90% of the market precludes choice when that market share is used to keep competitors from being a viable alternative.
You want crime? Fine, it has been deemed Illeagal on Penalty of Law to leverage your market share into an unfair advantage. Are you going to try and claim this is not what M$ is doing?
But the problem is that the consumers DON'T have a choice. Hence the term MONOPOLY. M$ has been found guilty of using its MONOPOLY position in the market to leverage other competitors out which leaves consumers with no choice.
This is precisely the case in which the 'guns of government' need to be used and it is long overdue.
The last paragraph is the really pertinant one but the entire selection is from the website.
http://www.arng.army.mil/About_Us/
"The Army National Guard (ARNG) is one component of The Army (which consists of the Active Army, the Army National Guard and the Army Reserves.) The Army National Guard is composed primarily of traditional Guardsmen -- civilians who serve their country, state and community on a part-time basis (usually one weekend each month and two weeks during the summer.) Each state, territory and the District of Columbia has its own National Guard, as provided for by the Constitution of the United States.
The National Guard has a unique dual mission that consists of both Federal and State roles. For state missions, the governor, through the state Adjutant General, commands Guard forces. The governor can call the National Guard into action during local or statewide emergencies, such as storms, fires, earthquakes or civil disturbances.
In addition, the President of the United States can activate the National Guard for participation in federal missions. Examples of federal activations include Guard units deployed to Bosnia and Kosovo for stabilization operations and units deployed to the Middle East and other locations in the war on terrorism. When federalized, Guard units are commanded by the Combatant Commander of the theatre in which they are operating."
The others all have similar statements.
Again they did not EXPECT to get called on for a long term federal commitment to a conflict overseas. That is not the same as saying they did not sign up for one if it occured.
Well the choice would be to either continue with Shuttle doing what can be done... which isn't much really. Or to scrap it and redesign.
Crew escape was never really an option. It has been studied and rejected in every phase of the shuttle program. Pretty much went out the window with the idea of side mounting the shuttle on the gas tank... the reason for side mounting the shuttle is due to the difficulty of maintaining aerodynamic control of a rocket with wings at the front. There is a reason wings are always at the tails of rockets, missles etc....
So I agree shuttle is launching without meeting the board recommendations. But really the only way to meet all of those was to use something besides Shuttle.
What have they done ? If they really solved the foam problem the solved what downed columbia by all evidence.
If they improove imaging and on orbit inspection of damage then they solve what made the event a surprise when it probably should not have been.
They can only go to ISS so they have a life boat to survive until resuce can be mounted so in the event of a damaged heatshied they can in the future avoid having to re-enter and pray. And all things considered that is probabbly what would have happend to columbia had they correctly interpreted the debris damage while on orbit.
So is a future shuttle mission going to be safer than it was before columbia ? Yes. A great deal safer ? I doubt it. Shuttle probably is.. and always has been as safe as is *humanly* possible. People fuck up. and when you have thousands of people invovled in a process there will be fuck ups. You try to avoid it. When they happen you try to make sure they don't happen again. This does not mean it will never happen again. If a condition of space exploration is that fuck ups can't happen then we had best stop now. Cause they will happen. No matter how much money is spent. No matter how much time is spent. No matter what we do mistakes will be made and in an activity with so little margian for error then some of the mistakes made will undoubtebly cost people their lives. This has already happend. And it will continue to happen.
This does not mean I think no effort should be made. But this zero tollerance for error has got to end.
Right there with you though I didn't get trained in the army. My Dad had an annoying habit (at the time) when I was growing up of randomly going into dumb mode when we were out somewhere and I had to get us back home. IE he played dumb and said I had to tell him which direction to go... and he would wrong or otherwise. Wasn't too long before I always paid attention to where we went and how to get back.
Never had any methodology but now that I am older I realize I tend to keep a relative position in mind with wherever I am far more than stuff like street names. IE I know I have to go *that way* and then I have learned to understand the city road system in order to get where I am going... works the same on the highways. Don't know how many times I have up and tracked through back roads without even looking at a map and wound up where I needed to be....
But I have also had that "dude you just fucked up" feeling and that is normally when I stop and pull out a map and sure enough I will have just taken a wrong turn and need to make a correction. Very weird.
Anyway... I find it funny that people accept the animal migration as ascribing it to some higher tuned sense (be it 6th or just more attuned) and refuse to accept that possibly people have a similar atuned sense. If this ability to detect such minute disturbances and correctly interpret them in a way that enhances survival why is it that we are not capable of it ? Does coginitive thought preclude such an ability ? Or just make it easier to ignore.
We have on file specifications for a capsule design that was built and tested in what.. 5 years... THE FIRST TIME. with less capacity and less knowledge supposedly than we have now? Now it is going to take us 10 years to essentialy re-build it? This is bullshit. If NASA had commited to reviving the Apollo Command capsule after Columbia they probably could be launching one in May instead of the shuttle. There are already plans on the books for alternate arrangements of shuttle stack components. There is no reason you couldn't put a blister pack with the SSME's on the ET and stick a capsule and cargo stack on-top of the ET instead of the cone fairing used now. You could also make a smaller ET to use Kerosene and Lox and use two of the new Boeing engines just demonstrated on the Delta. All very well understood processes. Stick with the SRB's... not becasue they are necesarrily the best solution but because we can make them now and it obviates the need for creating a more complex staging system that would require new rockets.
You could go back to the little joe escape rocket system for the crew and you would have almost about 3/4ths of the capacity of the Saturn 5. No more foam issues, No huge heavy heatshield for uneeded return structure requiring brittle leading edge surface material inherrent in any winged design (baring a materials breakthrough to replace what is used now). Better crew survivability on launch. Back to a higher payload to structure weight ration instead of the current 3/1 THE WRONG WAY IE more weight in structure than payload.
The capsule design is efficient... and it Should NOT take 10 years to get one flying again. It didn't take 10 years when we built a lunar landing mission from SCRATCH in an era when Sliderules still were the most common calculating tool of a design engineer and the entire computational power of the command module was a fraction of what is available in many CALCULATORS today much less a desktop computer.
Increased knowledge and technical ability should translate into faster turn around times. Not Slower.
WHat do you mean there is no undoing it? If we do it we can undo it.
As for waiting a 100 years.... its not like this is a proposal to start tommorrow. Could be that long before they even set foot on the damn planet at the rate we are going.
Yes but I doubt the cat food people had Amazon's volume or profit margians. My guess is there is a sweetheart deal between them and UPS where UPS cuts cost for volume as well. They already have super saving shipping working. Now Amazon has fairly well established volume of shipping and they reach a deal with UPS to up create a class of super saving volume based rates to cover cheap 2nd day delivery options.
Hell for all we know UPS, FedEx and Amazon simply extended the exact same terms that cover super savings to cover this at the cost of a percentage of the per customer charge. In otherwords far as Amazon goes this is the exact same economics as super savings except it now comes with up front money from the customer.
Ahhh but you see that is the truly nasty bit about advetisement.
Success is not by high percentages of swayed viewers. But by very marginal percentages. 1-100 or even less. That is why the repeat so much. Not so much as to drive it into your head as to reach as many people as possible Because it is the overall exposure that dictates the success. IE if you have 1 in 1000 success then you have to reach an astronomical number of people to make it pay off. If you are not sure what I mean then go google around on how junk mail works. It costs a lot of money to send that crap out and 'everyone' just throws it away. So why do people do it? Trust me the do not do it to throw money away.
Hmm an intelligent religious argument on Slashdot.... wonders will never cease.
When I reffer to Catholic in my earlier post I was reffering to Roman Catholic Church. Which by and large was the Christian faith until Luther other than the Eastern Orthodox split.
I do not Blame Luther personaly for schsims. But his movement was certainly the catalyst that led to the shattering of the Roman Catholic church. Not that I think this was a bad thing mind you.
The Trinity is not biblical. It is Church Doctrine. In the Gospels Jesus never says he is the Trinity. He never even directly says he is the Son of God. There are some passages generally interpreted to mean that but there is no clean clear statment where he says "I AM GOD". The concept of the trinity is not something Jesus taught. I would like to see you quote where in the Gospels that tid bit lies as you seem to be indicating it is there.
As for quesitoning the authority of the Bible period I would say there is plenty of room to make legitimate questions regarding that as the bible as we know it was not established until some 200 years after the Death of Christ. Parts of accepted scripture by some were decided to be left out. Non mainline thoughts were declared heresies. And about the only schisim that was large enough to survive outside of the umbrella of the Roman Catholic Church was the Eastern Orthodox. The rest were persecuted to extinction including the burning of any literature created which went against the doctrine of the Cathloic Church.
Not to mention that whole issue of the formation of the bible aside you also have the well known inacuracies of translation... combined with the difficulties of evolving languages over time. There is most certainly room to question the bible inso much as you can question the involvement and imperfections of man in its upkeep and formation.
The Nicene argument would be that made was of no matter. He was of the same eternal substance as the father the almighty. Thus he was not inferior. But anyway. Mostly pointless deabte to me. And it is sad how many people have died over that argument especially considering it was in the name of Christianity.
Really depends on your point of view. Believing in the divinity of christ is one thing, Believing in the Father Son and holy ghost a bit different. Like I said this probably far more about ingorance among the flock than among the sheperds. This is not something you will find among the prime Protestant Roots ( Lutheran etc ) But among the schismatic nightmare in American Christan Denominations resulting of the process brought about by Luther's action.
It is a pretty fundamental sticking point where alot of people can't get past the fundamental difference in terms. To someone of this ilk of which I am speaking the concept of any seperation of God and Christ is unthinkable. Blaspheme, your going to hell kinda unthinkable. It is not something which often results in enlightend discourse. They also are invariably weak on the concept of judge not lest ye be judged as well.
I would also argue that you can very much indeed question the divinity of christ ( to a degree.. hang with me here ) and still be a christian. That was something essentially laid out as a tenant of the faith at the convention in Nicene and resulted in the Nicene Creed. The tenents which all could agree to at that time. That is not to say the question of the nature of the divinity of Christ was not and is not hotly debated. All the creed laid out as basic tentant of the faith was that Jesus was of one subtance with the father and made incarnate by the holy spirit of the virgin mary. Thus the divine nature of Christ is still up for debate. Of Divine origins is not the same as divine in life. Jesus was made man. And that is where the difficulties emerge. If he was divine, a god, THE god, then what was the sacrifice of his life? If he was not divine then why was his life so much more meaningful than that of any other man?
Anyway the creed itself disentangles itself from that entire mess by not saying a damn thing about his life on earth. He was born of the virgin mary and then crucified under P.P. for our sins. The Creed makes no statement about what the christian faith presumes about Jesus in his life as Man. It does not because it could not. A very elegant solution to the schisims facing the early church. The creed was accepted by most. Those that did not became heretics and were hounded and eventually the target of Crusades. For those that accepted it the Creed became a basic unifying foundation of Christian faith binding the Early Church together even amidst its disagreements. It is the same ties that to this day still binds most of Christanity despite the shattering of the Catholic Church.
From what I can tell in my encounters with folks in many protestant denominations in the South is that they ignore the Trinity in favor of it being an immaterial distinction. IE If all three are the same then they are the same they are not three. To make the dinstinction imporant to them essentially makes you Catholic and many are raised thinking Cathloics are not Christians. Trust me... I couldn't make this up. Again we are not talking about the brightest bulbs in the chandaliere here.
Yeah I know what your saying. And I am not claiming that the tenants of the Reformation included disbelife in the Trinity. I am saying that in the multitude of schisims since then there has been a turn away from it among some. I have repeatedly encountered this growing up in the bible belt. It is entirely possible a great deal of this is due to ignorance on the part of the congregation and it is not a feeling that extends into the clergy.
I was raised episcople and one of the most common questions I get asked by people of protestant raising is to explain the concept of the trinity. not explain a difference of opinion about the interpretation of the trinity. But to explain it period.
The number of people giving up TV altogether because of insane advert times. Inane advert content. Repetitive inane advert content is going up. The reason TV DVD's are so suprisingly popular is that people can watch them on their terms. Their are no adverts. There are no inane repetitive adverts. Right now it is a geek thing. Tommorrow it will be like the iPod.
The 30 second spot is dieing. Studies already show that people are so immune to commercials it takes an insane number of repetitions in order to have any kind of chance to be rememebered. Instead the Web is leading the way with largely opt-in advertisement with paid for placement.
If Google can make money providing free search and massive bandwidth, a great deal of R&D for new content all through on demand ads autogenerated based on peoples request. I have a sneaking suspiscion that a network that offered its content for free and had targeted paid for advertising around the process could do the same.
Imagine a FOX websight that works like Google. Go search for a show, or go to the shows site. Paid for adverts are to the side like every freaking web page in existence now. Some click through some don't. Download the show with a streaming advert delivering method aimed at the users login which lasts ONLY while the content selected is loading.
Of course to do this you have to completely revamp Nielson or out right replace it. Turn the marketing industry upside down. And set up massive delivery infrastructure and reorganzie the way your basic TV station works.
Don't forget indulgences and the general corruption of the Catholic Church. The protestant splintering happend for any number of reason and continuing schisims ( forks ? ) continue to this day over minutiae. But I do think it is safe to say the curruption of the Catholic Church was the initial catalyst that led to Martin Luther.
Eh I think there is a bit more argument regarding the Holy Trinity than you make out. The Nicene Creed holds to that but that does not necesarrily apply to the denominations which resulted in the Reformation and since.
Many protestants ( don't think you can say all or even most ) have a great deal of difficulty with the concept of the trinity. And in fact you will get a great deal of there is no such thing. In other words Jesus was their Lord Savior. Don't even get started with someone of this ilk about the holy spirit.... you will be discussing it for a long long LOOOOOOONNNNGGgg time
I haven't really dug enough to understand if this is a limitation of the congregation that is not shared by the clergy/pastors/preacher whatever they are labled but from a sheer numbers game I would say there are many christians that do in fact argue that Jesus was God. Not sure I would go so far as to say most, perhaps most protetants in the bible belt, but even then I doubt it.
I have always marveld at the lack of understanding of the founding of Islam among most Christians. It is a failure both of understanding Religion and History that absolutely boggles the mind.
By that standard then the only way someone is a "true" Christian is if they don't commit any action against the christian ideal. Not a very good standard if you ask me. Most faiths accept the basic tennent that man is a flawed being and therefor more or less incapable of being perfect. Thus by such a standard nobody is a true christian lest the live the life of Christ.
How about changing the process of creating optics ?
So far the only viable way has been reduction... IE shape glass add metal, polish metal etc... However with the new advances in ink jet manufacturing how about building optics piece meal by construction rather than reduction?
In english what they are trying to do is define a word by context. For example go input a single word in google and you will get all the various contexts in which it is used.
Then by using some algo. ( serious academic handwaving here ) you place the meaning of word via context as determined for google. Thus effectively you create the potential for a program that could distinguish between there and their and do it across languages. It could also translate sayins like, the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak, dumb as a doorknob, I Rocked her World, Looney Tunes and Looney Toons.
The impressive part if done would be that you would not have to program in these various means of determining context as that could be gleaned via Google Results.
When this occurs in my experience the problem is not your drones it is someone elses drones. Again the force dosn't come from M$ holding a gun to your head. It comes because they entice some people to upgrade. Then these people who have upgraded begin to face problems in their information sharing with businesses that are not upgraded. In some cases you might have a roll back but in others you have force upgrades for business compatibility reasons. It is a snowball effect and once it reaches critical mass it dosn't take to long before the new version is adapted by the majority of users.
ie business X interacts with business Y. Business Y upgrades and has idiotic drones that do not understand the concept of reverse compatibility. Now your reduced to their level of competence and not what you can train your people to do. Short of teaching them to patiently train the other staff over the phone which is not what you pay them to do.
So one business decides to upgrade that is HUGE and they have data transactions with other companies. They run into problems either from their own employees being incompetent or the smaller businesses being unable to read their formats. Instead of user training to be more savvy to the capabilities of the programs they simply dictate that all business will henceforth be by X format only or there will be X fee asciciated or even that the jobs will no longer be accepted.
I have dealt with this very issue from both sides in the Bulk mail world. Not just spam but bulk mail to large client mailing lists ( like UPS stock holders, or Turner Movie Club membership etc ).
I am not against improovements but good lord. How much has Word and or Excell really changed in the last 10 years ? Why does M$ shroud the details of the changes to their formats. Why, once it is more or less easily used across multiple platforms, does the new version pretty much always arrive ?
I disagree. There is often an overiding functional problem with using old office aps when your primary points of interaction use a newer version. These problems often lead to failures of communication, mishandling of files which leads to delays and lost productivty and or extra cost in processing. Often the question of whether or not to upgrade is decided by whether or not the people you do business with need you more or you need them more. If they need you they will work with you. If you need them more they can dictate terms.
These are not cosmetic issues. It is like the difference between a ragged vehicle showing up to get the work done and a vehicle never showing up because it broke down. One issue is cosmetic but causes no problems to accomplishing the task... they other is an impediment to doing business. One MUST be addressed, the other is an optional.
Slashdot Mirror
90% of the market precludes choice when that market share is used to keep competitors from being a viable alternative.
You want crime? Fine, it has been deemed Illeagal on Penalty of Law to leverage your market share into an unfair advantage. Are you going to try and claim this is not what M$ is doing?
But the problem is that the consumers DON'T have a choice. Hence the term MONOPOLY. M$ has been found guilty of using its MONOPOLY position in the market to leverage other competitors out which leaves consumers with no choice.
This is precisely the case in which the 'guns of government' need to be used and it is long overdue.
The Army National Guard begs to differ.
The last paragraph is the really pertinant one but the entire selection is from the website.
http://www.arng.army.mil/About_Us/
"The Army National Guard (ARNG) is one component of The Army (which consists of the Active Army, the Army National Guard and the Army Reserves.) The Army National Guard is composed primarily of traditional Guardsmen -- civilians who serve their country, state and community on a part-time basis (usually one weekend each month and two weeks during the summer.) Each state, territory and the District of Columbia has its own National Guard, as provided for by the Constitution of the United States.
The National Guard has a unique dual mission that consists of both Federal and State roles. For state missions, the governor, through the state Adjutant General, commands Guard forces. The governor can call the National Guard into action during local or statewide emergencies, such as storms, fires, earthquakes or civil disturbances.
In addition, the President of the United States can activate the National Guard for participation in federal missions. Examples of federal activations include Guard units deployed to Bosnia and Kosovo for stabilization operations and units deployed to the Middle East and other locations in the war on terrorism. When federalized, Guard units are commanded by the Combatant Commander of the theatre in which they are operating."
The others all have similar statements.
Again they did not EXPECT to get called on for a long term federal commitment to a conflict overseas. That is not the same as saying they did not sign up for one if it occured.
Well the choice would be to either continue with Shuttle doing what can be done... which isn't much really. Or to scrap it and redesign.
Crew escape was never really an option. It has been studied and rejected in every phase of the shuttle program. Pretty much went out the window with the idea of side mounting the shuttle on the gas tank... the reason for side mounting the shuttle is due to the difficulty of maintaining aerodynamic control of a rocket with wings at the front. There is a reason wings are always at the tails of rockets, missles etc....
So I agree shuttle is launching without meeting the board recommendations. But really the only way to meet all of those was to use something besides Shuttle.
What have they done ? If they really solved the foam problem the solved what downed columbia by all evidence.
If they improove imaging and on orbit inspection of damage then they solve what made the event a surprise when it probably should not have been.
They can only go to ISS so they have a life boat to survive until resuce can be mounted so in the event of a damaged heatshied they can in the future avoid having to re-enter and pray. And all things considered that is probabbly what would have happend to columbia had they correctly interpreted the debris damage while on orbit.
So is a future shuttle mission going to be safer than it was before columbia ? Yes. A great deal safer ? I doubt it. Shuttle probably is.. and always has been as safe as is *humanly* possible. People fuck up. and when you have thousands of people invovled in a process there will be fuck ups. You try to avoid it. When they happen you try to make sure they don't happen again. This does not mean it will never happen again. If a condition of space exploration is that fuck ups can't happen then we had best stop now. Cause they will happen. No matter how much money is spent. No matter how much time is spent. No matter what we do mistakes will be made and in an activity with so little margian for error then some of the mistakes made will undoubtebly cost people their lives. This has already happend. And it will continue to happen.
This does not mean I think no effort should be made. But this zero tollerance for error has got to end.
NO they didn't expect to ever be called on to get shipped over seas to get shot at by hostile insurgents.
very big difference between not signing up for it and just never expecting that part of the deal to every become real.
Right there with you though I didn't get trained in the army. My Dad had an annoying habit (at the time) when I was growing up of randomly going into dumb mode when we were out somewhere and I had to get us back home. IE he played dumb and said I had to tell him which direction to go... and he would wrong or otherwise. Wasn't too long before I always paid attention to where we went and how to get back.
Never had any methodology but now that I am older I realize I tend to keep a relative position in mind with wherever I am far more than stuff like street names. IE I know I have to go *that way* and then I have learned to understand the city road system in order to get where I am going... works the same on the highways. Don't know how many times I have up and tracked through back roads without even looking at a map and wound up where I needed to be....
But I have also had that "dude you just fucked up" feeling and that is normally when I stop and pull out a map and sure enough I will have just taken a wrong turn and need to make a correction. Very weird.
Anyway... I find it funny that people accept the animal migration as ascribing it to some higher tuned sense (be it 6th or just more attuned) and refuse to accept that possibly people have a similar atuned sense. If this ability to detect such minute disturbances and correctly interpret them in a way that enhances survival why is it that we are not capable of it ? Does coginitive thought preclude such an ability ? Or just make it easier to ignore.
Let me get this right.
We have on file specifications for a capsule design that was built and tested in what.. 5 years... THE FIRST TIME. with less capacity and less knowledge supposedly than we have now? Now it is going to take us 10 years to essentialy re-build it? This is bullshit. If NASA had commited to reviving the Apollo Command capsule after Columbia they probably could be launching one in May instead of the shuttle. There are already plans on the books for alternate arrangements of shuttle stack components. There is no reason you couldn't put a blister pack with the SSME's on the ET and stick a capsule and cargo stack on-top of the ET instead of the cone fairing used now. You could also make a smaller ET to use Kerosene and Lox and use two of the new Boeing engines just demonstrated on the Delta. All very well understood processes. Stick with the SRB's... not becasue they are necesarrily the best solution but because we can make them now and it obviates the need for creating a more complex staging system that would require new rockets.
You could go back to the little joe escape rocket system for the crew and you would have almost about 3/4ths of the capacity of the Saturn 5. No more foam issues, No huge heavy heatshield for uneeded return structure requiring brittle leading edge surface material inherrent in any winged design (baring a materials breakthrough to replace what is used now). Better crew survivability on launch. Back to a higher payload to structure weight ration instead of the current 3/1 THE WRONG WAY IE more weight in structure than payload.
The capsule design is efficient... and it Should NOT take 10 years to get one flying again. It didn't take 10 years when we built a lunar landing mission from SCRATCH in an era when Sliderules still were the most common calculating tool of a design engineer and the entire computational power of the command module was a fraction of what is available in many CALCULATORS today much less a desktop computer.
Increased knowledge and technical ability should translate into faster turn around times. Not Slower.
http://www.lynxmotion.com/images/jpg/eh209.jpg
y ID =57
more practical
http://www.lynxmotion.com/Category.aspx?Categor
Easy to modify to use with larger wheels for a bit better clearance and differential drive so you still maintain the agility of the tank.
WHat do you mean there is no undoing it? If we do it we can undo it.
As for waiting a 100 years.... its not like this is a proposal to start tommorrow. Could be that long before they even set foot on the damn planet at the rate we are going.
Yes but I doubt the cat food people had Amazon's volume or profit margians. My guess is there is a sweetheart deal between them and UPS where UPS cuts cost for volume as well. They already have super saving shipping working. Now Amazon has fairly well established volume of shipping and they reach a deal with UPS to up create a class of super saving volume based rates to cover cheap 2nd day delivery options.
Hell for all we know UPS, FedEx and Amazon simply extended the exact same terms that cover super savings to cover this at the cost of a percentage of the per customer charge. In otherwords far as Amazon goes this is the exact same economics as super savings except it now comes with up front money from the customer.
Ahhh but you see that is the truly nasty bit about advetisement.
Success is not by high percentages of swayed viewers. But by very marginal percentages. 1-100 or even less. That is why the repeat so much. Not so much as to drive it into your head as to reach as many people as possible Because it is the overall exposure that dictates the success. IE if you have 1 in 1000 success then you have to reach an astronomical number of people to make it pay off. If you are not sure what I mean then go google around on how junk mail works. It costs a lot of money to send that crap out and 'everyone' just throws it away. So why do people do it? Trust me the do not do it to throw money away.
Hmm an intelligent religious argument on Slashdot.... wonders will never cease.
When I reffer to Catholic in my earlier post I was reffering to Roman Catholic Church. Which by and large was the Christian faith until Luther other than the Eastern Orthodox split.
I do not Blame Luther personaly for schsims. But his movement was certainly the catalyst that led to the shattering of the Roman Catholic church. Not that I think this was a bad thing mind you.
The Trinity is not biblical. It is Church Doctrine. In the Gospels Jesus never says he is the Trinity. He never even directly says he is the Son of God. There are some passages generally interpreted to mean that but there is no clean clear statment where he says "I AM GOD". The concept of the trinity is not something Jesus taught. I would like to see you quote where in the Gospels that tid bit lies as you seem to be indicating it is there.
As for quesitoning the authority of the Bible period I would say there is plenty of room to make legitimate questions regarding that as the bible as we know it was not established until some 200 years after the Death of Christ. Parts of accepted scripture by some were decided to be left out. Non mainline thoughts were declared heresies. And about the only schisim that was large enough to survive outside of the umbrella of the Roman Catholic Church was the Eastern Orthodox. The rest were persecuted to extinction including the burning of any literature created which went against the doctrine of the Cathloic Church.
Not to mention that whole issue of the formation of the bible aside you also have the well known inacuracies of translation... combined with the difficulties of evolving languages over time. There is most certainly room to question the bible inso much as you can question the involvement and imperfections of man in its upkeep and formation.
Out of curiosity why do you post annoynomous ?
The Nicene argument would be that made was of no matter. He was of the same eternal substance as the father the almighty. Thus he was not inferior. But anyway. Mostly pointless deabte to me. And it is sad how many people have died over that argument especially considering it was in the name of Christianity.
Really depends on your point of view. Believing in the divinity of christ is one thing, Believing in the Father Son and holy ghost a bit different. Like I said this probably far more about ingorance among the flock than among the sheperds. This is not something you will find among the prime Protestant Roots ( Lutheran etc ) But among the schismatic nightmare in American Christan Denominations resulting of the process brought about by Luther's action.
It is a pretty fundamental sticking point where alot of people can't get past the fundamental difference in terms. To someone of this ilk of which I am speaking the concept of any seperation of God and Christ is unthinkable. Blaspheme, your going to hell kinda unthinkable. It is not something which often results in enlightend discourse. They also are invariably weak on the concept of judge not lest ye be judged as well.
I would also argue that you can very much indeed question the divinity of christ ( to a degree.. hang with me here ) and still be a christian. That was something essentially laid out as a tenant of the faith at the convention in Nicene and resulted in the Nicene Creed. The tenents which all could agree to at that time. That is not to say the question of the nature of the divinity of Christ was not and is not hotly debated. All the creed laid out as basic tentant of the faith was that Jesus was of one subtance with the father and made incarnate by the holy spirit of the virgin mary. Thus the divine nature of Christ is still up for debate. Of Divine origins is not the same as divine in life. Jesus was made man. And that is where the difficulties emerge. If he was divine, a god, THE god, then what was the sacrifice of his life? If he was not divine then why was his life so much more meaningful than that of any other man?
Anyway the creed itself disentangles itself from that entire mess by not saying a damn thing about his life on earth. He was born of the virgin mary and then crucified under P.P. for our sins. The Creed makes no statement about what the christian faith presumes about Jesus in his life as Man. It does not because it could not. A very elegant solution to the schisims facing the early church. The creed was accepted by most. Those that did not became heretics and were hounded and eventually the target of Crusades. For those that accepted it the Creed became a basic unifying foundation of Christian faith binding the Early Church together even amidst its disagreements. It is the same ties that to this day still binds most of Christanity despite the shattering of the Catholic Church.
From what I can tell in my encounters with folks in many protestant denominations in the South is that they ignore the Trinity in favor of it being an immaterial distinction. IE If all three are the same then they are the same they are not three. To make the dinstinction imporant to them essentially makes you Catholic and many are raised thinking Cathloics are not Christians. Trust me... I couldn't make this up. Again we are not talking about the brightest bulbs in the chandaliere here.
Yeah I know what your saying. And I am not claiming that the tenants of the Reformation included disbelife in the Trinity. I am saying that in the multitude of schisims since then there has been a turn away from it among some. I have repeatedly encountered this growing up in the bible belt. It is entirely possible a great deal of this is due to ignorance on the part of the congregation and it is not a feeling that extends into the clergy.
I was raised episcople and one of the most common questions I get asked by people of protestant raising is to explain the concept of the trinity. not explain a difference of opinion about the interpretation of the trinity. But to explain it period.
The number of people giving up TV altogether because of insane advert times. Inane advert content. Repetitive inane advert content is going up. The reason TV DVD's are so suprisingly popular is that people can watch them on their terms. Their are no adverts. There are no inane repetitive adverts. Right now it is a geek thing. Tommorrow it will be like the iPod.
The 30 second spot is dieing. Studies already show that people are so immune to commercials it takes an insane number of repetitions in order to have any kind of chance to be rememebered. Instead the Web is leading the way with largely opt-in advertisement with paid for placement.
If Google can make money providing free search and massive bandwidth, a great deal of R&D for new content all through on demand ads autogenerated based on peoples request. I have a sneaking suspiscion that a network that offered its content for free and had targeted paid for advertising around the process could do the same.
Imagine a FOX websight that works like Google. Go search for a show, or go to the shows site. Paid for adverts are to the side like every freaking web page in existence now. Some click through some don't. Download the show with a streaming advert delivering method aimed at the users login which lasts ONLY while the content selected is loading.
Of course to do this you have to completely revamp Nielson or out right replace it. Turn the marketing industry upside down. And set up massive delivery infrastructure and reorganzie the way your basic TV station works.
no biggie.
Don't forget indulgences and the general corruption of the Catholic Church.
The protestant splintering happend for any number of reason and continuing schisims ( forks ? ) continue to this day over minutiae. But I do think it is safe to say the curruption of the Catholic Church was the initial catalyst that led to Martin Luther.
Eh I think there is a bit more argument regarding the Holy Trinity than you make out. The Nicene Creed holds to that but that does not necesarrily apply to the denominations which resulted in the Reformation and since.
Many protestants ( don't think you can say all or even most ) have a great deal of difficulty with the concept of the trinity. And in fact you will get a great deal of there is no such thing. In other words Jesus was their Lord Savior. Don't even get started with someone of this ilk about the holy spirit.... you will be discussing it for a long long LOOOOOOONNNNGGgg time
I haven't really dug enough to understand if this is a limitation of the congregation that is not shared by the clergy/pastors/preacher whatever they are labled but from a sheer numbers game I would say there are many christians that do in fact argue that Jesus was God. Not sure I would go so far as to say most, perhaps most protetants in the bible belt, but even then I doubt it.
I have always marveld at the lack of understanding of the founding of Islam among most Christians. It is a failure both of understanding Religion and History that absolutely boggles the mind.
That is like the Monty Python Witch test.
By that standard then the only way someone is a "true" Christian is if they don't commit any action against the christian ideal. Not a very good standard if you ask me. Most faiths accept the basic tennent that man is a flawed being and therefor more or less incapable of being perfect. Thus by such a standard nobody is a true christian lest the live the life of Christ.
How about changing the process of creating optics ?
So far the only viable way has been reduction... IE shape glass add metal, polish metal etc... However with the new advances in ink jet manufacturing how about building optics piece meal by construction rather than reduction?
the AC actually isn't far off.
In english what they are trying to do is define a word by context. For example go input a single word in google and you will get all the various contexts in which it is used.
Then by using some algo. ( serious academic handwaving here ) you place the meaning of word via context as determined for google. Thus effectively you create the potential for a program that could distinguish between there and their and do it across languages. It could also translate sayins like, the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak, dumb as a doorknob, I Rocked her World, Looney Tunes and Looney Toons.
The impressive part if done would be that you would not have to program in these various means of determining context as that could be gleaned via Google Results.
If the context is not there then not even a human can make that distinction.
Once past that the natural language problem or elephant you speak of is really just a machine that define words in context.
Google is actually a pretty powerfull means for deriving context by some means of comparing word frequencies around various results.
Hmmmm repeat after me. Server solutions are not office suites.
When this occurs in my experience the problem is not your drones it is someone elses drones. Again the force dosn't come from M$ holding a gun to your head. It comes because they entice some people to upgrade. Then these people who have upgraded begin to face problems in their information sharing with businesses that are not upgraded. In some cases you might have a roll back but in others you have force upgrades for business compatibility reasons. It is a snowball effect and once it reaches critical mass it dosn't take to long before the new version is adapted by the majority of users.
ie business X interacts with business Y. Business Y upgrades and has idiotic drones that do not understand the concept of reverse compatibility. Now your reduced to their level of competence and not what you can train your people to do. Short of teaching them to patiently train the other staff over the phone which is not what you pay them to do.
So one business decides to upgrade that is HUGE and they have data transactions with other companies. They run into problems either from their own employees being incompetent or the smaller businesses being unable to read their formats. Instead of user training to be more savvy to the capabilities of the programs they simply dictate that all business will henceforth be by X format only or there will be X fee asciciated or even that the jobs will no longer be accepted.
I have dealt with this very issue from both sides in the Bulk mail world. Not just spam but bulk mail to large client mailing lists ( like UPS stock holders, or Turner Movie Club membership etc ).
I am not against improovements but good lord. How much has Word and or Excell really changed in the last 10 years ? Why does M$ shroud the details of the changes to their formats. Why, once it is more or less easily used across multiple platforms, does the new version pretty much always arrive ?
I disagree. There is often an overiding functional problem with using old office aps when your primary points of interaction use a newer version. These problems often lead to failures of communication, mishandling of files which leads to delays and lost productivty and or extra cost in processing. Often the question of whether or not to upgrade is decided by whether or not the people you do business with need you more or you need them more. If they need you they will work with you. If you need them more they can dictate terms.
These are not cosmetic issues. It is like the difference between a ragged vehicle showing up to get the work done and a vehicle never showing up because it broke down. One issue is cosmetic but causes no problems to accomplishing the task... they other is an impediment to doing business. One MUST be addressed, the other is an optional.