Define "true" christian. 'Cos in my expeirence, the "true" christians don't behave in classically christian ways at all. They're too busy proseltyzing and considering themselves holier than thou.
*strangles the urge to call you a blithering idiot*
Look, I was referring to his [[reference markup]], not the Corinthians. Meanwhile, calling the Bible a refernce work is a lot like calling "The Meaning of Liff" by Douglas Adams a dictionary.
I dunno. I'm loving playing StarCraft with my friends across my PvPGN server. All out eight-player war across the city? Carrier fleet v. Battlecruiser fleet v. Devourer/Guardian fleet?
I love my StarCraft. Like more than a friend. No seriously. I actually made a live linux CD with little more than X, wine, sound drivers and StarCraft.
I'm picturing an advert:
Picture a guy with all-too-white teeth, a condescending voice, and a propensity for giving the "Thumbs Up". Like a used car salesman without the frazzled mustache.
"Computer down? Don't frown! It's the StarCraft boot disc. System crashed? Don't gnash! It's the StarCraft boot disc. Yes, with the StarCraft boot disc, you can avoid all that mucking about in obscure OS issues, and get to what's really important: Playing StarCraft. Windows tweakin'? Don't be freakin'! It's the StarCraft boot disc."
Hehe... me too. Just picked up a gamecube for $40, and grabbed WindWaker and Metroid Prime. Fucking awesome games, but paying $240 for them new would have left me thinking "why??"
I'm a linux fanboy, and even I know this is something that just has to happen for a lot of companies.
Apple, Goole and others lobbied hard against the new FASB rules that makes this step necessary; without them, these companies could continue to artifically inflate their bottom lines.
How it works: The old FASB rules didn't force a company to expense stock options. As such, they didn't come out of their bottom lines.
Meanwhile, whenever an option was exercised, the company would get a tax break for the 'expense'.
In other words, a company could spend money without noting it, and get a tax break if it was converted to cash. Nice little loophole there. It's essentially tax fraud without the illegalness. It was a great boon for the internet startups of the mid to late 90's, since they could have a very large pile of capital they could pay their emplyees with without it looking like they were diminishing their capital.
Under the new rules, stock options must be written down as an expense. The tax break still exists, but now it doesn't inflate the stock price, leaving it more balanced. Option is expensed. Stock price goes down. Option is exercised. The added demand and tax break brings the stock price back up.
Backdating options isn't illegal, per se. In fact, it used to be common practice to backdate stock option compensation to the beginning of the FY.
However, it has recently become illegal to offer stock options as compensation without expensing them (it used to not be - and a given company could reduce their taxes and inflate their bottom line by nonexpensing of stock options).
Because of this, if Apple's accounting was still backdating options after the new rules were passed, they would technically be exempt from expensing. The FASB would have one word to say to that: "Tax Fraud".
So basically, the audit process would have to go like this: If Apple's accounting accidentally backdated compensation options past the 'rules' line, then, without thinking about it (because there's usually so much going on, you'd normally only check the option date, not the signing date) failed to expense them, they have to correct the error, fix their earnings profile, and disclose the correction to their stockholders.
Ironically, Microsoft is one of a few tech companies who took care of this (ie: started expensing stock options) well before the new rules went into effect. I guess they figured they have enough legal problems.
Heh. In my eyes,.the Daily Kos is almost never a valid reference source. I really don't understand hard-liners; neither side of politics is ever 100% right or 100% wrong, and the split on any given issue is almost never completely along party lines (except, of course, the loud, controversial ones - which is why it always sounds like the left and right are at war. That's all you ever hear about.).
Meanwhile, I'm on the Net Neutrality bandwagon; wrote letters and phoned senators and all. I was kinda disappointed when I heard it went down in the Senate. Still, there's more in the works at savetheinternet.com. I saw that one senator is blocking the bill until it is amended to have provisions for NN. Good stuff there.
Meanwhile, we've gone offtopic. Moderators, mod us right.
Right. 'cos elected office candidates are required to expose their appointment plans before they can run. And 'cos the US electoral process is anything like properly fair to the losing side of a vote.
Hell, I've always throught the office of president should be a committee of those candidates who ran - the votes define what percentage of a vote on a specific issue goes to whom. It'd avoid all this bullshit we have with Bush; Kerry would be getting most of the control, and Bush and Nader would have to agree on something to override him (given last election's polls).
Meanwhile, even the lesser candidates (libertarians, I'm looking at you) would at least have input on executive action.
Actually, they're both. I was just thinking credible as in 'not being seen as total wackos'. I don't know about you, but total wackos of every sort have control of the US political process.
I'll bet you that a good percent of those claiming to be atheists were, at one point or another, christians. It's not being close minded. It's being done with it.
Atheism, the way many atheists use it (but fail to see it) is a religion. It's believing that if you've never seen it, and are incapable of ever seeing it, it's not there. Not a bad way to go, mind you, but a bit closed-minded for my tastes.
Meanwhile, agnostcism carries the connotation of trying to figure out the ineffable mysteries of the unknown. "Is there a god? Well, I don't know. I think I'll spend the rest of my cycles trying to figure that one out." Eh, seems like too much work.
I coined a new one a few years ago: apathism. "Is there a God?" "Who cares. I'll give a damn when he comes down here and gives me noogies." "How did the universe begin?" "Why does it matter?"
When confronted with this idea, people often ask me things like "Well, if everybody thought like that, what would be the incentive to be a good person?" "Who cares? No, seriously. Say I do something bad to you. You retaliate and do something bad to me, right? You don't need some god putting it into your head that being bad is bad. You figure it out eventually."
Wow, I'm getting very close to proselytizing here. Anyways, my point is this: if you're an atheist, and staunchly believe in the nonexistence of deities, faeries, sprites, leprechauns, etc, that's fine. Just don't go thinking you're religionless. If you truly don't care about the existence of Thor/God/Zora/the Flying Spaghetti Monster, you're not an atheist. You may not be an apathist either, but use the name if it suits you. I don't actually care.
Hm. Well, skewing offtopic with you, I'd say 'clump of cells' is rather accurate right up into the 450th trimester, strictly speaking. I usually use the 'neural activity limit' - when the kid's brain is around the size of the smallest animal I'd have a problem with killing (ie: a kitten), is the point at which I would concede that abortion would be wrong.
I don't know what trimester that is, and honestly I don't care (My girlfriend and I have a 'No Babies' rule that insists upon the use of condoms). It is not for the state to make moral decisions. It is for the state to make socially efficient policy (e.g.: laws against murder are socially efficient; laws against abortion aren't.)
No seriously (and I'm on the 'apathy before religion' side of things). GGP post made little sense and sounded like an extreme leftist having a psychotic episode.
"A multitude of religious types manage to sell their faith door to door, over the media, and through social pressures. Now these Athiests have decided that they want to play the same game, and get people to move to their beliefs."
No, they're trying to save people taxes. Withdrawl from the church and abandonment of religion are not the same thing.
"Sure their riding along on the coattails of seperation of church and state, its what any good opportunist would do, religions arent above it."
Not so much. Their objective is sep of church and state. This is just a convenient, cost saving, and easily implemented way to get government to notice.
"And as for subversion, I kinda think that is a reasonable goal.. They want the church out of the government, therfore undermining the government. Or simply to destroy (with civil/social methods) the state religion."
The existence of church control in government is an undermining of government, not the other way around. Meanwhile, there are two recognized state religions in Finland - and they only get paid taxes if they have members.
"While I might not applaud their actions, I still feel that they deserve the right to forward their beliefs."
How very christian of you. I'm going to go and applaud their actions.
Your family does not specify your religion. You specify your religion. If you're not given the choice, I would submit that you have suffered an abuse of faith.
I do believe there's a difference between a snipe/quip and a rant.
If you're sniped at, just snipe back. You're being provoked; the guy just thinks a long, drawn out response is funny. "Man, I really pissed that guy off!"
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Define "true" christian. 'Cos in my expeirence, the "true" christians don't behave in classically christian ways at all. They're too busy proseltyzing and considering themselves holier than thou.
*strangles the urge to call you a blithering idiot*
Look, I was referring to his [[reference markup]], not the Corinthians. Meanwhile, calling the Bible a refernce work is a lot like calling "The Meaning of Liff" by Douglas Adams a dictionary.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but a virtualized machine is a sandboxed machine, is it not?
I dunno. I'm loving playing StarCraft with my friends across my PvPGN server. All out eight-player war across the city? Carrier fleet v. Battlecruiser fleet v. Devourer/Guardian fleet?
I love my StarCraft. Like more than a friend. No seriously. I actually made a live linux CD with little more than X, wine, sound drivers and StarCraft.
I'm picturing an advert:
Picture a guy with all-too-white teeth, a condescending voice, and a propensity for giving the "Thumbs Up". Like a used car salesman without the frazzled mustache.
"Computer down? Don't frown! It's the StarCraft boot disc.
System crashed? Don't gnash! It's the StarCraft boot disc.
Yes, with the StarCraft boot disc, you can avoid all that mucking about in obscure OS issues, and get to what's really important: Playing StarCraft.
Windows tweakin'? Don't be freakin'! It's the StarCraft boot disc."
Hehe... me too. Just picked up a gamecube for $40, and grabbed WindWaker and Metroid Prime. Fucking awesome games, but paying $240 for them new would have left me thinking "why??"
I'm a linux fanboy, and even I know this is something that just has to happen for a lot of companies.
Apple, Goole and others lobbied hard against the new FASB rules that makes this step necessary; without them, these companies could continue to artifically inflate their bottom lines.
How it works:
The old FASB rules didn't force a company to expense stock options. As such, they didn't come out of their bottom lines.
Meanwhile, whenever an option was exercised, the company would get a tax break for the 'expense'.
In other words, a company could spend money without noting it, and get a tax break if it was converted to cash. Nice little loophole there. It's essentially tax fraud without the illegalness. It was a great boon for the internet startups of the mid to late 90's, since they could have a very large pile of capital they could pay their emplyees with without it looking like they were diminishing their capital.
Under the new rules, stock options must be written down as an expense. The tax break still exists, but now it doesn't inflate the stock price, leaving it more balanced.
Option is expensed. Stock price goes down.
Option is exercised. The added demand and tax break brings the stock price back up.
Backdating options isn't illegal, per se. In fact, it used to be common practice to backdate stock option compensation to the beginning of the FY.
However, it has recently become illegal to offer stock options as compensation without expensing them (it used to not be - and a given company could reduce their taxes and inflate their bottom line by nonexpensing of stock options).
Because of this, if Apple's accounting was still backdating options after the new rules were passed, they would technically be exempt from expensing. The FASB would have one word to say to that: "Tax Fraud".
So basically, the audit process would have to go like this: If Apple's accounting accidentally backdated compensation options past the 'rules' line, then, without thinking about it (because there's usually so much going on, you'd normally only check the option date, not the signing date) failed to expense them, they have to correct the error, fix their earnings profile, and disclose the correction to their stockholders.
Ironically, Microsoft is one of a few tech companies who took care of this (ie: started expensing stock options) well before the new rules went into effect. I guess they figured they have enough legal problems.
Heh. In my eyes,.the Daily Kos is almost never a valid reference source. I really don't understand hard-liners; neither side of politics is ever 100% right or 100% wrong, and the split on any given issue is almost never completely along party lines (except, of course, the loud, controversial ones - which is why it always sounds like the left and right are at war. That's all you ever hear about.).
Meanwhile, I'm on the Net Neutrality bandwagon; wrote letters and phoned senators and all. I was kinda disappointed when I heard it went down in the Senate. Still, there's more in the works at savetheinternet.com. I saw that one senator is blocking the bill until it is amended to have provisions for NN. Good stuff there.
Meanwhile, we've gone offtopic. Moderators, mod us right.
Right. 'cos elected office candidates are required to expose their appointment plans before they can run. And 'cos the US electoral process is anything like properly fair to the losing side of a vote.
Hell, I've always throught the office of president should be a committee of those candidates who ran - the votes define what percentage of a vote on a specific issue goes to whom. It'd avoid all this bullshit we have with Bush; Kerry would be getting most of the control, and Bush and Nader would have to agree on something to override him (given last election's polls).
Meanwhile, even the lesser candidates (libertarians, I'm looking at you) would at least have input on executive action.
Actually, they're both. I was just thinking credible as in 'not being seen as total wackos'. I don't know about you, but total wackos of every sort have control of the US political process.
I'll bet you that a good percent of those claiming to be atheists were, at one point or another, christians. It's not being close minded. It's being done with it.
Atheism, the way many atheists use it (but fail to see it) is a religion. It's believing that if you've never seen it, and are incapable of ever seeing it, it's not there. Not a bad way to go, mind you, but a bit closed-minded for my tastes.
Meanwhile, agnostcism carries the connotation of trying to figure out the ineffable mysteries of the unknown. "Is there a god? Well, I don't know. I think I'll spend the rest of my cycles trying to figure that one out." Eh, seems like too much work.
I coined a new one a few years ago: apathism. "Is there a God?" "Who cares. I'll give a damn when he comes down here and gives me noogies." "How did the universe begin?" "Why does it matter?"
When confronted with this idea, people often ask me things like "Well, if everybody thought like that, what would be the incentive to be a good person?" "Who cares? No, seriously. Say I do something bad to you. You retaliate and do something bad to me, right? You don't need some god putting it into your head that being bad is bad. You figure it out eventually."
Wow, I'm getting very close to proselytizing here. Anyways, my point is this: if you're an atheist, and staunchly believe in the nonexistence of deities, faeries, sprites, leprechauns, etc, that's fine. Just don't go thinking you're religionless. If you truly don't care about the existence of Thor/God/Zora/the Flying Spaghetti Monster, you're not an atheist. You may not be an apathist either, but use the name if it suits you. I don't actually care.
1.3%. At my paltry salary, that's $246/year I could be spending on not starving.
Credible religious right. Is that actually possible?
I know we don't have one in the U.S.
Not if 'credible' is a requirement...
Wow. Someone spends way too much time on Wikipedia.
Hm. Well, skewing offtopic with you, I'd say 'clump of cells' is rather accurate right up into the 450th trimester, strictly speaking. I usually use the 'neural activity limit' - when the kid's brain is around the size of the smallest animal I'd have a problem with killing (ie: a kitten), is the point at which I would concede that abortion would be wrong.
I don't know what trimester that is, and honestly I don't care (My girlfriend and I have a 'No Babies' rule that insists upon the use of condoms). It is not for the state to make moral decisions. It is for the state to make socially efficient policy (e.g.: laws against murder are socially efficient; laws against abortion aren't.)
In much the same way radical islamism is relevant to terrorism.
No seriously (and I'm on the 'apathy before religion' side of things). GGP post made little sense and sounded like an extreme leftist having a psychotic episode.
Not that it wasn't funny, but...
*sigh*
I could say that the universally enfoced regligion is physics using that kind of argument.
And being true to yourself is bad, how?
Yeah, I remember the last time I was serviced by MY Church. It was lovely. Paid $50 for that blowjob.
"A multitude of religious types manage to sell their faith door to door, over the media, and through social pressures. Now these Athiests have decided that they want to play the same game, and get people to move to their beliefs."
No, they're trying to save people taxes. Withdrawl from the church and abandonment of religion are not the same thing.
"Sure their riding along on the coattails of seperation of church and state, its what any good opportunist would do, religions arent above it."
Not so much. Their objective is sep of church and state. This is just a convenient, cost saving, and easily implemented way to get government to notice.
"And as for subversion, I kinda think that is a reasonable goal.. They want the church out of the government, therfore undermining the government. Or simply to destroy (with civil/social methods) the state religion."
The existence of church control in government is an undermining of government, not the other way around. Meanwhile, there are two recognized state religions in Finland - and they only get paid taxes if they have members.
"While I might not applaud their actions, I still feel that they deserve the right to forward their beliefs."
How very christian of you. I'm going to go and applaud their actions.
Your family does not specify your religion. You specify your religion. If you're not given the choice, I would submit that you have suffered an abuse of faith.
Flamebait? C'mon, that's funny.
You wouldn't mod it flamebait if it were ~/lutherans/muslims/i
I do believe there's a difference between a snipe/quip and a rant.
If you're sniped at, just snipe back. You're being provoked; the guy just thinks a long, drawn out response is funny. "Man, I really pissed that guy off!"
In other words, don't feed the trolls.