"But their main stated reason is our troops are in their part of the world and they don't like it."
It's not the troops as such, but the fact that the troops do not worship their particular deity. They have a rather extreme intolerance of those who choose not to worship their deity. The "they hate our freedom" claim does have validity: they strongly dislike secularism, and want religion to be a choice dictated by the government (and not a personal choice).
Use the money wisely: pay the good ones more if it means retaining them. Offer higher pay for new ones only if it will attract a better cut. Don't spend extra money just for the hell of it.
"You can, with USPS's (US Postal Service) NetPost service [usps.com]"
Is that the "USPS Simulator" where they have an ingenious algorithm to ensure that 30% of the emails never make it, and that the typical delivery time to the destination inbox averages 5.5 days? And, of course, no delivery ever occurs on Sundays or during any one of 78 other designated Federal and/or other postal holidays during the year?
There's some sort of pointless loop involved if all I use this service for is to read my paper-mailed ISP and "Remote Control Mail" bills online. A veritable Mobius-strip of "what the hell FOR???!?!?".
"Snail mail is the ONLY private form of communications we have left."
And as long as they keep destroying or losing my letters, or as long as they remain in Hefty trashbags stacked around Newman's living room, they will remain private.
I tried that. The interface was lousy, and it was like a maze. I ended up in UI loops just trying to get to the TV shows. The designers should be forced to look at the Google main page and "make it look/work like that". Then I finally found the shows. There was no way to burn them onto DVD so I could watch them on TV, so I went and found usable versions of "Lost" episodes on Bittorent. If only ABC had not had a terrible "keep users away" UI maze and made the episodes so they could easily be burned, I've have actually watched their commercials.
"I haven't read a paper book in nearly 3 years. Nearly everything I've wanted to read is available in digital form somehow"
Do you know if there is some sort of text format for DVDs? Or a utility to convert text or PDF into a DVD file so one of those little LCD DVD players could be used for ebooks? Been looking for something like that...
"I find it more than bizarre that large corporation
can move across borders as they please, but if any individual decides to do this
they're a criminal."
Due to lack of enforcement of immigration laws, this is changing too.
"Yet some of these videos are really dark and need some work to be viewable in my opinion."
A lot of it is production blunders. You find it everywhere. Did you ever see the Nintendo 64 version of "Doom"? Even at the max contrast/brightness adjustment, it was almost all black. Now compare "Star Trek: The Next Generation" to "Star Trek: Enterprise". Somewhere along the way between the two, they either cut the lighting technician from the budget or decided to save costs by unscrewing most of the lightbulbs from the sets. For whatever the reason, the show was very badly lit. Other shows like the short-lived "Mantis" on Fox, and even "Farscape" were pretty much unwatchable because they were so badly lit.
And now we have another cease-fire between Israel and the Palestinian government, and within hours of it starting, the Palestinian government fired 11 rockets at/into Israel. This is rather typical....
" if you think you can get quality professionals of any ilk for 40k a year even taking into account a so-called nine month work year"
I've seen much better quality professionals making less than 2/3 of that amount in private schools. They're not the overpaid union thugs in it to get rich. So-called nine-month work year? It is better to describe it as a job with the unique perk of a contiguous 3-month paid vacation, and other generous holidays in addition to that.
"Our public academic magnet schools here in my part of Ohio do not give the local private schools a run for the money."
Does that school have a primary mission of education? Or a primary mission of enriching the union? I know it can go either way for such alternative schools.
It was just another jab at Dan Rather for his "all the evidence for the story is faked, but I tell ya, it's TRUE!!!!" . Not to mention his insistence that the faked Word 97 documents were real for two weeks after they were proven fake. Not the best way to end his long and quite distinguished career.
"While most high school teachers are extremely motivated and devoted, the simple financial reality is that jobs that pay 20-40K/year do not attract top quality people"
We don't need to overpay them even more. Use the money to instead buy supplies, fix buildings, and hire additional teachers. "Low pay" is a myth put out by the teachers' union in order to try to suck more money out of the education system. Private school teachers actually are paid a lot less, they are typically better more dedicated professionals with better results. However, there is no union in the private schools, so the priority is on education instead of getting rich at the expense of education.
Many of those graduates are from North America, not South America. And the letter agencies? Thanks to the School of the Americas, there are precious few dictatorships left in Latin America. I don't think Castro or Chavez went there.
Also, I was curious if you what sweatshops you are referring to. I'm sure there are many, but I've also seen places called sweatshops that really aren't (the ones that pay above the national income average, and don't lock anyone in).
"You have to understand that the Quran explicitly orders Muslims to respect Jews and Christians and "only treat them with the better" (literal translation)."
I looked and found about 10 negative comments concerning Jews in the Q'uran. I can list and link to these if you wish. The points are: there's plenty of fuel there for anti-semitic demagogues to use, even if lines such as you quote contradict it. There are also other contradictions: The line "Let there be no compulsion in religion" contradicts the idea elsewhere that "Sharia is to have control over every aspect of life" and that non-Muslims should be subject to Muslim courts.
Is having a contradictory holy book unique to Islam? Not at all. The problem is a lack of secularism in the Muslim world, and too many nations force the Q'uran on disagreeing Muslims and onto non-Muslims alike. Then there are the countries that have a death penalty on the books for Muslims who change to another faith (but never for non-Muslims who change to Islam).
Another problem is that Islam is the only major religion founding by a rapacious maurauding warlord. The big difference with Genghis Khan, Alexander the Great, and Napoleon is that these other three men did not create a religion to help hold their empires together. You have to really twist the words of Christ and the Buddha to get justification for conquest and conversion by the sword (and yes, many did do this). With Muhammad, there isn't much twisting necessary. The Jews were not the only group to have to suffer to ravages of this totalitarian-minded empire. Other groups simply vanished. The Zoroastrians (the indiginous religion in Iran) are only barely tolerated.
Have empires done this in the name of Christ? Yes. However, there were widespread and varied movements toward secularization and enlightenment in Christendom long ago, which moved from being less tolerant than the Islamic world to being more tolerant the the Islamic world.
Slashdot Mirror
It's more like the difference between flammable and inflammable. I sure learned that one the hard way.
Why, no. Elvis was flying the jets.
"But how do you control multiple vehicles moving at supersonic speeds in 3 dimensional space?"
You shut off the navigation system, close your eyes, and let your feelings guide you. Or you tank up on Arrakis spice before flying.
On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog on an airplane.
"But their main stated reason is our troops are in their part of the world and they don't like it."
It's not the troops as such, but the fact that the troops do not worship their particular deity. They have a rather extreme intolerance of those who choose not to worship their deity. The "they hate our freedom" claim does have validity: they strongly dislike secularism, and want religion to be a choice dictated by the government (and not a personal choice).
Use the money wisely: pay the good ones more if it means retaining them. Offer higher pay for new ones only if it will attract a better cut. Don't spend extra money just for the hell of it.
"If you want competent teachers, pay them what they deserve AND support the teacher's union"
That's contradictory: the unions generally oppose merit pay for good teachers while supporting tenure for the incompetant ones.
"You can, with USPS's (US Postal Service) NetPost service [usps.com]"
Is that the "USPS Simulator" where they have an ingenious algorithm to ensure that 30% of the emails never make it, and that the typical delivery time to the destination inbox averages 5.5 days? And, of course, no delivery ever occurs on Sundays or during any one of 78 other designated Federal and/or other postal holidays during the year?
"Why not fire the stupid jackass and get someone who can actually teach in the class."
There's a certain reality called "the teachers' union" that turns your demand for compentant educators into a pipe dream. Puff puff.
There's some sort of pointless loop involved if all I use this service for is to read my paper-mailed ISP and "Remote Control Mail" bills online. A veritable Mobius-strip of "what the hell FOR???!?!?".
"Snail mail is the ONLY private form of communications we have left."
And as long as they keep destroying or losing my letters, or as long as they remain in Hefty trashbags stacked around Newman's living room, they will remain private.
I tried that. The interface was lousy, and it was like a maze. I ended up in UI loops just trying to get to the TV shows. The designers should be forced to look at the Google main page and "make it look/work like that". Then I finally found the shows. There was no way to burn them onto DVD so I could watch them on TV, so I went and found usable versions of "Lost" episodes on Bittorent. If only ABC had not had a terrible "keep users away" UI maze and made the episodes so they could easily be burned, I've have actually watched their commercials.
"I haven't read a paper book in nearly 3 years. Nearly everything I've wanted to read is available in digital form somehow"
Do you know if there is some sort of text format for DVDs? Or a utility to convert text or PDF into a DVD file so one of those little LCD DVD players could be used for ebooks? Been looking for something like that...
"I find it more than bizarre that large corporation can move across borders as they please, but if any individual decides to do this they're a criminal."
Due to lack of enforcement of immigration laws, this is changing too.
"Yet some of these videos are really dark and need some work to be viewable in my opinion."
A lot of it is production blunders. You find it everywhere. Did you ever see the Nintendo 64 version of "Doom"? Even at the max contrast/brightness adjustment, it was almost all black. Now compare "Star Trek: The Next Generation" to "Star Trek: Enterprise". Somewhere along the way between the two, they either cut the lighting technician from the budget or decided to save costs by unscrewing most of the lightbulbs from the sets. For whatever the reason, the show was very badly lit. Other shows like the short-lived "Mantis" on Fox, and even "Farscape" were pretty much unwatchable because they were so badly lit.
"consume Internet BBC content"
The way it works, you just can't consume broadcast content. It's not a good, and does not get used up or destroyed by the act of viewing it.
And now we have another cease-fire between Israel and the Palestinian government, and within hours of it starting, the Palestinian government fired 11 rockets at/into Israel. This is rather typical....
" if you think you can get quality professionals of any ilk for 40k a year even taking into account a so-called nine month work year"
I've seen much better quality professionals making less than 2/3 of that amount in private schools. They're not the overpaid union thugs in it to get rich. So-called nine-month work year? It is better to describe it as a job with the unique perk of a contiguous 3-month paid vacation, and other generous holidays in addition to that.
"Our public academic magnet schools here in my part of Ohio do not give the local private schools a run for the money."
Does that school have a primary mission of education? Or a primary mission of enriching the union? I know it can go either way for such alternative schools.
It was just another jab at Dan Rather for his "all the evidence for the story is faked, but I tell ya, it's TRUE!!!!" . Not to mention his insistence that the faked Word 97 documents were real for two weeks after they were proven fake. Not the best way to end his long and quite distinguished career.
"While most high school teachers are extremely motivated and devoted, the simple financial reality is that jobs that pay 20-40K/year do not attract top quality people"
We don't need to overpay them even more. Use the money to instead buy supplies, fix buildings, and hire additional teachers. "Low pay" is a myth put out by the teachers' union in order to try to suck more money out of the education system. Private school teachers actually are paid a lot less, they are typically better more dedicated professionals with better results. However, there is no union in the private schools, so the priority is on education instead of getting rich at the expense of education.
Many of those graduates are from North America, not South America. And the letter agencies? Thanks to the School of the Americas, there are precious few dictatorships left in Latin America. I don't think Castro or Chavez went there.
Also, I was curious if you what sweatshops you are referring to. I'm sure there are many, but I've also seen places called sweatshops that really aren't (the ones that pay above the national income average, and don't lock anyone in).
What does this have to do with Palestine?
"You have to understand that the Quran explicitly orders Muslims to respect Jews and Christians and "only treat them with the better" (literal translation)."
I looked and found about 10 negative comments concerning Jews in the Q'uran. I can list and link to these if you wish. The points are: there's plenty of fuel there for anti-semitic demagogues to use, even if lines such as you quote contradict it. There are also other contradictions: The line "Let there be no compulsion in religion" contradicts the idea elsewhere that "Sharia is to have control over every aspect of life" and that non-Muslims should be subject to Muslim courts.
Is having a contradictory holy book unique to Islam? Not at all. The problem is a lack of secularism in the Muslim world, and too many nations force the Q'uran on disagreeing Muslims and onto non-Muslims alike. Then there are the countries that have a death penalty on the books for Muslims who change to another faith (but never for non-Muslims who change to Islam).
Another problem is that Islam is the only major religion founding by a rapacious maurauding warlord. The big difference with Genghis Khan, Alexander the Great, and Napoleon is that these other three men did not create a religion to help hold their empires together. You have to really twist the words of Christ and the Buddha to get justification for conquest and conversion by the sword (and yes, many did do this). With Muhammad, there isn't much twisting necessary. The Jews were not the only group to have to suffer to ravages of this totalitarian-minded empire. Other groups simply vanished. The Zoroastrians (the indiginous religion in Iran) are only barely tolerated.
Have empires done this in the name of Christ? Yes. However, there were widespread and varied movements toward secularization and enlightenment in Christendom long ago, which moved from being less tolerant than the Islamic world to being more tolerant the the Islamic world.
"More bluntly, of what use is the parts of the Internet I can't even type the domain name for?"
There might be some places that would like to block going to sites that don't have certain character sets as their name.
"Had Hammurabi stored his laws on silicon instead of stone then perhaps there would be a point to that question"
Stranger things have happened. In the early 1970s, US military officials wrote their letters using Microsoft Office 97.