Resistance is hardly futile -- in fact, toasters as we know them can't operate without it.
ha! ha! fun-ny hu-man! i so love puns in the morn-ing. may i inter-est you in a var-iety of toast-ed bread prod-ucts? no, no, no need to look be-hind you...fo-cus on the blink-ing lights and prod-ucts...
With a quick search I can find it at £1.27 *per kilo*.
sure, if you want to by "Popcorm" from Chinese burners. but if you truly want to support the pop industry, you have to buy from the Mafioso Popcorn Association of America, at $4.75 per baggy at the average licensed theater. assuming each baggy has a quarter cup of unpopped kernels, we're easily talking over $90 per kilo. and there's nothing the Mafioso Popcorn Association of America likes less than an un-Rights-Managed kernel, so i don't recommend downpopping your own during the movie.
I myself prefer getting my stuff through Popcorn-2-Peer programs; but it's always important to make sure your peers are virus-free.
And with this system, they can sell DVD's in vending machines. I will definately pick up a few DVD's while waiting to catch the train home if this is widely available.
of course, when you look up to hand the conductor your ticket, you've now missed that scene...(ominous background music; bass increases slowly; cue the violins!) FOREVER!
My insurance company won't... this is a "preexisting condition" which, according to them, doesn't directly affect my Quality of Life or my ability to do my job.
IANAhealthcareemployee, but just out of curiosity...isn't there usually a statute of limitations on preexisting conditions? i.e., they become covered again after about a year?
if that isn't the case with your insurance, it might be worth changing plans; if you've been previously covered, the new insurance wouldn't exercise the preexisting clause at all. of course, getting coverage when you know about this condition could be quite tough...but probably worth the legwork...
that's actually precisely the sort of transmission error i'm referring to as being minor - something which is exegetically helpful when corrected, but also something which has little to no affect on the interpretation of the text -- it's commonly assumed by Christians that the wacky stuff in Revelations refers somewhat obliquely either to Roman officials or future events, or (most commonly) both. finding that the passage actually refers to Caligula instead of Nero (hypothetically) is quite interesting historically, but in no way changes the interpretation or application of the text.
the same can be said of other likely interpolations, such as the ENTIRE woman-caught-in-adultery passage (containing the old adage, "let him who is without sin cast the first stone" -- which is absent in the earliest manuscripts). discarding such passages changes nothing - the hypocrisy of sinners accusing other sinners of sinning is pounded on by Jesus half a dozen other times, and this example, while more visually memorable than the others, is mere reinforcement. take it or leave, the message of the passage stands.
all to say, we can list errors till kingdom come, but in 2000 years of history we have yet to see a religious sect (from any tradition - Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist) arise out of poor textual transmission - Protestantism came out of the return of a Pauline/Augustinian spirituality, Mormonism out of the interpolation of new texts, the Gnostic revival out of added texts and reinterpretations, Sunnis/Shiites out of doctrinal differences; etc etc etc -- it's only modern pop-culture scholars that think transmission errors miraculously and suddenly render a 1000-page text unusable -- errors which, by their very nature, sneak in because they're inconsequential enough not to catch the eyes of people reading the text.
There is likely no definitive answer to this , as an Agnostic I am more inclined to believe in the alterations having occurred and having been significant.I have also read texts which agree with you , I however do not
i'm responding to you as a scholar, though - forget Christian/Agnostic/Atheist - we have early texts (Dead Sea Scrolls for OT, papyri scraps for NT), and we have current texts - in the same languages (Hebrew/Aramaic, Greek), and we can line them up and go word for word. The transmission is, for the most part, faithful; and that IS a definative answer. That's just indisputable - and yes, I have personally done so. I majored in Classics - Greek/Latin with a little bit of Hebrew, and i greatly enjoy puzzling through the critical apparati in modern printings, where all major variants are listed. it only takes basic literacy to read a passage and check the footnote, where it lists the texts that omit "the" or add an "and."
that doesn't mean there weren't alterations in the deep Old Testament (which references several thousand years of history before its first extant texts). Meh. Maybe there were. But by the middle of the second century AD, there were enough independant textual transmission lines that modern scholars can speak with great pride and authority when discussing their texts. it doesn't much matter if someone in the 4th century altered a text, when you have unaltered, earlier texts.
It's much like you saying you've seen changes in the past 10 years in a text -- so long as you still have the version from 10 years ago, you can release a critical version today, which undoes those changes. or you can publish a blended version which lists both variants, and footnotes which texts include each. but to say "we can never know what it said 10 years ago because it has been altered!" would be silly.
On the mono-poly debate , well the books i read did differ on a few things . Some espousing the (As i like to call it ) Mrs. God theory others more in line with demonic theory.. though still if they are refereed to as divine beings then there is an argument for polytheism.
there's certainly a lot of disagreement on the point; mostly stemming from our lack of sources which describe how closely tied Judaism was to local polytheistic religions which shared names for deities. the bell curve of theories peaks around Henotheism these days (ref http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henotheistic), which describes prehistory Judaism as a one-God faith which believed in the existence of other gods; a hypothetical corrollary would be a Greek who worshipped only Jupiter, and thought Jupiter could overcome all other Greek deities -- polytheistic in one sense, but practicing and believing as if only one god matters, and functionally having that god on a higher pedestal. my demon analogy is probably overreaching; "lesser deities" would be more precise. meh. i'll drop the point. back to the meaty stuff:
I could read genesis and exodus and come off with the idea of god as a child murdering psycho , where as you could read it and see a heroic liberator of slaves.. the whole thing is up in the air .
I did not present them as facts only opinions based on texts i have read.. just as you have.
No no no no no. "coming off" indicates interpretation, wherein personal biases do wreak havoc. but questions of textual transmission accuracy are not debatable things where opinion matter. questions of biblical COMPOSITION are - theories abound - but TRANSMISSION is a done deal - we can say with 100% certainty, atheist, agnostic or Christian, that the text has not been altered in the past 1800 years. I can say the same thing about Homer, the Qur'an, the New York Times, and Dr. Seuss (for different periods of time) -- once you have multiple, independant transmission lines (e.g.: publication with promulgation),
Compare older versions of the Torah in Hebrew to the old testament.
you are, of course, aware that modern Old Testament translations are translated from the oldest extant Torah/Hebrew texts, but that Jewish copyists were so meticulous that it doesn't much matter? that the corruptions that snuck in were single words and minor misspellings, and that even over the 2,800 year spread between current press runs and the earliest manuscripts and pottery shards, there are stunningly few differences, especially when compared to parallel texts (Homer and the presocratics, for instance)
It has been shown that the Jewish faith as early as 800BC was perhaps not monotheistic.
Somewhat true - but it was also not what we would call polytheistic - what many scholars now believe is that the pre-literary (1000bc+) Jewish believers may have lent credence to the existence of other supernatural beings, but believed theirs was the highest God - the creator and ruler; their understanding of other 'gods' was closer to what modern fundamentalists would call demons - things other people worship that have powers, but not what we would refer to today as an omnipotent God. of course, oddly enough, much of that understanding comes from texts in the scriptures which were not erased by subsequent believers, which seem to indicate a diversity of opinion.
In essence the bible has been rewritten so many times....the amount of rewrites due to political slanting and posturing , making bits fit the ideas of the current church and plain old translation errors have made the thing a total mess.
that's just plan wrong. the bible has certainly been reinterpreted, but all mainline groups (eg, excluding Marcionites, certain Gnostic sects and the like) have faithfully transmitted the text, even if they chose to ignore inconvenient sections. which is why fundamentalist Catholics using circa-16th century Latin/Vulgate texts which where recopied zillions of times until the invention of the printing press, and Jewish scholars poring over scraps of the Torah dug up in 5th century BC tombs argue about interpretation and not content. there are, in fact, probably only about half a dozen passages in the Old Testament where the Hebrew and Greek/Latin traditions vary by enough to affect the understanding of the passage...and none of them affect the message of the passage, just its nuance.
the rest of your post is presented as opinion, so i don't see the need to correct it - as you're entitled to your opinions. but please don't present completely erroneous nonsense as historical fact.
About DVD-A's encryption being cracked, it wasn't What happened was a patch was released for WinDVD to redirect the output to a file instead of a sound card. You can bet the RIAA is working on a way to neutralize this.
it's called Windows Vista, in which all this will run in some sort of nasty protected process/thread that makes sure the data only goes to the sound card. i, for one, will buy a Mac inste.......oh drat.
i don't..........think so. most mainstream evangelicals (who are the core voting bloc, as opposed to the babbling idiots on the news) are cautiously in favor of medical advancement like this. eternal life type treatments make them a little jittery; but it's mostly a nervousness about 'playing God' as opposed to any adherence to a scriptural injunction...and such nervousness rarely translates to active grassroots opposition.
i suspect you'd actually see a case where the religious "nuts" as you call them, excepting the political commentators, would actually be the cogent intellectuals -- supporting the new technology for legitimate healing applications, but in a measured way, thinking about its ramifications, and watching for abuses.
A few other notes: We should end the "Overdraft" and bounced check laws. If a check does not have money, it should just be a refused transaction. Coupled with this the provision to immediately transfer funds... This way nobody goes to jail for bad checks, we just refuse them the goods because we can validate their check and charge the funds immediately.
but overdraft is a *good thing* when used properly - like when paying in good faith but with bad bookkeeping - payer wants to pay, recipient wants to receive, payer forgets to forward funds, banks goes and gets them and charges payer; case closed. the fee is stinky (unless payer is smart and has a small credit line on the account), but so it goes.
eliminating overdraft means checks cease being functional tender - if every check merely bounced when the account was empty, businesses that didn't want to wait on delinquents to call in and authorize the transfer wouldn't want to accept them unless they could check their balance at the point-of-sale...which defeats the purpose of checks - remote or delayed payment.
y'know, if they're asleep at the wheel anyway, it may at last be time to submit patent proposal #7,545,763: A system in which a central authority examines claims by inventors, selects which ones are original, and then protects said inventors from others copying their artifice.
"household controlled through voice commands issued to a robot dog"
i'm much more amused by the concept of a household controlled *by* voice commands issued *from* a robot dog.
"hey sparky! run next door and tell the Jones' house to turn down that godawful music...and turn off their hot water while you're at it...mwouhahaha"
"Prepping images for printing or submition... looking at a recent folder, 1-2 minutes per image, I'd say that's not bad."
That's not bad at all. That's actually quite impressive - I allot 5-15 minutes per image, adjusting levels, color balance, saturation, etc, which is where the GIMP slows me down, considerably. But then - I tend to do more low-level (University) advertising, where the only images that are used have to be absolutely perfect; not just resized/stamped. I also tend to shoot without strobes, meaning noise, color casts and deep shadows are daily friends. That said - you're definately one of the first pros I've seen weigh in fully on the linux side (though many dual-boot).
I'm also pleasantly surprised to see Bibble is Linux-ready...it seems some things have changed since I last upgraded my computer...much to ponder...
In all seriousness - written on a mac - Macs are AWFUL for photo organization - which shocks me, seeing as Apple prides itself on being the graphics leader. Photoshop's browser is a resource hog, and the finder's icon generation is a joke (as opposed to Windows XP...which...sigh...generates thumbnails almost instantly). IPhoto...oh IPhoto...why dost thou torment me with thine memory-eating?
On PC, I tend to organize and browse using...Windows Explorer (note: not an option if you generate RAW files), and Jasc PSP8 (not as cool as Adobe, but faster browser).
Most of the free browsing software (breezebrowser is popular - ) is for Windows only as of yet. Hope springs eternal. For Linux, though...Wine me up.:-)
If you're willing to pay, IView Multimedia has an absolutely excellant engine for Macs, although I think their non-pro version (100 lemmings) is limited to 18,000 images per catalog. The pro version (200 lemmings) is unlimited (except for the whole computer-exploding-around-128,000-open-images hardware limitation) and works wonderfully.
There are others. But with 40,000 images (parent), be prepared to pay (I'm at 35,000 myself, and have had to resign myself to it).
Slashdot Mirror
ha! ha! fun-ny hu-man! i so love puns in the morn-ing. may i inter-est you in a var-iety of toast-ed bread prod-ucts? no, no, no need to look be-hind you...fo-cus on the blink-ing lights and prod-ucts...
With a quick search I can find it at £1.27 *per kilo*.
sure, if you want to by "Popcorm" from Chinese burners. but if you truly want to support the pop industry, you have to buy from the Mafioso Popcorn Association of America, at $4.75 per baggy at the average licensed theater. assuming each baggy has a quarter cup of unpopped kernels, we're easily talking over $90 per kilo. and there's nothing the Mafioso Popcorn Association of America likes less than an un-Rights-Managed kernel, so i don't recommend downpopping your own during the movie.
I myself prefer getting my stuff through Popcorn-2-Peer programs; but it's always important to make sure your peers are virus-free.
Okay then, translate "The window has been broken" into active voice.
"Windows is broken."
hahaha - nice!
well, last before Windows Vista arrives, at least.
And with this system, they can sell DVD's in vending machines. I will definately pick up a few DVD's while waiting to catch the train home if this is widely available.
of course, when you look up to hand the conductor your ticket, you've now missed that scene...(ominous background music; bass increases slowly; cue the violins!) FOREVER!
located in NASA's secret moon base.
subtle. i like that.
My insurance company won't... this is a "preexisting condition" which, according to them, doesn't directly affect my Quality of Life or my ability to do my job.
IANAhealthcareemployee, but just out of curiosity...isn't there usually a statute of limitations on preexisting conditions? i.e., they become covered again after about a year?
if that isn't the case with your insurance, it might be worth changing plans; if you've been previously covered, the new insurance wouldn't exercise the preexisting clause at all. of course, getting coverage when you know about this condition could be quite tough...but probably worth the legwork...
that's actually precisely the sort of transmission error i'm referring to as being minor - something which is exegetically helpful when corrected, but also something which has little to no affect on the interpretation of the text -- it's commonly assumed by Christians that the wacky stuff in Revelations refers somewhat obliquely either to Roman officials or future events, or (most commonly) both. finding that the passage actually refers to Caligula instead of Nero (hypothetically) is quite interesting historically, but in no way changes the interpretation or application of the text.
the same can be said of other likely interpolations, such as the ENTIRE woman-caught-in-adultery passage (containing the old adage, "let him who is without sin cast the first stone" -- which is absent in the earliest manuscripts). discarding such passages changes nothing - the hypocrisy of sinners accusing other sinners of sinning is pounded on by Jesus half a dozen other times, and this example, while more visually memorable than the others, is mere reinforcement. take it or leave, the message of the passage stands.
all to say, we can list errors till kingdom come, but in 2000 years of history we have yet to see a religious sect (from any tradition - Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist) arise out of poor textual transmission - Protestantism came out of the return of a Pauline/Augustinian spirituality, Mormonism out of the interpolation of new texts, the Gnostic revival out of added texts and reinterpretations, Sunnis/Shiites out of doctrinal differences; etc etc etc -- it's only modern pop-culture scholars that think transmission errors miraculously and suddenly render a 1000-page text unusable -- errors which, by their very nature, sneak in because they're inconsequential enough not to catch the eyes of people reading the text.
There is likely no definitive answer to this , as an Agnostic I am more inclined to believe in the alterations having occurred and having been significant .I have also read texts which agree with you , I however do not
.. though still if they are refereed to as divine beings then there is an argument for polytheism .
.. the whole thing is up in the air .
I did not present them as facts only opinions based on texts i have read .. just as you have.
i'm responding to you as a scholar, though - forget Christian/Agnostic/Atheist - we have early texts (Dead Sea Scrolls for OT, papyri scraps for NT), and we have current texts - in the same languages (Hebrew/Aramaic, Greek), and we can line them up and go word for word. The transmission is, for the most part, faithful; and that IS a definative answer. That's just indisputable - and yes, I have personally done so. I majored in Classics - Greek/Latin with a little bit of Hebrew, and i greatly enjoy puzzling through the critical apparati in modern printings, where all major variants are listed. it only takes basic literacy to read a passage and check the footnote, where it lists the texts that omit "the" or add an "and."
that doesn't mean there weren't alterations in the deep Old Testament (which references several thousand years of history before its first extant texts). Meh. Maybe there were. But by the middle of the second century AD, there were enough independant textual transmission lines that modern scholars can speak with great pride and authority when discussing their texts. it doesn't much matter if someone in the 4th century altered a text, when you have unaltered, earlier texts.
It's much like you saying you've seen changes in the past 10 years in a text -- so long as you still have the version from 10 years ago, you can release a critical version today, which undoes those changes. or you can publish a blended version which lists both variants, and footnotes which texts include each. but to say "we can never know what it said 10 years ago because it has been altered!" would be silly.
On the mono-poly debate , well the books i read did differ on a few things . Some espousing the (As i like to call it ) Mrs. God theory others more in line with demonic theory
there's certainly a lot of disagreement on the point; mostly stemming from our lack of sources which describe how closely tied Judaism was to local polytheistic religions which shared names for deities. the bell curve of theories peaks around Henotheism these days (ref http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henotheistic), which describes prehistory Judaism as a one-God faith which believed in the existence of other gods; a hypothetical corrollary would be a Greek who worshipped only Jupiter, and thought Jupiter could overcome all other Greek deities -- polytheistic in one sense, but practicing and believing as if only one god matters, and functionally having that god on a higher pedestal. my demon analogy is probably overreaching; "lesser deities" would be more precise. meh. i'll drop the point. back to the meaty stuff:
I could read genesis and exodus and come off with the idea of god as a child murdering psycho , where as you could read it and see a heroic liberator of slaves
No no no no no. "coming off" indicates interpretation, wherein personal biases do wreak havoc. but questions of textual transmission accuracy are not debatable things where opinion matter. questions of biblical COMPOSITION are - theories abound - but TRANSMISSION is a done deal - we can say with 100% certainty, atheist, agnostic or Christian, that the text has not been altered in the past 1800 years. I can say the same thing about Homer, the Qur'an, the New York Times, and Dr. Seuss (for different periods of time) -- once you have multiple, independant transmission lines (e.g.: publication with promulgation),
wow...this is a dooooooozy of an uninformed post.
Compare older versions of the Torah in Hebrew to the old testament.
you are, of course, aware that modern Old Testament translations are translated from the oldest extant Torah/Hebrew texts, but that Jewish copyists were so meticulous that it doesn't much matter? that the corruptions that snuck in were single words and minor misspellings, and that even over the 2,800 year spread between current press runs and the earliest manuscripts and pottery shards, there are stunningly few differences, especially when compared to parallel texts (Homer and the presocratics, for instance)
It has been shown that the Jewish faith as early as 800BC was perhaps not monotheistic.
Somewhat true - but it was also not what we would call polytheistic - what many scholars now believe is that the pre-literary (1000bc+) Jewish believers may have lent credence to the existence of other supernatural beings, but believed theirs was the highest God - the creator and ruler; their understanding of other 'gods' was closer to what modern fundamentalists would call demons - things other people worship that have powers, but not what we would refer to today as an omnipotent God. of course, oddly enough, much of that understanding comes from texts in the scriptures which were not erased by subsequent believers, which seem to indicate a diversity of opinion.
In essence the bible has been rewritten so many times....the amount of rewrites due to political slanting and posturing , making bits fit the ideas of the current church and plain old translation errors have made the thing a total mess.
that's just plan wrong. the bible has certainly been reinterpreted, but all mainline groups (eg, excluding Marcionites, certain Gnostic sects and the like) have faithfully transmitted the text, even if they chose to ignore inconvenient sections. which is why fundamentalist Catholics using circa-16th century Latin/Vulgate texts which where recopied zillions of times until the invention of the printing press, and Jewish scholars poring over scraps of the Torah dug up in 5th century BC tombs argue about interpretation and not content. there are, in fact, probably only about half a dozen passages in the Old Testament where the Hebrew and Greek/Latin traditions vary by enough to affect the understanding of the passage...and none of them affect the message of the passage, just its nuance.
the rest of your post is presented as opinion, so i don't see the need to correct it - as you're entitled to your opinions. but please don't present completely erroneous nonsense as historical fact.
About DVD-A's encryption being cracked, it wasn't What happened was a patch was released for WinDVD to redirect the output to a file instead of a sound card. You can bet the RIAA is working on a way to neutralize this.
it's called Windows Vista, in which all this will run in some sort of nasty protected process/thread that makes sure the data only goes to the sound card. i, for one, will buy a Mac inste.......oh drat.
i don't..........think so. most mainstream evangelicals (who are the core voting bloc, as opposed to the babbling idiots on the news) are cautiously in favor of medical advancement like this. eternal life type treatments make them a little jittery; but it's mostly a nervousness about 'playing God' as opposed to any adherence to a scriptural injunction...and such nervousness rarely translates to active grassroots opposition.
i suspect you'd actually see a case where the religious "nuts" as you call them, excepting the political commentators, would actually be the cogent intellectuals -- supporting the new technology for legitimate healing applications, but in a measured way, thinking about its ramifications, and watching for abuses.
Anyone know what my Dual 2 GHz G5 is using?
if my temperature monitor is correct, i would guess nuclear fusion.
seriously, folks! 80 degrees celsius and climbing! (2.7 ghz g5)
A few other notes: We should end the "Overdraft" and bounced check laws. If a check does not have money, it should just be a refused transaction. Coupled with this the provision to immediately transfer funds... This way nobody goes to jail for bad checks, we just refuse them the goods because we can validate their check and charge the funds immediately.
but overdraft is a *good thing* when used properly - like when paying in good faith but with bad bookkeeping - payer wants to pay, recipient wants to receive, payer forgets to forward funds, banks goes and gets them and charges payer; case closed. the fee is stinky (unless payer is smart and has a small credit line on the account), but so it goes.
eliminating overdraft means checks cease being functional tender - if every check merely bounced when the account was empty, businesses that didn't want to wait on delinquents to call in and authorize the transfer wouldn't want to accept them unless they could check their balance at the point-of-sale...which defeats the purpose of checks - remote or delayed payment.
Attention All Comets: in Capitalist America, Astrologers predict You!
sorry...reference was perhaps a bit too obscure...(surrounding articles contain spoilers...don't wander too far if you wanna watch the series).
in ipv7, we won't need a navi at all...
y'know, if they're asleep at the wheel anyway, it may at last be time to submit patent proposal #7,545,763: A system in which a central authority examines claims by inventors, selects which ones are original, and then protects said inventors from others copying their artifice.
"Windows Longhorn: 'The Vapor Tiger' or 'Like Tiger...on Paper'...NEXT on Geral^H^H^H^H^HSlashdot's Origami OS News!"
sorry. it's late and i'm tired.
"household controlled through voice commands issued to a robot dog" i'm much more amused by the concept of a household controlled *by* voice commands issued *from* a robot dog. "hey sparky! run next door and tell the Jones' house to turn down that godawful music...and turn off their hot water while you're at it...mwouhahaha"
stupid slashdot spam article. where are the pictures?!
"Prepping images for printing or submition... looking at a recent folder, 1-2 minutes per image, I'd say that's not bad."
That's not bad at all. That's actually quite impressive - I allot 5-15 minutes per image, adjusting levels, color balance, saturation, etc, which is where the GIMP slows me down, considerably. But then - I tend to do more low-level (University) advertising, where the only images that are used have to be absolutely perfect; not just resized/stamped. I also tend to shoot without strobes, meaning noise, color casts and deep shadows are daily friends. That said - you're definately one of the first pros I've seen weigh in fully on the linux side (though many dual-boot).
I'm also pleasantly surprised to see Bibble is Linux-ready...it seems some things have changed since I last upgraded my computer...much to ponder...
In all seriousness - written on a mac - Macs are AWFUL for photo organization - which shocks me, seeing as Apple prides itself on being the graphics leader. Photoshop's browser is a resource hog, and the finder's icon generation is a joke (as opposed to Windows XP...which...sigh...generates thumbnails almost instantly). IPhoto...oh IPhoto...why dost thou torment me with thine memory-eating?
:-)
On PC, I tend to organize and browse using...Windows Explorer (note: not an option if you generate RAW files), and Jasc PSP8 (not as cool as Adobe, but faster browser).
Most of the free browsing software (breezebrowser is popular - ) is for Windows only as of yet. Hope springs eternal. For Linux, though...Wine me up.
If you're willing to pay, IView Multimedia has an absolutely excellant engine for Macs, although I think their non-pro version (100 lemmings) is limited to 18,000 images per catalog. The pro version (200 lemmings) is unlimited (except for the whole computer-exploding-around-128,000-open-images hardware limitation) and works wonderfully.
There are others. But with 40,000 images (parent), be prepared to pay (I'm at 35,000 myself, and have had to resign myself to it).