> The problem, when it comes to computers, is that there's precious little standardization.
Yes, that is definitely one BIG problem with computers./me *glares* at Excel for STILL having non-standard cut/copypaste. e.g. Copy cell, type into another cell, Paste... does NOTHING ?! Seriously, WTF, its 2010 and MS can't even implement this right in Excel 2007....
The GP had a point. You remember what they jokingly referred to the CGA as? Crappy Graphics Adapater, because it had 4 colors: black, white, cyan, and magenta. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_Graphics_Adapter
> For simplicity, let's say there are two positions here. One relies on evidence and experiment to draw conclusions about the world. The other, in the absence of evidence, relies on faith to believe in an invisible being while simultaneously trying to undermine the ideas of reason, logic and experimentation _in_general_.
Apologies for offending you but that is a simplistic dualistic-modality of thinking and looking at the world: e.g. In understanding truth, we have evidence, therefore logic dictates that the only other choice is lack-of-evidence.
To provide another perspective. While you are correct, you have only described the horizontal axis: logic
You are missing the vertical axies: emotion / faith.
The two are orthogonal.
There is actually a 3rd dimension of consciousness (knowingness) but I would encourage you to explore the first two, Theism (Femine Non-Linear Faith/Emotion) vs Atheism (Masculine Linear Logic), before moving to Agnostic. If you are persistant, you may experience Gnosticism to be able to undertand the strengths and limitations of the first two.
> Churches also exploit their status as 'good' and 'holy'.
Yes, unfortunately. Churches are in the business of selling heaven insurance.
Sadly, they have degenerated into cult status ("Our way is the only way") as a matter of self-preservation, thus they are "holy" and everyone else is "pagan" or "heretic." Ironically, heretic comes from the root words "choice".
> Unsure if you are Christian or not, Why would I waste my time with Spiritual Kindergarten??
>> Here is an analogy > he can devise a device (spectrometers already exist) What part of the word 'a-n-a-l-o-g-y' do you not understand??
> Sure he would lack the senses to tell how the human eyes/brain perceive these colors. And this is _precisely_ what theists and atheists are -- ignorant of experience -- they lack the senses to perceive non-physical reality. Without senses, they lack experience. Without experience, they lack knowledge.
> I simply said there is no evidence nor can there be to assert/deny that there is a god. And without supporting evidence there is no reason to believe there is a god.
If _you_ haven't found the evidence then "Maybe you aren't looking hard enough!"
The mystical experience provides plenty of evidence. If you haven't had these experiences, then you are the "proverbial" blind man, which is the original point.
A very wise man (Buddha) once stated this wisdom:
"What could you know about God? What do you know about yourself? Do you know anything about yourself? No? So how could you know anything about God? Leave God aside, for the time being, and find out who you are."
You don't know what you are looking for because you don't understand who you are really are, your Higher Self, let alone "God." Or in other words: "Know Thyself" is the _ultimate_ form of knowing God.
How do I know these mystical experiences are real? Because of deep meditation for the past 6 years.
> it is the responsibility of the people making the assertion (that god exists) to define what god is so it is a testable hypothesis LOL. The existence of God is NOT some theorem to be proved. (For one thing She would get a real kick out some human using their limited human intelligence and perspective trying to solve an unsolvable problem -- "prove that something 'outside' yourself exists!) Existence claims can never be proven _only_ experienced. You can't prove that I "exist" because I could be a figment of your imagination. There is no "proof" -- only knowing. I will address in further down.
As much as I hate the New Age definition of god being "All-That-Is", it is the most concise and accurate definition there is. Every religion has some cockamania "definition" of "God" that isn't even close to being accurate.
> The problem is Christianity etc rely on the supernatural which requires faith, The three Western religions, Judaism, Christian, and Islam have _many_ problems. Requiring faith is NOT one of them. I highly recommend you try reading Gurdjieff 'The Fourth Way' to understand the strengths and weaknesses of the various approaches since you don't know what you are talking about. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fourth_Way
To present another _analogy_: - Some people learn best by reading. - Some people learn best by watching. - Some people learn best by doing.
If you have ever studied Dancing or Martial Arts you would know that a multi-pronged solution caters to and maximizes the widest learning types, but there is nothing wrong with "specializing" in one type. Religions follow this same pattern of specialization.
Faith-based religion work extremely well for some people -- heart-centered. For others it does _absolutely_ nothing -- mind-centered. True Atheists, thank god (pardon the pun), are logic driven. They tend to do well with Buddhism -- since it ignores the whole concept of "What is God" from the get go, and instead focuses on (IMHO the more important) question "Who/What am I?"
> Logic and evidence comes from observing the universe around us, these things are not subjective an
> both conclude there is and can never be no credible evidence That is true that one man's "evidence" is another man's skepticism.
However, that is an incorrect conclusion based on a faulty assumption, even though a quite reasonable conclusion, lack of experience. Here is an analogy:
A blind man says there is no such thing as color. From his perspective (pardon the pun) he is absolutely correct - he has no valid frame of reference to even understand what color is.
Theists, Atheists, and the Agnostic are the blind men all arguing over what constitutes color when they really don't have a clue what the spectrum is.
It's like saying there is no life after death. If you have NEVER been dead, you don't KNOW, so you can NOT assert this claim. Once you have been dead, you will KNOW that Reality is much, much more complicated than the average human could even comprehend.
> how can you provide evidence of something you cannot define in clear non-supernatural terms,
If _you_ are unable to define it, that is _your_ problem. For example, as a baby did you understood Differential Calculus? Why Not?? The same applies to spiritual understanding. The fact that you are unable to understand the answer does not imply there is no answer.
Furthermore, ALL KNOWLEDGE is subjective. The objective relies upon the subjective experience/evidence. How do you KNOW that 2+2 = 4? If you can't do math or even know what numbers are, you DON'T, let alone come up with a proof.
> Your mistake is that you think atheists declare there is proof there is no god Can you show me where I said that please?
a-{word} = without, or lacking
Theism = has-a belief Atheism = has-no belief (due to lack of evidence) Agnostic = has-no knowledge (due to lack of evidence or experience) Gnostic = has-a knowledge (due to experience and evidence)
/sarcasm Mod ignorance up. Only the non-religious are the true paragons of morality./snicker (Stalin is quoted as saying "You know, they are fooling us, there is no God...all this talk about God is sheer nonsense" in E. Yaroslavsky, Landmarks in the Life of Stalin, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow 1940)
The atheists are just as ignorant of reality as the theists. At least the agnostic have the honesty to admit they DON'T KNOW, which is the first sign of TRUE knowledge. (Of course only the mystic sees the incompleteness in the other three, and laughs inwardly at the atheist blind man telling the other religious blind man that he can't see.)
> really are just practicing magical thinking. Do Scientists have an answer for the "magical thinking" of the placebo effect yet?? I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss that thinking has no effect on changing reality when you don't a) understand what is thinking, thought or consciousness, and b) don't understand the true nature of reality.
> religious leaders steal their money and abuse their children. Right! Let's toss the baby out with the bathwater! Simply because we have a few religious nuts who are too spiritually stupid to even understand what their religion is about. Every religion teaches the "Golden Rule." The fact that you have some stupid Catholic priests to stupid to even understand why Marriage is the foundation of the original Trinity relationship - father, mother, child - is completely irrelevent to your rant.
How about we simply hold up common sense values regardless of what beliefs a person choses to practise??
The bottom line, there are lot of good people, and lot of ignorant people, religious or not, theist or atheist.
-- Inner Space not Outer Space is the FINAL frontier.
8 lines are a "waste." I had a 5 pt font on my HP48SX/GX. Someone even hacked in lower case case. (Technically, 6 pts, since you need 1 line for spacing.)
> And a similar font existed in varius Apple][ graphic mode rendered text. 5 pixels tall 3 pixels wide + 1 pixel for line and letter spacing and you had the font.
Agreed, that a language should never FORCE one particular coding style, only ENABLE, especially the TABs vs SPACES holy war.
While there are advantages, they don't outweight the disadvantages.
In some contexts it nice to write if( a ) do_a(); if( b ) do_b();
While sometimes it is nicer to format it as if( a ) do_a(); if( b ) do_b();
In some contexts it nice to write e.g. case A: do_a(); break; case B: do_b(); break;
Yet to be safe, you usually want to write if( a ) { do_a(); } if( b ) { do_b(); } to future-proof the code-formatting if you need to add any extra logic inside the braces.
I can't stand some language dictating how or where I mark-up my code/comments with extra whitespace or terminators.
For example, putting the comma in front, makes it dead easy to extend enums, etc. instead of having to dick around add/removing the last comma.
enum Color { __DUMMY_COLOR , Red = 0 , Green , Blue };
I really wish programming languages would step into the new millenium. Is it really that hard to have a language and editor support dynamic tabs so I can write more readable code (and comments) in a proportional font ?
Slashdot Mirror
> The problem, when it comes to computers, is that there's precious little standardization.
Yes, that is definitely one BIG problem with computers. /me *glares* at Excel for STILL having non-standard cut/copypaste. ... does NOTHING ?! Seriously, WTF, its 2010 and MS can't even implement this right in Excel 2007 ....
e.g. Copy cell, type into another cell, Paste
The GP had a point. You remember what they jokingly referred to the CGA as? Crappy Graphics Adapater, because it had 4 colors: black, white, cyan, and magenta.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_Graphics_Adapter
Hell, even my Apple ][ had (graphics) Page Flipping plus 6 colors: black, white, green, violet, orange, blue
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2006/01/i-heart-cheatsheets.html
Thanks.
Yup, off-by-one, literally :-)
> For simplicity, let's say there are two positions here. One relies on evidence and experiment to draw conclusions about the world. The other, in the absence of evidence, relies on faith to believe in an invisible being while simultaneously trying to undermine the ideas of reason, logic and experimentation _in_general_.
Apologies for offending you but that is a simplistic dualistic-modality of thinking and looking at the world:
e.g.
In understanding truth, we have evidence, therefore logic dictates that the only other choice is lack-of-evidence.
To provide another perspective. While you are correct, you have only described the horizontal axis: logic
You are missing the vertical axies: emotion / faith.
The two are orthogonal.
There is actually a 3rd dimension of consciousness (knowingness) but I would encourage you to explore the first two, Theism (Femine Non-Linear Faith/Emotion) vs Atheism (Masculine Linear Logic), before moving to Agnostic. If you are persistant, you may experience Gnosticism to be able to undertand the strengths and limitations of the first two.
Good luck!
> Churches also exploit their status as 'good' and 'holy'.
Yes, unfortunately. Churches are in the business of selling heaven insurance.
Sadly, they have degenerated into cult status ("Our way is the only way") as a matter of self-preservation, thus they are "holy" and everyone else is "pagan" or "heretic." Ironically, heretic comes from the root words "choice".
Yeshua bar Yakov was born of human parents, so your statement isn't accurate, but I like your thought process!
I have a joke that you may appreciate:
Teacher: "Question everything! Question Authority!"
Student: "Says who!?"
(Teacher smiles at the student who "gets it.")
Please keep questioning everything ...
Cheers
> Unsure if you are Christian or not,
Why would I waste my time with Spiritual Kindergarten??
>> Here is an analogy
> he can devise a device (spectrometers already exist)
What part of the word 'a-n-a-l-o-g-y' do you not understand??
> Sure he would lack the senses to tell how the human eyes/brain perceive these colors.
And this is _precisely_ what theists and atheists are -- ignorant of experience -- they lack the senses to perceive non-physical reality. Without senses, they lack experience. Without experience, they lack knowledge.
> I simply said there is no evidence nor can there be to assert/deny that there is a god. And without supporting evidence there is no reason to believe there is a god.
If _you_ haven't found the evidence then "Maybe you aren't looking hard enough!"
The mystical experience provides plenty of evidence. If you haven't had these experiences, then you are the "proverbial" blind man, which is the original point.
A very wise man (Buddha) once stated this wisdom:
"What could you know about God? What do you know about yourself? Do you know anything about yourself? No? So how could you know anything about God? Leave God aside, for the time being, and find out who you are."
You don't know what you are looking for because you don't understand who you are really are, your Higher Self, let alone "God." Or in other words: "Know Thyself" is the _ultimate_ form of knowing God.
How do I know these mystical experiences are real? Because of deep meditation for the past 6 years.
Even a brain researcher is starting to understand:
http://www.ted.com/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight.html
> it is the responsibility of the people making the assertion (that god exists) to define what god is so it is a testable hypothesis
LOL. The existence of God is NOT some theorem to be proved. (For one thing She would get a real kick out some human using their limited human intelligence and perspective trying to solve an unsolvable problem -- "prove that something 'outside' yourself exists!) Existence claims can never be proven _only_ experienced. You can't prove that I "exist" because I could be a figment of your imagination. There is no "proof" -- only knowing. I will address in further down.
As much as I hate the New Age definition of god being "All-That-Is", it is the most concise and accurate definition there is. Every religion has some cockamania "definition" of "God" that isn't even close to being accurate.
> The problem is Christianity etc rely on the supernatural which requires faith,
The three Western religions, Judaism, Christian, and Islam have _many_ problems. Requiring faith is NOT one of them. I highly recommend you try reading Gurdjieff 'The Fourth Way' to understand the strengths and weaknesses of the various approaches since you don't know what you are talking about.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fourth_Way
To present another _analogy_:
- Some people learn best by reading.
- Some people learn best by watching.
- Some people learn best by doing.
If you have ever studied Dancing or Martial Arts you would know that a multi-pronged solution caters to and maximizes the widest learning types, but there is nothing wrong with "specializing" in one type. Religions follow this same pattern of specialization.
Faith-based religion work extremely well for some people -- heart-centered. For others it does _absolutely_ nothing -- mind-centered. True Atheists, thank god (pardon the pun), are logic driven. They tend to do well with Buddhism -- since it ignores the whole concept of "What is God" from the get go, and instead focuses on (IMHO the more important) question "Who/What am I?"
> Logic and evidence comes from observing the universe around us, these things are not subjective an
Part of being an expert is knowing _when_ it is deliberately safe to break the "rules".
e.g. 4:3 is crap for panoramic shots ... See the Spaghetti Western for examples.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaghetti_Western
The words you are looking for are: context, pacing, tension, build-up, and release/resolution. Alfred Hitchcock was a master of this technique.
Oblg. analogies to sex are forgiven ... ;-)
> both conclude there is and can never be no credible evidence
That is true that one man's "evidence" is another man's skepticism.
However, that is an incorrect conclusion based on a faulty assumption, even though a quite reasonable conclusion, lack of experience. Here is an analogy:
A blind man says there is no such thing as color. From his perspective (pardon the pun) he is absolutely correct - he has no valid frame of reference to even understand what color is.
Theists, Atheists, and the Agnostic are the blind men all arguing over what constitutes color when they really don't have a clue what the spectrum is.
It's like saying there is no life after death. If you have NEVER been dead, you don't KNOW, so you can NOT assert this claim. Once you have been dead, you will KNOW that Reality is much, much more complicated than the average human could even comprehend.
> how can you provide evidence of something you cannot define in clear non-supernatural terms,
If _you_ are unable to define it, that is _your_ problem. For example, as a baby did you understood Differential Calculus? Why Not?? The same applies to spiritual understanding. The fact that you are unable to understand the answer does not imply there is no answer.
Furthermore, ALL KNOWLEDGE is subjective. The objective relies upon the subjective experience/evidence. How do you KNOW that 2+2 = 4? If you can't do math or even know what numbers are, you DON'T, let alone come up with a proof.
> Your mistake is that you think atheists declare there is proof there is no god
Can you show me where I said that please?
a-{word} = without, or lacking
Theism = has-a belief
Atheism = has-no belief (due to lack of evidence)
Agnostic = has-no knowledge (due to lack of evidence or experience)
Gnostic = has-a knowledge (due to experience and evidence)
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/theism?&qsrc=
Note: Faith is DIFFERENT than belief. Everyone has faith, in some form or another, even if they are unwilling to admit it.
The problem is the "blind faith" that religion ignorantly tries to use as a crutch for "God".
--
Death is only a change in state.
Might of been "Flex Type"
Scans of Beagle Bros covers ...
http://www.treasurechestproject.org/appleii/index.html
Dude, there were a LOT of Beagle Bros software...
http://stevenf.com/beagle/products.html
Assuming a non-proportional font...
280 / 70 = 4 pixels / character ?? That's 3 pixels per glyph including a 1 pixel "whitespace" to seperate glyphs.
or
56 col = 5 pixels/character
Nice to see someone open-minded to other possibilities.
Have you heard of Dewey B. Larson? He has some interesting physics.
http://www.reciprocalsystem.com/
> "Oh, there has to be something mysterious at work here, we'll call it dark matter.".
Ah, I see, the aether by any other name.
You can't see, touch, taste, smell, or hear dark matter or dark energy, yet you have faith that it exists ??
> B) assuming that the big bang theory is valid ...
That assumption is full of holes. There are numerous problems with the Big Bang
http://www.metaresearch.org/cosmology/bb-top-30.asp
--
Inner Space not Outer Space is the FINAL frontier.
/sarcasm Mod ignorance up. Only the non-religious are the true paragons of morality. /snicker
(Stalin is quoted as saying "You know, they are fooling us, there is no God...all this talk about God is sheer nonsense" in E. Yaroslavsky, Landmarks in the Life of Stalin, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow 1940)
The atheists are just as ignorant of reality as the theists. At least the agnostic have the honesty to admit they DON'T KNOW, which is the first sign of TRUE knowledge. (Of course only the mystic sees the incompleteness in the other three, and laughs inwardly at the atheist blind man telling the other religious blind man that he can't see.)
> really are just practicing magical thinking.
Do Scientists have an answer for the "magical thinking" of the placebo effect yet?? I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss that thinking has no effect on changing reality when you don't a) understand what is thinking, thought or consciousness, and b) don't understand the true nature of reality.
> religious leaders steal their money and abuse their children.
Right! Let's toss the baby out with the bathwater! Simply because we have a few religious nuts who are too spiritually stupid to even understand what their religion is about. Every religion teaches the "Golden Rule." The fact that you have some stupid Catholic priests to stupid to even understand why Marriage is the foundation of the original Trinity relationship - father, mother, child - is completely irrelevent to your rant.
How about we simply hold up common sense values regardless of what beliefs a person choses to practise??
The bottom line, there are lot of good people, and lot of ignorant people, religious or not, theist or atheist.
--
Inner Space not Outer Space is the FINAL frontier.
Forgot a pic of the font ...
http://www.hpcalc.org/hp48/programming/asm/sshots/jazz68.gif
8 lines are a "waste." I had a 5 pt font on my HP48SX/GX. Someone even hacked in lower case case. (Technically, 6 pts, since you need 1 line for spacing.)
See the editor included with the "Jazz" assembler.
http://www.hpcalc.org/hp48/programming/asm/
> And a similar font existed in varius Apple][ graphic mode rendered text. 5 pixels tall 3 pixels wide + 1 pixel for line and letter spacing and you had the font.
FTFY.
HGR. 280x190, with color bleed. Vertical lines would be green or pink.
e.g.
http://www.retrocpu.com/apple-ii/images/games/c/castle_wolfenstein.png
> A Computer science professor called Ken Perlin
Understatement of the year -- this guy _invented_ Perlin noise.
Speaking of your sig... on a related note, if World War 1 was fought today, it might go something like this ... :-)
http://i171.photobucket.com/albums/u292/Mx_Paladin/Pictures/WWII.gif
Post your Bank Account & PIN and find out ... ;-)
Agreed, that a language should never FORCE one particular coding style, only ENABLE, especially the TABs vs SPACES holy war.
While there are advantages, they don't outweight the disadvantages.
In some contexts it nice to write
if( a )
do_a();
if( b )
do_b();
While sometimes it is nicer to format it as
if( a ) do_a();
if( b ) do_b();
In some contexts it nice to write
e.g.
case A: do_a(); break;
case B: do_b(); break;
Yet to be safe, you usually want to write
if( a )
{
do_a();
}
if( b )
{
do_b();
}
to future-proof the code-formatting if you need to add any extra logic inside the braces.
I can't stand some language dictating how or where I mark-up my code/comments with extra whitespace or terminators.
For example, putting the comma in front, makes it dead easy to extend enums, etc. instead of having to dick around add/removing the last comma.
enum Color { __DUMMY_COLOR
, Red = 0
, Green
, Blue
};
I really wish programming languages would step into the new millenium. Is it really that hard to have a language and editor support dynamic tabs so I can write more readable code (and comments) in a proportional font ?
e.g.
// ! !
first tab stop
second tab stop
Completely agree.
Try to solve it on your _own_ without using anybody else's posted solution. Memorable 6 hours of my life.
The same would apply to sudoku. Too easy, doesn't take that long, etc., but it helps keep the brain active.
If the grand-parent is bitching about it, why doesn't he write his _own_ solver?
--
Inner Space, NOT Outer Space is the Final Frontier.
Personally, I prefer the PETA angel ...
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/12/03/peta_angel/
Or if you the anti-python ad...
http://www.peta-sucks.com/smf/index.php?topic=34648.0
> Steam won't work without internet access.
> It also won't work without a computer, BTW. Or electricity.
Buddy, if Steam won't work without a computer, or electricity, I think you might have bigger problems. ;-)
The other convenience is a friends list, and the ability to "View game...", and "Join game..."
The other is the ability to move steamapps to a new drive, without having to re-install every single game.