We then have automated processes which periodically pull certain pages, strip the navigation elements and render them to PDF
The importance of keeping your distributed docs up to date, as described above, deserves emphasis. It's highly frustrating try to program to an API with an old version of the documentation.
I also agree that Word is a lousy way to produce this type of documentation. I would go further and say that it is a poor tool to use for most non-static technical documentation. It's update capabilities seem well-suited to more narrative documents but are cumbersome and confusing for technical documents.
What about banning semi-automatic handguns? It seems that the ability for concealment, rapid reload, and large capacity magazines are main factors in what make attacks of this nature so deadly, ie. that there are so many victims.
I could see where banning semi-auto handguns, creating and enforcing extremely stiff laws concerning the possession (or sale) of them, while still allowing revolvers, may at least lessen the carnage. People would still be able to protect themselves with revolvers.
There have been a lot of comments saying that allowing the students and faculty to be armed would have prevented such a large number of deaths. It bothers me to hear such loose talk about "taking [the shooter] down"...do you really want to kill someone? Are you that confident that you could do that, when even trained police officers have trouble doing it? Wouldn't it better to stop them from killing without killing them?
What about allowing people to carry stun-guns? The kind that you can fire from a distance. Shooting the killer with these would have stopped him without killing him, and without the danger of killing any innocents. There also would be no fears of more indiscriminate killings that might happen if everyone were armed with firearms.
I've been a 2nd amendment proponent for a long time, but I'm seriously rethinking my position. If we banned guns, but allowed law abiding citizens to carry effective, non-lethal weapons, I think we'd see much, much less killing. People would still be able to protect themselves, even in the short term while the glut of illegal guns was being eliminated.
Is there a downside to this solution?
Side note, 2 of the kids killed yesterday were seniors at our local high school last year. I saw one of them in a play last year...very sweet girl, with the world open in front of her. My own grief is almost overwhelming, I can't even imagine what her family and the families of the other victims are going through right now.
Of course you'd never want to put all of the collectors in one place...a few well placed munitions or a nuke from some rogue regime and there goes our power. Pretty effective way to incapacitate the nation, or throw the world into chaos if the power was being supplied throughout the world. Ever heard of offsite backup? Same principle. The collectors would have to be spread out in case of attack or natural disaster.
It should be standard practice not to even open emails if you're not certain the sender is legitimate, just delete them. Even if it's from someone you know, if you have any reason to be suspicious, (as in, perhaps their system was compromised and a virus is propagating itself by emailing everyone in their address book), don't open it. Check with the person first.
We who are "in the know" about this sort of thing should make sure our less technical family and friends follow this practice.
I can either sit here on my couch, laptop in my lap, my dog curled up next to me, the fireplace going, and have a nice view to the back yard where I can see the birds at the feeder - or sit in a cube. No contest..
But the reason why the US is considered so culpable on this question is that it maintained a hypocritical stance of freedom from commercial taxes but slavery for people, which the rest of the Anglo-Saxon community had rejected about 800 years earlier.
It always annoys me when the US is considered one big homogeneous society, either past or present. Slavery was a divisive issue in the US almost from the beginning, crystallizing in a north vs. south divide on the issue. There were many people in the north who were adamantly opposed to the practice and who not only lobbied against it but actively helped escaped slaves from the south to freedom in Canada. The country was so divided on this issue (and some others) that we fought a war over it, almost resulting in the country being split in two.
I started as a mainframe programmer in the mid-eighties, but moved to pc-based programming within a couple of years. I'll always remember my excitement at being able to install a multi-processing os on a pc!
It was QNX, which was also my introduction to a (quasi) unix-like environment. It was here that I started learning C, and here I am 20 years later still doing Unix and C programming, (yes, among other more recent platforms and languages).
My favorite particular memory was in 1987, designing, implementing, and installing a warehouse automation system for an Air Force base in CA, running it on a 386 "PCs Limited" pc, ("PCs Limited" was run by Michael Dell, later becoming Dell computers). The system communicated with about a dozen pallet stations in two warehouses, and directed several wire-guided automated vehicles throughout, tracking them as far as load status, destination, and battery power. It even had a screen showing a real-time display of where all the vehicles were!
I went to the base for several weeks for installation and testing. I'll never forget the feeling I had when I started one of the early tests, starting up the system and looking at my watch saying to myself, "ok, in about 30 seconds the system should tell these two vehicles to leave here, go to the other building, and pick up loads". 30 seconds later the vehicles both start beeping and moving out...it was really cool:-)
As far as I know, the system was used from 1987 until the base closed down about 10 years later. Get this, it wasn't even an industrialized pc, and it was installed in one of the non-air conditioned warehouses. Wish they still built them this tough!
There are many simple ways to "write your passwords down" without actually putting them on the paper. Use anagrams and pass phrases. Write the answers down where the passwords are the questions or the reverse.
But what happens to all of your accounts if you die? At least in my case, many of them would need to go on living, (my family's insurance or banking information, web sites I maintain, my home systems, etc.)
I keep the dozens of passwords I have written down, clearly marked as to what systems and sites they're for, and safely stored. I've told my wife where they are and what to do in case I die. Otherwise she'd be in a world of hurt trying to take care of the online things I currently take care of.
Even if she wasn't able to deal with it herself, at least she'd be able to hire a (trustworthy) technician to help her sort it out, without losing access to all of our important accounts.
I'm a touch typist and what I think just goes to my hands. It's actually harder (and takes longer) for me to type "u" to mean "you" than it does to type "you" because I have to throw my brain into idiot mode and override my normal typing skills to get idiot-speak onto the screen.
Kid's are learning to type in the abbreviated fashion straight out of the box. They don't have the extra step of converting from whole words to abbreviations that you have.
I suppose that's always been the biggest problem...people's inability to live up to the life required when one becomes a Christian. Of course, that's precisely the conundrum continually addressed throughout the Bible: we're saved by Jesus, because there's no way we can be righteous on our own.
That being said, it does seem as though some people who call themselves (even consider themselves) Christian don't try very hard to "walk the walk". This saddens me a great deal.
Even before I became truly committed to Christ, it was clear to me that accepting the faith would mean a monumental, fundamental, shift in my life. Simply put: if Christianity is true, then it must have a profound impact on your life. You can't continue to live as though nothing has changed. To be honest, I think this is one thing that held me back for a while - knowing that to truly commit myself to Christ meant a complete change in my outlook. Call me selfish..;-)
In fact, a digression, if you will indulge me...
My own spiritual journey has taken my whole life (to this point). I was raised Christian, but had serious questions about the reality of the whole thing. Christianity, God, what about other religions...the whole deal. I had to find out whatever I could on my own.
I started with one supposition: I was sure that there was truth. Something was true...not necessarily one religion, or any religion, but something was true.
I began serious research, reading many, many books, talking with experts, researching. I spent years doing so.
Starting with the existence of God, to His nature, to His approach and plans, to His relationship to us, to our nature, and so on.
I became convinced intellectually of the truth of Christianity. It put me in a bind. Being convinced, I could do nothing but accept it. Which, as I said before, would mean a complete shift in my life. Being stubborn and selfish, I was loathe to let go of the reins of my life, and give them to God. I was certainly aware of the "upside" so to speak, intellectually at least - eternal life and goodness, as a gift - but boy did I have a hard time letting go. Selfishness has always been a problem for me. Not in the sense of not giving to others, but in my own mind insisting that I was the "man"...I was the god of my life.
Thank God he doesn't give up on stubborn people. Just last year I made the commitment and became "born again". (I don't particularly like that phrase because it carries the connotation of "right wing, wacko, fundamentalist zealot"). Anyway, I was baptized and in my own mind truly committed to Christ and gave him my life.
Now that I've done so, I know not only intellectually but experientially the reality of what it means. My journey now continues as a committed Christian. Now I learn to live the way God wants me to live.
To your point about people who call themselves Christian acting in un-Christian ways..it saddens me too. It's hard for me to hear and read about it. It hurts.
I'm always wary of agendas and actions that are clothed in religion, particularly Christianity. It's critically important to live according to God's will, and not be misled.
So what does that mean in my life? Simply that I pray for guidance, and do my best to live as Christ's follower. I think about his teaching, and I try to live it. I'm far from perfect, and I certainly don't take His forgiveness as a license to act in an un-Christian way or to sin.
I love Jesus for what he's done for me, and everyone. I want to please him, and I want to do whatever I can to spread love and peace to others. There's so much pain and difficulty in the world. I want to help.
Perhaps this is the same thing that animates most Christians. The difficulty then becomes how to put it into practice. It's so easy to slip back into "human" ways of thinking...being sure that you are right about so
Whether Christianity is dominant in terms of "exercise the most influence or control, [second, they are the] Most prominent, as in position; ascendant" is a whole different argument, which I didn't even address.
My original fundamental point was that of people who adhere to one or another of the world's religions, more adhere to Christianity than any other. Recall the point from the original post that I was disputing:
Christianity isn't even the *dominant* religion on the planet, in terms of number of believers.
The original parent post used the word dominant to mean number of believers. No that's not the correct use of the word by its dictionary meaning, but with his "in terms of number of believers" phrase he made his use of it clear, and it was clear that his assertion was incorrect. I wanted to make sure that people who read his statement and understood it the way he meant it got the correction.
Congrats on missing my fundamental point...I guess all that zeal got in your eyes....JUST FUCKING PLAIN OLD WRONG...It is bigoted (unless you're a Christian of course) to say that Christianity is 'ascendant', i.e., supreme to all other religions by nature...You thought it was cute to quip...
Why so much venom? Yes, I'm a Christian, but I'm not blinded by zeal, stupid, or bigoted. It seems like you don't like Christians very much. Why? If this isn't the case, then what are your views on religion? Whatever they are, you seem to feel pretty strongly about them.
Instead of continuing this discussion on slashdot, why don't you email me so we can continue it offline. I've created a throwaway email at yahoo - perhaps you can do the same so we don't risk choking our regular emails with spam. You can reach me at N0$PAMyaddayadda13579@yahoo.comN0$PAM, (remove the first and last parts of course). I hope you choose to contact me to continue this discussion.
To start with, hereareseveralother links that support the fact that Christianity is the largest religion in the world by number of adherents.
Next -- do we take dominant to mean most popular?
Since there are 800 million or so more Christians in the world than the second highest religion, (Islam), Christianity is both the most dominant and most popular.
I give you this awesome quote from the bottom of the page were they are backing up their spurious claims:
AR [animal rights] is a religion, but for the majority of Animal Rights supporters, AR functions as a movement and/or lifestyle choice, not their primary religion.
Emphasis is not my own. This admission leads to double counting.
You're assuming that there are at least 800 million double-counts, all of which list themselves as both Christian and something else. That's a pretty wild assumption. The article in the (grandparent) link gives no indication of anything of that nature or magnitude.
Christianity is obviously the dominant religion in America (as there are more Christians than not). Christianity is not the dominant religion in China (or India, or Iraq, the locale is irrelevant) as there are more non-Christians than not. If one agrees with these two claims, then Christianity is not the Earth's dominant religion.
See all the links at the top of this post, and do your own research. You'll find that it's simply a fact that there are more Christians than any other religion's adherents in the world. However one feels about Christianity, or any other religion, it doesn't change this fact.
Even back with Civ I, this game was able to put me into an incredibly imaginative state...like reading a really good book, when you're just there.
I remember one particular moment...it was the middle ages, and I was on the move around the world. There was one other, very aggressive, group that kept trying to take over a section of my main land. I managed to drive them out, but instead of going back to their own land they regrouped on a medium size peninsula at the far end of my domain.
I had to get rid of them, so I gathered my forces and spent a good 4 hours in a strategic and tactical battle with knights, catapults, and legions through mountains and plains. When I finally defeated them, I could just picture my victorious units on the barren battlefield, banners snappping in the wind, my enemies lying broken on the ground. Awesome!
It's never been the salary that makes the heads of big companies rich. While a few hundred thousand a year would sound great to us, that's chump change to these guys that pull down millions a year in stock and bonuses.
Like it or not, it all boils down to morality. There's no question that scientists will continue to make progress in this area. There's also no question that there could be dramatic benefits or drawbacks.
The question becomes SHOULD it be done. People's response to this depends on where they fall on the morality of it: are there moral concerns to this or not? If so, where is the line drawn between moral and immoral experiments and activities.
It's intellectually dishonest to dismiss either side of the argument. If you believe there are no moral qualms with this, you at least need to admit that if others feel there are that doesn't make them stupid. If you believe there are moral qualms, that doesn't make those who believe otherwise evil.
Identify where you stand on the morality question, flesh out detailed reasons for your position, and debate. You're not going to convince anyone with shouting and name-calling.
two people who rarely venture outdoors except under duress and are close to unbearable unless they're ensconced online with 'friends' on MSN for hours at a time
When they're not online, they're grumpy, demanding, constantly nagging, etc. (i.e. normal teenagers)
It sounds like there are deeper issues here than internet usage - I get the sense that you have some hostility towards your kids.
Have you considered that your own attitude may be contributing to the amount of time they're spending away from you and online?
Slashdot Mirror
We then have automated processes which periodically pull certain pages, strip the navigation elements and render them to PDF
The importance of keeping your distributed docs up to date, as described above, deserves emphasis. It's highly frustrating try to program to an API with an old version of the documentation.
I also agree that Word is a lousy way to produce this type of documentation. I would go further and say that it is a poor tool to use for most non-static technical documentation. It's update capabilities seem well-suited to more narrative documents but are cumbersome and confusing for technical documents.
What about banning semi-automatic handguns? It seems that the ability for concealment, rapid reload, and large capacity magazines are main factors in what make attacks of this nature so deadly, ie. that there are so many victims.
I could see where banning semi-auto handguns, creating and enforcing extremely stiff laws concerning the possession (or sale) of them, while still allowing revolvers, may at least lessen the carnage. People would still be able to protect themselves with revolvers.
What do you think?
There have been a lot of comments saying that allowing the students and faculty to be armed would have prevented such a large number of deaths. It bothers me to hear such loose talk about "taking [the shooter] down"...do you really want to kill someone? Are you that confident that you could do that, when even trained police officers have trouble doing it? Wouldn't it better to stop them from killing without killing them?
What about allowing people to carry stun-guns? The kind that you can fire from a distance. Shooting the killer with these would have stopped him without killing him, and without the danger of killing any innocents. There also would be no fears of more indiscriminate killings that might happen if everyone were armed with firearms.
I've been a 2nd amendment proponent for a long time, but I'm seriously rethinking my position. If we banned guns, but allowed law abiding citizens to carry effective, non-lethal weapons, I think we'd see much, much less killing. People would still be able to protect themselves, even in the short term while the glut of illegal guns was being eliminated.
Is there a downside to this solution?
Side note, 2 of the kids killed yesterday were seniors at our local high school last year. I saw one of them in a play last year...very sweet girl, with the world open in front of her. My own grief is almost overwhelming, I can't even imagine what her family and the families of the other victims are going through right now.
Get them before they get us.
Didn't anyone else see Mars Attacks??
Good points in parent post. Here's another...
Of course you'd never want to put all of the collectors in one place...a few well placed munitions or a nuke from some rogue regime and there goes our power. Pretty effective way to incapacitate the nation, or throw the world into chaos if the power was being supplied throughout the world. Ever heard of offsite backup? Same principle. The collectors would have to be spread out in case of attack or natural disaster.
http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=scox
there is no way this is ever going to be used as anything but propaganda to cut Bush's least favorite programs.
Bush will have only two more years in office when the database comes online. His successors will benefit politically more than he will.
It should be standard practice not to even open emails if you're not certain the sender is legitimate, just delete them. Even if it's from someone you know, if you have any reason to be suspicious, (as in, perhaps their system was compromised and a virus is propagating itself by emailing everyone in their address book), don't open it. Check with the person first.
We who are "in the know" about this sort of thing should make sure our less technical family and friends follow this practice.
Genesis 1:27 God created man in his own image
God is spirit. Could it not have been that God created man's spirit in the image of God's spirit at some point along the evolutionary timeline?
That I work at home as much as possible.
I can either sit here on my couch, laptop in my lap, my dog curled up next to me, the fireplace going, and have a nice view to the back yard where I can see the birds at the feeder - or sit in a cube. No contest..
But the reason why the US is considered so culpable on this question is that it maintained a hypocritical stance of freedom from commercial taxes but slavery for people, which the rest of the Anglo-Saxon community had rejected about 800 years earlier.
It always annoys me when the US is considered one big homogeneous society, either past or present. Slavery was a divisive issue in the US almost from the beginning, crystallizing in a north vs. south divide on the issue. There were many people in the north who were adamantly opposed to the practice and who not only lobbied against it but actively helped escaped slaves from the south to freedom in Canada. The country was so divided on this issue (and some others) that we fought a war over it, almost resulting in the country being split in two.
What is it with Americans?
It's unfair to generalize this way.
I find it's very easy to make precision movements with a mouse, I find it's very hard to have precision control of a firearm held out in front of me.
It's just the opposite for me - really good shot in real life, but have a really hard time with the precise aiming needed in video games.
Finally, I'll be able to inflict some payback on my son...no more getting my butt kicked in multi-player shooters!
I started as a mainframe programmer in the mid-eighties, but moved to pc-based programming within a couple of years. I'll always remember my excitement at being able to install a multi-processing os on a pc!
:-)
It was QNX, which was also my introduction to a (quasi) unix-like environment. It was here that I started learning C, and here I am 20 years later still doing Unix and C programming, (yes, among other more recent platforms and languages).
My favorite particular memory was in 1987, designing, implementing, and installing a warehouse automation system for an Air Force base in CA, running it on a 386 "PCs Limited" pc, ("PCs Limited" was run by Michael Dell, later becoming Dell computers). The system communicated with about a dozen pallet stations in two warehouses, and directed several wire-guided automated vehicles throughout, tracking them as far as load status, destination, and battery power. It even had a screen showing a real-time display of where all the vehicles were!
I went to the base for several weeks for installation and testing. I'll never forget the feeling I had when I started one of the early tests, starting up the system and looking at my watch saying to myself, "ok, in about 30 seconds the system should tell these two vehicles to leave here, go to the other building, and pick up loads". 30 seconds later the vehicles both start beeping and moving out...it was really cool
As far as I know, the system was used from 1987 until the base closed down about 10 years later. Get this, it wasn't even an industrialized pc, and it was installed in one of the non-air conditioned warehouses. Wish they still built them this tough!
There are many simple ways to "write your passwords down" without actually putting them on the paper. Use anagrams and pass phrases. Write the answers down where the passwords are the questions or the reverse.
But what happens to all of your accounts if you die? At least in my case, many of them would need to go on living, (my family's insurance or banking information, web sites I maintain, my home systems, etc.)
I keep the dozens of passwords I have written down, clearly marked as to what systems and sites they're for, and safely stored. I've told my wife where they are and what to do in case I die. Otherwise she'd be in a world of hurt trying to take care of the online things I currently take care of.
Even if she wasn't able to deal with it herself, at least she'd be able to hire a (trustworthy) technician to help her sort it out, without losing access to all of our important accounts.
I'm a touch typist and what I think just goes to my hands. It's actually harder (and takes longer) for me to type "u" to mean "you" than it does to type "you" because I have to throw my brain into idiot mode and override my normal typing skills to get idiot-speak onto the screen.
Kid's are learning to type in the abbreviated fashion straight out of the box. They don't have the extra step of converting from whole words to abbreviations that you have.
I appreciate your candor and your honesty.
;-)
I suppose that's always been the biggest problem...people's inability to live up to the life required when one becomes a Christian. Of course, that's precisely the conundrum continually addressed throughout the Bible: we're saved by Jesus, because there's no way we can be righteous on our own.
That being said, it does seem as though some people who call themselves (even consider themselves) Christian don't try very hard to "walk the walk". This saddens me a great deal.
Even before I became truly committed to Christ, it was clear to me that accepting the faith would mean a monumental, fundamental, shift in my life. Simply put: if Christianity is true, then it must have a profound impact on your life. You can't continue to live as though nothing has changed. To be honest, I think this is one thing that held me back for a while - knowing that to truly commit myself to Christ meant a complete change in my outlook. Call me selfish..
In fact, a digression, if you will indulge me...
My own spiritual journey has taken my whole life (to this point). I was raised Christian, but had serious questions about the reality of the whole thing. Christianity, God, what about other religions...the whole deal. I had to find out whatever I could on my own.
I started with one supposition: I was sure that there was truth. Something was true...not necessarily one religion, or any religion, but something was true.
I began serious research, reading many, many books, talking with experts, researching. I spent years doing so.
Starting with the existence of God, to His nature, to His approach and plans, to His relationship to us, to our nature, and so on.
I became convinced intellectually of the truth of Christianity. It put me in a bind. Being convinced, I could do nothing but accept it. Which, as I said before, would mean a complete shift in my life. Being stubborn and selfish, I was loathe to let go of the reins of my life, and give them to God. I was certainly aware of the "upside" so to speak, intellectually at least - eternal life and goodness, as a gift - but boy did I have a hard time letting go. Selfishness has always been a problem for me. Not in the sense of not giving to others, but in my own mind insisting that I was the "man"...I was the god of my life.
Thank God he doesn't give up on stubborn people. Just last year I made the commitment and became "born again". (I don't particularly like that phrase because it carries the connotation of "right wing, wacko, fundamentalist zealot"). Anyway, I was baptized and in my own mind truly committed to Christ and gave him my life.
Now that I've done so, I know not only intellectually but experientially the reality of what it means. My journey now continues as a committed Christian. Now I learn to live the way God wants me to live.
To your point about people who call themselves Christian acting in un-Christian ways..it saddens me too. It's hard for me to hear and read about it. It hurts.
I'm always wary of agendas and actions that are clothed in religion, particularly Christianity. It's critically important to live according to God's will, and not be misled.
So what does that mean in my life? Simply that I pray for guidance, and do my best to live as Christ's follower. I think about his teaching, and I try to live it. I'm far from perfect, and I certainly don't take His forgiveness as a license to act in an un-Christian way or to sin.
I love Jesus for what he's done for me, and everyone. I want to please him, and I want to do whatever I can to spread love and peace to others. There's so much pain and difficulty in the world. I want to help.
Perhaps this is the same thing that animates most Christians. The difficulty then becomes how to put it into practice. It's so easy to slip back into "human" ways of thinking...being sure that you are right about so
Whether Christianity is dominant in terms of "exercise the most influence or control, [second, they are the] Most prominent, as in position; ascendant" is a whole different argument, which I didn't even address.
My original fundamental point was that of people who adhere to one or another of the world's religions, more adhere to Christianity than any other. Recall the point from the original post that I was disputing:
Christianity isn't even the *dominant* religion on the planet, in terms of number of believers.
The original parent post used the word dominant to mean number of believers. No that's not the correct use of the word by its dictionary meaning, but with his "in terms of number of believers" phrase he made his use of it clear, and it was clear that his assertion was incorrect. I wanted to make sure that people who read his statement and understood it the way he meant it got the correction.
Congrats on missing my fundamental point...I guess all that zeal got in your eyes....JUST FUCKING PLAIN OLD WRONG...It is bigoted (unless you're a Christian of course) to say that Christianity is 'ascendant', i.e., supreme to all other religions by nature...You thought it was cute to quip...
Why so much venom? Yes, I'm a Christian, but I'm not blinded by zeal, stupid, or bigoted. It seems like you don't like Christians very much. Why? If this isn't the case, then what are your views on religion? Whatever they are, you seem to feel pretty strongly about them.
Instead of continuing this discussion on slashdot, why don't you email me so we can continue it offline. I've created a throwaway email at yahoo - perhaps you can do the same so we don't risk choking our regular emails with spam. You can reach me at N0$PAMyaddayadda13579@yahoo.comN0$PAM, (remove the first and last parts of course). I hope you choose to contact me to continue this discussion.
To start with, here are several other links that support the fact that Christianity is the largest religion in the world by number of adherents.
Next -- do we take dominant to mean most popular?
Since there are 800 million or so more Christians in the world than the second highest religion, (Islam), Christianity is both the most dominant and most popular.
I give you this awesome quote from the bottom of the page were they are backing up their spurious claims: AR [animal rights] is a religion, but for the majority of Animal Rights supporters, AR functions as a movement and/or lifestyle choice, not their primary religion. Emphasis is not my own. This admission leads to double counting.
You're assuming that there are at least 800 million double-counts, all of which list themselves as both Christian and something else. That's a pretty wild assumption. The article in the (grandparent) link gives no indication of anything of that nature or magnitude.
Christianity is obviously the dominant religion in America (as there are more Christians than not). Christianity is not the dominant religion in China (or India, or Iraq, the locale is irrelevant) as there are more non-Christians than not. If one agrees with these two claims, then Christianity is not the Earth's dominant religion.
See all the links at the top of this post, and do your own research. You'll find that it's simply a fact that there are more Christians than any other religion's adherents in the world. However one feels about Christianity, or any other religion, it doesn't change this fact.
Christianity isn't even the *dominant* religion on the planet, in terms of number of believers.
Yes it is
Even back with Civ I, this game was able to put me into an incredibly imaginative state...like reading a really good book, when you're just there.
I remember one particular moment...it was the middle ages, and I was on the move around the world. There was one other, very aggressive, group that kept trying to take over a section of my main land. I managed to drive them out, but instead of going back to their own land they regrouped on a medium size peninsula at the far end of my domain.
I had to get rid of them, so I gathered my forces and spent a good 4 hours in a strategic and tactical battle with knights, catapults, and legions through mountains and plains. When I finally defeated them, I could just picture my victorious units on the barren battlefield, banners snappping in the wind, my enemies lying broken on the ground. Awesome!
It's never been the salary that makes the heads of big companies rich. While a few hundred thousand a year would sound great to us, that's chump change to these guys that pull down millions a year in stock and bonuses.
Like it or not, it all boils down to morality. There's no question that scientists will continue to make progress in this area. There's also no question that there could be dramatic benefits or drawbacks.
The question becomes SHOULD it be done. People's response to this depends on where they fall on the morality of it: are there moral concerns to this or not? If so, where is the line drawn between moral and immoral experiments and activities.
It's intellectually dishonest to dismiss either side of the argument. If you believe there are no moral qualms with this, you at least need to admit that if others feel there are that doesn't make them stupid. If you believe there are moral qualms, that doesn't make those who believe otherwise evil.
Identify where you stand on the morality question, flesh out detailed reasons for your position, and debate. You're not going to convince anyone with shouting and name-calling.
I like African Violets - the foliage is nice, (and it's fuzzy!), and it has little blossoms year around. Lots of variety here.
Jade plants are cool too. They're succulents - have sort of plump leaves.
Both of these are easy to care for and should do fine in medium light.
Wrong. I have a 15 year old son, whom I treat with love and respect. He treats me the same.
two people who rarely venture outdoors except under duress and are close to unbearable unless they're ensconced online with 'friends' on MSN for hours at a time
When they're not online, they're grumpy, demanding, constantly nagging, etc. (i.e. normal teenagers)
It sounds like there are deeper issues here than internet usage - I get the sense that you have some hostility towards your kids.
Have you considered that your own attitude may be contributing to the amount of time they're spending away from you and online?