The bible itself does not say that knowledge is a bad thing
Really? What about Genesis where Adam & Eve were forbidden to eat the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good & evil? How does one know they have to obey such an edict if they have no idea it's wrong not to?
I know how to manage -- I hire folks that are smarter than me for a reason -- because if I wanted to do the job myself, I'd have hired someone stupider
Here's the problem: you're in an increasingly small minority of people. You're not a manager, you're a leader. There's a significant difference between the two. A leader understands the purpose of each member of their team is to provide skillsets that the leader doesn't possess and utilizes the skillsets within their group to produce results. You ask for solutions, and let your people provide you the best ones. After all, they're the ones you hired to provide those solutions. Conversely, a manager is a twit who was promoted into their position via the Peter Principle. They read books like "Who moved my cheese" and think they know how to lead a group of people. They refuse to hire qualified people because, frankly, they may be found out to be a moron and thus get themselves fired. Hiring the less qualified becomes a job security strategy. When a solution is needed, they provide it themselves and hand the actual implementation over to their people. If it doesn't work, the failure is placed on the implementer instead of the manager who came up with the failed solution. After all, if they were so smart, they'd be managers, too. Wouldn't they?
Unfortunately, there's no way to fix this problem. Who would fix it if you could? The managers? That would require them to admit they're failures and move aside to let qualified individuals take the reins. As corporations become bigger, the need for leaders becomes greater. Unfortunately, leaders aren't made, they're born that way. It's a limited subset of the human population, so you hire what you can get and hope for the best.
Huh, that's funny, I would have said the opposite. Unix admins just assume their systems are secure and move on simply because they're running Unix. Windows admins, however, have a better grasp of security issues and consider anti-virus as an absolute last line of defense. I wouldn't trust a Unix admin's security advice with a gun to my head. Hell, most can't even figure out that the exact same security principals you'd apply to a Unix system would also be applied to a Windows box. But, what do you expect from people who can't grok that technology moves FORWARD, it doesn't remain stagnant. Disturbingly, most of the Unix admins I talk to refer to viruses as if they happen to people who know what they're doing.
That's the problem with voodoo. Every cult has an opinion, but none can offer FACTS to back it, only the contradictory ramblings of dozens of other religions whose work was plagerized to create "The Bible".
it would seem Bush believes that an embryo qualifies as a person and has rights.
That's the problem of allowing freedom of religion. Everyone forgets that the implication is a freedom FROM religion, and thus push their completely wrong religious agendas on smart, thinking people who are capable of grasping a universe that exists because of itself and no outside influence.
Here's a question: if the christian cults believe life begins at conception, why do they continue to celebrate birthdays? The ceremony is to celebrate the anniversary of the entry of a new person into the world, conception according to their voodoo is then the time to celebrate. It's easy enough to figure out approximately what day conception occured, and considering they only ever have sex to procreate, they should be able to pin it to the MINUTE the sperm entered the uterus. Or, are they still clinging to the stork theory?
After last night's speech, I think I need to change my sig. "The religous right: working to bring you another fun-filled Dark Age for the new millenium!" Yeah, it could use some tweaking.
Actually, I found his answers to have the correct, underlying message: "you can do everything in the world to make an OS as secure as possible, but once you put a human being in front of it, all of that goes away. The worst of those being technically deficient, but still pompous, unix admins who can't even grok that simple concept."
Damn! Beat me to it! hehehe. I have almost the whole set of Giant Microbes. They're in a display cabinet in the living room 'cause I just love telling people what they are.:)
Mary was merry when she got married. Sorry, couldn't resist. There's a slim portion of the population to whom that sentence makes no sense. They hear those three words exactly the same, regardless of speaker.
My company's had a policy for almost a year on those: you can't use 'em. They've used the feature in XPSP2 to disable flash drives and that's that. Out of 13k users, there's a very slim minority that need flash drives, and they're given the ability via a GPO. It took about 15 minutes to figure out how to do, and 20 minutes to replicate across the whole domain. Done. Next earth-shaking disaster, please.
You've got the perfect work philosophy there, I couldn't agree with you more. My job is the portion of my day I "sell" in order to get money to cover the remainder of the day and hopefully make it more comfortable. I put as much thought into it when I leave the office as I would put on an auction I just finished on eBay...NONE!:)
come to think of it, there are no technical benefits in doing so
Actually, there are plenty. The problem is *nix guys who are still using their 30-year-old technology and can't grasp the concept of "moving forward". Tell you what, you *nix guys keep to yourselves, let the Windows guys who know what they're doing keep the IT departments moving forward. We're moving your shit out, and helping you prepare for your next exciting career: Walmart greeter! Yaay! Of course, you'll start complaining there about the good old days where people had to push the door open, rather than it opening for them...
Consider that situation: a user with total control over the system, who can change or overwrite anything, is using a single component for everything they do.
Now consider that they're using Linux. How does that change the model? Do you honestly think if Linux saturated the home desktop arena tomorrow we wouldn't be seeing the same issues? The problem isn't the software, it's the interface between keyboard and chair.
Which again raises the question: is the GPL enforceable? I've seen many examples of "stolen" GPL material showing up in commercial products over the last year, but I don't remember seeing any example of anyone being punished for it. Are there any such examples? Unless someone actively tries to enforce it soon, it's going to be meaningless in the eyes of the law. "They didn't come after any of these people, they're just singling us out because we're more profitable" becomes a defense.
You are assuming what you set out to prove. This is a logical fallacy: You define Christians the way you want to define them, and your definition includes the awful qualities that you are trying to prove all Christians possess.
No, I am assuming christians are evil, and giving my definitions of evil through example.
You are under the impression that Christianity has been around for only 20 years. Are you trying to say that the rise in rape (which actually is in decline in the US) over the past "few years" just was a latent characteristic of Christianity until a few years ago? That's horseshit, as anyone with a brain can see. I might as well say that rape is caused by the rise in atheism, since that is the religion that has risen dramatically in popularity over the last few years!
I'm more inclined to believe that christianity is in a decline, despite the growing number of fundies in visable lives ('pubs, tv evangelists, etc) and that's why those crimes are in decline. I'd say that this is a last, desperate attempt to try and subvert people to the cult by making it appear there are more than there are. I haven't met very many people who were all that active in their churches unless it was at a wedding and there was a priest there...
Sources, please. Charles Manson? Scientologist. Gacy? Not Christian.
Check again. I couldn't find anything offhand about Manson, but I did say "most". Oh, my definition of "christian" is anyone who follows any religion that is believes christ was some kind of messiah. In other words: anyone who ain't a jew, hindu, atheist, etc.
Using your same logic, I could state that being male makes you a rapist. We should get rid of all males. Or being white makes you a rapist. After all, as you said, pretty much every serial killer has been a [...] white male.
Perhaps, but being a male or white doesn't always provide you with the kind of repressed, hypocritical upbringing like you would get in a christian household. The kind that tells you sex is evil and gays should be burned at the stake.
I'm sorry, but Christianity doesn't actively encourage that. One sect, entirely unrelated to mine, might. But mine does not. All Christians are not the same, just like all Caucasians are not the same.
You all follow some manner of religion that was derived from the same falsified documents. The fact that there are so many variations of your religion based on trivial interpretations is proof that it's a sham(e). Regardless, as I said, they're not actively working against it, that's the same as actively encouraging it. It's like telling a wife beater "you should try not to hit her so much".
Yes, because Heaven forbid people are allowed to exercise their free speech from the sanctity of their own homes!
Nice. But, that's not freedom of speech. First off, freedom isn't an absolute, never was, never should be. There are limits. Your freedom ends where mine begins. But, if you're right, then the christians shouldn't be allowed to force changes to zoning laws simply to keep strip clubs and porn shops and bars and such out of their cities, etc. But, they do. If we're going to get rid of everything that's offensive to everyone, we have to remove the churches, too. Freedom OF religion has an implication (at least to me) of freedom FROM religion.
What do you know? Something you and I and most Christians I know agree on!
Perhaps you, but certainly not most christians.
This is not a Christian thing; if you believe life starts before exiting the mother, then you are supporting murder (which I believe most humans oppose). If you don't believe a baby is alive until it has passed through the birth canal, I guess you don't have a problem with abortion, then, do you? I will say this though: I'm not trying to start a debate about abortion here: I am merely responding to the pa
Ah, you never been to Canada. They don't stay on very long anyway. All nude, all alcohol, all smoking! Nekkid chicks the way they're supposed to be seen! LOL!
And, surprisingly, my life continues to go on. Huh.
That's just flaming, plain and simple
Yeah, so? Thanks to the christians, we suffered through a thousand year dark age where freedom, expression and education were stifled and persecuted. Sounds very familiar to what they're trying to do today. Had the Romans flamed the christians a little better (with real flames), the world would be a much better place today.
And I'd like to think Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Donald Knuth (suck on that one, computer geeks), Gödel, Cantor
Aside from the typesetter there, everyone else was from ages past where they also believed in other superstions like throwing salt over your shoulder and avoiding black cats. They had no choice but to join the prevailing cult. They were indoctrinated at an early age. All cults find that's a great way to lock hold of someone for life.
nearly every U.S. president (there has to be at least one that you agree is/was intelligent), W. D. Phillips, and the list goes on and on. I chose those whom most people on Slashdot would undoubtedly consider intelligent men. Additionally, each lived during the 20th century, so they could have easily rejected Christianity without persecution.
That's simply not true. There has never been a time in the US where any president could reject christianity and remain a politician. And, no, I haven't been impressed by the intelligence of any president so far. They're all representative of the people of the US, and therefore not intelligent.
As to the others, how many actively participate in their church functions? I know plenty of self-proclaimed "christians" who have been to their church about as often as the local rabbi. I'm talking about the REAL christians. The ones who picket bookstores and send money to oral roberts. The ones who actively seek to bring about another age of ignorance and fear. The ones who made a big deal about Janet Jackson's boob. The ones who are all for removing a woman's right to choose to have an abortion (not everyone believes in their god, but everyone should follow his tenets, huh?) The ones who then are against providing assistance to the poor or giving out condoms or even sex education in the schools. The ones perpetuating "the war on drugs" despite the evidence of their last failed prohibition showing such a tactic is futile. The ones who stand, weekly, on the corner in front of our local Wally-world shouting at every car that drives by how they're going to hell. The ones who never even READ the book they pretend to base their lives on (go ahead, ask 'em how many of the authors of the new testament actually MET jesus, or even were his contemporaries). The ones who are members of the KKK (a christian organization). The one who believe "under god" should be in the pledge of allegience because "it's always been in there" (representative of their ignorance). And, my favorite, the morons who think jesus was WHITE! Here's a clue, folks: jesus looked more like Osama Bin Laden than Willem Dafoe.
The other people are not christians. They're people trying to avoid being harrassed. christians have way too much freedom these days, and it needs to stop. They're free to practice their little cult in their own homes and churches, but their crap needs to STAY THERE. Take the crucifixes that are visible from the street down (I don't want my kids exposed to such violent and ignorant images). Get rid of anything even close to religious ceremony from ALL government operations (such as having the 10 commandments on display in the courthouses). And, keep their evil little asses off the street protesting and picketing things that don't match up with their demented view of the world (in other worlds, get out of in front of the strip clubs and porn shops!).
Let's also not forget that thanks to christianity, we now have a much higher sexual repression, leading to more rapes and viole
Unless of course, it's the ability to carry out prayer or other religioius expression during meetings or on government property. Then the ACLU is indeed forcing government (courts) to take your rights away.
No one ever had the "right" to pray on government property, it was just done. Banning it was the right thing to do. No intelligent person wants to hear the hate mongering and ignorance festering that is the christian religions. Freedom OF religion implies a freedom FROM religion.
You're absolutely right, they should have held off releasing Windows 3.1 until it was thoroughly beta and security tested. Hell, if they did that, Linux wouldn't be 10 years behind.
What "research"? I won't disagree that Snopes is a good site for weeding out the obvious lies, but let's look at their "proof". First, their premise "The artificial sweetener aspartame has been proved responsible for an epidemic of cancer, brain tumors, and multiple sclerosis". They do this by showing an e-mail forward discussing how the "WORLD ENVIRONMENTAL CONFERENCE" concluded that aspertame is dangerous. This is false, but it's the only falsity that is proven by Snopes (that this conference existed).
To back this up, he offers up links. The first is the FDA. That would be the same FDA that was headed by Arthur Hull Hayes when Searle and company were trying to get aspertame on the market. That would be the same FDA that looked at Searle's research in which 74 studies concluded there were no dangers from aspertaeme. They also looked at 90 other independant studies, 83 of which concluded some dangerous outcome from the ingestion of aspertaeme and concluded that it must be safe. And, what further proof do you need than three months later Arthur Hull Hayes, resigned and went to work at Searle for a very large salary. Obviously, aspertaeme is the greatest invention of all time, that's why Hayes went to work for Searle. He wanted to be part of such an organization.
The next link is from aspertaeme.net. Gee, I wonder what their agenda could be?
The next two links...the first one just reprints the letter and says at the top it's a hoax. The next one just says "it's a hoax". Well, with all of THAT scientific jargon, it's GOT to be a hoax. At best, it confirms what Snopes DID prove, that there was no "WORLD ENVIRONMENTAL CONFERENCE", but not that aspertaeme is safe for living things to consume.
Ohh, look, another article from the FDA. See above.
Then, we have an article from MIT that says a visiting scientist says it's safe because he's tested it. The article doesn't list much in the way of credentials, and does show how a study might have been done, but we have no link to the actual study or its results.
Finally, Time Magazine. Not first on the list of places I go for medical research. Maybe if I want to know which celebrity is marrying whom, I'll look there.
Well, you've convinced me. I'm going to go swig myself up a gallon of diet soda right now. And, like everyone else, i'll have a double-cheeseburger with it, too!
this is slashdot, anecdotal cases make up the majority of the "truth" that's to be found here. Things like "Windows is unstable" and "Linux is easy to use" are touted as major "truths" all the time, and if you disagree, you're spreading FUD.
That being said, I don't know if there's been any formal long-term testing of the effects of this poison on the human system. I DO know that the head of the FDA blocked Searle from putting it in the public market for years due to faulty and suspicious testing procedures, and then approved it just a couple of months before he left and started working at Searle for $1.2M/year as a "marketing director". Take what truth from that you want. The of the story vary, but the truth remains.
What amazes me is if MS funds a study for Windows/against anyone, it's not valid. The fact that 74 of Searle and the FDA's studies of aspertame showed absolutely no danges while 92% of the independantly conducted studies showed MANY dangers shouldn't have any effect on truth, right?
I personally have seen the positive effects of ceasing the ingestion of it. My mother's vision had degraded severely over the course of a couple of years. Significantly more than could be attributed to her astigmatism. I suggested she stop downing so much diet soda with aspertame in it, and within 6 months, her vision restored pretty much back to where it should have been. Also, the migraines she'd recently started experiencing also stopped completely. I take more than enough truth from that, anecdotal or not.
Notice all the Nutrasweet bashing going on among health gurus over the last couple of years. It was the perfect sweetener, now it causes everything from headaches to severe thunderstorms.
I'd say you'd have a really difficult time building comparable equipment for significantly less cost
Only if you include the cost of scrounging around in "recycled pc" stores and trying to find clearance items from five years ago. My experience with recent Mac hardware indicates that it has similar performance to what you found on the PC side in 2000-2001.
By "up to speed", I mean that for me to take the machine as-is, a bunch of CDs and an internet connection, that I do not have sufficient background in Windows to get it installed and doing everything it currently does, exactly as it does it, anywhere near as quickly as the Wintel IT department can (it took them about 2h, it would have taken me over 2h just to install base Windows XP - of course, they use a corporate Gold image). That should be pretty obvious - if I could, then I should be working in Wintel desktop support, and not on high-end *nix servers.
Or, perhaps high-end Wintel servers, as I do. But, to the point...you admit that you have no experience or qualification to speak on the state of Windows, but somehow you make it seem like that's reason enough for you to have an opinion. You also admit that the little experience you HAVE had with Windows has been with a laptop that you've found to work well when it was put together by people who know what they're doing. My whole point has been that in the right hands, Windows can be and is as rock solid and secure and well performaning as any Unix system. Just like how in the wrong hands, and Unix can be an insecure pile of steaming crap.
I have not complained about the condition of my laptop whatsoever in my original post. That is because of corporate firewalls, a decent (though admittedly not always 100% functional) corporate patching mechanism, and not installing extraneous crap on the system. Why would I? My post should make it fairly clear that I know that installing crap onto Windows gives an already poor OS major headaches. I have installed FireFox and just about nothing else onto the system. Any self-respecting sysadmin would refuse to support a UNIX system where the users go around installing their own crap. I would not expect the Wintel IT dept. to support my laptop if I did such things, either. I've got my area of expertise, they've got theirs.
Exactly, installing the kind of crap software that home owners install. 10-year old software designed to fix "hardware and software" errors on machines and OSes of years past. Games like "Wetris" and "Bubble Bustin' Babes" downloaded from sites that claim to give you free access to porn. New cursors for when you visit particular websites, oh, and if you don't mind, we're going to track every move you make on the web. Do you honestly think if any other OS out there is immune from that? The only OS that's immune from that is the one that has no method of receiving input from the wetware at the keyboard.
Where did I claim to be an expert in (or even care about) Windows? If you think that Registry entries == Computers, then there's a great world of computers for you to still learn and experience:)
You don't have to be. But, you made the point that there were "undocumented" features of Windows, and my reply was that there is no such animal. SOMEONE out there knows what it does, and has documented it somewhere. It may not be the best docs, but it's out there, and you can usually get what you need from it. I get tired of hearin *nix guys talking about how technically superior they because they don't use Windows, but one of their first admissions are there's so much "undocumented" about it. "You can't possibly fix Windows problems, you don't have access to the source!" "Oh, I got a blue screen, no one knows what they are, and Microsoft doesn't tell!" "I installed a service patch, and this obscure piece of software that's used by TWO people in the whole world broke. Microsoft is {just trying to put them out of business, incapable of doing and real beta testing}" Sorry, I used to hold a lot of respect for *nix guys and their mad skillz.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, because there are companies these days who don't have Internet access.
even the most well looked after Microsoft Windows machine is going to get infected
Depends on who's in charge of them. We have some 13,000 Windows computers, none of which has any spyware on them.
The bible itself does not say that knowledge is a bad thing
Really? What about Genesis where Adam & Eve were forbidden to eat the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good & evil? How does one know they have to obey such an edict if they have no idea it's wrong not to?
I know how to manage -- I hire folks that are smarter than me for a reason -- because if I wanted to do the job myself, I'd have hired someone stupider
Here's the problem: you're in an increasingly small minority of people. You're not a manager, you're a leader. There's a significant difference between the two. A leader understands the purpose of each member of their team is to provide skillsets that the leader doesn't possess and utilizes the skillsets within their group to produce results. You ask for solutions, and let your people provide you the best ones. After all, they're the ones you hired to provide those solutions. Conversely, a manager is a twit who was promoted into their position via the Peter Principle. They read books like "Who moved my cheese" and think they know how to lead a group of people. They refuse to hire qualified people because, frankly, they may be found out to be a moron and thus get themselves fired. Hiring the less qualified becomes a job security strategy. When a solution is needed, they provide it themselves and hand the actual implementation over to their people. If it doesn't work, the failure is placed on the implementer instead of the manager who came up with the failed solution. After all, if they were so smart, they'd be managers, too. Wouldn't they?
Unfortunately, there's no way to fix this problem. Who would fix it if you could? The managers? That would require them to admit they're failures and move aside to let qualified individuals take the reins. As corporations become bigger, the need for leaders becomes greater. Unfortunately, leaders aren't made, they're born that way. It's a limited subset of the human population, so you hire what you can get and hope for the best.
Yeah, it's a bleak outlook, but it's realistic...
Huh, that's funny, I would have said the opposite. Unix admins just assume their systems are secure and move on simply because they're running Unix. Windows admins, however, have a better grasp of security issues and consider anti-virus as an absolute last line of defense. I wouldn't trust a Unix admin's security advice with a gun to my head. Hell, most can't even figure out that the exact same security principals you'd apply to a Unix system would also be applied to a Windows box. But, what do you expect from people who can't grok that technology moves FORWARD, it doesn't remain stagnant. Disturbingly, most of the Unix admins I talk to refer to viruses as if they happen to people who know what they're doing.
Yes it is
That's the problem with voodoo. Every cult has an opinion, but none can offer FACTS to back it, only the contradictory ramblings of dozens of other religions whose work was plagerized to create "The Bible".
it would seem Bush believes that an embryo qualifies as a person and has rights.
That's the problem of allowing freedom of religion. Everyone forgets that the implication is a freedom FROM religion, and thus push their completely wrong religious agendas on smart, thinking people who are capable of grasping a universe that exists because of itself and no outside influence.
Here's a question: if the christian cults believe life begins at conception, why do they continue to celebrate birthdays? The ceremony is to celebrate the anniversary of the entry of a new person into the world, conception according to their voodoo is then the time to celebrate. It's easy enough to figure out approximately what day conception occured, and considering they only ever have sex to procreate, they should be able to pin it to the MINUTE the sperm entered the uterus. Or, are they still clinging to the stork theory?
After last night's speech, I think I need to change my sig. "The religous right: working to bring you another fun-filled Dark Age for the new millenium!" Yeah, it could use some tweaking.
Actually, I found his answers to have the correct, underlying message: "you can do everything in the world to make an OS as secure as possible, but once you put a human being in front of it, all of that goes away. The worst of those being technically deficient, but still pompous, unix admins who can't even grok that simple concept."
Damn! Beat me to it! hehehe. I have almost the whole set of Giant Microbes. They're in a display cabinet in the living room 'cause I just love telling people what they are. :)
Mary was merry when she got married. Sorry, couldn't resist. There's a slim portion of the population to whom that sentence makes no sense. They hear those three words exactly the same, regardless of speaker.
My company's had a policy for almost a year on those: you can't use 'em. They've used the feature in XPSP2 to disable flash drives and that's that. Out of 13k users, there's a very slim minority that need flash drives, and they're given the ability via a GPO. It took about 15 minutes to figure out how to do, and 20 minutes to replicate across the whole domain. Done. Next earth-shaking disaster, please.
You've got the perfect work philosophy there, I couldn't agree with you more. My job is the portion of my day I "sell" in order to get money to cover the remainder of the day and hopefully make it more comfortable. I put as much thought into it when I leave the office as I would put on an auction I just finished on eBay...NONE! :)
come to think of it, there are no technical benefits in doing so
Actually, there are plenty. The problem is *nix guys who are still using their 30-year-old technology and can't grasp the concept of "moving forward". Tell you what, you *nix guys keep to yourselves, let the Windows guys who know what they're doing keep the IT departments moving forward. We're moving your shit out, and helping you prepare for your next exciting career: Walmart greeter! Yaay! Of course, you'll start complaining there about the good old days where people had to push the door open, rather than it opening for them...
Consider that situation: a user with total control over the system, who can change or overwrite anything, is using a single component for everything they do.
Now consider that they're using Linux. How does that change the model? Do you honestly think if Linux saturated the home desktop arena tomorrow we wouldn't be seeing the same issues? The problem isn't the software, it's the interface between keyboard and chair.
Which again raises the question: is the GPL enforceable? I've seen many examples of "stolen" GPL material showing up in commercial products over the last year, but I don't remember seeing any example of anyone being punished for it. Are there any such examples? Unless someone actively tries to enforce it soon, it's going to be meaningless in the eyes of the law. "They didn't come after any of these people, they're just singling us out because we're more profitable" becomes a defense.
You are assuming what you set out to prove. This is a logical fallacy: You define Christians the way you want to define them, and your definition includes the awful qualities that you are trying to prove all Christians possess.
No, I am assuming christians are evil, and giving my definitions of evil through example.
You are under the impression that Christianity has been around for only 20 years. Are you trying to say that the rise in rape (which actually is in decline in the US) over the past "few years" just was a latent characteristic of Christianity until a few years ago? That's horseshit, as anyone with a brain can see. I might as well say that rape is caused by the rise in atheism, since that is the religion that has risen dramatically in popularity over the last few years!
I'm more inclined to believe that christianity is in a decline, despite the growing number of fundies in visable lives ('pubs, tv evangelists, etc) and that's why those crimes are in decline. I'd say that this is a last, desperate attempt to try and subvert people to the cult by making it appear there are more than there are. I haven't met very many people who were all that active in their churches unless it was at a wedding and there was a priest there...
Sources, please. Charles Manson? Scientologist. Gacy? Not Christian.
Check again. I couldn't find anything offhand about Manson, but I did say "most". Oh, my definition of "christian" is anyone who follows any religion that is believes christ was some kind of messiah. In other words: anyone who ain't a jew, hindu, atheist, etc.
Using your same logic, I could state that being male makes you a rapist. We should get rid of all males. Or being white makes you a rapist. After all, as you said, pretty much every serial killer has been a [...] white male.
Perhaps, but being a male or white doesn't always provide you with the kind of repressed, hypocritical upbringing like you would get in a christian household. The kind that tells you sex is evil and gays should be burned at the stake.
I'm sorry, but Christianity doesn't actively encourage that. One sect, entirely unrelated to mine, might. But mine does not. All Christians are not the same, just like all Caucasians are not the same.
You all follow some manner of religion that was derived from the same falsified documents. The fact that there are so many variations of your religion based on trivial interpretations is proof that it's a sham(e). Regardless, as I said, they're not actively working against it, that's the same as actively encouraging it. It's like telling a wife beater "you should try not to hit her so much".
Yes, because Heaven forbid people are allowed to exercise their free speech from the sanctity of their own homes!
Nice. But, that's not freedom of speech. First off, freedom isn't an absolute, never was, never should be. There are limits. Your freedom ends where mine begins. But, if you're right, then the christians shouldn't be allowed to force changes to zoning laws simply to keep strip clubs and porn shops and bars and such out of their cities, etc. But, they do. If we're going to get rid of everything that's offensive to everyone, we have to remove the churches, too. Freedom OF religion has an implication (at least to me) of freedom FROM religion.
What do you know? Something you and I and most Christians I know agree on!
Perhaps you, but certainly not most christians.
This is not a Christian thing; if you believe life starts before exiting the mother, then you are supporting murder (which I believe most humans oppose). If you don't believe a baby is alive until it has passed through the birth canal, I guess you don't have a problem with abortion, then, do you? I will say this though: I'm not trying to start a debate about abortion here: I am merely responding to the pa
Ah, you never been to Canada. They don't stay on very long anyway. All nude, all alcohol, all smoking! Nekkid chicks the way they're supposed to be seen! LOL!
While we're at it, get rid of the dollar bill.
:)
Noooo! They did that in Canada, and now I have to give the strippers either loonies or toonies! I wanna slip paper into those g-strings, dammit!
Someone needs to mod the parent down
And, surprisingly, my life continues to go on. Huh.
That's just flaming, plain and simple
Yeah, so? Thanks to the christians, we suffered through a thousand year dark age where freedom, expression and education were stifled and persecuted. Sounds very familiar to what they're trying to do today. Had the Romans flamed the christians a little better (with real flames), the world would be a much better place today.
And I'd like to think Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Donald Knuth (suck on that one, computer geeks), Gödel, Cantor
Aside from the typesetter there, everyone else was from ages past where they also believed in other superstions like throwing salt over your shoulder and avoiding black cats. They had no choice but to join the prevailing cult. They were indoctrinated at an early age. All cults find that's a great way to lock hold of someone for life.
nearly every U.S. president (there has to be at least one that you agree is/was intelligent), W. D. Phillips, and the list goes on and on. I chose those whom most people on Slashdot would undoubtedly consider intelligent men. Additionally, each lived during the 20th century, so they could have easily rejected Christianity without persecution.
That's simply not true. There has never been a time in the US where any president could reject christianity and remain a politician. And, no, I haven't been impressed by the intelligence of any president so far. They're all representative of the people of the US, and therefore not intelligent.
As to the others, how many actively participate in their church functions? I know plenty of self-proclaimed "christians" who have been to their church about as often as the local rabbi. I'm talking about the REAL christians. The ones who picket bookstores and send money to oral roberts. The ones who actively seek to bring about another age of ignorance and fear. The ones who made a big deal about Janet Jackson's boob. The ones who are all for removing a woman's right to choose to have an abortion (not everyone believes in their god, but everyone should follow his tenets, huh?) The ones who then are against providing assistance to the poor or giving out condoms or even sex education in the schools. The ones perpetuating "the war on drugs" despite the evidence of their last failed prohibition showing such a tactic is futile. The ones who stand, weekly, on the corner in front of our local Wally-world shouting at every car that drives by how they're going to hell. The ones who never even READ the book they pretend to base their lives on (go ahead, ask 'em how many of the authors of the new testament actually MET jesus, or even were his contemporaries). The ones who are members of the KKK (a christian organization). The one who believe "under god" should be in the pledge of allegience because "it's always been in there" (representative of their ignorance). And, my favorite, the morons who think jesus was WHITE! Here's a clue, folks: jesus looked more like Osama Bin Laden than Willem Dafoe.
The other people are not christians. They're people trying to avoid being harrassed. christians have way too much freedom these days, and it needs to stop. They're free to practice their little cult in their own homes and churches, but their crap needs to STAY THERE. Take the crucifixes that are visible from the street down (I don't want my kids exposed to such violent and ignorant images). Get rid of anything even close to religious ceremony from ALL government operations (such as having the 10 commandments on display in the courthouses). And, keep their evil little asses off the street protesting and picketing things that don't match up with their demented view of the world (in other worlds, get out of in front of the strip clubs and porn shops!).
Let's also not forget that thanks to christianity, we now have a much higher sexual repression, leading to more rapes and viole
Unless of course, it's the ability to carry out prayer or other religioius expression during meetings or on government property. Then the ACLU is indeed forcing government (courts) to take your rights away.
No one ever had the "right" to pray on government property, it was just done. Banning it was the right thing to do. No intelligent person wants to hear the hate mongering and ignorance festering that is the christian religions. Freedom OF religion implies a freedom FROM religion.
You're absolutely right, they should have held off releasing Windows 3.1 until it was thoroughly beta and security tested. Hell, if they did that, Linux wouldn't be 10 years behind.
Good point, but she doesn't do caffeine (aside from the amounts you get from tea). She was drinking caffeine-free diet.
What "research"? I won't disagree that Snopes is a good site for weeding out the obvious lies, but let's look at their "proof". First, their premise "The artificial sweetener aspartame has been proved responsible for an epidemic of cancer, brain tumors, and multiple sclerosis". They do this by showing an e-mail forward discussing how the "WORLD ENVIRONMENTAL CONFERENCE" concluded that aspertame is dangerous. This is false, but it's the only falsity that is proven by Snopes (that this conference existed).
To back this up, he offers up links. The first is the FDA. That would be the same FDA that was headed by Arthur Hull Hayes when Searle and company were trying to get aspertame on the market. That would be the same FDA that looked at Searle's research in which 74 studies concluded there were no dangers from aspertaeme. They also looked at 90 other independant studies, 83 of which concluded some dangerous outcome from the ingestion of aspertaeme and concluded that it must be safe. And, what further proof do you need than three months later Arthur Hull Hayes, resigned and went to work at Searle for a very large salary. Obviously, aspertaeme is the greatest invention of all time, that's why Hayes went to work for Searle. He wanted to be part of such an organization.
The next link is from aspertaeme.net. Gee, I wonder what their agenda could be?
The next two links...the first one just reprints the letter and says at the top it's a hoax. The next one just says "it's a hoax". Well, with all of THAT scientific jargon, it's GOT to be a hoax. At best, it confirms what Snopes DID prove, that there was no "WORLD ENVIRONMENTAL CONFERENCE", but not that aspertaeme is safe for living things to consume.
Ohh, look, another article from the FDA. See above.
Then, we have an article from MIT that says a visiting scientist says it's safe because he's tested it. The article doesn't list much in the way of credentials, and does show how a study might have been done, but we have no link to the actual study or its results.
Finally, Time Magazine. Not first on the list of places I go for medical research. Maybe if I want to know which celebrity is marrying whom, I'll look there.
Well, you've convinced me. I'm going to go swig myself up a gallon of diet soda right now. And, like everyone else, i'll have a double-cheeseburger with it, too!
All I see is a bunch of anecdotal cases
this is slashdot, anecdotal cases make up the majority of the "truth" that's to be found here. Things like "Windows is unstable" and "Linux is easy to use" are touted as major "truths" all the time, and if you disagree, you're spreading FUD.
That being said, I don't know if there's been any formal long-term testing of the effects of this poison on the human system. I DO know that the head of the FDA blocked Searle from putting it in the public market for years due to faulty and suspicious testing procedures, and then approved it just a couple of months before he left and started working at Searle for $1.2M/year as a "marketing director". Take what truth from that you want. The of the story vary, but the truth remains.
What amazes me is if MS funds a study for Windows/against anyone, it's not valid. The fact that 74 of Searle and the FDA's studies of aspertame showed absolutely no danges while 92% of the independantly conducted studies showed MANY dangers shouldn't have any effect on truth, right?
I personally have seen the positive effects of ceasing the ingestion of it. My mother's vision had degraded severely over the course of a couple of years. Significantly more than could be attributed to her astigmatism. I suggested she stop downing so much diet soda with aspertame in it, and within 6 months, her vision restored pretty much back to where it should have been. Also, the migraines she'd recently started experiencing also stopped completely. I take more than enough truth from that, anecdotal or not.
Notice all the Nutrasweet bashing going on among health gurus over the last couple of years. It was the perfect sweetener, now it causes everything from headaches to severe thunderstorms.
That bashing's been going on since soon after the product hit the market. I think the patent expiring is why you're hearing more about it because there isn't anyone to "stifle" the truth anymore. The headaches are actually caused by brain lesions. But, those aren't the worst part, the blindness is what really gets you. (For the tin hatters out there)
I'd say you'd have a really difficult time building comparable equipment for significantly less cost
Only if you include the cost of scrounging around in "recycled pc" stores and trying to find clearance items from five years ago. My experience with recent Mac hardware indicates that it has similar performance to what you found on the PC side in 2000-2001.
I'll speak slowly.
:)
Thanks, I read slowly.
By "up to speed", I mean that for me to take the machine as-is, a bunch of CDs and an internet connection, that I do not have sufficient background in Windows to get it installed and doing everything it currently does, exactly as it does it, anywhere near as quickly as the Wintel IT department can (it took them about 2h, it would have taken me over 2h just to install base Windows XP - of course, they use a corporate Gold image). That should be pretty obvious - if I could, then I should be working in Wintel desktop support, and not on high-end *nix servers.
Or, perhaps high-end Wintel servers, as I do. But, to the point...you admit that you have no experience or qualification to speak on the state of Windows, but somehow you make it seem like that's reason enough for you to have an opinion. You also admit that the little experience you HAVE had with Windows has been with a laptop that you've found to work well when it was put together by people who know what they're doing. My whole point has been that in the right hands, Windows can be and is as rock solid and secure and well performaning as any Unix system. Just like how in the wrong hands, and Unix can be an insecure pile of steaming crap.
I have not complained about the condition of my laptop whatsoever in my original post. That is because of corporate firewalls, a decent (though admittedly not always 100% functional) corporate patching mechanism, and not installing extraneous crap on the system. Why would I? My post should make it fairly clear that I know that installing crap onto Windows gives an already poor OS major headaches. I have installed FireFox and just about nothing else onto the system. Any self-respecting sysadmin would refuse to support a UNIX system where the users go around installing their own crap. I would not expect the Wintel IT dept. to support my laptop if I did such things, either. I've got my area of expertise, they've got theirs.
Exactly, installing the kind of crap software that home owners install. 10-year old software designed to fix "hardware and software" errors on machines and OSes of years past. Games like "Wetris" and "Bubble Bustin' Babes" downloaded from sites that claim to give you free access to porn. New cursors for when you visit particular websites, oh, and if you don't mind, we're going to track every move you make on the web. Do you honestly think if any other OS out there is immune from that? The only OS that's immune from that is the one that has no method of receiving input from the wetware at the keyboard.
Where did I claim to be an expert in (or even care about) Windows? If you think that Registry entries == Computers, then there's a great world of computers for you to still learn and experience
You don't have to be. But, you made the point that there were "undocumented" features of Windows, and my reply was that there is no such animal. SOMEONE out there knows what it does, and has documented it somewhere. It may not be the best docs, but it's out there, and you can usually get what you need from it. I get tired of hearin *nix guys talking about how technically superior they because they don't use Windows, but one of their first admissions are there's so much "undocumented" about it. "You can't possibly fix Windows problems, you don't have access to the source!" "Oh, I got a blue screen, no one knows what they are, and Microsoft doesn't tell!" "I installed a service patch, and this obscure piece of software that's used by TWO people in the whole world broke. Microsoft is {just trying to put them out of business, incapable of doing and real beta testing}" Sorry, I used to hold a lot of respect for *nix guys and their mad skillz.
Now, I just don't know what happened....