> Teachers need to earn that respect. > I have rarely seen a respectable teacher > not get the respect they deserve.
Wrong. Teachers should get respect by _default_ because they are elder to the kids and because are partially responsible for them (as far as educating them is concerned). Teachers should only lose respect when they provably do something wrong to the kids (like abuse, or your example of a teacher calling red headed children dumb).
Children are NOT grown adults, they are being _trained_ to be good adults.
The teacher should not _have_ to be a educational version of Patch Adams (or even be exceptional) to be respected... just a human being doing his job.
> Problem is not the patents by themself, but the lack of interest > of the creators of "new stuff" to patent something that is tought to be obvious.
The problem *is* the patents and the patents system.
The answer to superfluous patents is not yet more superfluous patents, this time awarded to the 'small guys'. God knows that even a small inventor can be as selfish and conniving as a big corporation. The love of money affects most people.
The answer is not granting patents to obvious inventions. Till the patent system is reformed, the only straight way out seems to recognize which companies and individuals are abusing it.
I had enough of such worthless patents. Whenever one thinks of a simple obvious idea, one is forced to think "is this patented already?". What a waste of time!
Here's an idea: - a independent patent-rating site
(cross-linked to various gov patent sites worldwide) - free membership - members rate patents - not all patents to be rated. reasons to rate a patent could be outragiousness, and history of patent abuse by patent holder - members belong to various 'groups' which have their own
(enforceable) philosophy on admitting members, and rating patents - patents ranked by 'patent worthiness rating' (as ranked by group you subscribe to) - corporations ranked by 'patent abuse ranking' (as ranked by group you subscribe to) - members to a 'default group' that (hopefully) would rate
the RSA 'PK crypto' patent valid, but the Eolas 'ActiveX' one invalid. - maybe a federation of such sites internationally
I'd LOVE to see companies I buy things from, 'utilize' the patent system.
> banning kids from pictures destroys what little free artistry > we have, in the name of what? Ending child molestation? > That's the biggest joke of a justification I've ever heard
You have no solution on offer, only effeminate hand-wringing about damage to a wispy utopia where children presumably pop out of the womb fully grown - ready to partake of any and all of the garbage the world has on offer.
There's a reason children are called "children", not "adults". They are to be trained. Not traumatized.
I hope you personally aren't involved in raising any children - it would be all the better for them. I thank God that the creation of laws of your country are not in your hands.
Re:Remember Mr Perens
on
Open Maps?
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Basically Bruce seems to have bought a copy of the dataset which was under a less-restrictive license (i.e. no license - public domain). He then re-issued it under the GPL, apparently with no changes/additions, other than making it available in a different media (CD-ROM).
Somewhere in this story, I found a post with a a link that explains this is a software problem: Notice that they're quick to point out the problem isn't likely a hardware issue. There should be plenty of bandwidth on the AGP bus, but graphics chip makers don't seem to have written their drivers to handle transfers from AGP cards to main memory properly.
Then they run some tests and conclude: That means even if you can render high-quality images at 30 frames per second, you won't be able to get them out of the graphics card at anything near that rate.
> AGP does a lot better taking data in, but it's still pretty > costly sending data back to the CPU. I've heard that mentioned a few times, is it true?
From the AGP 3.0 spec: The AGP3.0 interface is designed to support several platform generations based upon 0.25m (and smaller) component silicon technology, spanning several technology generations. As with AGP2.0, the physical interface is designed to operate at a common clock frequency of 66 MHz. Its source synchronous data strobe operation, however, is octal-clocked and transfers eight double words (Dwords) of data within the span of time consumed by a single common clock cycle. The AGP3.0 data bus provides a peak theoretical bandwidth of 2.1 GB/s (32 bits per transfer at 533 MT/s). Both the common clock and source synchronous data strobe operation and protocols are similar to those employed by AGP2.0.11
Later on Page 96: Traditional AGP devices can demand up to the maximum bandwidth available over the AGP ports. However, the AGP system does not guarantee to deliver the requested bandwidth, nor does it guarantee transfers will take place within some clearly specified request/transfer latency time.... This is done by the system guaranteeing to process a specified number (N) of read or write transactions of a specified size (Y) during each isochronous time period (T). An AGP3.0 device can divide this bandwidth between read and write traffic as appropriate. Further, the system transfers isochronous data over the AGP3.0 Port within a specified latency (L). (emphasis mine)
I'm no expert, just asking if the "low upsream bandwidth" assumption is true. If it is, there could still some applications (eg: simple data compression) that could use it. Also, maybe output from VGA/DVI ports could be tapped.
I wish I knew - I could only succeed in keeping it from hitting the HDD for a few minutes.
I eventually gave up and will be taking another track: the USB key based distros. These setup RAM drives with a nice side-effect - they don't touch the HDD. So if somehow the HDD is still hit, one can simply unmount it without compromising system stability. (Or a program could mount it read-only, and simply remount it in read/write mode when it anticipates a large amount of data)
I wish there was some command that would tell what was writing to disk.... or reading from disk.
Hmmm... maybe here's what you can do: remount with access time enabled. Then when you see the HDD being hit, run find with the approrpriate flags to see which files (-ctime, -atime... not sure???) were accessed in the last few minutes. stat gives similar information.
Also, maybe the 'lsof' command? ("list open files") could show programs keeping files open. And maybe (blue-sky) an strace -follow of 'init' and grepping for the 'sync' system call would work:
strace -p1 -f
> Some of the damed up areas took more than 1.5 years. ? And I should be worried, why? If Noah and his family were in the ark 1 year as it was.
> After all any god who can put to gether a universe should > be able to convice people of something resembiling the > same story. God is not going to drag you kicking and screaming into heaven.
> If god was behind this, I expect the story lines to be a bit more consistant. Um, God is not behind this. Human memory is. Human memory is inconsistent.
> So you have a few hundreded vague flood stories out of the > hundreds of thousands of cultural groups and very few > of them agree Correct - in fact all of them disagree in many points, but agree in crucial points with the one accurate account (the Bible).
> many of thouse groups live in a desert (or low water areas) Um, you wouldn't know, would you? Were you there?
You can believe your own wishful thinking. Or you can search for God diligently and you will find him. The choice is yours. I hope you do not choose the fatal one of blind disbelief.
Another distro I have seen mentioned - flonix - has done from a non-commercial to a commercial one: http://www.flonix.com - with it's USB key based solution not available freely.
The virtual memory subsystem is probably one of the culprits. It seems to love checking on the disk every few seconds.
I once tried building a Linux PVR (will try again sometime) and wanted the HDD to sleep most of the day and wake up on command (for example, for timed VCR-style TV recordings. I experienced the frustrations you did:) -- I started by turning off all the daemons that could possibly hit disk. IIRC, I eventually got the time between the disk wakeups to be a few minutes when I turned off swap (swapon/swapoff commands). However, the computer (a Via passively cooled MB with brick power supply) would _still_ hit disk after a few minutes.
I eventually gave up and bought a USB flash memory key (the BIOS lets the computer boot off a USB disk). I hope to try that with one of the distros mentioned in this thread. Got some nice tips from it: - mount with noatime option (UNIX acceess times not updated) - mount/var/ as a ram disk (important since flash has a limit on the number of writes per sector)
> Well, remember that "god's word" has to be interpreted > by the prophets as well (which kind of makes it hearsay, doesn't it?)...
Yes. God's word was _recorded_ by the prophets. Which brings me to the point I made: All communication involves interpretation, and serious people can do a pretty good job at both. Regarding your comment about "hearsay", scripture itself has a very objective test of it's own validity when it was being recorded: Deut. 18:22 When a prophet speaketh in the name of the LORD, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which the LORD hath not spoken, but the prophet hath spoken it presumptuously: thou shalt not be afraid of him. The false prophets were also killed. This is obviously an effective way to weed out false prophets.
> The US Constitution is even in its original language, and without > any extraneous mythology and we can't agree on what it meant. More handwaving. If most people truly couldn't agree what the US constitution _meant_, there would be _much_ more _anarchy_ than there is now. But know this: the constitution is an imperfect instrument. It was written by several selfish and imperfect people. It is sometimes contradictory in letter and spirit. It is sometimes in need of constitutional amendments to *improve* it. *And*, on top of that people sometimes dispute what the words actually mean (but that's why the courts exist).
For instance, despite pre-constitutional documents proclaiming how obvious it is that "all men are created equal", certain phrases in them suggest the superiority of the white race. The original founding fathers themselves condoned slavery. The constitution itself had phrases that condone slavery by talking about handling of escaped slaves (give them back). That's why the republican party was founded (to abolish slavery by amending the constitution if necessary).
> How is the bible (and a translation, noless) be any different?
The Bible is perfect.
The Bible is explicitly not subject to amendment. It stands or falls on its own, according to what the original stated.
The Bible is well translated and (repeating this is getting tiresome) there is a huge corpus of work to support the validity of the translation. Look - if you disagree with this point anymore; you having studied the Bible yourself, why don't you just try to prove your point by stating _your opinion_ of a specific invalidly translated scripture (_not_ a secondhand "Googled" opinion - your opinion).
It makes prophecy of the world around you, far in advance of the actual happenings. When the predicted events happen, God expects you to believe what he said (Repeat: he's asking you to use your brain). For eg: (a) when science corroborates what the Bible says, or when (b) prophecy is corrobarated by events in human history (like the current happenings in the middle east).
> do you believe that the world is only 10,000 years old? It is about 6000 years old. That is the date I spoke earlier about that I had trouble honestly accepting. And the evidence (that I think God gave me) from genetics is summarized here. (Note, everything cited is mainstream peer-review, non-Christian, published scientific work.) The correlation between the work cited in the NYTimes article and Genesis Chapter 10 (the "Table of Nations") amazed me in particular.
Dude, yup, yup yup, when you translate, you interpret and the interpretation is at a different level when it's between languages. So what? English is not my native tongue either. And as for the time span, it's funny how God (yes, I am a believer) chose such a language (Greek) to effectively record the New Testament Bible that had a huge body of literature already exant and surviving that made translation *very* possible from Koine Greek (the variant of Greek used in the New Testament) to any other language. Remember Greek was the English of the day. And it can be very effectively translated today due to the *huge* body of similarly translated non-Biblical literature exant -- remember modern Western society (of which I am not a member anyway) is essentially *based* on these non-Biblical Greek literature.
For instance, have you heard of the phrase "leave no stone unturned"? It's origin is ancient Greek and it is effectively used here to disambiguate the finer meaning of a Bible verses that uses the same word.
> First, (and I repeat) you need to interpret to translate. I hear ya. And I repeat, you need to interpret to _communicate_. And translators can do a really good job with Biblical translations, thanks to the huge body of work available.
> Second, times change. Colloquialisms, culture, morality, ethics, even humor: Some things change, some things remain the same. To wave your hands in the air and say "everything changes, nothing can be understood" is to hide your head in the sand and ignore the obvious. You really don't have an excuse to not understand God's word.
> differential between the Greek, Aramaic, various other languages and English It's fairly obvious that you have not studied the Bible with anything close to the diligence and intellectual effort the Bible translators did. Its immature and churlish of you to grossly underestimate their work and insist that due to _your_ ignorance, _they_ couldn't possibly have done a thorough job at translation. Or mutter "blind faith"... "conflict of interest" to conveniently brush their work aside.
> I respectfully view your post as typical Judeo-Christian intolerance > for another viewpoint having something to do with your beliefs. Hey, I am Christian (not Judeo-Christian), and I am not intolerant either (I used to be Hindu). I'm just pointing out the facts. What you choose to do - whether you decide to honestly inspect them, or decide to live in a fatal ignorance, is your choice.
> Actually, this has to do with one of the reasons why > the bible is an interpretation -- it was translated by true believers. So? It was (mostly) translated by true believers. Remember some tenets of Christianity are: "don't mess with God's word" and "be honest". Are you telling me tens of thousands of Bible copyists and translators would somehow disobey these tenets just so your distorted worldview hangs together? -- that's laugable! You need a reality check (and I hope you got it)
> How can one be objective about a document when they already have an accepting, > absolutely non-critical, belief in the subjective, meta-physical ideals in the > bible -- a document that their entire belief system is created around? There you go again, implying that you use your brain, but the "believers" don't. More arrogance, born out of ignorance and quite possibly some silly pride. God gave _me_ a brain too, and he meant me to use it. Since I used to be a evolutionist humanist (quite like you it seems) and I held the Bible in not a little contempt, when I finally decided to seriously seek God, and ended up believing into Jesus Christ, I had trouble accepting parts of the Bible. So I asked God for help. And he did: apparently serendipitiously, I found peer-reviewed scientific papers in mainstream secular scientific journals that matched what the Bible said.
> I don't think that it can be done. So why are we even discussing this? It's pointless. I urge you for your own sake to seek God. If you're interested, contact me either in this thread or by email and I can point you to what I found.
> Oh, my mistake, I must have read the poorly translated bible. Your real mistake is assuming you know more that you do. Reading books filled with dubious (and contradictory) theories, poor scholarship and wishful thinking don't make one wise.
> If you were to take the Egyptean religion (the one used by the people, > not the leaders) as of about 100 bc and mix it with Judaism, > the results would be very much like pre-Roman Christianity. And I must believe, O hallowed authority, because... ?
> Thats very clear to me and there are many of examples in the bible > where Jesus introduced concepts that were common in the nearby areas > that were not common in Judaism. The best example might be dealing > with sick people. ? ? Miracles were not very common then, neither are they common now.
> As far as other ledgedens. Not all groups in the world do remember > a global flood however all groups that live near major rivers > do have flood stories. Most of which have been corrupted by > well meaning missionaries. Um, global floods, as in floods that kill all mankind? Like the more than 2500 year Vedic story from Hinduism. I used to be Hindu. Let me tell you my people are no pushovers, and certainly not given to rewriting all copies of (what they see as) scriptures on the say so of a few missionaries. And then, there are the other people groups listed here?
> Also the bird release thing is nonsense considering one > was a 6 day flood vs a 40 day flood. If you want to check > out what happens when ground is underwater for 40 days, look > into the Mississippi flood of 93 since some areas were underwater > for that length of time.
What! 40 days?!!? It lasted more than a year -- the most precisely recorded year of the Bible. It took months for the waters to recede as written in the Bible. Genesis chapter 7 says the rain started on the "second month, in the seventeenth day of the month". Genesis chapter 8 shows the waters finally receding: "And the waters were going and falling until the tenth month. In the tenth month, in the first of the month, the tops of the mountains were seen" (the mountains being pretty high - the Ararat ranges) (emphasis added).
Does this sound like a global flood or not?
Also, the order of release of birds makes sense. A dove is a clean bird, not a carrion feeder like the raven that is happy to feed on floating carcasses. Once the dove found a place to rest, Noah was sure it is safe for him to go out.
From the patent application for "Time based hardware button for application launch ": Alternative application functions are launched based on the length of time an application button is pressed.
When the ALT+TAB key combination is held down on many operating systems, different running applications are cycled through and launched depending on the length of the keypress - same idea. My desktop keyboard at home has a single button that incorporates the alt+tab combo in a single key. That's why they seem to want to limit it to "Palm-size" and "resource limited" PC.
Looks like MS is getting into the habit of trivially patenting the patent game with a vengeance now.
Getting back to my question, you said: "Genesis is a pretty clear derivative of Gilgamesh rather than an independent account" I asked what your evidence was. You haven't provided it.
> but one of them does agree with many of the stories > floating around that part of the world at that time > including the stories told at the time of Gilgamesh. They don't agree, but there are many similarities between the two epics. The obvious thing to point out is that the Bible Genesis has *much* more documentary evidence (thousands of manuscripts or framents, numerous more indirect quotations) than Gilgamesh does (12 stone tablets) and a much more consistent and believable story (eg: Gilgamesh's version of Noah and his wife are physically immortal(!) and still alive, Gilgamesh's Noah uses a illogical order of releasing birds from the ark)
> Its also clear as you trace religions that they all > tend to borrow idea from each other as different > groups start having more contact with people with > other religions assuming wars don't break out. Yes, many religious movements either borrow or "make stuff up" or refer to traditions from other faiths. For eg: the modern Pagan/Wicca movement (which tends to just makes things up), Islam which refers to the crucifixion (but whose Koran contradicts the word and the nature of God in the Bible), Sikhism, which refers to Hindu concepts. etc.
Not so Biblical Christianity and the religion of the Jews, which have preserved God's word. How is it Christians refused to assimilate, and instead preferred to be slaughtered in Roman times. How is it that the 2000+ year old Jewish dead sea scrolls match the modern day Jewish texts?
Have a read of this document comparing Noah's Flood and the Gilgamesh Epic. Especially the chart toward the end: "All people groups remember a global Flood" -- the Indians, Aztecs and the Cherokee have similar legends.
I was shaving this morning, and took a close look at the ingredients of my shaving gel -- "Nivea for men" "Sensitive" shaving gel -- "Chamomile & Vitamin enriched". However "Methylparaben" and "Propylparaben" are listed as ingredients.
I thought back to the studies: parabens found in tumour tissue... shaving nicks getting the chemicals past the skin barrier. Granted, men don't "wear" shaving gel through the day like women do with deodorants. But this gel is going in the bin.
When I was young, a person suggested using soap instead a shaving gel, and I thought "bah". Looks like he was right.
"I can pick up the basics of most languages within a day or two, thank you very much. That's not the point. If you're coding something that's a throw-away, one-time tool, fine. BUT... if you're coding something for the future, and you use a language or tool that's not standard for the company or industry, then you're just causing more headache."
Slashdot Mirror
So who was right, how many Slashdotters are also Java users?
Slashdot editors, in future please accompany such articles with a Slashdot poll.
> > Kids need to respect thier teachers.
> Teachers need to earn that respect.
> I have rarely seen a respectable teacher
> not get the respect they deserve.
Wrong. Teachers should get respect by _default_ because they are elder to the kids and because are partially responsible for them (as far as educating them is concerned). Teachers should only lose respect when they provably do something wrong to the kids (like abuse, or your example of a teacher calling red headed children dumb).
Children are NOT grown adults, they are being _trained_ to be good adults.
The teacher should not _have_ to be a educational version of Patch Adams (or even be exceptional) to be respected... just a human being doing his job.
> Problem is not the patents by themself, but the lack of interest
> of the creators of "new stuff" to patent something that is tought to be obvious.
The problem *is* the patents and the patents system.
The answer to superfluous patents is not yet more superfluous patents, this time awarded to the 'small guys'. God knows that even a small inventor can be as selfish and conniving as a big corporation. The love of money affects most people.
The answer is not granting patents to obvious inventions. Till the patent system is reformed, the only straight way out seems to recognize which companies and individuals are abusing it.
I had enough of such worthless patents. Whenever one thinks of
a simple obvious idea, one is forced to think "is this patented already?".
What a waste of time!
Here's an idea:
- a independent patent-rating site
(cross-linked to various gov patent sites worldwide)
- free membership
- members rate patents
- not all patents to be rated. reasons to rate a patent could be outragiousness, and history of patent abuse by patent holder
- members belong to various 'groups' which have their own
(enforceable) philosophy on admitting members, and rating patents
- patents ranked by 'patent worthiness rating' (as ranked by group you subscribe to)
- corporations ranked by 'patent abuse ranking' (as ranked by group you subscribe to)
- members to a 'default group' that (hopefully) would rate
the RSA 'PK crypto' patent valid, but the Eolas 'ActiveX' one invalid.
- maybe a federation of such sites internationally
I'd LOVE to see companies I buy things from, 'utilize' the patent system.
> banning kids from pictures destroys what little free artistry
> we have, in the name of what? Ending child molestation?
> That's the biggest joke of a justification I've ever heard
You have no solution on offer, only effeminate hand-wringing about damage to a wispy utopia where children presumably pop out of the womb fully grown - ready to partake of any and all of the garbage the world has on offer.
There's a reason children are called "children", not "adults". They are to be trained. Not traumatized.
I hope you personally aren't involved in raising any children - it would be all the better for them. I thank God that the creation of laws of your country are not in your hands.
Here's the Slashdot announcement.
Basically Bruce seems to have bought a copy of the dataset which was under a less-restrictive license (i.e. no license - public domain). He then re-issued it under the GPL, apparently with no changes/additions, other than making it available in a different media (CD-ROM).
> Contrary to popular belief, capitalism does not require profit; it requires only
> voluntary association...The core concept is simply freedom
Then call it by it's proper name -- call it "freedom", not "capitalism".
Otherwise you are just confusing the two concepts.
Unbridled freedom, unbridled capitalism, unbridled socialism -- each of these, with no restrictions applied, gives rise to preversities.
To illustrate: You know of anyone in the market for a nuke recently?
Government is a tool that can be used for good, or for evil. However governments ARE necessary for our protection.
> although I'm sure we'd all love to see Captain James Tiberius Kirk again, right?"
Right.
> what would you have him do? Seppuku?
No, just clearly admit to what he personally did and apologize.
Not at this rate
> may I humbly suggest that you stop spouting ...
You were neither humble, nor correct.
Please work on both issues.
Somewhere in this story, I found a post with a a link that explains this is a software problem:
Notice that they're quick to point out the problem isn't likely a hardware issue. There should be plenty of bandwidth on the AGP bus, but graphics chip makers don't seem to have written their drivers to handle transfers from AGP cards to main memory properly.
Then they run some tests and conclude:
That means even if you can render high-quality images at 30 frames per second, you won't be able to get them out of the graphics card at anything near that rate.
Seems worth checking out: GPGPU.ORG - "General-Purpose Computation Using Graphics Hardware"
...
> AGP does a lot better taking data in, but it's still pretty
> costly sending data back to the CPU.
I've heard that mentioned a few times, is it true?
From the AGP 3.0 spec:
The AGP3.0 interface is designed to support several platform generations based upon 0.25m (and
smaller) component silicon technology, spanning several technology generations. As with AGP2.0, the
physical interface is designed to operate at a common clock frequency of 66 MHz. Its source
synchronous data strobe operation, however, is octal-clocked and transfers eight double words
(Dwords) of data within the span of time consumed by a single common clock cycle. The AGP3.0 data
bus provides a peak theoretical bandwidth of 2.1 GB/s (32 bits per transfer at 533 MT/s). Both the
common clock and source synchronous data strobe operation and protocols are similar to those
employed by AGP2.0.11
Later on Page 96:
Traditional AGP devices can demand up to the maximum bandwidth available over the AGP ports.
However, the AGP system does not guarantee to deliver the requested bandwidth, nor does it guarantee
transfers will take place within some clearly specified request/transfer latency time.
This is done by the system guaranteeing to process a specified number (N) of read or write transactions of a specified size (Y) during each isochronous time period (T). An AGP3.0 device can divide this bandwidth between read and write traffic as appropriate. Further, the system transfers isochronous data over the AGP3.0 Port within a specified latency (L).
(emphasis mine)
I'm no expert, just asking if the "low upsream bandwidth" assumption is true. If it is, there could still some applications (eg: simple data compression) that could use it. Also, maybe output from VGA/DVI ports could be tapped.
I wish I knew - I could only succeed in keeping it from hitting the HDD for a few minutes.
... or reading from disk.
... not sure???) were accessed in the last few minutes. stat gives similar information.
:)
I eventually gave up and will be taking another track: the USB key based distros. These setup RAM drives with a nice side-effect - they don't touch the HDD. So if somehow the HDD is still hit, one can simply unmount it without compromising system stability. (Or a program could mount it read-only, and simply remount it in read/write mode when it anticipates a large amount of data)
I wish there was some command that would tell what was writing to disk.
Hmmm... maybe here's what you can do: remount with access time enabled. Then when you see the HDD being hit, run find with the approrpriate flags to see which files (-ctime, -atime
Also, maybe the 'lsof' command? ("list open files") could show programs keeping files open.
And maybe (blue-sky) an strace -follow of 'init' and grepping for the 'sync' system call would work:
strace -p1 -f
Gee, why didn't I think of this before?
> Some of the damed up areas took more than 1.5 years.
? And I should be worried, why? If Noah and his family were in the ark 1 year as it was.
> After all any god who can put to gether a universe should
> be able to convice people of something resembiling the
> same story.
God is not going to drag you kicking and screaming into heaven.
> If god was behind this, I expect the story lines to be a bit more consistant.
Um, God is not behind this. Human memory is. Human memory is inconsistent.
What God is behind is this - the Bible. And the plainly recorded data in the Bible fits in with reality - for eg: it fits in with data from the (non-Christian) population genetics research cited here. Especially, see how the data cited in the NYTimes article and how it fits in with Genesis 10.
> So you have a few hundreded vague flood stories out of the
> hundreds of thousands of cultural groups and very few
> of them agree
Correct - in fact all of them disagree in many points, but agree in crucial points with the one accurate account (the Bible).
> many of thouse groups live in a desert (or low water areas)
Um, you wouldn't know, would you? Were you there?
You can believe your own wishful thinking. Or you can search for God diligently and you will find him. The choice is yours. I hope you do not choose the fatal one of blind disbelief.
This was not mentioned in the thread above, but seems to be a very interesting contender: "St. Petersburg Linux" (SPB Linux) -- a USB Key based Linux distribution (the latest beta uses Kernel 2.6).
Another distro I have seen mentioned - flonix - has done from a non-commercial to a commercial one: http://www.flonix.com - with it's USB key based solution not available freely.
The virtual memory subsystem is probably one of the culprits. It seems to love checking on the disk every few seconds.
:) -- I started by turning off all the daemons that could possibly hit disk. IIRC, I eventually got the time between the disk wakeups to be a few minutes when I turned off swap (swapon/swapoff commands). However, the computer (a Via passively cooled MB with brick power supply) would _still_ hit disk after a few minutes.
/var/ as a ram disk
I once tried building a Linux PVR (will try again sometime) and wanted the HDD to sleep most of the day and wake up on command (for example, for timed VCR-style TV recordings. I experienced the frustrations you did
I eventually gave up and bought a USB flash memory key (the BIOS lets the computer boot off a USB disk). I hope to try that with one of the distros mentioned in this thread. Got some nice tips from it:
- mount with noatime option (UNIX acceess times not updated)
- mount
(important since flash has a limit on the number of writes per sector)
> by the prophets as well (which kind of makes it hearsay, doesn't it?)...
Yes. God's word was _recorded_ by the prophets. Which brings me to the point I made: All communication involves interpretation, and serious people can do a pretty good job at both. Regarding your comment about "hearsay", scripture itself has a very objective test of it's own validity when it was being recorded:
Deut. 18:22 When a prophet speaketh in the name of the LORD, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which the LORD hath not spoken, but the prophet hath spoken it presumptuously: thou shalt not be afraid of him.
The false prophets were also killed. This is obviously an effective way to weed out false prophets.
> The US Constitution is even in its original language, and without
> any extraneous mythology and we can't agree on what it meant.
More handwaving. If most people truly couldn't agree what the US constitution _meant_, there would be _much_ more _anarchy_ than there is now. But know this: the constitution is an imperfect instrument. It was written by several selfish and imperfect people. It is sometimes contradictory in letter and spirit. It is sometimes in need of constitutional amendments to *improve* it. *And*, on top of that people sometimes dispute what the words actually mean (but that's why the courts exist).
For instance, despite pre-constitutional documents proclaiming how obvious it is that "all men are created equal", certain phrases in them suggest the superiority of the white race. The original founding fathers themselves condoned slavery. The constitution itself had phrases that condone slavery by talking about handling of escaped slaves (give them back). That's why the republican party was founded (to abolish slavery by amending the constitution if necessary).
> How is the bible (and a translation, noless) be any different?
> do you believe that the world is only 10,000 years old?
It is about 6000 years old. That is the date I spoke earlier about that I had trouble honestly accepting. And the evidence (that I think God gave me) from genetics is summarized here. (Note, everything cited is mainstream peer-review, non-Christian, published scientific work.) The correlation between the work cited in the NYTimes article and Genesis Chapter 10 (the "Table of Nations") amazed me in particular.
Dude, yup, yup yup, when you translate, you interpret and the interpretation is at a different level when it's between languages. So what? English is not my native tongue either. And as for the time span, it's funny how God (yes, I am a believer) chose such a language (Greek) to effectively record the New Testament Bible that had a huge body of literature already exant and surviving that made translation *very* possible from Koine Greek (the variant of Greek used in the New Testament) to any other language. Remember Greek was the English of the day. And it can be very effectively translated today due to the *huge* body of similarly translated non-Biblical literature exant -- remember modern Western society (of which I am not a member anyway) is essentially *based* on these non-Biblical Greek literature.
For instance, have you heard of the phrase "leave no stone unturned"? It's origin is ancient Greek and it is effectively used here to disambiguate the finer meaning of a Bible verses that uses the same word.
> First, (and I repeat) you need to interpret to translate.
I hear ya. And I repeat, you need to interpret to _communicate_. And translators can do a really good job with Biblical translations, thanks to the huge body of work available.
> Second, times change. Colloquialisms, culture, morality, ethics, even humor:
Some things change, some things remain the same. To wave your hands in the air and say "everything changes, nothing can be understood" is to hide your head in the sand and ignore the obvious. You really don't have an excuse to not understand God's word.
> differential between the Greek, Aramaic, various other languages and English
It's fairly obvious that you have not studied the Bible with anything close to the diligence and intellectual effort the Bible translators did. Its immature and churlish of you to grossly underestimate their work and insist that due to _your_ ignorance, _they_ couldn't possibly have done a thorough job at translation. Or mutter "blind faith"... "conflict of interest" to conveniently brush their work aside.
> I respectfully view your post as typical Judeo-Christian intolerance
> for another viewpoint having something to do with your beliefs.
Hey, I am Christian (not Judeo-Christian), and I am not intolerant either (I used to be Hindu). I'm just pointing out the facts. What you choose to do - whether you decide to honestly inspect them, or decide to live in a fatal ignorance, is your choice.
> Actually, this has to do with one of the reasons why
> the bible is an interpretation -- it was translated by true believers.
So? It was (mostly) translated by true believers. Remember some tenets of Christianity are: "don't mess with God's word" and "be honest". Are you telling me tens of thousands of Bible copyists and translators would somehow disobey these tenets just so your distorted worldview hangs together? -- that's laugable! You need a reality check (and I hope you got it)
> How can one be objective about a document when they already have an accepting,
> absolutely non-critical, belief in the subjective, meta-physical ideals in the
> bible -- a document that their entire belief system is created around?
There you go again, implying that you use your brain, but the "believers" don't. More arrogance, born out of ignorance and quite possibly some silly pride. God gave _me_ a brain too, and he meant me to use it. Since I used to be a evolutionist humanist (quite like you it seems) and I held the Bible in not a little contempt, when I finally decided to seriously seek God, and ended up believing into Jesus Christ, I had trouble accepting parts of the Bible. So I asked God for help. And he did: apparently serendipitiously, I found peer-reviewed scientific papers in mainstream secular scientific journals that matched what the Bible said.
> I don't think that it can be done. So why are we even discussing this? It's pointless.
I urge you for your own sake to seek God. If you're interested, contact me either in this thread or by email and I can point you to what I found.
> Oh, my mistake, I must have read the poorly translated bible.
Your real mistake is assuming you know more that you do. Reading books filled with dubious (and contradictory) theories, poor scholarship and wishful thinking don't make one wise.
> If you were to take the Egyptean religion (the one used by the people,
> not the leaders) as of about 100 bc and mix it with Judaism,
> the results would be very much like pre-Roman Christianity.
And I must believe, O hallowed authority, because... ?
> Thats very clear to me and there are many of examples in the bible
> where Jesus introduced concepts that were common in the nearby areas
> that were not common in Judaism. The best example might be dealing
> with sick people.
?
? Miracles were not very common then, neither are they common now.
> As far as other ledgedens. Not all groups in the world do remember
> a global flood however all groups that live near major rivers
> do have flood stories. Most of which have been corrupted by
> well meaning missionaries.
Um, global floods, as in floods that kill all mankind? Like the more than 2500 year Vedic story from Hinduism. I used to be Hindu. Let me tell you my people are no pushovers, and certainly not given to rewriting all copies of (what they see as) scriptures on the say so of a few missionaries. And then, there are the other people groups listed here?
> Also the bird release thing is nonsense considering one
> was a 6 day flood vs a 40 day flood. If you want to check
> out what happens when ground is underwater for 40 days, look
> into the Mississippi flood of 93 since some areas were underwater
> for that length of time.
What! 40 days?!!? It lasted more than a year --
the most precisely recorded year of the Bible. It took months for the waters to recede as written in the Bible. Genesis chapter 7 says the rain started on the "second month, in the seventeenth day of the month". Genesis chapter 8 shows the waters finally receding: "And the waters were going and falling until the tenth month. In the tenth month, in the first of the month, the tops of the mountains were seen" (the mountains being pretty high - the Ararat ranges) (emphasis added).
Does this sound like a global flood or not?
Also, the order of release of birds makes sense. A dove is a clean bird, not a carrion feeder like the raven that is happy to feed on floating carcasses. Once the dove found a place to rest, Noah was sure it is safe for him to go out.
From the patent application for "Time based hardware button for application launch ":
Alternative application functions are launched based on the length of time an application button is pressed.
When the ALT+TAB key combination is held down on many operating systems, different running applications are cycled through and launched depending on the length of the keypress - same idea. My desktop keyboard at home has a single button that incorporates the alt+tab combo in a single key. That's why they seem to want to limit it to "Palm-size" and "resource limited" PC.
Looks like MS is getting into the habit of trivially patenting the patent game with a vengeance now.
What a waste of time for everyone!
> How many stories of creation are there in Genesis?
> The first two chapters don't even agree with each other
Regarding Genesis, the first two chapters agree.
But that's not what I asked, is it?
Getting back to my question, you said:
"Genesis is a pretty clear derivative of Gilgamesh rather than an independent account"
I asked what your evidence was. You haven't provided it.
> but one of them does agree with many of the stories
> floating around that part of the world at that time
> including the stories told at the time of Gilgamesh.
They don't agree, but there are many similarities between the two epics. The obvious thing to point out is that the Bible Genesis has *much* more documentary evidence (thousands of manuscripts or framents, numerous more indirect quotations) than Gilgamesh does (12 stone tablets) and a much more consistent and believable story (eg: Gilgamesh's version of Noah and his wife are physically immortal(!) and still alive, Gilgamesh's Noah uses a illogical order of releasing birds from the ark)
> Its also clear as you trace religions that they all
> tend to borrow idea from each other as different
> groups start having more contact with people with
> other religions assuming wars don't break out.
Yes, many religious movements either borrow or "make stuff up" or refer to traditions from other faiths. For eg: the modern Pagan/Wicca movement (which tends to just makes things up), Islam which refers to the crucifixion (but whose Koran contradicts the word and the nature of God in the Bible), Sikhism, which refers to Hindu concepts. etc.
Not so Biblical Christianity and the religion of the Jews, which have preserved God's word. How is it Christians refused to assimilate, and instead preferred to be slaughtered in Roman times. How is it that the 2000+ year old Jewish dead sea scrolls match the modern day Jewish texts?
Have a read of this document comparing Noah's Flood and the Gilgamesh Epic. Especially the chart toward the end: "All people groups remember a global Flood" -- the Indians, Aztecs and the Cherokee have similar legends.
The New Scientist link works for me.
I was shaving this morning, and took a close look at the ingredients of my shaving gel -- "Nivea for men" "Sensitive" shaving gel -- "Chamomile & Vitamin enriched". However "Methylparaben" and "Propylparaben" are listed as ingredients.
I thought back to the studies: parabens found in tumour tissue... shaving nicks getting the chemicals past the skin barrier. Granted, men don't "wear" shaving gel through the day like women do with deodorants. But this gel is going in the bin.
When I was young, a person suggested using soap instead a shaving gel, and I thought "bah". Looks like he was right.
> Actually that's one source, not two. Genesis is a pretty clear
> derivative of Gilgamesh rather than an independent account
Your evidence for this is?
"I can pick up the basics of most languages within a day or two, thank you very much. That's not the point. If you're coding something that's a throw-away, one-time tool, fine. BUT... if you're coding something for the future, and you use a language or tool that's not standard for the company or industry, then you're just causing more headache."
Good point.