Can someone explain how parent is a troll? The graph is quite interesting.
I'd guess it's that his link is to the site of one of the sleaziest spyware vendors around. Maybe there's some other reason, but that's the obvious one.
I don't think you get what he is saying. Unless you were already with AT&T, you won't be putting your SIM card in there. You are going to be putting an AT&T SIM card in there. Thats where the "activation" comes in, where the SIM card gets tied to your AT&T account. Just because you don't consider that to be the definition of activation, doesn't make that any less true.
I get exactly what he's saying, but he's wrong.
I stuck my *TMobile* SIM into my iPhone and didn't activate anything. It just worked...well after I had to work around Apple's retarded attempt at lockin.
I don't consider it activation because it wasn't.
Do you get it now?
You see? When you 1st got your SIM card you activated it. Thats what's this thread is talking about, activating a new SIM card. Instead of having the cellphone guys go through the process, you get to buy a phone from Apple or AT&T and activate your new SIM account yourself on iTunes. They aren't talking about inserting your previous SIM card from port to port, you dirty sailor.
Actually, we are talking about moving a SIM from phone to phone. The OP is trying to claim that doesn't happen in "99.9%" of cases which is complete BS.
You don't need to activate the specific device with GSM, but you do normally need to activate the SIM/your account, which for 99.9% of consumers amounts to exactly the same thing.
WTF?!?
Dude, most people already have accounts and SIMS you drop your old SIM in your new phone and away you go. That's all I had to do with my iPhone...well apart from evading the retarded *totally unnecessary* "activation" crap.
Seriously, quit spouting ridiculous BS to defend a stupid idea.
Okay, I'll bite. Other than new systems preinstalled with Vista and Office 2007 (no choice available to the customer), which evidence suggests people are choosing to move from XP/Office 2003 to Vista/Office 2007?
My small company just hired a bunch of new employees and had to buy new office licenses. Office 2003 was not purchasable, so we had to buy 2007 licenses along with the media for 2003 and it included "down"grade licenses to 2003.
This evidence is used by MS to suggest that we chose to upgrade to 2007. I suspect that a large chunk of the 2007 "installations" are similar given how widely reviled 2007 is.
If you're right, and the Mormons are right, then heaven is going to have entire planets with no booze. In that case I'm pretty glad that, as an unbeliever, I'd be going to the other place...
Beer volcanoes and stripper factories! Ramen brother. May you be touched by his noodly apendage.
It's not just document stealing. Read the wiki article I linked, it talks about how the church of Scientology tried to frame people for various crimes because they spoke out about the church! They threaten to kill people for the same reason. This is happening now, not hundreds of years ago.
It's not "hundreds" of years ago. The Catholic Church only banned torture and murder of "heretics" in the 1920s that's less that 100 years ago and had nothing to do with their nonexistent virtue. Other extremist nutter Christians are still doing it, and we don't even need to talk about the Muslims except to avoid being accused of not mentioning them.
Also, the Scientology nutters don't have the money and power of the other ones so they have to take more "drastic" actions to have much less of an evil effect.
So compared to sane, reasonable people, they're basically all the same bunch of nuts.
the available evidence shows one church evolving (howsoever slowly) away from what it used to do (and more in the direction of it's basic principles)
Hot tip, Sparky, when it's changing due to societal pressures *away* from what it's always done, then that is an abandonment of it's basic principles to maintain relevance, money and power.
Do you really need something *that* simple and obvious explained to you or are you just trolling?
If you're anti-corporate, why would you ever vote for a Libertarian?
Well, the Democrats and Republicans both pass laws written by various corporate interests and vote for massive corporate welfare. So our current situation with either/both of those parties in power is one where the government uses it's large amount of power to rob me to give handouts to various already profitable multinational corporations and pass laws to fuck me at the behest and to the benefit of said multinationals. Now occasionally, Congress passes laws they claim are designed to reign in the abuses committed by these corps, but they don't really work out that way.
So even if the Libertarian boogie man were completely accurate and they banned all restrictions on corporate behavior, while removing their ability to use the government against me, I'd still consider that a step up from where we are now.
Given how deeply in debt we are and how quickly we're losing the edge we used to have, I can't help but think that both the Republicans and the Democrats aren't just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, they're ordering new top of the line upholstery and sticking me with the bill.
So really, if you're gung ho pro corporate welfare, then either the Democrats or the Republicans are good choices with the edge obviously going to the Republicans. Heck, even the Greens are pro corporate so long as the corporation is pimping "green" products.
That's basically why I vote Libertarian. I'm not "anti-corporate", but I am anti the abuses so many of them spend so much time bribing my representatives to implement. Given that, really my only choices are the Libertarians or the Communists;-)
I'm not even an ideologically pure Libertarian by any stretch of the imagination. I just think somebody needs to slow this crazy train down and give everybody a slap in the face with reality and nobody else seems to be anywhere in that ballpark. The major party candidates pretty much just seem to be trying to out crazy each other and keep ignoring reality.
The Spitzer Space Telescope? For finding governor Eliot's ethics?
Huh?!?!
You use telescopes (especially "space" telescopes) to find things which are very far away. To find things which are extremely small (if they exist at all), you use a microscope.
Why would they not admit that in a survey? Hell, why wouldn't they admit it to their girlfriends? It's a compliment: I only date beautiful women. I'm dating you. Ergo, you are a beautiful woman.
Totally. My wife is gorgeous but has self-esteem issues. Whenever she gets down on herself I act all put out and ask her why she feels the need to insult me. Works pretty well most of the time;-)
It'd be like arguing about vi and emacs--and I would say that vi is great and you are wrong for liking emacs
I might not have been all that polite, but you'll note that I didn't sink to the level of calling you an emacs user;-)
But as for the direct evidence of miracles that I assume you are searching for, you probably aren't going to find much outside of the Bible. Why? Because everyone who first-hand witnessed the miracles and wrote about them now have them 'published' in the Bible, and they became believers. And I would have a hard time believing second-hand reports.
What eye witness accounts?!? Mark isn't an eye witness account. The other gospels are just later rewritings of Mark. There are no eyewitness accounts in the bible.
Tacitus wasn't a contemporary, and the Josephus references have been pretty thoroughly debunked as either accidental or intentional alterations after the fact. Why do no *contemporary* historians make any mention of earthquakes or the like. You know, the big things that people would have noticed?
Of course like any good scientist, I'm not going to sit here and tell you that I am absolutely 100% correct about everything...because I can't prove 100% that I am correct. I can however say that my research points in a certain direction and has not been refuted. I am also more than willing to entertain any evidence you may have refuting Jesus and/or the Bible.
here is a great article addressing everything you talked about and more. The two follow up links at the bottom are also very good and exhaustively researched.
My personal opinion is that only the people who have paid more money in taxes than received money in welfare should be allowed to vote. i.e. only those actually supporting the system rather than those who are net leechers on the system.
It's a great idea, but it'll never sell to the rural states since they'd never get a vote again.
I put my LIFE on the line, you bigoted piece of trash.
Yes, you put your life on the line in the interests of GE, Lockheed Martin, Exxon and other large corporations like that. You sure as shit aren't defending me or my country.
I don't get a god-damned welfare check from the government, I get a fair wage for an honest day's labor.
No, you get a welfare check. Your labor isn't honest because the people directing your labor are not honest.
So as long as you're doing nothing to benefit me and I'm being robbed to pay your bills, you're on welfare, Sparky. Suck it up and get a worthwhile job and quit whining about how people who actually provide valuable services are sick of paying you to be a hitman for corporate interests.
Sorry to nitpick, but the bible doesn't demand you stone people to death anymore. It also doesn't demand you dash children against rocks. That was old-school. Before 'salvation'.
I just love this "it was old-school" nonsense from people trying to defend the bible who have clearly never even read it.
Matthew 5:18 not one letter of one word of one law shall change.
Right there, murdering people for idiotic nonsense was explicitly demanded by Jesus himself (or rather whoever made up that silly fairy tale).
I get annoyed when someone reads a whole sentence out of the Bible (or anything) or off some bible-bashing website and then uses that as an entire campaign against the Bible. It'd be no better than me picking a sentence out of some programming guide and using that to try to understand programming.
Hardly. What you're doing is ignoring the sentence that says to check that your pointers aren't null before using them claiming that magically that part doesn't apply to you.
So if you're going to try to bash the Bible, try reading it. While you're reading it, use your brain. If you can logically refute or argue with what you've found, good for you. At least you've made an informed judgment.
Laughable. Dig yourself out of this one. It might help if you actually read the thing. Heck, try studying the actual history around the period of the new testament. The fact that there is no mention of *any* of the miraculous events outside of silly fairy tales is a big clue. That would involve you actually being able to think clearly on the subject which is really unlikely. First step is drop the assumption that it must magically be true because you really really want it to be.
I know this is slashdot, but how the hell can people sit here and have a huge discussion about something they know very little about?
Logic, "Pure" Math, or Computability Theory - experiments are not a valid form of proof in these fields
Close, but not completely true.
In Math, in a finite situation you can explicitly list all cases, and through "experimentation" show that your hypothesis holds for all of them.
Also, you can easily prove a general statement, whether finite or infinite, to be false with a single counterexample.
It's only in infinite situations where you're trying to prove that a general statement holds for all cases, that there is no "experimental" means to prove the statement.
You say its an infinite loop to explain God well its the same for explaining the universe. How did all this mass come into existence anyway...
I don't know.
Simple honest truth.
Now a religious person would say "God made it". At which point all that's done is change the question to "where did God come from", so it adds absolutely nothing to the discussion, answers nothing and just adds an extra lair of useless cruft.
If only the Catholic church could get over their condom hangups (and maybe priest celibacy and the no female priests thing), they'd have done a very nice job of modernizing themselves while keeping their core beliefs intact.
It would be more accurate to say "while keeping their core dysfunctions intact". Priest celibacy was invented solely so the church could keep their inheritance and no female priests was just pure misogyny. I mean they ditched torturing heretics to death in the 1920s. Heck, when was the last time you saw them stone people to death for any number of inane heresies as the bible never stopped demanding? Their core beliefs are long gone.
I do. Even still, when I google my name (first & last in quotes) I still get three results. Two of them are from the gaming clan of which I am a member, and the other is the amateur radio club of which I am also a member.
Wow, Googling "two results gaming clan one result radio club" returns your post and three referencing Ed Zantolac. Damn, Dude you're in trouble;-)
Slashdot Mirror
Can someone explain how parent is a troll?
The graph is quite interesting.
I'd guess it's that his link is to the site of one of the sleaziest spyware vendors around.
Maybe there's some other reason, but that's the obvious one.
I don't think you get what he is saying. Unless you were already with AT&T, you won't be putting your SIM card in there. You are going to be putting an AT&T SIM card in there. Thats where the "activation" comes in, where the SIM card gets tied to your AT&T account. Just because you don't consider that to be the definition of activation, doesn't make that any less true.
I get exactly what he's saying, but he's wrong.
I stuck my *TMobile* SIM into my iPhone and didn't activate anything. It just worked...well after I had to work around Apple's retarded attempt at lockin.
I don't consider it activation because it wasn't.
Do you get it now?
You see? When you 1st got your SIM card you activated it. Thats what's this thread is talking about, activating a new SIM card. Instead of having the cellphone guys go through the process, you get to buy a phone from Apple or AT&T and activate your new SIM account yourself on iTunes. They aren't talking about inserting your previous SIM card from port to port, you dirty sailor.
Actually, we are talking about moving a SIM from phone to phone. The OP is trying to claim that doesn't happen in "99.9%" of cases which is complete BS.
You don't need to activate the specific device with GSM, but you do normally need to activate the SIM/your account, which for 99.9% of consumers amounts to exactly the same thing.
WTF?!?
Dude, most people already have accounts and SIMS you drop your old SIM in your new phone and away you go. That's all I had to do with my iPhone...well apart from evading the retarded *totally unnecessary* "activation" crap.
Seriously, quit spouting ridiculous BS to defend a stupid idea.
Okay, I'll bite. Other than new systems preinstalled with Vista and Office 2007 (no choice available to the customer), which evidence suggests people are choosing to move from XP/Office 2003 to Vista/Office 2007?
My small company just hired a bunch of new employees and had to buy new office licenses. Office 2003 was not purchasable, so we had to buy 2007 licenses along with the media for 2003 and it included "down"grade licenses to 2003.
This evidence is used by MS to suggest that we chose to upgrade to 2007.
I suspect that a large chunk of the 2007 "installations" are similar given how widely reviled 2007 is.
The wackos in Jesus Camp are no more representative of Christianity than suicide bombers are representative of Islam.
Actually, they're both perfect representatives.
They're the true believers, not the modern, neutered to fit modern sensibilities versions.
If you're right, and the Mormons are right, then heaven is going to have entire planets with no booze. In that case I'm pretty glad that, as an unbeliever, I'd be going to the other place...
Beer volcanoes and stripper factories! Ramen brother. May you be touched by his noodly apendage.
It's not just document stealing. Read the wiki article I linked, it talks about how the church of Scientology tried to frame people for various crimes because they spoke out about the church! They threaten to kill people for the same reason. This is happening now, not hundreds of years ago.
It's not "hundreds" of years ago. The Catholic Church only banned torture and murder of "heretics" in the 1920s that's less that 100 years ago and had nothing to do with their nonexistent virtue. Other extremist nutter Christians are still doing it, and we don't even need to talk about the Muslims except to avoid being accused of not mentioning them.
Also, the Scientology nutters don't have the money and power of the other ones so they have to take more "drastic" actions to have much less of an evil effect.
So compared to sane, reasonable people, they're basically all the same bunch of nuts.
the available evidence shows one church evolving (howsoever slowly) away from what it used to do (and more in the direction of it's basic principles)
Hot tip, Sparky, when it's changing due to societal pressures *away* from what it's always done, then that is an abandonment of it's basic principles to maintain relevance, money and power.
Do you really need something *that* simple and obvious explained to you or are you just trolling?
Who wants a bunch of virgins anyway? I'll take a well seasoned 20-year old pornstar anyday! 8^)
A. You have eternity to train them.
B. There's a bunch of them, and variety is the spice of (after)life.
If you're anti-corporate, why would you ever vote for a Libertarian?
;-)
Well, the Democrats and Republicans both pass laws written by various corporate interests and vote for massive corporate welfare. So our current situation with either/both of those parties in power is one where the government uses it's large amount of power to rob me to give handouts to various already profitable multinational corporations and pass laws to fuck me at the behest and to the benefit of said multinationals.
Now occasionally, Congress passes laws they claim are designed to reign in the abuses committed by these corps, but they don't really work out that way.
So even if the Libertarian boogie man were completely accurate and they banned all restrictions on corporate behavior, while removing their ability to use the government against me, I'd still consider that a step up from where we are now.
Given how deeply in debt we are and how quickly we're losing the edge we used to have, I can't help but think that both the Republicans and the Democrats aren't just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, they're ordering new top of the line upholstery and sticking me with the bill.
So really, if you're gung ho pro corporate welfare, then either the Democrats or the Republicans are good choices with the edge obviously going to the Republicans. Heck, even the Greens are pro corporate so long as the corporation is pimping "green" products.
That's basically why I vote Libertarian. I'm not "anti-corporate", but I am anti the abuses so many of them spend so much time bribing my representatives to implement. Given that, really my only choices are the Libertarians or the Communists
I'm not even an ideologically pure Libertarian by any stretch of the imagination. I just think somebody needs to slow this crazy train down and give everybody a slap in the face with reality and nobody else seems to be anywhere in that ballpark. The major party candidates pretty much just seem to be trying to out crazy each other and keep ignoring reality.
Who needs grep when you have spotlight?
;-)
Does Spotlight support regular expressions?
I honestly don't know, but if it doesn't, there's your answer
The Spitzer Space Telescope? For finding governor Eliot's ethics?
Huh?!?!
You use telescopes (especially "space" telescopes) to find things which are very far away.
To find things which are extremely small (if they exist at all), you use a microscope.
Why would they not admit that in a survey? Hell, why wouldn't they admit it to their girlfriends? It's a compliment: I only date beautiful women. I'm dating you. Ergo, you are a beautiful woman.
;-)
Totally. My wife is gorgeous but has self-esteem issues. Whenever she gets down on herself I act all put out and ask her why she feels the need to insult me. Works pretty well most of the time
The Earth's average surface temperature of 15 C (59F) is about 33 C (59 F) warmer than it would be without the greenhouse effect.
With wacky conversions like that, people wonder why the US doesn't want to go with the metric system?
Um, no I believe we just had a change of parties in the Oval Office. You exaggerate too much.
Welcome time traveller!
It'd be like arguing about vi and emacs--and I would say that vi is great and you are wrong for liking emacs
;-)
I might not have been all that polite, but you'll note that I didn't sink to the level of calling you an emacs user
But as for the direct evidence of miracles that I assume you are searching for, you probably aren't going to find much outside of the Bible. Why? Because everyone who first-hand witnessed the miracles and wrote about them now have them 'published' in the Bible, and they became believers. And I would have a hard time believing second-hand reports.
What eye witness accounts?!?
Mark isn't an eye witness account. The other gospels are just later rewritings of Mark. There are no eyewitness accounts in the bible.
Tacitus wasn't a contemporary, and the Josephus references have been pretty thoroughly debunked as either accidental or intentional alterations after the fact.
Why do no *contemporary* historians make any mention of earthquakes or the like. You know, the big things that people would have noticed?
Of course like any good scientist, I'm not going to sit here and tell you that I am absolutely 100% correct about everything...because I can't prove 100% that I am correct. I can however say that my research points in a certain direction and has not been refuted. I am also more than willing to entertain any evidence you may have refuting Jesus and/or the Bible.
here is a great article addressing everything you talked about and more. The two follow up links at the bottom are also very good and exhaustively researched.
Enjoyed your pithy, one sentence, summary though.
:)
;-)
Thanks, it's my original assessment as far as I know, and like all one sentence assessments, ignores most of the subtleties.
Thanks for that
No problem. I'll be here all week. Try the veal and don't forget to tip your waitress
Recommended reading, especially Atlas Shrugged, but think twice before making a religion of it.
You can't "make" a religion out of it since it inherently is one.
It's just classical liberalism dressed up as a religion instead of as a philosophy with a healthy dose of sociopathy thrown in.
My personal opinion is that only the people who have paid more money in taxes than received money in welfare should be allowed to vote. i.e. only those actually supporting the system rather than those who are net leechers on the system.
It's a great idea, but it'll never sell to the rural states since they'd never get a vote again.
I put my LIFE on the line, you bigoted piece of trash.
Yes, you put your life on the line in the interests of GE, Lockheed Martin, Exxon and other large corporations like that.
You sure as shit aren't defending me or my country.
I don't get a god-damned welfare check from the government, I get a fair wage for an honest day's labor.
No, you get a welfare check. Your labor isn't honest because the people directing your labor are not honest.
So as long as you're doing nothing to benefit me and I'm being robbed to pay your bills, you're on welfare, Sparky.
Suck it up and get a worthwhile job and quit whining about how people who actually provide valuable services are sick of paying you to be a hitman for corporate interests.
Sorry to nitpick, but the bible doesn't demand you stone people to death anymore. It also doesn't demand you dash children against rocks. That was old-school. Before 'salvation'.
I just love this "it was old-school" nonsense from people trying to defend the bible who have clearly never even read it.
Matthew 5:18 not one letter of one word of one law shall change.
Right there, murdering people for idiotic nonsense was explicitly demanded by Jesus himself (or rather whoever made up that silly fairy tale).
I get annoyed when someone reads a whole sentence out of the Bible (or anything) or off some bible-bashing website and then uses that as an entire campaign against the Bible. It'd be no better than me picking a sentence out of some programming guide and using that to try to understand programming.
Hardly. What you're doing is ignoring the sentence that says to check that your pointers aren't null before using them claiming that magically that part doesn't apply to you.
So if you're going to try to bash the Bible, try reading it. While you're reading it, use your brain. If you can logically refute or argue with what you've found, good for you. At least you've made an informed judgment.
Laughable. Dig yourself out of this one. It might help if you actually read the thing. Heck, try studying the actual history around the period of the new testament. The fact that there is no mention of *any* of the miraculous events outside of silly fairy tales is a big clue. That would involve you actually being able to think clearly on the subject which is really unlikely.
First step is drop the assumption that it must magically be true because you really really want it to be.
I know this is slashdot, but how the hell can people sit here and have a huge discussion about something they know very little about?
You would obviously know the answer to that.
Logic, "Pure" Math, or Computability Theory - experiments are not a valid form of proof in these fields
Close, but not completely true.
In Math, in a finite situation you can explicitly list all cases, and through "experimentation" show that your hypothesis holds for all of them.
Also, you can easily prove a general statement, whether finite or infinite, to be false with a single counterexample.
It's only in infinite situations where you're trying to prove that a general statement holds for all cases, that there is no "experimental" means to prove the statement.
You say its an infinite loop to explain God well its the same for explaining the universe. How did all this mass come into existence anyway...
I don't know.
Simple honest truth.
Now a religious person would say "God made it". At which point all that's done is change the question to "where did God come from", so it adds absolutely nothing to the discussion, answers nothing and just adds an extra lair of useless cruft.
If only the Catholic church could get over their condom hangups (and maybe priest celibacy and the no female priests thing), they'd have done a very nice job of modernizing themselves while keeping their core beliefs intact.
It would be more accurate to say "while keeping their core dysfunctions intact". Priest celibacy was invented solely so the church could keep their inheritance and no female priests was just pure misogyny. I mean they ditched torturing heretics to death in the 1920s. Heck, when was the last time you saw them stone people to death for any number of inane heresies as the bible never stopped demanding?
Their core beliefs are long gone.
I do. Even still, when I google my name (first & last in quotes) I still get three results. Two of them are from the gaming clan of which I am a member, and the other is the amateur radio club of which I am also a member.
;-)
Wow, Googling "two results gaming clan one result radio club" returns your post and three referencing Ed Zantolac. Damn, Dude you're in trouble