I can think of 20 million good reasons why the Russians are doing this.
The space industry needs cash, and it needs popular, populist acceptance and "buzz," so that it can get still more cash. Increase the number of flights -- for whatever reason, 'cause Lance Bass wants to write a sonnet, who cares? -- and the science will follow naturally.
"Every Tom, Dick and Harry... incompetent civilian... making a mockery... compromising the amount of scientific work that can get done..." Your post reeks of elitism. The faster we can re-populate the space program's labcoat dilletantes with hard-hatted journeymen, the faster scientific work -- or any work of lasting value -- will get done. Arachnologists may be irritated by this, but one boy band singer is worth 12 Zero Gravity Spider Web Exepriments.
My daughter is four years old. She wants to be an astronaut when she grows up. If we all do our part to de-geekify space travel, her dream is much more likely to come true.
It's like Linux in a way (Kee-rist, I don't believe I'm saying this...). It will only ever enjoy popularity on the desktop rivalling that of MS or even Apple if it is marketed as something other than a "geek thang," if it becomes cool not because it is safe and reliable, but because celebrities use it and the media trumpets it. Of course, "we geeks" then lose one of "our own," but like any child whom we nurture through young and difficult years, the final proof is in its introduction to the "rest of the world."
The Space Program is moving out of its parents' basement. God Speed!
It's a common courtesy to answer every single phone call you can.
How do you figure? Maybe if you're lonely.
I've had an answering machine for twenty years. World's greatest invention. Got something I need to know, leave a message. More involved, leave a message re when it would be convenient for you to get a call back from me.
Want to call "just to talk?" Get a hobby, chum.
At most we average 1 per night
That's insane. I cannot remember the last time I got a telemarketer's call. Who knows, maybe their machines get my machine X number of times, they stop trying, but I'm not complaining.
I've talked to former telemarketers and they prefer my method.
Well, jeez, let me switch then. I'd hate to be accused of upsetting any telemarketers.
people that wait to hear my voice on an answering machine then pick up
...describes everyone I know. You must live in 1975. Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course. It was a much simpler time. Fewer telemarketers, for one thing...
Thanks. I was afraid I was the only one who had to read this three times before figuring out its meaning. I thought maybe it was some kind of generational thing (I'm over 25...)
Jesus, God, People, it's the New York friggin' Times, fer chrissake!! Just register and get on with your lives! Your individual liberties and right to watch Babylon Five re-runs are not being compromised.
This is like a goddam circus! You should see yourselves! It's better than anything on The Onion, and scarier...
Funny, I'm actually a fan of Cantor's work, but we should probably save that debate for another time...
My point was that formal acceptance of "Data as plural" was inevitable, but not quite "there" yet. I use inclusion in the OED as my "formal" yardstick. And, for reasons that you have cited and many more, I don't think it will be long.
Meanwhile, "Viri" as the plural for virus is a non-starter for exactly the same reasons: you talk to the average guy, you mention "viri," and he looks at you like you fell from a planet. "Viruses" he understands; anything else is a L33t-speak affectation.
So what are you saying, that XBox live is going to be a little pricey, making it a little more exclusive than, say, the free-for-all that is BattleNet? That as a result, there will be a lot less fourteen year-olds screaming that my bases belong to them?
I'm there! Sign me up!!
The XBox has been marketed to skew older than other consoles. The disposable income of the target audience is more. You can't compare it to the online game PC experience (although, in all fairness to journalists, there is nothing else to compare it to).
Would have liked to be with you on this one, but can't. Data is the plural of datum.
However, I do feel that its transmogrification into a singular word, and formal acceptance as such by the OED, is much liklier to occur than the fabrication of viri into the plural of virus. That will remain merely a a pompous and effete affectation.
I thought it was "leet-speak" as well, but with michael handling this submission, now I'm not so sure. If it was meant validly, and not humorlessly, it's really inexcusable. High-school newspapers have access to style-guides; why couldn't SlashDot?
Folks who use the second i really have it wrong. See, they're smart enough to know that the word viri is the Latin plural for Vir (Man), so they are projecting that the plural of virus is virii, much the same way that the plural for adius is radii (Because there is another Latin word radi, although I cannot remember what it is).
The plural for virus is viruses. Jeez, is that so tough? Forget all this poncey "language is fluid" nonsense and just pick up a friggin' dictionary.
The only reason I am running WIN2K with Outlook as opposed to Linux on my main home-business desktop is for its function as a PIM. Ties my e-mail, notes, contacts, journaling, calendar all together nicely, and co-exists happily with my iPAQ.
I use Moz for my browser, and have tried to switch over to it for mail and calendar, but sorely miss the PDA synchronization. That, and the thought of losing nearly four years of painstakingly built-up spam-filtering in my rules writing, keep me chained to Outlook. I use OpenOffice for all my other office work, on both my WIN2K and other linux boxen. Have been considering ACT, but if I'm going to "take the leap" I'd prefer something that would allow me to go completely open source on the OS as well.
You guys would make my week if you could direct me towards a [good] solution that would get me off Outlook painlessly.
It only seems like you are alone because the editors have a way of spinning a cotton-candy haze of pro-piracy, anti-MS floss about much of the news they disseminate. In turn, the younger participants (and, boy, doesn't it seem like there's an awful lot of high school and college kids on this board?) who are still in the process of forming opinions/having opinions formed for them, hop on the bandwagon -- which is built rather low to the ground to facilitate this.
Geeks/nerds are defined -- such as we need defining -- by our love for and affinity with technology, not by our politics.
Some of the geekiest people I have ever met are those who work "behind the scenes" in the entertainment industry, whose jobs center around securing their employers' assets from piracy. I've also met quite a few "Big Brother" geeks for whom the latest surveillance gear was like a newest distro of Linux. Nice guys. 110% Geek. Suffice to say I identified a lot more with them than I do with the juvenile dollar-signs-in-place-of-esses UseNet cast-offs that populate so many of the "political," uhh, discussions, on this board.
Geeks do not have a common politic, as Marketing Executives, Creative Designers, and athletes do not. I resist SlashDot's heavy-handed Hive-Think attempts to tell me how "we" should think.
No, YOU see www.fuckmicrosoft.com. I wasn't dropped on my head by Steve Ballmer as a small child.
spend a few centuries in purgatory for that transgression
Y'know, kid, seriously here, this is the kind of "religious fervor" that gives Linux proponents a bad name. People hear you talk like this, they start smiling sweetly and walking slowly, backwards, out of the room......and it just assists MS in their efforts to paint Linux as an OS for dwellers upon society's fringe.
Lighten up, Francis. You're not doing your cause -- or your blood pressure -- any favors.
The irony -- admittedly a literary device lost on most SlashDotters -- is that in the console arena, MS is the scrappy underdog. Their presence there is a tremendous boon to game players (ardent 14-year-old PS2 fan boys not included, of course). It is the XBox which is causing $ony to drop prices, expedite online muti-player, and generally just keep in line and look over their shoulder. They have entered an industry in dire need of a competitive shake-up, and are one of the few companies with the resources to be taken seriously by the existing $ony and Nintendo monoliths.
Microsoft Xbox -- it's a Good Thing.
Of course, if you subscribe to the conspiracy theory that Bill Gates is the Grand Lizard of the Illuminati and that XBox is his tool to effect a plan for World Domination hatched during the Fall of the Knights Templar, a simple discussion regarding game industry economics is probably not going to sway you much...
Are you implying that seniority vis-a-vis a given User Number on SlashDot is in any way indicative of
A. How long someone has been posting on SlashDot,
B. How long someone has been posting in various communities on the Internet, or
C. How old someone is?
'Cause if so, I can pretty much guarantee you've drawn the wrong conclusions about me across the board.
If, however, you've got a sig that you think is clever and are just lashing out because you read my post and realized most people
A. Aren't seeing it, and/or
B. Couldn't care less about it,
then I apologize for rocking your world, and will try to be more sensitive next time.
(Come to think of it, I believe I read somewhere that people with User ID's in the 300000 series tend to be wrapped a bit more tightly than the other numbers...)
There is nothing the RIAA would like more than for some MTV-gen snot-nosed l33t Haxxors to commit some out-and-out cyber vandalism in the name of "free music." They'd be on the six o'clock news faster than a man-bites-dog story, and the RIAA would ride that whole image right into the back of your router, with the rest of the Entertainment Industry -- and Mom and Pop America -- cheering them on..
Do yourselves a favor, try to control the punks, and fight this one in a jacket-and-tie before a bench. Recognize that Amateur Hour is over, else you'll reap a helluva lot worse than you'll sow.
The EFF... Aren't they the poseurs who staged the boxing match between Barney the Dinosaur and the annoying kid from Star Trek?
What ever made you imagine that the average PC user has any interest in having anything to do with them?
If there was ever a lobbying group in need of a complete make-over from scratch, it's those wannabes. I remember them being somewhat meaningful back in the early '90's, round about the time Wired magazine was first being published, but now...? Playing in the same league as the MPAA and RIAA? That can only end one way, cowboy, unless perhaps you create a grass-roots campaign to generate a billion dollars and use the money to bio-engineer a new board of directors. The EFF, as is, will be as effective influencing law-makers as a hummingbird the weather.
I have said this time and time again, "Who cares if the average American uses Linux."
Coupla questions and an observation:
How do you define "success?"
Do you value Linux because it is "cool?" Would you value it less/not at all as an Operating System if your mother used it (having installed it by herself, without baking cookies to entice your assistance?)
See, from where I'm sitting, Linux is not a success, mainly due to the patronizing, condescending, and supercilious attitudes of its self-annointed priesthood who continue to actively foster the illusion that it is difficult and for "geeks/experts only." And, given that it's 2001, and not 1997 any more, being geeky and l337 is certainly no guarantee that it's going to remain cool much longer.
Which is a shame, because it does all I need as an OS and I don't have to pay through the nose for it.
You're not seeing it if you're spending all your time glued to SlashDot, but we're living in the Twilight of the Nerds. It would be a shame to see Linux become a remnant of a bygone age, "cool" in the way those Mayan Calendars and Egyptian Pyramids stand as testimony to the technological prowess of ancient peoples not smart enough to pick up the phone when Destiny came calling.
Downloading MP3's... is a sort of nonviolent resistance to their vicious empire
Thanks for your insight, Frodo.
[Check, Please!]
...and on a semi-related topic, can we start getting the SlashDot discussions threaded by age group? I realize it sort of flies in the face of all that hail-and-well-met geeky democracy stuff, but it would certainly cut down on the number of spit-takes I do with my coffee each morning, and so contribute to keeping my desk area tidy.
Several Hundred Years Ago (OK, a little over 20) when I was host of a "New Music" radio show in New York, I had Philip Glass as a guest. He was working on Akhenaten at the time, second in his trilogy of operas which included Einstein on the Beach and Satyagraha (all three hold up terrifically to this day, IMO). Art and Muse aside for one moment, I wish to point out that he was among the nicest and least pretentious people -- let alone composer/conductors -- that I have ever met.
As busy as he was then, he has stayed among the most prolific composers of his generation. He has produced rock albums (mmmm, "Polygon" I think the group was, short-lived early 80's "math-rock" new wave-ish), as well as scores from operas and operettas (he did a wild and disturbing version of Poe's "Tell Tale Heart" which does not seem to get produced much for some reason) down to solo piano pieces. I have seen him on tour, even, at local small colleges, playing some of his piano stuff. The general public tendency is not to think of composers as "working their asses off," but Glass does, still to this day.
All that said, his score for Powaqaatsi was dreadful IMO, but the Kowyaanasqatsi CD has travelled with me from work, car, home since it was first released. It is brilliant, in every sense of the word.
If any of this has made you think twice (or even for the first time) about checking Glass' stuff out, and you're looking for an accessible place to start, I can heartily recommend The Photographer, a "music-theater" piece he did about the life of Edward Muybridge, the photographer whose pictures of horses in motion first clued us in that there are times when the beasts' feet aren't all on the ground (Glass has a knack for selecting bizarre and -- dare I say it? -- geeky topics).
If you're looking for early and "seminal," and/or want to get out of the lease on your apartment, go with "North Star."
Holy Moley! Lighten up, Francis! You're scaring the youngsters!
And what do you have against the NRA? Thank God they're out there protecting my right to protect myself from loose-cannons-waiting-to-blow-any-minute like you.
Jeez, pal, consider some anger-management therapy before you end up on the cover of NewsWeek.
I said trashy Christian children. As in the ones he went to school with were, not all of them are.
Hey, that's charitable of you. Thanks for the clarification.
Between you and me, it's a good thing you wrote "Christian" and not "Jewish" or "Muslim," lest this board be shut down and everyone in this thread be on the six o'clock news tonight. No one really takes too much note if you display an anti-Christian bias, so you should be squared away here...
Slashdot Mirror
That was a great little piece of Performance Art! ...do you take Visa?
I can think of 20 million good reasons why the Russians are doing this.
The space industry needs cash, and it needs popular, populist acceptance and "buzz," so that it can get still more cash. Increase the number of flights -- for whatever reason, 'cause Lance Bass wants to write a sonnet, who cares? -- and the science will follow naturally.
"Every Tom, Dick and Harry... incompetent civilian... making a mockery... compromising the amount of scientific work that can get done..."
Your post reeks of elitism. The faster we can re-populate the space program's labcoat dilletantes with hard-hatted journeymen, the faster scientific work -- or any work of lasting value -- will get done. Arachnologists may be irritated by this, but one boy band singer is worth 12 Zero Gravity Spider Web Exepriments.
My daughter is four years old. She wants to be an astronaut when she grows up. If we all do our part to de-geekify space travel, her dream is much more likely to come true.
It's like Linux in a way (Kee-rist, I don't believe I'm saying this...). It will only ever enjoy popularity on the desktop rivalling that of MS or even Apple if it is marketed as something other than a "geek thang," if it becomes cool not because it is safe and reliable, but because celebrities use it and the media trumpets it. Of course, "we geeks" then lose one of "our own," but like any child whom we nurture through young and difficult years, the final proof is in its introduction to the "rest of the world."
The Space Program is moving out of its parents' basement. God Speed!
How do you figure? Maybe if you're lonely.
I've had an answering machine for twenty years. World's greatest invention. Got something I need to know, leave a message. More involved, leave a message re when it would be convenient for you to get a call back from me.
Want to call "just to talk?" Get a hobby, chum.
At most we average 1 per night
That's insane. I cannot remember the last time I got a telemarketer's call. Who knows, maybe their machines get my machine X number of times, they stop trying, but I'm not complaining.
I've talked to former telemarketers and they prefer my method.
Well, jeez, let me switch then. I'd hate to be accused of upsetting any telemarketers.
people that wait to hear my voice on an answering machine then pick up
Thanks. I was afraid I was the only one who had to read this three times before figuring out its meaning. I thought maybe it was some kind of generational thing (I'm over 25...)
Jesus, God, People, it's the New York friggin' Times, fer chrissake!! Just register and get on with your lives! Your individual liberties and right to watch Babylon Five re-runs are not being compromised.
This is like a goddam circus! You should see yourselves! It's better than anything on The Onion, and scarier...
Funny, I'm actually a fan of Cantor's work, but we should probably save that debate for another time...
My point was that formal acceptance of "Data as plural" was inevitable, but not quite "there" yet. I use inclusion in the OED as my "formal" yardstick. And, for reasons that you have cited and many more, I don't think it will be long.
Meanwhile, "Viri" as the plural for virus is a non-starter for exactly the same reasons: you talk to the average guy, you mention "viri," and he looks at you like you fell from a planet. "Viruses" he understands; anything else is a L33t-speak affectation.
So what are you saying, that XBox live is going to be a little pricey, making it a little more exclusive than, say, the free-for-all that is BattleNet? That as a result, there will be a lot less fourteen year-olds screaming that my bases belong to them?
I'm there! Sign me up!!
The XBox has been marketed to skew older than other consoles. The disposable income of the target audience is more. You can't compare it to the online game PC experience (although, in all fairness to journalists, there is nothing else to compare it to).
a flood of ten year-olds yelling "All your base ....."
Why sign up for XBox Live? You can get that here, along with the 1,2,3 Profit! drivel and M$ Sux LOLOLOL!
Forget voice filters; we need age filters, on both our on-line game networks and SlashDot.
Would have liked to be with you on this one, but can't. Data is the plural of datum.
However, I do feel that its transmogrification into a singular word, and formal acceptance as such by the OED, is much liklier to occur than the fabrication of viri into the plural of virus. That will remain merely a a pompous and effete affectation.
I thought it was "leet-speak" as well, but with michael handling this submission, now I'm not so sure. If it was meant validly, and not humorlessly, it's really inexcusable. High-school newspapers have access to style-guides; why couldn't SlashDot?
Folks who use the second i really have it wrong. See, they're smart enough to know that the word viri is the Latin plural for Vir (Man), so they are projecting that the plural of virus is virii, much the same way that the plural for adius is radii (Because there is another Latin word radi, although I cannot remember what it is).
The plural for virus is viruses. Jeez, is that so tough? Forget all this poncey "language is fluid" nonsense and just pick up a friggin' dictionary.
I'm open to suggestions.
The only reason I am running WIN2K with Outlook as opposed to Linux on my main home-business desktop is for its function as a PIM. Ties my e-mail, notes, contacts, journaling, calendar all together nicely, and co-exists happily with my iPAQ.
I use Moz for my browser, and have tried to switch over to it for mail and calendar, but sorely miss the PDA synchronization. That, and the thought of losing nearly four years of painstakingly built-up spam-filtering in my rules writing, keep me chained to Outlook. I use OpenOffice for all my other office work, on both my WIN2K and other linux boxen. Have been considering ACT, but if I'm going to "take the leap" I'd prefer something that would allow me to go completely open source on the OS as well.
You guys would make my week if you could direct me towards a [good] solution that would get me off Outlook painlessly.
And you are not alone here.
It only seems like you are alone because the editors have a way of spinning a cotton-candy haze of pro-piracy, anti-MS floss about much of the news they disseminate. In turn, the younger participants (and, boy, doesn't it seem like there's an awful lot of high school and college kids on this board?) who are still in the process of forming opinions/having opinions formed for them, hop on the bandwagon -- which is built rather low to the ground to facilitate this.
Geeks/nerds are defined -- such as we need defining -- by our love for and affinity with technology, not by our politics.
Some of the geekiest people I have ever met are those who work "behind the scenes" in the entertainment industry, whose jobs center around securing their employers' assets from piracy. I've also met quite a few "Big Brother" geeks for whom the latest surveillance gear was like a newest distro of Linux. Nice guys. 110% Geek. Suffice to say I identified a lot more with them than I do with the juvenile dollar-signs-in-place-of-esses UseNet cast-offs that populate so many of the "political," uhh, discussions, on this board.
Geeks do not have a common politic, as Marketing Executives, Creative Designers, and athletes do not. I resist SlashDot's heavy-handed Hive-Think attempts to tell me how "we" should think.
See: www.fuckmicrosoft.com.
...and it just assists MS in their efforts to paint Linux as an OS for dwellers upon society's fringe.
No, YOU see www.fuckmicrosoft.com. I wasn't dropped on my head by Steve Ballmer as a small child.
spend a few centuries in purgatory for that transgression
Y'know, kid, seriously here, this is the kind of "religious fervor" that gives Linux proponents a bad name. People hear you talk like this, they start smiling sweetly and walking slowly, backwards, out of the room...
Lighten up, Francis. You're not doing your cause -- or your blood pressure -- any favors.
Damn M$, And thanks, SlashDot, for setting me straight yet again!
The irony -- admittedly a literary device lost on most SlashDotters -- is that in the console arena, MS is the scrappy underdog. Their presence there is a tremendous boon to game players (ardent 14-year-old PS2 fan boys not included, of course). It is the XBox which is causing $ony to drop prices, expedite online muti-player, and generally just keep in line and look over their shoulder. They have entered an industry in dire need of a competitive shake-up, and are one of the few companies with the resources to be taken seriously by the existing $ony and Nintendo monoliths.
Microsoft Xbox -- it's a Good Thing.
Of course, if you subscribe to the conspiracy theory that Bill Gates is the Grand Lizard of the Illuminati and that XBox is his tool to effect a plan for World Domination hatched during the Fall of the Knights Templar, a simple discussion regarding game industry economics is probably not going to sway you much...
Are you implying that seniority vis-a-vis a given User Number on SlashDot is in any way indicative of
A. How long someone has been posting on SlashDot,
B. How long someone has been posting in various communities on the Internet, or
C. How old someone is?
'Cause if so, I can pretty much guarantee you've drawn the wrong conclusions about me across the board.
If, however, you've got a sig that you think is clever and are just lashing out because you read my post and realized most people
A. Aren't seeing it, and/or
B. Couldn't care less about it,
then I apologize for rocking your world, and will try to be more sensitive next time.
(Come to think of it, I believe I read somewhere that people with User ID's in the 300000 series tend to be wrapped a bit more tightly than the other numbers...)
There is nothing the RIAA would like more than for some MTV-gen snot-nosed l33t Haxxors to commit some out-and-out cyber vandalism in the name of "free music." They'd be on the six o'clock news faster than a man-bites-dog story, and the RIAA would ride that whole image right into the back of your router, with the rest of the Entertainment Industry -- and Mom and Pop America -- cheering them on..
Do yourselves a favor, try to control the punks, and fight this one in a jacket-and-tie before a bench. Recognize that Amateur Hour is over, else you'll reap a helluva lot worse than you'll sow.
The EFF... Aren't they the poseurs who staged the boxing match between Barney the Dinosaur and the annoying kid from Star Trek?
What ever made you imagine that the average PC user has any interest in having anything to do with them?
If there was ever a lobbying group in need of a complete make-over from scratch, it's those wannabes. I remember them being somewhat meaningful back in the early '90's, round about the time Wired magazine was first being published, but now...? Playing in the same league as the MPAA and RIAA? That can only end one way, cowboy, unless perhaps you create a grass-roots campaign to generate a billion dollars and use the money to bio-engineer a new board of directors. The EFF, as is, will be as effective influencing law-makers as a hummingbird the weather.
They throw some nice parties, though...!
Your sig? Where...?
Oh Yeah, that's right, I've had that function disabled since day one here.
(Why would anyone _not_ be blocking sigs here? Someone please let me know if I am missing a lot...)
But I'm sure it's a lovely one, so Rock Awn, d00d!!
I have said this time and time again, "Who cares if the average American uses Linux."
Coupla questions and an observation:
How do you define "success?"
Do you value Linux because it is "cool?" Would you value it less/not at all as an Operating System if your mother used it (having installed it by herself, without baking cookies to entice your assistance?)
See, from where I'm sitting, Linux is not a success, mainly due to the patronizing, condescending, and supercilious attitudes of its self-annointed priesthood who continue to actively foster the illusion that it is difficult and for "geeks/experts only." And, given that it's 2001, and not 1997 any more, being geeky and l337 is certainly no guarantee that it's going to remain cool much longer.
Which is a shame, because it does all I need as an OS and I don't have to pay through the nose for it.
You're not seeing it if you're spending all your time glued to SlashDot, but we're living in the Twilight of the Nerds. It would be a shame to see Linux become a remnant of a bygone age, "cool" in the way those Mayan Calendars and Egyptian Pyramids stand as testimony to the technological prowess of ancient peoples not smart enough to pick up the phone when Destiny came calling.
Thanks for your insight, Frodo.
[Check, Please!]
Thanks for your consideration.
Hmm, I seemed to have screwed up the link to the CD on Amazon. Here's the cut and paste version:
Q H/ qid%3D1033126360/sr%3D11-1/ref%3Dsr%5F11%5F1/103-0 475882-2078215
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0000025
As busy as he was then, he has stayed among the most prolific composers of his generation. He has produced rock albums (mmmm, "Polygon" I think the group was, short-lived early 80's "math-rock" new wave-ish), as well as scores from operas and operettas (he did a wild and disturbing version of Poe's "Tell Tale Heart" which does not seem to get produced much for some reason) down to solo piano pieces. I have seen him on tour, even, at local small colleges, playing some of his piano stuff. The general public tendency is not to think of composers as "working their asses off," but Glass does, still to this day.
All that said, his score for Powaqaatsi was dreadful IMO, but the Kowyaanasqatsi CD has travelled with me from work, car, home since it was first released. It is brilliant, in every sense of the word.
If any of this has made you think twice (or even for the first time) about checking Glass' stuff out, and you're looking for an accessible place to start, I can heartily recommend The Photographer, a "music-theater" piece he did about the life of Edward Muybridge, the photographer whose pictures of horses in motion first clued us in that there are times when the beasts' feet aren't all on the ground (Glass has a knack for selecting bizarre and -- dare I say it? -- geeky topics).
If you're looking for early and "seminal," and/or want to get out of the lease on your apartment, go with "North Star."
Holy Moley! Lighten up, Francis! You're scaring the youngsters!
And what do you have against the NRA? Thank God they're out there protecting my right to protect myself from loose-cannons-waiting-to-blow-any-minute like you.
Jeez, pal, consider some anger-management therapy before you end up on the cover of NewsWeek.
Wow...
I said trashy Christian children. As in the ones he went to school with were, not all of them are.
Hey, that's charitable of you. Thanks for the clarification.
Between you and me, it's a good thing you wrote "Christian" and not "Jewish" or "Muslim," lest this board be shut down and everyone in this thread be on the six o'clock news tonight. No one really takes too much note if you display an anti-Christian bias, so you should be squared away here...