""Ignorant" is not the same as "stupid", and can be cured by means much less dramatic than death."
Unless you are a Yanomame that never has been in touch with "western civilization" or something like this, going to an entertainment Hollywood cinema and screaming "Oh, my God! we all are going to die by 2012!" is not a symptom of ignorance but plain stupidity.
"The problem is that we don't train people in the fine art of bullshit detection"
I can go to the hard extreme of conceding the benefit of doubt to your tipical "aunt Tillie" being bitten by a Nigerian scam or your average redneck taking his Holly Bible for a scientific paper. Going to an obviously hollywoodesque fiction film and taking it for true is way beyond repair.
"Debian backports (and I'm sure Ubuntu backports as well) are versioned such that when you upgrade to a new Debian release, the backport is replaced with the correct version."
Yes, but the upgrade path is in no way as tested as the "proper" "from last Stable release". And that's if it has been tested at least even once, which I wouldn't confy too much on.
"Well, what alternative do you suggest for introducing desired new features into older kernel versions?"
An easy one: Do Not Do It. Fedora is flagged and commited to be a "cutting edge" distribution. This is quite a good thing for both some enthusiasts and professionals that want/need to know where Red Hat is aiming to in the not-so-distant future. Well, Mr. Fedora: commit to it.
Again, for RHEL, what's the alternative? The whole point of RHEL is to provide long-term stable "releases"
Do it damn stable then. No, changing APIs and behaviour is not "damn stable"; it break things.
"but customers also want support for newer hardware."
Then do your damn homework by means of proper QA or by means of a helluva expenditure in support (instead of one or two stable versions, like 4 and 5 do support half a dozen and publish new versions faster). But, please, oh please, don't break what is already working. That's exactly why I moved from RH to Debian (that and the fact they seem to want making themselves more palatable to newby/unkowledgeable admins than to veterans that know their trade).
"If Yahweh has no body, what was it that was walking in the garden that the man and his wife heard?"
The body Yahweh took in order to make Himself presentable to Adam and Eve. God of course can do this as well as you can wear a suit even if your suit is not you.
Re:Here are a few criticisms...
on
Becoming Agile
·
· Score: 1
"Agile has turned out to be the worst of Micromanagement. Make replaceable parts out of every developer."
That's as much a strawman as the (implicit) that everything that is not "agile" must be pureshit waterfall. Agile *empowers" developers: it allows developer-to-customer feedback instead of a top-bottom "that's what you are gonna do". It rewards the problem realm knowledge the developer gains through succesive iterations and feedback with the customers. It gives the chance to the developer to have something to say instead of being an "aye-aye sir" guy.
But, hey, we all are very proud to fingerpoint managers as the only morons over there.
"Why would a cable/adsl modem have an open recursive DNS server?"
Why not? In fact, why any DNS over there shouldn't be opened to recursive searchs? I know why I don't want an opened resolver on my facilities and I know why buggy software shouldn't be opened to the Internet, but that is not what I'm asking.
"Catholic Theology not the result of 1500 years, it is rooted in man's pilgrimage to the eternal and is the synthesis of all quests ever undertaken for truth."
Can you please offer us documentation about phylosophers asking themselves about the consecuences of God being a trinitary entity, Mary being a virgin mother or the transubstantiation of bread and wine into blood and flesh of god himself prior to, say, Nicea's Concilium and certainly prior to 1 B.C.? Because if you can't produce such documents please don't try to say that *Catholic* theology is any older than that. All you offered is your 'post hoc' version of some well known arguments sustained by theologists, can you believe it? quite within the last 1500 years.
"The "multiple incarnations" does not refer to human-alien reincarnations but to Christ incarnating as alien to bring God's word to them."
What's the problem with it, then? Christ is the terrenial incarnation of the second person of the trinity on human flesh. There's no problem for God to incarnate again (in fact, it is promised that will happen again, even here in Earth, by the end of days), say, in Venus to save their souls or even as a bicicle; it's almighty, you know.
"So, why should women be treated differently from men in Christianity and Islam?"
Because men and women were not created equal (not that I think this or that, but only that this would be a clear explanation for the fact).
"If that is as you say, God doesn't resemble one any more than the other..."
Catholics have an advantage over other Christians and it is that they not only depend on the Holy Books, but on the Church Lore too. That allows them to rewrite themselves as needed. You have two kinds of dogmas: one class come from what can be considered "natural right" (you shall not kill) and they conform a general and proven through millenia to acceptable ethics; the other class are what a reasonable man would consider insignificant nonsenses (God is one and three at the same time) so they are very difficult to be challenged against real world. Almost everything else comes from Church Lore and can adapt as times presses (So the world is indeed round? Big fight but in the end, no problem. The Earth rounds over the Sun? Big fight but in the end, no problem. Evolution? Big fight but in the end, no problem. Homosexuality? Now big fight but you can bet that if reality presses strong enough, in the end, no problem. Etc.
Back to the issue, it's not so much that Christianity or Islam treated women as lessen individuals but that in the societies where Christianity or Islam were majority they backed society's claims. Again, you can bet that as society presses for it, "official" position from Rome will change -and is changing, accordingly.
"If He created an alien species, then they may have never been exposed to the concept, or they may have followed His commandment. Having never fallen from grace, they would have no need for a savior, and therefore no Jesus Christ."
That's true in theory but it's a bit more problematic in reality. Once you read it backwards, the falling and expulsion from Eden of Men is the explanation for we suffering illness and death. Unless your aliens are immortal and ill-free (quite dificult to believe from all we know about evolution) they must be "poisoned" of some original sin too, so they need redepmtion as much as we. Which rises the question: will be "our" Christ the Christ for the whole Universe or will He be "only" commanded by His Father to save only the Human race?
Current Catholic theology is the result of about 1500 years where some of the most powerful minds of occident contributed to build a quite solid intellectual building. It might be based on nonsenses but still it's internal coherence and its resistance to foreign attacks is quite good.
"extremely alien-looking aliens would be hard to fit with the idea that God 'made man in his own image'"
Surely it would be a problem for those too literalist (the ones that really believe the universe was built in six days, Noah's ark, Metusellah living 600 years, etc.) but for Catholics, God's image has nothing to be with having two arms or five and two heads or breathing liquid methane; it's about self identity and the thought of our own transcendence so probably any intelligent alien (non self-concious non-intelligent alien life pose no problem) would still fit the definition.
"Jesus Christ's role as savior would be confused"
Minor problem: Rome would say that each intelligent species would take its own path towards or against salvation and that's all. Regarding the heaven chores (angels and all that stuff) they are both real things and methapores of the relationship with divinity and you are done.
"would other worlds have their own Christ-figures, or would Earth's Christ be universal?"
Both stanzas are true at the same time. Literally that would be no problem for Catholic church, after all its God is one and three at the same time; logically it's still not a big problem: the path to redemption (or the lack of) would be tied to the local History of those aliens; they either don't need redeption (rationally that could be the case, of course I don't think Rome would accept that; they would be out of job), or they found their own path or they came to know about us so they can learn about Christ and share our own redemption (they know *now* that Christ did die for them to so their souls can be saved etc.).
"says Father Jose Funes, a Jesuit astronomer "
Of course, it had to be a Jesuit. Quite clever folks, those Jesuits.
"The multiple incarnations is a heresy in Catholicism"
Yes. But since God is uber-everything (almighty, omniscient...) it's easy to acomodate the idea that there are a lot of different ways for a mere mortal to be made in God's image (and even real reincarnations might be accepted by Catholics if aliens are involved; they'd just say that it's no "real" incarnation but kind of larval state: just as a worm and a butterfly seem very different but they still are the same individual you might incarnate on an alien or the other way around and still being accepted as being the same individual -that wouldn't be too hard a problem for Catholics: Christ showed us there was live beyond human death, etc.).
"he benefit of launching from the Moon is that Sending 8 trips of 1/8th the fuel cost to the moon (and assembling it there) and then launching is going to be less fuel costly than trying to send the full 8 parts in 1 piece from Earth."
Last I looked gravitational field was a conservative one so I say bullshit to that.
"That said, the real issue here appears to involve destruction of evidence - Which at the very least counts as a crime in itself, and strongly suggests these guys had more involvement than they let on."
Like in "don't ask. You just do it as I say and I won't fire you on the spot"?
"It is clear that you and many others do not understand the terms "zero sum game" [...] doing actually innovative work that bring products to market that better the AVERAGE LIVES OF ALL THE WORLDS PEOPLE."
It is clear that you do not understand the term "zero sum game" either. If I make 10.000 and 10.000 people get to lose 1 each, it's a zero sum game. If I make 1.000.000 and 10.000 people get to lose 1 each it is not a zero sum game but a net profit game, still 1 person is better and 10.000 people are worse than they were before.
"if you turn over your inventory (on the average) in a week or less, like a grocery store, a 1% profit comes out to over 50% in a year (and that's not counting compounding)."
That must be why all grocery tenants are uberbillionaires. Or is it any flaw in you argument (like limited market expansibility)?
"If you worked at a company that only made a 1% net profit, but invested in its people, its infrastructure and its goals, would that be worth it? It may be worth it to work there, but solely as a return on investment, no it is not "worth it". There are numerous other items that could be invested in (bonds, real estate, commodities) that offer far better that a 1% return with far lower risk."
The point is that there are investments and investments. You surely can find places to invest you money and get better than 1% profit but... what money? Unless you are rich by birth it will be the money that you gain in excess to your living expenditures so since you must work somewhere, do you prefer to work for a company that invests in its people and still manage to make a net profit so it's sustainable or anywhere else?
"Thats a result of quality of calories, not amount."
You didn't read what I wrote, did you? If you ingest calories below the level you burn them you *will* lose weight. If you are on equilibrium you *may* look a bit fatty if your calories come mainly from fat even if you don't get weight (at the expense of exchange muscle mass by fat). If you ingress more calories than you burn you *will* build fat reserves. "Quality" of calories (what the hell are high or low quality calories? Calories are calories are calories. Depending on your definition you can describe better or lower quality on food, but on calories?) has nothing to do.
"Plenty of Americans consume very low calorie diets and because they take vitamins and get proper nutrition they don't look like they went through a famine."
That's what they, Americans, think. They don't look like on famine because they are *not* on famine: they ingest enough calories (usually much, much more than enough) to ballance their burning rates. While there's a range where the human body can and will use compensating mechanisms (reducing basal methabolism, making more effective the intestinal absortion, trying to change the tendence by feeling hungry and/or tired, etc.) there's an absolute truth: as long as you ingest less calories than you burn you *will* lose weight to the point to look thin, to the point to look like starving, to the point of being caquectic, to the point to die.
Slashdot Mirror
"What if she got pregnant by raping Stephen Hawking?"
Her breed may get her intelligence and Hawking's strengh and handsomeness.
""Ignorant" is not the same as "stupid", and can be cured by means much less dramatic than death."
Unless you are a Yanomame that never has been in touch with "western civilization" or something like this, going to an entertainment Hollywood cinema and screaming "Oh, my God! we all are going to die by 2012!" is not a symptom of ignorance but plain stupidity.
"The problem is that we don't train people in the fine art of bullshit detection"
I can go to the hard extreme of conceding the benefit of doubt to your tipical "aunt Tillie" being bitten by a Nigerian scam or your average redneck taking his Holly Bible for a scientific paper. Going to an obviously hollywoodesque fiction film and taking it for true is way beyond repair.
"Debian backports (and I'm sure Ubuntu backports as well) are versioned such that when you upgrade to a new Debian release, the backport is replaced with the correct version."
Yes, but the upgrade path is in no way as tested as the "proper" "from last Stable release". And that's if it has been tested at least even once, which I wouldn't confy too much on.
"Well, what alternative do you suggest for introducing desired new features into older kernel versions?"
An easy one: Do Not Do It. Fedora is flagged and commited to be a "cutting edge" distribution. This is quite a good thing for both some enthusiasts and professionals that want/need to know where Red Hat is aiming to in the not-so-distant future. Well, Mr. Fedora: commit to it.
Again, for RHEL, what's the alternative? The whole point of RHEL is to provide long-term stable "releases"
Do it damn stable then. No, changing APIs and behaviour is not "damn stable"; it break things.
"but customers also want support for newer hardware."
Then do your damn homework by means of proper QA or by means of a helluva expenditure in support (instead of one or two stable versions, like 4 and 5 do support half a dozen and publish new versions faster). But, please, oh please, don't break what is already working. That's exactly why I moved from RH to Debian (that and the fact they seem to want making themselves more palatable to newby/unkowledgeable admins than to veterans that know their trade).
"If Yahweh has no body, what was it that was walking in the garden that the man and his wife heard?"
The body Yahweh took in order to make Himself presentable to Adam and Eve. God of course can do this as well as you can wear a suit even if your suit is not you.
Of course you was just trolling.
Forrrr BI Dennnnn... Palanettttt
"Agile has turned out to be the worst of Micromanagement. Make replaceable parts out of every developer."
That's as much a strawman as the (implicit) that everything that is not "agile" must be pureshit waterfall. Agile *empowers" developers: it allows developer-to-customer feedback instead of a top-bottom "that's what you are gonna do". It rewards the problem realm knowledge the developer gains through succesive iterations and feedback with the customers. It gives the chance to the developer to have something to say instead of being an "aye-aye sir" guy.
But, hey, we all are very proud to fingerpoint managers as the only morons over there.
"Why would a cable/adsl modem have an open recursive DNS server?"
Why not? In fact, why any DNS over there shouldn't be opened to recursive searchs? I know why I don't want an opened resolver on my facilities and I know why buggy software shouldn't be opened to the Internet, but that is not what I'm asking.
"Catholic Theology not the result of 1500 years, it is rooted in man's pilgrimage to the eternal and is the synthesis of all quests ever undertaken for truth."
Can you please offer us documentation about phylosophers asking themselves about the consecuences of God being a trinitary entity, Mary being a virgin mother or the transubstantiation of bread and wine into blood and flesh of god himself prior to, say, Nicea's Concilium and certainly prior to 1 B.C.? Because if you can't produce such documents please don't try to say that *Catholic* theology is any older than that. All you offered is your 'post hoc' version of some well known arguments sustained by theologists, can you believe it? quite within the last 1500 years.
"The "multiple incarnations" does not refer to human-alien reincarnations but to Christ incarnating as alien to bring God's word to them."
What's the problem with it, then? Christ is the terrenial incarnation of the second person of the trinity on human flesh. There's no problem for God to incarnate again (in fact, it is promised that will happen again, even here in Earth, by the end of days), say, in Venus to save their souls or even as a bicicle; it's almighty, you know.
"So, why should women be treated differently from men in Christianity and Islam?"
Because men and women were not created equal (not that I think this or that, but only that this would be a clear explanation for the fact).
"If that is as you say, God doesn't resemble one any more than the other..."
Catholics have an advantage over other Christians and it is that they not only depend on the Holy Books, but on the Church Lore too. That allows them to rewrite themselves as needed. You have two kinds of dogmas: one class come from what can be considered "natural right" (you shall not kill) and they conform a general and proven through millenia to acceptable ethics; the other class are what a reasonable man would consider insignificant nonsenses (God is one and three at the same time) so they are very difficult to be challenged against real world. Almost everything else comes from Church Lore and can adapt as times presses (So the world is indeed round? Big fight but in the end, no problem. The Earth rounds over the Sun? Big fight but in the end, no problem. Evolution? Big fight but in the end, no problem. Homosexuality? Now big fight but you can bet that if reality presses strong enough, in the end, no problem. Etc.
Back to the issue, it's not so much that Christianity or Islam treated women as lessen individuals but that in the societies where Christianity or Islam were majority they backed society's claims. Again, you can bet that as society presses for it, "official" position from Rome will change -and is changing, accordingly.
"If He created an alien species, then they may have never been exposed to the concept, or they may have followed His commandment. Having never fallen from grace, they would have no need for a savior, and therefore no Jesus Christ."
That's true in theory but it's a bit more problematic in reality. Once you read it backwards, the falling and expulsion from Eden of Men is the explanation for we suffering illness and death. Unless your aliens are immortal and ill-free (quite dificult to believe from all we know about evolution) they must be "poisoned" of some original sin too, so they need redepmtion as much as we. Which rises the question: will be "our" Christ the Christ for the whole Universe or will He be "only" commanded by His Father to save only the Human race?
"There is more to life than what you can prove scientifically."
Prove it.
"Maybe we have laid eyes on "God". Maybe He's the Universe itself."
Sorrily that's heresy and you'll burn in hell for the whole eternity.
Current Catholic theology is the result of about 1500 years where some of the most powerful minds of occident contributed to build a quite solid intellectual building. It might be based on nonsenses but still it's internal coherence and its resistance to foreign attacks is quite good.
"extremely alien-looking aliens would be hard to fit with the idea that God 'made man in his own image'"
Surely it would be a problem for those too literalist (the ones that really believe the universe was built in six days, Noah's ark, Metusellah living 600 years, etc.) but for Catholics, God's image has nothing to be with having two arms or five and two heads or breathing liquid methane; it's about self identity and the thought of our own transcendence so probably any intelligent alien (non self-concious non-intelligent alien life pose no problem) would still fit the definition.
"Jesus Christ's role as savior would be confused"
Minor problem: Rome would say that each intelligent species would take its own path towards or against salvation and that's all. Regarding the heaven chores (angels and all that stuff) they are both real things and methapores of the relationship with divinity and you are done.
"would other worlds have their own Christ-figures, or would Earth's Christ be universal?"
Both stanzas are true at the same time. Literally that would be no problem for Catholic church, after all its God is one and three at the same time; logically it's still not a big problem: the path to redemption (or the lack of) would be tied to the local History of those aliens; they either don't need redeption (rationally that could be the case, of course I don't think Rome would accept that; they would be out of job), or they found their own path or they came to know about us so they can learn about Christ and share our own redemption (they know *now* that Christ did die for them to so their souls can be saved etc.).
"says Father Jose Funes, a Jesuit astronomer "
Of course, it had to be a Jesuit. Quite clever folks, those Jesuits.
"The multiple incarnations is a heresy in Catholicism"
Yes. But since God is uber-everything (almighty, omniscient...) it's easy to acomodate the idea that there are a lot of different ways for a mere mortal to be made in God's image (and even real reincarnations might be accepted by Catholics if aliens are involved; they'd just say that it's no "real" incarnation but kind of larval state: just as a worm and a butterfly seem very different but they still are the same individual you might incarnate on an alien or the other way around and still being accepted as being the same individual -that wouldn't be too hard a problem for Catholics: Christ showed us there was live beyond human death, etc.).
"Money is exchanged, not made or created."
So there's now as much money (or richness) in the world as it were by 1800?
"he benefit of launching from the Moon is that Sending 8 trips of 1/8th the fuel cost to the moon (and assembling it there) and then launching is going to be less fuel costly than trying to send the full 8 parts in 1 piece from Earth."
Last I looked gravitational field was a conservative one so I say bullshit to that.
"That said, the real issue here appears to involve destruction of evidence - Which at the very least counts as a crime in itself, and strongly suggests these guys had more involvement than they let on."
Like in "don't ask. You just do it as I say and I won't fire you on the spot"?
"It is clear that you and many others do not understand the terms "zero sum game" [...] doing actually innovative work that bring products to market that better the AVERAGE LIVES OF ALL THE WORLDS PEOPLE."
It is clear that you do not understand the term "zero sum game" either. If I make 10.000 and 10.000 people get to lose 1 each, it's a zero sum game. If I make 1.000.000 and 10.000 people get to lose 1 each it is not a zero sum game but a net profit game, still 1 person is better and 10.000 people are worse than they were before.
"if you turn over your inventory (on the average) in a week or less, like a grocery store, a 1% profit comes out to over 50% in a year (and that's not counting compounding)."
That must be why all grocery tenants are uberbillionaires. Or is it any flaw in you argument (like limited market expansibility)?
"If you worked at a company that only made a 1% net profit, but invested in its people, its infrastructure and its goals, would that be worth it?
It may be worth it to work there, but solely as a return on investment, no it is not "worth it". There are numerous other items that could be invested in (bonds, real estate, commodities) that offer far better that a 1% return with far lower risk."
The point is that there are investments and investments. You surely can find places to invest you money and get better than 1% profit but... what money? Unless you are rich by birth it will be the money that you gain in excess to your living expenditures so since you must work somewhere, do you prefer to work for a company that invests in its people and still manage to make a net profit so it's sustainable or anywhere else?
"i.e., the ass cracks of the world..."
You don't know Andorra, do you? Imagine Switzerland, only shorter and more friendly.
"You have a problem with poor phone UI."
It is not a poor UI but a cleverly thought out UI to make you poor.
"Thats a result of quality of calories, not amount."
You didn't read what I wrote, did you? If you ingest calories below the level you burn them you *will* lose weight. If you are on equilibrium you *may* look a bit fatty if your calories come mainly from fat even if you don't get weight (at the expense of exchange muscle mass by fat). If you ingress more calories than you burn you *will* build fat reserves. "Quality" of calories (what the hell are high or low quality calories? Calories are calories are calories. Depending on your definition you can describe better or lower quality on food, but on calories?) has nothing to do.
"Plenty of Americans consume very low calorie diets and because they take vitamins and get proper nutrition they don't look like they went through a famine."
That's what they, Americans, think. They don't look like on famine because they are *not* on famine: they ingest enough calories (usually much, much more than enough) to ballance their burning rates. While there's a range where the human body can and will use compensating mechanisms (reducing basal methabolism, making more effective the intestinal absortion, trying to change the tendence by feeling hungry and/or tired, etc.) there's an absolute truth: as long as you ingest less calories than you burn you *will* lose weight to the point to look thin, to the point to look like starving, to the point of being caquectic, to the point to die.
"...not specifically American nerds."
Are you sure?
http://slashdot.org/faq/editorial.shtml#ed850
"Slashdot is U.S.-centric. We readily admit this, and really don't see it as a problem. Slashdot is run by Americans"