I really think he is right. The nwo stuff may not be as concrete as some claim, but in terms of civil rights, we're losing them more each day here in the U.S. When you look at recent events, like Bush completely overriding congress with no authority to do so, and even congress basically ignoring the will of the people (in terms of input they received, at least) regarding that bailout bill a while back, power is being concentrated further and further into the executive branch. GP's language might be a tad sensational, but a troll he/she is not.
It's more likely due to he massive egos and arguments surrounding the DSS, and archeology in general. To this day, over 60 years since their discovery, not all of the DSS have been published.
You wouldn't slap the DDS on a pioneer scanner any more than you would the U.S. Constitution. (Although both are widely ignored by groups who claim to follow them.) The documents are old and fragile, despite how well they have been preserved. I suspect they will take forever to scan for the same reasons that valuable paintings take forever to restore.
Also, as a student of ancient hebrew, I find this very exciting. The scripting on the DDS is not like the script you will find on a copy of the ancient hebrew texts in print. For one, you won't find vowel pointings. You also won't find any sort of sentence markers, and there is no system of capital and lower case letters as would be found in english or greek (though the koine greek codices were in all caps without any spacing or punctuation as well).
The reason the DDS are relevant for Christians is because Jewish history is inextricably linked to Jesus of Nazareth.
I hate to tell you, but GP is pretty much right. In many instances, security turns into a no-win situation.
When I was still working for a major financial institution, we had FINCEN dictating all sorts of rules about who you have to ID, what specific ingredients must be involved, what kind of transactions have to be reported, etc. And that's just in person. On the phone, it's worse because there is no picture ID to use.
You have customers who are often compliant but many times irate about being forced to provide their SSN (or part of it), their name, and their DOB over the phone, and then often, a myriad of other security questions.
Then you have the guys who send out the phishing e-mails, or make a copy of your corporate website. Customers, who are sometimes completely inept, and sometimes too inexperienced with the internet to know what's going on, give the bad guys all the information they need. So then we are forced to make a call:
A) increase amount/difficulty of security questions. That's usually the answer and it ticks off more customers. When I was supervising there were times when I blocked access for someone who really needed it and who was probably the real customer. But they just couldn't provide enough information to make me sure. There was also a time when I gave information to someone who made me feel confidently enough that they were the customer, but maybe they couldn't remember down to the month how long they'd been with the bank. Turns out later it was a scammer who got this person's information, even their signature. Sometimes you just can't know for certain.
B) We could stop offering telephone or online service. Try and survive like that.
C) We could move back to an cash-only system, so that the only fraud is going to be outright robbery. that might not be a bad idea in terms of keeping people from getting into so much debt, but I doubt it's practical.
I've thought about this myself, and you have a point. $200-300 is a lot to pay just for a graphics card. You definitely have to have some disposable income in order to afford this. Mainly because this graphics card will only help you if you've spent at bare minimum $600 (probably more like $1000) on other components. If you usually don't build your own computers, this discussion is likely uninteresting and irrelevant to you anyway.
However, the reason that this card is causing so much commotion is because a lot of people have been paying $500 or more for the top end cards during the last year or so. Why in the world would someone pay so much? As someone else commented, it's a matter of personal preference. In my personal situation, I don't own any consoles or play console games unless I'm at a friend's house. I do, however, frequently play PC games (on linux and xp, anyway; don't really game on the macbook). Aside from shooting things, I find it interesting to watch and experience the ways in which our games approach reality (visually and physics-wise) as hardware and software progress. For someone with that interest, having 60+ FPS at whatever resolution you're capable of displaying is important.
To give you an idea of what software these days is demanding and what the hardware can handle, I present my current rig. Nvidia 7800GT (purchased about 2 years ago on ebay in the $285-300 range), 2 gigs of DDR1 corsair, and an amd x2 4200 running at around 2.6ghz. The 7800Gt was launched 8/11/05, the ram (3500LL pro) was around october 2005 from what i can gather, and the cpu i think was from somewhere around May 2005 (i was a late buyer, but i didn't want to buy a whole new motherboard just yet). Anyway, I say all that to say that this stuff is not brand new, but it isn't ancient either. It is capable of running almost anything on the source engine very smoothly at my current 1920x1080 resolution, but not with everything turned up to max levels. Even at medium details, it cannot run the UT3 demo smoothly at 1280x1024, forget anything higher. Same story with Bioshock and the Crysis demo.
So, in preparation for UT3's launch, I intended to build a new rig. But there are some big things happening with CPUs and GPUs that make building right now a poor idea. The first issue was that rumors were flying around about the G92 and have been for some time. It was generally believed that they would release the next GPU sometime in november (and there were many different rumors, some saying that it would be a 9800 top end card with a teraflop throughput and others stating that it was going to be a midrange card between the then-current top end 8800GTX and ultras and the lower end geforce8 series). This release has solved that question. It was indeed a mid-range card solution, but the performance at $200 - $250 was far better than expected. This morning there were none available at newegg, and a few were on backorder at zipzoomfly. Now there are some at newegg, and I suspect it will take about a weak for the prices to solidify until after thanksgiving, at which point they'll probably drop some. Anyone who had been reading anything about nvidia would have been foolish to buy a GTX or ultra within the last couple of months, and that is the very reason I did not even consider it. The second issue is that ATI is probably going to release their next GPU in the next couple of weeks. Of course no one knows for sure what that will be, but the smart bet right now is that it will try to compete with the 8800GT in the same performance/price range. We'll see there. My purchases before were always default NVIDIA because their linux support was so much better. However, ATI/AMD has recently made large strides to change that, so it has influenced me to wait before deciding this time. The third issue is that both AMD and Intel are scheduled to release their new CPUs this quarter. So all of these issues have made it a good choice to wait. Now that this GPU is out, a lot of people who would have been enticed to
1. Tithing (Deuteronomy 14:22ff) was not a tax. The best we could probably compare it with is a tribute in the style represented in Hitite (and other Ancient Near East) Suzerain-Vassal treaties. (See Mendenhall's "Law and Covenant in Israel and the Ancient Near East, http://home.earthlink.net/~cadman777/Law_Cov_Mende nhall_TITLE.htm originally printed in Biblical Archeology magazine.
2. Giving outside tithing required? Can you cite this so I can look it up? The only thing I can think of is the offerings taken to build Solomon's temple, and those were strictly voluntary.
3. I would agree that initially Israel had a religious state, and that originally the Levites (among other things) handled the issues you mentioned.
4. Punishable by death? I can only assume you're thinking of Ananias and Sapphira. In the record, God killed them for lying, not for failure to comply to any giving requirements. Peter even told them that their resources were their own, to use as they saw fit. (Acts 5:1-11)
It seems a little ironic that he would be making these comments (purportedly) from a forum on his own website. (The article didn't seem to be able to substantiate that the quotes actually came from El-Jay himself.)
These are quotes from the article:
Instead they sit at home and make their own records, which is sometimes OK but it doesn't bode well for long-term artistic vision.
It's just a means to an end.
We're talking about things that are going to change the world and change the way people listen to music and that's not going to happen with people blogging on the internet.
I mean, get out there -- communicate.
Hopefully the next movement in music will tear down the internet.
Let's get out in the streets and march and protest instead of sitting at home and blogging.
I do think it would be an incredible experiment to shut down the whole internet for five years and see what sort of art is produced over that span.
There's too much technology available.
I'm sure, as far as music goes, it would be much more interesting than it is today.
I don't have a mobile phone or an iPod or anything.
I am such a Luddite when it comes to making music. All I can do is write at the piano. How can you make these comments in the form of a forum post??
Anyway, as others have noted, I like how the internet allows little guys to get their music out. One of my friends is an incredibly talented musician. I'd wager myspace has driven his exposure and fanbase far more than his coffee shop gigs.
One more pointless observation... It used to be that the only way to get your music out there was to get really popular, playing bars and other small gigs relentlessly at the expense of your family and/or personal health. Now you can keep playing coffee shops at your leisure while gaining popularity on the internet. As for me, I've played for small groups of friends, and i've played for larger audiences (no more than 1500), and I prefer the smaller groups hands down. For those that seek to distribute their music, they can continue to play smaller venues and let the internet do the footwork. I don't see a problem with that. Pop was getting crappy long before the internet became popular.
To preface this, I'm a Christian who doesn't buy into macro-evolution or spontaneous generation (gradual or sudden). Just getting that out of the way.
Parent is right, ID is not science (in the strictest sense). It is simply an assessment. ID says that many contemporary conclusions about the origin of the universe and our planet are based on illogical arguments. Also, ID is not supported exclusively by theists. Spontaneous generation and evolution are responses to phenomena we observe (namely that the universe exists and that our planet is inhabited). That is science: conclusions based on observations. However, a conclusion can be reached using the scientific method and still be false.
For example, the conclusion that the earth is the center of the universe is also science. When this conclusion was widely held, it was based on observed phenomena. As the amount of available evidence increased (due to advancements in our tools of observation), new conclusions were formed. This did not make the old conclusion any less scientific, it simply no longer adequately explained the observed phenomena. ID is not based on observation, per se, but rather on an examination of the existing arguments. The conclusion is that the existing arguments do not adequately explain the observed phenomena.
As for the statement that God does not provide proof, I suppose that depends on the definition of proof. I accept the fact that pigs do not have wings as sufficiently proven true. I have yet to examine all pigs that are, were, and ever shall be. Even were I to examine all such pigs, I would have to believe that my vision (and other senses) were not flawed in such a way as to lead me to a false conclusion. Yet no one I've heard of keeps pigs in cages for fear that they will fly off. We even consider it so proven as to say "such and such will occur when pigs fly," by which we mean that such and such will never happen. So, God has provided sufficient evidence that I believe His existence is proven. You may require different evidence, such as Him taking a corporeal form and then speaking to you directly so that you can observe this form via audio and visual senses.
Few (I'd argue zero) people are true 'literal-read weenies,' as you say. (For example, few believe that Jesus is a literal gate by which sheep enter and leave a sheep-pen, though that is exactly what He stated.) However, many of us believe that the Bible is not a collection of myths, and that it is more often literal than not, especially in narrative sections.
Others have put more thought into this and explained it more eloquently. You might examine R.C. Sproul's work (http://www.ligonier.org/) if you are interested.
I work in a call center for a credit union. we have probably about 1500 people answering phones and our membership is about 3 million. We have a very high satisfaction rate, but it takes an insane amount of work and money to keep things running smoothly.
After about 3 years of constant involvement answering phones and monitoring queues/trends, I honestly think the whole call center model is not the best way to approach customer service unless you have a ton of revenue at your disposal and you know where (geographically) to place the call centers.
There are some tough issues to tackle that have been mentioned:
Finding people with a good work ethic. - Some people are not interested in doing a job right because it's the right thing to do. Hence, they will make up stuff instead of stating what they know. The fact that many callers are rude and/or demanding doesn't make it easy for those of us who will help them no matter how they act, but for someone with no work ethic, just be glad they're not your waiter.
Having the right implementation. - When you do call center work, you're fighting two major fronts. (a) People are pretty impatient when they call. They want to have their call answered within 1 - 2 minutes. This can be done if the strategy is to push calls through as fast as possible. However this will inevitably sacrifice quality. Duh. (b) It costs a ton to staff capable people in a call center. If you're in an area with lots of job competition and a large pool of applicants, it is very hard to hire in a call center. It is hard work. People are often rude or demanding. Sitting on the phone for 8 hours every day really wears on you quickly, no matter how nice people are. So you have to put the center in a location where you are the employer of choice.
My credit union is lucky. We generate an insane amount of revenue for our size. We can afford good workers and the management for the most part has not forgotten that we are quality service oriented rather than profit driven. We are not required to answer a certain amount of calls per day. The major factor for evaluation is QA monitorings (QA is a huge operation alone) and the amount of time spent on the phone. Most companies are not so lucky. They do not have the money to hire good people. Their customers demand to have someone answer the phone, and something has to give.
Amen. I'm not a big fan of RIAA or MPAA tactics, but I do believe that the only real way to show dedication for your cause against them is to not use their products, rather than just stealing them. This is the same issue, but we're outraged when the victim is individual rather than corporate.
The one difference I can see here is that the person's art is being sold rather than just duplicated and stolen. Still, I think your point remains valid.
Oh yes, how foolish these arguments are. The article only mentioned peaceful protesters... no one would ever think to use a weapon like this in any other way than that specified by the article.
Mark my words, the implementation of a device like this will bring far more negative consequences than positive. It will be turned on the innocent. It will be used to torture people.
Can any object or situation be turned into a scenario for torture? Most certainly. Are weapons designed specifically to cause intense pain more likely to be used for torture? You tell me.
Those who use batteries, canes, and soap-filled socks for torture have already crossed lines that the conscience should prevent. These people will be doing that no matter what they have at their disposal. They have allowed their evil motives to supersede the call of morality or conscience.
What of those not already prone to such abuse? Don't you think this will severely increase the temptation? Already it is clear that some (I emphasize, not the majority by a long shot) of even our ostensibly disciplined armed forces have shown their darker sides in the way they've unnecessarily treated POWs (Guantanamo Bay, etc.) Our CIA has long lead the way in teaching other groups to use torture to gain our objectives (study any Latin American history). Can you not see how such a device would be used for revenge, frustration, or simple cruelty against a local population? If I've already crossed into this degenerate state of mind, I'm much more likely to restrain myself from killing in cold blood than making someone scream for a short period of time.
And what happens when the enemy, whoever that may be, inevitably gains control of such a device? How much more will our POWs be mistreated if we start using torture as a method for protection? Do we care to take this to the logical conclusion? Apparently not. I don't doubt that the inventors of this device are well-meaning. I do doubt that the human heart will restrain from abusing it.
Even if we all agree that this is madness, is there anything we can do to stop it now? I fear not.
I have no idea as to whether or not venues of any type require sheet music. However, I do know when a reply is completely rude and unneccesarily harsh. If the guy/girl is wrong about this, then fine. By all means, post a reply with correct information and some sort of evidence, as many of you have. Don't act like the person has just finished stomping newborn baby puppies though, just because you think they gave incorrect info.
Also, as a guitar player, I used OLGA a lot when I was first starting out. It is sad to see organizations making it so diffult for OLGA to keep up the good work. Does anyone have any ideas as to how we could fight this and/or who we could contact to express our disapproval?
As a representative of the aforementioned uber-religious, fascist, etc., I'm kind of sad to hear this. Up until two months ago, I didn't know such companies existed. My brother's fiancé bought him a copy of Vanilla Sky from a company called CleanFlicks. I was visiting him and I watched it. They do a really good job of dubbing and scrubbing, much better than is done on tv (the audio sync is really good, the editing doesn't seem like it was done on the first try).
I probably wouldn't have watched the film otherwise, and I really enjoyed it. You can say what you want about that being stupid, naive, sheltered, etc., but for the moment, this is still the U.S. and it's considered a right to choose what you watch or don't watch. Anyway, I went to their website after reading this, and it looks like they've also been renting edited movies. Their site didn't mention the court case, but they were mentioned and quoted in the article. Despite their corny quote about the situation, I'm happy these types of companies exist.
My main question is, what does hollywood have to gain from this? I never heard anyone freaking out about MST3K editing movies, but maybe this is a bit different. Still, it seems hollywood actually gains revenue from sales they might not get otherwise. I'd love to know their real motivation.
but you forgot one thing. Rock - Crushes - Scissors! -- But, Paper covers Rock, and Scissors cuts Paper! Kiff, we have a conundrum! Search them for Paper, and, bring me a Rock.
Well, since we're getting technical, it's actually the book of Revelation (not plural). In greek, "APOKALUYIS IWANNOU" (Apokalupsis Ionnou), or, "a Revelation of John".
Slashdot Mirror
Quite right. On top of that, we have the TSA burden increasing prices with a corresponding decrease in service and convenience.
because Monkey Island is being done : )
http://www.telltalegames.com/monkeyisland
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loom_(video_game)
I really think he is right. The nwo stuff may not be as concrete as some claim, but in terms of civil rights, we're losing them more each day here in the U.S. When you look at recent events, like Bush completely overriding congress with no authority to do so, and even congress basically ignoring the will of the people (in terms of input they received, at least) regarding that bailout bill a while back, power is being concentrated further and further into the executive branch. GP's language might be a tad sensational, but a troll he/she is not.
about that drill bit. Had it been made of that righteous mineral dolomite, there's a slim chance it might have survived.
but libertarianism is an empty, flawed ideology anyways, so what do you expect?
it would be nice to hear some reasons to accompany heavy criticism like that.
It's more likely due to he massive egos and arguments surrounding the DSS, and archeology in general. To this day, over 60 years since their discovery, not all of the DSS have been published.
You wouldn't slap the DDS on a pioneer scanner any more than you would the U.S. Constitution. (Although both are widely ignored by groups who claim to follow them.) The documents are old and fragile, despite how well they have been preserved. I suspect they will take forever to scan for the same reasons that valuable paintings take forever to restore.
Also, as a student of ancient hebrew, I find this very exciting. The scripting on the DDS is not like the script you will find on a copy of the ancient hebrew texts in print. For one, you won't find vowel pointings. You also won't find any sort of sentence markers, and there is no system of capital and lower case letters as would be found in english or greek (though the koine greek codices were in all caps without any spacing or punctuation as well).
The reason the DDS are relevant for Christians is because Jewish history is inextricably linked to Jesus of Nazareth.
I hate to tell you, but GP is pretty much right. In many instances, security turns into a no-win situation.
When I was still working for a major financial institution, we had FINCEN dictating all sorts of rules about who you have to ID, what specific ingredients must be involved, what kind of transactions have to be reported, etc. And that's just in person. On the phone, it's worse because there is no picture ID to use.
You have customers who are often compliant but many times irate about being forced to provide their SSN (or part of it), their name, and their DOB over the phone, and then often, a myriad of other security questions.
Then you have the guys who send out the phishing e-mails, or make a copy of your corporate website. Customers, who are sometimes completely inept, and sometimes too inexperienced with the internet to know what's going on, give the bad guys all the information they need. So then we are forced to make a call:
A) increase amount/difficulty of security questions. That's usually the answer and it ticks off more customers. When I was supervising there were times when I blocked access for someone who really needed it and who was probably the real customer. But they just couldn't provide enough information to make me sure. There was also a time when I gave information to someone who made me feel confidently enough that they were the customer, but maybe they couldn't remember down to the month how long they'd been with the bank. Turns out later it was a scammer who got this person's information, even their signature. Sometimes you just can't know for certain.
B) We could stop offering telephone or online service. Try and survive like that.
C) We could move back to an cash-only system, so that the only fraud is going to be outright robbery. that might not be a bad idea in terms of keeping people from getting into so much debt, but I doubt it's practical.
This isn't good... girls will start beating us at video games on a regular basis.
I'd say that is a good plan.
I tame them.
However, the reason that this card is causing so much commotion is because a lot of people have been paying $500 or more for the top end cards during the last year or so. Why in the world would someone pay so much? As someone else commented, it's a matter of personal preference. In my personal situation, I don't own any consoles or play console games unless I'm at a friend's house. I do, however, frequently play PC games (on linux and xp, anyway; don't really game on the macbook). Aside from shooting things, I find it interesting to watch and experience the ways in which our games approach reality (visually and physics-wise) as hardware and software progress. For someone with that interest, having 60+ FPS at whatever resolution you're capable of displaying is important.
To give you an idea of what software these days is demanding and what the hardware can handle, I present my current rig. Nvidia 7800GT (purchased about 2 years ago on ebay in the $285-300 range), 2 gigs of DDR1 corsair, and an amd x2 4200 running at around 2.6ghz. The 7800Gt was launched 8/11/05, the ram (3500LL pro) was around october 2005 from what i can gather, and the cpu i think was from somewhere around May 2005 (i was a late buyer, but i didn't want to buy a whole new motherboard just yet). Anyway, I say all that to say that this stuff is not brand new, but it isn't ancient either. It is capable of running almost anything on the source engine very smoothly at my current 1920x1080 resolution, but not with everything turned up to max levels. Even at medium details, it cannot run the UT3 demo smoothly at 1280x1024, forget anything higher. Same story with Bioshock and the Crysis demo.
So, in preparation for UT3's launch, I intended to build a new rig. But there are some big things happening with CPUs and GPUs that make building right now a poor idea. The first issue was that rumors were flying around about the G92 and have been for some time. It was generally believed that they would release the next GPU sometime in november (and there were many different rumors, some saying that it would be a 9800 top end card with a teraflop throughput and others stating that it was going to be a midrange card between the then-current top end 8800GTX and ultras and the lower end geforce8 series). This release has solved that question. It was indeed a mid-range card solution, but the performance at $200 - $250 was far better than expected. This morning there were none available at newegg, and a few were on backorder at zipzoomfly. Now there are some at newegg, and I suspect it will take about a weak for the prices to solidify until after thanksgiving, at which point they'll probably drop some. Anyone who had been reading anything about nvidia would have been foolish to buy a GTX or ultra within the last couple of months, and that is the very reason I did not even consider it. The second issue is that ATI is probably going to release their next GPU in the next couple of weeks. Of course no one knows for sure what that will be, but the smart bet right now is that it will try to compete with the 8800GT in the same performance/price range. We'll see there. My purchases before were always default NVIDIA because their linux support was so much better. However, ATI/AMD has recently made large strides to change that, so it has influenced me to wait before deciding this time. The third issue is that both AMD and Intel are scheduled to release their new CPUs this quarter. So all of these issues have made it a good choice to wait. Now that this GPU is out, a lot of people who would have been enticed to
1. Tithing (Deuteronomy 14:22ff) was not a tax. The best we could probably compare it with is a tribute in the style represented in Hitite (and other Ancient Near East) Suzerain-Vassal treaties. (See Mendenhall's "Law and Covenant in Israel and the Ancient Near East, http://home.earthlink.net/~cadman777/Law_Cov_Mende nhall_TITLE.htm originally printed in Biblical Archeology magazine.
2. Giving outside tithing required? Can you cite this so I can look it up? The only thing I can think of is the offerings taken to build Solomon's temple, and those were strictly voluntary.
3. I would agree that initially Israel had a religious state, and that originally the Levites (among other things) handled the issues you mentioned.
4. Punishable by death? I can only assume you're thinking of Ananias and Sapphira. In the record, God killed them for lying, not for failure to comply to any giving requirements. Peter even told them that their resources were their own, to use as they saw fit. (Acts 5:1-11)
These are quotes from the article: Instead they sit at home and make their own records, which is sometimes OK but it doesn't bode well for long-term artistic vision.
It's just a means to an end.
We're talking about things that are going to change the world and change the way people listen to music and that's not going to happen with people blogging on the internet.
I mean, get out there -- communicate.
Hopefully the next movement in music will tear down the internet.
Let's get out in the streets and march and protest instead of sitting at home and blogging.
I do think it would be an incredible experiment to shut down the whole internet for five years and see what sort of art is produced over that span.
There's too much technology available.
I'm sure, as far as music goes, it would be much more interesting than it is today.
I don't have a mobile phone or an iPod or anything.
I am such a Luddite when it comes to making music. All I can do is write at the piano.
How can you make these comments in the form of a forum post??
Anyway, as others have noted, I like how the internet allows little guys to get their music out. One of my friends is an incredibly talented musician. I'd wager myspace has driven his exposure and fanbase far more than his coffee shop gigs.
One more pointless observation... It used to be that the only way to get your music out there was to get really popular, playing bars and other small gigs relentlessly at the expense of your family and/or personal health. Now you can keep playing coffee shops at your leisure while gaining popularity on the internet. As for me, I've played for small groups of friends, and i've played for larger audiences (no more than 1500), and I prefer the smaller groups hands down. For those that seek to distribute their music, they can continue to play smaller venues and let the internet do the footwork. I don't see a problem with that. Pop was getting crappy long before the internet became popular.
Gotfuturama and the interview they link, at RottenTomatoes. (minor spoilers there, if you can call them that)
Parent is right, ID is not science (in the strictest sense). It is simply an assessment. ID says that many contemporary conclusions about the origin of the universe and our planet are based on illogical arguments. Also, ID is not supported exclusively by theists. Spontaneous generation and evolution are responses to phenomena we observe (namely that the universe exists and that our planet is inhabited). That is science: conclusions based on observations. However, a conclusion can be reached using the scientific method and still be false.
For example, the conclusion that the earth is the center of the universe is also science. When this conclusion was widely held, it was based on observed phenomena. As the amount of available evidence increased (due to advancements in our tools of observation), new conclusions were formed. This did not make the old conclusion any less scientific, it simply no longer adequately explained the observed phenomena. ID is not based on observation, per se, but rather on an examination of the existing arguments. The conclusion is that the existing arguments do not adequately explain the observed phenomena.
As for the statement that God does not provide proof, I suppose that depends on the definition of proof. I accept the fact that pigs do not have wings as sufficiently proven true. I have yet to examine all pigs that are, were, and ever shall be. Even were I to examine all such pigs, I would have to believe that my vision (and other senses) were not flawed in such a way as to lead me to a false conclusion. Yet no one I've heard of keeps pigs in cages for fear that they will fly off. We even consider it so proven as to say "such and such will occur when pigs fly," by which we mean that such and such will never happen. So, God has provided sufficient evidence that I believe His existence is proven. You may require different evidence, such as Him taking a corporeal form and then speaking to you directly so that you can observe this form via audio and visual senses.
Few (I'd argue zero) people are true 'literal-read weenies,' as you say. (For example, few believe that Jesus is a literal gate by which sheep enter and leave a sheep-pen, though that is exactly what He stated.) However, many of us believe that the Bible is not a collection of myths, and that it is more often literal than not, especially in narrative sections.
Others have put more thought into this and explained it more eloquently. You might examine R.C. Sproul's work (http://www.ligonier.org/) if you are interested.
After about 3 years of constant involvement answering phones and monitoring queues/trends, I honestly think the whole call center model is not the best way to approach customer service unless you have a ton of revenue at your disposal and you know where (geographically) to place the call centers.
There are some tough issues to tackle that have been mentioned:
Finding people with a good work ethic. - Some people are not interested in doing a job right because it's the right thing to do. Hence, they will make up stuff instead of stating what they know. The fact that many callers are rude and/or demanding doesn't make it easy for those of us who will help them no matter how they act, but for someone with no work ethic, just be glad they're not your waiter.
Having the right implementation. - When you do call center work, you're fighting two major fronts. (a) People are pretty impatient when they call. They want to have their call answered within 1 - 2 minutes. This can be done if the strategy is to push calls through as fast as possible. However this will inevitably sacrifice quality. Duh. (b) It costs a ton to staff capable people in a call center. If you're in an area with lots of job competition and a large pool of applicants, it is very hard to hire in a call center. It is hard work. People are often rude or demanding. Sitting on the phone for 8 hours every day really wears on you quickly, no matter how nice people are. So you have to put the center in a location where you are the employer of choice.
My credit union is lucky. We generate an insane amount of revenue for our size. We can afford good workers and the management for the most part has not forgotten that we are quality service oriented rather than profit driven. We are not required to answer a certain amount of calls per day. The major factor for evaluation is QA monitorings (QA is a huge operation alone) and the amount of time spent on the phone. Most companies are not so lucky. They do not have the money to hire good people. Their customers demand to have someone answer the phone, and something has to give.
What do you think you are, some kind of Jedi? Mind tricks do not work on me, only money. Wait... this is money? Crap.
The one difference I can see here is that the person's art is being sold rather than just duplicated and stolen. Still, I think your point remains valid.
start a video blog about my growing withdrawal issues.
Oh yes, how foolish these arguments are. The article only mentioned peaceful protesters... no one would ever think to use a weapon like this in any other way than that specified by the article.
Mark my words, the implementation of a device like this will bring far more negative consequences than positive. It will be turned on the innocent. It will be used to torture people.
Can any object or situation be turned into a scenario for torture? Most certainly. Are weapons designed specifically to cause intense pain more likely to be used for torture? You tell me.
Those who use batteries, canes, and soap-filled socks for torture have already crossed lines that the conscience should prevent. These people will be doing that no matter what they have at their disposal. They have allowed their evil motives to supersede the call of morality or conscience.
What of those not already prone to such abuse? Don't you think this will severely increase the temptation? Already it is clear that some (I emphasize, not the majority by a long shot) of even our ostensibly disciplined armed forces have shown their darker sides in the way they've unnecessarily treated POWs (Guantanamo Bay, etc.) Our CIA has long lead the way in teaching other groups to use torture to gain our objectives (study any Latin American history). Can you not see how such a device would be used for revenge, frustration, or simple cruelty against a local population? If I've already crossed into this degenerate state of mind, I'm much more likely to restrain myself from killing in cold blood than making someone scream for a short period of time.
And what happens when the enemy, whoever that may be, inevitably gains control of such a device? How much more will our POWs be mistreated if we start using torture as a method for protection? Do we care to take this to the logical conclusion? Apparently not. I don't doubt that the inventors of this device are well-meaning. I do doubt that the human heart will restrain from abusing it.
Even if we all agree that this is madness, is there anything we can do to stop it now? I fear not.
I have no idea as to whether or not venues of any type require sheet music. However, I do know when a reply is completely rude and unneccesarily harsh. If the guy/girl is wrong about this, then fine. By all means, post a reply with correct information and some sort of evidence, as many of you have. Don't act like the person has just finished stomping newborn baby puppies though, just because you think they gave incorrect info.
Also, as a guitar player, I used OLGA a lot when I was first starting out. It is sad to see organizations making it so diffult for OLGA to keep up the good work. Does anyone have any ideas as to how we could fight this and/or who we could contact to express our disapproval?
As a representative of the aforementioned uber-religious, fascist, etc., I'm kind of sad to hear this. Up until two months ago, I didn't know such companies existed. My brother's fiancé bought him a copy of Vanilla Sky from a company called CleanFlicks. I was visiting him and I watched it. They do a really good job of dubbing and scrubbing, much better than is done on tv (the audio sync is really good, the editing doesn't seem like it was done on the first try).
I probably wouldn't have watched the film otherwise, and I really enjoyed it. You can say what you want about that being stupid, naive, sheltered, etc., but for the moment, this is still the U.S. and it's considered a right to choose what you watch or don't watch. Anyway, I went to their website after reading this, and it looks like they've also been renting edited movies. Their site didn't mention the court case, but they were mentioned and quoted in the article. Despite their corny quote about the situation, I'm happy these types of companies exist.
My main question is, what does hollywood have to gain from this? I never heard anyone freaking out about MST3K editing movies, but maybe this is a bit different. Still, it seems hollywood actually gains revenue from sales they might not get otherwise. I'd love to know their real motivation.
NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition!!
but you forgot one thing. Rock - Crushes - Scissors! -- But, Paper covers Rock, and Scissors cuts Paper! Kiff, we have a conundrum! Search them for Paper, and, bring me a Rock.
Well, since we're getting technical, it's actually the book of Revelation (not plural). In greek, "APOKALUYIS IWANNOU" (Apokalupsis Ionnou), or, "a Revelation of John".