But with open source, if the guy who's supposed to be in charge, the programmer or whatever doesn't take responsibility for his errors, then you can take over that responsibility. You can fix the errors, remove the unwanted features, make it right for yourself and others.
But if Microsoft refuses to fix an issue? Then you're screwed up.
Let me say that Gentoo is great. I've used Red Hat, Mandrake, and recently Suse. But now that I've tried Gentoo, I wouldn't go to any other distro, at least not for personal use.
Changed perhaps, but 'evolved' implies improvement.
Ah but although many people's idea of God is still that of an old, kind father-figure sitting in Heaven, a lot of people have differing views. Think only of Aristotle's First Cause, or the Hindu's Brahman principle. Although the hindus have individual "gods", they still believe in an absolute remote principle that I believe is closer to many philosophers' and mystics' view of God than the "old man". Think of many modern "new age" religions which see God as a mystical energy principle. Some philosophers and scientists see God as some kind of "pervasive energy field". Maybe God doesn't live in "heaven", maybe God exists within the hidden dimensions predicted by superstring theory, unseen and pervasive...
Or beyond that, look at modern pantheism, which believes that God is the entire Universe.
but I suspect that when you use the term 'god' you have a mental image much like a North Korean peasant has for Kim Jong, while I also conjure an image of much the same type of person but from quite a different standpoint.
No, you are wrong about me in this regard. In my post I used to term God to describe the judeo-christian view over the centuries, but when I use the word for myself, I think of a peculiar view I hold: that God is sum of the entire Multiverse at the end, where everything has been done, and tried. I'm not expanding further on this here, this is drifting further away from the original subject.
It has always been my understanding that Christianity developed around 1900 years ago with the spreading of the Christian faith by Paul and Peter during the early 60-100 CE.
Christianity didn't just "appear", it was, at first, a Jewish sect, and its early members and founders (Jesus, Peter, Paul) were jews. Paul started spreading it to the Gentiles, but the original church in Jerusalem led by James (Jesus' brother) was often at odds with the movement of Paul. So I look at Christianity and see an offshoot of judaism, and that goes back about 2000 years or so earlier. Possibly more.
Things all changed when the Roman Empire collapsed and anarchy ruled what was left of the known world, and the people turned to the "church" for leadership and created a vast power structure and law structure for ruling and controlling the known world.
You got it wrong, as others pointed out. The estabkishment of a more official church started earlier than that, around the time when the Roman emperors converted. They used the old pagan ways to control people, and their influence on christianism helped the early church acquire more structure. By the time the western roman empire collapsed, the church was already established in Rome and was able to retain control of a sizable portion of land, along with a strong influence with the surrounding leaders. And then we get Clovis, and the (germanic) Holy Roman Empire where it consolidated that power over western Europe.
The very early Christian church had a very powerful leader, Mary Magdalin, who without her help, Christianity would most likely not exist today. But she fell the victim of the current belief of the time that women should not be allowed to be equals as men, and was summerily deified as a "whore to pity and forgive" for centuries.
She may have had some importance, but the history I've studied tends to attribute a lot more influence to James and Paul. Paul won, in the end, because the Jerusalem church was mostly destroyed by Trajan when he re-conquered Palestine in 70CE. And Pual was, according to many sources, a mysoginistic bachelor, and it was his influence that removed women from power in the church. Before him, women were seen as almost equal to men in the view of the early Christians, and women could be priests, deacons, etc.
Christianity itself has evolved several times over the 2000 years of its existiance
Yes, it has. But I fear the Catholic Church hasn't changed much these last 600 years. Still, I believe the attachment to a 4000 years old tradition is weighing Christianity down and preventing a renewal of the faith.
In that light I'll reiterate my point though, given that there is a God he is what he is, not what humans wish to concieve him to be.
Maybe. I do believe in something I call God, but it is different than what most people (and especially christians) would call by the same word, yet it has the same basic characteristics that are essential to it. Still, I do agree, and one of my most basic beliefs on the subject is that the reality is necessarily different from the idea we have of that reality.
The problem, as often, is history. The concept and idea of God has evolved over the ages, and although religions try to preserve traditions and attempt to justify themselves by pointing back in time by saying that they've existed for a long time, the truth is quite different. The God of Genesis is not the God of Exodus, or of Kings, even less that of Isaiah.
But through that period, "Eli" was a tribal God who was worshipped by the Israelites ("I am the God of your fathers").Moise didn't claim that the Egyptian Gods didn't exist, he simply claimed that his God was more powerful, and that his people should only worship that single God. He used the stories (myths) they held from their ancestors before being enslaved to help free them. He was a tribal God. Vengeful and jealous, as he says in the Bible. Not evil, simply a different vision of God than we have today. Why? Because we create the image of God that we use. Not to say that there is no such thing as "God", but I say that what we hold, what we call God in various eras is really a reflection of ourselves, of what we believe could exist that is greater than us. A "father figure", in a way, and also a protector.
Now, from the time of the Exile at Babylon, things changed for the Hebrews. Their contact with Zoroastroism changed their vision of their God and that's when they turned a bit more philosophical. Further penetration from Greek hellenistic thoughts (Plato and others) furthered the drifting toward a new kind of monotheism: before, they believed that their God was the only one for themselves, but now they started to believe it was the only one there was, that other tribal Gods were false ones.
Then we get Jesus, and Paul, and the influence of Mithraism, but I don't want to get into this too far 'cause this post is going to be long enough as it is and I'm not sure getting into a deep religious debate on Slashdot is a good idea, but Jesus and his followers brought a different perspective, a universalism that the Jews never had: a single God for all.
Until I'd say Aquinas this fusion of Jewish monotheism and hellenistic philosophy progressed, and then it pretty much congealed, as far as the catholic church is concerned, at least. Other currents continued and are still progressing: pantheism, new age philosophies, people are still creating new, more progressive images and ideas of God.
The point is this: the God of Abraham is NOT the same God as the one we see today. The image has evolved, and changed. Although the ideas answer the same basic needs in humans, the need has evolved, as has the response to that need. The problem of entranched religions is that their traditions and history at one point prevents them from progressing in such a way. They get stuck, and Christianity (as a Jewish sect) is the worst of the lot, as its history dates more or less 4000 years into the past. Some traditions simply cannot be reconciled with modern viewpoints about the idea of God. You can only stretch it so far.
So I'm, not convinced that the idea of perfection and love that we attribute to our modern idea of God is a device of the church. I think it's more of an evolution of the modern mind.
Luckily, I have karma to burn lately. Hope you liked my little dissertation.
The available option is to get 128MB or 64MB on the Radeon 9700.
Apple also regularly offer trade-in or CTO options on the higher-end PowerMacs - you can get a Radeon 9800 Pro istead of the stock 9600 Pro on the G5 for example.
I don't know about the US, but here in Canada the new models have been accompanied by a significant price drop. The new 17" PB G4 is about the same price the old 15" SD model was.
I guess it's too late to get modded up, but what the heck.
New Hampshire, 2004. Brains are now officially forbidden in New Hampshire, said House spokesman Turner. The recent court decision forbidding recording equipment from capturing chat logs has essentially extended the ban on everything, from pen and paper to modern human brains. "This shouldn't cause too much problem, only a few people still had brains in working order within the state, anyway", said spokesman Turner. "Although you can still possess brains, you are forbidden to use them for recording any kind of information, so complete lobotomy is probably the only option unless you can produce a medical certificate to the effect that your brain is incapable (permanently or temporarily) of recording memories." The main character from Memento was recently seen in the state, and the state governor has announced plans to convert the state into a giant hospital for taking care of alzheimer patients - if he can remember giving the order.
How would anyone know if the tracks that -don't- get played on the radio are worth a fuck unless they went out of their way to find them (most conveniantly and legally, in the form of an album)?
That's how I use P2P. I hear stuff I like (from friends, radio, etc), and I go looking for additional material, or albums by the artist. If I like it, I buy the album. If not, I keep that single track or two I like (note that I live in Canada where P2P sharing is legal and the ITMS is not yet available). The best world would be one where I could freely get tunes I want to sample for a short time, and pay a small price to keep those I like.
That way, you can get those interesting singles, buy albums that are worth it, and stay away from those that aren't worth the money. Ideally, of course, most of the cash I pay should go to the artist, and not the recording company.
There's already plenty of ways to bring those machines online legally.
They're called Linux distributions. there's no need to pay more Microsoft tax. Imagine, now you don't need to pay the tax once, you must pay it twice or three times!
There are a few albums I don't listen to much because there's only one or two good tracks on them. It's not the majority of my collection. Most are singles that I heard on radio, and decided o buy the album. Often, this works fine, and I get something good. But sometimes, the single was good but the rest wasn't as interesting. It's never happened to you? Then you must like pretty much anything, have no taste in music, OR have extraordinary taste and recognize good artists from a single song!
As for the good albums, I also prefer (by far) to listen to them as a whole.
Will they ever learn? Having to buy whole albums with only a single good tune was one of the major reasons why online music became so popular, and why P2P is so useful. Downloading single songs is great, costs very little yet delivers exactly what we want.
And now they're going to "bundle" it up again? Force us to get more than what we want with the package, and obviously pay for it?
I was quite surprised to read all those posts here about the supermarket cards. Up here in Canada (Quebec more precisely), apart from some exceptions (Air Miles and HBC/Club Z programs which are not compulsory but a voluntary program) there is none of that crap. People never pay with checks anyway, we mostly use debit cards.
Certain stores have store credit cards (Sears, TheBay, etc) but once again it's your choice to get one of those and use it.
I think that if they started requiring cards for some reason or another, people would just refuse and go to the next store/supermarket and buy what they want there.
Isn't that slow? The Pioneer DVR-106 I'm currently using does a full 4.5GB in less than 20min at 4x, and the 107 at 8x does it in about 10min. 45min is almost 5 times longer for only double the capacity. That's somewhat disappointing.
OTOH I suspect it could burn regular single-layers DVDs at a better speed. Might be worth it for those who need a lot of them or can wait, but it won't be for me at first. Unless there's an error in that number...
Go to Applications | Utilities, open Directory Access, authenticate, check the "Appletalk" box, close the window and wait 30 seconds. That's because appletalk browsing was disabled by default. The 10.3.3 update simply enables this by default again.
Slashdot Mirror
But with open source, if the guy who's supposed to be in charge, the programmer or whatever doesn't take responsibility for his errors, then you can take over that responsibility. You can fix the errors, remove the unwanted features, make it right for yourself and others.
But if Microsoft refuses to fix an issue? Then you're screwed up.
After Y2K
Let me say that Gentoo is great. I've used Red Hat, Mandrake, and recently Suse. But now that I've tried Gentoo, I wouldn't go to any other distro, at least not for personal use.
Ah but although many people's idea of God is still that of an old, kind father-figure sitting in Heaven, a lot of people have differing views. Think only of Aristotle's First Cause, or the Hindu's Brahman principle. Although the hindus have individual "gods", they still believe in an absolute remote principle that I believe is closer to many philosophers' and mystics' view of God than the "old man". Think of many modern "new age" religions which see God as a mystical energy principle. Some philosophers and scientists see God as some kind of "pervasive energy field". Maybe God doesn't live in "heaven", maybe God exists within the hidden dimensions predicted by superstring theory, unseen and pervasive...
Or beyond that, look at modern pantheism, which believes that God is the entire Universe.
No, you are wrong about me in this regard. In my post I used to term God to describe the judeo-christian view over the centuries, but when I use the word for myself, I think of a peculiar view I hold: that God is sum of the entire Multiverse at the end, where everything has been done, and tried. I'm not expanding further on this here, this is drifting further away from the original subject.
Teaching by example?
Karen Armstrong's "A History of God" is a good one.
I've always liked what Gerald Messadie wrote, but that's in french so it might not be an option for you.
But which is the God you worship? The "true" one, or the one you believe in, of which you hold the idea in your mind?
Christianity didn't just "appear", it was, at first, a Jewish sect, and its early members and founders (Jesus, Peter, Paul) were jews. Paul started spreading it to the Gentiles, but the original church in Jerusalem led by James (Jesus' brother) was often at odds with the movement of Paul. So I look at Christianity and see an offshoot of judaism, and that goes back about 2000 years or so earlier. Possibly more.
You got it wrong, as others pointed out. The estabkishment of a more official church started earlier than that, around the time when the Roman emperors converted. They used the old pagan ways to control people, and their influence on christianism helped the early church acquire more structure. By the time the western roman empire collapsed, the church was already established in Rome and was able to retain control of a sizable portion of land, along with a strong influence with the surrounding leaders. And then we get Clovis, and the (germanic) Holy Roman Empire where it consolidated that power over western Europe.
She may have had some importance, but the history I've studied tends to attribute a lot more influence to James and Paul. Paul won, in the end, because the Jerusalem church was mostly destroyed by Trajan when he re-conquered Palestine in 70CE. And Pual was, according to many sources, a mysoginistic bachelor, and it was his influence that removed women from power in the church. Before him, women were seen as almost equal to men in the view of the early Christians, and women could be priests, deacons, etc.
Yes, it has. But I fear the Catholic Church hasn't changed much these last 600 years. Still, I believe the attachment to a 4000 years old tradition is weighing Christianity down and preventing a renewal of the faith.
Maybe. I do believe in something I call God, but it is different than what most people (and especially christians) would call by the same word, yet it has the same basic characteristics that are essential to it. Still, I do agree, and one of my most basic beliefs on the subject is that the reality is necessarily different from the idea we have of that reality.
The problem, as often, is history. The concept and idea of God has evolved over the ages, and although religions try to preserve traditions and attempt to justify themselves by pointing back in time by saying that they've existed for a long time, the truth is quite different. The God of Genesis is not the God of Exodus, or of Kings, even less that of Isaiah.
But through that period, "Eli" was a tribal God who was worshipped by the Israelites ("I am the God of your fathers").Moise didn't claim that the Egyptian Gods didn't exist, he simply claimed that his God was more powerful, and that his people should only worship that single God. He used the stories (myths) they held from their ancestors before being enslaved to help free them. He was a tribal God. Vengeful and jealous, as he says in the Bible. Not evil, simply a different vision of God than we have today. Why? Because we create the image of God that we use. Not to say that there is no such thing as "God", but I say that what we hold, what we call God in various eras is really a reflection of ourselves, of what we believe could exist that is greater than us. A "father figure", in a way, and also a protector.
Now, from the time of the Exile at Babylon, things changed for the Hebrews. Their contact with Zoroastroism changed their vision of their God and that's when they turned a bit more philosophical. Further penetration from Greek hellenistic thoughts (Plato and others) furthered the drifting toward a new kind of monotheism: before, they believed that their God was the only one for themselves, but now they started to believe it was the only one there was, that other tribal Gods were false ones.
Then we get Jesus, and Paul, and the influence of Mithraism, but I don't want to get into this too far 'cause this post is going to be long enough as it is and I'm not sure getting into a deep religious debate on Slashdot is a good idea, but Jesus and his followers brought a different perspective, a universalism that the Jews never had: a single God for all.
Until I'd say Aquinas this fusion of Jewish monotheism and hellenistic philosophy progressed, and then it pretty much congealed, as far as the catholic church is concerned, at least. Other currents continued and are still progressing: pantheism, new age philosophies, people are still creating new, more progressive images and ideas of God.
The point is this: the God of Abraham is NOT the same God as the one we see today. The image has evolved, and changed. Although the ideas answer the same basic needs in humans, the need has evolved, as has the response to that need. The problem of entranched religions is that their traditions and history at one point prevents them from progressing in such a way. They get stuck, and Christianity (as a Jewish sect) is the worst of the lot, as its history dates more or less 4000 years into the past. Some traditions simply cannot be reconciled with modern viewpoints about the idea of God. You can only stretch it so far.
So I'm, not convinced that the idea of perfection and love that we attribute to our modern idea of God is a device of the church. I think it's more of an evolution of the modern mind.
Luckily, I have karma to burn lately. Hope you liked my little dissertation.
Don't give them ideas! Next thing we know some corporation will try to charge for air and sunlight (cue Mr Burns "excellent" and hand-pose).
The available option is to get 128MB or 64MB on the Radeon 9700.
Apple also regularly offer trade-in or CTO options on the higher-end PowerMacs - you can get a Radeon 9800 Pro istead of the stock 9600 Pro on the G5 for example.
The new Powerbooks DO come with a 9700 (for the 15 and 17" models).
I'd say to RTFA, but what can I expect these days on slashdot.
I don't know about the US, but here in Canada the new models have been accompanied by a significant price drop. The new 17" PB G4 is about the same price the old 15" SD model was.
Perhaps being a corporation is the cause, and getting lots of lawyers and losing their sense of humor is the consequence?
I guess it's too late to get modded up, but what the heck.
New Hampshire, 2004. Brains are now officially forbidden in New Hampshire, said House spokesman Turner. The recent court decision forbidding recording equipment from capturing chat logs has essentially extended the ban on everything, from pen and paper to modern human brains. "This shouldn't cause too much problem, only a few people still had brains in working order within the state, anyway", said spokesman Turner. "Although you can still possess brains, you are forbidden to use them for recording any kind of information, so complete lobotomy is probably the only option unless you can produce a medical certificate to the effect that your brain is incapable (permanently or temporarily) of recording memories." The main character from Memento was recently seen in the state, and the state governor has announced plans to convert the state into a giant hospital for taking care of alzheimer patients - if he can remember giving the order.
That's how I use P2P. I hear stuff I like (from friends, radio, etc), and I go looking for additional material, or albums by the artist. If I like it, I buy the album. If not, I keep that single track or two I like (note that I live in Canada where P2P sharing is legal and the ITMS is not yet available). The best world would be one where I could freely get tunes I want to sample for a short time, and pay a small price to keep those I like.
That way, you can get those interesting singles, buy albums that are worth it, and stay away from those that aren't worth the money. Ideally, of course, most of the cash I pay should go to the artist, and not the recording company.
There's already plenty of ways to bring those machines online legally.
They're called Linux distributions. there's no need to pay more Microsoft tax. Imagine, now you don't need to pay the tax once, you must pay it twice or three times!
There are a few albums I don't listen to much because there's only one or two good tracks on them. It's not the majority of my collection. Most are singles that I heard on radio, and decided o buy the album. Often, this works fine, and I get something good. But sometimes, the single was good but the rest wasn't as interesting. It's never happened to you? Then you must like pretty much anything, have no taste in music, OR have extraordinary taste and recognize good artists from a single song!
As for the good albums, I also prefer (by far) to listen to them as a whole.
Will they ever learn? Having to buy whole albums with only a single good tune was one of the major reasons why online music became so popular, and why P2P is so useful. Downloading single songs is great, costs very little yet delivers exactly what we want.
And now they're going to "bundle" it up again? Force us to get more than what we want with the package, and obviously pay for it?
They'll never learn...
WTF? Offtopic? That's Moogles say in FF9, it's quite on-topic and funny actually!
Could this actually be a prelude to including some form of adware in Windows? That would certainly fill that goal he has set for Windows users...
I was quite surprised to read all those posts here about the supermarket cards. Up here in Canada (Quebec more precisely), apart from some exceptions (Air Miles and HBC/Club Z programs which are not compulsory but a voluntary program) there is none of that crap. People never pay with checks anyway, we mostly use debit cards.
Certain stores have store credit cards (Sears, TheBay, etc) but once again it's your choice to get one of those and use it.
I think that if they started requiring cards for some reason or another, people would just refuse and go to the next store/supermarket and buy what they want there.
Isn't that slow? The Pioneer DVR-106 I'm currently using does a full 4.5GB in less than 20min at 4x, and the 107 at 8x does it in about 10min. 45min is almost 5 times longer for only double the capacity. That's somewhat disappointing.
OTOH I suspect it could burn regular single-layers DVDs at a better speed. Might be worth it for those who need a lot of them or can wait, but it won't be for me at first. Unless there's an error in that number...
It was easy to solve in 10.3:
Go to Applications | Utilities, open Directory Access, authenticate, check the "Appletalk" box, close the window and wait 30 seconds. That's because appletalk browsing was disabled by default. The 10.3.3 update simply enables this by default again.