You appeal to something just as unobservable as God with your assertion that anything can just appear. I suppose your null interpretive framework could account for what we observe in the world, but it certainly is not superior to that put forth in the Bible. The Bible provides a much more structured and logical interpretation for our observations, so it in fact is the superior framework.
They're upset with us because we're free and have a different ideology. According to UBL (IIRC from the national geographic special), the difference between us is that America loves life and they love death. I hope we never back down from that to appease the other side of the world.
50W at microwave frequencies sitting on your lap sounds like a bad idea. 300W boils water in under 6 minutes when contained in a microwave oven. I'm not springing for this upgrade...
As a side-effect, this could really help reduce people's complete and utter reliance on the powergrid. It's much easier to store natural gas than electricity, so this could make everyone more resilient in the face of disasters or blackouts.
I'm not exactly sure if you're referring to an actual Gaim lockout by MSN, but anyway... Remember the Trillian/AOL/Yahoo! wars? Seems like MSN has been the most open so far if my memory isn't missing any incidents. With that being said, I still hope Jabber prevails, since it is the most open protocol I've seen thus far.
It is an interesting point though. I remember being a little stunned at first when I exploded the puff balls and dragons on dig-dug on my Atari 5200. I guess even such tiny, pixelated depictions of violence on non-human entities causes a reaction in the innocent. Innocence is something that's impossible to regain. Premature desensitization, or extreme desensitization at any age, can cause a positive or negative shift in an individual's worldview. When I joined martial arts, I began to think more seriously about the possibility that someone I know, or someone on the street, could desire to injure me or another victim. However, in that case, my worldview shifted in such a way that I became a defensive thinker, more prepared to deflect attacks from others or myself. In the case of video games, the player's worldview shifts to that of a cop-killing aggressor. (guess which game...) Everything we do or see changes us in some small way, and the results of that shift are only controlled by our own inhibitions or, in my case, the direction of the Holy Spirit. We need to take that seriously.
Besides, almost all video games are a waste of time! (OK, I'll make an exception for when they're a social event:-) )
The US military has always been a prime innovator. Some of the technologies are destructive (that's their primary job after all, to defend the country with force) and many aren't:
- computers
- ARPAnet
- jet aircraft (actually British military)
- etc. other examples are all around us we don't even recognize.
Notice that many of these probably weren't invented by the military, but the military made them work.
It would be nice if they could transition to less destructive missions or disappear entirely, but at this point (and every point in the future) I think some of our "friendly neighbors" in the mideast and asia would be a little too pleased by that move.:-)
I've always wondered if it would be worthwhile to have a version control style filesystem. Basically, a built-in subversion or CVS-type backend that operates without your knowledge until you need to roll something back. Of course you'd need to manage space usage, but with 1TB storage capacities within reach of the home user perhaps it's less of an issue? I think losing data is quite a bit more expensive than storage these days.:-)
I use OO daily, and I agree that v.2.0 is pretty nice, but it is not even close to MS Office! I just can't escape Visio for my tech writing tasks (I know, it wasn't produced by MS, but it is definitely a part of office now), and both the PowerPoint and Excel clones in OO have a long way to go before they are Office's peers. It would actually be sort of scary if they were, office has been in development for quite a while longer than OO.
I don't think Microsoft's attempts at security are lackluster, they're taking security really seriously. Check out the hard stats: http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/index.php?p=103
That's also the reason they haven't released a new OS in awhile. Check out this discussion of their new development process, which mentions that they had to scrap a lot of code that was going to end up in Vista to improve reliability: http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB112743680328349 448,00.html?mod=todays_us_page_one (sorry, requires subscription)
On the other hand, IE is falling WAY behind in the features department. They really need to do something to attract more advanced users.
I enjoy developing apps for Linux and Gnome, and I simply couldn't switch back to Windows now after getting so used to the Linux development environment and its broad capabilities. However, I think people need to be fair with Microsoft. If MS weren't around, I highly doubt that a PC (or 7) would be in every modern home, so we'd all be worse off.
Well, I guess Apple could have provided the same (or probably better) ease of use, but competition is always good.:-)
I like the Abit AN8-SLI for that reason. It has a low-profile heatpipe rather than a fan on the chipset. I run a waterblock off my video card, and the tubes actually touch the top of the heatpipe connector, so you're right, a fan definitely would get in the way. I guess I may as well link to my setup too:-) : http://lemaymd.com/main.php?frag=gadgets-pc&title= Homebuilt%20PC&pfrag=gadgets
That the parent scored 5: insightful after claiming America is run by armed dictators that purposely drowned N.O. makes me wonder where slashdot's moderators come from. This is a meaningless conspiracy theory.
I compete in TopCoder occasionally, and I have yet to see a result that is actually useful. The competition is purely for fun and skill development. The component development competitions are useful, however.
To have someone compare US and Chinese techniques for protecting national security in the same sentence and first post makes me upset, to put it mildly. I truly hope he is not an American, who takes for granted the incredible freedoms we have. If this were China, he'd be jailed for that comment. I know we're not perfect, I personally don't like the Patriot Act and other encroaching measures, but we always work through them in our system. In China, there's nothing to work through. Everything must serve the state. Totally different mindset.
I really like the possibility that this system would introduce some resiliency (security) into the powergrid, but it won't be replacing the entire grid. Huge powerplants will never disappear, we need water and nuclear power. It simply wouldn't be as efficient to move everything to a tiny scale.
We do understand that translations are imperfect, and that only the Greek and Hebrew sources are perfect. Things get even hairier than that when you try to figure out which Greek and Hebrew sources are perfect, but if you sweat out those details you'll never get to reading anything important. I personally don't read Greek or Hebrew, but I like the NET Bible (www.bible.org), because it includes translators' notes containing important Greek and Hebrew terms, and explaining why they chose the translation they did. Not all terms are explained, so sometimes you need a true Greek/Hebrew study bible, where every word and phrase is tagged with a number that will take you to a special index of words in the back. Then you can dig into as much detail as you want and basically translate things for yourself.
Anyway, the Bible is very clear about fornication, homosexuality, and all the other important areas of life people like to pretend are OK but clearly aren't (isn't some of this stuff just common sense?). One of the most important characteristics of God's commands in the Bible is that they all ultimately benefit His people. I ask any reasonable person (most slashdotters excluded here;-) ) to name a benefit of fornication. I can certainly name many downfalls. I can hear the question already, so I'll prove it:
- STDs
- Unwanted pregnancy
- Emotional problems in marriage
- Lingering, haunting emotional ties
Now, rather than exhaust all the many verses in the Bible that forbid fornication, I'll just present one that I think clearly expresses God's intent:
Hebrews 13:4, New English Translation:
Marriage must be honored among all and the marriage bed kept undefiled, for God will judge sexually immoral people and adulterers.
"sexually immoral" means the following in the Greek:,n {por'-nos} 1) a man who prostitutes his body to another's lust for hire 2) a male prostitute 3) a man who indulges in unlawful sexual intercourse, a fornicator
It appears to be true that the definition of fornication is a bit circular in this case, referring back to the law, but it generally refers to a relationship between unmarried people. What makes this even more clear is the distinction between adulterers and fornicators.
Does anyone else here think the generated music just plain sounds bad? I don't think any composers' livelihoods will be in jeopardy for quite some time.:-)
Wow, that's a really weird effect. I hope somebody else reads it who knows what's actually happening and can enlighten the rest of us... I'd also like to know how he thought to microwave a strangely divided grape in the first place.
I am a Linux developer and love the OS, but you have to admit that a lot of the stuff on Linux is a copy of something in OS X or Windows. It seems like Linux is always playing catch-up and MS and Apple are the ones producing innovation, along with less frequent contributions from UNIX companies like SGI. Who picked up on anti-aliased desktop fonts first, who was the first to really push web services into the mainstream, etc. I think MS plays a very important role in technology advancement.
Nobody seems to provide any actual details on this find, just artists' reconstructions based on something, but from what I've read so far this thing sounds similar to an ostrich with claws. From the Chicago Tribune article, http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi -0505050246may05,1,5853353.story?coll=chi-newsnati onworld-hed&ctrack=1&cset=true, "It had the built-for-speed legs of meat eaters, but it was developing the bigger belly of plant-eaters. It had lost the serrated teeth needed for tearing flesh; those were replaced with the smaller, duller vegetarian variety." Sounds like a toothed, clawed ostrich, not some strange "intermediate form."
Isn't it funny how many "mass fossil graves" we found all over the earth, almost like there was a global flood...?
Does the title on this article seem inherently biased to anyone else? ID tries to unify and explain hard evidence, just as evolution does, so I think it deserves the full title of "science".
I'm really happy to see this discussed again, this debate is finally warming up again in the 21st century!
I consider myself a strong Biblical literalist, and as such I must say that I strongly disagree with several of BytePusher's characterizations of "fundamentalists". I don't want to demean him, I'm just chipping in my two cents to provide an alternate view of our externally and broadly defined group.
True Christian fundamentalists by definition believe that the God of the Bible is the intelligent Designer and Creator of the universe. The inspired account of this Creation resides in Genesis, and that account contradicts the concept of macroevolution. (I hate to repeat this obvious point: microevolution is undeniable fact. The only problem arises when vastly different creatures like whales and elephants or monkeys and humans are purported to be ancestrally linked) Genesis has an uncanny way of stating that Creation occurred in 7 literal days: "And there was morning, and there was evening..." Furthermore, macroevolution intrinsically requires death and suffering, whereas Genesis cannot tolerate their presence since God pronounced everything to be good until the fall of man.
Fossils provide strong evidence for a worldwide flood. Creationists and evolutionists see the same evidence, they simply interpret it differently. The difference is, when you interpret it in the light of the Bible, it actually makes sense!:-) We have no problems like those of the evolutionists with their "missing links". You might still be wondering about the ages of "millions of years" tacked onto various fossils. Consider first that these dates are modified frequently, plainly revealing their inaccuracy. Secondly, dating methods are widely abused and use statistically improper extrapolation techniques. See the resources below for details.
As always, I encourage you to check out http://www.icr.org/ and http://www.answersingenesis.org./ Some of the materials they endorse are simply amazing to read. "Darwin's Black Box" in particular is a really fun and interesting book. (I should be getting paid for this.;-) )
I almost don't want to reply to this topic because of the typically intense and misinformed vitriol towards literal Bible-believing Christians spilling out on this site, (seriously, that is not the way to present an argument) but I feel that I should serve as one representative literal Bible-believer, maybe it will help some who are open-minded understand our position.
I personally love IMAX movies and I love science. However, I am not afraid to think that there is a power greater than myself in this universe who created everything in 6 literal days, 6-10000 years ago. I also believe that true science supports this position much more strongly than it supports complete evolution. So, it rankles me when the IMAX films spout off evolutionary claims as though they are fact. You don't even need to have a contrary belief to determine that those claims aren't fact, they change on their own every couple of months/years! I would even be happy if they admitted that "it is currently hypothesized that...". So, if a large number of people are offended by those dogmatic claims in certain areas and the theaters have decided that it is counterproductive to show those films, so be it, perhaps the producers will be a little bit more honest in the future!
Slashdot Mirror
You appeal to something just as unobservable as God with your assertion that anything can just appear. I suppose your null interpretive framework could account for what we observe in the world, but it certainly is not superior to that put forth in the Bible. The Bible provides a much more structured and logical interpretation for our observations, so it in fact is the superior framework.
They're upset with us because we're free and have a different ideology. According to UBL (IIRC from the national geographic special), the difference between us is that America loves life and they love death. I hope we never back down from that to appease the other side of the world.
50W at microwave frequencies sitting on your lap sounds like a bad idea. 300W boils water in under 6 minutes when contained in a microwave oven. I'm not springing for this upgrade...
As a side-effect, this could really help reduce people's complete and utter reliance on the powergrid. It's much easier to store natural gas than electricity, so this could make everyone more resilient in the face of disasters or blackouts.
I'm not exactly sure if you're referring to an actual Gaim lockout by MSN, but anyway... Remember the Trillian/AOL/Yahoo! wars? Seems like MSN has been the most open so far if my memory isn't missing any incidents. With that being said, I still hope Jabber prevails, since it is the most open protocol I've seen thus far.
I doubt Mario would end up on the list. :-)
:-) )
It is an interesting point though. I remember being a little stunned at first when I exploded the puff balls and dragons on dig-dug on my Atari 5200. I guess even such tiny, pixelated depictions of violence on non-human entities causes a reaction in the innocent. Innocence is something that's impossible to regain. Premature desensitization, or extreme desensitization at any age, can cause a positive or negative shift in an individual's worldview. When I joined martial arts, I began to think more seriously about the possibility that someone I know, or someone on the street, could desire to injure me or another victim. However, in that case, my worldview shifted in such a way that I became a defensive thinker, more prepared to deflect attacks from others or myself. In the case of video games, the player's worldview shifts to that of a cop-killing aggressor. (guess which game...) Everything we do or see changes us in some small way, and the results of that shift are only controlled by our own inhibitions or, in my case, the direction of the Holy Spirit. We need to take that seriously.
Besides, almost all video games are a waste of time! (OK, I'll make an exception for when they're a social event
The US military has always been a prime innovator. Some of the technologies are destructive (that's their primary job after all, to defend the country with force) and many aren't:
- computers
- ARPAnet
- jet aircraft (actually British military)
- etc. other examples are all around us we don't even recognize.
Notice that many of these probably weren't invented by the military, but the military made them work.
It would be nice if they could transition to less destructive missions or disappear entirely, but at this point (and every point in the future) I think some of our "friendly neighbors" in the mideast and asia would be a little too pleased by that move. :-)
I've always wondered if it would be worthwhile to have a version control style filesystem. Basically, a built-in subversion or CVS-type backend that operates without your knowledge until you need to roll something back. Of course you'd need to manage space usage, but with 1TB storage capacities within reach of the home user perhaps it's less of an issue? I think losing data is quite a bit more expensive than storage these days. :-)
I use OO daily, and I agree that v.2.0 is pretty nice, but it is not even close to MS Office! I just can't escape Visio for my tech writing tasks (I know, it wasn't produced by MS, but it is definitely a part of office now), and both the PowerPoint and Excel clones in OO have a long way to go before they are Office's peers. It would actually be sort of scary if they were, office has been in development for quite a while longer than OO.
9 448,00.html?mod=todays_us_page_one (sorry, requires subscription)
:-)
I don't think Microsoft's attempts at security are lackluster, they're taking security really seriously. Check out the hard stats: http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/index.php?p=103
That's also the reason they haven't released a new OS in awhile. Check out this discussion of their new development process, which mentions that they had to scrap a lot of code that was going to end up in Vista to improve reliability: http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB11274368032834
On the other hand, IE is falling WAY behind in the features department. They really need to do something to attract more advanced users.
I enjoy developing apps for Linux and Gnome, and I simply couldn't switch back to Windows now after getting so used to the Linux development environment and its broad capabilities. However, I think people need to be fair with Microsoft. If MS weren't around, I highly doubt that a PC (or 7) would be in every modern home, so we'd all be worse off.
Well, I guess Apple could have provided the same (or probably better) ease of use, but competition is always good.
I like the Abit AN8-SLI for that reason. It has a low-profile heatpipe rather than a fan on the chipset. I run a waterblock off my video card, and the tubes actually touch the top of the heatpipe connector, so you're right, a fan definitely would get in the way. I guess I may as well link to my setup too :-) : http://lemaymd.com/main.php?frag=gadgets-pc&title= Homebuilt%20PC&pfrag=gadgets
That the parent scored 5: insightful after claiming America is run by armed dictators that purposely drowned N.O. makes me wonder where slashdot's moderators come from. This is a meaningless conspiracy theory.
I compete in TopCoder occasionally, and I have yet to see a result that is actually useful. The competition is purely for fun and skill development. The component development competitions are useful, however.
To have someone compare US and Chinese techniques for protecting national security in the same sentence and first post makes me upset, to put it mildly. I truly hope he is not an American, who takes for granted the incredible freedoms we have. If this were China, he'd be jailed for that comment. I know we're not perfect, I personally don't like the Patriot Act and other encroaching measures, but we always work through them in our system. In China, there's nothing to work through. Everything must serve the state. Totally different mindset.
I really like the possibility that this system would introduce some resiliency (security) into the powergrid, but it won't be replacing the entire grid. Huge powerplants will never disappear, we need water and nuclear power. It simply wouldn't be as efficient to move everything to a tiny scale.
We do understand that translations are imperfect, and that only the Greek and Hebrew sources are perfect. Things get even hairier than that when you try to figure out which Greek and Hebrew sources are perfect, but if you sweat out those details you'll never get to reading anything important. I personally don't read Greek or Hebrew, but I like the NET Bible (www.bible.org), because it includes translators' notes containing important Greek and Hebrew terms, and explaining why they chose the translation they did. Not all terms are explained, so sometimes you need a true Greek/Hebrew study bible, where every word and phrase is tagged with a number that will take you to a special index of words in the back. Then you can dig into as much detail as you want and basically translate things for yourself.
;-) ) to name a benefit of fornication. I can certainly name many downfalls. I can hear the question already, so I'll prove it:
,n {por'-nos}
Anyway, the Bible is very clear about fornication, homosexuality, and all the other important areas of life people like to pretend are OK but clearly aren't (isn't some of this stuff just common sense?). One of the most important characteristics of God's commands in the Bible is that they all ultimately benefit His people. I ask any reasonable person (most slashdotters excluded here
- STDs
- Unwanted pregnancy
- Emotional problems in marriage
- Lingering, haunting emotional ties
Now, rather than exhaust all the many verses in the Bible that forbid fornication, I'll just present one that I think clearly expresses God's intent:
Hebrews 13:4, New English Translation:
Marriage must be honored among all and the marriage bed kept undefiled, for God will judge sexually immoral people and adulterers.
"sexually immoral" means the following in the Greek:
1) a man who prostitutes his body to another's lust for hire 2) a male prostitute 3) a man who indulges in unlawful sexual intercourse, a fornicator
It appears to be true that the definition of fornication is a bit circular in this case, referring back to the law, but it generally refers to a relationship between unmarried people. What makes this even more clear is the distinction between adulterers and fornicators.
The Sears tower has a video screen that plays a video with audio. That's all I've seen. :-)
Does anyone else here think the generated music just plain sounds bad? I don't think any composers' livelihoods will be in jeopardy for quite some time. :-)
Wow, that's a really weird effect. I hope somebody else reads it who knows what's actually happening and can enlighten the rest of us... I'd also like to know how he thought to microwave a strangely divided grape in the first place.
I am a Linux developer and love the OS, but you have to admit that a lot of the stuff on Linux is a copy of something in OS X or Windows. It seems like Linux is always playing catch-up and MS and Apple are the ones producing innovation, along with less frequent contributions from UNIX companies like SGI. Who picked up on anti-aliased desktop fonts first, who was the first to really push web services into the mainstream, etc. I think MS plays a very important role in technology advancement.
Here is an interesting case of divergent evolution when one species isolated itself from another by taking to the skies: http://informationcentre.tripod.com/carevolution.h tml
Nobody seems to provide any actual details on this find, just artists' reconstructions based on something, but from what I've read so far this thing sounds similar to an ostrich with claws. From the Chicago Tribune article, http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi -0505050246may05,1,5853353.story?coll=chi-newsnati onworld-hed&ctrack=1&cset=true, "It had the built-for-speed legs of meat eaters, but it was developing the bigger belly of plant-eaters. It had lost the serrated teeth needed for tearing flesh; those were replaced with the smaller, duller vegetarian variety." Sounds like a toothed, clawed ostrich, not some strange "intermediate form."
Isn't it funny how many "mass fossil graves" we found all over the earth, almost like there was a global flood...?
Does the title on this article seem inherently biased to anyone else? ID tries to unify and explain hard evidence, just as evolution does, so I think it deserves the full title of "science".
I'm really happy to see this discussed again, this debate is finally warming up again in the 21st century!
:-) We have no problems like those of the evolutionists with their "missing links". You might still be wondering about the ages of "millions of years" tacked onto various fossils. Consider first that these dates are modified frequently, plainly revealing their inaccuracy. Secondly, dating methods are widely abused and use statistically improper extrapolation techniques. See the resources below for details.
;-) )
I consider myself a strong Biblical literalist, and as such I must say that I strongly disagree with several of BytePusher's characterizations of "fundamentalists". I don't want to demean him, I'm just chipping in my two cents to provide an alternate view of our externally and broadly defined group.
True Christian fundamentalists by definition believe that the God of the Bible is the intelligent Designer and Creator of the universe. The inspired account of this Creation resides in Genesis, and that account contradicts the concept of macroevolution. (I hate to repeat this obvious point: microevolution is undeniable fact. The only problem arises when vastly different creatures like whales and elephants or monkeys and humans are purported to be ancestrally linked) Genesis has an uncanny way of stating that Creation occurred in 7 literal days: "And there was morning, and there was evening..." Furthermore, macroevolution intrinsically requires death and suffering, whereas Genesis cannot tolerate their presence since God pronounced everything to be good until the fall of man.
Fossils provide strong evidence for a worldwide flood. Creationists and evolutionists see the same evidence, they simply interpret it differently. The difference is, when you interpret it in the light of the Bible, it actually makes sense!
As always, I encourage you to check out http://www.icr.org/ and http://www.answersingenesis.org./ Some of the materials they endorse are simply amazing to read. "Darwin's Black Box" in particular is a really fun and interesting book. (I should be getting paid for this.
I almost don't want to reply to this topic because of the typically intense and misinformed vitriol towards literal Bible-believing Christians spilling out on this site, (seriously, that is not the way to present an argument) but I feel that I should serve as one representative literal Bible-believer, maybe it will help some who are open-minded understand our position.
I personally love IMAX movies and I love science. However, I am not afraid to think that there is a power greater than myself in this universe who created everything in 6 literal days, 6-10000 years ago. I also believe that true science supports this position much more strongly than it supports complete evolution. So, it rankles me when the IMAX films spout off evolutionary claims as though they are fact. You don't even need to have a contrary belief to determine that those claims aren't fact, they change on their own every couple of months/years! I would even be happy if they admitted that "it is currently hypothesized that...". So, if a large number of people are offended by those dogmatic claims in certain areas and the theaters have decided that it is counterproductive to show those films, so be it, perhaps the producers will be a little bit more honest in the future!