However, if he actually enjoys gardening as much as going to a movie or play or even just sitting and doing nothing, then entertainment value of the time needs to be considered against his hourly wage.
Otherwise, if you make $300/hour and go see a movie for $9/hour, then the movie cost you $309 an hour.
However, my experience with micro$oft technical support was that for a mere $35, they put multiple senior engineers on my problem and after several hours determined what the problem was (my sound card driver was incompatible with the latest OS patch and the sound card mfg was not going to upgrade the driver).
In my work environment, they are similarly professional and helpful.
My beef with M$ is that I don't want to rent my software. I want to own it. I want it to run indefinately into the future, not arbitrarily stop working at their whim so they can force me to pay again.
Computers are about 95% complete-- we do not need an entire new $300 O/S every 5 years any more.
Oh I don't know... how about murdering a million people. how about seducing the doctor's wife and destroying his family? how about kidnapping his children and threatening to kill them? how about using alternative live saving drugs that were discovered through torture and murder?
There are many cases where it is better to die than to take the actions necessary to live.
I.e. the forcefield works against high velocity attacks but is worthless against low velocity attacks. That would have been a nice sci-fi gimmick. They could have parachuted in a nuclear bomb for example.
Which is more likely to you... That a cell plopped into existence... or A different god (say Vishna) is actually the "real" god and created the universe?
Does it make it less unlikely if you consider the following... A cell "plopped into existence" from several pre-existing parts (we have seen that "cell like containers" form naturally... RNA pieces form naturally... organic chemistry has "lifelike" sequences that don't make the cut to "life").
And finally...
Galaxies have between 10,000,000 and 1,000,000,000,000 stars. There are roughly 100,000,000,000 galaxies in the universe.
So, even if we give only one chance per YEAR that life will arise (and start to evolve from there since there are always selection pressures on any population).. You have roughly 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 "chances" per year alone that life will arise.
For the purpose of argument, let's say that only 1/100,000 solar systems is capable of supporting some kind of life...
That would mean "only" 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 "chances" per year that life would arise.
So if the odds were 1/1,000,000,000,000,000,000 life would arise in 1,000 places throughout the universe *every year* and that life would arise in 3 places in the universe roughly every day.
Of course, bacteria and small celled organisms actually have many generations per day (unlike us larger species) so once they exist anywhere... small celled organisms are going to explode everywhere.
So just realize how rare and unlikely you are saying life has to be to require a god to exist.
And the earth is 4,000,000,000 *years* old. The universe is ~16,000,000,000 *years* old.
It's extremely unlikely that one person will win the powerball lottery and yet... those odds are "only" something like 1/235,000,000 (vs 1/1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000)
---
And a fundamental problem is this... If the entire universe is empty-- then god created all that extra stuff for no purpose and cares about humans. Otherwise, if the entire universe is not empty, then god created all those other sibling races that he cares about just as much (and like all parents - perhaps he likes some better than us). He's almost certainly done the Jesus thing billions of times if he exist and the universe is not empty.
I agree that there is no true revelation other than personal revelation (i.e. if you tell me god told you something, I can't tell you from a madman).
I don't feel the need to prove your religion wrong as long as it doesn't get into suppressing hard evidence, cutting funds for real science, violate the social contract (murder, taxes, child abuse, etc.) and so on. You and your buds can believe whatever goofy thing you want.
"And I know because"... I only know what christians tell me. The ones who are serious and have a divinity school and the sources they have referred me to and a few books/articles I've read on the subject over my lifetime (which are all mashed together in my muddly mind) say this is the truth of their religion. It was surprising enough for me to remember. The soul separate from the "steeler's" fan.
Of course, if you think about it- an ordinary human life stretched over eternity is probably a form of hell... at the end, you would be completely jaded- probably unable to fall in love any more, given eternity and human nature, over eternity, you would experience both infinite happiness and infinite misery and infinite boredom.
Mormons are not christians. That's some goofy thing they started this century. I can worship a pineapple and say I'm christian but that doesn't make me one. Mormons do not believe the key passages of the bible and instead use a different definition for who god and jesus are. It is very weasely to do this and makes you mormons look bad to the rest. It is about as goofy as a Hindu religion somehow claiming they are christians too. Just accept the glory of your own unique beliefs and move on. Using tortured grammar and logic to say you are christians just isn't working among anyone I know.
And sorry- it was joe smith, my bad. I'm sloppy a bit on/. its a discussion not a term paper but that was a pretty big error. Apologies.
There are other contemporary egyptian babylonian gods who shared large parts of the christian mythos. Horus and osirus have a lot of commonalities with jesus.
It depends on which folks you talk to about the personality/soul thing- but the folks I know that go to a very "technical" church that has a divinity school and goes into the root meanings of all the words back view this up. They find the view that steelers fans are all sitting around watching the steelers games from heaven to be goofy.
Yea, it's ironic that early christians were strong seekers of the truth and put a lot of the ethical backbone of science down-- then later christians had a problem when physical evidence started contradicting maybe 5%-10% of the bible. A lot of the bible is verifiable and it is a reasonably good historical source. But some parts (creation myth) are in conflict with reality if you take them literally instead of metaphorically.
As I said in my other post-- i should have said "some" again ("some modern christians")-- not all modern christians are actively anti-truth/knowledge. A large, vocal minority are- but a lot of them are decent folks who are trustworthy and who are mostly open minded (but still of rock solid irrational faith).
Not really-- I dropped "some" in that sentence and you can't fix things on Slashdot.
I have friends who are christians that do not try to suppress or ostracize folks who don't believe. I should have said "some modern christians" (and it is quite vocal and large minority)...
Some folks believe in science and believe in god and just view that where they contradict each other that the bible is a metaphor or parable written by ancient primitive tribesfolk but that the essential truth (god exists, he cares about humans, he came to earth in mortal form and died so that we could live after death) is still true. I'm okay with them-- they are not putting out stupid crap like Ben Stien's movie.
Fair enough-- it sounds like you are close to seeing it, but you couldn't bear emotionally to believe certain things are true. And I say, if that makes you happy and nice to the folks around you, then more power to you.
Since I really believe that none of anything we do matters very soon after our deaths, I just want me and you, and other folks to be happy (as long as being happy doesn't mean killing me or some crap like that).
I agree- and I responded to the parent poster in part because I thought the "Troll" moderation was unfair. I commented sardonically on the way that slashdot moderation is goofy some times.
"Mods" are a community-- some are pro M$, some are pro linux, some are anti-religion, some are pro-religion, some are reasonable, some are pissed off this morning about something, some even misread and mis-mod.
If you believe in evolution on a micro-scale, I think you are holding yourself back from truly considering just how long history is.
Consider the tiniest change (thicker hair) each generation.
There are 50 human generations in 1,000 years-- 500 generations for many animals.
In a million years, there are 50,000 generations-- each one an opportunity for microchange on multiple levels. Plants you depended on to eat going extinct due to new diseases. New aggressive plants and animals overwriting the less aggressive plants and animals. New diseases hitting you all the time. Random sexual preferences that propagate and strengthen with each generation.
in a billion years, there are 50,000,000 generations (~500,000,000 generations for shorter lived animals).
Consider that in only 500 years the average size of western humans has gone from roughly 5' to roughly 6'. Micro-evolution IS macro-evolution. Just over unimaginably long time frames.
Briefly... There is some evidence that the people who wrote the bible wrote what they knew to be true (so they were credible witnesses as far as it goes since many of the verifiable parts of their stories check out). There is some evidence that the supernatural stuff about jesus was already rumbling around that area in several other countries attached to several other dieties. There is some evidence that some of the books of the bible were not written by one person. There is some evidence that some books of the bible were suppressed by the early church. There is a lot of credible evidence that modern christians are anti-truth because they ignore vast mounds of physical evidence because it contradicts genesis. They have been caught lying and suppressing the truth. They are not acting christ like.. or even disciple like. They do not value the truth. They do not respect honest seekers of truth.
Why the hostility? Well as a non-believer, I had people trying to ram religion down my throat for most of my life-- it generated a lot of hostility on my part. I just wanted to be left alone to live my life.
Could christianty be true? Sure. Could several other religions be true? yes. Did the followers of failed religious believe them to be true? absolutely. Would some of them have died for their faiths. absolutely.
"Going to heaven" is very different than most people think. If your entire personality ceases to exist and only an animating spirit/soul sans personality goes to heaven, then most people would view that as the same as death. So most people really don't believe christianity anyway... they engage in a mental kung-fu and think that if some part of them survives completely sans their personality then that's okay... heck, let me clone their bloody cells and keep those alive forever-- would that be immortal life? Christianity is always portrayed in the media as if the people's personality survives.
There is only hearsay evidence that he "paid" for sins. John Smith has a great little religion going based on hearsay information too. Do you believe his religion?
Still. the moderation was probably unfair. That's life.
No. Mass and other governments caught on to the fact they were losing ability to read data LESS than a decade old.
They passed laws saying data must be an "open standard" so they could read the data in the future even if they had to rewrite a reading application for Windows 2100 ultimate based on 85 year old spec docs.
Microsoft wrote a patent encumbered XML file spec that even they can't code and payed $$$$$ to have a bunch of people vote that it was to be labeled an "open standard" satisfying the legal requirement... but it STILL won't be readable in another 10 years leaving the fundamental problem unresolved.
Yes but the speed is predicated on the fact that you can keep making attempts in the same session. If you have to restart, you may be down to one success per two minutes.
You are not going to find a perfect automated solution for this.
However, there HAS to be something the same for those six attempts or you wouldn't be able to use the id. A cookie, a browser string- something. Even if you have the same IP. I do get your point tho that then they could just make a completely new attempt and you couldn't tell.
But just like my phone number is "unlisted", my email is too. If you are someone that I accept as a new acquaintance, then we swap info and I let you in.
Why are they allowing the same computer multiple accounts in the same day? Why are they allowing the same account creation attempt to fail over three times?
Still... I guess as computers get smarter, this is unstoppable.
All my accounts are white-listed. If I don't know you, I don't see your email.
Slashdot Mirror
Not but it has been used to justify putting up cameras to constantly monitor what all of us are doing.
You're anonymous but it bears observing:
You are saying that it is okay for me to torture and murder you and your family for my own benefit.
Think about the society you will be in when even 51% feels that way.
However, if he actually enjoys gardening as much as going to a movie or play or even just sitting and doing nothing, then entertainment value of the time needs to be considered against his hourly wage.
Otherwise, if you make $300/hour and go see a movie for $9/hour, then the movie cost you $309 an hour.
Is it wrong to shoot someone who is high on drugs, has a history of violence while intoxicated, and has a gun in their hand?
If it's okay to put them down, it's certainly seems okay to me to put down their computer.
I am committed to being off windows.
However, my experience with micro$oft technical support was that for a mere $35, they put multiple senior engineers on my problem and after several hours determined what the problem was (my sound card driver was incompatible with the latest OS patch and the sound card mfg was not going to upgrade the driver).
In my work environment, they are similarly professional and helpful.
My beef with M$ is that I don't want to rent my software. I want to own it. I want it to run indefinately into the future, not arbitrarily stop working at their whim so they can force me to pay again.
Computers are about 95% complete-- we do not need an entire new $300 O/S every 5 years any more.
Oh I don't know...
how about murdering a million people.
how about seducing the doctor's wife and destroying his family?
how about kidnapping his children and threatening to kill them?
how about using alternative live saving drugs that were discovered through torture and murder?
There are many cases where it is better to die than to take the actions necessary to live.
One thing would have saved that movie for me...
If the bi-plane had been the key...
I.e. the forcefield works against high velocity attacks but is worthless against low velocity attacks. That would have been a nice sci-fi gimmick. They could have parachuted in a nuclear bomb for example.
As it was... hokum.
Couple thought questions...
Which is more likely to you...
That a cell plopped into existence...
or
A different god (say Vishna) is actually the "real" god and created the universe?
Does it make it less unlikely if you consider the following...
A cell "plopped into existence" from several pre-existing parts (we have seen that "cell like containers" form naturally... RNA pieces form naturally... organic chemistry has "lifelike" sequences that don't make the cut to "life").
And finally...
Galaxies have between 10,000,000 and 1,000,000,000,000 stars.
There are roughly 100,000,000,000 galaxies in the universe.
So, even if we give only one chance per YEAR that life will arise (and start to evolve from there since there are always selection pressures on any population)..
You have roughly
1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 "chances" per year alone that life will arise.
For the purpose of argument, let's say that only 1/100,000 solar systems is capable of supporting some kind of life...
That would mean "only" 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 "chances" per year that life would arise.
So if the odds were 1/1,000,000,000,000,000,000 life would arise in 1,000 places throughout the universe *every year* and that life would arise in 3 places in the universe roughly every day.
Of course, bacteria and small celled organisms actually have many generations per day (unlike us larger species) so once they exist anywhere... small celled organisms are going to explode everywhere.
So just realize how rare and unlikely you are saying life has to be to require a god to exist.
And the earth is 4,000,000,000 *years* old. The universe is ~16,000,000,000 *years* old.
It's extremely unlikely that one person will win the powerball lottery and yet... those odds are "only" something like 1/235,000,000 (vs 1/1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000)
---
And a fundamental problem is this...
If the entire universe is empty-- then god created all that extra stuff for no purpose and cares about humans. Otherwise, if the entire universe is not empty, then god created all those other sibling races that he cares about just as much (and like all parents - perhaps he likes some better than us). He's almost certainly done the Jesus thing billions of times if he exist and the universe is not empty.
I agree that there is no true revelation other than personal revelation (i.e. if you tell me god told you something, I can't tell you from a madman).
/. its a discussion not a term paper but that was a pretty big error. Apologies.
I don't feel the need to prove your religion wrong as long as it doesn't get into suppressing hard evidence, cutting funds for real science, violate the social contract (murder, taxes, child abuse, etc.) and so on. You and your buds can believe whatever goofy thing you want.
"And I know because"... I only know what christians tell me. The ones who are serious and have a divinity school and the sources they have referred me to and a few books/articles I've read on the subject over my lifetime (which are all mashed together in my muddly mind) say this is the truth of their religion. It was surprising enough for me to remember. The soul separate from the "steeler's" fan.
Of course, if you think about it- an ordinary human life stretched over eternity is probably a form of hell... at the end, you would be completely jaded- probably unable to fall in love any more, given eternity and human nature, over eternity, you would experience both infinite happiness and infinite misery and infinite boredom.
Mormons are not christians. That's some goofy thing they started this century. I can worship a pineapple and say I'm christian but that doesn't make me one. Mormons do not believe the key passages of the bible and instead use a different definition for who god and jesus are. It is very weasely to do this and makes you mormons look bad to the rest. It is about as goofy as a Hindu religion somehow claiming they are christians too. Just accept the glory of your own unique beliefs and move on. Using tortured grammar and logic to say you are christians just isn't working among anyone I know.
And sorry- it was joe smith, my bad. I'm sloppy a bit on
There are other contemporary egyptian babylonian gods who shared large parts of the christian mythos. Horus and osirus have a lot of commonalities with jesus.
It depends on which folks you talk to about the personality/soul thing- but the folks I know that go to a very "technical" church that has a divinity school and goes into the root meanings of all the words back view this up. They find the view that steelers fans are all sitting around watching the steelers games from heaven to be goofy.
Yea, it's ironic that early christians were strong seekers of the truth and put a lot of the ethical backbone of science down-- then later christians had a problem when physical evidence started contradicting maybe 5%-10% of the bible. A lot of the bible is verifiable and it is a reasonably good historical source. But some parts (creation myth) are in conflict with reality if you take them literally instead of metaphorically.
As I said in my other post-- i should have said "some" again ("some modern christians")-- not all modern christians are actively anti-truth/knowledge. A large, vocal minority are- but a lot of them are decent folks who are trustworthy and who are mostly open minded (but still of rock solid irrational faith).
Not really-- I dropped "some" in that sentence and you can't fix things on Slashdot.
I have friends who are christians that do not try to suppress or ostracize folks who don't believe.
I should have said "some modern christians" (and it is quite vocal and large minority)...
Some folks believe in science and believe in god and just view that where they contradict each other that the bible is a metaphor or parable written by ancient primitive tribesfolk but that the essential truth (god exists, he cares about humans, he came to earth in mortal form and died so that we could live after death) is still true. I'm okay with them-- they are not putting out stupid crap like Ben Stien's movie.
Fair enough-- it sounds like you are close to seeing it, but you couldn't bear emotionally to believe certain things are true. And I say, if that makes you happy and nice to the folks around you, then more power to you.
Since I really believe that none of anything we do matters very soon after our deaths, I just want me and you, and other folks to be happy (as long as being happy doesn't mean killing me or some crap like that).
Peace!
I agree- and I responded to the parent poster in part because I thought the "Troll" moderation was unfair. I commented sardonically on the way that slashdot moderation is goofy some times.
"Mods" are a community-- some are pro M$, some are pro linux, some are anti-religion, some are pro-religion, some are reasonable, some are pissed off this morning about something, some even misread and mis-mod.
If you believe in evolution on a micro-scale, I think you are holding yourself back from truly considering just how long history is.
Consider the tiniest change (thicker hair) each generation.
There are 50 human generations in 1,000 years-- 500 generations for many animals.
In a million years, there are 50,000 generations-- each one an opportunity for microchange on multiple levels. Plants you depended on to eat going extinct due to new diseases.
New aggressive plants and animals overwriting the less aggressive plants and animals.
New diseases hitting you all the time.
Random sexual preferences that propagate and strengthen with each generation.
in a billion years, there are 50,000,000 generations (~500,000,000 generations for shorter lived animals).
Consider that in only 500 years the average size of western humans has gone from roughly 5' to roughly 6'.
Micro-evolution IS macro-evolution. Just over unimaginably long time frames.
Someday's Slashdot mods... you.
Briefly...
There is some evidence that the people who wrote the bible wrote what they knew to be true (so they were credible witnesses as far as it goes since many of the verifiable parts of their stories check out).
There is some evidence that the supernatural stuff about jesus was already rumbling around that area in several other countries attached to several other dieties.
There is some evidence that some of the books of the bible were not written by one person.
There is some evidence that some books of the bible were suppressed by the early church.
There is a lot of credible evidence that modern christians are anti-truth because they ignore vast mounds of physical evidence because it contradicts genesis. They have been caught lying and suppressing the truth. They are not acting christ like.. or even disciple like. They do not value the truth. They do not respect honest seekers of truth.
Why the hostility? Well as a non-believer, I had people trying to ram religion down my throat for most of my life-- it generated a lot of hostility on my part. I just wanted to be left alone to live my life.
Could christianty be true? Sure. Could several other religions be true? yes. Did the followers of failed religious believe them to be true? absolutely. Would some of them have died for their faiths. absolutely.
"Going to heaven" is very different than most people think. If your entire personality ceases to exist and only an animating spirit/soul sans personality goes to heaven, then most people would view that as the same as death. So most people really don't believe christianity anyway... they engage in a mental kung-fu and think that if some part of them survives completely sans their personality then that's okay... heck, let me clone their bloody cells and keep those alive forever-- would that be immortal life? Christianity is always portrayed in the media as if the people's personality survives.
There is only hearsay evidence that he "paid" for sins. John Smith has a great little religion going based on hearsay information too. Do you believe his religion?
Still. the moderation was probably unfair. That's life.
I hear they used a hard G, hard C, and pronounced "EI" as "AYE" and only had a long o.
No.
Mass and other governments caught on to the fact they were losing ability to read data LESS than a decade old.
They passed laws saying data must be an "open standard" so they could read the data in the future even if they had to rewrite a reading application for Windows 2100 ultimate based on 85 year old spec docs.
Microsoft wrote a patent encumbered XML file spec that even they can't code and payed $$$$$ to have a bunch of people vote that it was to be labeled an "open standard" satisfying the legal requirement... but it STILL won't be readable in another 10 years leaving the fundamental problem unresolved.
but with a twist.. and give it a real holly wood ending.
We'll get that lady from the vampire movies as the lead and punch it up with some really big explosions in new tokyo.
Yes but the speed is predicated on the fact that you can keep making attempts in the same session.
If you have to restart, you may be down to one success per two minutes.
You are not going to find a perfect automated solution for this.
Good point.
I can't find good figures but...
Speaking of coal mines one green slanted site said... "Pennsylvania is home to over 250000 acres of abandoned surface mines."
http://www.actionpa.org/energy/
That is 390 sq miles in one state alone. And Pennsylvania is not a particularly big state.
If you set the amount low enough, you could pay the "worst" sales tax rate (10%?) on it.
2.99
0.29 tax
17.00 shipping & handling.
Sure, they MIGHT try to bust you... but heck, you are in another state.
I'm sure it wouldn't work for Amazon but for everyone else..
However, there HAS to be something the same for those six attempts or you wouldn't be able to use the id. A cookie, a browser string- something. Even if you have the same IP. I do get your point tho that then they could just make a completely new attempt and you couldn't tell.
No- I get new people all the time.
But just like my phone number is "unlisted", my email is too. If you are someone that I accept as a new acquaintance, then we swap info and I let you in.
Hmmmm.
Do you pay sales tax on shipping fees?
First Run DVD! 19.99 in stores.. buy here for only 2.99! (+$17.00 shipping & handling)
Why are they allowing the same computer multiple accounts in the same day?
Why are they allowing the same account creation attempt to fail over three times?
Still... I guess as computers get smarter, this is unstoppable.
All my accounts are white-listed. If I don't know you, I don't see your email.