000 or more years which may have transpired since the flood, I find it hard to believe it will be found intact. Ultimately, I have to believe that even if anything still remains of the ark (and it is, in fact, on our Ararat), it is almost certainly buried in the glacial ice.
In the end, it would seem fitting if the ark were no longer there, for whatever reason. The other arks are lost too: the Ark of the Covenant was sealed up in a cave, and its location was miraculously hidden (according to II Maccabees) and cannot be found; and the Virgin Mary (who Catholics, like myself, believe is the Ark of the New Covenant, since she bore Christ, who is GOD and Our Salvation, in her womb) was (according to Catholics and Eastern Orthodox) assumed into Heaven at the end of her life.
Hmm. Wouldn't that mean flashing the BIOS every single time you wanted to install an OS upgrade? Flashing the BIOS is a non-trivial matter, and can result in a totally dead machine if anything goes wrong. The last thing I want is to have to send the mobo back to the manufacturer just because the power spiked while I was installing a patch or service pack.
Secondly, wouldn't this prevent (or at least complicate) multiple booting? Wouldn't this make one totally dependent on the motherboard vendor's choice of OS software? That is, unless one is a decent hardware hacker, anyhow.
Not trying to flame you, perhaps I've misunderstood, but it seems to me that, as things are, this would represent a significant step backward, not forward.
Yeah, but they're not getting that $0.06/mo, Viacom is. So Viacom is getting (almost) everything they wanted and Dish loses $1/subscriber, not to mention the PPV movie credits or the lost subscriptions due to this whole mess. Still sounds like a Pyrrhic victory to me.
Yes, but they don't appear to have won the war at all. They dropped their lawsuit and extended the contracts for the three other stations, not to mention paying the rate increase (apparently). The only demand they didn't give in on was the Nicktoons one (and they gave in part way on that, too).
They're stuck giving back $1 and a movie to every one of their customers, all in an (apparently failed) effort to prevent a six-cent rate increase. Seems like a Pyrrhic victory at best for Dish.
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Exactly. It demonstrates just how flawed the pure capitalist economic system is. In order to combat inflation, we've had to rely on wage-slavery. When domestic wage-slavery became relatively unprofitable, we began to rely on foreign sources - economic colonialism. That system is just not sustainable.
The very clothes we wear are cheap to us (a fraction of a day's wage, in general), but would take many day's wages to buy for the Asian and Latin American workers who actually make them. Even the lowest peasants of feudal Europe - even men whose job in life was to load dung carts - could buy a pair of shoes on just two days wages. A pair of the sneakers made by Chinese slaves would take those same slaves months, or even years, to afford.
How much longer will the country with the world's biggest army stand for that? American workers have long since become unprofitable to use, because they rightly expect to be able to afford the products they make. When will the Chinese expect the same? For now, certainly, the Chinese government is quite satisfied to make money for themselves while their workers suffer worse than European serfs or American slaves ever did. If things change, who are we going to rely on for cheap labor? No one: the system will fail. The gravy train is over indeed.
Worse than that. In fuedal societies, even the serfs knew what rights they really had, and what rights they didn't; and when anyone trod on those rights, there was a revolt. There has never been a successful revolt in the U.S.A.
Whether you agree with the arangement or not, people in fuedal societies were demonstrably better off than those in our current democracies. An English scholar named William Cobbett published quite a bit of information about that, back in the 19th century, in a book about the Protestant Reformation: "The History of the Reformation in England." He showed that the English peasant in the late 15th century was far better off than the wage-slave of 19th century oligarchic England.
To be sure, the average American today is better off than that, but only at the expense of Asian and Latin American wage-slaves, and now the Arabs.
BTW, elections being hijacked is nothing new. Kennedy wasn't likely the first, either. Just remember also, the electors (you know, the people we are actually voting for on election day - as opposed to the candidates whose names are on the ballot) don't have any obligation to vote for who they're pledged to vote for (other than one of honor, and who was the last honorable man you saw in politics?). They could all go in and decide to elect someone who isn't even on the ballot if they wanted to!
This system was devised for a reason, and not for practicality: the founders never really believed in democracy, they were just "new money" who wanted to be rid of the incovenience of the king (or, more to the point, the incovenience of the king's taxes). To be blunt, American democracy has never worked the way it is billed to work, and still works exactly the way the founders intended. It was, and is, a boldfaced lie - a charade to delude the ignorant by making them believe they have a voice in government. Marx said religion was the opiate of the masses, but I say democracy is the real culprit.
Aristotle held that all republics eventually degrade into oligarchy. Some would say they all start that way, too.
Um, before you do that, you should know that Echostar has a hand in this too. They are partnering with Comcast on G-4.
I used to watch it daily too, and I have to say TSS was headed downhill well before Leo left. IMHO, the turning point was when they cut it to an hour from 90 min. After that, it was much faster-paced; and, instead of cutting out some of the fluff spots, they cut out or rushed a lot of the meaty or particularly geeky parts instead. In addition, there was no longer room for the same size cast as before, thus Martin and Morgan were eventually out.
It's really too bad: TSS was a fine show when it was a leisurely, 90-min. affair. After they sped up the pace, it just wasn't the same show.
Perhaps, if one were so inclined, one might even trace the beginning of the downward spiral to the move to the new set, or to Megan's departure.
Well, in my religion, one of the absolute truths we believe is that the Church can interpret what the truth is infalibly. In other words, the belief is that the Church (specificaly popes and ecumenical councils) can interpret the truth infalibly, a power which was given by GOD himself, and is under His protection, but is very rarely used (the last time it was explictly invoked was in 1950, when the doctrine of the Assumption of Mary was formally defined). There are restrictions on this, because it can't be an innovation, it has to be at least implicit in prior Church teaching and in Scripture. It's never been used to teach science. Religion isn't about abandoning science, religion and science complement eacother.
As to whether one person's absolute revealed truth is the same as another's, logically, they must agree, or else one or the other is not truth (at least not absolute truth). Logically, only one religion can be true. Others may hold some of the truth, but not all of it.
Ultimately, one probably cannot prove through reason alone which religon is true. That is where faith comes in. Faith is a choice, one which we are free to make or not make. I choose to believe in Christ, because I judge it better than the alternative (as Pascal did). Christianity is in many ways unique, and in one in particular: in no other faith did GOD become a man for the sole purpose of suffering and dying as an offering to Himself for our sins - sins which only He could atone for.
In the end, Christianity isn't about the ark, or the geographical extent of the flood, or whether the World was made in six-24 hour days: these things we are free to ponder to a degree. Christianity is about GOD loving us so much that He became one of us, in order to offer a sacrifice we couldn't offer. It's about a GOD who made man in full knowledge that He would have to die for him. Next to that, everything else is ultimately meaningless.
Trying to see it from their point of view, though, I guess they had to weigh the importance of the changes against the importance of releasing on schedule, and the changes won. I'm still not positive that I agree with that, but I can see why they did. If you have to deal with the FDL stuff personally, I'm sure it really does matter.
Rock and a hard place is right.
I think you're pretty much right. I really do understand that these issues are important for some people (mostly the people who have to deal with them), and that for those people the really do make a difference. I do think the Invariant Sections are a problem, for instance (especially for those who actually have to deal with them), I think it's just unfortunate it had to come at a time which holds up the release cycle.
Like you, I wish testing were testing and unstable were unstable. Perhaps that is really the root of the problem here. Testing ought to have minor bugs, not big one which break the system. I'm not saying it should be guarantied to work, but it would be nice if it were guarantied to mostly work. If it worked the way it was supposed to, I would use testing and probably wouldn't be complaining as much about the holdup.
As it is, because Sarge was only incrementaly newer than Woody in the first place (on some fronts, anyhow), it's going to be very much obsolete by the time it comes out. Maybe they should pull a "Netscape 5" here: ditch Sarge as it is, and start over with the cycle as of now. Then at least we'd get some of the things we weren't going to get in Sarge if it came out this year. On the other hand, maybe that isn't very practical.
Yes, I'm not suggesting they should have moved the stuff in non-free to free at this point. I just wish that the current changes didn't have to hold up Sarge.
After cooling down a bit, I suppose that is somewhat selfish of me, anyhow, as I don't have to deal with any of the "bureaucratic hassle" myself. I understand that others do, and I just wish some of those hassles weren't such a hassle.
No one is redefining words here, it's just that many words have more than one meaning. This is especially true when one is dealing with words which have been translated (often multiple times: e.g., from the Ancient Hebrew original to the Ancient Greek LXX to the Late Latin Vulgate to the English versions). Sometimes the word which has been used in English isn't the best fit for the word in the original Hebrew, Greek, or Aramaic (depending on the book of the Bible). Sometimes the original word has no exact English equivalent. Even the word in English can have multiple meanings.
Lastly, many of these books are over 3000 years old. Words often change their meanings over time, even in the same language. This has happened in English even over the last few hundred years - imagine how much it can have happened in Hebrew over 3000 years. You simply can't get the eaxct, literal meaning of every passge of scripture looking at English translations through twenty-first century glasses. Even lifelong scholars in the ancient tongues cannot always agree on exact meanings.
It is wholy rational, that if there is absolute truth to be found, that it will have to be revealed truth. Only an outside observer can see things from a fixed reference point, and only that observer could make it known to us. Anything a scientist finds is doomed to be theory, because he cannot have a fixed reference. Religion is the only possible outlet for revealed, absolute truth in the universe. Which religion is the only question.
Exactly. Because if GOD weren't there, then the Bible would be meaningless. The Bible is only there because GOD is there.
Well, they could stop holding up the release cycle over debates about "what does free mean." Some of the stuff in non-free is, IMHO, free/OSS. It just seems silly that some things which were considered free when Woody came out, all of a sudden aren't now. Are they going to go back and excise all of it from Woody? No. So leave it in Sarge, then.
Using stable has been part of my problem, but I've gotten the impresion that unstable and testing are far too often totally broken. I would rather be able to use a stable version that is a bit more up-to-date. I'm not clamoring for the latest GNOME version the day it comes out, but it would be nice to have it before it becomes obsolete. Woody released with a GNOME version which was already obsolete. At the time, they said something to the effect of "we want a quick turn-around for Sarge, because Woody took too long." Now Sarge is apt to take just as long.
As for why I don't use FreeBSD, it's mostly the issue of the core system. If, for instance, I want to use vim istead of nvi and gawk instead of mawk, that's fairly easy on any Linux system; but on BSD, if I understand rightly, you are stuck with whichever implementation that the project decided to use. Sure you can run the other version as well, but you can't subtitute it. I like the fact that Linux is more modular. I would have gone to Gentoo last year, but for being on 56k.
Don't get me wrong, all else being equal, I prefer free/OSS. I'm just not opposed to authors having an inherent right to not share their code if they don't want to. While I may not always agree with their decision, I don't think it's an evil one.
Not exactly. Everything in the Bible is literally true, but only in the sense and context it was meant to be understood in. That's a fine distinction, but an important one. For instance, it is certainly possible that there are gaps in the geneologies in Genesis, because "begat" may just mean "was ancestor to," rather than "was the father of." Either way, it's literally true, it's just a different sense of the word.
I really wish they would make up their minds. Are they trying to provide the most stable distro out there, or are they trying to be an unofficial organ of the FSF? Both perhaps? If this last is the case, then they ought to have been more balanced about this decision. Why push back the release cycle by a whole year just to make the GNU zealots happy? Why not wait until the next release for these change and bring Sarge out on time? At least the message there would have been that "we agree with FSF/GNU ideals in principal, but we have other goals which are as important as far as this release goes."
Instead, the message they are sending is that "Debian is for GNU zealots only. We don't give a damn about anyone else. If you have a need for any closed-source program or proprietary hardware, you are evil." I am sick of this attitude, frankly.
Don't get me wrong, I respect what RMS and FSF/GNU have done for the cause of free/OSS software, but I simply can't agree with the notion that closed-source is evil. I prefer Linus' approach which is essentially to say that we think free/OSS is a better idea, but that authors have a right to go closed-source if they want. Personally, I tend to think that the BSD license is often, maybe even generally, superior to the GPL. I use Linux because it ofers more choices than BSD, not because I dislike BSD or its license. I had thought that Debian was distancing itself from GNU, but I guess they've done a 180.
I have used Debian for over three years, because I like the package system. I am not a GNU zealot. Over the last two years, I have become increasingly annoyed with holdups in the release cycle, but promises of a quick Sarge release went a long way to apease me. This is the last straw. There are other distros (Gentoo for one) with as good or better package/ports systems, and that at least pretend to care about real-world users. Goodbye Debian.
P.S. Before anyone flames me, keep in mind that in part I am blowing off steam out of utter frustration. If I spoke overly harshly, I apologize to anyone I offended.
Mostly because traditon has ascribed the place the Mt. Ararat. The traditions could certainly be wrong, of course, but where else are you going to look? If it isn't there, you aren't going to find it anywhere unless you just happen to trip over it. In point of fact, that's probably true even if it is there. Most reputable scholars agree with the rectangular box theory. The boat-shaped indentations theory was heavily influenced by fanciful, and rather ridiculous, Mediaeval and early modern artwork.
I understand that this is a common sticking point, but it needn't be. This passage is clearly speaking in round measurements. Would you be any happier if it said 31 cubits? I doubt it. Some people would balk even if it said 31.4159 cubits. The Bible is not a textbook. It is full of rounded measurements and symbolic numbers.
One thing which often causes people problems is trying to read the Bible as a science or history textbook. Most devout Christians belive there are no errors in the Bible, but that doesn't mean we understand every passage rightly (not to mention that there are copyists' and translators' errors which have crept in over the last 3000+ years). We have to understand passages the way they were intended to be understood, which isn't always easy to determine. For instance, is the Bible really trying to say that pi is exactly 3, or just taking that as the closest possible approximation in whole-number terms?
You are right that most churches (including the Catholic church, to which I belong) can be incredibly political, and their leaders and members often act wrongly. I myself am quite scandalised by many things which occur in the Church today: the pederasty problem among priests and bishops, the litugical crisis, and especially the aparent unwillingness of the pope to lead and to deal with these matters instead of delegating them to a bearaucracy from Hell. I guess all one can do is take that to indicate the truth of the message that all men are fallen and imperfect.
Ultimately, you are right: you need to come to believe for yourself - not because the ark is there, not because the shroud is there, but because GOD is there. You have to feel GOD's presence. Nobody else can believe for you.
I myself know GOD exists. It's a feeling that I can't readily describe, but I just know it. Do I still have moments of doubt, yes, but I always come back.
I really enjoyed a book called "The Journey" by a Boston College proffessor named Peter Kreeft. It starts with Plato's cave and asking why to believe in any god at all, follows on to discuss pantheism vs. monotheism, then the GOD of Abraham specificaly, and finally to the Cross of Christ. It dicusses the issues involved rationally, but without getting bogged down in formal logic.
In the end, reason can only show you the door, though. Stepping through is a leap of faith.
Actually, much bigger than "modern day" Armenia. Modern Armenia is only that part of Armenia which Russia controlled until 1991, and is but a small fraction of ancient Armenia. Ancient Armenia included most of what is now eastern Turkey and some of northern Iran, northern Iraq, and western Azerbaijan. The center of ancient Armenia was the region around Lake Van, in Turkey.
It is concieveable that Noah and his family, aware of the significance of what had occured (the flood) would have preserved the ark intact, considering it a holy relic. However, as time passed, it would likely have been scavenged by the residents of the region, both for relics and for more mundane purposes.
As you say, we cannot be certain that this is theArarat. The passage in Genesis actually reads "the mountains of Ararat" or (in the Douay-Rheims translation, which I use) "the mountains of Armenia." Note the plurality. In other words, when Moses wrote these words (ca.1400 B.C.), "Ararat" applied to the whole region of classical Armenia Minor, which included much of the area around Lake Van in eastern Turkey (coincidently, also a leading candidate for the location of Eden).
We do have ancient testimony that the ark was still visible (IIRC, Flavius Josephus speaks of this sometime after A.D.70), but these were nearly all based on hearsay, and some of it tends to indicate that the ark was down in the foothills, not high on the mountain. Likewise, there was the monastery on Ararat which claimed to house several relics from the ark, but that has since been buried by earthquake. Much of the modern testimony seems to conflict on some points.
I really do hope they find it. Not because it will prove the flood happened - as you say, those who do not believe still would not - but because it is a holy relic, not only to Christians, but to Jews and Muslims as well, and ought to be preserved as best we can. On the other hand, given the 5000 or more years which may have transpired since the flood, I find it hard to believe it will be found intact. Ultimately, I have to believe that even if anything still remains of the ark (and it is, in fact, on our Ararat), it is almost certainly buried in the glacial ice.
In the end, it would seem fitting if the ark were no longer there, for whatever reason. The other arks are lost too: the Ark of the Covenant was sealed up in a cave, and its location was miraculously hidden (according to II Maccabees) and cannot be found; and the Virgin Mary (who Catholics, like myself, believe is the Ark of the New Covenant, since she bore Christ, who is GOD and Our Salvation, in her womb) was (according to Catholics and Eastern Orthodox) assumed into Heaven at the end of her life.
Hmm. Wouldn't that mean flashing the BIOS every single time you wanted to install an OS upgrade? Flashing the BIOS is a non-trivial matter, and can result in a totally dead machine if anything goes wrong. The last thing I want is to have to send the mobo back to the manufacturer just because the power spiked while I was installing a patch or service pack.
Secondly, wouldn't this prevent (or at least complicate) multiple booting? Wouldn't this make one totally dependent on the motherboard vendor's choice of OS software? That is, unless one is a decent hardware hacker, anyhow.
Not trying to flame you, perhaps I've misunderstood, but it seems to me that, as things are, this would represent a significant step backward, not forward.
Yeah, but they're not getting that $0.06/mo, Viacom is. So Viacom is getting (almost) everything they wanted and Dish loses $1/subscriber, not to mention the PPV movie credits or the lost subscriptions due to this whole mess. Still sounds like a Pyrrhic victory to me.
They're stuck giving back $1 and a movie to every one of their customers, all in an (apparently failed) effort to prevent a six-cent rate increase. Seems like a Pyrrhic victory at best for Dish.