No, it's not. Mormons deny the doctrine of the trinity [1], they profess that there are sins the blood of Christ is incapable of paying for [2], they deny the existence of hell [3], and they deny the eternity and uniqueness of the Judeo-Christian God [4]. These are all basic tenets that have been fundamental to defining "what is a Christian?" ever since the question was first asked in the first couple centuries A.D. No Christian church accepts the unique doctrines that Mormonism teaches [5][6].
Just as it is incorrect for non-Hindus to say, "This is the authoritative word on what is and what is not Hinduism," (or non-Muslims for Islam, or non-Atheists for Atheism, or what have you), it is incorrect for non-Christians to say, "This doctrine over here is Christian!"
malicious, frivolous litigation, slander, and harassment. That's evil
Yes it is - but be careful that you don't list seeks to impose his values on others as an evil characteristic alongside the others you mentioned. Seeking to impose our values (honesty, forthrightness) on another (Jack Thompson) is what this disbarment case is all about. The imposition of values of ethics, morals, religion, tolerance, what have you, onto others is done every day by every person of every culture. Even saying, "You can't force your values on me!" is an assertion of our value of freedom against another's wish to compel us.
I'm not saying that you have called seeks to impose his values on others "evil," just a caveat.
Mars. Sure, we've sent Rovers there and the like, but I'm sure there is much more research that can be done when there are actual people present.
True; as von Braun famously said, "Man is the best computer we can put aboard a spacecraft, and the only one that can be mass produced with unskilled labor." But consider advances in other scientific fields that may give us an advantage: with upcoming VR technologies, we may no longer need to strap a scientist into a rocket in order to put human minds on Mars.
Take a look at the kind of flight-simulation technology that exists to train pilots on expensive and/or high-risk aircraft (from the F-22 to the A380). Combine it with a high-bandwidth comm channel to sensors on the Red Planet (this would be the hardest part to develop? I don't know what the current state of the art is for communicating with extraterrestrial devices - what kind of bandwidth do the Mars rovers pull?), and you could put scientific minds in an environment that's immersive enough to make research on Mars much more spontaneous and adaptive than it is now.
Advantages to this approach would include the ability to grant any trained scientist access to a Martian research lab, regardless of their state of health - you don't have to be trained as an astronaut and make the four-month journey through cosmic rays, sir, just step into this VR booth. The public would also probably be more accepting of a catastrophic mission failure, since it would come at the cost of no human lives.
Sure, eventually a nation will want to put boots on the ground out there as a PR victory, but increasingly, there will be nothing a human could do as a physical presence on Mars that they couldn't accomplish just as easily from Mission Control.
Healthcare being one of the cheapest buyers of IT--they skimp because the budgets goto the Physicians' salaries. This needs to change.
The reason physicians' salaries are so high is primarily twofold:
1) Due to the sue-happy, nothing-is-my-own-responsibility culture of the US, malpractice insurance rates are stratospheric, and salaries must rise to compensate. Nevada recently had its only remaining Level I trauma center close its doors because insurance rates were too high; the average US neurosurgeon gets sued more than once every three years, with an average suit resolution time of over three years per case - meaning that practicing neurosurgery in the US is a process of having suit upon suit piled against you until you are forced out of business; because of the miraculous state of western medicine, individuals think that if the doctor is doing what he should, there's no way they shouldn't be totally and instantly cured - suing your doctor is seen as the only sensible recourse to an "undesired outcome." Insuring against inevitable lawsuits is becoming an impossible prospect, and the liability insurance companies are taking it out on the wallets of their clients - the physicians. (Yet I personally know a malpractice attorney who somehow has the balls to claim that 'only bad doctors get sued'...)
2) Physicians, by-and-large, start their practice from a default state of deep debt, since medical school is such a lengthy, specialized, and advanced (hence, expensive) process - see the state of modern medicine, above. It takes not only special intelligence, but special dedication to know enough and be compassionate enough to treat the mysterious, complicated health issues of people who are only going to sue you by way of thanks. Medicine is no longer even remotely the "I got into it because I wanted to get rich" profession it used to be stereotyped as. Most physicians I know are making ends meet, nothing more (then again, most physicians I know are ER doctors, who only ever see a dime from three out of every ten patients they treat).
If you want to lower physician salaries, one of these situations has to change. Doctors aren't 'lining their pockets' - there's no room for them to make a living except to have high salaries, with conditions the way they are. I don't see medical school getting any cheaper in the future - on the contrary, it will only become more advanced, more specialized, and hence, lengthier and more expensive. That means we must reverse condition 1. Trying to drive down physician salaries without impacting medical liability insurance rates will leave us all stranded in our living rooms, band-aiding ourselves because there's no hospital to go to.
Re:You need to work it out...
on
IT and Divorce?
·
· Score: 5, Funny
These days, people divorce because they argue too much. Or because "the spice" is gone.
But "the spice" must flow! The entire galactic economy could collapse, nevermind a single marriage!
In time, the tree of touch-screen menus through which one must navigate in order to reach the "Shut up, I'm ready to pay now" button will include such intermediate screens as:
"Would you like to add a 2lb bag of M&M's to your purchase? YES/NO"
*no*
"Would you like to add a tin of TrendyMints to your purchase? YES/NO"
*no*
"Special! This week only! See the explosive secret that shocked Hollywood - as celebrities' nightmares come true! Read it now in CelebMag, only [SPECIAL PRICE!]$7.83 with your existing purchase! YES/NO"
Combine the already-extant technologies of pervasive customer-preference tracking and vending-style dispensing of your impulse buys, and their revenue streams jump right back up, and the only price paid is the infuriation of the customer who just wants to buy his bloody breakfast cereal and leave.
Does anyone know why they've got artwork for, say, Thanksgiving every single year, and some seemingly off-mainstream ones (Persian New Year, e.g.), but they've not ever done Christmas or Chanukah? All they have is some "holiday" mumbo-jumbo with snowmen. Is this yet another win for the politically correct crowd, or is something less sinister at work?
If you have to ask, then you won't understand. But since you ask why and I am taking that as you believe everything, so I am going to say this: "Tesen is always right."
Tes
No, no, you missed the subtlety of my point. Think about it for a minute: "Question everything." "Why?" It's the same tongue-in-cheek response one should give whenever confronted with a bumper sticker ordering you to Question Authority.
The more out of line your mods, the lowing your mod weight would become.
The problem with that system is that it will even more quickly marginalize non-mainstream opinions. Just because you disagree with the majority doesn't make your opinion less valuable - in fact sometimes quite the opposite.
ok, a slam on Bush. Fair enough. However what I was asking for was information, specifically, (if you'll read, rather than seeing the B-word and getting all bent out of shape) information on the US Senate's treatment of this same piece of legislation.
Depending on how fast a connection you're offering, there are enough voice-via-Internet clients out there that T-Mobile's offer could very well count for phone service.
On the other hand, it looks like I may fit the profile pretty well. Grandiose sense of my own self worth... check, check, check... I pity the poor fools who are working for me - fools who, also, are me.
Okay, we all enjoy the self-righteous feeling of anger we get when we see the little man with his mouth taped over. But this doesn't qualify as "censorship" - it's a business decision taken by a publicly-held company, not Big Brother cracking down on what you can or cannot say.
The government telling you you're not allowed to say certain things, under penalty of law: censorship.
A company deciding it's not going to do business with another (in this case, a press) company: not censorship.
The bottom line here is, if a consumer does not like the actions that a corporation is taking, then they can vote with their money by using a competing service.
Your thoughts on private censorship vs. government censorship are dead-on; however, when it comes to "using a competing service," that can be hard to do for some of us. Here in Podunk, GA, USA the utilities have a monopoly by and large in their respective fields. It's a "use-us-or-don't-use-anyone-at-all" kind of deal.
But then again, is this the right context to look at Internet access? Has the Web truly become a utility as important as water or power? In centuries past even running water was considered a "luxury" and not a necessity; have we in the last decade added bitslinging to our society's list of must-haves?
Slashdot Mirror
No, it's not. Mormons deny the doctrine of the trinity [1], they profess that there are sins the blood of Christ is incapable of paying for [2], they deny the existence of hell [3], and they deny the eternity and uniqueness of the Judeo-Christian God [4]. These are all basic tenets that have been fundamental to defining "what is a Christian?" ever since the question was first asked in the first couple centuries A.D. No Christian church accepts the unique doctrines that Mormonism teaches [5] [6].
Just as it is incorrect for non-Hindus to say, "This is the authoritative word on what is and what is not Hinduism," (or non-Muslims for Islam, or non-Atheists for Atheism, or what have you), it is incorrect for non-Christians to say, "This doctrine over here is Christian!"
8,000... is only half of what it was five years ago.
This seems to imply that five years ago [2002-2003], there were twice as many as 8,000 [16,000].
In 2003-04 -- the high point of this decade -- 14,185 students were awarded bachelors degrees in computer science...
This on the other hand seems to imply that four years ago, ~14,000 was the highest figure in the last ten years.
Huh?
malicious, frivolous litigation, slander, and harassment. That's evil
Yes it is - but be careful that you don't list seeks to impose his values on others as an evil characteristic alongside the others you mentioned. Seeking to impose our values (honesty, forthrightness) on another (Jack Thompson) is what this disbarment case is all about. The imposition of values of ethics, morals, religion, tolerance, what have you, onto others is done every day by every person of every culture. Even saying, "You can't force your values on me!" is an assertion of our value of freedom against another's wish to compel us.
I'm not saying that you have called seeks to impose his values on others "evil," just a caveat.
Mars. Sure, we've sent Rovers there and the like, but I'm sure there is much more research that can be done when there are actual people present.
True; as von Braun famously said, "Man is the best computer we can put aboard a spacecraft, and the only one that can be mass produced with unskilled labor." But consider advances in other scientific fields that may give us an advantage: with upcoming VR technologies, we may no longer need to strap a scientist into a rocket in order to put human minds on Mars.
Take a look at the kind of flight-simulation technology that exists to train pilots on expensive and/or high-risk aircraft (from the F-22 to the A380). Combine it with a high-bandwidth comm channel to sensors on the Red Planet (this would be the hardest part to develop? I don't know what the current state of the art is for communicating with extraterrestrial devices - what kind of bandwidth do the Mars rovers pull?), and you could put scientific minds in an environment that's immersive enough to make research on Mars much more spontaneous and adaptive than it is now.
Advantages to this approach would include the ability to grant any trained scientist access to a Martian research lab, regardless of their state of health - you don't have to be trained as an astronaut and make the four-month journey through cosmic rays, sir, just step into this VR booth. The public would also probably be more accepting of a catastrophic mission failure, since it would come at the cost of no human lives.
Sure, eventually a nation will want to put boots on the ground out there as a PR victory, but increasingly, there will be nothing a human could do as a physical presence on Mars that they couldn't accomplish just as easily from Mission Control.
Precisely my thoughts.
.it... "Hey, I <cough> found this really neat blog that speaks to us as Italians."
Step 1: rent space on an offshore server
Step 2: encrypt your sessions
Step 3: ???
Step 4: blogit!
You can pass around a foreign URL just as easily as a
Ought not a Nobel Peace Prize winner practice what he preaches?
Healthcare being one of the cheapest buyers of IT--they skimp because the budgets goto the Physicians' salaries. This needs to change.
The reason physicians' salaries are so high is primarily twofold:
1) Due to the sue-happy, nothing-is-my-own-responsibility culture of the US, malpractice insurance rates are stratospheric, and salaries must rise to compensate. Nevada recently had its only remaining Level I trauma center close its doors because insurance rates were too high; the average US neurosurgeon gets sued more than once every three years, with an average suit resolution time of over three years per case - meaning that practicing neurosurgery in the US is a process of having suit upon suit piled against you until you are forced out of business; because of the miraculous state of western medicine, individuals think that if the doctor is doing what he should, there's no way they shouldn't be totally and instantly cured - suing your doctor is seen as the only sensible recourse to an "undesired outcome." Insuring against inevitable lawsuits is becoming an impossible prospect, and the liability insurance companies are taking it out on the wallets of their clients - the physicians. (Yet I personally know a malpractice attorney who somehow has the balls to claim that 'only bad doctors get sued'...)
2) Physicians, by-and-large, start their practice from a default state of deep debt, since medical school is such a lengthy, specialized, and advanced (hence, expensive) process - see the state of modern medicine, above. It takes not only special intelligence, but special dedication to know enough and be compassionate enough to treat the mysterious, complicated health issues of people who are only going to sue you by way of thanks. Medicine is no longer even remotely the "I got into it because I wanted to get rich" profession it used to be stereotyped as. Most physicians I know are making ends meet, nothing more (then again, most physicians I know are ER doctors, who only ever see a dime from three out of every ten patients they treat).
If you want to lower physician salaries, one of these situations has to change. Doctors aren't 'lining their pockets' - there's no room for them to make a living except to have high salaries, with conditions the way they are. I don't see medical school getting any cheaper in the future - on the contrary, it will only become more advanced, more specialized, and hence, lengthier and more expensive. That means we must reverse condition 1. Trying to drive down physician salaries without impacting medical liability insurance rates will leave us all stranded in our living rooms, band-aiding ourselves because there's no hospital to go to.
These days, people divorce because they argue too much. Or because "the spice" is gone.
But "the spice" must flow! The entire galactic economy could collapse, nevermind a single marriage!
In time, the tree of touch-screen menus through which one must navigate in order to reach the "Shut up, I'm ready to pay now" button will include such intermediate screens as:
"Would you like to add a 2lb bag of M&M's to your purchase? YES/NO"
*no*
"Would you like to add a tin of TrendyMints to your purchase? YES/NO"
*no*
"Special! This week only! See the explosive secret that shocked Hollywood - as celebrities' nightmares come true! Read it now in CelebMag, only [SPECIAL PRICE!]$7.83 with your existing purchase! YES/NO"
Combine the already-extant technologies of pervasive customer-preference tracking and vending-style dispensing of your impulse buys, and their revenue streams jump right back up, and the only price paid is the infuriation of the customer who just wants to buy his bloody breakfast cereal and leave.
Does anyone know why they've got artwork for, say, Thanksgiving every single year, and some seemingly off-mainstream ones (Persian New Year, e.g.), but they've not ever done Christmas or Chanukah? All they have is some "holiday" mumbo-jumbo with snowmen. Is this yet another win for the politically correct crowd, or is something less sinister at work?
Are we still talking about this?
Why?
If you have to ask, then you won't understand. But since you ask why and I am taking that as you believe everything, so I am going to say this: "Tesen is always right."
Tes
No, no, you missed the subtlety of my point. Think about it for a minute: "Question everything." "Why?" It's the same tongue-in-cheek response one should give whenever confronted with a bumper sticker ordering you to Question Authority.
Question everything!
Why?
The more out of line your mods, the lowing your mod weight would become.
The problem with that system is that it will even more quickly marginalize non-mainstream opinions. Just because you disagree with the majority doesn't make your opinion less valuable - in fact sometimes quite the opposite.
Some of them do...
ok, a slam on Bush. Fair enough. However what I was asking for was information, specifically, (if you'll read, rather than seeing the B-word and getting all bent out of shape) information on the US Senate's treatment of this same piece of legislation.
What's the next step? It passed the house; has the US Senate already given approval? What about the possibility (however slim) of a veto?
You know, there are plenty of games being made for profit right now. The vast majority of them are horrible, too.
Depending on how fast a connection you're offering, there are enough voice-via-Internet clients out there that T-Mobile's offer could very well count for phone service.
August 24, 2005:
10-year anniversary of Windows 95
1,926-year anniversary of the Vesuvius eruption.
Which caused more destruction, is the big question?
I'm self-employed, you insensetive clod!
On the other hand, it looks like I may fit the profile pretty well. Grandiose sense of my own self worth... check, check, check... I pity the poor fools who are working for me - fools who, also, are me.
Okay, we all enjoy the self-righteous feeling of anger we get when we see the little man with his mouth taped over. But this doesn't qualify as "censorship" - it's a business decision taken by a publicly-held company, not Big Brother cracking down on what you can or cannot say.
The government telling you you're not allowed to say certain things, under penalty of law: censorship.
A company deciding it's not going to do business with another (in this case, a press) company: not censorship.
"A company cannot be allowed to profit from deceit."
The US Government said that? With a straight face?
"I wonder if the Google campus is missing too?"
As kevcol pointed out, you can clearly see their campus - in fact, arguably it's more clear that Google's own version of the same spot.
The bottom line here is, if a consumer does not like the actions that a corporation is taking, then they can vote with their money by using a competing service.
Your thoughts on private censorship vs. government censorship are dead-on; however, when it comes to "using a competing service," that can be hard to do for some of us. Here in Podunk, GA, USA the utilities have a monopoly by and large in their respective fields. It's a "use-us-or-don't-use-anyone-at-all" kind of deal.
But then again, is this the right context to look at Internet access? Has the Web truly become a utility as important as water or power? In centuries past even running water was considered a "luxury" and not a necessity; have we in the last decade added bitslinging to our society's list of must-haves?