I was born from catholic parents, I was baptised as a catholic, I was raised as a catholic, I went to a catholic private high-school etc, and I have a very scientific mind.
I cannot be 100% certain that there is no god at all, but what I am 100% certain of is that the "catholic god" does not exist (ironic, isn't it?). Here's the reasoning.
God is supposed to have created everything in 7 days, earth and sky, light and darkness, animals and humans. He would have made the humans "intelligent" and make them look like him, so we should expect God to stand on 2 feet, have 2 arms, 10 fingers, etc.
Evolution is indeed just a theory, so we can't use it to refute the creationist theory. But we can look at the facts on which the evolution theory is based. We today are Homo Sapiens Sapiens (not a typo, it's really a double-Sapiens), and we would believe that the catholic god looks like a Homo Sapiens Sapiens himself, since we look like him. However, millions of years ago, there were no Homo Sapiens Sapiens, there were Neaderthals. Let's not assume we evolve from them, since we're not allowed to use the evolution theory. So, either the catholic god wasn't there "from the start" and created the Homo Sapiens Sapiens after the Neanderthals, or the catholic god looks like a Neanderthal, created the Neanderthals, and Homo Sapiens Sapiens evolved from there (a mix of both theories).
BUT, long before the Neanderthals walk the Earth, there were dinosaurs. At the time of dinosaurs, there were no Homo spieces, there were monkeys. So either the catholic god wasn't there "from the start" and created the Homo spieces (and sub-spieces) after the dinosaurs and the monkeys, or the catholic god looks like either a dinosaur or a monkey, and we evolved from there.
And it keeps going like that until we reach the real beginning of time.
So, even without the theory of evolution, we know for a fact that animals and dinosaurs have been walking on this Earth long before the first human being. Whichever way you look at it, the book of Genesis is just plain wrong. Either god didn't create everything from the beginning, or he didn't do it in 7 days (it took millions of years for Homo Sapiens Sapiens to be here), or he doesn't look like a human being at all.
I don't know enough about other variations of Christianity or about other religions to know if the same kind of reasoning applies, but in my mind, there is no god.
I would still use Mozilla if it could handle extensions properly. By handling, I mean the ability to uninstall any extension at any time, the new Firefox Extension Manager is wonderful. Port it to Mozilla please.
I had this feeling too for a while when I was in college and played loads of chess with friends. Everytime I saw a checkered floor (and god knows there are a lot of them), I was seeing all the knight moves I could do and how I could capture that guy over there.
I almost got into loads of trouble a couple of years ago after playing to much of Baldur's Gate II. Having Yoshimo (a thief) drink ability potions and then trying to pickpocket everybody in town, with the quicksave and quickload features for when you get caught, back in the real life I thought several times "Hmmm... I wonder what he has in his pockets, if he finds out I'll just quickload", to then realize close to the last minute that you can't quickload out of life (or can you?)
Then maybe the guy shouldn't have been using a laser in such situations. The truth is that a blinded pilot constitutes a significant danger to the public.
If using a laser pointer to do as it was advertized when you bought it ("You can point at stars in the sky") is considered a "significant danger to the public", then maybe you should consider your whole firearm policy. After all, doing what you are supposed to do with a gun ("You can shoot people with this") is also a significant danger to the public, isn't it?
How can you defend that guy? He blinded pilots on landing,
I'm not defending a guy that blinds pilots on landing. That's not what the article I mentioned is about. The guy "shined" a jet what was going over his house. The article even mentions he was pointing stars. There are gadgets that let you do starpointing. But then, if a jet happens to cross the line between you and the star you're currently pointing, all of a sudden you're a terrorist.
Check your sources before you go trolling anonymously.
China has "got to start putting people in jail" to show it is serious about cracking down on widespread counterfeiting and piracy that costs U.S. companies billions of dollars in lost sales every year, a top Bush administration official said.
And of course, China has a real incentive of making sure U.S. companies don't lose money... I mean... of course, let's all bow down to Dubya, the great leader of Earth.
And remember the multiple-angle button on the DVD players? Who really thinks that this button was designed for the sports industry?
When they want to sell the DVD player, they talk about that button a lot, but I've yet to find a use for it... Are there really movies that offer multiple angles? Which ones (both porn and non-porn)? I never, ever saw a multiple-angle enabled movie (or never noticed it...).
In time people can be migrated over to a new format..
Look at what happend to vinyl and CD's..
People can be migrated to a new format if people see a reason to. CD's are much better thatn vinyls (in 99% of the cases... the only current use of vinyls I can think of is scratching by DJ's).
This new 'standard' brings no advantage for the customer, and if it costs even a single cent more, then the average american customer won't buy it.
It'd also be nice to know exactly when in the video are those freezes and bsod... I don't feel like watching an 80 minutes pro-Microsoft video just to see that...
Precisely. The confirmation dialog box has become so common now that clicking "yes" or "ok" or something similar has become a pavlovian response for many.
This is oh so true. I can't count how many times my mother in law came to me saying that her computer had a problem and popped an error, then when I ask her what was the error message, she says "I don't know, I didn't read it, I just clicked on Yes to make it go away"... *sigh*
People should need to get a licence in order to use a computer.
First off we should decree 11! seconds per year. A new second would therefore be about 0.78 old seconds (60*60*24*365/11! ~= 0.78). That close enough so that people wouldn't be too confused.
Did you think about all those kids who play hide-and-seek... the seeking kid will have a huge advantage now since counting to 30 will be 22% faster...
The imperial system offers great approximation and visualization advantages. It's based on twos and threes.
The imperial system offers great approximation alright, but sometimes an approximation just isn't enough.
When you ask how tall I am, I'll say 5'10" and you won't really care if it's actually 5'11". However, when I buy something for which the price is based on measures (e.g. yarn by the yard), you better not use your arm to approximate a yard and end up giving me only 2 feet.
Our whole numeric system is based on 10's (except for computers), everybody learns to count in 10's, why is it so hard to measure in 10's?
Not only that, I bet his wife belongs to the administrator group aswell. There are far too many people who have the wrong user rights.
Sometimes, it unfortunately just *has* to be that way. I run Linux at home, use Firefox as a browser, OOo as an office suite, etc.
My wife's computer is a dual-boot Win98/WinXP. We won't even talk about user/admin on Win98, but she does have an admin account on WinXP. She uses her computer mostly for web-browsing, email and games. Games... that's the part that hurts. In order to play some games, you have to have Windows (and Win98 for older games... Myst and Riven don't even run on XP). And 99% of games require an admin account for some reason.
She does use Firefox for a browser though, on both Windows, so it's not *that* bad.
However, I did plan for the worst. Her Win98 partition serves only for Myst/Riven, the minute she finishes Riven, out goes Win98. And her WinXP partition is only for Firefox, MSN and a few games. If it get infested by anything, I won't go through the trouble of cleaning spyware, sometimes it's faster to format/reinstall.
Plus, I block everything from her computer in the router so nothing but Firefox and MSN goes through from her computer.
So yes, I am a geek who knows enough to use Linux, yet I let my wife use Windows with an admin account... it's all about knowing that Windows machine are only temporary and she's aware that it can be reformatted anytime.
That's what apple did when my iPod died. What you describe is barely acceptable support.
I totally agree. I once bought a HP printer from the store, and it went defect about 2 weeks later. When I called HP to tell them, they shipped me a new printer through Purolator right away and asked me to give the broken printer to the delivery guy when I received the new one, which I did about 48 hours later. That is good service.
Taking hints from IE designers are like taking hints on car design from the designers of the Pinto. Sure, they might have gotten alot right, but there was that one problem...
I particularly like this part of the article :
Red herrings and over-rated concepts [...] Security and Stability [...]
So while viruses, hacks, and crashes are still a popular topic of discussion for software products, better browsers involve getting past these basic requirements.
[...]
However the goal of browser design should be to minimize the impact of these things, and move on to investing as much energy as possible towards actually improving people's ability to use the web.
That's totally IE's mentality. It's insecure alright. Let's not fix it, let's just minimize the impact and keep on adding "cool" features.
Slashdot Mirror
XBOX - 9,400,000
You are aware that you are citing stats that are about 18 months old, right?
I cannot be 100% certain that there is no god at all, but what I am 100% certain of is that the "catholic god" does not exist (ironic, isn't it?). Here's the reasoning.
God is supposed to have created everything in 7 days, earth and sky, light and darkness, animals and humans. He would have made the humans "intelligent" and make them look like him, so we should expect God to stand on 2 feet, have 2 arms, 10 fingers, etc.
Evolution is indeed just a theory, so we can't use it to refute the creationist theory. But we can look at the facts on which the evolution theory is based. We today are Homo Sapiens Sapiens (not a typo, it's really a double-Sapiens), and we would believe that the catholic god looks like a Homo Sapiens Sapiens himself, since we look like him. However, millions of years ago, there were no Homo Sapiens Sapiens, there were Neaderthals. Let's not assume we evolve from them, since we're not allowed to use the evolution theory. So, either the catholic god wasn't there "from the start" and created the Homo Sapiens Sapiens after the Neanderthals, or the catholic god looks like a Neanderthal, created the Neanderthals, and Homo Sapiens Sapiens evolved from there (a mix of both theories).
BUT , long before the Neanderthals walk the Earth, there were dinosaurs. At the time of dinosaurs, there were no Homo spieces, there were monkeys. So either the catholic god wasn't there "from the start" and created the Homo spieces (and sub-spieces) after the dinosaurs and the monkeys, or the catholic god looks like either a dinosaur or a monkey, and we evolved from there.
And it keeps going like that until we reach the real beginning of time.
So, even without the theory of evolution, we know for a fact that animals and dinosaurs have been walking on this Earth long before the first human being. Whichever way you look at it, the book of Genesis is just plain wrong. Either god didn't create everything from the beginning, or he didn't do it in 7 days (it took millions of years for Homo Sapiens Sapiens to be here), or he doesn't look like a human being at all.
I don't know enough about other variations of Christianity or about other religions to know if the same kind of reasoning applies, but in my mind, there is no god.
I would still use Mozilla if it could handle extensions properly. By handling, I mean the ability to uninstall any extension at any time, the new Firefox Extension Manager is wonderful. Port it to Mozilla please.
I think one of the best uses of BitTorrent is the distribution of Linux. I know Mandrake uses BitTorrent, probably other distros do too.
I had this feeling too for a while when I was in college and played loads of chess with friends. Everytime I saw a checkered floor (and god knows there are a lot of them), I was seeing all the knight moves I could do and how I could capture that guy over there.
I almost got into loads of trouble a couple of years ago after playing to much of Baldur's Gate II. Having Yoshimo (a thief) drink ability potions and then trying to pickpocket everybody in town, with the quicksave and quickload features for when you get caught, back in the real life I thought several times "Hmmm... I wonder what he has in his pockets, if he finds out I'll just quickload", to then realize close to the last minute that you can't quickload out of life (or can you?)
If using a laser pointer to do as it was advertized when you bought it ("You can point at stars in the sky") is considered a "significant danger to the public", then maybe you should consider your whole firearm policy. After all, doing what you are supposed to do with a gun ("You can shoot people with this") is also a significant danger to the public, isn't it?
I'm not defending a guy that blinds pilots on landing. That's not what the article I mentioned is about. The guy "shined" a jet what was going over his house. The article even mentions he was pointing stars. There are gadgets that let you do starpointing. But then, if a jet happens to cross the line between you and the star you're currently pointing, all of a sudden you're a terrorist.
Check your sources before you go trolling anonymously.
Pothead: "Hey guys, what are you in for?"
Pirate: "20 years. The new Britney album."
Dad: "25 years. I stargazed with my kid."
Way to go America!
And of course, China has a real incentive of making sure U.S. companies don't lose money... I mean... of course, let's all bow down to Dubya, the great leader of Earth.
When they want to sell the DVD player, they talk about that button a lot, but I've yet to find a use for it... Are there really movies that offer multiple angles? Which ones (both porn and non-porn)? I never, ever saw a multiple-angle enabled movie (or never noticed it...).
People can be migrated to a new format if people see a reason to. CD's are much better thatn vinyls (in 99% of the cases... the only current use of vinyls I can think of is scratching by DJ's).
This new 'standard' brings no advantage for the customer, and if it costs even a single cent more, then the average american customer won't buy it.
It'd also be nice to know exactly when in the video are those freezes and bsod... I don't feel like watching an 80 minutes pro-Microsoft video just to see that...
I'd love to get that extension that replaces the throbber by word-learning stuff, but those links don't work. Anyone has a mirror or something?
This is oh so true. I can't count how many times my mother in law came to me saying that her computer had a problem and popped an error, then when I ask her what was the error message, she says "I don't know, I didn't read it, I just clicked on Yes to make it go away"... *sigh*
People should need to get a licence in order to use a computer.
If you really consider Fox News and CNN to be the best, most accurate information in the world, I truly pity you.
He also said : Apache2 works way better on Windows.
Did you think about all those kids who play hide-and-seek... the seeking kid will have a huge advantage now since counting to 30 will be 22% faster...
WILL SOMEONE THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!
The imperial system offers great approximation alright, but sometimes an approximation just isn't enough.
When you ask how tall I am, I'll say 5'10" and you won't really care if it's actually 5'11". However, when I buy something for which the price is based on measures (e.g. yarn by the yard), you better not use your arm to approximate a yard and end up giving me only 2 feet.
Our whole numeric system is based on 10's (except for computers), everybody learns to count in 10's, why is it so hard to measure in 10's?
Sometimes, it unfortunately just *has* to be that way. I run Linux at home, use Firefox as a browser, OOo as an office suite, etc.
My wife's computer is a dual-boot Win98/WinXP. We won't even talk about user/admin on Win98, but she does have an admin account on WinXP. She uses her computer mostly for web-browsing, email and games. Games... that's the part that hurts. In order to play some games, you have to have Windows (and Win98 for older games... Myst and Riven don't even run on XP). And 99% of games require an admin account for some reason.
She does use Firefox for a browser though, on both Windows, so it's not *that* bad.
However, I did plan for the worst. Her Win98 partition serves only for Myst/Riven, the minute she finishes Riven, out goes Win98. And her WinXP partition is only for Firefox, MSN and a few games. If it get infested by anything, I won't go through the trouble of cleaning spyware, sometimes it's faster to format/reinstall.
Plus, I block everything from her computer in the router so nothing but Firefox and MSN goes through from her computer.
So yes, I am a geek who knows enough to use Linux, yet I let my wife use Windows with an admin account... it's all about knowing that Windows machine are only temporary and she's aware that it can be reformatted anytime.
The SFX team provided a page for misspelled names and typos.
They're sorted in alphabetical order of the last name, so it won't take that long... took me only a minute... mostly waiting for Acrobat to load.
I totally agree. I once bought a HP printer from the store, and it went defect about 2 weeks later. When I called HP to tell them, they shipped me a new printer through Purolator right away and asked me to give the broken printer to the delivery guy when I received the new one, which I did about 48 hours later. That is good service.
I particularly like this part of the article :
Red herrings and over-rated concepts
[...]
Security and Stability
[...]
So while viruses, hacks, and crashes are still a popular topic of discussion for software products, better browsers involve getting past these basic requirements.
[...]
However the goal of browser design should be to minimize the impact of these things, and move on to investing as much energy as possible towards actually improving people's ability to use the web.
That's totally IE's mentality. It's insecure alright. Let's not fix it, let's just minimize the impact and keep on adding "cool" features.