Yeah, monotheism is bitch. It's like trying to have a conglomerate that that makes practically everything. Without care it becomes pretty difficult to have a clear and consistent understanding of exactly what it is they do? It becomes even worse over time as the god changes. 50 years ago Nokia was the god of rubber boots - 10 years ago it was the god of mobile phones. Somehow believers have to either merge those conflicting gods together or just make a clean break. Christianity unfortunately saddled itself with the Hebrews' sociopathic nutjob of a god. I think it was Marcion who in the first century realized the obvious problem and tried to separate Jesus from Yahweh. He is not fondly remembered for doing this.
We've not grown in goodness? Goodness is a terribly vague term, so I'm taking it to refer to morality, in which history tells a different story.
Progress has come in stops and starts. Overall though the trend has been towards increased compassion, freedom and justice. Compare the Hebrews to a modern western nation. Contrast Leviticus with modern laws - which would you honestly choose to live under if you did not subscribe to the popular religion of the time? In which society would you, as a rape victim, prefer to live? Hell, just 50 years ago being black was in parts of America synonymous with being sub-human. To claim that we have eschewed "goodness" for science is to practice sophistry or willful ignorance. Read Jefferson's letter to the Dansbury Baptists - contrast it with the freedoms of religion enjoyed today. Also, you know who was oppressing the baptists? We are fortunate to live in these times. It's unlikely that you will ever write do et ing that will cause you to flee your country to avoid inquisitors, clerics and petty nobles.
"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?" * God doesn't prevent "evil" for the same reason you allow you child to fall sometimes. Kids have to fall in order to learn how to walk.
Does it sound reasonable to allow a child to fall if you know that, once it happens, they will never be able to get up again?
. Then he is not omnipotent. * The only thing that can stop him is himself - just like a child's view of a parent.
If we are as children then I fail to see how we can to any extent understand his plans and his wishes for us. It's like a parent who communicates exclusively with their children by having post-it notes written by third-parties left in the room of the house that most of the children will never visit. For added fun, the post-it notes are written in languages that most of the children cannot understand, and most of the post-it notes are fake or and/or contradictory of earlier messages. Consider the problems inherent in the way canonical scripture was delivered to us - the tip of the iceberg. What about the vast majority of scripture that is equally well evidenced but is not considered to be God breathed and profitable for teaching?
Is he able, but not willing? . Then he is malevolent. * Is it malevolent to not give your child candy before dinner? To let your child play soccer and get his leg broken? To fail a math exam because he didn't study?
Is he both able and willing? . Then whence cometh evil? * "Evil" is unfortunately a prerequisite for learning. One of the most important things to learn in this life is that many things a child sees as "evil" are in fact "good".
You're asserting knowledge of God's ways in order to support the claim that we can't really understand his ways. Which way is it? "The Lord works in mysterious ways" has long been an excuse wheeled out when the world behaves just as if there is no divine overseer managing the fortunes of its inhabitants. It's handwaving piffle employed in lieu of having a rational position from which to argue. Perhaps I don't fully understand the big picture; I fail to see how allowing a 10-year-old girl to be imprisoned and repeatedly raped should be considered a lesson learned. I don't know what God wants, and I'm sure that neither do you.
Is he neither able nor willing? . Then why call him God?" * Like most parents, I doubt he really cares that much what you call him. But he does occasionally need to swat your bottom...
Drowning in a tsunami, contracting AIDs from your mother, being born without eyes, or being killed by some nutter who decided to fly your plane in to a building in God's name is hardly "swatting". This religious belief is a vain attempt to anthropomorphize nature. Given nature's indifference to human suffering it's not surprising that the resulting deity turns out to be a mess of contradictions. With one hand nature (and God) sustains life and provides us with pleasures, while on the other hand it afflicts us with pointless suffering and the lottery of genetics.
Nothing really, other than their assurance that they reject legal requests except this coming via the UK judicial system. With the European Arrest Warrant though this can be problematic. For example, prior the UK's de-criminalization of blasphemy a member state with a blasphemy law that was not just an relic could see their batshit crazy law enforced in the UK.
Do you have reason to suspect that HMA will abandon their stated policy?
Ostensibly random capitalization of words is the retarded alternative to writing in such a way that people don't need fucking big "emphasis here" signs vomited all over a post that could contain some sense, buried under a ton of Gene Rayesque obfuscation and general word wankery.
Atheist already ignore all the tech in organic cells so it's seems like this event will be more probable.
Evolutionary biology neither a cause nor a requirement of atheism. Raelians are creation believing atheists. St. Augustine famously commented that it was foolish to cling blindly to scriptural untruths in the face of overwhelming evidence. Of course discarding Genesis would be extreme, but certainly taking it to be metaphorical is more tenable than combatting sound science with stories of talking snakes tempting a simple-minded rib woman in to eating magical fruit. There is no dogma in atheism - only (with variations in strength) the shared lack of belief in god(s).
Note: I am a creation believing christain. I dont believe in evolution. (I do believe in natural selection)
Is your belief in God based on the same thought process as your unbelief in evolution? If not then I think you're cheapening either science or religious belief. No rational person "believes" in evolution the same way the devout would believe in God. Sure some people say that they "believe" in evolution or gravity, without really understanding why, but we shouldn't be considering the layman here. Evolution is simply a well evidenced scientific theory. Sure it requires faith that scientists worldwide aren't all colluding to deceive, or wrong to a level that would suggest we should discard all of biology as being completely baseless, but this doesn't compare to the faith required to believe in God - let alone the faith (or chutzpah) to believe you have somehow managed to in any way understand what this god wants? It's interesting that creationism alone is quite varied in the Christian world, and when we go to other religious we see even more incredible variations. The only way creation can be unified is perhaps at the very basic level of "an entity was at some point in the past involved in our creation". Beyond that things begin to diverge.
True, and Fallout turned out pretty well. Warcraft is too is an example of a franchise that successfully shifted to another genre. Syndicate is a game I fondly remember. I hope EA don't end up churning out a Deus Ex knock-off
This should be handled legally. When a company is bankrupt the natural course of action is to liquidate the assets. Righthaven's only assets are its lawyers. Liquidate the lawyers and sell their organs to settle the debts.
Us geeks of course want to fuck with the shit we buy...but we're not the target market either. The target market is the average dumb schmuck.
Yeah, because people wouldn't have anything that can't be hacked around with. It's not like sone people prefer that certain devices just work. You're right about not being the target market. You're in a similar demographic to a guy who runs bolts through his cock and derides anyone who doesn't have to stand facing sideways to the urinal in order to take a piss.
If, on the other hand, the agent engaged in a prolonged campaign of grooming and cajoling to get otherwise upright and/or feckless people stirred up enough to do something, there would be a serious argument that entrapment was going on.
Well, pretty much anything can be going when you're engaging in wild speculation. The case is pretty well documented and there is no indication of grooming or Akamai arranging to have employees spied on.
Anyway, let's get back to speculation. Maybe his wife was paid off by a rival of Akamai - knowing that Doxer in hus desperation would likely do something to harm is employer.
Yes, that assumption is common among those who lack the kind of paranoia necessary to turn a simple opt-in filtering system in to a plot to forever prevent users from fapping to the fine quality close-ups of vaginas Jimbo has assembled for our lonely pleasure.
That this article got posted leads me to make three assumptions.
1) You trolled Soulskill good. Now, Soulskill being a bit of a plank means that you don't get many points for this.
2) Soulskill was hired to post paranoid speculative shit as "news". If that's not the case then I must assume Soulskill to have been hired on some kind of "jobs for tards" scheme.
3) Slashdot's opt-in filtering scheme will surely be subverted, so this article will vanish as soon as the Jews, Illuminati, my neighbour or the UN force Geeknet employ their zomgfilters to prevent the world from reading your astonishing expose.
How us it wrong if, to use your analogy, the computer was clearly labelled as bring only able go address 3 gigabytes of memory? It would be sn entirely different matter if they had sold the machine as having 4 gigs, while neglecting to mention that an additional payment is required to get the last gig.
This Intel thing doesn't trouble. If I buy a 2.67 processor, and it runs at the advertised clock rate the I have what I paid paid for. The fact that the chip can go faster is immaterial.
Depends on usage patterns. I had to disable suspend to disk in OS X because with 8 gigs of RAM it was taking far too long to sleep, which is awkward when in my job there are days when I run from one meeting to the next. I'd love an SSD so I could make suspending to disk practical.
It seems opportunistic to even consider such a measure at a time like this. It'd be like asking, in the days following 9/11, if the public would like to see Muslims excluded from air travel.
Cameron knows that emotions are running high and that people will, as we've always done, happily sign away freedoms without considering the long term implications. We've not exactly had good experiences, here or across the pond, with governmental powers being extended before the dust settles on the latest outrage against civilization.
An idea like this easily crosses the mind, but it's quite another thing to actually go public with such a notion when you're the prime fucking minister. It tells me that Cameron is either an opportunist looking to extend governmental powers for its own benefit or he doesn't have the good sense to properly consider an idea before opening his mouth.
Where exactly is the line drawn on cheat-free exactly?
Anything that runs contrary to Blizzard's terms of use. Nothing Blizzard allows in their own game can be considered to be cheating - at least in the broad sense of the term. Players will have their "meta-rules" to define additional types of cheating, but on the whole they are useful mainly for generating drama.
I recall in WoW people complaining about people using potions or certain cool-down abilities during duels, and in StarCraft and WarCraft there'd be nonces who'd whine about opponents being "unfair" because they'd go out and attack their opponents' base before they've had a chance to build up a decently-sized army.
For the small trade-off you get cheat-free economy
Any developer that manages to create a truly cheat free economy in a game of any significant scale should probably take as their next project the development of a bug free completely secure web browser. Blizzard's move will certainly make it more difficult to cheat by modifying characters and items offline, but if you believe Diablo III will be cheat free then I have a bridge you may be interested in purchasing.
While you can't play the game in an airplane, the overall return for that trade-off is much better.
Bullshit marketing speak - this is highly subjective. I've played the Diablo series from the start and have always preferred it as an offline game. The overall return may be worth it for someone with a solid Internet connection available to them whenever they wish to play, and a hankering for online play, but the reverse is true for people who prefer offline play and don't always have access to an Internet connection.
They could fix this quite easily by giving us the choice to create characters that can specifically not be played online.
Perhaps they're genuine in trying for reduce cheating. A happy side-effect of this is that requiring a persistent connection is consistent with Blizzard's attempts to turn Battlenet in to a kind of social network for owners of Blizzard titles.
Mandating registration would likely be a breach of the Berne Convention - at least if such registration plays a legal role in the establishment of copyright on a work.
I don't think the barn door saying means what you think it does. It suggests pointless action taken after the event. The original data was stolen but encryption to hinder future theft of data seems sensible.
Is a reminder that any man who would be part of a plan that risked placing Palin in the Oval Office in the event of his statistically imminent death is barely qualified to run a hotdog stand. He should have attracted less derision if he introduced a pony as his sexual partner and running mate.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, monotheism is bitch. It's like trying to have a conglomerate that that makes practically everything. Without care it becomes pretty difficult to have a clear and consistent understanding of exactly what it is they do? It becomes even worse over time as the god changes. 50 years ago Nokia was the god of rubber boots - 10 years ago it was the god of mobile phones. Somehow believers have to either merge those conflicting gods together or just make a clean break. Christianity unfortunately saddled itself with the Hebrews' sociopathic nutjob of a god. I think it was Marcion who in the first century realized the obvious problem and tried to separate Jesus from Yahweh. He is not fondly remembered for doing this.
We've not grown in goodness? Goodness is a terribly vague term, so I'm taking it to refer to morality, in which history tells a different story.
Progress has come in stops and starts. Overall though the trend has been towards increased compassion, freedom and justice. Compare the Hebrews to a modern western nation. Contrast Leviticus with modern laws - which would you honestly choose to live under if you did not subscribe to the popular religion of the time? In which society would you, as a rape victim, prefer to live? Hell, just 50 years ago being black was in parts of America synonymous with being sub-human. To claim that we have eschewed "goodness" for science is to practice sophistry or willful ignorance. Read Jefferson's letter to the Dansbury Baptists - contrast it with the freedoms of religion enjoyed today. Also, you know who was oppressing the baptists? We are fortunate to live in these times. It's unlikely that you will ever write do et ing that will cause you to flee your country to avoid inquisitors, clerics and petty nobles.
"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?"
* God doesn't prevent "evil" for the same reason you allow you child to fall sometimes. Kids have to fall in order to learn how to walk.
Does it sound reasonable to allow a child to fall if you know that, once it happens, they will never be able to get up again?
. Then he is not omnipotent.
* The only thing that can stop him is himself - just like a child's view of a parent.
If we are as children then I fail to see how we can to any extent understand his plans and his wishes for us. It's like a parent who communicates exclusively with their children by having post-it notes written by third-parties left in the room of the house that most of the children will never visit. For added fun, the post-it notes are written in languages that most of the children cannot understand, and most of the post-it notes are fake or and/or contradictory of earlier messages. Consider the problems inherent in the way canonical scripture was delivered to us - the tip of the iceberg. What about the vast majority of scripture that is equally well evidenced but is not considered to be God breathed and profitable for teaching?
Is he able, but not willing?
. Then he is malevolent.
* Is it malevolent to not give your child candy before dinner? To let your child play soccer and get his leg broken? To fail a math exam because he didn't study?
Is he both able and willing?
. Then whence cometh evil?
* "Evil" is unfortunately a prerequisite for learning. One of the most important things to learn in this life is that many things a child sees as "evil" are in fact "good".
You're asserting knowledge of God's ways in order to support the claim that we can't really understand his ways. Which way is it? "The Lord works in mysterious ways" has long been an excuse wheeled out when the world behaves just as if there is no divine overseer managing the fortunes of its inhabitants. It's handwaving piffle employed in lieu of having a rational position from which to argue. Perhaps I don't fully understand the big picture; I fail to see how allowing a 10-year-old girl to be imprisoned and repeatedly raped should be considered a lesson learned. I don't know what God wants, and I'm sure that neither do you.
Is he neither able nor willing?
. Then why call him God?"
* Like most parents, I doubt he really cares that much what you call him. But he does occasionally need to swat your bottom...
Drowning in a tsunami, contracting AIDs from your mother, being born without eyes, or being killed by some nutter who decided to fly your plane in to a building in God's name is hardly "swatting". This religious belief is a vain attempt to anthropomorphize nature. Given nature's indifference to human suffering it's not surprising that the resulting deity turns out to be a mess of contradictions. With one hand nature (and God) sustains life and provides us with pleasures, while on the other hand it afflicts us with pointless suffering and the lottery of genetics.
Damn, I thought that had been changed. Thanks for the clarification.
Nothing really, other than their assurance that they reject legal requests except this coming via the UK judicial system. With the European Arrest Warrant though this can be problematic. For example, prior the UK's de-criminalization of blasphemy a member state with a blasphemy law that was not just an relic could see their batshit crazy law enforced in the UK.
Do you have reason to suspect that HMA will abandon their stated policy?
Ostensibly random capitalization of words is the retarded alternative to writing in such a way that people don't need fucking big "emphasis here" signs vomited all over a post that could contain some sense, buried under a ton of Gene Rayesque obfuscation and general word wankery.
Atheist already ignore all the tech in organic cells so it's seems like this event will be more probable.
Evolutionary biology neither a cause nor a requirement of atheism. Raelians are creation believing atheists. St. Augustine famously commented that it was foolish to cling blindly to scriptural untruths in the face of overwhelming evidence. Of course discarding Genesis would be extreme, but certainly taking it to be metaphorical is more tenable than combatting sound science with stories of talking snakes tempting a simple-minded rib woman in to eating magical fruit. There is no dogma in atheism - only (with variations in strength) the shared lack of belief in god(s).
Note: I am a creation believing christain. I dont believe in evolution. (I do believe in natural selection)
Is your belief in God based on the same thought process as your unbelief in evolution? If not then I think you're cheapening either science or religious belief. No rational person "believes" in evolution the same way the devout would believe in God. Sure some people say that they "believe" in evolution or gravity, without really understanding why, but we shouldn't be considering the layman here. Evolution is simply a well evidenced scientific theory. Sure it requires faith that scientists worldwide aren't all colluding to deceive, or wrong to a level that would suggest we should discard all of biology as being completely baseless, but this doesn't compare to the faith required to believe in God - let alone the faith (or chutzpah) to believe you have somehow managed to in any way understand what this god wants? It's interesting that creationism alone is quite varied in the Christian world, and when we go to other religious we see even more incredible variations. The only way creation can be unified is perhaps at the very basic level of "an entity was at some point in the past involved in our creation". Beyond that things begin to diverge.
True, and Fallout turned out pretty well. Warcraft is too is an example of a franchise that successfully shifted to another genre. Syndicate is a game I fondly remember. I hope EA don't end up churning out a Deus Ex knock-off
Truth, my friend. Reports of lawyers dying from heart failure are a cover for the real cause - dying from shame
This should be handled legally. When a company is bankrupt the natural course of action is to liquidate the assets. Righthaven's only assets are its lawyers. Liquidate the lawyers and sell their organs to settle the debts.
I could have used the FDCA when wankers would routinely wander up the street, breaking car wing mirrors and wipers as they went.
Us geeks of course want to fuck with the shit we buy...but we're not the target market either. The target market is the average dumb schmuck.
Yeah, because people wouldn't have anything that can't be hacked around with. It's not like sone people prefer that certain devices just work. You're right about not being the target market. You're in a similar demographic to a guy who runs bolts through his cock and derides anyone who doesn't have to stand facing sideways to the urinal in order to take a piss.
If, on the other hand, the agent engaged in a prolonged campaign of grooming and cajoling to get otherwise upright and/or feckless people stirred up enough to do something, there would be a serious argument that entrapment was going on.
Well, pretty much anything can be going when you're engaging in wild speculation. The case is pretty well documented and there is no indication of grooming or Akamai arranging to have employees spied on.
Anyway, let's get back to speculation. Maybe his wife was paid off by a rival of Akamai - knowing that Doxer in hus desperation would likely do something to harm is employer.
I have to hope that rule 34 does not apply to us.
Yes, that assumption is common among those who lack the kind of paranoia necessary to turn a simple opt-in filtering system in to a plot to forever prevent users from fapping to the fine quality close-ups of vaginas Jimbo has assembled for our lonely pleasure.
That this article got posted leads me to make three assumptions.
1) You trolled Soulskill good. Now, Soulskill being a bit of a plank means that you don't get many points for this.
2) Soulskill was hired to post paranoid speculative shit as "news". If that's not the case then I must assume Soulskill to have been hired on some kind of "jobs for tards" scheme.
3) Slashdot's opt-in filtering scheme will surely be subverted, so this article will vanish as soon as the Jews, Illuminati, my neighbour or the UN force Geeknet employ their zomgfilters to prevent the world from reading your astonishing expose.
How us it wrong if, to use your analogy, the computer was clearly labelled as bring only able go address 3 gigabytes of memory? It would be sn entirely different matter if they had sold the machine as having 4 gigs, while neglecting to mention that an additional payment is required to get the last gig.
This Intel thing doesn't trouble. If I buy a 2.67 processor, and it runs at the advertised clock rate the I have what I paid paid for. The fact that the chip can go faster is immaterial.
Depends on usage patterns. I had to disable suspend to disk in OS X because with 8 gigs of RAM it was taking far too long to sleep, which is awkward when in my job there are days when I run from one meeting to the next. I'd love an SSD so I could make suspending to disk practical.
It seems opportunistic to even consider such a measure at a time like this. It'd be like asking, in the days following 9/11, if the public would like to see Muslims excluded from air travel.
Cameron knows that emotions are running high and that people will, as we've always done, happily sign away freedoms without considering the long term implications. We've not exactly had good experiences, here or across the pond, with governmental powers being extended before the dust settles on the latest outrage against civilization.
An idea like this easily crosses the mind, but it's quite another thing to actually go public with such a notion when you're the prime fucking minister. It tells me that Cameron is either an opportunist looking to extend governmental powers for its own benefit or he doesn't have the good sense to properly consider an idea before opening his mouth.
Where exactly is the line drawn on cheat-free exactly?
Anything that runs contrary to Blizzard's terms of use. Nothing Blizzard allows in their own game can be considered to be cheating - at least in the broad sense of the term. Players will have their "meta-rules" to define additional types of cheating, but on the whole they are useful mainly for generating drama.
I recall in WoW people complaining about people using potions or certain cool-down abilities during duels, and in StarCraft and WarCraft there'd be nonces who'd whine about opponents being "unfair" because they'd go out and attack their opponents' base before they've had a chance to build up a decently-sized army.
For the small trade-off you get cheat-free economy
Any developer that manages to create a truly cheat free economy in a game of any significant scale should probably take as their next project the development of a bug free completely secure web browser. Blizzard's move will certainly make it more difficult to cheat by modifying characters and items offline, but if you believe Diablo III will be cheat free then I have a bridge you may be interested in purchasing.
While you can't play the game in an airplane, the overall return for that trade-off is much better.
Bullshit marketing speak - this is highly subjective. I've played the Diablo series from the start and have always preferred it as an offline game. The overall return may be worth it for someone with a solid Internet connection available to them whenever they wish to play, and a hankering for online play, but the reverse is true for people who prefer offline play and don't always have access to an Internet connection.
They could fix this quite easily by giving us the choice to create characters that can specifically not be played online.
Perhaps they're genuine in trying for reduce cheating. A happy side-effect of this is that requiring a persistent connection is consistent with Blizzard's attempts to turn Battlenet in to a kind of social network for owners of Blizzard titles.
Mandating registration would likely be a breach of the Berne Convention - at least if such registration plays a legal role in the establishment of copyright on a work.
Definitely no arguments there.
I am ready to be modded troll for my beliefs.
Such bravery surely warrants an epic poem.
I don't think the barn door saying means what you think it does. It suggests pointless action taken after the event. The original data was stolen but encryption to hinder future theft of data seems sensible.
Is a reminder that any man who would be part of a plan that risked placing Palin in the Oval Office in the event of his statistically imminent death is barely qualified to run a hotdog stand. He should have attracted less derision if he introduced a pony as his sexual partner and running mate.