No, I think you're wrong. You can have a simplified contract and not have rediculous early termination fees. Either eliminate the phone subsidy altogether (the subsidies are the primary reason the carriers want the fees), or adjust all monthy fees to compensate for the revenue you expect to lose on short-term customers.
The thing that really ticks me off is that our carrier (T-Mobile) resets the clock on our early termination fee any time we change our service or get a new phone (even if it is one for which we pay, and not one of the free models). We made it through our first two-year period, so I was offended to learn they had reset the clock when we upgraded our plan, and then again when we purchased a new phone. We'd really like to get a new phone again, but there's no chance that we're going to re-up for another two-years of penalty being held over our heads.
It just bothers me how many Christians (particularly Protestants) accept the fallibility of man and institutions of men (For instance, the Catholic Church) yet fail to see how this easily applies to what is, ultimately, a product (from authoring, to canonization, propagation, and translation) of the work of men: the Bible. I do not know if this stems from general ignorance of the origins and history of the Bible, hesitancy of religious leaders to address such issues, or cognitive dissonance, but I do know that it often leads to a false sense of righteousness and abuse.
I believe most leaders of the Church (in its various denominations and forms) would acknowledge the frailty and failures of men and their organizations and efforts, but they would also profess a belief that God was/is able to preserve his intended message through those flawed mechanisms. I'm not suggesting that God preserved or approves of all the interpretations men layer upon the message, but rather that he preserved the message itself.
I appreciate your willingness to engage in civil dialogue on this topic. I don't mean to belabor the discussion, so there's no need to read on if you are satisfied with our exchange. I include the following as a means to help explain further why I consider the Scripture, particularly the New Testament, to be a reliable witness.
# # #
All translations of Scripture embed a level of interpretation made by the translators. There are palces in the Scriptures where scholars are unsure of what specific words mean (if, for example, it is the only use of that word in all of the texts and if there are few uses of that word in other contemporary literature), and other places where judgments must be made as to context (for example, how to iterpretat ancient Greek language and usage to an equivalent phrase in English when our lexicon may use only one word to represent a concept, like love, that has three separate words with distinct meanings in Greek). This I acknowledge. Is it possible that errors were made in translating such passages? Absolutely! To the best of my understanding, however, none of those questionable sections touch on any of the primary teachings of the Christian faith. On those issues, the Scriptures (in a myriad of translations) have tremendous unity with not only historical manuscripts like the Authorized King James Version, the Vulgate, and others, but also tremendous translational integrity with those extant copies and fragments that date into the first and second centuries A.D.
Examining the texts solely from a historical, literary perspective, there is more reason to believe that the Scriptures (and here I am specifically referring to the New Testament) accurately captured the lives and events of Christ and the Apostles (those who were witnesses to the life of Christ) than there is for any other author of antiquity. The earliest copies (seven of them) of Plato are dated approximately 1200 years after their writing, but few scholars doubt their origin. There was a 1400 year gap for the writings of Aristotle to the extant copies, with only 49 manuscripts. The most reliable work we find from antiquity, apart from the Scriptures, is Homer's Illiad, copies of which date to about 500 years after its writing and over 640 manuscripts. Of those manuscripts, there was about 95% agreement between them, showing the internal consistency of the documents. For the New Testament Scriptures, the gap between the original writings and the earliest copies is less than 100 years, there are approximately 5,600 extant copies in the original languages (Greek and Hebrew), and those copies have greater than 98% internal consistency. In fact the smallest gap for any of the Gospel fragments appears to be for the Gospel of John (the one most often attacked as a later insertion to elevate Christ to having a divine nature), as found in the John Rylands Fragment, which dates the earliest copy to approximately 29 years from th
Do I believe that the institutions that canonized Scripture were likely flawed, or at least made of collections of fallable persons? Absolutely. That does not negate my belief that God may used flawed vessels for his purposes.
I claim that the Bible is divine not simply because of its existance, but because of its existance in conjunction with its claims (including prophecies that have been fulfilled), the specific historical accuracy of its accounts (the biblical record has not once been contradicted by any archaelogical evidence), and the honesty of its narrative (the persons in the Scriptures are presented with all their flaws). The narrative claims to be that of God, given through men. It is a claim that is either true of false, though one not easily tested in an empirical setting. It is similar to the way the Christ claimed deity. Either he was a lunatic, or he was what he claimed to be.
I accept that God created and preserved the Scriptures (without regard to canon) because of experiential proofs that are meaningful only to me. I cannot convince you otherwise. If you do not accept that God exists, it makes no sense to believe that he has chosen to communicate to us at all. If you accept that he exists, and accept that such a being might desire to be in relationship with us (a concept even I find hard to comprehend), then one must seek to discern how he has chosen to communicate with us. There are many so-called sacred texts in the world. Each makes some sort of claim regarding our ability to communicate with (or transcend to) the divine. From that point, it becomes a journey to discern which path is true. Not all can be true since they have conflicting claims: Jesus said "no man may come to the Father but through me"--that clearly conflicts with the concept that all sincerely held beliefs lead to God.
So, circular logic? Only if you discount my own experiential basis for belief. I believe that God is all-powerful, therefore nothing is too difficult for him. Beginning with that belief, I have no difficulty accepting that God could have preserved specific writings for our time, even if the institutions and persons involved were not perfect. We don't disallow witnesses from testifying in a court of law simply because they are flawed, or simply because they may have their own motivations. We surely try to weed out those who would promote their own agenda over the truth, but we still accept testimony as testimony. It is then up to a jury to decide if the testimony was true and the witness credible. The Scriptures contain many such accounts of witnesses to events. The question, thus, is this: how do you judge the witnesses--are they being truthful and are they credible? I believe that, yes, the witnesses of Scriture were truthful, and I believe that the support of the historical and archaelogical record proves them credible.
I agree with your statement--for God, time is meaningless. The fundamentalist would argue that the statement "a day is like a thousand years..." has no bearing on the creation account, since Moses was moved to record "day" with "evening and morning" to designate a literal day.
I've run into a number of professing Christians who cannot accept a literal six-day creation on the basis of the scientific record. What amazes me most is that they view God as one who could create the entire universe, but that he would not have the power to create a universe that would appear very old from the onset. I don't believe it happened that way, but I just find it interesting.
I often have people cite how Scripture is contradictory. Would you be so kind as to provide some specific examples that I may review and address?
If you examine my quote, I do not claim that the "modern, accepted form" of the Bible is a "perfect, divine work". I simply state that I believe God preserved the writings he intended to preserve--writings that may help us understand his character, and his plan of salvation. Had he not wanted the teaching of the cross to go forth, he could have allowed for the teaching to be diluted, for the early manuscripts to have been lost, or that the early sect of the Christians had been eliminated. I trust that the message he intended to deliver to this present day has reached us. Will someone eventually uncover some additional texts that will bring clearer understanding? Unlike some, I will say that this is possible. The Hebrew prophet Daniel was given words of prophecy that were to be hidden away until a time "near the end". Have we received these writings yet? I don't know.
I agree that terms like "Holy Trinity" do not appear in the Scriptures. They are teachings that attempt to reconcile evidences in the Scriptures in ways that are easier for the human mind to grasp. A primary reference cited for the Trinity is at the baptism of Jesus, where he is present in the water (physically), God's voice is heard affirming Christ as the "beloved son", and the Spirit is seen in the form of a dove. While some might brand me a heretic for entering this discourse, I must state that the concept of Trinity was defined to resolve logical issues when considering the nature of God (who regularly claims that He is One, and that there are no other gods before or after him), the nature of Christ (who is, it seems, both God and man), and the nature of the Holy Spirit (sent from God, the Comforter who could not come while Christ remained). The early church fathers branded modalism--the concept that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit--were all simply differnt manifestations of the same being--as a heresy largely in part to the fact that the human mind could not comprehend that God could appear, as in the case of Jesus' baptism, in more than one mode at once. My view, therefore, would be (as I term it), a non-spacially-or-chronologically-limited modalism. My beliefe is that the God of the Bible is one God. We see him active as (using the terms most commonly known) God the Father, he came as Christ the Son, and comes as the Holy Spirit. I make no claim to special revelation or knowledge. I simply acknowledge that this God is beyond my knowing. If it is still easier for some to grapple with the concept of Trinity, let them. In either view, Christ is held as divine, a sacrifice of substitutionary atonement. My view does not beg the claim (of the Jehovah's Witnesses) that I worship a "three-headed-monster-god", nor does it evoke the claim (of the Muslim) that we are polytheists.
I appreciate the civil discourse. It is always best to extend the dialogue and ensure that both sides have presented their arguments fairly.
I agree that too many want to take their preferred English translation as the literal "words of God". The point you make on language usage is a valid one. If you were to show a copy of the original language of the King James Version (the version that is, perhaps, the most zealously defended as being "the only acceptable version") to someone who holds the view that the modern English rendering of that version is unchanged (in its wording, grammar, and syntax) from when it was first completed, they would likely not be able to read or comprehend large sections of the text.
I must admit that I came across the literal "young woman" issue only in the past year, so I am still wrestling with that one. I believe there are other textual cues (Old and New Testament) that support the translation as "virgin" there (one of which being--if memory serves--in the writer, Matthew's familiarity with the prophecies of the Jewish Messiah, and the fact that the term "young woman" was, in other literature of that day, often used to designate virginity), but that is a topic for later study.
A similar area, one that I can see clearly rises from tradition, is how the Christ child was laid in a feeding trough "because there was no room for him in the inn". Hebrew families did not have the luxury of motoring up to a motel in around 6 B.C. Most travelers would stay with their extended families (or strangers) as guests. The word translated as "inn" is only used one other place in the Greek New Testament--where Jesus instructed his followers to proceed ahead of him to prepare for the Passover meal. The room they were given was the "guest room"--the same word translated as "inn" in most nativity accounts. To me, it is even more meaningful that the family of the Christ-child came to seek shelter from his own kin, and that they did not even have room for him (where the guests were normally boarded). Instead, they were (if my limited understanding of the home design of the day is accurate) invited to stay on the lowest level (the basement, if you will) where the animals were sheltered.
As someone who is trying to understand what it means to be a follower of this Christ, I agree that there have been many waves of doctrine (teaching) that have changed the focus or seeming importance of different aspects of Chrstianity. [I find it interesting that you use "xian", since using the "X", the first letter of the name/title "Christ" in Greek, was actually one of the ways the "true believers" of a certain period distinguished themselves from the nominal Christians of their day, but that, too, is another discussion.] I lament the fact that Western society (and even some Western theology) minimizes the spiritual dimension of this life, including the reality of our adversary, oft rendered as "the devil". It is true that some Christian teachers, in an attempt to develop a theology that they could comprehend, had to minimize the concept of the devil and hell to embrace a view of God as a loving being. Do so, in effect, changes the nature of the Gospel. It is difficult, if not impossible, for the human mind to reconcile the concept that God could be both fully loving and fully just (i.e., offering heaven yet maintaining hell). This, too, is a topic for another discussion.
I thank you for your willingness to dialogue and hope that you will have the pleasure of meeting others, like me, who sincerely believe the Christian Gospel and with whom you may engage in intelligent discourse on these or other topics.
I've been in the field for 15 years. I've run data verifications, and even facilitated physical restoration tests for contingency testing. I've still seen some media failures and data corruption even when data has been previsouly verified and all data handling practices were followed. Such events are rare, but they can happen.
When you get to smaller businesses, the risk of damage to the backup media are amplified, since media are often accessible to many hands and exposed to a variety of environmental factors. The human element (e.g., spilled sugary coffee) can instantly render a backup tape useless. In such situations, it is rare for someone to come forward and admit the problem when it happens. It's more likely to be noticed when someone wants you to pull that ancient file from the tape that was made 11 months ago--something sticky this way comes.
Actually new Federal (U.S.) regulations came into effect that were pushing banks to improve their online security (I worked for one of the major bank regulators in the U.S.), so your criticism is extremely valid.Much has changed (and continues to change).
That said, there are still far too many Banks that think the've protected users with personally-chosen images and similar protections. All they've really done there is reduce the chance of a successful phishing attempt. The real danger is still the customer who visits infected sites or opens links that should not be trusted and gets his/her machine infected with a keystroke logger or some other malware. Even better, I've always thought access point cloning is a perfect avenue for intelligent man-in-the-middle attacks. I was at a hotel in Atlanta in late 2006. When I powered up my laptop, there were numerous open "free" access points around with very strong signals. One of the access points was named for the hotel. The problem is that the folks at the front desk told me that their wireless network was down when I checked in. Calling the front desk, they confirmed that it was still down and would not be repaired until the next day. Let some plebe connect to the cloned access point, capture all of the traffic, including the session keys, and take over. Heck, if you can interpose a DNS server or do some DNS cache poisoning, you could redirect the user to a lookalike site, have them enter logon information which you would use to pass on to the legitimate site, let them conduct their business through your proxy, and then disconnect from you. Meanwhile, you still have the real session and can do as you please. The anti-phishing filters don't work for all sites because some smaller institutions don't pay for the extended validation certificates, or because they maintain older web addresses so their customer links don't break (I have an account with a credit union that is like this. I get a site certificate error any time I try to access the site. When I notified their techs, I was just told to update my shortcut to the new address. The old link is still there, generating the certificate error but allowing users who continue to navigate through to the logon screen.
Heck, if I wanted to get access to a customer's online bank accounts, it would be much easier by picking up some of their junk mail and then paying for additional personal details on a website. Armed with that information, it would be much easier to social engineer oneself into another's account.
Even better, some small, private colleges still have online applications and information forms, some of which request social security numbers, that are not https (or, if having an https URL, are not actually secured). I ran into one recently (when looking into a master's program for myself). I know the net admin, so I called him about the form (which was on a site labeled https, but was not actually using SSL or any other encryption). He indicated that the office person who sent the form had used an old link, and that the old page should have been removed months before. I checked out some other college sites thereafter, and found similar issues. There's no telling how many potential students have tranmitted their sensitive personal data in plaintext due to such oversights.
Oops...um...sorry. I just caught myself ranting again.
The discovery of extant and reliable manuscripts does not invalidate the belief that the Christian Scriptures are God's words. If you carefully study the statements of faith of various conservative Christian groups, they will, almost invariably, note that they believe that [paraphrasing] "the Bible, God's word, is inspired and without error in its original languages and was written by men who were moved by God to do so". Most of their biblical study focuses on exegesis and hermeneutics, the former being an attempt for critical understanding of the text based on its original context and intended audience, and the latter being an attempt to find practical application of those texts to modern living.
As to the "evolution over time" argument, a careful study of the earliest manuscripts or their transcripts (there are tens of thousands of extant copies of the various gospels and epistles, and a significant number of these can even be traced into the first century AD) will show that none of the central tenets of Christianity undewent any modification since the earliest manuscripts. Portions that have been found to have been appended by other writers at other times (most likely well-meaning scribes or monks) have never been found in sections of the text that deal with the core beliefs of Christianity (e.g., virgin birth, miracles, death, resurrection--others have already addressed the issue of the recent Mark text not invalidating other internal references to resurrection). One of the most well-known examples of such an embelishment is the end of the "Lord's Prayer" [I'm typing from memory here]:
Our Father, who art in heaven
Hallowed be Thy name
Thy kingdom come
Thy will be done
On earth as it is in heaven
Give us this day our daily bread
And forgive us our tresspasses
As we forgive those who tresspass against us
And lead us not into temptation,
But deliver us from evil For Thine is the kingdom,
And the power,
And the glory,
Forever and ever. Amen!
The final section (those lines in bold italics) does not appear in the earliest and most trustworthy manuscripts. Modern translations that hold to high standards to scholarship omit those verses, or at least print them following a note the explains that they do not appear in the best manuscripts. If you take away those lines, no critical teachings of the Christian gospel have been compromised. In fact, they are sentiments expressed of God elsewhere in the Chritian Scriptures, including in the book of Psalms and in the Revelation of Jesus Christ to John.
Yes, while church leaders came together in the fourth century to formalize the official canon that is accepted today, history shows us that there were lists of accepted writings as early as the second century AD. Most scholars agree that no such list was needed during the first century, because many of the original witnesses, or the people who had received their direct accounts, were still living. The modern "conservative" or "fundamentalist" Christian sees the canonization of Scripture as a divinely sanctioned act that preserved only those texts that were necessary for the advancement of the Gospel. I find myself in a slightly different camp. While I believe God used canonization to preserve those writings that were passed on to this day, I believe there were likely other writings that were lost, either temporarily (yet to be discovered) or permanently (destroyed). The teachings of the Christian Scriptures encourage believers to critically examine all teachings to see if they align with the truth of the previously recognized Scriptures (the Old Testament--the Hebrew Law and Prophets, plust the Poems). In the letters of Peter, he places Paul's writings on the same level as Scripture in that day (during the first century), so there was an early acceptance that Paul's teachings of Christ's death and resurrection aligned with the Old Testament's prophecies of a suffering messiah who would
The logic behind reading a literal six-day creation is that, while "day" in Hebrew can mean a period of time when used alone, all other references to "day" that include "evening and morning" are references to literal days. Thus, the literalists argue, there is no reason to believe the usage of "day" with the term "evening and morning" in Genesis should be viewed any differently.
But there are manuscripts of the individual gospels and many of the epistles that date much earlier, including some that can reliably be dated within the first century AD.
This is news because it says something about WfW 3.11--it worked. In the manufacturing plant where I currently work, we have a couple of industrial robots that run on 3.11. By MS finally pulling the plug, some equipment manufacturers will be in a tizzy to modernize their software (and firmware). Before this news, it wasn't broken, so why fix it.
The reference to XP is in the light of MS sunsetting the availability of that OS for most OEMs (save for those of the ultra-mobile class)--they're getting rid of something that worked and was accepted by the customer base. It may be a sound move in business theory (and, I'd argue, for WfW 3.11, something long overdue), but it is not likely to make some consumer channels happy.
Of course, you could argue that the writing has been on the wall for a long time, so let's hope that most of the WfW 3.11 users have been planning for this one...
Tab is covered by copyright because the song composer owns the copyright on the specifc arrangement of notes represented by the tablature.
As to cover tunes, they, too, are covered by copyright (as is any music used in performance settings)--a performance copyright. If you buy some of the large and extremely expensive books of cover tunes, they often include limited performance rights (thus the tremendous cost). One of the reasons a lot of coffee shops have dropped or altered their musical programs is that lawsuits were threatened over local musicians who came in and played well-known tunes without having first secured performance copyright permissions. Of all copyright law, that's one to which I can best relate, since I am a songwriter when not bogged down as a sysadmin. Other musicians should not be able to take and use my songs (and make money doing so) without fair compensation to me (I manage my own copyrights, and do not require rediculous licensing fees for their use). Let them either pay a reasonable amount to use a piece in their performance, or let them write their own music.
Now, for mashups, people should be allowed some use of protected pieces, provided that economic gain is not the primary purpose of the mashup. If someone wants to put together snippets of their 10 favorite Devo songs while displaying a collage of abstract watercolor paintings, let it be. Now, if someone wants to do the same and sell the resultant media on a late-night television infomercial, then let them pony up some licensing cash (or revenue sharing).
If all they are doing with their Internet connection is picking up email once or twice a week, I find people have no desire to get a faster pipe. When their email volume increases (by number or size) to the point where it is taking them hours to download their messages, then they consider a faster alternative.
I've been working with an older couple who are in just that situation. They connect to pull their email messages, but they got behind a while back while away. Since they came back, their machine never successfully downloads all of their messages. The real kicker for them is that their mail client (assuming since it never completes the receive-messages session) never marks the items that were downloaded as picked up, so the next time they connect the inbox fills with copies of each message that was part of the initial download.
I've been working on them for a while, trying to get them to try broadband service (the PC is okay), but living on Social Security in the U.S., they just don't have money to spare for Internet connectivity.
IT managers will eat this up once it's proven a viable option (read: no bugs or denial of access). Being able to budget the same amount (though bound to increase) year after year, and not needing to worry about managing user licenses or decisions about whether or not to buy an OEM version with that next laptop--I think business will swallow this one whole. Consumers, on the other hand? It will be a split. Those who know little about their PCs and just want something to work may just go out and shell up the dough. Those who are more knowledgeable, like those who download free anti-virus and firewall tools vs. paying the subscription game, are likely to find alternatives like OO.
To me, that's where the eventual subscription model will break down. When consumers finally realize that they are paying $X per year (or, eventually, per month or per use) when their neighbors are getting comparable (or, hopefully, better) functionality for FREE, then they will leave the subscription services in droves.
All you OO contributors and developers, prepare yourselves for a few more years of famine. Build the product consumers will want, at the price they can't resist (FREE), and you'll have knocked a big hole in Microsoft's thick hide.
Perhaps texts are peer-reviewed in the purely academic fields, but, from my experience as a part-time instrcutor, technology texts are full of significant errors and getting them acknowledged and updated in subsequent printings (which are often limited because of the typical lifespan of a text tied to any specific technology) is difficult and unlikely.
I was recently teaching some real entry-level computer user courses using a well-known author's series for some of the Microsoft Office applications (i.e., Excel and Access). My copy of the text arrived about two months before the student copies were ordered. When we got to some of the listed exercises, the students could not come up with numbers that even came close to those listed in the text. Afte spending significant time reviewing the students' logic and data structures, I went back to my desk and started working the assignment line by line. At each point, I reviewed the assumptions and the necessary logic. That's when I discovered that the student text was missing two key instructions--partial sentences that materially changed the nature of the data that was being manipulated. There's a big difference between "all remaining profits are used to..." and "twenty-five percent of all remaining profits are used to..." The other change was equally significant: "they earn a bonus amount every time monthly profit is greater than..." vs. "they earn a bonus amount every time the monthly saved amount [the 25% figure mentioned earlier] is greater than..." [Note, these were not intended to be exact quotes from the text, but rather a way to set apart the parallel couplets.]
I can only imagine that some instructor, somewhere, is going to dock points from his/her students when their answeres don't match the key. How often do such things go unnoticed?
You really hit on a key point here. A four year degree shows that you had some perseverence and got throuhgh the program. That BS should make you marketable across many industries, even those which are not directly tied to technology.
What do you want to do? It would have been much better for you to have tackled that question before pursuing your degree, or at least before your final two years. Talk to your college's career services office and ask them to put you through the ringer--personality type assessments, vocational interest surveys, personal preference assessments--anything they can provide to help you wrap your head around the central question: not what do you want to be when you grow up (though that might be easy for some to answer), but what job will you find meaningful on a daily basis. Find that job that you will either love, or at least tolerate without repeated depressive episodes, and you will be well on your way to finding an employer who will be glad to have you join the team.
I was in the first wave to join Netflix, and I was a user who, early on, made repeated requests for better ways to manage the queue. What they implemented was a good try, but it was not that for which I was looking. As the account owner, I wanted to be able to manage all queues from a single screen. I despised the way I needed to manage each queue on its own screen (I gave up on profiles at least a year ago, so I don't know if they rectified this).
What I envisioned originally was to be able to manage multiple lists on a single screen: lets call them List A, List B, and List C. When browsing and adding movies to the queue, you still have one button to add movies, but it would have a drop-down option that would let you choose another queue. Thus, the default button action would be the same, but you would have the option of diverting the request. For queue management, I had pitched a system similar to the one the adopted, allowing you to specify how to intersperse the movies from the other queues. For controls, I envisioned parameters only on the sub-queues. Using the names I provided earlier in and example, you could configure List B to send one movie after every three sent on the primary queue. I envisioned being able to drag-and-drop between the lists on the same GUI page. As for others adding their preferences to the queue, the account owner could specify users (by email address) who could logon and add to specific queues, much the way the service was implemented. For younger kids who may not have their own eddresses, Netflix could have allowed the account owner to create logon accounts that would be child accounts and have limited rights. If the owner's logon was thisuser@somedomain.com, for example, I envisioned secondary accounts that could be named subAccountName~thisuser@somedomain.com.
Oh, and yes, I was this verbose in passing my comments on to Netflix. I was pleased that they opted for profiles, but was disappointed by how cumbersome they were to manage. Placing all profile management in a single page view would have gone far in making them easier to use.
I guess I'm disappointed to see Netflix throw out the baby with the bathwater, but they can see that users like me have stopped using the profiles. It reaches a point where the amount of developer support hours and system maintenance tasks invested in a minimally used feature necessitates a pause to rethink the strategy. Hopefully we will see an improved queue management system in the future.
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No, I think you're wrong. You can have a simplified contract and not have rediculous early termination fees. Either eliminate the phone subsidy altogether (the subsidies are the primary reason the carriers want the fees), or adjust all monthy fees to compensate for the revenue you expect to lose on short-term customers.
The thing that really ticks me off is that our carrier (T-Mobile) resets the clock on our early termination fee any time we change our service or get a new phone (even if it is one for which we pay, and not one of the free models). We made it through our first two-year period, so I was offended to learn they had reset the clock when we upgraded our plan, and then again when we purchased a new phone. We'd really like to get a new phone again, but there's no chance that we're going to re-up for another two-years of penalty being held over our heads.
I believe most leaders of the Church (in its various denominations and forms) would acknowledge the frailty and failures of men and their organizations and efforts, but they would also profess a belief that God was/is able to preserve his intended message through those flawed mechanisms. I'm not suggesting that God preserved or approves of all the interpretations men layer upon the message, but rather that he preserved the message itself.
I appreciate your willingness to engage in civil dialogue on this topic. I don't mean to belabor the discussion, so there's no need to read on if you are satisfied with our exchange. I include the following as a means to help explain further why I consider the Scripture, particularly the New Testament, to be a reliable witness.
# # #
All translations of Scripture embed a level of interpretation made by the translators. There are palces in the Scriptures where scholars are unsure of what specific words mean (if, for example, it is the only use of that word in all of the texts and if there are few uses of that word in other contemporary literature), and other places where judgments must be made as to context (for example, how to iterpretat ancient Greek language and usage to an equivalent phrase in English when our lexicon may use only one word to represent a concept, like love, that has three separate words with distinct meanings in Greek). This I acknowledge. Is it possible that errors were made in translating such passages? Absolutely! To the best of my understanding, however, none of those questionable sections touch on any of the primary teachings of the Christian faith. On those issues, the Scriptures (in a myriad of translations) have tremendous unity with not only historical manuscripts like the Authorized King James Version, the Vulgate, and others, but also tremendous translational integrity with those extant copies and fragments that date into the first and second centuries A.D.
Examining the texts solely from a historical, literary perspective, there is more reason to believe that the Scriptures (and here I am specifically referring to the New Testament) accurately captured the lives and events of Christ and the Apostles (those who were witnesses to the life of Christ) than there is for any other author of antiquity. The earliest copies (seven of them) of Plato are dated approximately 1200 years after their writing, but few scholars doubt their origin. There was a 1400 year gap for the writings of Aristotle to the extant copies, with only 49 manuscripts. The most reliable work we find from antiquity, apart from the Scriptures, is Homer's Illiad, copies of which date to about 500 years after its writing and over 640 manuscripts. Of those manuscripts, there was about 95% agreement between them, showing the internal consistency of the documents. For the New Testament Scriptures, the gap between the original writings and the earliest copies is less than 100 years, there are approximately 5,600 extant copies in the original languages (Greek and Hebrew), and those copies have greater than 98% internal consistency. In fact the smallest gap for any of the Gospel fragments appears to be for the Gospel of John (the one most often attacked as a later insertion to elevate Christ to having a divine nature), as found in the John Rylands Fragment, which dates the earliest copy to approximately 29 years from th
Do I believe that the institutions that canonized Scripture were likely flawed, or at least made of collections of fallable persons? Absolutely. That does not negate my belief that God may used flawed vessels for his purposes. I claim that the Bible is divine not simply because of its existance, but because of its existance in conjunction with its claims (including prophecies that have been fulfilled), the specific historical accuracy of its accounts (the biblical record has not once been contradicted by any archaelogical evidence), and the honesty of its narrative (the persons in the Scriptures are presented with all their flaws). The narrative claims to be that of God, given through men. It is a claim that is either true of false, though one not easily tested in an empirical setting. It is similar to the way the Christ claimed deity. Either he was a lunatic, or he was what he claimed to be.
I accept that God created and preserved the Scriptures (without regard to canon) because of experiential proofs that are meaningful only to me. I cannot convince you otherwise. If you do not accept that God exists, it makes no sense to believe that he has chosen to communicate to us at all. If you accept that he exists, and accept that such a being might desire to be in relationship with us (a concept even I find hard to comprehend), then one must seek to discern how he has chosen to communicate with us. There are many so-called sacred texts in the world. Each makes some sort of claim regarding our ability to communicate with (or transcend to) the divine. From that point, it becomes a journey to discern which path is true. Not all can be true since they have conflicting claims: Jesus said "no man may come to the Father but through me"--that clearly conflicts with the concept that all sincerely held beliefs lead to God. So, circular logic? Only if you discount my own experiential basis for belief. I believe that God is all-powerful, therefore nothing is too difficult for him. Beginning with that belief, I have no difficulty accepting that God could have preserved specific writings for our time, even if the institutions and persons involved were not perfect. We don't disallow witnesses from testifying in a court of law simply because they are flawed, or simply because they may have their own motivations. We surely try to weed out those who would promote their own agenda over the truth, but we still accept testimony as testimony. It is then up to a jury to decide if the testimony was true and the witness credible. The Scriptures contain many such accounts of witnesses to events. The question, thus, is this: how do you judge the witnesses--are they being truthful and are they credible? I believe that, yes, the witnesses of Scriture were truthful, and I believe that the support of the historical and archaelogical record proves them credible.
I agree with your statement--for God, time is meaningless. The fundamentalist would argue that the statement "a day is like a thousand years..." has no bearing on the creation account, since Moses was moved to record "day" with "evening and morning" to designate a literal day.
I've run into a number of professing Christians who cannot accept a literal six-day creation on the basis of the scientific record. What amazes me most is that they view God as one who could create the entire universe, but that he would not have the power to create a universe that would appear very old from the onset. I don't believe it happened that way, but I just find it interesting.
I often have people cite how Scripture is contradictory. Would you be so kind as to provide some specific examples that I may review and address?
If you examine my quote, I do not claim that the "modern, accepted form" of the Bible is a "perfect, divine work". I simply state that I believe God preserved the writings he intended to preserve--writings that may help us understand his character, and his plan of salvation. Had he not wanted the teaching of the cross to go forth, he could have allowed for the teaching to be diluted, for the early manuscripts to have been lost, or that the early sect of the Christians had been eliminated. I trust that the message he intended to deliver to this present day has reached us. Will someone eventually uncover some additional texts that will bring clearer understanding? Unlike some, I will say that this is possible. The Hebrew prophet Daniel was given words of prophecy that were to be hidden away until a time "near the end". Have we received these writings yet? I don't know.
I agree that terms like "Holy Trinity" do not appear in the Scriptures. They are teachings that attempt to reconcile evidences in the Scriptures in ways that are easier for the human mind to grasp. A primary reference cited for the Trinity is at the baptism of Jesus, where he is present in the water (physically), God's voice is heard affirming Christ as the "beloved son", and the Spirit is seen in the form of a dove. While some might brand me a heretic for entering this discourse, I must state that the concept of Trinity was defined to resolve logical issues when considering the nature of God (who regularly claims that He is One, and that there are no other gods before or after him), the nature of Christ (who is, it seems, both God and man), and the nature of the Holy Spirit (sent from God, the Comforter who could not come while Christ remained). The early church fathers branded modalism--the concept that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit--were all simply differnt manifestations of the same being--as a heresy largely in part to the fact that the human mind could not comprehend that God could appear, as in the case of Jesus' baptism, in more than one mode at once. My view, therefore, would be (as I term it), a non-spacially-or-chronologically-limited modalism. My beliefe is that the God of the Bible is one God. We see him active as (using the terms most commonly known) God the Father, he came as Christ the Son, and comes as the Holy Spirit. I make no claim to special revelation or knowledge. I simply acknowledge that this God is beyond my knowing. If it is still easier for some to grapple with the concept of Trinity, let them. In either view, Christ is held as divine, a sacrifice of substitutionary atonement. My view does not beg the claim (of the Jehovah's Witnesses) that I worship a "three-headed-monster-god", nor does it evoke the claim (of the Muslim) that we are polytheists.
I appreciate the civil discourse. It is always best to extend the dialogue and ensure that both sides have presented their arguments fairly.
I agree that too many want to take their preferred English translation as the literal "words of God". The point you make on language usage is a valid one. If you were to show a copy of the original language of the King James Version (the version that is, perhaps, the most zealously defended as being "the only acceptable version") to someone who holds the view that the modern English rendering of that version is unchanged (in its wording, grammar, and syntax) from when it was first completed, they would likely not be able to read or comprehend large sections of the text.
I must admit that I came across the literal "young woman" issue only in the past year, so I am still wrestling with that one. I believe there are other textual cues (Old and New Testament) that support the translation as "virgin" there (one of which being--if memory serves--in the writer, Matthew's familiarity with the prophecies of the Jewish Messiah, and the fact that the term "young woman" was, in other literature of that day, often used to designate virginity), but that is a topic for later study.
A similar area, one that I can see clearly rises from tradition, is how the Christ child was laid in a feeding trough "because there was no room for him in the inn". Hebrew families did not have the luxury of motoring up to a motel in around 6 B.C. Most travelers would stay with their extended families (or strangers) as guests. The word translated as "inn" is only used one other place in the Greek New Testament--where Jesus instructed his followers to proceed ahead of him to prepare for the Passover meal. The room they were given was the "guest room"--the same word translated as "inn" in most nativity accounts. To me, it is even more meaningful that the family of the Christ-child came to seek shelter from his own kin, and that they did not even have room for him (where the guests were normally boarded). Instead, they were (if my limited understanding of the home design of the day is accurate) invited to stay on the lowest level (the basement, if you will) where the animals were sheltered.
As someone who is trying to understand what it means to be a follower of this Christ, I agree that there have been many waves of doctrine (teaching) that have changed the focus or seeming importance of different aspects of Chrstianity. [I find it interesting that you use "xian", since using the "X", the first letter of the name/title "Christ" in Greek, was actually one of the ways the "true believers" of a certain period distinguished themselves from the nominal Christians of their day, but that, too, is another discussion.] I lament the fact that Western society (and even some Western theology) minimizes the spiritual dimension of this life, including the reality of our adversary, oft rendered as "the devil". It is true that some Christian teachers, in an attempt to develop a theology that they could comprehend, had to minimize the concept of the devil and hell to embrace a view of God as a loving being. Do so, in effect, changes the nature of the Gospel. It is difficult, if not impossible, for the human mind to reconcile the concept that God could be both fully loving and fully just (i.e., offering heaven yet maintaining hell). This, too, is a topic for another discussion.
I thank you for your willingness to dialogue and hope that you will have the pleasure of meeting others, like me, who sincerely believe the Christian Gospel and with whom you may engage in intelligent discourse on these or other topics.
I've been in the field for 15 years. I've run data verifications, and even facilitated physical restoration tests for contingency testing. I've still seen some media failures and data corruption even when data has been previsouly verified and all data handling practices were followed. Such events are rare, but they can happen.
When you get to smaller businesses, the risk of damage to the backup media are amplified, since media are often accessible to many hands and exposed to a variety of environmental factors. The human element (e.g., spilled sugary coffee) can instantly render a backup tape useless. In such situations, it is rare for someone to come forward and admit the problem when it happens. It's more likely to be noticed when someone wants you to pull that ancient file from the tape that was made 11 months ago--something sticky this way comes.
Actually new Federal (U.S.) regulations came into effect that were pushing banks to improve their online security (I worked for one of the major bank regulators in the U.S.), so your criticism is extremely valid.Much has changed (and continues to change).
That said, there are still far too many Banks that think the've protected users with personally-chosen images and similar protections. All they've really done there is reduce the chance of a successful phishing attempt. The real danger is still the customer who visits infected sites or opens links that should not be trusted and gets his/her machine infected with a keystroke logger or some other malware. Even better, I've always thought access point cloning is a perfect avenue for intelligent man-in-the-middle attacks. I was at a hotel in Atlanta in late 2006. When I powered up my laptop, there were numerous open "free" access points around with very strong signals. One of the access points was named for the hotel. The problem is that the folks at the front desk told me that their wireless network was down when I checked in. Calling the front desk, they confirmed that it was still down and would not be repaired until the next day. Let some plebe connect to the cloned access point, capture all of the traffic, including the session keys, and take over. Heck, if you can interpose a DNS server or do some DNS cache poisoning, you could redirect the user to a lookalike site, have them enter logon information which you would use to pass on to the legitimate site, let them conduct their business through your proxy, and then disconnect from you. Meanwhile, you still have the real session and can do as you please. The anti-phishing filters don't work for all sites because some smaller institutions don't pay for the extended validation certificates, or because they maintain older web addresses so their customer links don't break (I have an account with a credit union that is like this. I get a site certificate error any time I try to access the site. When I notified their techs, I was just told to update my shortcut to the new address. The old link is still there, generating the certificate error but allowing users who continue to navigate through to the logon screen.
Heck, if I wanted to get access to a customer's online bank accounts, it would be much easier by picking up some of their junk mail and then paying for additional personal details on a website. Armed with that information, it would be much easier to social engineer oneself into another's account.
Even better, some small, private colleges still have online applications and information forms, some of which request social security numbers, that are not https (or, if having an https URL, are not actually secured). I ran into one recently (when looking into a master's program for myself). I know the net admin, so I called him about the form (which was on a site labeled https, but was not actually using SSL or any other encryption). He indicated that the office person who sent the form had used an old link, and that the old page should have been removed months before. I checked out some other college sites thereafter, and found similar issues. There's no telling how many potential students have tranmitted their sensitive personal data in plaintext due to such oversights.
Oops...um...sorry. I just caught myself ranting again.
1. Steal/social engineer your username/password. 2. Steal/clone your mobile phone. 3. ???? 4. Profit!!!
Have you ever had to restore from backup? From time to time, things simply fail.
The discovery of extant and reliable manuscripts does not invalidate the belief that the Christian Scriptures are God's words. If you carefully study the statements of faith of various conservative Christian groups, they will, almost invariably, note that they believe that [paraphrasing] "the Bible, God's word, is inspired and without error in its original languages and was written by men who were moved by God to do so". Most of their biblical study focuses on exegesis and hermeneutics, the former being an attempt for critical understanding of the text based on its original context and intended audience, and the latter being an attempt to find practical application of those texts to modern living.
As to the "evolution over time" argument, a careful study of the earliest manuscripts or their transcripts (there are tens of thousands of extant copies of the various gospels and epistles, and a significant number of these can even be traced into the first century AD) will show that none of the central tenets of Christianity undewent any modification since the earliest manuscripts. Portions that have been found to have been appended by other writers at other times (most likely well-meaning scribes or monks) have never been found in sections of the text that deal with the core beliefs of Christianity (e.g., virgin birth, miracles, death, resurrection--others have already addressed the issue of the recent Mark text not invalidating other internal references to resurrection). One of the most well-known examples of such an embelishment is the end of the "Lord's Prayer" [I'm typing from memory here]:
Our Father, who art in heaven
Hallowed be Thy name
Thy kingdom come
Thy will be done
On earth as it is in heaven
Give us this day our daily bread
And forgive us our tresspasses
As we forgive those who tresspass against us
And lead us not into temptation,
But deliver us from evil
For Thine is the kingdom,
And the power,
And the glory,
Forever and ever. Amen!
The final section (those lines in bold italics ) does not appear in the earliest and most trustworthy manuscripts. Modern translations that hold to high standards to scholarship omit those verses, or at least print them following a note the explains that they do not appear in the best manuscripts. If you take away those lines, no critical teachings of the Christian gospel have been compromised. In fact, they are sentiments expressed of God elsewhere in the Chritian Scriptures, including in the book of Psalms and in the Revelation of Jesus Christ to John.
Yes, while church leaders came together in the fourth century to formalize the official canon that is accepted today, history shows us that there were lists of accepted writings as early as the second century AD. Most scholars agree that no such list was needed during the first century, because many of the original witnesses, or the people who had received their direct accounts, were still living. The modern "conservative" or "fundamentalist" Christian sees the canonization of Scripture as a divinely sanctioned act that preserved only those texts that were necessary for the advancement of the Gospel. I find myself in a slightly different camp. While I believe God used canonization to preserve those writings that were passed on to this day, I believe there were likely other writings that were lost, either temporarily (yet to be discovered) or permanently (destroyed). The teachings of the Christian Scriptures encourage believers to critically examine all teachings to see if they align with the truth of the previously recognized Scriptures (the Old Testament--the Hebrew Law and Prophets, plust the Poems). In the letters of Peter, he places Paul's writings on the same level as Scripture in that day (during the first century), so there was an early acceptance that Paul's teachings of Christ's death and resurrection aligned with the Old Testament's prophecies of a suffering messiah who would
The logic behind reading a literal six-day creation is that, while "day" in Hebrew can mean a period of time when used alone, all other references to "day" that include "evening and morning" are references to literal days. Thus, the literalists argue, there is no reason to believe the usage of "day" with the term "evening and morning" in Genesis should be viewed any differently.
But there are manuscripts of the individual gospels and many of the epistles that date much earlier, including some that can reliably be dated within the first century AD.
Next generation developers? I thought those were already requirements. Wait! Did someone not tell Microsoft?
~ A quote from a formerly employed programmer.
If there were an IT union, I'd leave the profession and start growing organic vegetables.
This is news because it says something about WfW 3.11--it worked. In the manufacturing plant where I currently work, we have a couple of industrial robots that run on 3.11. By MS finally pulling the plug, some equipment manufacturers will be in a tizzy to modernize their software (and firmware). Before this news, it wasn't broken, so why fix it.
The reference to XP is in the light of MS sunsetting the availability of that OS for most OEMs (save for those of the ultra-mobile class)--they're getting rid of something that worked and was accepted by the customer base. It may be a sound move in business theory (and, I'd argue, for WfW 3.11, something long overdue), but it is not likely to make some consumer channels happy.
Of course, you could argue that the writing has been on the wall for a long time, so let's hope that most of the WfW 3.11 users have been planning for this one...
How about Willful Acquisition of Licensed Content (WALC).
Then all those there pirates can WALC the PLANK (Product License Assignments Never Keep).
Tab is covered by copyright because the song composer owns the copyright on the specifc arrangement of notes represented by the tablature.
As to cover tunes, they, too, are covered by copyright (as is any music used in performance settings)--a performance copyright. If you buy some of the large and extremely expensive books of cover tunes, they often include limited performance rights (thus the tremendous cost). One of the reasons a lot of coffee shops have dropped or altered their musical programs is that lawsuits were threatened over local musicians who came in and played well-known tunes without having first secured performance copyright permissions. Of all copyright law, that's one to which I can best relate, since I am a songwriter when not bogged down as a sysadmin. Other musicians should not be able to take and use my songs (and make money doing so) without fair compensation to me (I manage my own copyrights, and do not require rediculous licensing fees for their use). Let them either pay a reasonable amount to use a piece in their performance, or let them write their own music.
Now, for mashups, people should be allowed some use of protected pieces, provided that economic gain is not the primary purpose of the mashup. If someone wants to put together snippets of their 10 favorite Devo songs while displaying a collage of abstract watercolor paintings, let it be. Now, if someone wants to do the same and sell the resultant media on a late-night television infomercial, then let them pony up some licensing cash (or revenue sharing).
If all they are doing with their Internet connection is picking up email once or twice a week, I find people have no desire to get a faster pipe. When their email volume increases (by number or size) to the point where it is taking them hours to download their messages, then they consider a faster alternative.
I've been working with an older couple who are in just that situation. They connect to pull their email messages, but they got behind a while back while away. Since they came back, their machine never successfully downloads all of their messages. The real kicker for them is that their mail client (assuming since it never completes the receive-messages session) never marks the items that were downloaded as picked up, so the next time they connect the inbox fills with copies of each message that was part of the initial download.
I've been working on them for a while, trying to get them to try broadband service (the PC is okay), but living on Social Security in the U.S., they just don't have money to spare for Internet connectivity.
IT managers will eat this up once it's proven a viable option (read: no bugs or denial of access). Being able to budget the same amount (though bound to increase) year after year, and not needing to worry about managing user licenses or decisions about whether or not to buy an OEM version with that next laptop--I think business will swallow this one whole. Consumers, on the other hand? It will be a split. Those who know little about their PCs and just want something to work may just go out and shell up the dough. Those who are more knowledgeable, like those who download free anti-virus and firewall tools vs. paying the subscription game, are likely to find alternatives like OO.
To me, that's where the eventual subscription model will break down. When consumers finally realize that they are paying $X per year (or, eventually, per month or per use) when their neighbors are getting comparable (or, hopefully, better) functionality for FREE, then they will leave the subscription services in droves.
All you OO contributors and developers, prepare yourselves for a few more years of famine. Build the product consumers will want, at the price they can't resist (FREE), and you'll have knocked a big hole in Microsoft's thick hide.
Perhaps texts are peer-reviewed in the purely academic fields, but, from my experience as a part-time instrcutor, technology texts are full of significant errors and getting them acknowledged and updated in subsequent printings (which are often limited because of the typical lifespan of a text tied to any specific technology) is difficult and unlikely.
I was recently teaching some real entry-level computer user courses using a well-known author's series for some of the Microsoft Office applications (i.e., Excel and Access). My copy of the text arrived about two months before the student copies were ordered. When we got to some of the listed exercises, the students could not come up with numbers that even came close to those listed in the text. Afte spending significant time reviewing the students' logic and data structures, I went back to my desk and started working the assignment line by line. At each point, I reviewed the assumptions and the necessary logic. That's when I discovered that the student text was missing two key instructions--partial sentences that materially changed the nature of the data that was being manipulated. There's a big difference between "all remaining profits are used to..." and "twenty-five percent of all remaining profits are used to..." The other change was equally significant: "they earn a bonus amount every time monthly profit is greater than..." vs. "they earn a bonus amount every time the monthly saved amount [the 25% figure mentioned earlier] is greater than..." [Note, these were not intended to be exact quotes from the text, but rather a way to set apart the parallel couplets.]
I can only imagine that some instructor, somewhere, is going to dock points from his/her students when their answeres don't match the key. How often do such things go unnoticed?
You really hit on a key point here. A four year degree shows that you had some perseverence and got throuhgh the program. That BS should make you marketable across many industries, even those which are not directly tied to technology.
What do you want to do? It would have been much better for you to have tackled that question before pursuing your degree, or at least before your final two years. Talk to your college's career services office and ask them to put you through the ringer--personality type assessments, vocational interest surveys, personal preference assessments--anything they can provide to help you wrap your head around the central question: not what do you want to be when you grow up (though that might be easy for some to answer), but what job will you find meaningful on a daily basis. Find that job that you will either love, or at least tolerate without repeated depressive episodes, and you will be well on your way to finding an employer who will be glad to have you join the team.
Where do I get to mod this (+/-) 5 Tirade?
Change it to No Child Allowed to Excel (NCAE). The acronym for No Child Allowed Ahead was already taken (NCAA).
I was in the first wave to join Netflix, and I was a user who, early on, made repeated requests for better ways to manage the queue. What they implemented was a good try, but it was not that for which I was looking. As the account owner, I wanted to be able to manage all queues from a single screen. I despised the way I needed to manage each queue on its own screen (I gave up on profiles at least a year ago, so I don't know if they rectified this).
What I envisioned originally was to be able to manage multiple lists on a single screen: lets call them List A, List B, and List C. When browsing and adding movies to the queue, you still have one button to add movies, but it would have a drop-down option that would let you choose another queue. Thus, the default button action would be the same, but you would have the option of diverting the request. For queue management, I had pitched a system similar to the one the adopted, allowing you to specify how to intersperse the movies from the other queues. For controls, I envisioned parameters only on the sub-queues. Using the names I provided earlier in and example, you could configure List B to send one movie after every three sent on the primary queue. I envisioned being able to drag-and-drop between the lists on the same GUI page. As for others adding their preferences to the queue, the account owner could specify users (by email address) who could logon and add to specific queues, much the way the service was implemented. For younger kids who may not have their own eddresses, Netflix could have allowed the account owner to create logon accounts that would be child accounts and have limited rights. If the owner's logon was thisuser@somedomain.com, for example, I envisioned secondary accounts that could be named subAccountName~thisuser@somedomain.com.
Oh, and yes, I was this verbose in passing my comments on to Netflix. I was pleased that they opted for profiles, but was disappointed by how cumbersome they were to manage. Placing all profile management in a single page view would have gone far in making them easier to use.
I guess I'm disappointed to see Netflix throw out the baby with the bathwater, but they can see that users like me have stopped using the profiles. It reaches a point where the amount of developer support hours and system maintenance tasks invested in a minimally used feature necessitates a pause to rethink the strategy. Hopefully we will see an improved queue management system in the future.