A good book that questions both of these topics is "The 12th planet" by Zecharia Sitchin.
I also highly recommend this book, I read it for the first time 2 years ago and was intrigued with some of the ideas presented. Anyone who is interested in theological theory should read it.
the plot twist, characters, and dialogue (especially dialogue) were excellent, the numerous pokes at the catholic church were jaded but quite funny, but i wish kevin smith just stayed with the ace he had up his sleeve. instead, when he was done tearing the dogma apart, for some reason he decided to replace it with his own vision of what god and spirituality are all about. and the problem is - his version is unbelievably butchered.
let's take god, for instance. one moment god is wrathful and proud, the next moment she is benevolent and curious about the world she created; one moment she is bound by rules of human logic, another moment she exercises omnipotence; one moment she is the god of the old testament, the next moment of the new testament, and yet at others a very pantheist omnibeing permeating all of existence. never mind further consistency problems with other members of his pantheon (e.g. loki was a nordic god, not a biblical entity).
i really wish he hadn't done that. ideas like god having to obey human church's laws about atonement of sins are really quite funny, but how can you present a self-consistent version of spirituality based on that? you just can't. not even if you're kevin smith.
*SLAP* You missed the point. The movie wasn't about doctrine, it was about faith. The fact that he portrayed God in as many different lights as he could goes to further that. A nod to each belief as a kind of 'You could be right' thing. He did it the way he did it because he was advocating that you have faith in SOMETHING, not neccesarily what everyone else believes in, but something.
The Big Bang, the theory that a piece of extremely dense matter about the size of a basketball spontaneously exploded to form the universe as we know it, then this universe that was devoid of life at the time spontaneously generated some form of life which eventually became us, is pretty damn silly sounding to me.
I am a Christian, but most fundies would want me lynched as a heretic. I don't pretend to know the age of the universe because time is a meaningless construct of humanity. As far as we know the universe is only 1 nanosecond old and all of our memories were created as is by some alien computer as a Virtual Life experiment. I have very Agnostic leanings, but following Pascal's wager (Which I believe to be an excellent model of why scientific logical people should believe in some kind of god ) and my own research on the subject I've come to believe in a more or less traditional Christian view of life,death, God and everything.
Re:The End of the World As We Know It (Score:2) by Industrial Disease on 10:36 AM December 2nd, 1999 EST (#137) (User Info) I know I've read some really nasty post-Rapture fiction that had a tone of "Let's rejoice in the way them sinners are gonna suffer after us Real Christians are called up to Heaven," kind of like some of the more hateful Jack Chick tracts. I've read some excerpts of something recently that gave me the same feeling; if it wasn't Left Behind, I apologize.
'Left Behind' deals with the plight of new converts after the rapture. People who saw the rapture and said, 'Oh shit, the Christians were right!' and converted. It follows the exploits of the AntiChrist as he peacefully conquers the world, then begins to enslave it. It's an interesting read, though I don't recommend reading it as a religious book but as a Sci-Fi book. It does accurately follow the letter of Revelations Prophecy though... More or less. You might like it.
I how someone, who appears to be very literate and well read, who appears to actually _research_ topic he/she posts on, and who generally conveys a sense of intelligence in their writing (NO, I'm NOT talking about Katz) could continue to profess belief in an omnipitant, omniscient, supernatural boogyman.
I mean, come _on_ - there exists this magical, invisible being, who knows everything and can do anything, and who really loves humanity (as long as they say and do the correct things at the correct times) and who is responsible for everything - but yet never actually manifests himself in any observable way. And while he loves eveyone, if you don't do what he says, when you die you'll be transported to this other magical place full of magic fire where you'll be burned for eternity....
Oh, and there's this other magic guy who lives in this magical burning place (except that he seems to like it there - go figure) and his whole purpose to to intentionally corrupt people so that the DO come to his place when they die (apperently, he Has To Get Them All) - but he can't directly manifest himself either, except in movies.
But do what you're told, and be good, and when you die you go to this other magical place where everything is happy and good and wonderful.
It's all so silly! So juvinile! Hell, I outgrew my imaginary friends when I was 4!
It's all bunk, myth, and story - and not very well written story at that. What hold does this crap put on people?
I hope we see more movies like Dogma, that highlight just how stupid religion really is, and less like End Of Days, which lend it credence.
I think someone is cranky, you might need a nap...
If you believe that belief in a supreme deity is silly and juvenile then I challenge you to espouse to us the correct notion of how the universe came into being, how we came into being, why things are as they are. You see, you can not with confidence say that you are right, because you can not know until it is too late. I suggest you re-examine your life to see if perhaps you hold a belief in some theory which is equally silly, like the Big Bang....
what really disturbs me is the popularity of the "Left Behind" series of "Christian Science Fiction" novels
Why is that disturbing? They are actually pretty decently written books, and interesting to boot. Also, they don't really point at 2000 as the end of the world. Try reading them, they aren't Asimov or Bradbury, but they are a nice hour long read apiece.
But that will at least be a NEW plot device, I imagine people will be a bit more optimistic when the world doesn't end and we havea new, fresh, 1000 years ahead of us to enjoy the peace and prosperity we have created. Maybe I'll give Sci-Fi writing a crack myself, can't hurt.
Perhaps now that writers will no longer have the impending millenium to prop up their plot lines we will see the return of imaginative speculative science fiction of the likes of Bradbury, Doc smith, Assimov, and Heinlen. Perhaps we will see the birth of the next centuries literary guardians. After all, Science Fiction shapes our desires for science fact, the goal is always to do what the writers said you should be able to do. Welcome the flying cars, the infinite free clean energy, and the world peace, welcome the new age of Science Fiction.
The apocalypse is not going to come when people expect it to come, even Jesus can't tell the moment when its gonna happen. And even God himself warn us in the Bible: everyone to be prepared because everything can happen anytime. God is alive wich means he can THINK / LOVE /... and is not a seqvencial machine and expect it to do: if (Russia->Attack(Israel)) Apocalipse();>
flip throug the bakc of the bible, you know, that part where it says 'Revelations', you'll notice a few things that talk about little end time events and precursers to the apocalypse. Russia invading Israel (I think it's specifically stated as the Holy City being invaded from the north) is one of the major events that is supposed to mean the apocalypse will begin in the next 10 years. Which is why I say that until that happens I'm not worried about the actual apocalypse.
I suggest to you that a 25 year life span would correlate with a large amount of suffering in a species which is easily capable of living 100+ years.
Any development of tools is battling evolution. If you build a spear instead of growing claws you are battling evolution. We are no longer battling evolution, we've won.
None of those trillion or so inhabitants are even aware that they exist on more than a very base level of 'Hunger, Hurt, Breed'.
If you can put forth a more significant meaning to existance I'd love to hear it.
Our origins according to you are tree dwelling furry, hunter gatherer types. What do you suggest is the way we should be living? Fire is a circumvention of Evolution, as we used fire instead of growing more fur. Clothing is a circumvention, farming is a circumvention, ALL technology takes the place of an evolutionary advancement. Instead of developing more muscular legs or more efficient ways to run, we enslaved the horse. Then we decided they were too slow, and built a the car. According to your theory we would either be organically capable of all that we are now, or still living in mud huts freezing and starving because the best we can do is sneak up on sleeping insects because EVERY OTHER ANIMAL ON EARTH can run faster, jump higher, or just plain kick our asses.
Oh, and I don't fear death, but that doesn't mean I want to die. It doesn't make any difference to me whether I die today or tommorow except for one thing, I would miss my fiance.
Now, if you can't tell your stance is bullshit I'll continue trying to provoke discussion.
And who would buy a athlon and only put 32M/4Gigs in it? And only a 15" monitor? My Athlon has 128Megs ram and 30Gig (compUSA $299) HD. 40X cdrom. When ram prices chill out a little i'll up that to 256Megs. And with a little 17" Trinitron monitor it comes out to a little over $1500. That beats ANY mac in bang for buck AND raw power. Took me about a hour and a half to 2 hours to put the system together and slap Slackware 7 onto the HD. Looks like AMD wins here...
That's why no one is trying to market the iMac to YOU. The iMac is marketed at families who don't have the knowledge and experience to pick out quality components and put them together. If they did, then they wouldn't need an iMac. They'd be getting a G4 tower, which will whip the ass of the Athlon (Note: I LOVE Athlons, but Motorola makes a processor that will eat AMD alive).
The system I was putting together was one that was equivelant to the 300mhz iMac in every way possible. And the iMac wins there. If you build your own out of quality components you may come out a little bit ahead, but that slight advantage isn't going to be enough to convince most people that they need to go do 3 weeks of research to figure out what components they need and how to put them together.
Add just $250 to the $600 PC and you have an Athlon 550 that beats the crap out of _any_ iMac. And still, only $850. Add in $50 for labour at the computer store (because the iMac is preassembeld) and you are saving $100 still. Plus you have a faster machine that can be upgraded to any size monitor, and upgraded to whatever components you like. The iMac is NEVER a deal!
Ok... According to e-bay I can get an Athlon 550 and Mobo for 450$ (Roughly). Add 140$ for a 15" trinitron (Pricewatch) and you are up to 600$, add a hardrive, the 1000$ iMacs have 4 gig or so I think, that costs 88$ refurbished from Quantum (Pricewatch again), ad an Ati 128 for 70$ (Pricewatch, ATI Rage 128) a keyboard (Microsoft natural kbd) 30$ a mouse 15$, a 24x CD-ROM for 25$ (Pricewatch), and 32 megs of PC100 SDRAM for 35$ (Pricewatch again), and our total comes to... 852$. Now, most people who the iMac is targeted at are going to pay someone 50$ to put it together, so that's 900$, plus an operating system (They aren't likely to be using linux) that puts it right around 1000$. Then you have the headaches associated with an OS that crashes twice/day. Looks like the iMac wins out here...
So is it our fault that the other species aren't as good at surviving as we are? If you decree that the dominant species deserves to be dominant by the very nature of being dominant then we as a species should be able to do anything we want that we think will insure our continued survival.
How can we be living in a manner inconsistent with our origins? Does it offend you that we are no longer dying at 25 because we spent our entire lives in a mud floored cave, naked and freezing with barely enough food?
Also, you don't seem to realize that the eart doesn't give a shit one way or another whether we are here, or anything else is on it, it will continue to float around the sun until either the sun explodes, the orbit changes, or some other massive disaster occurs. And even then the earth won't care.
We are the only entity on earth that can determine what happens on a global scale, and it only concerns us. We are the only thing on earth that CARES what happens to us. Every species on this rock could be annihilated and not an atom in the universe would feel one shred of remorse, regret, or anything else. We exist here to further our own existence.
As for living in a manner consistent with our origins, that's obsurd, you imply that any form of evolution is unnatural as it would remove the entity from their origins. We are not battling our own evolution, we are cutting evolution off and doing whatever the hell we please. I don't say this is a good thing, but I do say that if we destroy ourselves it's not going to bother anyone, least of all us.
Kintanon Note: As far as I'm concerned 90% of what I just said is bullshit, I'm simply arguing the logical opposite of the other poster because I think his stance is equally full of bullshit.
Comparing different architectures "at the same clock" is patently useless. The reason is that different architectures do different amounts of work per clock cycle, depending on things like the number of pipelines, RISC vs CISC, etc.
The only way to accurately compare system performance (after you eliminate systems that don't do what you want, of course) is by using price-performance ratios. How much bang do you get for your buck?
Given the fact that I can get a damn good PC for less then $300, but have to shell out $1000+ for a Mac, I think I know what I would pick. (Plus, there are too many Windows-only games, so for me personally, I would go PC so I can still boot into Windows to play games.)
My personal pet peeve is that the menu bar is permanently docked at the top of the screen and doesn't stay attached to the application that owns it.
There are advantages to that method: For one, you don't waste screen real estate duplicating the menu bar in every window. For another, it means you always know where to find the menu, no matter where a window is. I'm not saying one is better then the other, just that Apple's method is not without merit.
Exactly, which is why arguing that paying 1000$ for a 300mhz iMac that will out perform the 600$ K6-400 you put together on your own time is bad is just silly. (Side not, that sentence was horribly constructed)
For one thing, add in the labor for the machine, if you say... 20$ an hour to put the thing together ('s 15 less than what I charge, and 20 less than what Best buy charges) and it takes you 5 hours, that's 100$ worth of time, plus it's YOUR time. Plus, the components you purchased aren't going to be the best quality and will be more likely to have trouble.
So unless you are a power user (like most of the people reading this) an iMac is an excellent machine to purchase. I recommend them to families all the time.
The Gameing issue is why I'm still using win98 and not yet linux. Waiting for the Q3:A debut.
Oh, and the menu bar is a pet peeve, and I've been told by the chief editor at www.dailyimac.com that it isn't a valid complaint (thpppt!).
We would starve when we exceeded the ecosystem's capacity, keeping our population in check... I'm sorry, is there something wrong with that? It seems to work pretty well for a few million other species, and worked well for us until the past few thousand years, a tiny fraction of the time our species has been on this planet.
I don't buy the propaganda of progress.
Then you must subscribe to the theory that the purpose of a species is to expand as quickly and over as much are as possible so as to maximize survival of the species? If not then you shouldn't care whether we kill ourselves off or not because the earth will recover within a couple thousand years of our demise, if so then you should be happy that we are defeating nature and expanding beyond the surface of the planet.
Or you can be of the opinion that humanity is 'unnatural' which is silly, since everything that exists is natural, otherwise it wouldn't exist.
I'd have to agree that in their current numbers and under the current system the armchair investors aren't going to single handedly bring down the economy. What worries me is the armchair investors + Y2K panic + Actual Y2K problems (Few and far between as they may be) + General panic. The combination of events and the timing just seem so ripe for a collapse. Not to mention that the unprecedented growth of our economy is almost begging for something to check it. You may be right, I certainly hope you are, but I'm still going to be pessimisitc about the economy for a couple of years. >:)
Why are the casual investors who read Motley Fool or Bloomberg's the "blind masses"? What special font of knowledge do you drink from, oh wise swami? The stock market isn't going to bite it because investors will decend into some sort of blind panic. We all get our news from the same sources. Although the net is supposed to give us freedom by providing access to information not available normally, all it really does is homogenize rumor and fact faster than news outlets can. All the warnings not too sell, all the arguements for holding onto stock vrs. selling it will hit everybody at once, and many won't dump there stocks. not to mention, the majority of people don't own "stock", they have a portfolio, a 401k, or some other diversified holding. do you honestly think they're gonna say, oh shit, screw my retirement plan, sell sell sell? No, they'll hold on to it and ride it out while fund managers do they're best to get rid of overvalued stocks and reinvest in good bets or blue chips. not to mention, we don't by stock on credit these days, (not the sane among us) so no real comparison can be drawn to the great depression. also, you started off you first post in this thread by saying that our stock market has been riding an unrealistic bubble for the last 3 or 4 years, and if it hadn't been propped up by the goverment and allowed to fail naturally, we would have been better off. 3 or 4 years ago, we had just come out of a recession. does that mean every time the market experiences growth, it's overvalued? or would have a recession for the entire course of the 90's been better in your mind? "dumbass" -anonymous coward
You are looking at it from the point of view of someone who posesses a modicum of common sense (If not manners). The vast majority of people looking to get rich in the market are starting to do so on their own using things like e-trade. This is BAD, they are uninformed and DON'T KNOW IT. I know that the Motley Fool and/or Bloombergs is not the the be all end all of knowledge and information. The only insight I have that they lack is that I know that I can't accurately predict market forces and I realize that no one is going to be able to garauntee returns. Most people who are investing now are doing so with the expectation that the market will continue to climb past 11000. When something happens and the market drops back to a more realistic 8000 or so they are going to be screwed. 3 or 4 years ago we had just been pulled out of a natrual recession by government action. That was BAD, the recession didn't naturally end, it was curtailed. We should have been in that recession for another 2 years to finish relieving the pressure built up by the early 90's tech rush. The Market is being forced to dance to the tune of the government, and it WILL stumble, fall, and crash sooner or later.
A better place for iMac news is www.dailyimac.com and soon www.dailymac.com will have Mac news. They tend to update pretty quickly and are a nice looking site...
But their management is dumber than your average company. I sell computers at the campus store here, and there's only ONE reason why I tend to push people heavily towards PCs - Macs ar 1.5 times as much as an equivalent PC or more. (Even you yourself admit to them being overpriced.) Apple is just way too greedy, and they're too stupid to realize that their greed is pushing people to PCs. Apple could do REALLY well if they'd only stop shooting themselves in the foot.
You're ignoring the fact that every Mac ever built will outperform every PC ever built if you compare a set of similar numbers (ie. same #Mhz, same #RAM). The MAC hardware is just beautiful, it's the OS that sucks monkey balls. My personal pet peeve is that the menu bar is permanently docked at the top of the screen and doesn't stay attached to the application that owns it. That's one of many pet peeves really...
1) If you look at the statistics, the big sellofs in the markets tend to be the professional traders. The small investors are much more in a buy and hold mentality, probably because most of their equity wealth is in retirement funds. Small investors hold, realizing that historically over a 5 or 10 year timeline, there is no better investment than equities. 2) Small investors are not borrowing to invest in the stock market in anywhere near the numbers that they were in the 20's. This means that they are not likely to lose more than their initial investment. In the 20's, people were buying items that they didn't understand with 10% down. They were then on the hook for 10 times their initial investment when it failed. 3) The egreigous cases of stock manipulation common in the 20's are not as common due to the regulatory influences of the SEC and the FASB.
Professional investors understand what they are doing and how the market will react to things. Armchair stock brokers don't. And they will panic for precisely the reason you state, they are relying on the market in some fashion for their retirement. Our culture has ceased to save money and begun to believe that they can't lose because the market will always go up. You can't honestly believe that if 50% of the people who are cluelessly investing sell of their stock all at once it won't make the market sag. The problem is that ANY kind of market sag is going to cause panic because of the market being propped up for so long. There have been checks placed on the market to prevent a crash, but if someone goes to sell their stocks and finds out they can't because the market has gone down too much they are going to panic worse. The same as if you tell them they can't withdraw their money from the bank because too many people have already done so. The human element of mob panic is becoming a larger and larger factor in the market. As an example take a look at a stock called VONE over the last 4 days. It went from 2.5 to 13 in 1 day, then back down to 7 the next day. The rise was based on a press release about a product they were actually producing, the drop was based on someones opinion that was posted in an article on the web warning people against giving in to the hype.
The masses blindly follow places like the Motley fool and Bloombergs. Whatever gets recommended there gets bought up en masse by the armchair e-traders, then dumped when a warning against jumping on the bandwagon comes out. Hence economists are creating self fulfilling prophecies that are fueling mass investing by unqualified individuals and creating unreliable fluctuation in stock prices.
Oh brother (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on 11:31 AM December 1st, 1999 EST (#96)
Not even close. The majority of the U.S. economic growth is caused by SMALL businesses, not major corporations.
Stick to "tech" (let me guess, you're getting a DeVry degree).
Stupid.
Economic Growth is not the same as stock market growth, nor is it equal to the actual value of the goods and services produced. Just because you are fueling economic growth via small business does not mean that you control any portion of the economy. A staggering number of small businesses FAIL. But you don't see the economy burping on that, but if Proctor and Gambel went under the market would choke and the economy would falter. Growth is caused by a proliferation of small startups, recession is caused by the large 'power players' in the economy. And once the economy falters it is much harder to start a small business, which slows economic growth, which contributes to further recession.
Oh, and I'm not getting a degree at the moment, I'm working full time supporting 150+ users, so there.
You are not going to see a huge stock market collapse of any sort. Certainly, there are a few industry's that are way over-valued... and to my dismay, they are still climbing. But we are actually going through right now, what a lot of people call a Stealth Bear Market Sure the S & P 500, the Dow and the Nasdaq are at all time highs right now... but this is only because of a small, eclectic group of stocks have enjoyed an incredible bull market. In the meantime, a majority of the high flying blue chips have really been crashing. Buy breaking it down... leads to a suprising find, which I will illustrate for you:
Not qoute the entire post, but I am responding to it all, not just the qouted part:
You are forgetting that one of the most powerful forces driving the economy is public opinion. It doesn't matter what the actual performance of the market is if you have 100 million people that think it's doing great and are dumping tons of money into stocks that are hopelessly over value dand due for a big downturn. When this happens the e-trade jockeys will be slapped with a reality check the likes of which they've never known, this will lead to a massive pull out of the stock market. A huge glut of people trying to sell off stocks with very few people buying them. This leads to those stocks being devalued further, fueling the panic. This will suppress the market and devalue related stocks in all industries across the board.
You have to realize that there is unprecedented number of clueless idiots investing in the market similar to the 1920s, only on a larger scale, when these people get burned on a massive scale it's going to cause a lot of problems. The paralels between 1929 and 1999 are pointing towards economic problems over the next 5 years. The fact that there hasn't REALLY been a major downturn in the market for almost 30 years is going to make it that much worse.
Kintanon
PS. Screw E-mail. A good discussion deserves to be seen by all! >:)
First of all, I find it odd that such a large percentage of people are expecting the return of christ or a messiah of some kind when none of the end time signs in the bible have been fulfilled. Now if/when Russia invades Israel, THEN we can start looking for the apocalypse.
Second of all, the US economy is being artificially inflated and propped up by government intervention and the actions of a few large corporations and wealthy individuals. Our economy is due for a major downturn to relieve some of the pressure that has been driving it for the last 5 years. The government and the corporations don't understand that this would have been a good thing had it been allowed to happen naturally a few years ago, if it happens now it will be a minor disaster, and if they hold it off another two or three years it will make the Great Depression look like paradise. The federal reserve manipulates the interest rates to force economic growth, the stock market is full of over valued unprofitable stocks, and people are becoming disenchanted with the government. These are all signs of an economic collapse on the verge of occuring. I expect that the panic around Y2K when people start to pull their money from the stock market and the banks will spark this collapse and that the 3 years from 2000 to 2003 will be a lean time for the Tech industry as more people buy less gadgetry and are forced to concetrate more on paying their light bills and buying food. However after that Technology should rebound strongly and once again the economy will begin to rise.
All of this comes from my own research into the Stock Market and the US economy, I was going to be a business major until I got into tech.
I stand corrected on Lysistrata. On Canterbury Tales, however... I'm not terribly good at reading middle english. I can make out general contexts, but it usually takes twice as long as reading modern english. Any translations to modern english? Probably not on the i-net.
Picky picky picky, I doubt you'll find a translation of Canterbury Tales into modern english ANYWHERE! It's used as a study of Olde English. And it isn't that difficult to read if you read it phonetically. And most version include notes on words with usage changes. Stop being so damn picky. The information is there, it isn't our fault you can't read it.
Slashdot Mirror
A good book that questions both of these topics is "The 12th planet" by Zecharia Sitchin.
I also highly recommend this book, I read it for the first time 2 years ago and was intrigued with some of the ideas presented. Anyone who is interested in theological theory should read it.
Kintanon
the plot twist, characters, and dialogue (especially dialogue) were excellent, the numerous pokes at the catholic church were jaded but quite funny, but i wish kevin smith just stayed with the ace he had up his sleeve. instead, when he was done tearing the dogma apart, for some reason he decided to replace it with his own vision of what god and spirituality are all about. and the problem is - his version is unbelievably butchered.
let's take god, for instance. one moment god is wrathful and proud, the next moment she is benevolent and curious about the world she created; one moment she is bound by rules of human logic, another moment she exercises omnipotence; one moment she is the god of the old testament, the next moment of the new testament, and yet at others a very pantheist omnibeing permeating all of existence. never mind further consistency problems with other members of his pantheon (e.g. loki was a nordic god, not a biblical entity).
i really wish he hadn't done that. ideas like god having to obey human church's laws about atonement of sins are really quite funny, but how can you present a self-consistent version of spirituality based on that? you just can't. not even if you're kevin smith.
*SLAP*
You missed the point. The movie wasn't about doctrine, it was about faith. The fact that he portrayed God in as many different lights as he could goes to further that. A nod to each belief as a kind of 'You could be right' thing. He did it the way he did it because he was advocating that you have faith in SOMETHING, not neccesarily what everyone else believes in, but something.
Kintanon
In response to post #169 chronologically.
The Big Bang, the theory that a piece of extremely dense matter about the size of a basketball spontaneously exploded to form the universe as we know it, then this universe that was devoid of life at the time spontaneously generated some form of life which eventually became us, is pretty damn silly sounding to me.
I am a Christian, but most fundies would want me lynched as a heretic. I don't pretend to know the age of the universe because time is a meaningless construct of humanity. As far as we know the universe is only 1 nanosecond old and all of our memories were created as is by some alien computer as a Virtual Life experiment.
I have very Agnostic leanings, but following Pascal's wager (Which I believe to be an excellent model of why scientific logical people should believe in some kind of god ) and my own research on the subject I've come to believe in a more or less traditional Christian view of life,death, God and everything.
Kintanon
Re:The End of the World As We Know It (Score:2)
by Industrial Disease on 10:36 AM December 2nd, 1999 EST (#137)
(User Info)
I know I've read some really nasty post-Rapture fiction that had a tone of "Let's rejoice in the way them sinners are gonna suffer after us Real Christians are called up to Heaven," kind of like some of the more hateful Jack Chick tracts. I've read some excerpts of something recently that gave me the same feeling; if it wasn't Left Behind, I apologize.
'Left Behind' deals with the plight of new converts after the rapture. People who saw the rapture and said, 'Oh shit, the Christians were right!' and converted. It follows the exploits of the AntiChrist as he peacefully conquers the world, then begins to enslave it. It's an interesting read, though I don't recommend reading it as a religious book but as a Sci-Fi book. It does accurately follow the letter of Revelations Prophecy though... More or less. You might like it.
Kintanon
I how someone, who appears to be very literate and well read, who appears to actually _research_ topic he/she posts on, and who generally conveys a sense of intelligence in their writing (NO, I'm NOT talking about Katz) could continue to profess belief in an omnipitant, omniscient, supernatural boogyman.
I mean, come _on_ - there exists this magical, invisible being, who knows everything and can do anything, and who really loves humanity (as long as they say and do the correct things at the correct times) and who is responsible for everything - but yet never actually manifests himself in any observable way. And while he loves eveyone, if you don't do what he says, when you die you'll be transported to this other magical place full of magic fire where you'll be burned for eternity....
Oh, and there's this other magic guy who lives in this magical burning place (except that he seems to like it there - go figure) and his whole purpose to to intentionally corrupt people so that the DO come to his place when they die (apperently, he Has To Get Them All) - but he can't directly manifest himself either, except in movies.
But do what you're told, and be good, and when you die you go to this other magical place where everything is happy and good and wonderful.
It's all so silly! So juvinile! Hell, I outgrew my imaginary friends when I was 4!
It's all bunk, myth, and story - and not very well written story at that. What hold does this crap put on people?
I hope we see more movies like Dogma, that highlight just how stupid religion really is, and less like End Of Days, which lend it credence.
I think someone is cranky, you might need a nap...
If you believe that belief in a supreme deity is silly and juvenile then I challenge you to espouse to us the correct notion of how the universe came into being, how we came into being, why things are as they are. You see, you can not with confidence say that you are right, because you can not know until it is too late. I suggest you re-examine your life to see if perhaps you hold a belief in some theory which is equally silly, like the Big Bang....
Kintanon
But in any case, it's no longer punishable by burning at the stake, so I'm happy... :-)
Really?!?! Oh shit, I've got a lot of apologies to write then damnit...
Kintanon
"INFIDEL! BURN THE WITCH! BLASPHEMER! JIHAD! JIHAD!!!!!"
what really disturbs me is the popularity of the "Left Behind" series of "Christian Science Fiction" novels
Why is that disturbing? They are actually pretty decently written books, and interesting to boot. Also, they don't really point at 2000 as the end of the world. Try reading them, they aren't Asimov or Bradbury, but they are a nice hour long read apiece.
Kintanon
But that will at least be a NEW plot device, I imagine people will be a bit more optimistic when the world doesn't end and we havea new, fresh, 1000 years ahead of us to enjoy the peace and prosperity we have created. Maybe I'll give Sci-Fi writing a crack myself, can't hurt.
Kintanon
Perhaps now that writers will no longer have the impending millenium to prop up their plot lines we will see the return of imaginative speculative science fiction of the likes of Bradbury, Doc smith, Assimov, and Heinlen. Perhaps we will see the birth of the next centuries literary guardians. After all, Science Fiction shapes our desires for science fact, the goal is always to do what the writers said you should be able to do. Welcome the flying cars, the infinite free clean energy, and the world peace, welcome the new age of Science Fiction.
Kintanon
The apocalypse is not going to come when people expect it to come, even Jesus can't tell the moment when its gonna happen. And even God himself warn us in the Bible: everyone to be prepared because everything can happen anytime. God is alive wich means he can THINK / LOVE / ... and is not a seqvencial machine and expect it to do: if (Russia->Attack(Israel)) Apocalipse();>
flip throug the bakc of the bible, you know, that part where it says 'Revelations', you'll notice a few things that talk about little end time events and precursers to the apocalypse. Russia invading Israel (I think it's specifically stated as the Holy City being invaded from the north) is one of the major events that is supposed to mean the apocalypse will begin in the next 10 years. Which is why I say that until that happens I'm not worried about the actual apocalypse.
Kintanon
In reply to #170 chronologically
I suggest to you that a 25 year life span would correlate with a large amount of suffering in a species which is easily capable of living 100+ years.
Any development of tools is battling evolution. If you build a spear instead of growing claws you are battling evolution. We are no longer battling evolution, we've won.
None of those trillion or so inhabitants are even aware that they exist on more than a very base level of 'Hunger, Hurt, Breed'.
If you can put forth a more significant meaning to existance I'd love to hear it.
Our origins according to you are tree dwelling furry, hunter gatherer types. What do you suggest is the way we should be living? Fire is a circumvention of Evolution, as we used fire instead of growing more fur. Clothing is a circumvention, farming is a circumvention, ALL technology takes the place of an evolutionary advancement. Instead of developing more muscular legs or more efficient ways to run, we enslaved the horse. Then we decided they were too slow, and built a the car. According to your theory we would either be organically capable of all that we are now, or still living in mud huts freezing and starving because the best we can do is sneak up on sleeping insects because EVERY OTHER ANIMAL ON EARTH can run faster, jump higher, or just plain kick our asses.
Oh, and I don't fear death, but that doesn't mean I want to die. It doesn't make any difference to me whether I die today or tommorow except for one thing, I would miss my fiance.
Now, if you can't tell your stance is bullshit I'll continue trying to provoke discussion.
Kintanon
Oh and MacOS dosnt crash? ya right...
And who would buy a athlon and only put 32M/4Gigs in it? And only a 15" monitor? My Athlon has 128Megs ram and 30Gig (compUSA $299) HD. 40X cdrom. When ram prices chill out a little i'll up that to 256Megs. And with a little 17" Trinitron monitor it comes out to a little over $1500. That beats ANY mac in bang for buck AND raw power. Took me about a hour and a half to 2 hours to put the system together and slap Slackware 7 onto the HD. Looks like AMD wins here...
That's why no one is trying to market the iMac to YOU. The iMac is marketed at families who don't have the knowledge and experience to pick out quality components and put them together. If they did, then they wouldn't need an iMac. They'd be getting a G4 tower, which will whip the ass of the Athlon (Note: I LOVE Athlons, but Motorola makes a processor that will eat AMD alive).
The system I was putting together was one that was equivelant to the 300mhz iMac in every way possible. And the iMac wins there. If you build your own out of quality components you may come out a little bit ahead, but that slight advantage isn't going to be enough to convince most people that they need to go do 3 weeks of research to figure out what components they need and how to put them together.
Kintanon
Add just $250 to the $600 PC and you have an Athlon 550 that beats the crap out of _any_ iMac. And still, only $850. Add in $50 for labour at the computer store (because the iMac is preassembeld) and you are saving $100 still. Plus you have a faster machine that can be upgraded to any size monitor, and upgraded to whatever components you like. The iMac is NEVER a deal!
Ok... According to e-bay I can get an Athlon 550 and Mobo for 450$ (Roughly). Add 140$ for a 15" trinitron (Pricewatch) and you are up to 600$, add a hardrive, the 1000$ iMacs have 4 gig or so I think, that costs 88$ refurbished from Quantum (Pricewatch again), ad an Ati 128 for 70$ (Pricewatch, ATI Rage 128) a keyboard (Microsoft natural kbd) 30$ a mouse 15$, a 24x CD-ROM for 25$ (Pricewatch), and 32 megs of PC100 SDRAM for 35$ (Pricewatch again), and our total comes to... 852$. Now, most people who the iMac is targeted at are going to pay someone 50$ to put it together, so that's 900$, plus an operating system (They aren't likely to be using linux) that puts it right around 1000$. Then you have the headaches associated with an OS that crashes twice/day. Looks like the iMac wins out here...
Kintanon
In response to post 150 chronologically:
So is it our fault that the other species aren't as good at surviving as we are? If you decree that the dominant species deserves to be dominant by the very nature of being dominant then we as a species should be able to do anything we want that we think will insure our continued survival.
How can we be living in a manner inconsistent with our origins? Does it offend you that we are no longer dying at 25 because we spent our entire lives in a mud floored cave, naked and freezing with barely enough food?
Also, you don't seem to realize that the eart doesn't give a shit one way or another whether we are here, or anything else is on it, it will continue to float around the sun until either the sun explodes, the orbit changes, or some other massive disaster occurs. And even then the earth won't care.
We are the only entity on earth that can determine what happens on a global scale, and it only concerns us. We are the only thing on earth that CARES what happens to us. Every species on this rock could be annihilated and not an atom in the universe would feel one shred of remorse, regret, or anything else. We exist here to further our own existence.
As for living in a manner consistent with our origins, that's obsurd, you imply that any form of evolution is unnatural as it would remove the entity from their origins. We are not battling our own evolution, we are cutting evolution off and doing whatever the hell we please. I don't say this is a good thing, but I do say that if we destroy ourselves it's not going to bother anyone, least of all us.
Kintanon
Note: As far as I'm concerned 90% of what I just said is bullshit, I'm simply arguing the logical opposite of the other poster because I think his stance is equally full of bullshit.
Comparing different architectures "at the same clock" is patently useless. The reason is that different architectures do different amounts of work per clock cycle, depending on things like the number of pipelines, RISC vs CISC, etc.
The only way to accurately compare system performance (after you eliminate systems that don't do what you want, of course) is by using price-performance ratios. How much bang do you get for your buck?
Given the fact that I can get a damn good PC for less then $300, but have to shell out $1000+ for a Mac, I think I know what I would pick. (Plus, there are too many Windows-only games, so for me personally, I would go PC so I can still boot into Windows to play games.)
My personal pet peeve is that the menu bar is permanently docked at the top of the screen and doesn't stay attached to the application that owns it.
There are advantages to that method: For one, you don't waste screen real estate duplicating the menu bar in every window. For another, it means you always know where to find the menu, no matter where a window is. I'm not saying one is better then the other, just that Apple's method is not without merit.
Exactly, which is why arguing that paying 1000$ for a 300mhz iMac that will out perform the 600$ K6-400 you put together on your own time is bad is just silly. (Side not, that sentence was horribly constructed)
For one thing, add in the labor for the machine, if you say... 20$ an hour to put the thing together ('s 15 less than what I charge, and 20 less than what Best buy charges) and it takes you 5 hours, that's 100$ worth of time, plus it's YOUR time. Plus, the components you purchased aren't going to be the best quality and will be more likely to have trouble.
So unless you are a power user (like most of the people reading this) an iMac is an excellent machine to purchase. I recommend them to families all the time.
The Gameing issue is why I'm still using win98 and not yet linux. Waiting for the Q3:A debut.
Oh, and the menu bar is a pet peeve, and I've been told by the chief editor at www.dailyimac.com that it isn't a valid complaint (thpppt!).
Kintanon
We would starve when we exceeded the ecosystem's capacity, keeping our population in check... I'm sorry, is there something wrong with that? It seems to work pretty well for a few million other species, and worked well for us until the past few thousand years, a tiny fraction of the time our species has been on this planet.
I don't buy the propaganda of progress.
Then you must subscribe to the theory that the purpose of a species is to expand as quickly and over as much are as possible so as to maximize survival of the species? If not then you shouldn't care whether we kill ourselves off or not because the earth will recover within a couple thousand years of our demise, if so then you should be happy that we are defeating nature and expanding beyond the surface of the planet.
Or you can be of the opinion that humanity is 'unnatural' which is silly, since everything that exists is natural, otherwise it wouldn't exist.
Kintanon
Ok, very long post, #133 chronologically.
I'd have to agree that in their current numbers and under the current system the armchair investors aren't going to single handedly bring down the economy. What worries me is the armchair investors + Y2K panic + Actual Y2K problems (Few and far between as they may be) + General panic.
The combination of events and the timing just seem so ripe for a collapse. Not to mention that the unprecedented growth of our economy is almost begging for something to check it. You may be right, I certainly hope you are, but I'm still going to be pessimisitc about the economy for a couple of years. >:)
Kintanon
Why are the casual investors who read Motley Fool or Bloomberg's the "blind masses"? What special font of knowledge do you drink from, oh wise swami? The stock market isn't going to bite it because investors will decend into some sort of blind panic. We all get our news from the same sources. Although the net is supposed to give us freedom by providing access to information not available normally, all it really does is homogenize rumor and fact faster than news outlets can. All the warnings not too sell, all the arguements for holding onto stock vrs. selling it will hit everybody at once, and many won't dump there stocks. not to mention, the majority of people don't own "stock", they have a portfolio, a 401k, or some other diversified holding. do you honestly think they're gonna say, oh shit, screw my retirement plan, sell sell sell? No, they'll hold on to it and ride it out while fund managers do they're best to get rid of overvalued stocks and reinvest in good bets or blue chips. not to mention, we don't by stock on credit these days, (not the sane among us) so no real comparison can be drawn to the great depression. also, you started off you first post in this thread by saying that our stock market has been riding an unrealistic bubble for the last 3 or 4 years, and if it hadn't been propped up by the goverment and allowed to fail naturally, we would have been better off. 3 or 4 years ago, we had just come out of a recession. does that mean every time the market experiences growth, it's overvalued? or would have a recession for the entire course of the 90's been better in your mind? "dumbass" -anonymous coward
You are looking at it from the point of view of someone who posesses a modicum of common sense (If not manners). The vast majority of people looking to get rich in the market are starting to do so on their own using things like e-trade. This is BAD, they are uninformed and DON'T KNOW IT. I know that the Motley Fool and/or Bloombergs is not the the be all end all of knowledge and information. The only insight I have that they lack is that I know that I can't accurately predict market forces and I realize that no one is going to be able to garauntee returns. Most people who are investing now are doing so with the expectation that the market will continue to climb past 11000. When something happens and the market drops back to a more realistic 8000 or so they are going to be screwed. 3 or 4 years ago we had just been pulled out of a natrual recession by government action. That was BAD, the recession didn't naturally end, it was curtailed. We should have been in that recession for another 2 years to finish relieving the pressure built up by the early 90's tech rush. The Market is being forced to dance to the tune of the government, and it WILL stumble, fall, and crash sooner or later.
Kintanon
A better place for iMac news is www.dailyimac.com
and soon www.dailymac.com will have Mac news. They tend to update pretty quickly and are a nice looking site...
Kintanon
But their management is dumber than your average company. I sell computers at the campus store here, and there's only ONE reason why I tend to push people heavily towards PCs - Macs ar 1.5 times as much as an equivalent PC or more. (Even you yourself admit to them being overpriced.) Apple is just way too greedy, and they're too stupid to realize that their greed is pushing people to PCs. Apple could do REALLY well if they'd only stop shooting themselves in the foot.
You're ignoring the fact that every Mac ever built will outperform every PC ever built if you compare a set of similar numbers (ie. same #Mhz, same #RAM). The MAC hardware is just beautiful, it's the OS that sucks monkey balls. My personal pet peeve is that the menu bar is permanently docked at the top of the screen and doesn't stay attached to the application that owns it. That's one of many pet peeves really...
Kintanon
1) If you look at the statistics, the big sellofs in the markets tend to be the professional traders. The small investors are much more in a buy and hold mentality, probably because most of their equity wealth is in retirement funds. Small investors hold, realizing that historically over a 5 or 10 year timeline, there is no better investment than equities. 2) Small investors are not borrowing to invest in the stock market in anywhere near the numbers that they were in the 20's. This means that they are not likely to lose more than their initial investment. In the 20's, people were buying items that they didn't understand with 10% down. They were then on the hook for 10 times their initial investment when it failed. 3) The egreigous cases of stock manipulation common in the 20's are not as common due to the regulatory influences of the SEC and the FASB.
Professional investors understand what they are doing and how the market will react to things. Armchair stock brokers don't. And they will panic for precisely the reason you state, they are relying on the market in some fashion for their retirement. Our culture has ceased to save money and begun to believe that they can't lose because the market will always go up. You can't honestly believe that if 50% of the people who are cluelessly investing sell of their stock all at once it won't make the market sag. The problem is that ANY kind of market sag is going to cause panic because of the market being propped up for so long. There have been checks placed on the market to prevent a crash, but if someone goes to sell their stocks and finds out they can't because the market has gone down too much they are going to panic worse. The same as if you tell them they can't withdraw their money from the bank because too many people have already done so.
The human element of mob panic is becoming a larger and larger factor in the market. As an example take a look at a stock called VONE over the last 4 days. It went from 2.5 to 13 in 1 day, then back down to 7 the next day. The rise was based on a press release about a product they were actually producing, the drop was based on someones opinion that was posted in an article on the web warning people against giving in to the hype.
The masses blindly follow places like the Motley fool and Bloombergs. Whatever gets recommended there gets bought up en masse by the armchair e-traders, then dumped when a warning against jumping on the bandwagon comes out. Hence economists are creating self fulfilling prophecies that are fueling mass investing by unqualified individuals and creating unreliable fluctuation in stock prices.
Kintanon
Oh brother (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on 11:31 AM December 1st, 1999 EST (#96)
Not even close. The majority of the U.S. economic growth is caused by SMALL businesses, not major corporations.
Stick to "tech" (let me guess, you're getting a DeVry degree).
Stupid.
Economic Growth is not the same as stock market growth, nor is it equal to the actual value of the goods and services produced. Just because you are fueling economic growth via small business does not mean that you control any portion of the economy. A staggering number of small businesses FAIL. But you don't see the economy burping on that, but if Proctor and Gambel went under the market would choke and the economy would falter. Growth is caused by a proliferation of small startups, recession is caused by the large 'power players' in the economy. And once the economy falters it is much harder to start a small business, which slows economic growth, which contributes to further recession.
Oh, and I'm not getting a degree at the moment, I'm working full time supporting 150+ users, so there.
Hi stupid, pleased to meet you, I'm Kintanon.
You are not going to see a huge stock market collapse of any sort. Certainly, there are a few industry's that are way over-valued... and to my dismay, they are still climbing. But we are actually going through right now, what a lot of people call a Stealth Bear Market Sure the S & P 500, the Dow and the Nasdaq are at all time highs right now... but this is only because of a small, eclectic group of stocks have enjoyed an incredible bull market. In the meantime, a majority of the high flying blue chips have really been crashing. Buy breaking it down... leads to a suprising find, which I will illustrate for you:
Not qoute the entire post, but I am responding to it all, not just the qouted part:
You are forgetting that one of the most powerful forces driving the economy is public opinion. It doesn't matter what the actual performance of the market is if you have 100 million people that think it's doing great and are dumping tons of money into stocks that are hopelessly over value dand due for a big downturn. When this happens the e-trade jockeys will be slapped with a reality check the likes of which they've never known, this will lead to a massive pull out of the stock market. A huge glut of people trying to sell off stocks with very few people buying them. This leads to those stocks being devalued further, fueling the panic. This will suppress the market and devalue related stocks in all industries across the board.
You have to realize that there is unprecedented number of clueless idiots investing in the market similar to the 1920s, only on a larger scale, when these people get burned on a massive scale it's going to cause a lot of problems. The paralels between 1929 and 1999 are pointing towards economic problems over the next 5 years. The fact that there hasn't REALLY been a major downturn in the market for almost 30 years is going to make it that much worse.
Kintanon
PS. Screw E-mail. A good discussion deserves to be seen by all! >:)
First of all, I find it odd that such a large percentage of people are expecting the return of christ or a messiah of some kind when none of the end time signs in the bible have been fulfilled. Now if/when Russia invades Israel, THEN we can start looking for the apocalypse.
Second of all, the US economy is being artificially inflated and propped up by government intervention and the actions of a few large corporations and wealthy individuals. Our economy is due for a major downturn to relieve some of the pressure that has been driving it for the last 5 years. The government and the corporations don't understand that this would have been a good thing had it been allowed to happen naturally a few years ago, if it happens now it will be a minor disaster, and if they hold it off another two or three years it will make the Great Depression look like paradise. The federal reserve manipulates the interest rates to force economic growth, the stock market is full of over valued unprofitable stocks, and people are becoming disenchanted with the government. These are all signs of an economic collapse on the verge of occuring. I expect that the panic around Y2K when people start to pull their money from the stock market and the banks will spark this collapse and that the 3 years from 2000 to 2003 will be a lean time for the Tech industry as more people buy less gadgetry and are forced to concetrate more on paying their light bills and buying food. However after that Technology should rebound strongly and once again the economy will begin to rise.
All of this comes from my own research into the Stock Market and the US economy, I was going to be a business major until I got into tech.
Kintanon
I stand corrected on Lysistrata.
On Canterbury Tales, however... I'm not terribly good at reading middle english. I can make out general contexts, but it usually takes twice as long as reading modern english. Any translations to modern english? Probably not on the i-net.
Picky picky picky, I doubt you'll find a translation of Canterbury Tales into modern english ANYWHERE! It's used as a study of Olde English. And it isn't that difficult to read if you read it phonetically. And most version include notes on words with usage changes. Stop being so damn picky. The information is there, it isn't our fault you can't read it.
Kintanon