No, but you can ghost a base OS image, then have it sysprep on first boot and install Exchange in its proper role. It was a bit more work than necessary for that many servers, but when a server goes down, I just have to plug my 2G flash key into any convenient machine, edit one of about 50 text files each describing a different server config and put the name and IP of the machine in. Then, plug it into the server and reboot. 20 minutes later, the server's up and running like it never went down.
Yes, so you spend all your time building one box and make it "perfect", then push the image to the other servers. You still had to build that one Notes box. A few hours to build the first, then 10 minutes to build the remainder. Your original point seemed to be the number of servers involved and the time it takes to set it up. My point was the additional servers do not take a significant investment in time. The 16 servers that make up our environment were all built in two days. After the initial build, the main bulk of the time was spent unboxing and disposing of the cardboard. Granted, before I joined the group they didn't use Ghost and that environment would've taken over three weeks to build. Me, I like to tell 'em it takes a week and then goof off for three days. I still come out ahead of what it would've taken them.:)
Notes does a lot of what Exchange does, and does a whole lot more.
Having been an administrator of both systems, there's only two spots in which Notes exceeds Exchange/Outlook: in Notes, when I set an item on my calendar as "out of office", it asks if I want to set an out of office message for that time. Fantastic, but that's available in E/O 2007, so it's only an edge if you're still on older versions of the pair. Second, I can set the number of people a conference room will hold so that users can't overpopulate a room for a meeting. Great feature, but not a show-stopper.
Beyond that, Notes offers nothing to corporations except increased calls to help desks due to downtime and a user interface that must've been designed by Dali when he was on acid. I realize they've simply designed their own "standards" since they're cross-platform, but in doing so they've violated the UI standards of every OS it runs on and thus makes it difficult to train users with. It's hard to use, doesn't integrate with other apps very well, is a pig on the desktop (in the last place I used it, we had Citrix servers capable of handling 150 users each simultaneously. We had to cut that down to 45 since they'd be running the Notes client). Sure, we could've given them Outlook with the Notes connector, but why run a half-assed backend with a full-assed frontend?
Sorry, but Exchange is simply install and forget. Even in my current environment of 14,000 desktops, the only calls my group ever gets about "Exchange" are "can you check and see if this customer's address has been blacklisted by the spam filter?"
The answer is simple. If you don't vote, don't count yourself as "intelligent".
Yeah, 'cause voting counts for anything anymore. We're trapped, and he's going to seize all of the power and make himself emperor. And, yes, I still vote. I just don't see the point anymore. I don't get to vote FOR anyone anymore, just against.
There's this new thing out. It's called the New Testament. It means that the punishment for sin is no longer death. It means we don't have to be perfect.
A nice thought, but not valid:
"Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law." Matthew 5; 17
Followed up by:
"Those filled with unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, backbiters, hate for god, despite, proud, boasters, inventions of evil things, disobedience to parents, without understanding, covenant breakers, unnatural affection, implacable or unmerciful nature: Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death". Romans 1:29-32
Whisperers?
You call it delusion. I call it faith. You are correct in that I can not prove anything. Then again, there is so much accepted in science that can not be proved either, but it's widely accepted as fact.
Such as? The Big Bang? That's why it's called a "theory". There's a lot of evidence to support it, but it's not treated, pun intended, as gospel. If someone comes along and verifiably proves the Big Bang was a wrong path, science will accept it and move on. On the other hand, religion, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary of all its beliefs continues to believe in them. That is, until the unerring voice of god on Earth decides to change them after 1600 years.:) As for the "delusion" part, it's not meant as an insult. The definition of delusion: "an erroneous belief that is held in the face of evidence to the contrary".
Mankind is responsible for those atrocities and so much more. Are you saying that I should abandon mankind? Besides, MY religion was responsible for none of those. However, I will agree that religion has been misused for some pretty horrific atrocities, but atrocities happen with or without religion. It has just become an excuse, or enabler, for some. But blaming religion as a whole for the misdeeds of a few is like blaming black people for OJ murdering his wife.
Name something on par with any of the atrocities I've mentioned that wasn't inspired by religion. As to the black's analogy, not comparable. "Black" refers to a person's skin color, not their thought patterns or outlook on life. Being "black" does not, by definition, provide you with a set of rules and morals you're supposed to follow that were written by iron-age shepherds. It does not tell you how you're to interact with those who are not "black". For example, just because one is black does not mean they are required to hate gays. Being a member of most religions does (even if you chose not to follow that particular credo).
Funny. I was thinking the same thing, minus the rationality part.
Nice!:)
Uh, nowhere in the Bible does it say to kill my children.
Exodus 21:15-17 "And he that smiteth his father, or his mother, shall be surely put to death"
Exodus 21:17 "And he that curseth his father, or his mother, shall surely be put to death".
Deuteronomy 21: "and they shall say to the elders of his city, `This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton and a drunkard. Then all the men of the city shall stone him to death with stones; so you shall purge the evil from your midst; and all Israel shall hear, and fear.
The facts that our Founding Fathers had religion. I listed a site with their affiliations. Those were the facts. The Constitutions states Freedom OF Religion, not freedom FROM it for a reason (another fact). I find those truths to be self evident.
All that is Evil? I think your definitions are a bit skewed.
Oh, I get it, the one or two sentences in the whole book that might be construed as "good" are the end-all and be-all of your religion, then? How 'bout...
Do not covet thy neighbor's wife, neighbor's ass, neighbor's wife's ass.
The penalty for which, is death (Leviticus 20:10).
Honor thy mother and father.
The peanalty for which, is death
Do you follow the 10 commandments, too? If so, how many people have you personally put to death for working on the sabbath (Exodus 31:15)? How 'bout muslims or buddhists (Deuteronomy 17:2)? Have you attacked their towns and destroyed all of the inhabitants (Deuteronomy 13:13)? Since I denounce the reality of your delusional god, I can only assume you're trying to track me down so I can be stoned to death (Leviticus 24:16), right? Just like 'em faigs (Leviticus 20:13)!
Now, I can hear the squirmy rationalizations coming...forget 'em. God's law is perfect (Psalms 19:7). You can claim they have no relevance, but if that's the case, why follow any of them? Most often I hear that atheists are masters of situational ethics, yet any christian who hasn't put to death at least one unbeliever is denying their own beliefs in favor of expediency.
My church feeds the hungry, clothes the poor, and gives aid to those that need it.
I'm assuming that's with the money you got from selling all your stuff so you could get into heaven (Luke 18:22), right? I like Luke, he's full of Jesus' love. You hate your father and mother (Luke 14:26), right?
This page lists all of the founding father's religions.
Up until I left catholic school at the end of the eigth grade, I was still listed as "catholic" myself. So? Washington, for example, never did anything more than give lip service to being a christian. Perhaps there might be a reason for hiding your atheistic beliefs during a time when people were literally burned alive for less. Hmmmm...wonder what it could be?
It doesn't matter. You are either completely misguided or a troll.
I know the feeling. Look at it this way, you're at least not arguing with someone completely delusional. Let's face it, you can defend your religion all you like, but the simple fact of the matter is your religion is responsible for the German holocaust, Jonestown, Waco, Salem, the Inquisition, the Crusades, etc, etc, etc, etc. Defend as you like with what YOU think your religion is, but the fact is it's been responsible for more bloodshed, horror and evil in the world. The fact that it can be twisted to such ends, while all the while decrying its "message of peace and love" just proves how delusional you really are.
nothing will change their minds. No matter how many facts I present or how many times I disprove your assumptions
Of course not, for the simple reason that I have truth and rationality on my side. You have delusion and fairy tales that tell you to kill your children. As for "facts", where are the "facts"?
Your hatred for religion has become a religion in itself.
Religion is the absence of rationality and the submission to a shared delusion. I look at the evidence before me and see what's true. By his own laws, your god should be stoned to death outside the city's walls, yet you cling to him as a loving father.
I'll pray for you
Thanks, I'll rub my lucky rabbit's foot for you. 'Course, I don't know how lucky he was since he lost a foot and all...:)
You can get as angry as you want but I'm just looking at facts.
No, you're making them up, and that's why I'm angry. In this day and age when information is available by just typing a couple of keys, people are not only still ignorant, but making up their own facts as well. For example, by taking 30 seconds and looking up the stats on Google, you'd see school violence has been decreasing for a long time. You might want to claim isolated incidents show things spiraling out of control, but anecdotes don't reflect reality. Oh, and BTW, violent crime rate is down across the board. Teen pregnancy is down. Alcohol and drug abuse are down. I'll let you spend the short amount of time necessary finding that information. So, if we follow your "logic", and fill it in with facts, removing god from school was a good thing. Big surprise.
Bad things have been done in the name of religion, so let's ban religion.
Exactly. Your flawed attempts at logic by extrapolating to include cars notwithstanding, the banning of religion would be the greatest achievement mankind could hope to achieve. As to banning cars...nyuh-uh, not the same. A car is an inanimate object, religion is a set of codes designed to promote evil behavior. To follow the logical course of the argument, you'd have to say "murder is bad, we should ban all murder!" We don't allow other criminal conspiracies, this is just one more we need to get rid of.
Really?
Yes, really.
Why then, is Creator capitalized as if to mean God?
Oh, I see the problem, you're confusing belief in a creator-type with religion. Not the same thing, chuckles. Jefferson, for example, would be better classified as a "theist". He hated christianity, and the voodoo surrounding their little cult. He believed in a creator, but not in the flawed "moralism" that comes from religion. His belief in "freedom of religion" would have been better expressed as "freedom FROM religion". In other words, folks were allowed to believe what they liked, they just couldn't force it on anyone else. If Jefferson were alive today, he'd be an atheist or at worst an agnostic. Similarly for Washington, Franklin and most of the others. Christian apologetics might like to try and convince the world of their twisted version of history, but the truth lies bare for all to see.
And, thus, the greatest failing of the United States. The mistaken belief that any religion would keep to itself. By its very nature, religion requires its members to force it down the throats of those who don't want it. And, if they won't take it, they're exterminated.
Does Spoonman not think that Hitler and Stalin were evil? That kinds throws out his No religion, No evil theory.
Of course I believe Hitler was evil. He was a christian, and everything he did was an extension of that. Try reading Mein Kampf some time. As to Stalin, well, he had been raised in the Russian orthodox church, so sure...evil is implied. He did try to do good be getting rid of the religious, perhaps that's why he's portrayed as such a monster?
after legislation after legislation is passed to chase God OUT of the country, people can't complain when He's no longer there to protect it.
Please, keep your stupidity to yourself. We passed legislation keeping YOUR god from trampling on the rights of the brainwashed followers of other gods as well as those who don't believe in any of your fairy tales or voodoo. As for his "protecting" it, thanks, but I can do without his "protection". His protection means people fly planes into our buildings, millions of people are killed in concentration camps, blacks are strung up by the neck, children are told to drink the Kool-aid, Palestinians are killed and forced from their homes or people are set on fire in Texas. And, yes, I'm aware I'm lumping in the atrocities of all religions that have occurred in the last hundred years together. You morons need to wake the fuck up and see that YOU are responsible for all of the "evil" in the world. In fact, without you there would BE no "evil".
You don't like the legislation, too fucking bad. This is a secular nation, founded to keep idiots like you in check. Our founding fathers HATED religion, so if you don't like it you can get out. Go over to the Middle East with the rest of your psychotic friends where you belong and leave those of us with morals alone!
I've said it before, I'll say it again...if only the Romans had used hungrier lions, this would be a much better world.
I have an LG LX3300 from Verizon that is a phone, it does absolutely nothing else (and I hate it for that. Gettin' a Treo next week! YAAY!). Battery life for the first year was pretty good (I'm always on it for work and generally got 3-4 days on each charge). It's been going downhill for the last couple of months and I only get about two days usage on a charge, but that's still not too bad. You might be able to get one through their refurb program. If not, pretty much all of the phones that are given away for free from every providers aren't much better than normal phones. If she knows how to dial a phone, she'll be fine. She just won't go into the menu or anything, so she won't see the "extra" complexity.
In my experience Microsoft Office primarily consists of Word and either Excel or PowerPoint
Then, the amount of your experience is trivial and not enough for you to formulate a proper opinion on. In the microscopic companies you're obviously used to working in, yes, people generally use Office poorly. Although, I would argue that's due to the failing of their technical staff (you) not being able to train them properly in the more advanced features. If you're directly supporting end-users who use Office and aren't at least Microsoft Certified Office User, you're doing them a terrible disservice. That's an easy certification to get, and you learn a LOT while getting it. I considered myself an "advanced" Office user before going for that cert, and boy was I wrong. Back in the day when I just did end-user support, it was invaluable in teaching my users how to use the more advanced features that others say are useless.
Let me give you one example of what an end-user considered an "advanced" option: one day while walking into the office I passed by the office of the company's comptroller. I happened to glance in and noticed she was working in Excel, but doing something on her desk calculator. I thought to myself "this can't be good.." So, I went to my desk, plopped down my stuff and walked back to her. I asked "I'm just curious as to what you're doing in Excel that requires a calculator?" She proceeded to tell me how she has these spreadsheets she does every month, and one thing she needs to do is create subtotals in each column. She didn't even know how to get full totals for the columns without using a calculator. So, I showed her how to do both. It took me about 5 minutes, and she responded with "Wow, that used to take me 2-3 days to do each of those!" Now, it takes her about 10 minutes. Yes, this woman was completely stupid, but she wasn't unique in her ignorance. I think you'd be sadly surprised to find out how many people don't know how to get into the Help system. Users don't know how to use these tools, and if you can't teach them then that's YOUR failing, not theirs. It is, after all, your job.
All I can say about OO is that the spreadsheet and presentation components are not as strong or user friendly as the MS Office parts
So, in the first line I quoted from you, you mention that Office consists of three parts (you forgot to include Outlook), and now you're stating that 2/3s of the corresponding parts from Open Office aren't up to snuff. So, given that logic, what's the incentive for switching, again? It's free? How much does that "free" end up costing you in lost productivity? Is it more than the $200 for Office?
Yeah, it couldn't possibly be that when comparing to MS Office, Open Office isn't even on the list of contenders? Hell, even Lotus' office suite was better than Open Office, and Lotus' was like being raped in the ass.
You missed the 2 key words in his post. "by default.
No, I didn't, I chose to ignore it for a simple reason: by "default" (in other words once you've completed a Stage 3 install) a Gentoo box is pretty much useless as it provides just enough to allow you to add more to it. Since Gentoo is completely customizable by the end user, there really is no "default".
Any distribution or OS can be cranked down, services shut off, etc
Yes, they can, so complaining about "bloat" from any OS is silliness defined.
"by default" and so often "by default" tends to be too bloated
Depends on your definition of "bloated". What you need and what I need are two entirely different things, vendors need to provide all the options and let the end user decide for themselves. If the enduser isn't skilled enough to know how to turn things down, they won't be skilled enough to judge performance anyway.
Really stupid interface, since so many bloat items have nothing to do with what the user wants, but at least it would be a knob that most anyone could turn.
Unfortunately, needs aren't linear so a knob won't work. Some people will need Subversion, Apache and CUPS, whereas some people will just need CUPS. Others will need Sendmail and CUPS, but not Apache. You're suggesting making it easy enough for everyone to understand, but complex enough that it can account for every need. You generally can't have it both ways. Most distros now include some kind of GUI tool where you just uncheck the daemons you don't need, but if you don't know what those daemons do (and don't understand the often poorly-written descriptions) you just end up running the "default". Vendors have to put out an OS so it does what the vast majority of people need. The dorks who care about getting every last meg of memory free can worry about that themselves. Personally, I couldn't care less. RAM is cheap, run it all.
The same can be said of a properly setup XP/2003/Vista install as well. After shutting down all unneccessary services in XP, it uses less memory than my Gentoo box.
An operating system's job is to mediate access to hardware and software resources.
1982 called...it wants its OS definition back.
But, seriously, could you provide a link to this OS you've designed? Sounds like you've put together something pretty amazing that the rest of the world has just overlooked.
CS being the study of the principles and concepts involved in Computing at a more fundamental, and often more sophisticated level, and IT being a more practical, application based approach to computing
You've got it backwards. CS is generally a "programming" curriculum, whereas IT is computing at the fundamental level. It's been rare that I've met a programmer who had understood the fundamentals of computing (at least in the last 15 years or so). Most programmers I've met have been glorified users who just know how to use a very specialized program very well.
Windows wasn't exactly really hip on that, either. Until there was MSDN, it cost a bunch of money to get documentation, and compilers that worked for Windows.
Not so, you could always download SDKs and documentation from MS' BBS way back in the day. There was never a cost. The only significant thing a paid MSDN subscription gets, aside from those levels where you get copies of all of their software, is everything's mailed to you, rather than you having to find it. I've never, even back in the Windows 2.0 days where I started, had to pay for an SDK.
But as a small-d democrat, I also understand that my preference is overridden by the huge majority of Americans who want weed and other drugs to remain criminalized
It's not a HUGE majority anymore. Most figures I've seen recently (outside of the conservative media, of course) put it close to the 50% mark in favor of legalizing in some manner (most are for medical, which is a start). Some put it a point or two over, some a few points under, but it's not a huge majority anymore. More likely a slim majority at best. Once we get "Gee, Dubya out" (assuming he doesn't declare himself king, which seems a very good possibility) and we don't get another 'Pub president, we stand a chance of that changing. 12 states and DC have currently decriminalized medical marijuana (I'm pushin' for NYS to be lucky number 13, it's very very close!), and as that number grows, there's a lot more potential to force the federal government to have to follow suit. The only way to combat the absurd lies about the "evil weed" is with the truth. Join Norml, spread the word.
Suppose they declare protesting to be a terrorist act?
Isn't this already the case under some interpretations of the "PATRIOT" act? (Considering the act's a complete violation of everything this country is supposed to be founded on, the quotes are justified.)
iPhone's going to do in the long run without an SDK
He could call IBM on that iPhone and asked how well it worked for OS/2. Oh, there was an SDK for OS/2, but it was $600/seat. All of the MS SDKs were and still are free because it bears repeating: "Developers are the life and death of any platform". Thought the developer at the time..."Hmmm...do I pay a ton of money to have my program work exclusively on OS/2, or do I just code it for free to run on Windows and then it'll work on OS/2?"
maybe there's something wrong with your operating system?
Nope, there's something wrong with Firefox. IE (and it works with Safari Beta 3, as well) is just doing what it's supposed to do: handing specific URLS off to its handler. If you have FTP URLs open in a third-party app which is then exploited, is the problem STILL with the browser that launched the handler? Of course not. Worse, this exploit only works when the URL is passed to Firefox, not when it handles the URL directly, which means Firefox is only validating the URL correctly when it handles it directly. You can blame the OS all you like, but poor coding from the Firefox team is still poor coding from the Firefox team.
Slashdot Mirror
No, but you can ghost a base OS image, then have it sysprep on first boot and install Exchange in its proper role. It was a bit more work than necessary for that many servers, but when a server goes down, I just have to plug my 2G flash key into any convenient machine, edit one of about 50 text files each describing a different server config and put the name and IP of the machine in. Then, plug it into the server and reboot. 20 minutes later, the server's up and running like it never went down.
Yes, so you spend all your time building one box and make it "perfect", then push the image to the other servers. You still had to build that one Notes box. A few hours to build the first, then 10 minutes to build the remainder. Your original point seemed to be the number of servers involved and the time it takes to set it up. My point was the additional servers do not take a significant investment in time. The 16 servers that make up our environment were all built in two days. After the initial build, the main bulk of the time was spent unboxing and disposing of the cardboard. Granted, before I joined the group they didn't use Ghost and that environment would've taken over three weeks to build. Me, I like to tell 'em it takes a week and then goof off for three days. I still come out ahead of what it would've taken them. :)
It's called "Ghost", learn it, love it.
Notes does a lot of what Exchange does, and does a whole lot more.
Having been an administrator of both systems, there's only two spots in which Notes exceeds Exchange/Outlook: in Notes, when I set an item on my calendar as "out of office", it asks if I want to set an out of office message for that time. Fantastic, but that's available in E/O 2007, so it's only an edge if you're still on older versions of the pair. Second, I can set the number of people a conference room will hold so that users can't overpopulate a room for a meeting. Great feature, but not a show-stopper.
Beyond that, Notes offers nothing to corporations except increased calls to help desks due to downtime and a user interface that must've been designed by Dali when he was on acid. I realize they've simply designed their own "standards" since they're cross-platform, but in doing so they've violated the UI standards of every OS it runs on and thus makes it difficult to train users with. It's hard to use, doesn't integrate with other apps very well, is a pig on the desktop (in the last place I used it, we had Citrix servers capable of handling 150 users each simultaneously. We had to cut that down to 45 since they'd be running the Notes client). Sure, we could've given them Outlook with the Notes connector, but why run a half-assed backend with a full-assed frontend?
Sorry, but Exchange is simply install and forget. Even in my current environment of 14,000 desktops, the only calls my group ever gets about "Exchange" are "can you check and see if this customer's address has been blacklisted by the spam filter?"
It's not so bad for us "big fish". We get a premium line to call where we get right through to a person. Sorry, just had to rub it in. :)
You're on. I look forward to purchasing your breakfast, but just know I'm going to eat for free! :)
The answer is simple. If you don't vote, don't count yourself as "intelligent".
Yeah, 'cause voting counts for anything anymore. We're trapped, and he's going to seize all of the power and make himself emperor. And, yes, I still vote. I just don't see the point anymore. I don't get to vote FOR anyone anymore, just against.
There's this new thing out. It's called the New Testament. It means that the punishment for sin is no longer death. It means we don't have to be perfect.
:29-32
:) As for the "delusion" part, it's not meant as an insult. The definition of delusion: "an erroneous belief that is held in the face of evidence to the contrary".
:)
A nice thought, but not valid:
"Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law." Matthew 5; 17
Followed up by:
"Those filled with unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, backbiters, hate for god, despite, proud, boasters, inventions of evil things, disobedience to parents, without understanding, covenant breakers, unnatural affection, implacable or unmerciful nature: Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death". Romans 1
Whisperers?
You call it delusion. I call it faith. You are correct in that I can not prove anything. Then again, there is so much accepted in science that can not be proved either, but it's widely accepted as fact.
Such as? The Big Bang? That's why it's called a "theory". There's a lot of evidence to support it, but it's not treated, pun intended, as gospel. If someone comes along and verifiably proves the Big Bang was a wrong path, science will accept it and move on. On the other hand, religion, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary of all its beliefs continues to believe in them. That is, until the unerring voice of god on Earth decides to change them after 1600 years.
Mankind is responsible for those atrocities and so much more. Are you saying that I should abandon mankind? Besides, MY religion was responsible for none of those. However, I will agree that religion has been misused for some pretty horrific atrocities, but atrocities happen with or without religion. It has just become an excuse, or enabler, for some. But blaming religion as a whole for the misdeeds of a few is like blaming black people for OJ murdering his wife.
Name something on par with any of the atrocities I've mentioned that wasn't inspired by religion. As to the black's analogy, not comparable. "Black" refers to a person's skin color, not their thought patterns or outlook on life. Being "black" does not, by definition, provide you with a set of rules and morals you're supposed to follow that were written by iron-age shepherds. It does not tell you how you're to interact with those who are not "black". For example, just because one is black does not mean they are required to hate gays. Being a member of most religions does (even if you chose not to follow that particular credo).
Funny. I was thinking the same thing, minus the rationality part.
Nice!
Uh, nowhere in the Bible does it say to kill my children.
Exodus 21:15-17 "And he that smiteth his father, or his mother, shall be surely put to death"
Exodus 21:17 "And he that curseth his father, or his mother, shall surely be put to death".
Deuteronomy 21: "and they shall say to the elders of his city, `This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton and a drunkard. Then all the men of the city shall stone him to death with stones; so you shall purge the evil from your midst; and all Israel shall hear, and fear.
The facts that our Founding Fathers had religion. I listed a site with their affiliations. Those were the facts. The Constitutions states Freedom OF Religion, not freedom FROM it for a reason (another fact). I find those truths to be self evident.
Okay, I will grant you that the
All that is Evil? I think your definitions are a bit skewed.
:)
Oh, I get it, the one or two sentences in the whole book that might be construed as "good" are the end-all and be-all of your religion, then? How 'bout...
Do not covet thy neighbor's wife, neighbor's ass, neighbor's wife's ass.
The penalty for which, is death (Leviticus 20:10).
Honor thy mother and father.
The peanalty for which, is death
Do you follow the 10 commandments, too? If so, how many people have you personally put to death for working on the sabbath (Exodus 31:15)? How 'bout muslims or buddhists (Deuteronomy 17:2)? Have you attacked their towns and destroyed all of the inhabitants (Deuteronomy 13:13)? Since I denounce the reality of your delusional god, I can only assume you're trying to track me down so I can be stoned to death (Leviticus 24:16), right? Just like 'em faigs (Leviticus 20:13)!
Now, I can hear the squirmy rationalizations coming...forget 'em. God's law is perfect (Psalms 19:7). You can claim they have no relevance, but if that's the case, why follow any of them? Most often I hear that atheists are masters of situational ethics, yet any christian who hasn't put to death at least one unbeliever is denying their own beliefs in favor of expediency.
My church feeds the hungry, clothes the poor, and gives aid to those that need it.
I'm assuming that's with the money you got from selling all your stuff so you could get into heaven (Luke 18:22), right? I like Luke, he's full of Jesus' love. You hate your father and mother (Luke 14:26), right?
This page lists all of the founding father's religions.
Up until I left catholic school at the end of the eigth grade, I was still listed as "catholic" myself. So? Washington, for example, never did anything more than give lip service to being a christian. Perhaps there might be a reason for hiding your atheistic beliefs during a time when people were literally burned alive for less. Hmmmm...wonder what it could be?
It doesn't matter. You are either completely misguided or a troll.
I know the feeling. Look at it this way, you're at least not arguing with someone completely delusional. Let's face it, you can defend your religion all you like, but the simple fact of the matter is your religion is responsible for the German holocaust, Jonestown, Waco, Salem, the Inquisition, the Crusades, etc, etc, etc, etc. Defend as you like with what YOU think your religion is, but the fact is it's been responsible for more bloodshed, horror and evil in the world. The fact that it can be twisted to such ends, while all the while decrying its "message of peace and love" just proves how delusional you really are.
nothing will change their minds. No matter how many facts I present or how many times I disprove your assumptions
Of course not, for the simple reason that I have truth and rationality on my side. You have delusion and fairy tales that tell you to kill your children. As for "facts", where are the "facts"?
Your hatred for religion has become a religion in itself.
Religion is the absence of rationality and the submission to a shared delusion. I look at the evidence before me and see what's true. By his own laws, your god should be stoned to death outside the city's walls, yet you cling to him as a loving father.
I'll pray for you
Thanks, I'll rub my lucky rabbit's foot for you. 'Course, I don't know how lucky he was since he lost a foot and all...
You can get as angry as you want but I'm just looking at facts.
No, you're making them up, and that's why I'm angry. In this day and age when information is available by just typing a couple of keys, people are not only still ignorant, but making up their own facts as well. For example, by taking 30 seconds and looking up the stats on Google, you'd see school violence has been decreasing for a long time. You might want to claim isolated incidents show things spiraling out of control, but anecdotes don't reflect reality. Oh, and BTW, violent crime rate is down across the board. Teen pregnancy is down. Alcohol and drug abuse are down. I'll let you spend the short amount of time necessary finding that information. So, if we follow your "logic", and fill it in with facts, removing god from school was a good thing. Big surprise.
Bad things have been done in the name of religion, so let's ban religion.
Exactly. Your flawed attempts at logic by extrapolating to include cars notwithstanding, the banning of religion would be the greatest achievement mankind could hope to achieve. As to banning cars...nyuh-uh, not the same. A car is an inanimate object, religion is a set of codes designed to promote evil behavior. To follow the logical course of the argument, you'd have to say "murder is bad, we should ban all murder!" We don't allow other criminal conspiracies, this is just one more we need to get rid of.
Really?
Yes, really.
Why then, is Creator capitalized as if to mean God?
Oh, I see the problem, you're confusing belief in a creator-type with religion. Not the same thing, chuckles. Jefferson, for example, would be better classified as a "theist". He hated christianity, and the voodoo surrounding their little cult. He believed in a creator, but not in the flawed "moralism" that comes from religion. His belief in "freedom of religion" would have been better expressed as "freedom FROM religion". In other words, folks were allowed to believe what they liked, they just couldn't force it on anyone else. If Jefferson were alive today, he'd be an atheist or at worst an agnostic. Similarly for Washington, Franklin and most of the others. Christian apologetics might like to try and convince the world of their twisted version of history, but the truth lies bare for all to see.
And, thus, the greatest failing of the United States. The mistaken belief that any religion would keep to itself. By its very nature, religion requires its members to force it down the throats of those who don't want it. And, if they won't take it, they're exterminated.
Does Spoonman not think that Hitler and Stalin were evil? That kinds throws out his No religion, No evil theory.
Of course I believe Hitler was evil. He was a christian, and everything he did was an extension of that. Try reading Mein Kampf some time. As to Stalin, well, he had been raised in the Russian orthodox church, so sure...evil is implied. He did try to do good be getting rid of the religious, perhaps that's why he's portrayed as such a monster?
after legislation after legislation is passed to chase God OUT of the country, people can't complain when He's no longer there to protect it.
Please, keep your stupidity to yourself. We passed legislation keeping YOUR god from trampling on the rights of the brainwashed followers of other gods as well as those who don't believe in any of your fairy tales or voodoo. As for his "protecting" it, thanks, but I can do without his "protection". His protection means people fly planes into our buildings, millions of people are killed in concentration camps, blacks are strung up by the neck, children are told to drink the Kool-aid, Palestinians are killed and forced from their homes or people are set on fire in Texas. And, yes, I'm aware I'm lumping in the atrocities of all religions that have occurred in the last hundred years together. You morons need to wake the fuck up and see that YOU are responsible for all of the "evil" in the world. In fact, without you there would BE no "evil".
You don't like the legislation, too fucking bad. This is a secular nation, founded to keep idiots like you in check. Our founding fathers HATED religion, so if you don't like it you can get out. Go over to the Middle East with the rest of your psychotic friends where you belong and leave those of us with morals alone!
I've said it before, I'll say it again...if only the Romans had used hungrier lions, this would be a much better world.
I have an LG LX3300 from Verizon that is a phone, it does absolutely nothing else (and I hate it for that. Gettin' a Treo next week! YAAY!). Battery life for the first year was pretty good (I'm always on it for work and generally got 3-4 days on each charge). It's been going downhill for the last couple of months and I only get about two days usage on a charge, but that's still not too bad. You might be able to get one through their refurb program. If not, pretty much all of the phones that are given away for free from every providers aren't much better than normal phones. If she knows how to dial a phone, she'll be fine. She just won't go into the menu or anything, so she won't see the "extra" complexity.
In my experience Microsoft Office primarily consists of Word and either Excel or PowerPoint
Then, the amount of your experience is trivial and not enough for you to formulate a proper opinion on. In the microscopic companies you're obviously used to working in, yes, people generally use Office poorly. Although, I would argue that's due to the failing of their technical staff (you) not being able to train them properly in the more advanced features. If you're directly supporting end-users who use Office and aren't at least Microsoft Certified Office User, you're doing them a terrible disservice. That's an easy certification to get, and you learn a LOT while getting it. I considered myself an "advanced" Office user before going for that cert, and boy was I wrong. Back in the day when I just did end-user support, it was invaluable in teaching my users how to use the more advanced features that others say are useless.
Let me give you one example of what an end-user considered an "advanced" option: one day while walking into the office I passed by the office of the company's comptroller. I happened to glance in and noticed she was working in Excel, but doing something on her desk calculator. I thought to myself "this can't be good.." So, I went to my desk, plopped down my stuff and walked back to her. I asked "I'm just curious as to what you're doing in Excel that requires a calculator?" She proceeded to tell me how she has these spreadsheets she does every month, and one thing she needs to do is create subtotals in each column. She didn't even know how to get full totals for the columns without using a calculator. So, I showed her how to do both. It took me about 5 minutes, and she responded with "Wow, that used to take me 2-3 days to do each of those!" Now, it takes her about 10 minutes. Yes, this woman was completely stupid, but she wasn't unique in her ignorance. I think you'd be sadly surprised to find out how many people don't know how to get into the Help system. Users don't know how to use these tools, and if you can't teach them then that's YOUR failing, not theirs. It is, after all, your job.
All I can say about OO is that the spreadsheet and presentation components are not as strong or user friendly as the MS Office parts
So, in the first line I quoted from you, you mention that Office consists of three parts (you forgot to include Outlook), and now you're stating that 2/3s of the corresponding parts from Open Office aren't up to snuff. So, given that logic, what's the incentive for switching, again? It's free? How much does that "free" end up costing you in lost productivity? Is it more than the $200 for Office?
Yeah, it couldn't possibly be that when comparing to MS Office, Open Office isn't even on the list of contenders? Hell, even Lotus' office suite was better than Open Office, and Lotus' was like being raped in the ass.
You missed the 2 key words in his post. "by default.
No, I didn't, I chose to ignore it for a simple reason: by "default" (in other words once you've completed a Stage 3 install) a Gentoo box is pretty much useless as it provides just enough to allow you to add more to it. Since Gentoo is completely customizable by the end user, there really is no "default". Any distribution or OS can be cranked down, services shut off, etc
Yes, they can, so complaining about "bloat" from any OS is silliness defined.
"by default" and so often "by default" tends to be too bloated
Depends on your definition of "bloated". What you need and what I need are two entirely different things, vendors need to provide all the options and let the end user decide for themselves. If the enduser isn't skilled enough to know how to turn things down, they won't be skilled enough to judge performance anyway.
Really stupid interface, since so many bloat items have nothing to do with what the user wants, but at least it would be a knob that most anyone could turn.
Unfortunately, needs aren't linear so a knob won't work. Some people will need Subversion, Apache and CUPS, whereas some people will just need CUPS. Others will need Sendmail and CUPS, but not Apache. You're suggesting making it easy enough for everyone to understand, but complex enough that it can account for every need. You generally can't have it both ways. Most distros now include some kind of GUI tool where you just uncheck the daemons you don't need, but if you don't know what those daemons do (and don't understand the often poorly-written descriptions) you just end up running the "default". Vendors have to put out an OS so it does what the vast majority of people need. The dorks who care about getting every last meg of memory free can worry about that themselves. Personally, I couldn't care less. RAM is cheap, run it all.
The same can be said of a properly setup XP/2003/Vista install as well. After shutting down all unneccessary services in XP, it uses less memory than my Gentoo box.
An operating system's job is to mediate access to hardware and software resources.
1982 called...it wants its OS definition back.
But, seriously, could you provide a link to this OS you've designed? Sounds like you've put together something pretty amazing that the rest of the world has just overlooked.
CS being the study of the principles and concepts involved in Computing at a more fundamental, and often more sophisticated level, and IT being a more practical, application based approach to computing
You've got it backwards. CS is generally a "programming" curriculum, whereas IT is computing at the fundamental level. It's been rare that I've met a programmer who had understood the fundamentals of computing (at least in the last 15 years or so). Most programmers I've met have been glorified users who just know how to use a very specialized program very well.
Windows wasn't exactly really hip on that, either. Until there was MSDN, it cost a bunch of money to get documentation, and compilers that worked for Windows.
Not so, you could always download SDKs and documentation from MS' BBS way back in the day. There was never a cost. The only significant thing a paid MSDN subscription gets, aside from those levels where you get copies of all of their software, is everything's mailed to you, rather than you having to find it. I've never, even back in the Windows 2.0 days where I started, had to pay for an SDK.
But as a small-d democrat, I also understand that my preference is overridden by the huge majority of Americans who want weed and other drugs to remain criminalized
It's not a HUGE majority anymore. Most figures I've seen recently (outside of the conservative media, of course) put it close to the 50% mark in favor of legalizing in some manner (most are for medical, which is a start). Some put it a point or two over, some a few points under, but it's not a huge majority anymore. More likely a slim majority at best. Once we get "Gee, Dubya out" (assuming he doesn't declare himself king, which seems a very good possibility) and we don't get another 'Pub president, we stand a chance of that changing. 12 states and DC have currently decriminalized medical marijuana (I'm pushin' for NYS to be lucky number 13, it's very very close!), and as that number grows, there's a lot more potential to force the federal government to have to follow suit. The only way to combat the absurd lies about the "evil weed" is with the truth. Join Norml, spread the word.
Suppose they declare protesting to be a terrorist act?
Isn't this already the case under some interpretations of the "PATRIOT" act? (Considering the act's a complete violation of everything this country is supposed to be founded on, the quotes are justified.)
but most of the larger ones will probably continue to do so because it's easier
:)
Well, we do it 'cause it's cheaper, but easier helps, too.
iPhone's going to do in the long run without an SDK
He could call IBM on that iPhone and asked how well it worked for OS/2. Oh, there was an SDK for OS/2, but it was $600/seat. All of the MS SDKs were and still are free because it bears repeating: "Developers are the life and death of any platform". Thought the developer at the time..."Hmmm...do I pay a ton of money to have my program work exclusively on OS/2, or do I just code it for free to run on Windows and then it'll work on OS/2?"
maybe there's something wrong with your operating system?
Nope, there's something wrong with Firefox. IE (and it works with Safari Beta 3, as well) is just doing what it's supposed to do: handing specific URLS off to its handler. If you have FTP URLs open in a third-party app which is then exploited, is the problem STILL with the browser that launched the handler? Of course not. Worse, this exploit only works when the URL is passed to Firefox, not when it handles the URL directly, which means Firefox is only validating the URL correctly when it handles it directly. You can blame the OS all you like, but poor coding from the Firefox team is still poor coding from the Firefox team.