"Why limit "pro-life" to only "pro-human-life-screw-other-life"? Is it the religious thing?"
It's not even human life. Most pro life people are also pro war and pro death penalty. They have no qualms about dropping bombs on children once they are born. They also have no problems with sentencing children to the death penalty. Needless to say virtually none of them are vegetarians or even environmentalists.
It's different for every birth and every fetus. Legally the cut off date is the third trimester. Sure it's arbitrary but then so is the legal age for drinking, voting etc.
Most companies start out this way. Friendly, open, honest, exciting. Then the company start growing and soon you no longer know the name of everybody who works there. Soon after that the management will turn over and they will bring in the CPAs. The CPAs will start talking about shareholder value and write vision statements. About six months to a year after that somebody will pull you aside and start talking about your flair.
The insane thing is that all the smart people will leave as soon as the vision statement gets written. Those people can get jobs anywhere. The mediocre people will run the company from that point on but by now the company is so large it won't matter. Everything will take ten times longer, customer service will suffer, employees won't give a damn and yet the company will still somehow survive.
I can't explain it but I have seen it a few times now.
Maybe unconciously we are striking back at people who have been ripping us off for years.
There has to be a reason why nobody feels bad about pirating music. If I took a coat from a homeless man I'd feel guilty, if I kicked a dog on the street it'd feel guilty. The other day I downloaded a song I didn't feel guilty.
I can't really tell you why I don't feel guilty, I just don't. Maybe because I only wanted to hear the song right then and there and haven't listened to it since, maybe becuase they play it on the radio a lot so it's not that much different to me.
Maybe just maybe I look at my shelf full of CDs I paid 15 dollars for and realize that most of them have only one or two good songs on them and feel like I have been ripped off.
The same arguments could be applied for most enterprises. You don't have to buy SUSE (or any other linux) and most enterprises have helpdesks who will get paid no matter what and at least a handful of unix sysadmins.
If you read about their plan it was pretty slick, They first got rid of all MS products on the desktop except for windows. They used groupwise for email and calendering, they installed iFolder on all the desktops and trained their people to save all their documents on it, they installed firefox and openoffice.
Once the users were used to this toolset they simply switched the OS and kept the same application stack.
This is the smart way to switch. First get rid of outlook, office, and IE. Then when you switch the OS users barely notice.
I am shocked nobody asked about deployment options. Is there a way to deploy firefox/thunderbird widely in a company without using ghost? How about the ability to lock down certain settings? You can't compete with IE in the workplace without those.
Every mac user should submit a bug into the apple bug tracking system that says something like "the finder still sucks". They should do this once a quarter till apple gets the message.
"You have to be kidding me. The OS X API (Cocoa) is easily the best MVC, OOP framework I have ever used and learning how to program GUI app's in it is a breeze. "
That's fine if all you want to do is program for the Mac. Most people want to program either for windows or multiple operating systems. Until there is a port of Cocoa for other platform then it's useless for me.
"They supply you with Interface Builder which allows you to visually create your GUI and then generate the classes for it so you can control it. It's pretty much out of the box."
Xcode is nice for objective C. It's barely adequate for java. It's useless for python or ruby. Eclipse is better for java, python, ruby, php or what have you. It does run on the mac which is nice.
"Any command line tools you're missing can generally be downloaded and compiled (if you like this way/no binary around) so if the things you want are not out of the box, use fink to get all you want."
Fink has a very limited set of ports compared to debian, gentoo, freebsd ports or what have you. It also sits outside of mac os x in it's own root (probably a good thing) and is not integrated tightly with the OS like portage is with gentoo or apt is with debian. Darwinports and pkgsrc suffer the same problem.
Every linux distribution and every freebsd distribution has better package management then mac os X. Sorry but it's true.
"I think what you're getting hung up on is the difference between the dictionary definition of religion and the common usage, which implies religion related to belief of a higher being."
No. What I am getting hung up on is why one set of beliefs deserves constitutional protection and while another does not.
"Also, I may be wrong, but I believe that atheism does get constitutional protection as a religion."
Not really. It's legal to discriminate against atheists if you are a church but it's not legal to discriminate against christians if you are business run by an atheist.
" I'd clarify from my own perspective by saying that I have every right to pray whereever"
Nobody is disputing that. I am simply pointing out that it may be disruptive depending on the gyrations you make while praying.
"right to stand next to me worshiping Satan if you desired to."
Again depends on the rituals. I don't think starbucks would appreciate me sacrificing a small animal in the coffee shop.
You know in this day and age I never thought we would even be having this conversation.
It seems like mankind never really makes forward progress when it comes to culture. The same old battles being fought all throughout history. How long has the war between christianity and science been going on now? Two thousand years without let up.
"I can't say for sure because I am biased as well, but I would wager that our belief in science's superiority has more to do with our preconceptions than anything else."
Well I of course think you are way wrong. If I had to bet I would bet on science, if I was betting against you I would win most of the time.
But hey it's a free country, you can believe in anything you want.
"And I suppose there is a little difference between praying aloud in a group, and everyone getting out a prayer rug and becoming an obstruction to traffic (people, cars, customers, what have you)"
If you have gathered in a circle at the local starbucks and are praying loud enough for other people to hear (even if barely) then there is no appreciable difference between that and opening up a prayer rug in the local starbucks and starting to genuflect.
"Loosely, any specific system of code of ethics, values, and belief." and "A cause, a principle, or an activity pursued with zeal or conscientious devotion." (google Definitions of religion on the Web)"
If that's a definition of religion then libeterianism is a religion, basketball is a religion, weightlifting is a religion, ebay is a religion. All of those are a cause, principle or an activity that is pursued with seal or conscientious devotion.
"And Homosexuality, if I remember correctly, is a value system and life style choice..."
So is christianity or islam. All religions are lifestyle choices.
"And I didn't mention that the isms are automatically Religions. Though, one could make it his/her/it's religion."
Ok then. Athesims is not a religion. It's just another ism.
Here is the thing that really gets my goat though. Atheism, homosexuality, liberterianism, scientology, and christianity are all lifestyle choices and yet of those only scientology and christianity get constitutional protection. I think that's wrong. If homosexuality as you say could be made somebodies religion then it should have the exact same constitutional protection as christianity does. And yet it doesn't. Could you imagine what would happen if your state passed a law saying christians can't get married or serve in the military?
If you are invoking your god loudly enough for other people to hear then you are indeed "forcing" your religion on them. See my other post. In fact don't reply to this one, reply to the other one.
As an atheist I have always wondered about prayer. The muslims go though an elobarate ritual of genuflecting and kneeling, the christians seem to think kneeling or bowing the head is enough.
The thing I wonder is this. If your god is omnipresent and omnicient why do you have to go through physicals gyrations in order to be heard by god? Most christians pray out loud why is that?
I suppose you would get the same reaction to praying in public that a muslim would get if they took out a prayer rug, faced east and started genuflecting or perhaps a wiccan got if they drew a diagram on the ground, lit candles and chanting (or whatever else they do)
I would sincerely like to know your answer to this question. In the same spirit I will answer a couple of your own questions.
"though, of course, it raises an interesting view..if you lack a religion..doesn't that become your religion?"
The answer to this is no. In the same way that not having a porche does not mean you have a porche or not having an ulcer does not mean you have ulcer.
"If you refuse to believe or acknowledge God, aren't you following a belief system?"
Yes but not all belief systems are religions. This is where you seem to have tripped up. You apparently believe that any set of beliefs constitures a religion and that's just not true. For example homosexuality is not a religion although the set of people who are homosexuals believe in having sex with their own gender. Similarly utilitariansim, liberalism, conservatism, and lots of other "ism"s are not a religion even though they are belief systems.
Most of physics is probably contraversial to christians. It's just that they don't know enough about it. Same with chemistry. When you think about it atoms are heretical.
Slashdot Mirror
"Why limit "pro-life" to only "pro-human-life-screw-other-life"? Is it the religious thing?"
It's not even human life. Most pro life people are also pro war and pro death penalty. They have no qualms about dropping bombs on children once they are born. They also have no problems with sentencing children to the death penalty. Needless to say virtually none of them are vegetarians or even environmentalists.
It's different for every birth and every fetus. Legally the cut off date is the third trimester. Sure it's arbitrary but then so is the legal age for drinking, voting etc.
It's not the desert it's the shiny new bombers!. Nothing says "we rock" like massive air power.
According to their web site the IMF has taken them seriously.
Don't kid yourself there. These guys put out papers and postions that soon after will appear on republican talking points all over the media.
It's a joke but...
Most companies start out this way. Friendly, open, honest, exciting. Then the company start growing and soon you no longer know the name of everybody who works there. Soon after that the management will turn over and they will bring in the CPAs. The CPAs will start talking about shareholder value and write vision statements. About six months to a year after that somebody will pull you aside and start talking about your flair.
The insane thing is that all the smart people will leave as soon as the vision statement gets written. Those people can get jobs anywhere. The mediocre people will run the company from that point on but by now the company is so large it won't matter. Everything will take ten times longer, customer service will suffer, employees won't give a damn and yet the company will still somehow survive.
I can't explain it but I have seen it a few times now.
Maybe unconciously we are striking back at people who have been ripping us off for years.
There has to be a reason why nobody feels bad about pirating music. If I took a coat from a homeless man I'd feel guilty, if I kicked a dog on the street it'd feel guilty. The other day I downloaded a song I didn't feel guilty.
I can't really tell you why I don't feel guilty, I just don't. Maybe because I only wanted to hear the song right then and there and haven't listened to it since, maybe becuase they play it on the radio a lot so it's not that much different to me.
Maybe just maybe I look at my shelf full of CDs I paid 15 dollars for and realize that most of them have only one or two good songs on them and feel like I have been ripped off.
I suppose it didn't hurt that the album was pretty good too. Something that seems to get lost in this conversation.
Maybe if something is really good it doesn't need that much advertising.
I would give them some leeway if they didn't have a history of pulling sleazy crap like this.
This company is being run by people who have no ethics whatsoever.
You know these kinds of things are just expected from MS and that's sad. A company which has clearly lost is moral compass.
Bruce is and has been a tremendous contributor to open source and free software. What have you done?
When do I get the windows version!. I am not allowed to use linux at work and I HATE outlook with a passion.
The same arguments could be applied for most enterprises. You don't have to buy SUSE (or any other linux) and most enterprises have helpdesks who will get paid no matter what and at least a handful of unix sysadmins.
If you read about their plan it was pretty slick, They first got rid of all MS products on the desktop except for windows. They used groupwise for email and calendering, they installed iFolder on all the desktops and trained their people to save all their documents on it, they installed firefox and openoffice.
Once the users were used to this toolset they simply switched the OS and kept the same application stack.
This is the smart way to switch. First get rid of outlook, office, and IE. Then when you switch the OS users barely notice.
I am shocked nobody asked about deployment options. Is there a way to deploy firefox/thunderbird widely in a company without using ghost? How about the ability to lock down certain settings? You can't compete with IE in the workplace without those.
Unless it has find as you type, livebookmarks, and foxylicious it won't be half as good as firefox is today.
Trust me IE7 will still be lame compared to firefox.
Every mac user should submit a bug into the apple bug tracking system that says something like "the finder still sucks". They should do this once a quarter till apple gets the message.
"You have to be kidding me. The OS X API (Cocoa) is easily the best MVC, OOP framework I have ever used and learning how to program GUI app's in it is a breeze. "
That's fine if all you want to do is program for the Mac. Most people want to program either for windows or multiple operating systems. Until there is a port of Cocoa for other platform then it's useless for me.
"They supply you with Interface Builder which allows you to visually create your GUI and then generate the classes for it so you can control it. It's pretty much out of the box."
Xcode is nice for objective C. It's barely adequate for java. It's useless for python or ruby. Eclipse is better for java, python, ruby, php or what have you. It does run on the mac which is nice.
"Any command line tools you're missing can generally be downloaded and compiled (if you like this way/no binary around) so if the things you want are not out of the box, use fink to get all you want."
Fink has a very limited set of ports compared to debian, gentoo, freebsd ports or what have you. It also sits outside of mac os x in it's own root (probably a good thing) and is not integrated tightly with the OS like portage is with gentoo or apt is with debian. Darwinports and pkgsrc suffer the same problem.
Every linux distribution and every freebsd distribution has better package management then mac os X. Sorry but it's true.
I appreciate the nitpick but really none of what you say contradicts me. We are still having this war.
"I think what you're getting hung up on is the difference between the dictionary definition of religion and the common usage, which implies religion related to belief of a higher being."
No. What I am getting hung up on is why one set of beliefs deserves constitutional protection and while another does not.
"Also, I may be wrong, but I believe that atheism does get constitutional protection as a religion."
Not really. It's legal to discriminate against atheists if you are a church but it's not legal to discriminate against christians if you are business run by an atheist.
" I'd clarify from my own perspective by saying that I have every right to pray whereever"
Nobody is disputing that. I am simply pointing out that it may be disruptive depending on the gyrations you make while praying.
"right to stand next to me worshiping Satan if you desired to."
Again depends on the rituals. I don't think starbucks would appreciate me sacrificing a small animal in the coffee shop.
You know in this day and age I never thought we would even be having this conversation.
It seems like mankind never really makes forward progress when it comes to culture. The same old battles being fought all throughout history. How long has the war between christianity and science been going on now? Two thousand years without let up.
"I can't say for sure because I am biased as well, but I would wager that our belief in science's superiority has more to do with our preconceptions than anything else."
Well I of course think you are way wrong. If I had to bet I would bet on science, if I was betting against you I would win most of the time.
But hey it's a free country, you can believe in anything you want.
"And I suppose there is a little difference between praying aloud in a group, and everyone getting out a prayer rug and becoming an obstruction to traffic (people, cars, customers, what have you)"
If you have gathered in a circle at the local starbucks and are praying loud enough for other people to hear (even if barely) then there is no appreciable difference between that and opening up a prayer rug in the local starbucks and starting to genuflect.
"Loosely, any specific system of code of ethics, values, and belief." and "A cause, a principle, or an activity pursued with zeal or conscientious devotion." (google Definitions of religion on the Web)"
If that's a definition of religion then libeterianism is a religion, basketball is a religion, weightlifting is a religion, ebay is a religion. All of those are a cause, principle or an activity that is pursued with seal or conscientious devotion.
"And Homosexuality, if I remember correctly, is a value system and life style choice..."
So is christianity or islam. All religions are lifestyle choices.
"And I didn't mention that the isms are automatically Religions. Though, one could make it his/her/it's religion."
Ok then. Athesims is not a religion. It's just another ism.
Here is the thing that really gets my goat though. Atheism, homosexuality, liberterianism, scientology, and christianity are all lifestyle choices and yet of those only scientology and christianity get constitutional protection. I think that's wrong. If homosexuality as you say could be made somebodies religion then it should have the exact same constitutional protection as christianity does. And yet it doesn't. Could you imagine what would happen if your state passed a law saying christians can't get married or serve in the military?
My question was "are they both equally flawed". I am willing to accept your statement that "both systems are flawed" for the sake of this argument.
It seem to me that one is a like a BMW with a broken tail light and the other is like a wheelbarrow with missing wheel and broken handles.
they are both flawed but one is pretty much useless except perhaps as an aestheric device.
If you are invoking your god loudly enough for other people to hear then you are indeed "forcing" your religion on them. See my other post. In fact don't reply to this one, reply to the other one.
As an atheist I have always wondered about prayer. The muslims go though an elobarate ritual of genuflecting and kneeling, the christians seem to think kneeling or bowing the head is enough.
The thing I wonder is this. If your god is omnipresent and omnicient why do you have to go through physicals gyrations in order to be heard by god? Most christians pray out loud why is that?
I suppose you would get the same reaction to praying in public that a muslim would get if they took out a prayer rug, faced east and started genuflecting or perhaps a wiccan got if they drew a diagram on the ground, lit candles and chanting (or whatever else they do)
I would sincerely like to know your answer to this question. In the same spirit I will answer a couple of your own questions.
"though, of course, it raises an interesting view..if you lack a religion..doesn't that become your religion?"
The answer to this is no. In the same way that not having a porche does not mean you have a porche or not having an ulcer does not mean you have ulcer.
"If you refuse to believe or acknowledge God, aren't you following a belief system?"
Yes but not all belief systems are religions. This is where you seem to have tripped up. You apparently believe that any set of beliefs constitures a religion and that's just not true. For example homosexuality is not a religion although the set of people who are homosexuals believe in having sex with their own gender. Similarly utilitariansim, liberalism, conservatism, and lots of other "ism"s are not a religion even though they are belief systems.
Most of physics is probably contraversial to christians. It's just that they don't know enough about it. Same with chemistry. When you think about it atoms are heretical.