Admit it -- you still have the VAX on a dolly in a self-storage locker right around the corner, with a stack of pr0n on top, just waiting for the day when you get that "Dear John" letter. You'll even rearrange the old room to be "just like it was."
"Asked why HID hasn't addressed the issue in more recent proximity card systems, after knowledge of RFID threats became common, Carroll said that doing so would cause "major upheaval" among customers."
Apparently the "major upheaval" necessary to bring their product's security up to snuff is less desirable than the "major upheaval" that would occur if the currently poor security were exploited in a headline-grabbing, stock-price-swatting incident. Perhaps their risk-analysis number-crunchings have been tainted by oh...I dunno, smoking crack?
I was going to comment on the same excerpt you chose -- because I felt the same sense of "umm, is it backwards day today?" Luckily for me, there was more than enough "backwards speak" to quote!:/
I guess I didn't explain what I've observed clearly enough: Verizon sells many different phones along with their service. Some of those phones bear the "branding" of their original manufacturers, while others are "Verizon brand" phones, even though Verizon is just slapping their name on a device manufactured by some other company. The latter is what I have discovered to be unacceptably locked down. I'm sure there are other non-Verizon-brand phones that are locked down, but I doubt there are Verizon-brand phones that are not locked down.
Thanks for the tip about SEEM edits, I'll research that as it applies to the PN-215. I have discovered an "unlock tool" for that model, but so far I haven't had any success using it.
...because Verizon has made it their policy to lock down the filesystem of every device they get their greedy mitts on. My first phone with their service was a Samsung a670, which worked great, allowed me to read and write to the filesystem for free (so I could get fancy with ringers, wallpaper, pull pics off quickly and for free, etc) using BitPim and QPST.
Then the time came to pick a "free" phone for work, and unfortunately I chose the Pantech PN-215, a "Verizon brand" phone. While it was more or less similar in features compared to the Samsung, the best I can do so far is just look at the filesystem, no writing allowed (to the device or to anything connected). I've tried out a few different workarounds (Verizon even went so far as to tell me there was no data cable for that model, a blatant lie I quickly disproved by doing some research and trying out an Audiovox cable), but so far no dice.
This means that if I want to transfer pics, ringers, etc I have to do that over the air, lining the pockets of the greed-machine that is Verizon.
My personal plan is coming up for renewal, and when I add my wife to it, you can be sure we will not be purchasing any phone that is locked down in this way.
GoDaddy was not hosting the site, they are the registrar for the domain name. As such they control DNS for seclists.org, and part of what they did was to change the nameserver from what it was supposed to be to NS1.SUSPENDED-FOR.SPAM-AND-ABUSE.COM, effectively preventing most people from accessing the site.
The IP in the A record for seclists.org is registered to "MEER NET," who is either hosting the site or reselling the hosting, and had nothing to do with what GoDaddy did.
Did your build calculations and choice of materials reflect a liberal estimate of the amount of...erm...bodily fluids from nasty/lazy swimmers? I don't know what the effect of those fluids would be on lines meant to carry strictly water (or even strictly chlorinated pool water), but it's probably worth pondering.:)
Not that I would be surprised that you have already heard of the feature, and not to say that this is the ideal answer to your question/desire, but most clients do include a "force seeding" feature. Many trackers I frequent enforce a ratio, and if "regular" seeing isn't getting me where I'd like to be, then I just force seed a torrent until I'm there. Works great for me.
Perhaps a configurable option for global "aggressive seeding" would be ideal though.
Don't take your license out with you, or if you are driving, don't show it when asked for ID.
Cops generally frown upon an inability to produce proof that you are legally able to operate a motor vehicle when they ask you for ID during a traffic stop.
I'm wondering if there's an easy way one could retroactively erase or significantly corrupt the magnetically-stored information on one's ID, so that it is no longer machine-readable. Even if that might be against the law, how would anyone prove that you yourself willingly rendered the information unreadable, as long as there are no obvious signs of willful physical damage to the card?
If I could do that to my ID, I'd expect a little extra scrutiny whenever a machine did try to read it, but the human "scrutinizer" would probably just carefully read what's human-readable on the card and then send me on my way, since I still would have satisfied the requirement that I "prove" my age or what have you.
I would hope that, if I were a witness to an incident like the UCLA one (and I did watch the video, several times), I would have the strength to throw myself on top of the "detainee" so that any police would have to "tase me off" to continue their dirty work. Just imagine if even 5 people all did that at once -- the police would have to admit they had been defeated, nonviolently. They might call for backup, everyone involved might be arrested, but they would have to stop torturing the person and wouldn't be able to continue torturing others. I'd score that one in the W column.
But all the same, I'm glad you were able to acknowledge that you're not so rash as your original post would indicate!;)
While you might initially feel that taking the action you describe would somehow satisfy your personal sense of "justice," (I have definitely felt similar urges in the past) I think you'd benefit from some reflection upon the words of a man who has seen what violence does and does not achieve:
"As I have walked among the desperate, rejected and angry young men I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they asked, and rightly so, what about Vietnam? They asked if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today, my own government."
"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. So it goes. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction.... The chain reaction of evil -- hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars -- must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation." - Martin Luther King
I also would like to think that we as a species are smart enough to ensure a minimal disruption in energy supplies. However, your assertion that everything will just fall into place should a significant need for alternate energy sources arise is even less convincing than the Bobby McFerrin song from which you have apparently borrowed your philosophy.
The "Peak Oil" nightmare scenario is not one where everyone wakes up one day and there is no more oil -- the decline in availability would produce a relatively long period of escalating prices, civil unrest, and unprecedented hoarding. It's not hard to imagine who the winners and losers in such a scenario would be -- the ultra-elite and the "survivalists" among the moderately wealthy would survive for at least a while, but the bottom 50% of the population that depends on accessible, cheap oil would be in exceptionally bad shape.
I'm a firm believer in "cosmological" optimism, but when it comes to "terrestrial" optimism, I can't share your opinion.
if you do not vote, you forfeit all right to complain about anything your government does until november 2008 (by which time, you will have learned your lesson and will vote, right?)
Wrong. There are plenty of reasons to feel entitled to complain about government's (in)action even if one did not vote. Human rights abuses can rightly be complained about by anyone, voter or non-voter, citizen or non-citizen. That's everyone's right as a human.
the gore bush fiasco back in 2000 should have finally once and for all taught everyone how much their vote really does matter
Wrong. It taught everyone that their vote doesn't matter, only the electoral college's vote and the Supreme Court's vote counts. We ought to rewrite the Constitution to make that more clear: "All people are created equal, but their votes are not."
if the government does something you don't like from 2007-2008, and you do not vote today, then go find a mirror, and look at yourself for blame
Wrong. I think most everyone with two brain cells to rub together who's still reading my post can figure out why.
In other words, I am saying that if you are going to believe in something that you can't see or demonstrate (your "faith"), you need to demonstrate that you're not nuts. You can have your bugbears and superstitions, but you had better not think that they or the "voice in your head" can justify your deciding to kill someone. (I mean don't mean the "tu" you, by the way. You seem reasonable enough... for a Slashdot user.:o)
I disagree with all interpretations of the Gospels that permit the taking of life under any circumstance. If you read them now, you'd probably be amazed at how clearly that instruction is spelled out, in specific contrast to the current-at-the-time interpretations of the existing Israeli law.
I think a distinction worth making is the separation of what I believe and what I advocate. I specifically advocate each person arriving at their own belief. I think one ought to be free to believe whatever one wants and remain free from suspicion of mental illness, so long as what one advocates in the name of that belief is no cause for concern.
You speculate that every human being has a divine spark. You're welcome to the speculation. I don't see this spark -- there's no evidence of it. I do sometimes see evidence of truly incorrigible, dangerous deportment. Forgive it if you want... I'd rather see these people jailed. Now, believing what we each do, if we can work together to solve our problems, it doesn't matter where we disagree. If you feel I am "damned" because I don't see what you see, or that I am an infidel, we have a problem. Jesus means nothing to many people in the world. How do you feel about, say, Osiris?:o)
I can't think of a more eloquent way to answer your question than to quote Mohandas Gandhi: "The best religion is the one that brings you closest to God."
Any concept can be misapplied. The world was thought flat. The world really is spherical. It tooks science -- battling against religion -- to discover that. Atoms are dancing everywhere above 276 Kelvin. It took science to discover that. But these things don't change human behaviour.
There has been a succession of Creationist theologies, each superceded by the next, stretching back into the mists of prehistoric man. Each new faith claimed its predecessors (as well as contemporaries) were false. Hmmm. Maybe one day, people will finally humbly accept that there is no Father, Son, nor Holy Spook, no Virgin Mother, no God to smite our foes... It's just monkeys trying to act civilized while they sink to varying degrees of infamy. A few see the virtue in virtues. But social organization (game theory) explains that well enough.
Yes, the irony of my "flat earth" example was no accident.:)
I would be unreasonable if I thought I could do anything more than convert Atheists to Agnostics through some casual back and forth on an internet forum. Or anything achieved of my own will, really. The "leap of faith" cannot be made by anyone other than the owner of the legs doing the leaping.
And yes, there is the classic dilemma of "proving a negative" to be reckoned with. Not to embrace a stalemate, but I can truly say I couldn't reject my faith unless someone did prove there was no God. And that will happen when Lucifer puts on his North Face and hits the slopes.
Are you really so certain there is no God?
(That's rhetorical, you are free to abandon the thread.:)
At best, a religion can give a person a philosophy for facing tough times. A positive attitude helps people survive prolonged exposure to doctors and in general makes things seem easier to endure.
Unfortunately, so do insanity and dementia. So the challenge for the Faithful is to prove that they're not insane or demented.
I agree that a challenge exists, but I don't think it's for the innocent to combat a presumption of guilt when it comes to insanity or dementia. In my vocabulary, atheists really are "God playing hide and go seek" with itself in the sense that every human has a divine spark, whether they like it or not. Each is no more or less "divine" than the worst criminal or the most highly lauded icon.
Bill Hicks seems likable. But the holographic explanation and the Christian Trinity are complicated theories for the world in which we live.
Tying together the concepts of "Trinity" and "Christianity" is tricky business. The former is basically a meta-philosophical tangent that some people put more emphasis on compared to others, while the latter is the over-arching whole. There are many otherwise dissimilar schools of Christian thought that admit the popular concept of "Trinity" is harmlessly misunderstood at best, and an impediment to inter-cultural dialogue at worst. "Are there three gods or one?" et al... I personally don't have much to say about it other than the above -- the message of Christ is the focus.
As brilliant as Einstein was, essentially he was hailed as a unique genius because he thought more outside of the box in his field than anyone else up to that point. We are only just beginning to see people peaking over the top of the "bar" that he set so long ago, and thats what's so attractive about a holographic universe. Experiments have defied the Einsteinian limit of our understanding. We are back to square one. Spacetime is just the slice of life that most everyone has wrapped their minds around and is now predictable and boring by comparison!
Six billion monkeys who only needed cunning, aggressiveness, and a small measure of sociability to survive explains it all much more simply.
Yes, it even explains the Pope.:o)
Occam's razor only applies to the degree that we are conscious of the simplest explanation in the first place. At one point in history, the simplest explanation of world geography was that the Earth was flat.
I want to keep our discussion going (and I already have several ideas to share about what you said above) but it seems like your response was truncated. Can you repost?
I don't claim to have the answers to your questions. What I do claim is the opinion that the philosophy of life espoused by Jesus in the Gospels is the most appealing philosophy of life I have encountered in my 28 years, that this current state of existence we enjoy is only a shadow of "real" existence (read up on theories concerning "The Holographic Universe" for some scientific context), and that we are here in this current state to learn how to love.
That the philosophy of Jesus has been distorted, twisted, and flat-out ignored by others who merely label themselves "Christians" (eg how can you truly obey the command to "turn the other cheek" while participating in a military organization that requires you to kill?) is a tragedy more or less unmatched in recorded human history. I readily admit and accept that the name of Christ has been abused by some of the most repulsive and frightening people to walk this Earth. Perhaps it is such an inviting target for deceivers because of its proven and considerable power to affect people?
The Bible outside the Gospels is worth reading for context, but I don't base my core beliefs on those texts. The Gospels themselves are enough for me to live on. If I had to "speak for God" I'd say that it cares less about what "holy" book we bury our noses in and what building we spend our time in over the weekend and more about how we treat all of our fellow humans.
If you want a more modern crystallization of what I believe, the closest I have found is this Bill Hicks bit:
"The world is like a ride at an amusement park. It goes up and down and round and round. It has thrills and chills and it's very brightly coloured and it's very loud and it's fun, for a while. Some people have been on the ride for a long time, and they begin to question: Is this real, or is this just a ride? And other people have remembered, and they come back to us, they say, "Hey, don't worry, don't be afraid, ever, because, this is just a ride..." And we... kill those people. Ha ha, "Shut him up. We have a lot invested in this ride. Shut him up. Look at my furrows of worry. Look at my big bank account and my family. This just has to be real." It's just a ride. But we always kill those good guys who try and tell us that, you ever notice that? And let the demons run amok. Jesus murdered; Martin Luther King murdered; Malcolm X murdered; Gandhi murdered; John Lennon murdered; Reagan... wounded. But it doesn't matter because: It's just a ride. And we can change it anytime we want. It's only a choice. No effort, no work, no job, no savings and money. A choice, right now, between fear and love.
The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on your doors, buy guns, close yourself off. The eyes of love, instead, see all of us as one. Here's what we can do to change the world, right now, to a better ride. Take all that money that we spend on weapons and defenses each year and instead spend it feeding and clothing and educating the poor of the world, which it would pay for many times over, not one human being excluded, and we could explore space, together, both inner and outer, forever, in peace. Thank you very much, you've been great."
There are lots of Christians who have no problem reconciling evolution with creation. If you understand even the basic concepts surrouding an omnipotent creator, you understand that one could easily have created a world that evolves.
Unfortunately, this teensy bit of elementary school logic is lost on the more frothy-mouthed "supporters" of my faith. God help them!
I make a habit of mentioning this because I'm tired of fundamentalist wackos getting all the attention in this debate, and I do not take your lampooning of them as any kind of insult to me as a Christian.
SPF and Sender ID are not the same. They differ in what they validate and what "layer" of the e-mail system they are concerned with. Sender ID is not the latest version of SPF - it is a new and independent experiment. The "spf2.0" tag name is a historical accident. Neither is better because they address different problems. There is controversy because Sender ID is incompatible with existing specifications. Microsoft is aware of the problem and representatives of theirs have stated that they have no plans to fix it. There are practical work-arounds for SPF and Sender ID users."
Additionally, the problem with Sender ID being "incompatible" is due to the "recommended" specification:
"The Sender ID specification contains a recommendation to use SPF's v=spf1 policies -- which are originally defined to apply to MAIL FROM and HELO identities only -- and apply them to the PRA identity as well. Specifically, it says to consider v=spf1 as equivalent to spf2.0/mfrom,pra. This is technically wrong, as is explained in detail below. Sender ID implementors should correct this and treat v=spf1 records as equivalent to spf2.0/mfrom. Unfortunately this mistake in the Sender ID specification was not corrected prior to its publication despite an appeal from the SPF project."
I have not implemented Sender ID in my systems on principle -- I agree with OpenSPF that Sender ID's recommended implementation is, in a word, stupid. So far, SPF by itself is working out great for me.
Forgive me for veering mildly off-topic, but this needs to be shared:
A friend recently explained his own telemarketer-thwarting strategy to me which, if you can accept the minor negatives, is probably the most effective and simple means of "doing your part" to resist the use of telemarketing when a call comes in.
When the telemarketer calls and asks for someone (even if it is you and they immediately assume so and launch into their spiel), simply say "Oh OK, yes, let me get him/her," then set the phone down (preferably on mute) and walk away. That's it! Wait until you hear the telco tones/message confirming the call is dropped and then hang it up.
Almost all telemarketers have guidelines for how long they're supposed to wait on hold, and by doing the above you guarantee you'll max out whatever limit has been set, thereby denying that particular telemarketer additional time they could be calling others with. If you instead got all mad and angrily hung up on them right away, that gives them time to bother someone else -- but by doing your part you help everyone else out on the telemarketer's list, as well as earn the personal satisfaction that you got what you wanted without getting mean or upset. The only downside is that your line is in use the whole time as well, though in my experience almost no telemarketer will wait more than 1 or 2 minutes before giving up.
Slashdot Mirror
Admit it -- you still have the VAX on a dolly in a self-storage locker right around the corner, with a stack of pr0n on top, just waiting for the day when you get that "Dear John" letter. You'll even rearrange the old room to be "just like it was."
Gentle reader,
I see that you have picked up on the meaning of "TFA." Here is a new acronym for you to study: "FAQ."
Apparently the "major upheaval" necessary to bring their product's security up to snuff is less desirable than the "major upheaval" that would occur if the currently poor security were exploited in a headline-grabbing, stock-price-swatting incident. Perhaps their risk-analysis number-crunchings have been tainted by oh...I dunno, smoking crack?
I was going to comment on the same excerpt you chose -- because I felt the same sense of "umm, is it backwards day today?" Luckily for me, there was more than enough "backwards speak" to quote!
It's Jem. And she is outrageous.
(Oh no -- maybe I should have used Tor to submit this comment?!)
I guess I didn't explain what I've observed clearly enough: Verizon sells many different phones along with their service. Some of those phones bear the "branding" of their original manufacturers, while others are "Verizon brand" phones, even though Verizon is just slapping their name on a device manufactured by some other company. The latter is what I have discovered to be unacceptably locked down. I'm sure there are other non-Verizon-brand phones that are locked down, but I doubt there are Verizon-brand phones that are not locked down.
Thanks for the tip about SEEM edits, I'll research that as it applies to the PN-215. I have discovered an "unlock tool" for that model, but so far I haven't had any success using it.
...because Verizon has made it their policy to lock down the filesystem of every device they get their greedy mitts on. My first phone with their service was a Samsung a670, which worked great, allowed me to read and write to the filesystem for free (so I could get fancy with ringers, wallpaper, pull pics off quickly and for free, etc) using BitPim and QPST.
Then the time came to pick a "free" phone for work, and unfortunately I chose the Pantech PN-215, a "Verizon brand" phone. While it was more or less similar in features compared to the Samsung, the best I can do so far is just look at the filesystem, no writing allowed (to the device or to anything connected). I've tried out a few different workarounds (Verizon even went so far as to tell me there was no data cable for that model, a blatant lie I quickly disproved by doing some research and trying out an Audiovox cable), but so far no dice.
This means that if I want to transfer pics, ringers, etc I have to do that over the air, lining the pockets of the greed-machine that is Verizon.
My personal plan is coming up for renewal, and when I add my wife to it, you can be sure we will not be purchasing any phone that is locked down in this way.
Thanks a million, "Can you rip me off now?!"
GoDaddy was not hosting the site, they are the registrar for the domain name. As such they control DNS for seclists.org, and part of what they did was to change the nameserver from what it was supposed to be to NS1.SUSPENDED-FOR.SPAM-AND-ABUSE.COM, effectively preventing most people from accessing the site.
The IP in the A record for seclists.org is registered to "MEER NET," who is either hosting the site or reselling the hosting, and had nothing to do with what GoDaddy did.
"Use it or lose it!"
Dude, do not underestimate the power of a child's full bladder.
Did your build calculations and choice of materials reflect a liberal estimate of the amount of...erm...bodily fluids from nasty/lazy swimmers? I don't know what the effect of those fluids would be on lines meant to carry strictly water (or even strictly chlorinated pool water), but it's probably worth pondering. :)
Not that I would be surprised that you have already heard of the feature, and not to say that this is the ideal answer to your question/desire, but most clients do include a "force seeding" feature. Many trackers I frequent enforce a ratio, and if "regular" seeing isn't getting me where I'd like to be, then I just force seed a torrent until I'm there. Works great for me.
Perhaps a configurable option for global "aggressive seeding" would be ideal though.
Cops generally frown upon an inability to produce proof that you are legally able to operate a motor vehicle when they ask you for ID during a traffic stop.
I'm wondering if there's an easy way one could retroactively erase or significantly corrupt the magnetically-stored information on one's ID, so that it is no longer machine-readable. Even if that might be against the law, how would anyone prove that you yourself willingly rendered the information unreadable, as long as there are no obvious signs of willful physical damage to the card?
If I could do that to my ID, I'd expect a little extra scrutiny whenever a machine did try to read it, but the human "scrutinizer" would probably just carefully read what's human-readable on the card and then send me on my way, since I still would have satisfied the requirement that I "prove" my age or what have you.
I would hope that, if I were a witness to an incident like the UCLA one (and I did watch the video, several times), I would have the strength to throw myself on top of the "detainee" so that any police would have to "tase me off" to continue their dirty work. Just imagine if even 5 people all did that at once -- the police would have to admit they had been defeated, nonviolently. They might call for backup, everyone involved might be arrested, but they would have to stop torturing the person and wouldn't be able to continue torturing others. I'd score that one in the W column. But all the same, I'm glad you were able to acknowledge that you're not so rash as your original post would indicate! ;)
Talking head makes obvious flamebait remarks in ratings grab. Full story at 11!
While you might initially feel that taking the action you describe would somehow satisfy your personal sense of "justice," (I have definitely felt similar urges in the past) I think you'd benefit from some reflection upon the words of a man who has seen what violence does and does not achieve:
"As I have walked among the desperate, rejected and angry young men I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they asked, and rightly so, what about Vietnam? They asked if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today, my own government."
"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. So it goes. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction.... The chain reaction of evil -- hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars -- must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation." - Martin Luther King
I also would like to think that we as a species are smart enough to ensure a minimal disruption in energy supplies. However, your assertion that everything will just fall into place should a significant need for alternate energy sources arise is even less convincing than the Bobby McFerrin song from which you have apparently borrowed your philosophy.
The "Peak Oil" nightmare scenario is not one where everyone wakes up one day and there is no more oil -- the decline in availability would produce a relatively long period of escalating prices, civil unrest, and unprecedented hoarding. It's not hard to imagine who the winners and losers in such a scenario would be -- the ultra-elite and the "survivalists" among the moderately wealthy would survive for at least a while, but the bottom 50% of the population that depends on accessible, cheap oil would be in exceptionally bad shape.
I'm a firm believer in "cosmological" optimism, but when it comes to "terrestrial" optimism, I can't share your opinion.
Wrong. There are plenty of excuses, not the least of which is when enough machines fail to function so that people have to stand in line for 4 or 5 hours as was well documented in 2004. And will probably happen again today.
Wrong. There are plenty of reasons to feel entitled to complain about government's (in)action even if one did not vote. Human rights abuses can rightly be complained about by anyone, voter or non-voter, citizen or non-citizen. That's everyone's right as a human.
Wrong. It taught everyone that their vote doesn't matter, only the electoral college's vote and the Supreme Court's vote counts. We ought to rewrite the Constitution to make that more clear: "All people are created equal, but their votes are not."
Wrong. I think most everyone with two brain cells to rub together who's still reading my post can figure out why.
In other words, I am saying that if you are going to believe in something that you can't see or demonstrate (your "faith"), you need to demonstrate that you're not nuts. You can have your bugbears and superstitions, but you had better not think that they or the "voice in your head" can justify your deciding to kill someone. (I mean don't mean the "tu" you, by the way. You seem reasonable enough... for a Slashdot user. :o)
:o)
:)
:)
I disagree with all interpretations of the Gospels that permit the taking of life under any circumstance. If you read them now, you'd probably be amazed at how clearly that instruction is spelled out, in specific contrast to the current-at-the-time interpretations of the existing Israeli law.
I think a distinction worth making is the separation of what I believe and what I advocate. I specifically advocate each person arriving at their own belief. I think one ought to be free to believe whatever one wants and remain free from suspicion of mental illness, so long as what one advocates in the name of that belief is no cause for concern.
You speculate that every human being has a divine spark. You're welcome to the speculation. I don't see this spark -- there's no evidence of it. I do sometimes see evidence of truly incorrigible, dangerous deportment. Forgive it if you want... I'd rather see these people jailed. Now, believing what we each do, if we can work together to solve our problems, it doesn't matter where we disagree. If you feel I am "damned" because I don't see what you see, or that I am an infidel, we have a problem. Jesus means nothing to many people in the world. How do you feel about, say, Osiris?
I can't think of a more eloquent way to answer your question than to quote Mohandas Gandhi: "The best religion is the one that brings you closest to God."
Any concept can be misapplied. The world was thought flat. The world really is spherical. It tooks science -- battling against religion -- to discover that. Atoms are dancing everywhere above 276 Kelvin. It took science to discover that. But these things don't change human behaviour.
There has been a succession of Creationist theologies, each superceded by the next, stretching back into the mists of prehistoric man. Each new faith claimed its predecessors (as well as contemporaries) were false. Hmmm. Maybe one day, people will finally humbly accept that there is no Father, Son, nor Holy Spook, no Virgin Mother, no God to smite our foes... It's just monkeys trying to act civilized while they sink to varying degrees of infamy. A few see the virtue in virtues. But social organization (game theory) explains that well enough.
Yes, the irony of my "flat earth" example was no accident.
I would be unreasonable if I thought I could do anything more than convert Atheists to Agnostics through some casual back and forth on an internet forum. Or anything achieved of my own will, really. The "leap of faith" cannot be made by anyone other than the owner of the legs doing the leaping.
And yes, there is the classic dilemma of "proving a negative" to be reckoned with. Not to embrace a stalemate, but I can truly say I couldn't reject my faith unless someone did prove there was no God. And that will happen when Lucifer puts on his North Face and hits the slopes.
Are you really so certain there is no God?
(That's rhetorical, you are free to abandon the thread.
That number needs to be made known.
At best, a religion can give a person a philosophy for facing tough times. A positive attitude helps people survive prolonged exposure to doctors and in general makes things seem easier to endure.
:o)
Unfortunately, so do insanity and dementia. So the challenge for the Faithful is to prove that they're not insane or demented.
I agree that a challenge exists, but I don't think it's for the innocent to combat a presumption of guilt when it comes to insanity or dementia. In my vocabulary, atheists really are "God playing hide and go seek" with itself in the sense that every human has a divine spark, whether they like it or not. Each is no more or less "divine" than the worst criminal or the most highly lauded icon.
Bill Hicks seems likable. But the holographic explanation and the Christian Trinity are complicated theories for the world in which we live.
Tying together the concepts of "Trinity" and "Christianity" is tricky business. The former is basically a meta-philosophical tangent that some people put more emphasis on compared to others, while the latter is the over-arching whole. There are many otherwise dissimilar schools of Christian thought that admit the popular concept of "Trinity" is harmlessly misunderstood at best, and an impediment to inter-cultural dialogue at worst. "Are there three gods or one?" et al... I personally don't have much to say about it other than the above -- the message of Christ is the focus.
As brilliant as Einstein was, essentially he was hailed as a unique genius because he thought more outside of the box in his field than anyone else up to that point. We are only just beginning to see people peaking over the top of the "bar" that he set so long ago, and thats what's so attractive about a holographic universe. Experiments have defied the Einsteinian limit of our understanding. We are back to square one. Spacetime is just the slice of life that most everyone has wrapped their minds around and is now predictable and boring by comparison!
Six billion monkeys who only needed cunning, aggressiveness, and a small measure of sociability to survive explains it all much more simply.
Yes, it even explains the Pope.
Occam's razor only applies to the degree that we are conscious of the simplest explanation in the first place. At one point in history, the simplest explanation of world geography was that the Earth was flat.
I want to keep our discussion going (and I already have several ideas to share about what you said above) but it seems like your response was truncated. Can you repost?
I don't claim to have the answers to your questions. What I do claim is the opinion that the philosophy of life espoused by Jesus in the Gospels is the most appealing philosophy of life I have encountered in my 28 years, that this current state of existence we enjoy is only a shadow of "real" existence (read up on theories concerning "The Holographic Universe" for some scientific context), and that we are here in this current state to learn how to love.
..." And we ... kill those people. Ha ha, "Shut him up. We have a lot invested in this ride. Shut him up. Look at my furrows of worry. Look at my big bank account and my family. This just has to be real." It's just a ride. But we always kill those good guys who try and tell us that, you ever notice that? And let the demons run amok. Jesus murdered; Martin Luther King murdered; Malcolm X murdered; Gandhi murdered; John Lennon murdered; Reagan ... wounded. But it doesn't matter because: It's just a ride. And we can change it anytime we want. It's only a choice. No effort, no work, no job, no savings and money. A choice, right now, between fear and love.
That the philosophy of Jesus has been distorted, twisted, and flat-out ignored by others who merely label themselves "Christians" (eg how can you truly obey the command to "turn the other cheek" while participating in a military organization that requires you to kill?) is a tragedy more or less unmatched in recorded human history. I readily admit and accept that the name of Christ has been abused by some of the most repulsive and frightening people to walk this Earth. Perhaps it is such an inviting target for deceivers because of its proven and considerable power to affect people?
The Bible outside the Gospels is worth reading for context, but I don't base my core beliefs on those texts. The Gospels themselves are enough for me to live on. If I had to "speak for God" I'd say that it cares less about what "holy" book we bury our noses in and what building we spend our time in over the weekend and more about how we treat all of our fellow humans.
If you want a more modern crystallization of what I believe, the closest I have found is this Bill Hicks bit:
"The world is like a ride at an amusement park. It goes up and down and round and round. It has thrills and chills and it's very brightly coloured and it's very loud and it's fun, for a while. Some people have been on the ride for a long time, and they begin to question: Is this real, or is this just a ride? And other people have remembered, and they come back to us, they say, "Hey, don't worry, don't be afraid, ever, because, this is just a ride
The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on your doors, buy guns, close yourself off. The eyes of love, instead, see all of us as one. Here's what we can do to change the world, right now, to a better ride. Take all that money that we spend on weapons and defenses each year and instead spend it feeding and clothing and educating the poor of the world, which it would pay for many times over, not one human being excluded, and we could explore space, together, both inner and outer, forever, in peace. Thank you very much, you've been great."
There are lots of Christians who have no problem reconciling evolution with creation. If you understand even the basic concepts surrouding an omnipotent creator, you understand that one could easily have created a world that evolves.
Unfortunately, this teensy bit of elementary school logic is lost on the more frothy-mouthed "supporters" of my faith. God help them!
I make a habit of mentioning this because I'm tired of fundamentalist wackos getting all the attention in this debate, and I do not take your lampooning of them as any kind of insult to me as a Christian.
Time to keep making the consciousness donuts!
According to OpenSPF's comparison of the two systems, that's not true:
Additionally, the problem with Sender ID being "incompatible" is due to the "recommended" specification:
I have not implemented Sender ID in my systems on principle -- I agree with OpenSPF that Sender ID's recommended implementation is, in a word, stupid. So far, SPF by itself is working out great for me.
Forgive me for veering mildly off-topic, but this needs to be shared:
A friend recently explained his own telemarketer-thwarting strategy to me which, if you can accept the minor negatives, is probably the most effective and simple means of "doing your part" to resist the use of telemarketing when a call comes in.
When the telemarketer calls and asks for someone (even if it is you and they immediately assume so and launch into their spiel), simply say "Oh OK, yes, let me get him/her," then set the phone down (preferably on mute) and walk away. That's it! Wait until you hear the telco tones/message confirming the call is dropped and then hang it up.
Almost all telemarketers have guidelines for how long they're supposed to wait on hold, and by doing the above you guarantee you'll max out whatever limit has been set, thereby denying that particular telemarketer additional time they could be calling others with. If you instead got all mad and angrily hung up on them right away, that gives them time to bother someone else -- but by doing your part you help everyone else out on the telemarketer's list, as well as earn the personal satisfaction that you got what you wanted without getting mean or upset. The only downside is that your line is in use the whole time as well, though in my experience almost no telemarketer will wait more than 1 or 2 minutes before giving up.