And if you want to go into ThinkPad territory, be prepared to pay a whole lot more.
Refurb, Baby. Refurb. My CEO's addicted to that shit and being the one who sets them up I have few complaints. Once the default setup didn't have the right drivers for the wireless and the online "fix all your shit" utility didn't recognize it (presumably a bad wireless chipset was the reason for the refurb), but other than that no worries so far.
I actually had to boot off a linux CD and lspci to find out what it was (Device Manager is a piece of crap.. is there an easy way to find that out in Windows?)
People who like to be able to watch multiple TV shows captured in 2GB/hour MPEG2 on different frontends simultaneously ( let alone people with HD ) while still having plenty of bandwidth left over for traffic to the firewall for internet traffic as well as various other LAN traffic with zero stuttering.
I use wireless in my Mac Pro. I help manage the wireless network at my institution, and it's cheaper to put a wireless card in my desktop than it is to get another laptop.
And through the magic of the PCI slot you can do that. Not so easy with a laptop (PCMCIA, sure, but maybe they're busy plus laptops are inherently more likely to *need* wireless and the cards stick out changing the form factor).
Maybe someone doesn't want to run an Ethernet cable across the room and around the corner to the only telephone jack in the apartment. Instead they might get a wireless solution. But they use a desktop.
Sure, but maybe your house is wired and you have Gig switches installed (w00t!!!) and have multiple MythTV frontends and you scoff at wireless speeds;-) At home, I usually plug my laptop in even though it has built in wireless. I have 2 PCI wireless cards I yanked out of machines after we bought this place and discovered the phone lines were wired with CAT 5 and we use VOIP;-)
My point, basically is to back up the parent. Laptops had better come with wireless since they're most commonly carried around. Desktops might benefit, but it's nowhere near as clear as in the case of laptops. In bulk for an OEM they're probably pretty darn cheap (no idea what the actual breakdown might be) but margins are generally thin.
)As opposed to the time the average Windows user spends installing antivirus, antispyware, a personal firewall, dozens of patches, and three sets of activation.
I recently did a Gentoo/MySQL install and an XP install simultaneously. I was done with the Gentoo install *and* imaged that install on the sister machine an hour before I finished getting XP patched and ready to start installing software. Granted, the Gentoo boxes were pretty decent server class machines and the XP machine was a cheap desktop (fresh install, pre SP2 version of XP), but damn.
OpenBSD on a similar desktop machine took 10 minutes for a base install. 10 more to get it configured as a simple failover NAT + firewall (double the total for the failover partner).
Attending law school doesn't automatically mean you want to help people. It can mean a few things, sorted from most common to least:
I think that (or even something stronger) was part of zippthorne's point.
I agree that lawyers should be banned from any legislative position as well even the "good" ones. It's based on a thought I had in college. I got my BS in mathematics, and noticed some real similarities between mathematicians and lawyers. They both love a good argument, love hacking the system, and love finding a way "around" the rules. It's a fun game. The deep difference is that for the most part mathematicians (well ignoring the whole field of applied mathematics) are happy doing it in their ivory towers, operating on systems that don't have to have anything to do with the real world to make them happy. With lawyers, they operate very deeply in the real world. Their ability to scam the system is their bread and butter, but it's not a game to the people who their actions kill, bankrupt, or otherwise destroy. They made up the rules of the system and so they feel no remorse for the results of their action since they're operating within the rules.
They write the laws (legislators), apply the laws (judges), enforce the laws (prosecutors), and barely ever do they give a good god damn about its effect on the world and the people in it as long as they get paid.
It is unlikely that things would have turned out any differently, though. We would have still grabbed Texas.
However, there is a deep fundamental difference between the Boston Tea Party and the Alamo. Equating them is ridiculous and disgraceful. The BTP folks weren't pure by any means, but they did have some great goals and they created agreat system. The folks at the Alamo were nothing but thugs and brigands.
It's still all irrelevant, however, and you're just another person who thinks they're some kind of intellectual elite and talks down their nose to complete strangers on the Internet because it gets them off.
Ah the old, "I can't refute your points so I'll whine about how you must be some intellectual elite since how else could you have made me look so silly" approach.
Would you want a butcher who has no interest in cutting meat?
No.
How about a doctor who'd rather be a contractor?
No.
However, on what basis do you consider it rational to want a ruler who *wants* to rule you?
Deep fundamental difference. My proposal is intended to get somebody who absolutely does not want to be there at all but understands that he has a job to do and can only go back to what he does like doing after it is done.
Again, I'm not claiming it would lead to the best of all possible worlds. Just that I think it would be better (most likely only temporarilly) than what we have right now which is a system where *only* the scum can rise to the top.
Well, I've been volunteering myself for the post of 'Benevolent Dictator'...a post to last about 2 years, in which I can start by throwing out all current members of both houses of congress...and start anew...and changing some laws to avoid letting money become the horrible necessity it is now to run....and to fix a few other things.
My solution which is unworkable, inhuman, incompatible with a free society, and unlikely to make things great although I'm convinced it would make things better is:
Take every official of the federal government. Shoot them.
Hold new elections. Shoot everybody who runs.
Find (magically) the person who had the least interest in being involved in any of that crap, make him do the job. Holding his family and friends hostage if need be to force his cooperation. Set some reasonable goals (magically again) for him to accomplish before he can step down.
You own the box, you own the CD that came in the box, you own the papers in the box. You don't own the program, you are merely licensing it's use from MS under the terms they dictate.
I don't own "MS POS 2007" or whatever, but I absolutely own *that one copy of it*. I don't have the right to make a million copies and hand them out, but I can certainly do whatever the hell I want with that copy. They can not dictate terms to me since I have never engaged in a transaction with them. I have never had any sort of relationship with them at all. I certainly did not sign any contracts. I never agreed to license shit from them. I have never once in my life purchased, licensed or in any other way engaged in commerce with Microsoft. I *bought* it from a computer store. If I were to break into thre computer store and steal the box, then the computer store would call the cops, Microsoft wouldn't. They are in no way involved with the transaction.
"There is nothing that gives them any right to say shit about what I do with it (within copyright law). They weren't even part of the transaction."
You are simply wrong.
That is certainly a possibility I have to entertain, but I'm not aware of anything that could possibly make it true (in this one particular case;-), and apparently you aren't either otherwise I assume you would have mentioned it.
That would seem like the logical thing but in today's world you didn't buy it and it's not your property. You have simply paid MS for the rights to use their intellectual property under the terms they dictate.
I have yet to hear of a single court case lending any validity to that viewpoint. Were I to buy one of their products, I'd head down to the computer store, pay Microcenter for a product in a box and I would own it. Whatever nonsense they want to write inside the box is meaningless. There is nothing that gives them any right to say shit about what I do with it (within copyright law). They weren't even part of the transaction.
Well, yeah.. you can do that, and it works, but it's illegal. If you don't mind breaking the law, you can install the low-end version of Vista in a virtual machine too. The "tax" is only for installing it legally.
Since when does "Microsoft says so" equal "the law"?
From what I've seen, this does not just apply to multiple installations. You really are not allowed to install a basic version on a VM, even if you buy a unique copy and only use it for that purpose.
Yes, you really are allowed to do damn near anything you want to with it. You bought it, it's your property. You can't make copies for other people due to copyright law, but if you want to install it in a virtual machine running on your toaster then knock yourself out.
There is not one god damned thing in the world that allows them to dictate how you choose to use your property.
Pretending that they have rights that they do not and treating this nonsense in their meaningless EULA as if it were even sane is just fucking retarded.
Run it anywhere you damn well please. It is your right if you paid for it.
For me, I think that saying that there is a force out there that must have created something at some point in time is not another worthless layer. I think it's closer to the truth, even if it only seems like semantics to some. I think to deny that a force, such as God, could have created this existence is closing out an idea
It's not just semantics. It is a statement with *zero* justification. If you need something like that to feel ok with the universe, knock yourself out, but don't pretend that there is any need for such a thing or that it adds anything to knowledge. I'm not denying that such a thing *could* have happened. It could have.
I'm just trying to say that it is a viable option, and it isn't out of ignorance that many Christians believe.
That's a completely different thing. That is wholely out of ignorance though.
Deism is the only rational religion. "There is a god who created everything and that's about as far as he matters to the world". To actually buy into something as specific and contradictory as Christianity is ignorant. It's demeaning to a being with the power to create the universe to demand that he have the maturity and attitude of a petulant 6 year old which is what the Judeo-Christian god is.
Sorry, but if there was a god who actually wanted to get a message across, then he damn well would have been able to do it better than yours did. So to believe that an *all powerful* being was incapable of delivering a simple message accurately is about as ignorant as you can get. And yes, he absolutely did fail miserably at that task as proved absolutely by the fact that there are so many different gods out there.
I'm avoiding the easy target so as not to invoke Godwin's law, but to say that all whites are based on hate, because of slavery, or how the Native Americans were treated when the pilgrims arrived in America is just prejudice.
What, the Nazis? You do know they were explicitly and militantly Christian, that the holocaust followed the script laid out by Martin Luther and that Kristalnacht was on his birthday, right? You do know the Catholic Church and specifically the current Pope were big time sympathizers, right? Sure, Stalin was as bad or worse depending on how you measure it, but just replacing worship of a god or gods with worship of the state doesn't amek it any less of a religion. It demands taking as absolute truth something completely made up. Once you've done that, it just makes you more pliable to other ridiculous beliefs and atrocities.
The fact is that Christianity is a tool that has been used to great effect in murder, torture and enslavement for centuries, right? You do know it doesn't have much good at all to point to in its entire history to offset that, right?
I'd say that there are a lot of people on both sides of the Republican/Democrat split that are Christian.
I'd say it really depends on how you define it. If you're talking about people who actually try to follow the teachings commonly attributed to Jesus, then there are no Republicans who meet that definition as they have diametrically opposed goals. The religious right has taken over "Christianity" in America. Neither you nor any other Christians have done squat about it, so, personally I'm using them as my definition. You didn't feel like defending your faith, and you're still not doing it since I'm not the one dragging it through shit. I'm merely talking about how things are. Why don't you spend some time attacking your fellow "Christians" who are disgracing your religion currently with their hate based agenda instead of trying to convince me that reality ain't what it is?
So, as long as a very large, very powerful group of people calling themselves "Christian" are engaged in an all out war on the basis of this nation, (if you don't think they are, then you haven't read up on them since they're quite clear on that point), and people like you keep actively supporting them and giving them legitimacy
I'm not sure why being a so-called "red state" means that it's people or government agencies are supporters of MS.
Becasue "Red state" means "Republican". The Republicans are an extreme right wing party. Rigth wing means that they support using the power of the state against the individual for the benefit of the wealthy elite. Back in the day that was the Nobility and Church against the people. Today it is corporate power. MS is a big corporate power who likes using the government against the citizens. Therefore it is reasonable to expect a "Red State" to support them.
However, the sweeping generalization made by the original poster is simply unsupported.
It's not a "sweeping generalization", it's a simple application of the relevant definitions.
I would point you to the fact that you're talking about the people who brought you the Boston Tea Party and The Alamo here. I
You do know that "The Alamo" and more generally the war it was an event in was pjust another land grab, right? It had nothing to do with standing up against tyranny. Seriously, stop getting your history from stupid movies and you'll come across as less of an idiot in future.
If your country were to be invaded by Chinese with the intent of taking over, would you fight for your life, fight for your country, or just go into the camps and take a shower if asked/told to?
I think you fail to understand that in your analogy *we're* the Chinese.
To say that Utah is more "red" than Alabama based on votes, is to suggest that G.W. Bush is the ideal Republican candidate...
They have these things called "primaries" in which many people compete to be exactly that. Bush won over many "real' republican candidates therefore demonstrating that he was the ideal Republican candidate.
I think you haven't clued into the fact that the Republican party underwent a major shift some time back. The day Reagan was elected was the day the final nail in the coffin of the old Republican party was hammered into place. "Small government" "fiscal responsibility" those are dead ideas to the Republican party. They still spout out nonsense about that, but it's only becasue some people are too stupid to understand that actions speak louder than words.
Bush *is* the ideal Republican candidate as he embraces exactly what that party now stands for and has for decades.
Where did all this stuff come from? What causes life? Those existential question cannot be answered by science.
They can't yet be answered by science and they may never be. Currently the only honest answer to them is "I don't know".
All religion provides is an extra worthless lair of cruft in regards to answers. Their answer "god did it". That isn't an answer it's just pretending to a lack of ignorance since the question "where did god come from" is just a replacement of the previous question with nothing added. The only honest to that question is "I don't know" for a gain of nothing and a loss of simplicity.
I'm trying to be reasonable here, but you seem to be implying that small-minded hatred is what Christianity is all about.
You seem to be implying that isn't one of the primary things it is about. History makes you a liar. Heck, current events in the US make you a liar as it's Christians, once again, trying to destroy this country with their sickeningly immoral hate based legislation and their various other savage assaults on liberty. Due, as you well know, solely to small-minded hatred.
So, sorry, but while there might be a few decent Christians running around, the majority of the ones in America as a group are evil hate mongering scum. Just look at who they elected and why and that is a proven fact.
On the same token, can you prove that there is no God?
It's not the same token though. Prove there isn't an invisible rabbit tailing your footsteps. That's exactly as stupid as god. For your question to even be reasonable you'd have to address *any* insane crap anybody spouts as if it was gospel.
The onus is on the ones claiming some complely ridiculous idea and then using that idea as an excuse to shove their small minded hatred on others to show one damn thing to base their delusions on.
Saying stupidity is stupidity is just sane. It is in no way symmetrical.
(likely because if they heard the stories without years of conditioning first, they'd reject it outright as bad sci-fi nonsense).
Same as Christianity. It's just that they get the parents to brainwash the children for years before they're even capable of dealing with it rationally.
I really don't think so - truly bad SF with the good bits plagerised from the ramblings of someone writing during psychotic episodes in Chicago in the 1930s is still distinguishable from religion.
So you're saying that the only difference is how long they've been around? Or is Chicago the problem?
Slashdot Mirror
ever heard of year-round birth control?
;-)
Yep. Heard about it from my wife when we were dating and I was wondering what was up with no periods after several months
Year-round birth control is the greatest thing ever.
And if you want to go into ThinkPad territory, be prepared to pay a whole lot more.
Refurb, Baby. Refurb. My CEO's addicted to that shit and being the one who sets them up I have few complaints. Once the default setup didn't have the right drivers for the wireless and the online "fix all your shit" utility didn't recognize it (presumably a bad wireless chipset was the reason for the refurb), but other than that no worries so far.
I actually had to boot off a linux CD and lspci to find out what it was (Device Manager is a piece of crap.. is there an easy way to find that out in Windows?)
Who still uses wired ethernet in their house?
;-)
People who like to be able to watch multiple TV shows captured in 2GB/hour MPEG2 on different frontends simultaneously ( let alone people with HD ) while still having plenty of bandwidth left over for traffic to the firewall for internet traffic as well as various other LAN traffic with zero stuttering.
And you call yourself a geek
I use wireless in my Mac Pro. I help manage the wireless network at my institution, and it's cheaper to put a wireless card in my desktop than it is to get another laptop.
;-) At home, I usually plug my laptop in even though it has built in wireless. I have 2 PCI wireless cards I yanked out of machines after we bought this place and discovered the phone lines were wired with CAT 5 and we use VOIP ;-)
And through the magic of the PCI slot you can do that. Not so easy with a laptop (PCMCIA, sure, but maybe they're busy plus laptops are inherently more likely to *need* wireless and the cards stick out changing the form factor).
Maybe someone doesn't want to run an Ethernet cable across the room and around the corner to the only telephone jack in the apartment. Instead they might get a wireless solution. But they use a desktop.
Sure, but maybe your house is wired and you have Gig switches installed (w00t!!!) and have multiple MythTV frontends and you scoff at wireless speeds
My point, basically is to back up the parent. Laptops had better come with wireless since they're most commonly carried around. Desktops might benefit, but it's nowhere near as clear as in the case of laptops. In bulk for an OEM they're probably pretty darn cheap (no idea what the actual breakdown might be) but margins are generally thin.
)As opposed to the time the average Windows user spends installing antivirus, antispyware, a personal firewall, dozens of patches, and three sets of activation.
I recently did a Gentoo/MySQL install and an XP install simultaneously. I was done with the Gentoo install *and* imaged that install on the sister machine an hour before I finished getting XP patched and ready to start installing software. Granted, the Gentoo boxes were pretty decent server class machines and the XP machine was a cheap desktop (fresh install, pre SP2 version of XP), but damn.
OpenBSD on a similar desktop machine took 10 minutes for a base install. 10 more to get it configured as a simple failover NAT + firewall (double the total for the failover partner).
Attending law school doesn't automatically mean you want to help people. It can mean a few things, sorted from most common to least:
I think that (or even something stronger) was part of zippthorne's point.
I agree that lawyers should be banned from any legislative position as well even the "good" ones. It's based on a thought I had in college. I got my BS in mathematics, and noticed some real similarities between mathematicians and lawyers. They both love a good argument, love hacking the system, and love finding a way "around" the rules. It's a fun game.
The deep difference is that for the most part mathematicians (well ignoring the whole field of applied mathematics) are happy doing it in their ivory towers, operating on systems that don't have to have anything to do with the real world to make them happy.
With lawyers, they operate very deeply in the real world. Their ability to scam the system is their bread and butter, but it's not a game to the people who their actions kill, bankrupt, or otherwise destroy. They made up the rules of the system and so they feel no remorse for the results of their action since they're operating within the rules.
They write the laws (legislators), apply the laws (judges), enforce the laws (prosecutors), and barely ever do they give a good god damn about its effect on the world and the people in it as long as they get paid.
It is unlikely that things would have turned out any differently, though. We would have still grabbed Texas.
However, there is a deep fundamental difference between the Boston Tea Party and the Alamo. Equating them is ridiculous and disgraceful.
The BTP folks weren't pure by any means, but they did have some great goals and they created agreat system.
The folks at the Alamo were nothing but thugs and brigands.
It's still all irrelevant, however, and you're just another person who thinks they're some kind of intellectual elite and talks down their nose to complete strangers on the Internet because it gets them off.
Ah the old, "I can't refute your points so I'll whine about how you must be some intellectual elite since how else could you have made me look so silly" approach.
Would you want a butcher who has no interest in cutting meat?
No.
How about a doctor who'd rather be a contractor?
No.
However, on what basis do you consider it rational to want a ruler who *wants* to rule you?
Deep fundamental difference.
My proposal is intended to get somebody who absolutely does not want to be there at all but understands that he has a job to do and can only go back to what he does like doing after it is done.
Again, I'm not claiming it would lead to the best of all possible worlds. Just that I think it would be better (most likely only temporarilly) than what we have right now which is a system where *only* the scum can rise to the top.
Well, I've been volunteering myself for the post of 'Benevolent Dictator'...a post to last about 2 years, in which I can start by throwing out all current members of both houses of congress...and start anew...and changing some laws to avoid letting money become the horrible necessity it is now to run....and to fix a few other things.
My solution which is unworkable, inhuman, incompatible with a free society, and unlikely to make things great although I'm convinced it would make things better is:
Take every official of the federal government. Shoot them.
Hold new elections. Shoot everybody who runs.
Find (magically) the person who had the least interest in being involved in any of that crap, make him do the job. Holding his family and friends hostage if need be to force his cooperation.
Set some reasonable goals (magically again) for him to accomplish before he can step down.
You own the box, you own the CD that came in the box, you own the papers in the box. You don't own the program, you are merely licensing it's use from MS under the terms they dictate.
I don't own "MS POS 2007" or whatever, but I absolutely own *that one copy of it*. I don't have the right to make a million copies and hand them out, but I can certainly do whatever the hell I want with that copy. They can not dictate terms to me since I have never engaged in a transaction with them. I have never had any sort of relationship with them at all. I certainly did not sign any contracts. I never agreed to license shit from them. I have never once in my life purchased, licensed or in any other way engaged in commerce with Microsoft. I *bought* it from a computer store.
If I were to break into thre computer store and steal the box, then the computer store would call the cops, Microsoft wouldn't. They are in no way involved with the transaction.
"There is nothing that gives them any right to say shit about what I do with it (within copyright law). They weren't even part of the transaction."
You are simply wrong.
That is certainly a possibility I have to entertain, but I'm not aware of anything that could possibly make it true (in this one particular case
YOU'VE BEEN EATEN BY A GRUE!
Thats my Commodore gaming memory.
You fought your way through a million enemies to rescue your lady and she kicks you square in the nuts and you die.
That's my Commodore gaming memory
That would seem like the logical thing but in today's world you didn't buy it and it's not your property. You have simply paid MS for the rights to use their intellectual property under the terms they dictate.
I have yet to hear of a single court case lending any validity to that viewpoint.
Were I to buy one of their products, I'd head down to the computer store, pay Microcenter for a product in a box and I would own it. Whatever nonsense they want to write inside the box is meaningless.
There is nothing that gives them any right to say shit about what I do with it (within copyright law). They weren't even part of the transaction.
Well, yeah.. you can do that, and it works, but it's illegal. If you don't mind breaking the law, you can install the low-end version of Vista in a virtual machine too. The "tax" is only for installing it legally.
Since when does "Microsoft says so" equal "the law"?
Get a grip.
From what I've seen, this does not just apply to multiple installations. You really are not allowed to install a basic version on a VM, even if you buy a unique copy and only use it for that purpose.
Yes, you really are allowed to do damn near anything you want to with it. You bought it, it's your property. You can't make copies for other people due to copyright law, but if you want to install it in a virtual machine running on your toaster then knock yourself out.
There is not one god damned thing in the world that allows them to dictate how you choose to use your property.
Pretending that they have rights that they do not and treating this nonsense in their meaningless EULA as if it were even sane is just fucking retarded.
Run it anywhere you damn well please. It is your right if you paid for it.
to take money from people by force is not a right.
Wow, so Republicans aren't sepnding far more of my money than the even Dems ever dreamed of?
To have the government take money from people by force to give them to you is not a right.
Corporate welfare.
To kill another human being, even if it is your own child, is not a right.
Death penalty, Made up war in Iraq.
To take peoples money and use them to brainwash their kids is not a right.
Faith based initiatives.
Nice try, Sparky, but your ignorance is now clear to everybody. No wonder you posted that ignorant douchebaggery as an AC.
For me, I think that saying that there is a force out there that must have created something at some point in time is not another worthless layer. I think it's closer to the truth, even if it only seems like semantics to some. I think to deny that a force, such as God, could have created this existence is closing out an idea
It's not just semantics. It is a statement with *zero* justification.
If you need something like that to feel ok with the universe, knock yourself out, but don't pretend that there is any need for such a thing or that it adds anything to knowledge.
I'm not denying that such a thing *could* have happened. It could have.
I'm just trying to say that it is a viable option, and it isn't out of ignorance that many Christians believe.
That's a completely different thing. That is wholely out of ignorance though.
Deism is the only rational religion. "There is a god who created everything and that's about as far as he matters to the world".
To actually buy into something as specific and contradictory as Christianity is ignorant.
It's demeaning to a being with the power to create the universe to demand that he have the maturity and attitude of a petulant 6 year old which is what the Judeo-Christian god is.
Sorry, but if there was a god who actually wanted to get a message across, then he damn well would have been able to do it better than yours did.
So to believe that an *all powerful* being was incapable of delivering a simple message accurately is about as ignorant as you can get. And yes, he absolutely did fail miserably at that task as proved absolutely by the fact that there are so many different gods out there.
I'm avoiding the easy target so as not to invoke Godwin's law, but to say that all whites are based on hate, because of slavery, or how the Native Americans were treated when the pilgrims arrived in America is just prejudice.
What, the Nazis? You do know they were explicitly and militantly Christian, that the holocaust followed the script laid out by Martin Luther and that Kristalnacht was on his birthday, right? You do know the Catholic Church and specifically the current Pope were big time sympathizers, right?
Sure, Stalin was as bad or worse depending on how you measure it, but just replacing worship of a god or gods with worship of the state doesn't amek it any less of a religion. It demands taking as absolute truth something completely made up. Once you've done that, it just makes you more pliable to other ridiculous beliefs and atrocities.
The fact is that Christianity is a tool that has been used to great effect in murder, torture and enslavement for centuries, right? You do know it doesn't have much good at all to point to in its entire history to offset that, right?
I'd say that there are a lot of people on both sides of the Republican/Democrat split that are Christian.
I'd say it really depends on how you define it. If you're talking about people who actually try to follow the teachings commonly attributed to Jesus, then there are no Republicans who meet that definition as they have diametrically opposed goals.
The religious right has taken over "Christianity" in America. Neither you nor any other Christians have done squat about it, so, personally I'm using them as my definition. You didn't feel like defending your faith, and you're still not doing it since I'm not the one dragging it through shit. I'm merely talking about how things are. Why don't you spend some time attacking your fellow "Christians" who are disgracing your religion currently with their hate based agenda instead of trying to convince me that reality ain't what it is?
So, as long as a very large, very powerful group of people calling themselves "Christian" are engaged in an all out war on the basis of this nation, (if you don't think they are, then you haven't read up on them since they're quite clear on that point), and people like you keep actively supporting them and giving them legitimacy
I'm not sure why being a so-called "red state" means that it's people or government agencies are supporters of MS.
Becasue "Red state" means "Republican". The Republicans are an extreme right wing party.
Rigth wing means that they support using the power of the state against the individual for the benefit of the wealthy elite.
Back in the day that was the
Nobility and Church against the people. Today it is corporate power.
MS is a big corporate power who likes using the government against the citizens. Therefore it is reasonable to expect a "Red State" to support them.
However, the sweeping generalization made by the original poster is simply unsupported.
It's not a "sweeping generalization", it's a simple application of the relevant definitions.
I would point you to the fact that you're talking about the people who brought you the Boston Tea Party and The Alamo here. I
You do know that "The Alamo" and more generally the war it was an event in was pjust another land grab, right? It had nothing to do with standing up against tyranny. Seriously, stop getting your history from stupid movies and you'll come across as less of an idiot in future.
Neo-con who gets our country involved in a foreign war in the interest of destabilizing the Middle East and keeping oil prices down
You do know that oil prices (and more importantly oil company profits) are at record levels, right?
Keeping prices down wasn't part of any plan.
If your country were to be invaded by Chinese with the intent of taking over, would you fight for your life, fight for your country, or just go into the camps and take a shower if asked/told to?
I think you fail to understand that in your analogy *we're* the Chinese.
To say that Utah is more "red" than Alabama based on votes, is to suggest that G.W. Bush is the ideal Republican candidate...
They have these things called "primaries" in which many people compete to be exactly that.
Bush won over many "real' republican candidates therefore demonstrating that he was the ideal Republican candidate.
I think you haven't clued into the fact that the Republican party underwent a major shift some time back. The day Reagan was elected was the day the final nail in the coffin of the old Republican party was hammered into place. "Small government" "fiscal responsibility" those are dead ideas to the Republican party. They still spout out nonsense about that, but it's only becasue some people are too stupid to understand that actions speak louder than words.
Bush *is* the ideal Republican candidate as he embraces exactly what that party now stands for and has for decades.
Where did all this stuff come from? What causes life? Those existential question cannot be answered by science.
They can't yet be answered by science and they may never be. Currently the only honest answer to them is "I don't know".
All religion provides is an extra worthless lair of cruft in regards to answers.
Their answer "god did it". That isn't an answer it's just pretending to a lack of ignorance since the question "where did god come from" is just a replacement of the previous question with nothing added. The only honest to that question is "I don't know" for a gain of nothing and a loss of simplicity.
I'm trying to be reasonable here, but you seem to be implying that small-minded hatred is what Christianity is all about.
You seem to be implying that isn't one of the primary things it is about. History makes you a liar. Heck, current events in the US make you a liar as it's Christians, once again, trying to destroy this country with their sickeningly immoral hate based legislation and their various other savage assaults on liberty. Due, as you well know, solely to small-minded hatred.
So, sorry, but while there might be a few decent Christians running around, the majority of the ones in America as a group are evil hate mongering scum. Just look at who they elected and why and that is a proven fact.
Let's see you take out an entire filesystem as non-root under Linux.
/etc/fstab: /dev/hda7 /home/darby/winshare vfat user,uid=1000 1 2
;-)
OK:
From
$ whoami
darby
$ rm -rf winshare
$
Done
On the same token, can you prove that there is no God?
It's not the same token though.
Prove there isn't an invisible rabbit tailing your footsteps.
That's exactly as stupid as god.
For your question to even be reasonable you'd have to address *any* insane crap anybody spouts as if it was gospel.
The onus is on the ones claiming some complely ridiculous idea and then using that idea as an excuse to shove their small minded hatred on others to show one damn thing to base their delusions on.
Saying stupidity is stupidity is just sane. It is in no way symmetrical.
(likely because if they heard the stories without years of conditioning first, they'd reject it outright as bad sci-fi nonsense).
Same as Christianity. It's just that they get the parents to brainwash the children for years before they're even capable of dealing with it rationally.
I really don't think so - truly bad SF with the good bits plagerised from the ramblings of someone writing during psychotic episodes in Chicago in the 1930s is still distinguishable from religion.
So you're saying that the only difference is how long they've been around?
Or is Chicago the problem?