Huh? Why is that? I have one of those things as well. My debit card is a smart-card (has one of those chips on it), and the bank gave me a simple cardreader.
How it goes is:
- I go to my bank's site - I enter my card number - I put my card reader into the device - I type the 8-digit number on the screen into the reader - I type my pin into the reader - The reader tells me the pin is OK (I assume that since it's a smartcard, if I type a wrong pin 3 times in a row, it destroys itself) - the reader returns an 8-digit number I type into the login screen
I am in
If I want to transfer money, I have to use a different procedure. I don't have to do this for every transfer, I can make a few and then do it once for all:
- I type my pin into the card reader - I type a number on the screen into the reader - I type the total amount transfered - The reader returns a number which I can use to confirm the transfer
I think this system is pretty secure. It's a minor annoyance, but after a few times it only takes a few seconds to do.
Why would giving the card reader to people be a security breach? Am I missing something?
Well, we ordered some trial CD's from IBM a while back, and they arrived yesterday.
They came in a box. A cardboard box of about 40x40x50 cm (that's about 15x15x20 inch). It contained a lot of packaging paper, and there was a smaller box in it. In that box where some CD's, and a 300 page book titled "license".
We needed just one CD. Just one.
Worst part: I'm not making any of this up.
So I'm betting on #2 as well.
Our IT department made a website accessible from our VPN, where you can enter your machines name, and it sends the Wake-On-LAN in the correct network.
It's really just some lines of PHP, and a small wake-on-LAN tool in the back. Quite simple and very convenient.
That's quite sad. I'm hooked to reading and rarely watch movies. Don't even have a television these days. I've recently discovered (English) science fiction (not my native language), and I'm just devouring it all. (just finished "Speaker for the Dead")
My reading is up to the level where my "imagination" functionality is in overdrive. I've never watched a movie adaptation that wasn't dull and boring compared to the book.
To me the LotR movies where extremely dull and boring. I watched them in agony and boredom. (2 times I was so naive to thing the next one would be better)
Now, the weird thing is, I don't have any visual imagination. My imagination takes on some other unseen form. Probably some other part of my brain that's involved, nothing visual. I honestly couldn't picture anything I read in LotR, but when I saw the movie, I did see it was horribly wrong. I didn't match my imagination, even though it isn't visual.
Perhaps that's why I don't appreciate movies and television so much? Visuals aren't of interest to me.
We had these tests in school where you had to read a text (not only in my native language, but later in the 2 other languages (French and English) I learned as well), and you had to answer questions about it later. I was always so surprised on how people could score less than 90% on these tests. I just couldn't understand they read that text without knowing it's contents. (I was so good at these tests, they actually kept me from failing French, which I speak very badly, but understand extremely well)
The brain certainly is a strange beast...
I wonder: how easily are you distracted while you read?
I lose all sense of time and surroundings when I read. I ignore everything. Sometimes when I stop reading, I discover people have told me something while I was reading, to which I'm told I replied "yes" (without stopping to read off course). However, I usually only have an extremely vague memory of that happening...
As a hint if you're looking to "learn to read": don't think this "reading imagination" HAS to be visual. In my case, it seems to take another form.
I didn't need the slides to know that 'GLaDoS' was 'alive'. It was pretty obvious anyhow, almost from the start.
I knew that too, a computer coming alive and killing everyone IS of course what you would expect in any videogame. What I liked about is was more the "casualness" of the "hint". It wasn't setup so you'd find it and couldn't possibly miss it. It was just a sideline thing, no 2x4. No rubbing your nose in it. And that's what I found new and refreshing. But by going on about this, I'm blowing it way out of proportion;-)
It's just a small detail I liked really.
Tricks me? Attempts to. None of her 'tricks' would have fooled even the least self-aware of us primates.
But you WHERE fooled;-) She tricked you into destroying her "morality core".
"Oops, something fell of me, just like that, I don't know what it is, it mustn't be important!".
As for the art, I do consider it art. When a potter makes a pot, it's not necessarily art. But if it's a unique, very nice pot, it is art. But hey, where talking about "what is art". I've been in too many modern art museums. Half of the stuff (at least) in these isn't art to me at all. In the end, "art" is just a word.
Let's just say I think a good game deserves to be art. And portal was good. So, hey, why not?
If you mean that they didn't rub your face in it, then you are right. But that's what makes the story so great, the subtle way in which it is told.
For example, take the slides you can glimpse in 2 places in the game. They mention GLaDoS as "arguably alive". They don't give away what happend at all, they only drop that 1 hint, on one of the last lines of just 1 of the slides in the set.
All you get are various hints as to what happend, never anything forced.
Oh, and let's not forget, for once, the "bad guy" makes no stupid revealing speech explaining all at the end.
Instead, she tricks you, which ultimatly reveals her weakness.
As for identical looking areas, that's true, BUT: Where you bored even ONCE?
IMHO The puzzles are all very different, and never frustrating or boring. It's a small game, but a real good one.
Your argument would make sense if there was decent private health care for sale in the US. But there isn't (or so I've been told, I must admit I don't live there). All private health-care companies pay a horde of lowlife employees, that look at all cases and use whatever means they can to get away with not having to pay. They all do that to increase profit. Good luck going to a competitor when you're sick and they weasel out and don't pay. You're sick already, so you can't go anywhere else.
Face it: capitalism doesn't work in this sector, for the simple reason you can't go anywhere else if you're being treated bad.
(And yes, state health-care costs heaps of money, but at least they don't usually try to escape paying out. When you've got 2 bads, pick the least worst of the 2. In this case, pick health instead of money.)
The idea that a complicated organism can "evolve" one part at a time is just idiotic, no matter how many people believe it.
So, take us humans as a complicated organism. We where created in one piece by God, I guess.
But God seems to have created us with major genetic defects (cancer, allergic reactions, hereditary diseases,...)! Those do not only hit "sinners", but also "innocent children".
Did the all-powerful-and-all-knowing-God make a big mistake? One that can't be corrected? Or is he just a sadist? (And don't say it's a test, that only makes him more of a sadist.)
With all our defects, it's clear humans are the result of pure chaos and evolution on our DNA code. It's idiotic not to see that, no matter how many people don't believe it.
Exactly, all of these, and more, need to be dealt with!
But you forgot one important one:
Governments using fear to control and manipulate you.
Fear is a powerful tool of manipulation, why do you think terrorists use it? Certain governments know all too well how to exploit and manage this fear for their own ends.
They too are to be dealt with!
There's no reason to blindly fear and obey. But there are problems to be dealt with.
Only a terrorized mind, controlled by fear believes the only way to deal with these things is by giving the government totalitarian powers.
As a matter of nit-picking, I don't think "formless and void" in Genisis 1:2 refers to the entire universe (though I think it, too, went through a phase that would match that description). It is used to describe the Earth: the Earth had reached a state of formlessness and emptiness: "...darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters."
You're certainly not a "6000-year old earth"-adept, but why do you still seek so much literal meaning in the bible? That's something I can't grasp as a non-Christian. You make a good point that "real" bible scholars study the text in original languages. As you know certain groups take certain translations as a very literal, and the absolute truth, which you don't (Why? How did you decide "where to draw the line"?).
As I did the exercise in my previous post, even if you take the text as "literally true", due to language, cultural and even "editorial" considerations, you can interpret it in different, flexible ways.
Reasoning from the perspective "the bible is literally true", and combining that with "different flexible interpretations are possible", doesn't that mean that the "editor" was purposely vague, and these things are "besides the point"? Anyway I'm not good at that sort of reasoning. I'd draw the conclusion "the bible is not literally true".
If I look at genesis, I'd say it's an ancient story meant to illustrate the message "don't mess with things those who know better told you not to mess with" or "respect your superior" (or something to that effect). As a non-Christian, I don't get the need for Christians to take it as a literal account of creation.
the very first verse of the very first book in the Bible (which refers specifically to a "beginning"),
This is an interesting point. My problem with such arguments is this:
The bible was written in a certain LANGUAGE. It was also TRANSLATED. The fact that it's written in a certain language alone is important.
For example, there are actually languages that don't have any other numbers than: one, two and many. (I'm not making this up BTW). How could a translation of the bible in that language tell us how many days Jesus spent in the desert? How could a language, that also doesn't include weekdays, tell us when god made what?
In this case, even in English, what's the correct word for "the beginning of time"? Because "beginning" refers to a point in time, while we want to suggest there was no time so no point of reference. More like "the point before which there could not be counted any time", and that's not great either. Even "point" is a problem, as it refers to dimensions, be they time or space, and we're referring to the lack of dimensions! No matter what way I think of, the meaning of the words somewhere requires time. English simply can't express it! So you'll need a full-blown mathematical model to describe this correctly, or a lot of pages.
Any good Editor wouldn't go in to such unimportant details, and would use "beginning" as a good enough word. After all, the bible is written for another reason! Tiny details such as this are of no importance. Even more, zooming in on them draws focus to them, and thus makes these details look important..
Conclusion, taking the bible as correct, taking into account the limits of language and looking at the scientific evidence:
"In the beginning" is short for "The beginning of time", "Dimensional creation" or "Singular emergance" (all still fuzzy descriptions).
And "formless and void" refers to "quark-gluon plasma", or the even more uniform phase before that. It's not like they had a word for that in Hebrew.
(PS: I'm interested in what your view is on the point above, to understand Christians (that take the bible very literally) better. My own beliefs are actually non-Christian.)
I've looked it up, and this is of course legalese in its purest form, but these are interesting bits of the law: (in dutch)
2. Onder "verwerking" wordt verstaan
elke bewerking of elk geheel van
bewerkingen met betrekking tot
persoonsgegevens, al dan niet uitgevoerd
met behulp van geautomatiseerde
procédés, zoals het verzamelen,
vastleggen, ordenen, bewaren, bijwerken,
wijzigen, opvragen, raadplegen,
gebruiken, verstrekken door middel van
doorzending, verspreiden of op enigerlei
andere wijze ter beschikking stellen,
samenbrengen, met elkaar in verband
brengen, alsmede het afschermen,
uitwissen of vernietigen van
persoonsgegevens.
Eenieder is bovendien gerechtigd om
wegens zwaarwegende en
gerechtvaardigde redenen die verband
houden met zijn bijzondere situatie, zich
ertegen te verzetten dat hem betreffende
gegevens het voorwerp van een
verwerking vormen, behalve wanneer de
rechtmatigheid van de verwerking
gesteund is op de in artikel 5, b) en c),
bedoelde redenen.
Indien de persoonsgegevens verkregen
worden met het oog op direct marketing
mag de betrokkene zich kosteloos en
zonder enige motivering tegen de
voorgenomen verwerking van hem
betreffende persoonsgegevens verzetten.
My interpretation is that this stopping "verwerking" means as much as deleting the data, as your forbidden to do anything with it.
There's a lot of other stuff in the law, which prevents many uses of personal data. But I must admit I'd have liked it more if it read more explicitly that you can have it deleted.
Hahaha! ROFL. You think that they actually do it though?
Most do. Off course some don't, especially as it's not easy to know. But even if they keep the data, they at least leave you alone. If not, they'll give you proof you can use to sue. And before you laugh again, courts DO occasionally get it right:P
Then again, you probably think that all your laws are there to protect you too.
Off course not, there's a lot of problems, but it's not nearly as bleak as you make it appear. Not every law is out to get you, and not every law fails 100% to do make a difference. These privacy laws, are at least a sign of good intention. It's positive we have them...
Your depressed, anarchistic, black-and-white views blind you to the fact the current situation isn't a complete disaster, and even has some good sides.
Well, here in Belgium it's simple. There's a law that gives you the right to request all info they have on you, and allows you to order them to delete it. I'm not 100% sure, but I think at least a few other European counties have a law like that.
Power to the artists? No! Artists are fewer in number than the public. We should strife to please as much people as possible, so I call for complete power to the public. No copyright whatsoever.
But then you'll need some way of encouraging and creating artists, and allowing them to make a living/profit.
I see only 2 ways there, and they're both as bad as DRM (which will either fail, or be a totalitarian, monopolistic nightmare).
Either you let fans pay artists on a voluntary basis, which will fail, because people are mostly egoistic.
Or, you can have a tax system, with some government agency figuring out which artists is entitled support. But it will obviously do a bad job (as it's a government agency).
I agree with what you say, but the big difference here is that there are no waiting lists. I moved from UK to US, my family health issues are addressed immediately here. My friends and family in the UK get stuck on waiting lists with can be for months.
Move to Belgium. No waiting lists. Infact, people from the UK and the Netherlands come here on "medical holiday" to avoid the waiting lists.
Another difference is doctors here make a fortune, just like lawyers. Whereas those in the UK can work 80 hours a week for a middle income. Move to Belgium. Also if your a docter, docters make good money here.
Medical professional are also broken down into an infinite number of specialists here, there's little need to muck around with general practitioners, if you do, you'll get referred to a specialist pretty quick.
Move to Belgium. You get reffered very easily. You can just go directly to a specialist as well.
There is also free medical for low income and freeloader types. Most places will not turn you away either. If you call up front, you'll be asked about insurance. Even when you receive huge bills, you can make small monthly payments to pay it off. Children without medical cover may be covered by the state, so if you have a young kid and a big bill, yet have no insurance, and if your income is low enough (which is less than something like $50-60k I've been told) the state will pick up the tab.
Move to Belgium. NO place will turn you away. And you can just forget about the small monthly payments.
It's not all doom and gloom like you think it is. Yes, there's a huge amount of profiteering, a bill will be for different values depending on payment, and insurance companies waste a huge resource avoiding payment, you really have to be on the ball even with cover. The real issues are for the long term sick, rather than fixing up a damaged body part. Move to Belgium. Downsides are a bit to enthousiastic docters, which will use stuff like scanners too often (costing the governement lots of money). But there's no avoiding payment by governement. And the long term sick get all their expenses above a maximum amount payed by the governement.
But uhm, to be fair, there is one major downside. It costs the governement A LOT, and we all know where they get their money...
So in conclusion: Move to Belgium! We need people we can tax for our healthcare system.
I go for bikerides, and especially on long downhill parts, I enjoy driving without hands, not using my legs (the slope keeps me going), and keeping my eyes closed for a few seconds. Your direction sense, hearing, balance and touch (you feel the wind "in more detail") become very aware. If you read this witohut having tried it, you might think it's dangerous, and you'd panic doing this, but somehow it's very relaxing, and I automaticaly start to breath slowly and deeply.
Even on fairly steep slopes (where you gain speed fast) this is enjoyable, but on these you can't risk closing your eyes for more than a second;)
Why can't they make these things simple and thrushtworthy for everyone? It ain't so hard:
- Enter voting office - Receive a "voting paper" - Enter voting booth - Insert voting paper into machine - Push the button for the candidate you want. (Machine's critical components are covered in faraday cage, to stop any readable transmissions) - Vote is printed on paper - Check the print and fold the paper along the prefolded line, so text is no longer visible - Publicaly put it in the urn (where they just fall in a disorderly stack, so order can't be traced)
Counting (when the election is over, earlier is cheating off course) - Manually get all papers, and feed them into a counting machine - Machine sorts and counts all votes. returns each type of vote paper in easily countable stacks. Result is immediatly made public. - Count a large part of the votes by hand.
Any problem with this type of voting? It offers all benefits of electronic voting, and none of the drawbacks (or so I'd think).
Sure, there were some parts missing like the scouring of the shire, and some of the dialog was slighlty phantom-menace-esque("what does your heart tell you") but the extended editions of the movies were great.
The needless additions where worse than the missing parts. Like all that nonsense about Aragorn falling over the edge of a cliff during a battle with worgs, being thought dead, and then returning. What the hell did they need that for??
I also read the books first, but the movies were... well movies.
Perhaps that's my problem, movies just never compare to books for me.
The books spent a whole lot less time on the battle sequences than the movies did.
Is that bad? Besides, like I said, in my imagination, those battle sequences where so much more impressive.
I still think something better could have been done. Sure, it could have been alot worse as well, but also a lot better.
If you could get Ian Holm, Hugo Weaving, Ian Mckellen, and Peter Jackson all together again, The Hobbit would have to be excellent.
You seem to have no imagination of your own. I first read LotR and then saw the movies. The book is still in my top 10 now (and I read alot). Compared to it the movies where incredibly dull, boring and shallow.
So I am certainly NOT looking forward to a "The Hobbit" movie with the same team...
I hate this attitude "Oh he would not have bought it anyways and therefore its ok to borrow"
I can assure you my brother wouldn't have bought any of the gigabytes of music he currently has. For a start he doesn't have the money for it, and secondly at least 50% of that music he wouldn't even consider buying if he was Bill Gates himself.
So what exactly is the "industry" losing on him?
Beep NO ITS NOT! Ask a BMW driver if you could take their car for a spin because 1) you don't have the money, 2) don't want to buy it because you prefer Lexus. Most likely the BMW driver would tell you to bugger off.
BAD analogy, he has got something to lose here, his car! Can't you see the difference between "physical" and "intellectual" property? In this case te analogy wouldn't be copying the car, but making a perfect copy of it without the owner having any negative effect on his car.
Imagine if Microsoft took this lax attitude to Open Source. Imagine if Microsoft said, "Hey let's borrow that threading code" and not follow the GPL. I am betting you and your brother would be the first in line to demand Steve Ballmer's head! Yet you think its ok to "borrow" movies.
Another bad analogy, code is not the same as music. And besides, my brother isn't making any money of it. I wouldn't agree if he made money by selling music he downloaded.
Movies, Music, Open Source all depend on copyright. If you break copyright for one you break copyright for all. I am a firm supporter of Open Source and a firm believer of copyright.
So next time when you "borrow" a movie or music, you are saying it's ok for Microsoft to borrow pieces of Linux code without following the GPL.
As I said, your analogies and logic is faulty...
I could personnaly live with copyright that only permits the creator to make money from the work, but leaves all other uses free.
My personal explanation is this: I won't buy this music, film or game anyway, so I don't hurt anyone by copying it and "using" it. Take the case of my brother. He's got barely any money at all, yet he has gigabytes and gigabytes of music and movies. Nobody loses any money over him, since he doesn't have the money to buy thoses anyway.
So a lot of pirating is a "win, no loss" scenario, and any good "solution" must keep these wins. Off course, a lot of pirating IS a loss for the "industry" as well, since some people would have bought the CD or DVD, and won't pay for it if thy can get it for free, even though they like it.
So it's clear a solution is needed that generates income for creator in another way, and that's where "Steal This Film" certainly fails.
The only solution I can think off, would be to pay artists by taxes, which are dependand on how much you "use" copyrighted works (not fair to pay the full tax if you watch one movie a month and rarely listen to music), and your income. This would be a very hard to implement and unpopular method though:)
Slashdot Mirror
Huh? Why is that? I have one of those things as well.
My debit card is a smart-card (has one of those chips on it), and the bank gave me a simple cardreader.
How it goes is:
- I go to my bank's site
- I enter my card number
- I put my card reader into the device
- I type the 8-digit number on the screen into the reader
- I type my pin into the reader
- The reader tells me the pin is OK (I assume that since it's a smartcard, if I type a wrong pin 3 times in a row, it destroys itself)
- the reader returns an 8-digit number I type into the login screen
I am in
If I want to transfer money, I have to use a different procedure. I don't have to do this for every transfer, I can make a few and then do it once for all:
- I type my pin into the card reader
- I type a number on the screen into the reader
- I type the total amount transfered
- The reader returns a number which I can use to confirm the transfer
I think this system is pretty secure. It's a minor annoyance, but after a few times it only takes a few seconds to do.
Why would giving the card reader to people be a security breach? Am I missing something?
Well, we ordered some trial CD's from IBM a while back, and they arrived yesterday. They came in a box. A cardboard box of about 40x40x50 cm (that's about 15x15x20 inch). It contained a lot of packaging paper, and there was a smaller box in it. In that box where some CD's, and a 300 page book titled "license". We needed just one CD. Just one. Worst part: I'm not making any of this up. So I'm betting on #2 as well.
Our IT department made a website accessible from our VPN, where you can enter your machines name, and it sends the Wake-On-LAN in the correct network. It's really just some lines of PHP, and a small wake-on-LAN tool in the back. Quite simple and very convenient.
That's quite sad. I'm hooked to reading and rarely watch movies. Don't even have a television these days. I've recently discovered (English) science fiction (not my native language), and I'm just devouring it all. (just finished "Speaker for the Dead")
My reading is up to the level where my "imagination" functionality is in overdrive. I've never watched a movie adaptation that wasn't dull and boring compared to the book.
To me the LotR movies where extremely dull and boring. I watched them in agony and boredom. (2 times I was so naive to thing the next one would be better)
Now, the weird thing is, I don't have any visual imagination. My imagination takes on some other unseen form. Probably some other part of my brain that's involved, nothing visual. I honestly couldn't picture anything I read in LotR, but when I saw the movie, I did see it was horribly wrong. I didn't match my imagination, even though it isn't visual.
Perhaps that's why I don't appreciate movies and television so much? Visuals aren't of interest to me.
We had these tests in school where you had to read a text (not only in my native language, but later in the 2 other languages (French and English) I learned as well), and you had to answer questions about it later. I was always so surprised on how people could score less than 90% on these tests. I just couldn't understand they read that text without knowing it's contents. (I was so good at these tests, they actually kept me from failing French, which I speak very badly, but understand extremely well)
The brain certainly is a strange beast...
I wonder: how easily are you distracted while you read?
I lose all sense of time and surroundings when I read. I ignore everything. Sometimes when I stop reading, I discover people have told me something while I was reading, to which I'm told I replied "yes" (without stopping to read off course). However, I usually only have an extremely vague memory of that happening...
As a hint if you're looking to "learn to read": don't think this "reading imagination" HAS to be visual. In my case, it seems to take another form.
It's just a small detail I liked really. But you WHERE fooled
"Oops, something fell of me, just like that, I don't know what it is, it mustn't be important!".
As for the art, I do consider it art. When a potter makes a pot, it's not necessarily art. But if it's a unique, very nice pot, it is art. But hey, where talking about "what is art". I've been in too many modern art museums. Half of the stuff (at least) in these isn't art to me at all. In the end, "art" is just a word.
Let's just say I think a good game deserves to be art. And portal was good. So, hey, why not?
For example, take the slides you can glimpse in 2 places in the game. They mention GLaDoS as "arguably alive". They don't give away what happend at all, they only drop that 1 hint, on one of the last lines of just 1 of the slides in the set.
All you get are various hints as to what happend, never anything forced.
Oh, and let's not forget, for once, the "bad guy" makes no stupid revealing speech explaining all at the end.
Instead, she tricks you, which ultimatly reveals her weakness.
As for identical looking areas, that's true, BUT: Where you bored even ONCE?
IMHO The puzzles are all very different, and never frustrating or boring. It's a small game, but a real good one.
Your argument would make sense if there was decent private health care for sale in the US. But there isn't (or so I've been told, I must admit I don't live there). All private health-care companies pay a horde of lowlife employees, that look at all cases and use whatever means they can to get away with not having to pay. They all do that to increase profit. Good luck going to a competitor when you're sick and they weasel out and don't pay. You're sick already, so you can't go anywhere else.
Face it: capitalism doesn't work in this sector, for the simple reason you can't go anywhere else if you're being treated bad.
(And yes, state health-care costs heaps of money, but at least they don't usually try to escape paying out. When you've got 2 bads, pick the least worst of the 2. In this case, pick health instead of money.)
But God seems to have created us with major genetic defects (cancer, allergic reactions, hereditary diseases,
Did the all-powerful-and-all-knowing-God make a big mistake? One that can't be corrected? Or is he just a sadist? (And don't say it's a test, that only makes him more of a sadist.)
With all our defects, it's clear humans are the result of pure chaos and evolution on our DNA code. It's idiotic not to see that, no matter how many people don't believe it.
Exactly, all of these, and more, need to be dealt with!
But you forgot one important one: Governments using fear to control and manipulate you.
Fear is a powerful tool of manipulation, why do you think terrorists use it? Certain governments know all too well how to exploit and manage this fear for their own ends.
They too are to be dealt with!
There's no reason to blindly fear and obey. But there are problems to be dealt with.
Only a terrorized mind, controlled by fear believes the only way to deal with these things is by giving the government totalitarian powers.
As I did the exercise in my previous post, even if you take the text as "literally true", due to language, cultural and even "editorial" considerations, you can interpret it in different, flexible ways.
Reasoning from the perspective "the bible is literally true", and combining that with "different flexible interpretations are possible", doesn't that mean that the "editor" was purposely vague, and these things are "besides the point"? Anyway I'm not good at that sort of reasoning. I'd draw the conclusion "the bible is not literally true".
If I look at genesis, I'd say it's an ancient story meant to illustrate the message "don't mess with things those who know better told you not to mess with" or "respect your superior" (or something to that effect). As a non-Christian, I don't get the need for Christians to take it as a literal account of creation.
The bible was written in a certain LANGUAGE. It was also TRANSLATED. The fact that it's written in a certain language alone is important.
For example, there are actually languages that don't have any other numbers than: one, two and many. (I'm not making this up BTW). How could a translation of the bible in that language tell us how many days Jesus spent in the desert? How could a language, that also doesn't include weekdays, tell us when god made what?
In this case, even in English, what's the correct word for "the beginning of time"? Because "beginning" refers to a point in time, while we want to suggest there was no time so no point of reference. More like "the point before which there could not be counted any time", and that's not great either. Even "point" is a problem, as it refers to dimensions, be they time or space, and we're referring to the lack of dimensions! No matter what way I think of, the meaning of the words somewhere requires time. English simply can't express it! So you'll need a full-blown mathematical model to describe this correctly, or a lot of pages.
Any good Editor wouldn't go in to such unimportant details, and would use "beginning" as a good enough word. After all, the bible is written for another reason! Tiny details such as this are of no importance. Even more, zooming in on them draws focus to them, and thus makes these details look important..
Conclusion, taking the bible as correct, taking into account the limits of language and looking at the scientific evidence:
"In the beginning" is short for "The beginning of time", "Dimensional creation" or "Singular emergance" (all still fuzzy descriptions).
And "formless and void" refers to "quark-gluon plasma", or the even more uniform phase before that. It's not like they had a word for that in Hebrew.
(PS: I'm interested in what your view is on the point above, to understand Christians (that take the bible very literally) better. My own beliefs are actually non-Christian.)
I've looked it up, and this is of course legalese in its purest form, but these are interesting bits of the law: (in dutch)
2. Onder "verwerking" wordt verstaan elke bewerking of elk geheel van bewerkingen met betrekking tot persoonsgegevens, al dan niet uitgevoerd met behulp van geautomatiseerde procédés, zoals het verzamelen, vastleggen, ordenen, bewaren, bijwerken, wijzigen, opvragen, raadplegen, gebruiken, verstrekken door middel van doorzending, verspreiden of op enigerlei andere wijze ter beschikking stellen, samenbrengen, met elkaar in verband brengen, alsmede het afschermen, uitwissen of vernietigen van persoonsgegevens.
Eenieder is bovendien gerechtigd om wegens zwaarwegende en gerechtvaardigde redenen die verband houden met zijn bijzondere situatie, zich ertegen te verzetten dat hem betreffende gegevens het voorwerp van een verwerking vormen, behalve wanneer de rechtmatigheid van de verwerking gesteund is op de in artikel 5, b) en c), bedoelde redenen. Indien de persoonsgegevens verkregen worden met het oog op direct marketing mag de betrokkene zich kosteloos en zonder enige motivering tegen de voorgenomen verwerking van hem betreffende persoonsgegevens verzetten.
My interpretation is that this stopping "verwerking" means as much as deleting the data, as your forbidden to do anything with it.
There's a lot of other stuff in the law, which prevents many uses of personal data. But I must admit I'd have liked it more if it read more explicitly that you can have it deleted.
Your depressed, anarchistic, black-and-white views blind you to the fact the current situation isn't a complete disaster, and even has some good sides.
Well, here in Belgium it's simple. There's a law that gives you the right to request all info they have on you, and allows you to order them to delete it. I'm not 100% sure, but I think at least a few other European counties have a law like that.
Power to the artists? No! Artists are fewer in number than the public. We should strife to please as much people as possible, so I call for complete power to the public. No copyright whatsoever.
But then you'll need some way of encouraging and creating artists, and allowing them to make a living/profit.
I see only 2 ways there, and they're both as bad as DRM (which will either fail, or be a totalitarian, monopolistic nightmare). Either you let fans pay artists on a voluntary basis, which will fail, because people are mostly egoistic.
Or, you can have a tax system, with some government agency figuring out which artists is entitled support. But it will obviously do a bad job (as it's a government agency).
Which disease do you prefer?
Move to Belgium. No waiting lists. Infact, people from the UK and the Netherlands come here on "medical holiday" to avoid the waiting lists. Another difference is doctors here make a fortune, just like lawyers. Whereas those in the UK can work 80 hours a week for a middle income. Move to Belgium. Also if your a docter, docters make good money here. Medical professional are also broken down into an infinite number of specialists here, there's little need to muck around with general practitioners, if you do, you'll get referred to a specialist pretty quick.
Move to Belgium. You get reffered very easily. You can just go directly to a specialist as well. There is also free medical for low income and freeloader types. Most places will not turn you away either. If you call up front, you'll be asked about insurance. Even when you receive huge bills, you can make small monthly payments to pay it off. Children without medical cover may be covered by the state, so if you have a young kid and a big bill, yet have no insurance, and if your income is low enough (which is less than something like $50-60k I've been told) the state will pick up the tab.
Move to Belgium. NO place will turn you away. And you can just forget about the small monthly payments. It's not all doom and gloom like you think it is. Yes, there's a huge amount of profiteering, a bill will be for different values depending on payment, and insurance companies waste a huge resource avoiding payment, you really have to be on the ball even with cover. The real issues are for the long term sick, rather than fixing up a damaged body part. Move to Belgium. Downsides are a bit to enthousiastic docters, which will use stuff like scanners too often (costing the governement lots of money). But there's no avoiding payment by governement. And the long term sick get all their expenses above a maximum amount payed by the governement.
But uhm, to be fair, there is one major downside. It costs the governement A LOT, and we all know where they get their money...
So in conclusion: Move to Belgium! We need people we can tax for our healthcare system.
Hmmm, I do that too.
;)
I go for bikerides, and especially on long downhill parts, I enjoy driving without hands, not using my legs (the slope keeps me going), and keeping my eyes closed for a few seconds. Your direction sense, hearing, balance and touch (you feel the wind "in more detail") become very aware. If you read this witohut having tried it, you might think it's dangerous, and you'd panic doing this, but somehow it's very relaxing, and I automaticaly start to breath slowly and deeply.
Even on fairly steep slopes (where you gain speed fast) this is enjoyable, but on these you can't risk closing your eyes for more than a second
Why can't they make these things simple and thrushtworthy for everyone?
It ain't so hard:
- Enter voting office
- Receive a "voting paper"
- Enter voting booth
- Insert voting paper into machine
- Push the button for the candidate you want. (Machine's critical components are covered in faraday cage, to stop any readable transmissions)
- Vote is printed on paper
- Check the print and fold the paper along the prefolded line, so text is no longer visible
- Publicaly put it in the urn (where they just fall in a disorderly stack, so order can't be traced)
Counting (when the election is over, earlier is cheating off course)
- Manually get all papers, and feed them into a counting machine
- Machine sorts and counts all votes. returns each type of vote paper in easily countable stacks. Result is immediatly made public.
- Count a large part of the votes by hand.
Any problem with this type of voting? It offers all benefits of electronic voting, and none of the drawbacks (or so I'd think).
Not sure what exactly you need, but do you know google's search history? http://www.google.com/searchhistory
Perhaps that's my problem, movies just never compare to books for me.
Is that bad? Besides, like I said, in my imagination, those battle sequences where so much more impressive.
I still think something better could have been done. Sure, it could have been alot worse as well, but also a lot better.
So I am certainly NOT looking forward to a "The Hobbit" movie with the same team...
I agree, on Linux, I haven't seen anything better than Anjuta. I don't program GUIs however, I usualy create network applications.
KDevelop really annoyed me a lot, it was unusable for me.
Eclipse is great for java, but for C or C++ it really let me down.
Anjuta isn't perfect (but no other IDE I've ever seen is anyway), but overall it does most of what I want perfectly.
My personal explanation is this: I won't buy this music, film or game anyway, so I don't hurt anyone by copying it and "using" it. Take the case of my brother. He's got barely any money at all, yet he has gigabytes and gigabytes of music and movies. Nobody loses any money over him, since he doesn't have the money to buy thoses anyway.
So a lot of pirating is a "win, no loss" scenario, and any good "solution" must keep these wins. Off course, a lot of pirating IS a loss for the "industry" as well, since some people would have bought the CD or DVD, and won't pay for it if thy can get it for free, even though they like it.
So it's clear a solution is needed that generates income for creator in another way, and that's where "Steal This Film" certainly fails.
The only solution I can think off, would be to pay artists by taxes, which are dependand on how much you "use" copyrighted works (not fair to pay the full tax if you watch one movie a month and rarely listen to music), and your income. This would be a very hard to implement and unpopular method though
Just ask wikipedia.
I was too young at the time to know about it, but it's an interesting piece of history.