because Christians actually do a heck of a lot of good in the world as well (www.tearfund.org) (www.christianaid.org) despite what your dawkinist convictions have led you to believe whearas scientology is stuck up its own ass?
I judge neither organization (nor any other, nor any individual) by what they do to or with the willing; I judge them by what they do to the unwilling. You understand the distinction?
Would you really view the two prospects with equal concern?
I certainly would; I have spent years living in India; your view of "liberal Hinduism" as a positive force is not one I would share. Hindus bring every bit as dangerous cultural baggage as do Muslims, and for many of the same reasons. That includes genital mutilation, murder by stoning and other types of crowd-inflicted deadly force, female foeticide, arbitrary and vicious classing, "untouchables".... to experience you putting Hinduism up as some kind of shining light of religion is simply to experience you revealing your extreme ignorance.
If you do, then I wash my hands of you
Well, Mr. AC, It appears I'm having a little trouble getting worked up over that. I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me.:-)
His argument is that Christians have not infiltrated the system because they ARE the system. No need to infiltrate your own home.
The system was designed by deists, for the most part, and designed to not be religious at all. Infiltration has indeed occurred, but it is the religious who have done the infiltrating. Much of the objectionable religious material and programs that we have seen have arise under government auspices has occurred in the last century or so. Blue laws and "In god we trust" in the 1800s, "one nation under god" in the 1900s, "faith-based inititives" in the 2000s, and so forth.
...truly bad SF with the good bits plagerised from the ramblings of someone writing during psychotic episodes in Chicago in the 1930s
Honestly, I could just as easily have written "truly bad SF with the good bits plagerised from the ramblings of someone writing during psychotic episodes in the middle east in the 300s" with regard for the bible. Unless you are arguing that age alone somehow imparts validity, a presumption I cannot go along with.
The way they treat women in childbirth and the mentally ill is truly evil - the most fanatical of religions at least look after their own when they are in trouble.
Yes? Consider, then: Christian scientists. Mayans. Voodooists. Christian exorcists. Islamists. Naturopaths. Do these not also make you shudder at the treatment of mentally ill, pregnant, and even those with more conventional illnesses? What about the sacrifice of healthy people to the gods? What about the handling of poisonous reptiles? What about "deprogramming" (and "programming")? What about female clititordectomies (AKA "female circumcision", which it actually is not)? What about burning women alive for adultry? What about stonings and similar religiously recommended treatments for such maladies as... disagreement? Are these not facets of non-scientological religion we should be just as wary of?
Again, I do not defend the actions of Scientologists, but I continue to fail to see how they are acting differently from many other religions in any way such that we should really be concerned about them, as opposed to religion in general. Also, the way that many religions "look after their own" mostly makes me shudder with dismay.
Real religions are generally predicated on openness.
Really? So you are contending that the Catholic Church is not a "real religion", because it agressively hides much (paintings, statues, philosophical and theological writings, histories and more) away from anyone but the uppermost ranks of the church heirarchy, for example in the Vatican library? In your view, any religion that hides theological "secrets" at one level at the expense of another level, then, is invalid - just... what, a club? A public-service organization? A lodge?
To be honest, I was unaware that "openness" was a criteria for religion. I'm not sure that you would be able to back that up, other than as a personal metric of your own. Where are your references for such a metric as a general use one in determining what is a religion, and what is not?
Is the Bible trademarked and kept out of the hands of 'unbelievers'? No.
Well, the KJ NT/OT bible isn't, I agree. Nor are all scientology texts. But many religious (and non-religious) artworks and writings are, in fact, kept out of the hands of not only unbelievers, and some also away from rank-and-file church members - by the Catholic church, for one for-instance. I'm afraid you're trying to make a distinction in disfavor of scientology that doesn't exist. They're not doing anything in particular that other religions don't do in terms of behavior in this world, as far as I can see.
Have you heard about recent Catholic church activities in charging parishoners thousands of dollars in order to be "Super-Ultra Christians rank 10"? No?
Yes. It's called "selling indulgences" and has been a staple behavior of the Catholics for centuries. And of course there is the ritual response of "bless you" for giving to most any Christian church. And then there are the politics inherent in rising upwards through any large structured organization, Christian organized religions certainly not excepted in any way. And of course, money is simply a placeholder for time and work, and many religions demand payment more directly than money, much of Christianity included. There is also tithing as practiced by some Christian churches. Some require missionary work. In any case, there is certainly no shortage of examples of Christians exchanging various advancements and other issues and items of perceived vallue in return for the (relatively) mundane currency of land, time, money, edifice, artifice, and so forth.
But the same thing goes on in Scientology.
Well, yes. That was my point.
You end up having to pay thousands of dollars in order to advance through the OT levels.
And this is significant to you because... ??? I do not see what the problem is when people are willing to pay. It is only when religious behaviours become a matter of coercion - such as the Christian ethics of single spouses, heterosexuality, not working on Sunday, putting religious indoctrination on currency supposedly meant for people of all, or no, religion - that they concern me. What someone does of their own free will is of no concern at all to me, unless they do it to others. What they do to themselves is no problem. That is obviously their choice, and I would argue, just as obviously, their right.
Hubbard was a hack writer, and he created a hack cult.
Well, I'm not at all certain that the authors of the bible or the quran managed to avoid this level of performance. There are certainly passages in both that reek of the very poorest of writing skills, barely veiled (sometimes not veiled at all) misogyny, complete lack of rational - not to mention scientific - underpinnings, and numerous conflicting plot elements (genealogical, temporal, and more.)
I remain unconvinced of any salient difference of the type being put forth here. Scientology is a younger religion; it espouses its own relatively unique faith-based ideas. It has yet to become significantly violent or succeed at entrenching its precepts as formal social coercion, that is, as law. Other than that, it seems little different from Christianity or Islam.
So, your argument is that because Christian teachings are made to appear on banknotes, that this is evidence that atheists have influence where they previously didn't? That's what infiltration would mean in the context of modification of banknotes from not having such a teaching, to having such a teaching, which is what happened.
I'm afraid I'm not following your argument. Worse, I'm afraid you aren't following your argument.:-)
On what basis do you differentiate between the teachings of Scientology and the teachings of Christianity such that one would be considered a religion, and the other not? Both come from books written by people; both espouse certain sets of behaviors; both postulate the existence of beings without any particular evidence in the scientific sense; both require faith, as both lack scientific standing; now, I will concede that Christianity has done far more to screw with my life than Scientology has, but I rather think that is a consequence of Christianity having had more time to get into the system, as it were - given time, I expect the Scientologists to do the same, but that is just my opinion, of course.
Scientology is not just a bunch of wacky walking wallets providing money to their leaders, some are criminals
Some Christians are criminals as well. You know, blowing up abortion clinics, burying newborns in walls, molesting children. So one could just as easily, and correctly, say: "Christianity is not just a bunch of wacky walking wallets providing money to their leaders, some are criminals."
Your point then, being?
I'm not in the least contesting the idea that Scientologists aren't loony to their very core; I'm just curious why you seem to think that Scientologists are worse than Christians somehow. Most of the differences I can think of leave the Christians as the worse offenders. Don't recall any scientologists blowing up any abortion clinics, for instance, nor can I think of them trying to tell me, a non-believer - or worse, getting a law put in place that coerces me - such that I can't marry two willing people.
Something like asking thousands of dollars for the religious scriptures?
Oh. You mean like selling of "indulgences", a common Christian practice over most of the time Christianity has been extant, until just recently? Or do you mean like getting a blessing because you put something in the collection plate, or contributed to the build-a-cathedral fund? Or do you mean like the money one pays when one purchases any Christian book at the bookstore? Or do you mean when one pays to be educated at a Christian univeristy? Or do you mean when one donates at a tent revival? What about when a religion keeps art from the masses, as per the Catholic repository of great artworks? Does that count?
What about when certain behaviors - compliance with the religious tenets - are rewarded with the concept that the individual who does not so comply will have extracted from them the payment of eternal suffering?
What about when Christianity gets into the legal system and manages to prevent citizens from going about their business according to Christian notions; for instance, you can't marry more than one person, you can't perform this or that sexual activity, you can't open your store on Sunday... are these costs, or payments, extracted from the manifestly unwilling, of the same nature as those the Scientologists extract from the willing participants in their operations? Or are they actually worse, as they certainly seem on close examination?
I mean, if you are a Christian, and you accept that one spouse is the norm, and you willingly comply with this, isn't this the same as a sscientology adherent who willingly pays the cost for the documents you refer to? Isn't it more critical that those who are not Christian are being forced to adhere to Christian ideas? No scientologist has ever tried to force me into any scientology-related mode of thinking or behavior that has a real cost in terms of life experience; yet I am constantly faced with such costs emanating from the Christian ethos.
It appears to me, at least, that while I am not prepared to give either system of thinking a pass as even slightly rational, that Christianity is far more guilty of interfering with people than Scientology is, at least, to date.
Heck include PETA in that list of out of control protestors that don't get anything near this level of punishment. They've been known to set up in front of people's houses.
...as have the news media. Instead of holding up a placard to the passers-by, they broadcast their opinions and facts to a far wider audience.
Unfortunately the California law enforcement and judicial branches have been infiltrated by Co$ members
Has the infiltration of scientologists risen to the level of the infiltration of Christians, in your estimation?
Or is there some reason you would present to support the idea that the infiltration of one religion is of more concern than of another?
As far as I can see, the problems for society and its citizens are similar in nature, if not in scope, with regard to any religious person who, in your words, "infiltrates" the justice system. But I am curious as to your take on the matter.
Well, certainly as opposed to Python, anyway. I went from perl to Python with a huge sigh of relief. I try to move a still-used perl script from perl to python once a week. Eventually I'll get them all, and I can leave the language behind. But I wrote tons of perl before I discovered Python and it is a long, long road to upgrade all that stuff. But every time I do one, I get a more maintainable, more english-like tool. Sometimes it takes me several minutes to even understand what the heck a perl script (even one of mine) is trying to do. Perl just... doesn't lead you to the most readable solutions. In fact, the better at it you get, the more obscure looking your programs get, it seems to me. That's an IMHO.:)
Anyway, if someone is looking for a scripting language today, Python is the cat's meow. Readable, sensible, extensible, flexible, well supplied with great libraries of functionality, powerful as hell, very easy to debug, not unreasonable in speed.
Where have you seen it reported that Vista eats 10% of the CPU?
Here on/.; that's why I characterized it as "rumors." One of your other replies has a specific set of circumstances it's reporting on that agrees; I also read (again, here on/.) that the DRM stuff is resource intensive in the 10%-ish range. Not sure if you'd add those together, or what.
Perhaps the perceived CPU penalty with Vista is caused by needlessly bloated third-party drivers?
Well, it's possible, certainly. It'll take a while for the community to shake out just what is going on with Vista; the biggest warning has actually come from MS itself, with the repeated remarks about Vista "requiring" certain levels of CPU and graphics for 100% functionality. I have seen these repeatedly (and I think MS even has a tool to check your system to see if you "meaure up") but I can't place exactly where. Perhaps someone else will step up to the plate here. I'm not, after all, a MS windows user anymore. I just see this stuff out of the corner of my eye, as it were, and it sticks because it's interesting.
Primarily because the vast, vast majority of consumers lack the knowledge and, more importantly, the will, to do so.
I don't think you quite got what I was proposing. I was trying (probably poorly) to say that this hypothetical OS would be 100% usable out of the box. You'd get apps for it, and they would work just fine. If, and only if, you wanted to, you could add things to the OS like 3D desktop, and the apps would *still* work, because the OS interface hadn't changed for the applications, just the OS code would do something else with window calls, menu calls, etc. while still returning the same reactions to the code - option selected, menu visible, button pressed, and so on.
So there's nothing that the end user has to do; only things they *can* do, if they like. This allows the idea of window managers and so forth, it would be configurable like linux is, only more so, and developers wouldn't have to navigate the shoals of all the various licenses and obligations they incur by adopting one of the linux widget sets, for instance.
Many developers have absolutely no interest in FOSS, many are the exact opposite. The machine would be friendly to both, because it would actually have GUI widgets right out of the gate. Like Windows and OSX in the sense that developing for them requires no third party stuff at all, everything you need is in the OS already. That's the developer view of this.
But this should also be simple; because we're seeing very large OS binaries, and some pretty slow ones, too. If the user wants that kind of features, and loading, let them pick an optional package. They'd quickly enough be known for how much they loaded the system... "oh, I use desktopZ, it's really pretty, but my machine is noticably slower." That kind of thing. "I added full time speech recognition, I didn't even notice a slowdown on my Pentium-Of-Borg-OctoCore-Mobile-Heat-Generator, but it took half my spare 40 gig disk!"
This opens the window for OS add-ons as well as applications, again like linux, but unlike linux, the basic OS is complete in the box. linux is more than complete, it is rich, in almost all areas, which also probably means bloated and slower than it has to be, although that is hand-waving, not based on measurements.
I was trying to say that in the area of a proper graphics layer, it falls short because you can't just write a GUI-based app to the OS, as it were, without picking up some 3rd party library and the associated license liabilities and obligations and possibly costs.
Also that the security has a bit of a hole in it as I described above - you can't prevent execution on a directory basis w/o creating a special partition, and that leaves a rather tricky security hole you have to plug some other way, usually many times over. Ask yourself, how many worms and other nasty things end up crowbarring themselves into/tmp or/var ? And why? It's because they can do so and then execute, of course. It's just that simple. There's no reason for this, other than the security isn't up to easily and conveniently preventing it, and so we have the basis for many hacks.
Y'know... (looks around shiftily) I actually missed my 6809 Flex system (a "brother" to CP/M, timewise and interface wise) so badly I wrote a complete emulator for it, and in the process, taught it how to use unconscionable amounts of disk space.
I used to work in the video games industry, so I also added an emulation of a graphics board I designed way back when that I particularly liked (it had vestigial hardware line drawing in an 8-color bitmap) so the emulation has a text mode interface like you'd expect (and like CP/M) and it also has graphics you can fiddle with if you are so inclined.
Sometimes there's a lot to be said for simply going back and writing some fun stuff in 6809 assembler, at least for me. Keeps one cognizant of how things work to some degree. Plus the emulator can outrun a 'real" 6809 by quite a bit, so it feels quite snappy.
Well, maybe that's a signal we're looking at things incorrectly, then. Why not build a stable core - multitasking, networking, application sandboxing, list management, basic graphics with user-settable bitmaps and/or polygonal models -- the rest of the usual suspects like disk io and USB -- and then let the user decide if they want, for instance, to add a 3d desktop with voice and haptic features, widgets, zooming, 400 language compatibility (OSX carries a crapload of language stuff to your drive it doesn't really need to, for instance) and drivers for every printer ever known to man?
That almost sounds like a linux release, but the key thing missing in all linux versions is a stable and always-there set of GUI tools so applications can run on the OS itself. linux (IMO) is crippled by that lack of a standard GUI layer. It has almost everything else, I'm perfectly ready to concede. Be nice if it had a little bit smarter permissions - like being able to say that "this dir is read/write, but nothing can execute here" without having to set the dir up on its own partition, etc., but at least there is a workaround.
In fact, that's how I ended up with Apple's OSX. It's almost linux from my user / developer point of view, but it has a solid GUI I am under the impression I can count on, and I don't have to pay fees to use or get the user to try to download.
I'd like to see something more basic, though. I know these marvelous machines we have today would run like raped apes if we actually tried to make them do so, instead of trying to make them do "everything for everybody." Vista's gone and collected 10% or so of a modern CPU for itself, if the rumors I hear are correct; is that really where we want to be? Damn, 10% of a modern CPU is what, 100% of one five years ago?
Sometimes I write software to run in a shell in OSX or linux and just enjoy the zappiness of it all. I am heavily involved in AI experimentation, particularly in the multiply-associative memory area, and I always write that stuff for a text shell. A real linux text shell actually runnning in text mode... man that's fast.:)
Why would they accept an OS that gets slower with every release? Why would they accept an OS that requires more and more from their hardware investment, eventually requiring replacement (as may be very likely the case with Vista) instead of getting sleeker and slimmer and more efficient? Why would they accept an OS that carries with it the highest threat of adware, viruses, worms, trojans - for whatever reason? When terrible mistakes are made - like activex - why don't they expect the company to fix those mistakes?
Just wondering. I mean clearly, they do not hold Microsoft to a very high standard. I left the OS a couple of years ago, having had all I was willing to take. But most people around me stick with MS, regardless of what trouble they have.
Personally, I think part of the answer is application lock-in; people who use some app that they can't get away from, and where the developers force them to upgrade to the next OS because otherwise, the next version or revision of the locked-in app won't work.
If you've ever read the law, you would understand this
I have read the law, and what YOU don't understand is that when the tap is done first, and the approval done second, the tappers can tap anyone they want, without certifying anything at all. It's backwards, and it is both absurd and wrong. When certification comes second, there was no barrier to the tap in the first place. This assumes that FISA was a real court, and not a rubber-stamping organization, which is not what the evidence seems to indicate anyway. Since FISA seems quite happy to say OK to anything it gets handed, historically speaking, the whole arrangement reeks of constitutional crisis. If anyone was awake enough to care.
No. Movies - as in, films you see at movie theaters - are 24 frames per second, which is doubled to 48 frames by flashing each frame twice. Television paints 1/2 the frame 60x a second, and every other frame is displaced one scan line up or down from the previous scan line. Film has no scan lines; just full frames that flash by at 48/second, really 24x2/a second.
Conversion of film to television does result in television scan lines and refresh rates.
Yes, M. Moderator, the facts are overrated. You bet. You just stick your head right back in the sand where it'll stay nice and warm. Don't worry about the sounds of boot-heels crunching the sand next to your head. They're not coming for you. Yet.
Slashdot moderation: Rated 100% broken by users everywhere.
No. We should issue warrants when we have probable cause. With warrant in hand, you can do what the warrant authorizes. FISA lets the administration do whatever it wants, then issues a warrant, which is backwards.
Suppose a cop comes and searches your house, just because he wants to, and then goes to a judge (just incidentally known to be a rubber-stamper, if we're going to make an accurate analogy) and says, can I have a warrant? How does that make you feel? Do you feel secure in your home, in your privacy, in your possessions?
If you do, you're a vastly different person than I am.
I maintain that the only correct order is cause, warrant, search. Period. Yes, it is "inconvenient" for the authorities. It is meant to be. That's the entire point. The process is supposed to protect the citizens from overzealous government intrusions into their homes and lives. By inverting the order, the protection - and privacy - evaporates.
It sets a terrible precedent; it needs to go away.
Any thoughts why the society you see as so disfuctional is so fabulously successful on this front?
Yes. First of all, it's largely an illusion; crimes are being perpetrated in your general direction, you just fail to notice - you kept paying the excise tax on your phone bill, right? Ever catch on that it was being levied for the Spanish American war? That's just the tip of an iceberg of abuse you've been paying coin to all your life. Secondly, the overall stats are averages, and while some segments of society are indeed very robbery/mugging "personal" crime free, that is not true of the least fortunate levels of society, who are suffering as the resources they need, are all being spent on other levels of society. Thirdly, to say that a nine strap beating is better than the ten, eleven, and fifteen strap beatings others are receiving, is in no way sufficient to discredit the idea that no beating at all is the target, and that reducing from 9 is still the way you want to go to get there.
The US is chock full of injustice. For instance, there's this guy. Just because it hasn't crossed your path, doesn't mean it isn't out there, that it isn't pervasive, that it isn't important. it just means you're not paying attention. You've bought the cool aid, and you're happy to drink it. I'm not. I truly believe you are living in an imaginary world, in the sense that things are not what you think they are. That goes for most of the middle class.
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I judge neither organization (nor any other, nor any individual) by what they do to or with the willing; I judge them by what they do to the unwilling. You understand the distinction?
I certainly would; I have spent years living in India; your view of "liberal Hinduism" as a positive force is not one I would share. Hindus bring every bit as dangerous cultural baggage as do Muslims, and for many of the same reasons. That includes genital mutilation, murder by stoning and other types of crowd-inflicted deadly force, female foeticide, arbitrary and vicious classing, "untouchables".... to experience you putting Hinduism up as some kind of shining light of religion is simply to experience you revealing your extreme ignorance.
Well, Mr. AC, It appears I'm having a little trouble getting worked up over that. I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me. :-)
The system was designed by deists, for the most part, and designed to not be religious at all. Infiltration has indeed occurred, but it is the religious who have done the infiltrating. Much of the objectionable religious material and programs that we have seen have arise under government auspices has occurred in the last century or so. Blue laws and "In god we trust" in the 1800s, "one nation under god" in the 1900s, "faith-based inititives" in the 2000s, and so forth.
Honestly, I could just as easily have written "truly bad SF with the good bits plagerised from the ramblings of someone writing during psychotic episodes in the middle east in the 300s" with regard for the bible. Unless you are arguing that age alone somehow imparts validity, a presumption I cannot go along with.
Yes? Consider, then: Christian scientists. Mayans. Voodooists. Christian exorcists. Islamists. Naturopaths. Do these not also make you shudder at the treatment of mentally ill, pregnant, and even those with more conventional illnesses? What about the sacrifice of healthy people to the gods? What about the handling of poisonous reptiles? What about "deprogramming" (and "programming")? What about female clititordectomies (AKA "female circumcision", which it actually is not)? What about burning women alive for adultry? What about stonings and similar religiously recommended treatments for such maladies as... disagreement? Are these not facets of non-scientological religion we should be just as wary of?
Again, I do not defend the actions of Scientologists, but I continue to fail to see how they are acting differently from many other religions in any way such that we should really be concerned about them, as opposed to religion in general. Also, the way that many religions "look after their own" mostly makes me shudder with dismay.
Really? So you are contending that the Catholic Church is not a "real religion", because it agressively hides much (paintings, statues, philosophical and theological writings, histories and more) away from anyone but the uppermost ranks of the church heirarchy, for example in the Vatican library? In your view, any religion that hides theological "secrets" at one level at the expense of another level, then, is invalid - just... what, a club? A public-service organization? A lodge?
To be honest, I was unaware that "openness" was a criteria for religion. I'm not sure that you would be able to back that up, other than as a personal metric of your own. Where are your references for such a metric as a general use one in determining what is a religion, and what is not?
Well, the KJ NT/OT bible isn't, I agree. Nor are all scientology texts. But many religious (and non-religious) artworks and writings are, in fact, kept out of the hands of not only unbelievers, and some also away from rank-and-file church members - by the Catholic church, for one for-instance. I'm afraid you're trying to make a distinction in disfavor of scientology that doesn't exist. They're not doing anything in particular that other religions don't do in terms of behavior in this world, as far as I can see.
Yes. It's called "selling indulgences" and has been a staple behavior of the Catholics for centuries. And of course there is the ritual response of "bless you" for giving to most any Christian church. And then there are the politics inherent in rising upwards through any large structured organization, Christian organized religions certainly not excepted in any way. And of course, money is simply a placeholder for time and work, and many religions demand payment more directly than money, much of Christianity included. There is also tithing as practiced by some Christian churches. Some require missionary work. In any case, there is certainly no shortage of examples of Christians exchanging various advancements and other issues and items of perceived vallue in return for the (relatively) mundane currency of land, time, money, edifice, artifice, and so forth.
Well, yes. That was my point.
And this is significant to you because... ??? I do not see what the problem is when people are willing to pay. It is only when religious behaviours become a matter of coercion - such as the Christian ethics of single spouses, heterosexuality, not working on Sunday, putting religious indoctrination on currency supposedly meant for people of all, or no, religion - that they concern me. What someone does of their own free will is of no concern at all to me, unless they do it to others. What they do to themselves is no problem. That is obviously their choice, and I would argue, just as obviously, their right.
Well, I'm not at all certain that the authors of the bible or the quran managed to avoid this level of performance. There are certainly passages in both that reek of the very poorest of writing skills, barely veiled (sometimes not veiled at all) misogyny, complete lack of rational - not to mention scientific - underpinnings, and numerous conflicting plot elements (genealogical, temporal, and more.)
I remain unconvinced of any salient difference of the type being put forth here. Scientology is a younger religion; it espouses its own relatively unique faith-based ideas. It has yet to become significantly violent or succeed at entrenching its precepts as formal social coercion, that is, as law. Other than that, it seems little different from Christianity or Islam.
So, your argument is that because Christian teachings are made to appear on banknotes, that this is evidence that atheists have influence where they previously didn't? That's what infiltration would mean in the context of modification of banknotes from not having such a teaching, to having such a teaching, which is what happened.
I'm afraid I'm not following your argument. Worse, I'm afraid you aren't following your argument. :-)
On what basis do you differentiate between the teachings of Scientology and the teachings of Christianity such that one would be considered a religion, and the other not? Both come from books written by people; both espouse certain sets of behaviors; both postulate the existence of beings without any particular evidence in the scientific sense; both require faith, as both lack scientific standing; now, I will concede that Christianity has done far more to screw with my life than Scientology has, but I rather think that is a consequence of Christianity having had more time to get into the system, as it were - given time, I expect the Scientologists to do the same, but that is just my opinion, of course.
Some Christians are criminals as well. You know, blowing up abortion clinics, burying newborns in walls, molesting children. So one could just as easily, and correctly, say: "Christianity is not just a bunch of wacky walking wallets providing money to their leaders, some are criminals."
Your point then, being?
I'm not in the least contesting the idea that Scientologists aren't loony to their very core; I'm just curious why you seem to think that Scientologists are worse than Christians somehow. Most of the differences I can think of leave the Christians as the worse offenders. Don't recall any scientologists blowing up any abortion clinics, for instance, nor can I think of them trying to tell me, a non-believer - or worse, getting a law put in place that coerces me - such that I can't marry two willing people.
Oh. You mean like selling of "indulgences", a common Christian practice over most of the time Christianity has been extant, until just recently? Or do you mean like getting a blessing because you put something in the collection plate, or contributed to the build-a-cathedral fund? Or do you mean like the money one pays when one purchases any Christian book at the bookstore? Or do you mean when one pays to be educated at a Christian univeristy? Or do you mean when one donates at a tent revival? What about when a religion keeps art from the masses, as per the Catholic repository of great artworks? Does that count?
What about when certain behaviors - compliance with the religious tenets - are rewarded with the concept that the individual who does not so comply will have extracted from them the payment of eternal suffering?
What about when Christianity gets into the legal system and manages to prevent citizens from going about their business according to Christian notions; for instance, you can't marry more than one person, you can't perform this or that sexual activity, you can't open your store on Sunday... are these costs, or payments, extracted from the manifestly unwilling, of the same nature as those the Scientologists extract from the willing participants in their operations? Or are they actually worse, as they certainly seem on close examination?
I mean, if you are a Christian, and you accept that one spouse is the norm, and you willingly comply with this, isn't this the same as a sscientology adherent who willingly pays the cost for the documents you refer to? Isn't it more critical that those who are not Christian are being forced to adhere to Christian ideas? No scientologist has ever tried to force me into any scientology-related mode of thinking or behavior that has a real cost in terms of life experience; yet I am constantly faced with such costs emanating from the Christian ethos.
It appears to me, at least, that while I am not prepared to give either system of thinking a pass as even slightly rational, that Christianity is far more guilty of interfering with people than Scientology is, at least, to date.
Has the infiltration of scientologists risen to the level of the infiltration of Christians, in your estimation?
Or is there some reason you would present to support the idea that the infiltration of one religion is of more concern than of another?
As far as I can see, the problems for society and its citizens are similar in nature, if not in scope, with regard to any religious person who, in your words, "infiltrates" the justice system. But I am curious as to your take on the matter.
Well, certainly as opposed to Python, anyway. I went from perl to Python with a huge sigh of relief. I try to move a still-used perl script from perl to python once a week. Eventually I'll get them all, and I can leave the language behind. But I wrote tons of perl before I discovered Python and it is a long, long road to upgrade all that stuff. But every time I do one, I get a more maintainable, more english-like tool. Sometimes it takes me several minutes to even understand what the heck a perl script (even one of mine) is trying to do. Perl just... doesn't lead you to the most readable solutions. In fact, the better at it you get, the more obscure looking your programs get, it seems to me. That's an IMHO. :)
Anyway, if someone is looking for a scripting language today, Python is the cat's meow. Readable, sensible, extensible, flexible, well supplied with great libraries of functionality, powerful as hell, very easy to debug, not unreasonable in speed.
Here on /.; that's why I characterized it as "rumors." One of your other replies has a specific set of circumstances it's reporting on that agrees; I also read (again, here on /.) that the DRM stuff is resource intensive in the 10%-ish range. Not sure if you'd add those together, or what.
Well, it's possible, certainly. It'll take a while for the community to shake out just what is going on with Vista; the biggest warning has actually come from MS itself, with the repeated remarks about Vista "requiring" certain levels of CPU and graphics for 100% functionality. I have seen these repeatedly (and I think MS even has a tool to check your system to see if you "meaure up") but I can't place exactly where. Perhaps someone else will step up to the plate here. I'm not, after all, a MS windows user anymore. I just see this stuff out of the corner of my eye, as it were, and it sticks because it's interesting.
I don't think you quite got what I was proposing. I was trying (probably poorly) to say that this hypothetical OS would be 100% usable out of the box. You'd get apps for it, and they would work just fine. If, and only if, you wanted to, you could add things to the OS like 3D desktop, and the apps would *still* work, because the OS interface hadn't changed for the applications, just the OS code would do something else with window calls, menu calls, etc. while still returning the same reactions to the code - option selected, menu visible, button pressed, and so on.
So there's nothing that the end user has to do; only things they *can* do, if they like. This allows the idea of window managers and so forth, it would be configurable like linux is, only more so, and developers wouldn't have to navigate the shoals of all the various licenses and obligations they incur by adopting one of the linux widget sets, for instance.
Many developers have absolutely no interest in FOSS, many are the exact opposite. The machine would be friendly to both, because it would actually have GUI widgets right out of the gate. Like Windows and OSX in the sense that developing for them requires no third party stuff at all, everything you need is in the OS already. That's the developer view of this.
But this should also be simple; because we're seeing very large OS binaries, and some pretty slow ones, too. If the user wants that kind of features, and loading, let them pick an optional package. They'd quickly enough be known for how much they loaded the system... "oh, I use desktopZ, it's really pretty, but my machine is noticably slower." That kind of thing. "I added full time speech recognition, I didn't even notice a slowdown on my Pentium-Of-Borg-OctoCore-Mobile-Heat-Generator, but it took half my spare 40 gig disk!"
This opens the window for OS add-ons as well as applications, again like linux, but unlike linux, the basic OS is complete in the box. linux is more than complete, it is rich, in almost all areas, which also probably means bloated and slower than it has to be, although that is hand-waving, not based on measurements.
I was trying to say that in the area of a proper graphics layer, it falls short because you can't just write a GUI-based app to the OS, as it were, without picking up some 3rd party library and the associated license liabilities and obligations and possibly costs.
Also that the security has a bit of a hole in it as I described above - you can't prevent execution on a directory basis w/o creating a special partition, and that leaves a rather tricky security hole you have to plug some other way, usually many times over. Ask yourself, how many worms and other nasty things end up crowbarring themselves into /tmp or /var ? And why? It's because they can do so and then execute, of course. It's just that simple. There's no reason for this, other than the security isn't up to easily and conveniently preventing it, and so we have the basis for many hacks.
Y'know... (looks around shiftily) I actually missed my 6809 Flex system (a "brother" to CP/M, timewise and interface wise) so badly I wrote a complete emulator for it, and in the process, taught it how to use unconscionable amounts of disk space.
I used to work in the video games industry, so I also added an emulation of a graphics board I designed way back when that I particularly liked (it had vestigial hardware line drawing in an 8-color bitmap) so the emulation has a text mode interface like you'd expect (and like CP/M) and it also has graphics you can fiddle with if you are so inclined.
Sometimes there's a lot to be said for simply going back and writing some fun stuff in 6809 assembler, at least for me. Keeps one cognizant of how things work to some degree. Plus the emulator can outrun a 'real" 6809 by quite a bit, so it feels quite snappy.
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Well, maybe that's a signal we're looking at things incorrectly, then. Why not build a stable core - multitasking, networking, application sandboxing, list management, basic graphics with user-settable bitmaps and/or polygonal models -- the rest of the usual suspects like disk io and USB -- and then let the user decide if they want, for instance, to add a 3d desktop with voice and haptic features, widgets, zooming, 400 language compatibility (OSX carries a crapload of language stuff to your drive it doesn't really need to, for instance) and drivers for every printer ever known to man?
That almost sounds like a linux release, but the key thing missing in all linux versions is a stable and always-there set of GUI tools so applications can run on the OS itself. linux (IMO) is crippled by that lack of a standard GUI layer. It has almost everything else, I'm perfectly ready to concede. Be nice if it had a little bit smarter permissions - like being able to say that "this dir is read/write, but nothing can execute here" without having to set the dir up on its own partition, etc., but at least there is a workaround.
In fact, that's how I ended up with Apple's OSX. It's almost linux from my user / developer point of view, but it has a solid GUI I am under the impression I can count on, and I don't have to pay fees to use or get the user to try to download.
I'd like to see something more basic, though. I know these marvelous machines we have today would run like raped apes if we actually tried to make them do so, instead of trying to make them do "everything for everybody." Vista's gone and collected 10% or so of a modern CPU for itself, if the rumors I hear are correct; is that really where we want to be? Damn, 10% of a modern CPU is what, 100% of one five years ago?
Sometimes I write software to run in a shell in OSX or linux and just enjoy the zappiness of it all. I am heavily involved in AI experimentation, particularly in the multiply-associative memory area, and I always write that stuff for a text shell. A real linux text shell actually runnning in text mode... man that's fast. :)
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Also...
Why would they accept an OS that gets slower with every release? Why would they accept an OS that requires more and more from their hardware investment, eventually requiring replacement (as may be very likely the case with Vista) instead of getting sleeker and slimmer and more efficient? Why would they accept an OS that carries with it the highest threat of adware, viruses, worms, trojans - for whatever reason? When terrible mistakes are made - like activex - why don't they expect the company to fix those mistakes?
Just wondering. I mean clearly, they do not hold Microsoft to a very high standard. I left the OS a couple of years ago, having had all I was willing to take. But most people around me stick with MS, regardless of what trouble they have.
Personally, I think part of the answer is application lock-in; people who use some app that they can't get away from, and where the developers force them to upgrade to the next OS because otherwise, the next version or revision of the locked-in app won't work.
I have read the law, and what YOU don't understand is that when the tap is done first, and the approval done second, the tappers can tap anyone they want, without certifying anything at all. It's backwards, and it is both absurd and wrong. When certification comes second, there was no barrier to the tap in the first place. This assumes that FISA was a real court, and not a rubber-stamping organization, which is not what the evidence seems to indicate anyway. Since FISA seems quite happy to say OK to anything it gets handed, historically speaking, the whole arrangement reeks of constitutional crisis. If anyone was awake enough to care.
No. Movies - as in, films you see at movie theaters - are 24 frames per second, which is doubled to 48 frames by flashing each frame twice. Television paints 1/2 the frame 60x a second, and every other frame is displaced one scan line up or down from the previous scan line. Film has no scan lines; just full frames that flash by at 48/second, really 24x2/a second.
Conversion of film to television does result in television scan lines and refresh rates.
Maybe its because I was pulling on your leg at the end there. Still, that's pretty humorless and grim.
Oh well. Thanks for coming back on and acknowledging my point. Much appreciated.
Yes, M. Moderator, the facts are overrated. You bet. You just stick your head right back in the sand where it'll stay nice and warm. Don't worry about the sounds of boot-heels crunching the sand next to your head. They're not coming for you. Yet.
Slashdot moderation: Rated 100% broken by users everywhere.
No. We should issue warrants when we have probable cause. With warrant in hand, you can do what the warrant authorizes. FISA lets the administration do whatever it wants, then issues a warrant, which is backwards.
Suppose a cop comes and searches your house, just because he wants to, and then goes to a judge (just incidentally known to be a rubber-stamper, if we're going to make an accurate analogy) and says, can I have a warrant? How does that make you feel? Do you feel secure in your home, in your privacy, in your possessions?
If you do, you're a vastly different person than I am.
I maintain that the only correct order is cause, warrant, search. Period. Yes, it is "inconvenient" for the authorities. It is meant to be. That's the entire point. The process is supposed to protect the citizens from overzealous government intrusions into their homes and lives. By inverting the order, the protection - and privacy - evaporates.
It sets a terrible precedent; it needs to go away.
Yes. First of all, it's largely an illusion; crimes are being perpetrated in your general direction, you just fail to notice - you kept paying the excise tax on your phone bill, right? Ever catch on that it was being levied for the Spanish American war? That's just the tip of an iceberg of abuse you've been paying coin to all your life. Secondly, the overall stats are averages, and while some segments of society are indeed very robbery/mugging "personal" crime free, that is not true of the least fortunate levels of society, who are suffering as the resources they need, are all being spent on other levels of society. Thirdly, to say that a nine strap beating is better than the ten, eleven, and fifteen strap beatings others are receiving, is in no way sufficient to discredit the idea that no beating at all is the target, and that reducing from 9 is still the way you want to go to get there.
The US is chock full of injustice. For instance, there's this guy. Just because it hasn't crossed your path, doesn't mean it isn't out there, that it isn't pervasive, that it isn't important. it just means you're not paying attention. You've bought the cool aid, and you're happy to drink it. I'm not. I truly believe you are living in an imaginary world, in the sense that things are not what you think they are. That goes for most of the middle class.
Feel free to hit the contact form at blackbeltsystems.com if you like. :)