That is interesting. Of course, the rules in a civil proceeding are different than in a criminal one. In a criminal proceeding the burden of proof is always on the accuser. Apparently then, this is not the case in a civil matter. Still, it would seem that a plaintiff would have to prove their accusation that the software got installed by the owner of a computer. The owner of the computer could claim that he loaned it to somebody and they were the ones that installed the computer software. The software could have also been installed remotely or by a virus. To assume that the owner of a computer knowingly seems to be a rather tenuous assumption these days.
...You accept the contract/license when you load the software onto your computer....
Except what if the person claims they sent the computer to a shop and when it came back it had the software installed? The customer has a repair bill to prove that the computer was repaired. How will it ever be proved that the owner is a liar and did install the software, which is only possible if the "agree" button is clicked. Of course, the repair shop also denies installing anything. All that can be shown is that program xxxx.exe is loaded onto a piece of dumb computer apparatus, with no way to prove how it got on there or who put it on there. Maybe it was part of a virus from the Internet.
You see, the whole problem with any EULA, is that it does NOT prove, only assumes (believes) WHO the mouse clicker might have been. Maybe it was the cat. There is no way to prove it was not the cat. In this it is much different that a signed or witnessed contract. A signature or notary witness testifies as to WHO the parties of the contract are, but a mouse click testifies of nothing.
...You are therefore responsible for the contract...
To have a valid contract, the persons entering into a contract have to be proved as to who they are and if they are eligible. No matter how a mouse button gets pushed, cat, dog or some kid, there is no way to prove WHO pushed it. An assumption of the owner of the computer having pushed it is just that, an assumption, that may or may not be valid. Therefore, unless there is a witness, a signature or other mechanism that IDENTIFIES who entered into the contract, there is no contract.
....It's just a convenient way to prove you agreed to the terms...
Really? If the computer owner says the cat pushed the mouse button, how does that prove he is a liar? For any contract to be valid, BOTH parties must be unambiguously identified. That is why there is this thing called a notary for important stuff and signatures for the rest. In the case of a so called EULA, how are the parties to an agreement identified? How can it be proved WHO or WHAT pushed a mouse button?
...any state judge can hear a case involving Amazon because they mail tons of stuff to every state...
Are you really saying that if I mail something to another state, I become subject to the laws and courts of that state? Would that not mean that EVERYBODY is subject to almost every state's laws if they merely mail stuff to some other state? That doesn't sound right to me. Also, what happens if a judge makes a decision (such as a default lawsuit) about a citizen of another state? Does that really carry any weight? Will the local sheriff or police arrest a person that simply ignores whatever some out of state judge or legislator decides, especially in a civil case? Can extradition occur in a non-criminal case?
If someone in another state files a lawsuit on say Joe Ordinary and Joe simply ignores every court paper regarding such a lawsuit, what will eventually happen? What if the out of state plaintiff gets an astronomical default judgement, can he ever collect a penny of it from Joe?
....Anyone who buys a computer and puts it on the public Internet is flying their own plane,....
For many here on/. it is apparently an unpleasant notion that nowadays a computer is an appliance, much as any other. The manufacturer of a toaster must ensure that their product doesn't set people's houses on fire or even only randomly turn a piece of bread into charcoal. It seems that computer hardware and especially software is the only commonly purchased product that comes with pages and pages of fine print stating everything its maker is NOT responsible for. If a TV set craps out in its warranty period the maker thereof has to repair or replace it.
If a Windows Computer craps out because it gets some malware, such as the now rampant Conficker worm, neither the hardware maker thereof nor Microsoft has to repair the defective product. In this case, the user of the computer did not do anything other than what the darn thing is meant to be used for. If computers as a whole, including software that runs them, were finally regarded just as most other products, in terms of liability of the makers, there would be a huge incentive to ensure that self-propagating malware would be eliminated. If MS or the manufacturer had to pay for the disinfecting of every Windows computer for at least a year after purchase, malware would soon be reduced to a trickle.
..but the hundreds of retailers that sell itunes gift cards...
So then tax the sale of the gift cards is all they can do. If Apple sells any item in their NY store, do those customers not already pay sales tax? Since the iTunes store and its servers are in CA, they cannot force iTunes to be their tax collector.
.... it is not worth the hassle to do business in NYS...
I don't see the problem for *any* business not having a physical presence in NY simply *IGNORING* anything coming from the government of that state. What can they possibly do to force some out of state business to become a tax collector for them? Did NY state not try to force Amazon to collect taxes for orders by New York customers? Whatever became of that? Let them figure out how to collect whatever taxes from their citizens, but what rights do they have to force a business in some other state to be their tax collector?
....Because if they do the malware writers will be cranking out "Happy screensaver.scr.sh" and malware like the OSX Codec Trojan...
While it is true that there is no security against user stupidity, a LOT that can be attributed to the fact that Windows is fundamentally insecure. Only in Windows do we see self-propagating malware where no user interaction of any kind is needed for such malware to infect thousands or more computers. There simply are no self-propgating malware for Linux or OSX. If Macs and Linux were saddled with the same stupid users as you claim for Windows, there would be such infected computers, one by one stupid user at a time, but not the rampant epidemic of wild-fire infections seen in the Windows world.
...they WILL throw you in there, no matter how many other people are in the place....
Well, that is how it ought to be. Maybe, in Vermont people don't smoke and deal in certain kinds of molecular structures that have been arbitrarily declared illegal. The laws around here make the purveyors of certain natural growing green things into felons which take precedence in occupying jail space over mere traffic rule offenders.
Maybe they also don't have bleeding heart judges in Vermont that feel sorry if several malefactors have to share a cell in jail. Out here on the west coast the liberal courts have placed strict limits how many inmates are allowed per square foot of jail space.
I agree with you entirely, especially this part. We pile law upon law and as we do people become more lawless. Too many laws these days are passed for the benefit of special, usually money-laden interests. If Joe Ordinary cannot pay his ARM because the bank jacked up the payment from $1300 to $2600 each month, there is NO government bailout for him. But the greedy bank executives get big bonuses and continue to live their opulent life style and get government welfare.
In Moses time the law was boiled down to ten and Jesus pared that down to two.
...Once you no longer fear loss of that driver's license you have won the battle....
Except around here some drive anyway. The courts cannot put them in jail, because the same courts mandated that the jail can only hold some maximum number. As a result only the really bad criminals end up in jail. Driving without a license is not bad enough to put and keep even a repeat offender in jail. Even stealing a car may not always land a thief in jail for long. I just read that a Federal Court ordered California to let thousands of prisoners out whose crime is MUCH worse than driving without a valid permit. So, for many on the lower socioeconomic scale, fear of loss of driving license is a diminishing threat.
...It seems to be human nature to cheat the system....
That is a sad commentary on humans alright. However, if these tolls and other automobile taxes were ONLY used for roads, bridges, transit and other uses beneficial to motorists, many people would likely be more willing to pay for such things. As it is, in many places the motorists are used as cash cows to fund fat politicians favorite projects, including income redistribution. How much of the red light camera money is used to benefit motorists?
...Especially if you get a 90 suspension or something...
Except around here the jails are so overcrowded that there is barely room for violent criminals. The economically strapped people who cannot afford insurance as mandated by law, get such suspensions and also get their car impounded. They just go to a junk yard and get another clunker and drive without insurance and without a license. The old clunkers are cheaper than the fines and the insurance, even if they could afford either. If they get caught this way even as often as once a month, it is still cheaper to repeat this over and over than pay astronomical insurance rates.
...city fills up its purse much more efficiently...
That is the biggest problem with this, simply another way to TAX people to pay for more bureaucrats at local governments. We do however need good roads, so toll roads would be OK if they replace some of the gas tax and were mandated to be used ONLY for roads, bridges and other structure cars drive upon. No more money for political fat cats to spend on their favorite pork projects. The power to tax should be removed from politicians and given back to the people who can vote for more taxes if they want to pay more for given projects.
...The culprits are the badly behaved programs....
No, the culprits are the customers who buy the crap that application programmers put out that won't work properly unless a user is an administrator. If nobody bought such garbage, then the vendors would wise up EXTREMELY quickly. Mac users would certainly not buy programs that did not run unless the user were an administrator. That is why there is NO Mac program than requires a user to be an administrator just to RUN a program after an administrator installs it.
...So, instead of a 'Genius Bar', will the MS store have like...a 'Nerd Bar'?...
No, It will be an excuses bar where micronerds will explain that your problem is with hardware not a bug in Microsoft's programming. You will also be directed to edit the registry and other obscure fixes. Also, sales people there will ask at least twice if you REALLY want to make that purchase or rather cancel.
...they eventually figured out that stars work with nuclear processes...
There is evidence that this is not the case either. The fact that the solar corona is almost 1000 times hotter than the surface violates the known fact that heat always flows from a hotter to colder location. If the sun were really heated by a 20+ million degrees thermonuclear reaction, the surface should be much hotter than the corona.
There is also the fact that the sun's mass is not enough to gravitationally oppose the huge outward pressures generated by a thermonuclear reaction at the needed temperatures. Gravity is simply too weak to overcome the strong nuclear and electrical forces that would have to be present in such a thermonuclear reaction furnace.
Then there is the missing neutrino problem. From thermonuclear fusion experiments and bombs, we know what the production rate of associated neutrinos should be for the sun IF it were indeed powered by fusion, as theorized. However, the actual neutrino flux from the sun is only a tiny fraction of what should be measured if fusion were the energy source of the sun. At this point scientists really are back to square one in determining the power source of the sun and similar sized stars.
There is also radar evidence that the sun is not a big gas ball, but actually has a solid iron core, similar to the earth, surrounded by an atmosphere of seething plasma kept hot by an as yet unknown external electrical power grid, in the same way as a metal arc lamp here on earth. There is some evidence that the sun, along with other stars in the spiral arms of our galaxy, is part of a galactic scale electrical power distribution system powered from the center of our galaxy.
....This is a case about whether a software house has the right to restrict what hardware you can use the software on...
No true! Apple is a hardware company which includes OSX as part of their hardware. There is no law that forces them or any company to furnish parts to competitor companies. However, since Apple sells unencumbered copies of OSX to anyone with money, a customer who buys a part, in this case OSX, has the right to do whatever they want with that part legally bought from Apple.
Apple could kill this whole thing by simply no longer selling their parts, in this case OSX, to anybody with money. OSX only gets sold to customers who can prove they have a genuine Mac. Requiring a valid Mac serial number before a sale of any Mac part, including OSX should prevent Pystar from doing their OSX rip-off business. Once the owner of a Mac with a given serial number has gotten their copy from Apple, they cannot buy another one. Apple doesn't have to resort to WGA crap or install codes, but just not sell OSX to anyone but Mac owners. Anyone who wants a legal copy of OSX must buy or already own a Mac. Any non Mac owner can buy a copy for the price of a Mac mini.
...Until you get hit with a a $40 overdraft charge for being a penny short...
I suppose that would apply only to people who keep their account on the ragged edge of empty. I always try to keep at least $100 cushion in case my arithmetic is a little off.
...As long as the prophecy remains "possible" it cannot be discredited,...
Except that a number of biblical prophecies deal with things that were not possible or even imagined when some very specific, not vague, prophecies were made. Here are two of them:
Jesus Christ predicts that before he returns to Earth there will be a time of trouble such as there has never been before nor will ever be again after that time. That in itself is not something that is outside of the realm of possible. Things had gotten pretty nasty in certain places already in his day. But then he adds, that if those days near the end would not be cut short by his return, everything alive would perish. He was making these statements in the context of human warfare. Only in our modern era does humanity possess the weapons of mass destruction that makes such a scenario possible.
In the last book of the Bible, the book of Revelation, we read of a world dictator who will require every person on earth to have some sort of numerical identifier specifically located on the forehead or on the right hand. This identifier is often referred to as the mark of the beast. Those without such an identifier, we read, will not be able to buy or sell, that is carry on any sort of trade or go shopping. For centuries before our modern computer age, scholars have scratched their heads in puzzlement. They could not conceive how such a thing would be possible. Try to rent a car today at any airport without a credit card. Try to get a job in any modern country without a Social Security number or other centralized identification. I am sure you can see the direction this is all heading. Will we be there in five, 10, 20 or 30 years? One thing is for sure, it is not a question of "if" this will come, but only "when".
...the UN is still utterly WORTHLESS in doing anything but talking...
You are absolutely correct in that. Have you ever considered WHY that is so? Could it be that the UN has no real power? If, or better when, that ever changes, the UN or some future successor thereof will wield full control over much, if not all of the world.
(...Believing God to be a Genie who will WHISK YOU AWAY! from all your problems (much like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz) IS Crazy...)
I certainly agree with that! I don't quite get how you have come to reply to my post with that statement. The Bible is quite clear in many places, that the rule of man upon earth will someday end, to be superseded by the rule of God. It is also quite plain that this rule of God will be exercised through a man, the God-man Jesus Christ. Through all of the history of mankind, it has been amply demonstrated that human beings are incapable of governing themselves and properly taking care of the world that God has given us.
Just before man manages to destroy this planet and themselves completely, God will intervene to prevent the utter destruction of all of mankind. Meanwhile, for those willing to entrust themselves entirely to God, the promise of God today is not to take us out of our troubles and trials, but to give us whatever we need to go through them and come out triumphant on the other side, whether still here in this life or the next.
To those who entrust themselves completely to God through Jesus Christ, the following promise applies: Romans 8:35-39
...The politicians have slowly but surely devalued our money to 1/45th its value in 1933...
That's because what what we call "money" is now intrinsically worthless. For most of human history, the medium of exchange, what we call money had some intrinsic value, because it could not arbitrarily be created without work and effort. In our modern era, whoever has the ability to create money and not go to prison will never go broke. This means that whatever entity does this, reduces the value of whatever money is worth. The stuff we call money is not immune to the laws of supply and demand. The more of a commodity that exists, the less a given unit will be worth. The amount of gold takes to buy a loaf of bread or pay for a night's lodging in an average hotel has not really changed all that much over time.
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...you will have to prove you didn't sign...
That is interesting. Of course, the rules in a civil proceeding are different than in a criminal one. In a criminal proceeding the burden of proof is always on the accuser. Apparently then, this is not the case in a civil matter. Still, it would seem that a plaintiff would have to prove their accusation that the software got installed by the owner of a computer. The owner of the computer could claim that he loaned it to somebody and they were the ones that installed the computer software. The software could have also been installed remotely or by a virus. To assume that the owner of a computer knowingly seems to be a rather tenuous assumption these days.
...You accept the contract/license when you load the software onto your computer....
Except what if the person claims they sent the computer to a shop and when it came back it had the software installed? The customer has a repair bill to prove that the computer was repaired. How will it ever be proved that the owner is a liar and did install the software, which is only possible if the "agree" button is clicked. Of course, the repair shop also denies installing anything. All that can be shown is that program xxxx.exe is loaded onto a piece of dumb computer apparatus, with no way to prove how it got on there or who put it on there. Maybe it was part of a virus from the Internet.
You see, the whole problem with any EULA, is that it does NOT prove, only assumes (believes) WHO the mouse clicker might have been. Maybe it was the cat. There is no way to prove it was not the cat. In this it is much different that a signed or witnessed contract. A signature or notary witness testifies as to WHO the parties of the contract are, but a mouse click testifies of nothing.
...You are therefore responsible for the contract...
To have a valid contract, the persons entering into a contract have to be proved as to who they are and if they are eligible. No matter how a mouse button gets pushed, cat, dog or some kid, there is no way to prove WHO pushed it. An assumption of the owner of the computer having pushed it is just that, an assumption, that may or may not be valid. Therefore, unless there is a witness, a signature or other mechanism that IDENTIFIES who entered into the contract, there is no contract.
....It's just a convenient way to prove you agreed to the terms...
Really? If the computer owner says the cat pushed the mouse button, how does that prove he is a liar? For any contract to be valid, BOTH parties must be unambiguously identified. That is why there is this thing called a notary for important stuff and signatures for the rest. In the case of a so called EULA, how are the parties to an agreement identified? How can it be proved WHO or WHAT pushed a mouse button?
...any state judge can hear a case involving Amazon because they mail tons of stuff to every state...
Are you really saying that if I mail something to another state, I become subject to the laws and courts of that state? Would that not mean that EVERYBODY is subject to almost every state's laws if they merely mail stuff to some other state? That doesn't sound right to me. Also, what happens if a judge makes a decision (such as a default lawsuit) about a citizen of another state? Does that really carry any weight? Will the local sheriff or police arrest a person that simply ignores whatever some out of state judge or legislator decides, especially in a civil case? Can extradition occur in a non-criminal case?
If someone in another state files a lawsuit on say Joe Ordinary and Joe simply ignores every court paper regarding such a lawsuit, what will eventually happen? What if the out of state plaintiff gets an astronomical default judgement, can he ever collect a penny of it from Joe?
....Anyone who buys a computer and puts it on the public Internet is flying their own plane,....
For many here on /. it is apparently an unpleasant notion that nowadays a computer is an appliance, much as any other. The manufacturer of a toaster must ensure that their product doesn't set people's houses on fire or even only randomly turn a piece of bread into charcoal. It seems that computer hardware and especially software is the only commonly purchased product that comes with pages and pages of fine print stating everything its maker is NOT responsible for. If a TV set craps out in its warranty period the maker thereof has to repair or replace it.
If a Windows Computer craps out because it gets some malware, such as the now rampant Conficker worm, neither the hardware maker thereof nor Microsoft has to repair the defective product. In this case, the user of the computer did not do anything other than what the darn thing is meant to be used for. If computers as a whole, including software that runs them, were finally regarded just as most other products, in terms of liability of the makers, there would be a huge incentive to ensure that self-propagating malware would be eliminated. If MS or the manufacturer had to pay for the disinfecting of every Windows computer for at least a year after purchase, malware would soon be reduced to a trickle.
... just asking Joe to collect a few extra sheckles for them and pass it back...
Exactly and what legal right does NY have to force a CA business to be their tax collector?
How does the decision of a NY judge affect anyone in another state? Is the jurisdiction of a state judge not limited to that state?
..but the hundreds of retailers that sell itunes gift cards...
So then tax the sale of the gift cards is all they can do. If Apple sells any item in their NY store, do those customers not already pay sales tax? Since the iTunes store and its servers are in CA, they cannot force iTunes to be their tax collector.
.... it is not worth the hassle to do business in NYS...
I don't see the problem for *any* business not having a physical presence in NY simply *IGNORING* anything coming from the government of that state. What can they possibly do to force some out of state business to become a tax collector for them? Did NY state not try to force Amazon to collect taxes for orders by New York customers? Whatever became of that? Let them figure out how to collect whatever taxes from their citizens, but what rights do they have to force a business in some other state to be their tax collector?
....Because if they do the malware writers will be cranking out "Happy screensaver.scr.sh" and malware like the OSX Codec Trojan...
While it is true that there is no security against user stupidity, a LOT that can be attributed to the fact that Windows is fundamentally insecure. Only in Windows do we see self-propagating malware where no user interaction of any kind is needed for such malware to infect thousands or more computers. There simply are no self-propgating malware for Linux or OSX. If Macs and Linux were saddled with the same stupid users as you claim for Windows, there would be such infected computers, one by one stupid user at a time, but not the rampant epidemic of wild-fire infections seen in the Windows world.
...they WILL throw you in there, no matter how many other people are in the place....
Well, that is how it ought to be. Maybe, in Vermont people don't smoke and deal in certain kinds of molecular structures that have been arbitrarily declared illegal. The laws around here make the purveyors of certain natural growing green things into felons which take precedence in occupying jail space over mere traffic rule offenders.
Maybe they also don't have bleeding heart judges in Vermont that feel sorry if several malefactors have to share a cell in jail. Out here on the west coast the liberal courts have placed strict limits how many inmates are allowed per square foot of jail space.
... stop the damn war on drugs....
I agree with you entirely, especially this part. We pile law upon law and as we do people become more lawless. Too many laws these days are passed for the benefit of special, usually money-laden interests. If Joe Ordinary cannot pay his ARM because the bank jacked up the payment from $1300 to $2600 each month, there is NO government bailout for him. But the greedy bank executives get big bonuses and continue to live their opulent life style and get government welfare.
In Moses time the law was boiled down to ten and Jesus pared that down to two.
...Once you no longer fear loss of that driver's license you have won the battle....
Except around here some drive anyway. The courts cannot put them in jail, because the same courts mandated that the jail can only hold some maximum number. As a result only the really bad criminals end up in jail. Driving without a license is not bad enough to put and keep even a repeat offender in jail. Even stealing a car may not always land a thief in jail for long. I just read that a Federal Court ordered California to let thousands of prisoners out whose crime is MUCH worse than driving without a valid permit. So, for many on the lower socioeconomic scale, fear of loss of driving license is a diminishing threat.
...It seems to be human nature to cheat the system....
That is a sad commentary on humans alright. However, if these tolls and other automobile taxes were ONLY used for roads, bridges, transit and other uses beneficial to motorists, many people would likely be more willing to pay for such things. As it is, in many places the motorists are used as cash cows to fund fat politicians favorite projects, including income redistribution. How much of the red light camera money is used to benefit motorists?
...Especially if you get a 90 suspension or something...
Except around here the jails are so overcrowded that there is barely room for violent criminals. The economically strapped people who cannot afford insurance as mandated by law, get such suspensions and also get their car impounded. They just go to a junk yard and get another clunker and drive without insurance and without a license. The old clunkers are cheaper than the fines and the insurance, even if they could afford either. If they get caught this way even as often as once a month, it is still cheaper to repeat this over and over than pay astronomical insurance rates.
...city fills up its purse much more efficiently ...
That is the biggest problem with this, simply another way to TAX people to pay for more bureaucrats at local governments. We do however need good roads, so toll roads would be OK if they replace some of the gas tax and were mandated to be used ONLY for roads, bridges and other structure cars drive upon. No more money for political fat cats to spend on their favorite pork projects. The power to tax should be removed from politicians and given back to the people who can vote for more taxes if they want to pay more for given projects.
...The culprits are the badly behaved programs....
No, the culprits are the customers who buy the crap that application programmers put out that won't work properly unless a user is an administrator. If nobody bought such garbage, then the vendors would wise up EXTREMELY quickly. Mac users would certainly not buy programs that did not run unless the user were an administrator. That is why there is NO Mac program than requires a user to be an administrator just to RUN a program after an administrator installs it.
...So, instead of a 'Genius Bar', will the MS store have like...a 'Nerd Bar'?...
No, It will be an excuses bar where micronerds will explain that your problem is with hardware not a bug in Microsoft's programming. You will also be directed to edit the registry and other obscure fixes. Also, sales people there will ask at least twice if you REALLY want to make that purchase or rather cancel.
...they eventually figured out that stars work with nuclear processes...
There is evidence that this is not the case either. The fact that the solar corona is almost 1000 times hotter than the surface violates the known fact that heat always flows from a hotter to colder location. If the sun were really heated by a 20+ million degrees thermonuclear reaction, the surface should be much hotter than the corona.
There is also the fact that the sun's mass is not enough to gravitationally oppose the huge outward pressures generated by a thermonuclear reaction at the needed temperatures. Gravity is simply too weak to overcome the strong nuclear and electrical forces that would have to be present in such a thermonuclear reaction furnace.
Then there is the missing neutrino problem. From thermonuclear fusion experiments and bombs, we know what the production rate of associated neutrinos should be for the sun IF it were indeed powered by fusion, as theorized. However, the actual neutrino flux from the sun is only a tiny fraction of what should be measured if fusion were the energy source of the sun. At this point scientists really are back to square one in determining the power source of the sun and similar sized stars.
There is also radar evidence that the sun is not a big gas ball, but actually has a solid iron core, similar to the earth, surrounded by an atmosphere of seething plasma kept hot by an as yet unknown external electrical power grid, in the same way as a metal arc lamp here on earth. There is some evidence that the sun, along with other stars in the spiral arms of our galaxy, is part of a galactic scale electrical power distribution system powered from the center of our galaxy.
....This is a case about whether a software house has the right to restrict what hardware you can use the software on...
No true! Apple is a hardware company which includes OSX as part of their hardware. There is no law that forces them or any company to furnish parts to competitor companies. However, since Apple sells unencumbered copies of OSX to anyone with money, a customer who buys a part, in this case OSX, has the right to do whatever they want with that part legally bought from Apple.
Apple could kill this whole thing by simply no longer selling their parts, in this case OSX, to anybody with money. OSX only gets sold to customers who can prove they have a genuine Mac. Requiring a valid Mac serial number before a sale of any Mac part, including OSX should prevent Pystar from doing their OSX rip-off business. Once the owner of a Mac with a given serial number has gotten their copy from Apple, they cannot buy another one. Apple doesn't have to resort to WGA crap or install codes, but just not sell OSX to anyone but Mac owners. Anyone who wants a legal copy of OSX must buy or already own a Mac. Any non Mac owner can buy a copy for the price of a Mac mini.
...Until you get hit with a a $40 overdraft charge for being a penny short ...
I suppose that would apply only to people who keep their account on the ragged edge of empty. I always try to keep at least $100 cushion in case my arithmetic is a little off.
...As long as the prophecy remains "possible" it cannot be discredited,...
Except that a number of biblical prophecies deal with things that were not possible or even imagined when some very specific, not vague, prophecies were made. Here are two of them:
Jesus Christ predicts that before he returns to Earth there will be a time of trouble such as there has never been before nor will ever be again after that time. That in itself is not something that is outside of the realm of possible. Things had gotten pretty nasty in certain places already in his day. But then he adds, that if those days near the end would not be cut short by his return, everything alive would perish. He was making these statements in the context of human warfare. Only in our modern era does humanity possess the weapons of mass destruction that makes such a scenario possible.
In the last book of the Bible, the book of Revelation, we read of a world dictator who will require every person on earth to have some sort of numerical identifier specifically located on the forehead or on the right hand. This identifier is often referred to as the mark of the beast. Those without such an identifier, we read, will not be able to buy or sell, that is carry on any sort of trade or go shopping. For centuries before our modern computer age, scholars have scratched their heads in puzzlement. They could not conceive how such a thing would be possible. Try to rent a car today at any airport without a credit card. Try to get a job in any modern country without a Social Security number or other centralized identification. I am sure you can see the direction this is all heading. Will we be there in five, 10, 20 or 30 years? One thing is for sure, it is not a question of "if" this will come, but only "when".
...the UN is still utterly WORTHLESS in doing anything but talking...
You are absolutely correct in that. Have you ever considered WHY that is so? Could it be that the UN has no real power? If, or better when, that ever changes, the UN or some future successor thereof will wield full control over much, if not all of the world.
(...Believing God to be a Genie who will WHISK YOU AWAY! from all your problems (much like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz) IS Crazy...)
I certainly agree with that! I don't quite get how you have come to reply to my post with that statement. The Bible is quite clear in many places, that the rule of man upon earth will someday end, to be superseded by the rule of God. It is also quite plain that this rule of God will be exercised through a man, the God-man Jesus Christ. Through all of the history of mankind, it has been amply demonstrated that human beings are incapable of governing themselves and properly taking care of the world that God has given us.
Just before man manages to destroy this planet and themselves completely, God will intervene to prevent the utter destruction of all of mankind. Meanwhile, for those willing to entrust themselves entirely to God, the promise of God today is not to take us out of our troubles and trials, but to give us whatever we need to go through them and come out triumphant on the other side, whether still here in this life or the next.
To those who entrust themselves completely to God through Jesus Christ, the following promise applies: Romans 8:35-39
...The politicians have slowly but surely devalued our money to 1/45th its value in 1933...
That's because what what we call "money" is now intrinsically worthless. For most of human history, the medium of exchange, what we call money had some intrinsic value, because it could not arbitrarily be created without work and effort. In our modern era, whoever has the ability to create money and not go to prison will never go broke. This means that whatever entity does this, reduces the value of whatever money is worth. The stuff we call money is not immune to the laws of supply and demand. The more of a commodity that exists, the less a given unit will be worth. The amount of gold takes to buy a loaf of bread or pay for a night's lodging in an average hotel has not really changed all that much over time.