Iran is far more progressive than most people know. This is primarily because of the biased reporting by the western media. Iran is one of the few middle-eastern states with a democracy, and also the only one which has allowed women to take on important political positions.
Heck, they even had a lady vice president - something which the US still hasn't!
Iran has just had a round of elections and the Ahmadinejad's government has lost a lot of seats because the Iranian people are losing patience with his desire to inflame the middle-east when the economy itself is in shambles.
All this indicates a fairly strong democracy; and even considering the fact that there is, no doubt, not much openness to dissenting opinion, it is still a far cry from America's primary muslim-majority, middle-eastern ally Saudi Arabia.
Iran and Iraq have both had strong democracies in the past, and these have been mostly undone by the fact that US installed dictators in the place of elected ministers. However, Iran has still managed to retain a democracy.
>No one has the right to limit others' communication just to make a buck.
Oh really?! why don't you give *ALL* your work away for free because you shouldn't possibly restrict their ability to enjoy the fruits of your labour just to make a buck?
Ok, so I take it that you have determined, contrary to what experts across the world have determined over decades of research and observation, that environmental factors and the circumstances under which a child grows up cannot possibly have any effect on their mental state as adults; that it has no bearing on their choices, actions etc. You have also determined, after careful research - no doubt, that pornography has *zero* effect on marriages, has no effect on psychosexual development of an individual, has no effect on society.
May I present you with some evidence which indicates the exact opposite from the Mental Health Research Foundation - a non-religious, medical body.
Some findings which may interest you: 1. People with higher education and generally higher levels of intelligence are more prone to indulge in pornography. 2. People do tend to act out what they see in pornography; please see the link for some cases and the effect it has had.
I do not mean to offend you in anyway, but those who claim that pornography has no effect on society haven't bothered to do the research and are seriously deluding themselves. Please look around and you will find research after research indicating the harmful effects of pornography - and these are all not from nut-job religious zealots.
Please do not be fooled. Pornography is very harmful. I have personally indulged myself in it and the effects it has had on my life is profound.
Though it may be interesting to verify why some cultures don't have the "great flood" story, that can be explained in many ways - one could be as simple as stories being forgotten over time.
But since some cultures do mention the "great flood" story - and it is not something that "could" happen to them - they mention it as something that *did* happen to them. So you cannot just wish that story away by calling it exaggerated unless you have the proof to indicate that it is indeed an exaggerated story. Or are you prejudging this because it does not fall in line with your favourite theory/viewpoint?
The implication that the inputs we receive - whether visual, audible, environmental, emotional etc or whatever, couldn't possibly have any effect on us is unproven. All evidence indicates the exact opposite. So why should this be any different for porn? To argue that porn has no effect on society at all is a very big assertion and if you want to make such an assertion, you should be willing to back it up with facts.
I am surprised that this post was marked as insightful. Are you arguing that there is no evidence that the environment that we grow in and the influences coming from it has no bearing on us? Do you have any data to back up that assertion?
I ask this because if what you are saying is indeed true, then we don't have to have legislation in place for banning adults from exposing themselves to children in parks, we don't have to worry about violence in the home affecting children who may not directly be the victims of the attack etc.
If what you are implying is true, most of psychiatry is bunkum.
Great points! In all this discussions trashing DRM, a lot of people (especially geeks) seem to forget that if it wasn't for their unwillingness to pay for what they use, DRM wouldn't be needed at all.
If a person thinks the recording label shouldn't be selling their music for $X a CD, then he/she has the right not to purchase and use that music.. but you cannot use the music without purchasing it.
Just because something is possible, it doesn't make it right.
I guess you are buying into this Richard Dawkin's thing too much.
In case you didn't know already - most people were far more religious in the 1960s than now.. people have gotten more and more anti-religious, and more atheistic in their beliefs over the past few decades.
So if anything the trend indicates that as atheism has increased, scientific temperment has decreased. NOTE: The only reason I am linking the two possibly unrelated trends is because you have chosen to directly co-relate religious beliefs to inability to think scientifically.
Also, about your other point about Moslem civilization and decline during the middle ages - what are you smoking? don't you have any understanding or knowledge of history?! The persian and the ottoman empires, the moslem nations have all contributed a lot to the advancement of science and technology and the only reason you don't seem to be able to grasp it is because you have become a zealot as much as any other religious nut - except that you worship at the altar of atheism.
Right! as all of us know that in 1960s most of the population believed wholly in the theory of evolution and not in that other tale which is why US was considerably more advanced in technology than any other nation.
Since you seem quite uninformed - in the 1960s roughly 65% of the youth in the age group of 25 to 30 in the US believed in a God - now the percentage is far less than that.
Get a life! do you really need to bring this pointless creationism vs evolution debate here too?
I would highly recommend that you try and use the VCL (Visual Component Library) components which comes with Delphi and C++Builder. C++ Builder or the Delphi Turbo tools are now available free (the professional versions costs money though - approx $340).
VCL is exceptionally simple but yet very robust and customizable. Search for "Delphi Super Pages" for additional VCL components, sample code, and all sorts of other goodies.
Who is asking for sympathy? You seem to have an axe to grind - did you lose your job to offshoring? You rant about offshoring, but yet you seem to enjoy it if someone is having trouble recruiting people for work in the US.
Also, why do you assume that I am referring to the US scene? However, I do know that the scene in the US is just the same, I am not referring to the US recruitment scene at all here.
The quality of programmers has dipped across the world. That is just plain fact.
In some scenarios it just does not work to hire a person and then then train them to work on the job. If the project is already in operation and if one of the developers gets hit by a bus, takes up another job or moves for whatever reason, you need someone to fill in the gap quickly - not a month after they are hired.
Also, in this industry, developers change jobs very quickly - I know people who have gotten trained in one company and then taken up a job in yet another company immediately after the training period ended.
One other point - if instead of hiring someone qualified, I have the time and the space to hire someone smart and then train them for the skills, then it will push down salaries considerably because then I will have a much large set of people to hire from.
I have been interviewing and hiring people for a long time; I have also been training people.
What I have seen is that the average quality of the engineering student fresh out of college is far lower than it was about 10 years ago. The recent grads have week knowledge of fundamentals, and generally have poor math and reasoning abilities. I am not sure what is causing this, perhaps the education system is worse than it was earlier, or perhaps the fact that there are far more distractions now for the average student - im/sms/video gaming/stress/etc.
First off, there is no good reason to go with a commericial OSS product unless you specifically need to tweak the source code.
Qt vs C#: Sure, C# is cheaper, but the price you quoted for Qt is for triple-platform licenses, and C# doesn't get you that much cross-platform support. Yes, Mono gives you support for other platforms, but it differs in many respects from the Windows version, whereas Qt is very consistent across all of them. Documentation and support for Qt is vastly better than the comparable C# support for non-Windows environments, (and somewhat better than for Windows as well)
I am guessing that the poster wanted a QT Desktop edition which costs USD 3300/- for a *single* license on a *single* platform. The other editions such as console, and desktop lite aren't of much use if you need to develop anything substantial.
QT is cross-platform - but you need to buy separate licenses for each platform you need to support. QT desktop edition costs USD 3300/- per platform. And this license is tied to a named developer. That is if you buy this license for a developer Joe, and if Joe decides to packup and take a vacation for a couple of weeks, you can't bring in Bill into the project to work on QT unless you buy a separate license for him as well.
And as stated before, if you really need to support more than one platform, you need to buy additional licenses for each such platform for each developer.
So yes, it is very expensive. Support is available for a single year after which you can purchase support for the next year - this is again very expensive.
I beg to differ. People aren't getting smarter - they are just getting a lot more information at rates which they cannot really process well enough to be able to do anything concrete with it. There is too much of information about too many different topics, and not enough time to focus on any single area long enough to get a level of expertise.
So yes, the kid next door may know something about all the new models of cellular phones out there, the list of cool websites, the way to get the best price for a laptop on ebay etc, but that is unfortunately where the story ends. The average college graduate these days has far less applied knowledge than the old hands and it is really starting to show.
I have heard reports of recently graduated chemical engineers who have trouble balancing an equation!! that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago.
I recruit programmers regularly - and truth be told there has been a steady decline in the quality of programming talent available over the 8 to 9 years that I have been interviewing people; some of it because of the problem you have just stated. Many of the so-called programmers are just basic users who know something about using some RAD IDE or the other but have no understanding of fundamentals, algorithms etc.
Ofcourse, since we all know that after the prohibition on alcohol was lifted, all alcoholics quit drinking!
I think you need to rethink that line of thought. Is there any evidence in any society anywhere in the world to indicate that if a contraband drug is legalized that the addicts all stop using them?
I disagree, however, that the historical documents included in the Bible do not purport to provide moral guidance.
The historical documents and moral guidance are not always separate sections in the Bible. That is, many times moral instructions and historical notes are mentioned together. So, I don't think we are in disagreeement on this point.
However, the Bible does not advocate that the actions of many historical characters be considered as models of behaviour. That is, it does not advocate that we adopt the same behaviour - fact is, in many cases the Bible is recommending the exact opposite; that is that we do not go down the same road. Ofcourse, there are instances in the Bible when the behaviour of these characters is spoken off highly, but those recommendations are rare.
For instance, in the section were the Bible talks about David killing Uriah to take over his wife, it also talks about what God did about it; when you read it, it becomes quite clear that God (and the Bible) didn't consider David's actions to be right.
However, in other parts of the Bible, the Bible commends the behaviour of some people - these commendations can be seen as suggestions for role models. An example is when Jesus commends a Roman Centurion highly for his faith.
I hope I cleared this up.
By the way, thank you for reading my answers patiently and for responding to them. Most appreciated.
Ok, I understand the point you are making here. I think the confusion stems from the fact that many understand 'divinely-inspired' to mean sweet moral instructions. Well, that is just an assumption. isn't it? The way I understand it, 'divinely inspired' could also mean truth in the context of history and this history could be very, very unpleasant.
For instance, consider the case of King David - here is a man who slept with someone else's wife and then when it seemed like the woman had gotten pregnant, he tried to get that man to sleep with her inorder to get himself on the clear. However, that didn't happen. So David sent the man (who was obviously very loyal to David) to his death. That is the truth about David. The Bible documents that..and goes on to talk about how God chastizes David for this.. and then punishes David. The Bible also talks about how David was a man after God's own heart - well, does that go to mean that God approved of everything David did. No. David paid a very heavy price for what he did - if you are interested in hearing, you could either read the Bible or perhaps I could summarize it for you.
From my understanding, the 'divinely inspired' part comes from the fact that something as ugly as this about one of the primary protagonists is even documented in the Bible.
The Bible makes many unflattering statements about many of the primary characters. It does not even spare Jesus. The Bible makes a outrageous claim when it places non-jews and prostitutes in the lineage of Jesus. Actually, there is a person in Jesus's bloodline who was a product of incest - when a man slept with a prostitute who was his daughter-in-law.
We sometimes underestimate how outrageous this claim really is because Jews had a completely different expectation of the anscestry of the Messiah. It is far easier for us to accept the lineage of Jesus than it would have been for the Jews during the time of Jesus because then the law was to stone people for things like adultery - and to accept that their Messiah is a product of an adulterous relationship would have been too much to stomach for most.
It is interesting that the Bible documents this because very rarely will a book state something quite as humiliating about the main character.
Here again, the 'divinely inspired' element is the truth in the statements - the fact that the unflattering facts are stated along with the rest.
Sadly, the church and the christians as a whole attribute a wimpy character to God - making Him seem sacharine sweet, while the Bible indicates that this God has no problem facing the truth because He indeed is the Truth. It is many of the christians who have problems facing the truth of the Bible.
So to summarize - I do believe the Bible is divinely inspired; there is truth in it which is very difficult to digest, but yet it is there because it is the truth and that I believe is the work of God and this is the 'divine' element in the Bible. It is not just the instructions which are divinely inspired, but also the truthful depiction of weak, and far-from-impeccable characters.
Through all the unsavoury, unflattering depictions of the characters in the Bible, we get an insight into their weaknesses, their characters, their folly; and we also learn something about how God dealt with them. None of this would have been possible if only the acts of valour, and benevolence were documented.
Ironically, to me atleast, the outrageous claims of the Bible lends it greater credibility.
I have been a long time user of Borland products - Turbo C, Turbo Pascal, Delphi, Borland C++Builder, Borland C++ and now BDS 2006.
This is a company which has been on the fast track downhill for several years now. The management has been drinking the Application Lifecycle Management Kool-Aid for so long that they are drunk on it and cannot seem to think straight anymore.
Their development tools are overpriced, their customer service is abysmal.. the list of complaints is long. This is really sad.
I don't expect Borland to be around for more than 5 years unless something drastic happens (eg: the management team is completely replaced and the company goes back to its roots).
Slashdot Mirror
Iran is far more progressive than most people know. This is primarily because of the biased reporting by the western media. Iran is one of the few middle-eastern states with a democracy, and also the only one which has allowed women to take on important political positions.
Heck, they even had a lady vice president - something which the US still hasn't!
Iran has just had a round of elections and the Ahmadinejad's government has lost a lot of seats because the Iranian people are losing patience with his desire to inflame the middle-east when the economy itself is in shambles.
All this indicates a fairly strong democracy; and even considering the fact that there is, no doubt, not much openness to dissenting opinion, it is still a far cry from America's primary muslim-majority, middle-eastern ally Saudi Arabia.
Iran and Iraq have both had strong democracies in the past, and these have been mostly undone by the fact that US installed dictators in the place of elected ministers. However, Iran has still managed to retain a democracy.
>No one has the right to limit others' communication just to make a buck.
Oh really?! why don't you give *ALL* your work away for free because you shouldn't possibly restrict their ability to enjoy the fruits of your labour just to make a buck?
Ok, so I take it that you have determined, contrary to what experts across the world have determined over decades of research and observation, that environmental factors and the circumstances under which a child grows up cannot possibly have any effect on their mental state as adults; that it has no bearing on their choices, actions etc. You have also determined, after careful research - no doubt, that pornography has *zero* effect on marriages, has no effect on psychosexual development of an individual, has no effect on society.
l ds/pornldsauthor/links/victorcline/porneffect.htm
May I present you with some evidence which indicates the exact opposite from the Mental Health Research Foundation - a non-religious, medical body.
http://mentalhealthlibrary.info/library/porn/porn
Some findings which may interest you:
1. People with higher education and generally higher levels of intelligence are more prone to indulge in pornography.
2. People do tend to act out what they see in pornography; please see the link for some cases and the effect it has had.
I do not mean to offend you in anyway, but those who claim that pornography has no effect on society haven't bothered to do the research and are seriously deluding themselves. Please look around and you will find research after research indicating the harmful effects of pornography - and these are all not from nut-job religious zealots.
Please do not be fooled. Pornography is very harmful. I have personally indulged myself in it and the effects it has had on my life is profound.
Though it may be interesting to verify why some cultures don't have the "great flood" story, that can be explained in many ways - one could be as simple as stories being forgotten over time.
But since some cultures do mention the "great flood" story - and it is not something that "could" happen to them - they mention it as something that *did* happen to them. So you cannot just wish that story away by calling it exaggerated unless you have the proof to indicate that it is indeed an exaggerated story. Or are you prejudging this because it does not fall in line with your favourite theory/viewpoint?
The implication that the inputs we receive - whether visual, audible, environmental, emotional etc or whatever, couldn't possibly have any effect on us is unproven. All evidence indicates the exact opposite. So why should this be any different for porn? To argue that porn has no effect on society at all is a very big assertion and if you want to make such an assertion, you should be willing to back it up with facts.
I am surprised that this post was marked as insightful. Are you arguing that there is no evidence that the environment that we grow in and the influences coming from it has no bearing on us? Do you have any data to back up that assertion?
I ask this because if what you are saying is indeed true, then we don't have to have legislation in place for banning adults from exposing themselves to children in parks, we don't have to worry about violence in the home affecting children who may not directly be the victims of the attack etc.
If what you are implying is true, most of psychiatry is bunkum.
Great points! In all this discussions trashing DRM, a lot of people (especially geeks) seem to forget that if it wasn't for their unwillingness to pay for what they use, DRM wouldn't be needed at all.
If a person thinks the recording label shouldn't be selling their music for $X a CD, then he/she has the right not to purchase and use that music.. but you cannot use the music without purchasing it.
Just because something is possible, it doesn't make it right.
There is a flood theory among the Australian aborgines as well. What contact did they have with the jews?
I guess you are buying into this Richard Dawkin's thing too much.
In case you didn't know already - most people were far more religious in the 1960s than now.. people have gotten more and more anti-religious, and more atheistic in their beliefs over the past few decades.
So if anything the trend indicates that as atheism has increased, scientific temperment has decreased. NOTE: The only reason I am linking the two possibly unrelated trends is because you have chosen to directly co-relate religious beliefs to inability to think scientifically.
Also, about your other point about Moslem civilization and decline during the middle ages - what are you smoking? don't you have any understanding or knowledge of history?! The persian and the ottoman empires, the moslem nations have all contributed a lot to the advancement of science and technology and the only reason you don't seem to be able to grasp it is because you have become a zealot as much as any other religious nut - except that you worship at the altar of atheism.
Here, get an education even if it is from Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_Empire/
Right! as all of us know that in 1960s most of the population believed wholly in the theory of evolution and not in that other tale which is why US was considerably more advanced in technology than any other nation.
Since you seem quite uninformed - in the 1960s roughly 65% of the youth in the age group of 25 to 30 in the US believed in a God - now the percentage is far less than that.
Get a life! do you really need to bring this pointless creationism vs evolution debate here too?
By the way, so you know - the US constituition does *NOT* mandate that you have to pay a tax on your income.
/
Please see http://www.givemeliberty.org/SUMMER/TestDrive.htm
Also
Please see http://www.freedomtofascism.com/
You don't have to pay income taxes in the US. The US constituition has a law which mandates that *corporate* income is taxable - not personal income.
/
See http://www.givemeliberty.org/SUMMER/TestDrive.htm
Also see http://www.freedomtofascism.com/
In India, we also make up stories like you do. But we call them fiction.
I would highly recommend that you try and use the VCL (Visual Component Library) components which comes with Delphi and C++Builder. C++ Builder or the Delphi Turbo tools are now available free (the professional versions costs money though - approx $340).
VCL is exceptionally simple but yet very robust and customizable. Search for "Delphi Super Pages" for additional VCL components, sample code, and all sorts of other goodies.
Who is asking for sympathy? You seem to have an axe to grind - did you lose your job to offshoring? You rant about offshoring, but yet you seem to enjoy it if someone is having trouble recruiting people for work in the US.
Also, why do you assume that I am referring to the US scene? However, I do know that the scene in the US is just the same, I am not referring to the US recruitment scene at all here.
The quality of programmers has dipped across the world. That is just plain fact.
In some scenarios it just does not work to hire a person and then then train them to work on the job. If the project is already in operation and if one of the developers gets hit by a bus, takes up another job or moves for whatever reason, you need someone to fill in the gap quickly - not a month after they are hired.
Also, in this industry, developers change jobs very quickly - I know people who have gotten trained in one company and then taken up a job in yet another company immediately after the training period ended.
One other point - if instead of hiring someone qualified, I have the time and the space to hire someone smart and then train them for the skills, then it will push down salaries considerably because then I will have a much large set of people to hire from.
I have been interviewing and hiring people for a long time; I have also been training people.
What I have seen is that the average quality of the engineering student fresh out of college is far lower than it was about 10 years ago. The recent grads have week knowledge of fundamentals, and generally have poor math and reasoning abilities. I am not sure what is causing this, perhaps the education system is worse than it was earlier, or perhaps the fact that there are far more distractions now for the average student - im/sms/video gaming/stress/etc.
The price quoted cannot be for 3 separate platforms. Please see this link:
http://www.trolltech.com/products/qt/licenses/pri
I am guessing that the poster wanted a QT Desktop edition which costs USD 3300/- for a *single* license on a *single* platform. The other editions such as console, and desktop lite aren't of much use if you need to develop anything substantial.
QT is cross-platform - but you need to buy separate licenses for each platform you need to support. QT desktop edition costs USD 3300/- per platform. And this license is tied to a named developer. That is if you buy this license for a developer Joe, and if Joe decides to packup and take a vacation for a couple of weeks, you can't bring in Bill into the project to work on QT unless you buy a separate license for him as well.
c ing/
And as stated before, if you really need to support more than one platform, you need to buy additional licenses for each such platform for each developer.
So yes, it is very expensive. Support is available for a single year after which you can purchase support for the next year - this is again very expensive.
http://www.trolltech.com/products/qt/licenses/pri
As for embedded platforms, most embedded platforms are expensive - OSS or not.
I beg to differ. People aren't getting smarter - they are just getting a lot more information at rates which they cannot really process well enough to be able to do anything concrete with it. There is too much of information about too many different topics, and not enough time to focus on any single area long enough to get a level of expertise.
So yes, the kid next door may know something about all the new models of cellular phones out there, the list of cool websites, the way to get the best price for a laptop on ebay etc, but that is unfortunately where the story ends. The average college graduate these days has far less applied knowledge than the old hands and it is really starting to show.
I have heard reports of recently graduated chemical engineers who have trouble balancing an equation!! that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago.
I recruit programmers regularly - and truth be told there has been a steady decline in the quality of programming talent available over the 8 to 9 years that I have been interviewing people; some of it because of the problem you have just stated. Many of the so-called programmers are just basic users who know something about using some RAD IDE or the other but have no understanding of fundamentals, algorithms etc.
Ofcourse, since we all know that after the prohibition on alcohol was lifted, all alcoholics quit drinking!
I think you need to rethink that line of thought. Is there any evidence in any society anywhere in the world to indicate that if a contraband drug is legalized that the addicts all stop using them?
The historical documents and moral guidance are not always separate sections in the Bible. That is, many times moral instructions and historical notes are mentioned together. So, I don't think we are in disagreeement on this point.
However, the Bible does not advocate that the actions of many historical characters be considered as models of behaviour. That is, it does not advocate that we adopt the same behaviour - fact is, in many cases the Bible is recommending the exact opposite; that is that we do not go down the same road. Ofcourse, there are instances in the Bible when the behaviour of these characters is spoken off highly, but those recommendations are rare.
For instance, in the section were the Bible talks about David killing Uriah to take over his wife, it also talks about what God did about it; when you read it, it becomes quite clear that God (and the Bible) didn't consider David's actions to be right.
However, in other parts of the Bible, the Bible commends the behaviour of some people - these commendations can be seen as suggestions for role models. An example is when Jesus commends a Roman Centurion highly for his faith.
I hope I cleared this up.
By the way, thank you for reading my answers patiently and for responding to them. Most appreciated.
Ok, I understand the point you are making here. I think the confusion stems from the fact that many understand 'divinely-inspired' to mean sweet moral instructions. Well, that is just an assumption. isn't it? The way I understand it, 'divinely inspired' could also mean truth in the context of history and this history could be very, very unpleasant.
For instance, consider the case of King David - here is a man who slept with someone else's wife and then when it seemed like the woman had gotten pregnant, he tried to get that man to sleep with her inorder to get himself on the clear. However, that didn't happen. So David sent the man (who was obviously very loyal to David) to his death. That is the truth about David. The Bible documents that..and goes on to talk about how God chastizes David for this.. and then punishes David. The Bible also talks about how David was a man after God's own heart - well, does that go to mean that God approved of everything David did. No. David paid a very heavy price for what he did - if you are interested in hearing, you could either read the Bible or perhaps I could summarize it for you.
From my understanding, the 'divinely inspired' part comes from the fact that something as ugly as this about one of the primary protagonists is even documented in the Bible.
The Bible makes many unflattering statements about many of the primary characters. It does not even spare Jesus. The Bible makes a outrageous claim when it places non-jews and prostitutes in the lineage of Jesus. Actually, there is a person in Jesus's bloodline who was a product of incest - when a man slept with a prostitute who was his daughter-in-law.
We sometimes underestimate how outrageous this claim really is because Jews had a completely different expectation of the anscestry of the Messiah. It is far easier for us to accept the lineage of Jesus than it would have been for the Jews during the time of Jesus because then the law was to stone people for things like adultery - and to accept that their Messiah is a product of an adulterous relationship would have been too much to stomach for most.
It is interesting that the Bible documents this because very rarely will a book state something quite as humiliating about the main character.
Here again, the 'divinely inspired' element is the truth in the statements - the fact that the unflattering facts are stated along with the rest.
Sadly, the church and the christians as a whole attribute a wimpy character to God - making Him seem sacharine sweet, while the Bible indicates that this God has no problem facing the truth because He indeed is the Truth. It is many of the christians who have problems facing the truth of the Bible.
So to summarize - I do believe the Bible is divinely inspired; there is truth in it which is very difficult to digest, but yet it is there because it is the truth and that I believe is the work of God and this is the 'divine' element in the Bible. It is not just the instructions which are divinely inspired, but also the truthful depiction of weak, and far-from-impeccable characters.
Through all the unsavoury, unflattering depictions of the characters in the Bible, we get an insight into their weaknesses, their characters, their folly; and we also learn something about how God dealt with them. None of this would have been possible if only the acts of valour, and benevolence were documented.
Ironically, to me atleast, the outrageous claims of the Bible lends it greater credibility.
I have been a long time user of Borland products - Turbo C, Turbo Pascal, Delphi, Borland C++Builder, Borland C++ and now BDS 2006.
This is a company which has been on the fast track downhill for several years now. The management has been drinking the Application Lifecycle Management Kool-Aid for so long that they are drunk on it and cannot seem to think straight anymore.
Their development tools are overpriced, their customer service is abysmal.. the list of complaints is long. This is really sad.
I don't expect Borland to be around for more than 5 years unless something drastic happens (eg: the management team is completely replaced and the company goes back to its roots).
You should perhaps take a look at this for size:
1 _51issue.htm
AMUL Diary - 2.41 million members
http://www.amul.com/organisation.html
Lijjat - 40,000 women many of them illiterate
http://www.lijjat.com/Content.asp?id_Section=7
Dabbawallahs of Bombay - Ab 4500 members.
http://www.successfulmanagers.com/51issue/mantras
All of these are cooperatives. This model does work even for very large numbers, but it is not suitable for all types of businesses.