I have XP boxes in the field that are 9 years old without fail and the ONLY thing they've needed from me is the occasional hardware upgrade. I have Win2K boxes even older that are now being used in a kid's room or in a basement after being rotated out of the office. Again they work just fine, completely updated from RTM to final update rollout, no driver issues.
When my daughter innocently installed XCP on my computer from a music CD she'd bought at the record store she worked in, it hosed the machine completely. It destroyed all the P2P software (which I used to share/download indie music) and the CD burning software, and a lot of other perfectly legal software (like recording software; XCP wasn't about piracy, it was about ruining independant musicians' recording and burning abilities) I couldn't find the original driver disks for the video card or audio chip, so I went to the manufacturers' web sites to download drivers, and there weren't any for 98. So I had to buy XP just to get drivers for my hardware.
Installing XP was a pain in the ass. I had to babysit it, clicking choices once every three or four minutes and rebooting I don't know how many times. Never mind putting in that damned antipiracy code. I was used to this; I'd gone through the same hassle upgrading from 95 to 98.
After installing the drivers from the disks that came with the hardware, and reinstalling all my software (an afternoon's work) everything worked except the CD burning software. Windows gave me a message every single time I booted saying that the software was unstable (it was the software that came with the burner). It wouldn't let me uninstall the software. I went to the burner's web site, which wanted to sell me new burning software. Windows informed me it needed updates, so I let it update, shut it off ane went to bed, figuring I'd reinstall Windows yet again the next day after checking my email.
The next morning the cablemodem was on the floor and itwouldn't get on the internet. I figured that the cat had knocked it off and broken it, so I called Insight, my ISP at the time. They said they could see the modem so I must have a bad network card. I tried a few cables first, thinking maybe when the modem hit the floor one of the connectors had broken, but it was a no-go. I planned on buying a new network card (they're only about ten bucks) and reinstalled Windows to get rid of the annoying "we have disabled your CD burning software" message every damned time I booted, and lo and behold the internet worked again!
Windows had replaced a perfectly good network driver with one that didn't work at all!
So the next thing I did was dig out the old Mandriva disks and installed it dual boot. Half an hour, where Windows had taken all afternoon. And everything worked except the S-video output.
So you see, I had the same issues with Windows that you have with Linux; I completely understand your frustration.
How many forum hunts have you had to do to find driver fixes in the last couple of years?
Driver issues used to drive me crazy five years ago (Mandriva and Suse), especially with the video driver. My card has an S-video out that always worked in Windows with the PC plugged into the TV but it put garbage on the TV screen in Suse and Mandriva. But in the last few years I have yet to have updates break anything, and the TV is happily displaying the computer output.
I've been using kubuntu, and my main rig is cobbled together from junk parts (which may be why I have no driver issues with it, they've had time to get the drivers working on the older parts), but the (sadly stolen) new netbook that came with Win 7 ran fine under kubuntu. Actually it ran better with kubuntu than Windows. I had a hell of a time trying to find how to shut off the retarded "tap to click" so called "feature" in the netbook under Windows, but it was brain-dead simple in kubuntu.
I have to agree with you about Linus and the ABIs.
Before you trash the old PCs, see if kubuntu works on them; it's a shame to waste hardware. Only takes maybe a half hour to install, and unlike a Windows installation you just boot it from CD, make a few choices, and walk away from it while it installs and configures.
I suspect that the problem with drivers in Linux may be that the card manufacturers give Linux no respect, so somebody without the tech specs has to hack new drivers blind. I can see where it would tale a while.
Linux is the Rodney Dangerfield of operating systems!
Just clicked on your web site and saw the photo of your cat, Shadow. I have a cat (well, my oldest daughter has him now) named Shadow that looks EXACTLY like your Shadow. Well, my Shadow is older but he looked like yours a few years ago (Leila says he's gotten fat).
Also, my name's Steve, too! (Named after the saint that was stoned)
I'd have posted this comment on your site if you didn't require registration, so my apologies to slashdotters I may have annoyed with this offtopic comment. Checking the "no bonus" boxes, if anyone wants to mod this down please feel free, it should be -1 as it's aimed at only one slashdotter.
BTW, Steve, you may find some or even most of my journals offensive. especially the earlier ones tat deal with hookers. If you're ok with profanity here's some science fiction:
No one abuses fish? How about A Fish Called Wanda or Total Recall? Any animal can be abused. But you don't have to buy an animal to abuse it.
This legislation makes me think LSD is making a comeback. Sounds like the whole damned city is one big nuthouse. I sure wouldn't want to live in such a tightly regulated town.
I was in a hurricane in Delaware when I was starioned at Dover in the USAF (1971 or 2, don't remember). Journaled about it here. Also, even though I've never heard of a tsunami hitting the Atlantic, that's possible, too.
I'm not really sure. It's hard to explain one's feelings, especially when you don't really understand those feelings yourself. Maybe I'm an Asimov robot:) You can make that "You have met at least a single one who isn't appalled by the idea."
Thanks, I don't feel so alone now.
I would also suggest that Osama Bin Laden or similar individuals might make an even better example. If he had repented to God and stopped what he was doing and surrendered I would have expected him to still pay the civil penalty for his actions, but I believe that he would have gone to heaven if he had repented and at least think that I would have been able to even be friends with him given the opportunity if he was genuinely repentant. (After all Paul was effectively the Bin Laden of his day when he was Saul and he went on to be one of the pivotal leaders of the early church.)
Very true. Most folks either havent read the part whare Saul's job was killing people, but it's actually one of my favorite stories in the Bible. Job is another, it's gotten me through a lot of hard times. It doesn't seem we disagree on any critical issues
We certainly agree about that. You're the first person I've ever heard of that thinks McVeigh is in heaven.
Except Enoch;)
I take the "Enoch walked faithfully with God; then he was no more, because God took him away" to mean that Enoch died. But again, that's open to one's own interpretation.
He'll have to build a time machine first, since they did away with welfare in the US back in 1996 when they enacted PWORA. Besides, welfare didn't pay shit.
Well, it won't help me any; I use kubuntu and have no MS programs at all (although ten years ago I was on Windows at home, and before about 1995 was on DOS). Too bad I have to use MS at work...
Perhaps, perhaps not. I don't know whether or not homosexuality is wrong, and really don't care. As to my take on Christianity, my grandmother gave me a "red letter edition" of the King James Bible where Jesus' words are printed in red ink. IMO this is the important part of the Bible, and I can find no fault in any of them. Whether or not you believe in God or Jesus, his teachings make sense. If everyone lived like that (and yes, it's nearly impossible, especially in this world) it would be a far better place to live.
Ghandi (a Hindu if I'm not mistaken) once famously said "I don't like Christians, but I like Christ". Those are also words of wisdom.
how can it be ok for God to instruct one people to go to war but then say it is outside the legitimate authority of nation states to decide to go to war without being morally wrong?
I see it like this: If I write a program I have the right to erase that program, as well as the right to write another program to erase or modify that program, and if the second program fails at its task I'll be annoyed. You and I are to God what a computer program we write is to us. If the first program is buggy I'm surely going to want to delete it using any tools I wish, including other tools I've written.
God never told Bush to invade Iraq (and I'm not sure that Bush isn't just pretending to be a Christian; I'm pretty sure Gingrich is just pretending to be a Christian, but it isn't up to me to judge; they'll stand before God some day). The passage you cite says taxation is moral (so why are these "Christian" tea partiers so against taxes?) but I don't see anywhere that anybody is given the right to kill.
I'm pretty sure I couldn't kill to save myself, but I'm not so sure I could refrain from killing to protect my children, even though it would be wrong. Plus, the sin of killing is, in fact, forgiven, just as any other sin is.
I have another objection to the death penalty that not only isn't based on morality, but may be immoral in itself. You don't know when you're going to die, or how you're going to die. You could suffer a stroke or a heart attack in the next five minutes. You could be killed in a car accident on your way to work tomorrow. And when you do die, it's most likely going to be horrrible; from a heart attack, or cancer, or Alzheimer's, or bleeding to death from a gunshot or accident, drowning, fire, etc. Few die painlesslessly in their sleep. It's not likely to be pleasant.
The condemned murderer knows the exact time he's going to die, and has a chance to repent the murder. You won't. And when he does die, he'll be humanely and painlesslesly put to death, like a beloved dog you have to euthanize. I say let him rot in prison until God takes him. Like I said, that's probably an immoral view.
When I tell Christians that Timothy McVeigh is probably in heaven, I have yet to meet a single one who isn't appalled at the idea. They're sure he went straight to hell, but McVeigh was a devout Catholic who had a chance to repent and confess his horrible deeds before he was executed. Hell, Christ prayed for God's forgiveness for the people who tortured him to death, as you surely know.
It is also worth noting that when Peter cut off the ear of the servant, the reason given was that it was time for Jesus to be taken, not that it was wrong to defend yourself.
I don't have a bible in front of me right now, but in one of the other four accounts that John omits, Jesus performed another miracle by putting the ear back on and healing it. "He who lives by the sword, dies by the sword". That is the passage (and I couldn't tell you what chapter and verse, again, I don't have my Bible with me) that says self-defense is wrong.
(For that matter, if Jesus believed that self defense was wrong, why did he even permit Peter to be carrying a sword in the first place?) [John 18:10-11]
I have no answer to that. I guess I have some Bible study to do tonight.
Even if the reasons for going in to the conflict were wrong, the Bible is fairly clear that it is the leaders that are held accountable for that since the individuals can not know what the reason the leader has are and it is within that leader's Biblically established authority to give the direction to go to war.
I'm no longer conflicted about my role; my guilty conscience and repentance (let alone God's grace and Jesus' sacrifice for me) pretty much says I'm not going to have to pay for it; nevertheless, it was wrong. I wasn't drafted, and in fact my lottery number pretty much guranteed I wouldn't have been. I really feel bad for the poor guys who had to suffer the actual horrors of killing someone dire
A virus can contain a rootkit, but a rootkit isn't a virus. And Windows is far easier to root than any other OS (even if MS is getting better at it). It isn't easy to root Linux remotely (although if you have physical access it's fairly easy to pwn).
Sure, I'll run it in a VM hosted on Linux, but no way would I rely on it for my every day computing needs on the bare metal. Fucking garbage without any kind of cogent security system is what Windows is.
Multiple sclerosis (abbreviated MS, also known as disseminated sclerosis or encephalomyelitis disseminata) is an inflammatory disease in which the fatty myelin sheaths around the axons of the brain and spinal cord are damaged, leading to demyelination and scarring as well as a broad spectrum of signs and symptoms.[1]
No, if someone's the sort of person who gets a trojan an antivirus won't save them. A true virus (or a worm) needs no human intervention, only a poorly written OS or app. AV protects you from careless programmers (if the virus is in the AV's library), not your own cluelessness.
On the contrary, we've always been appreciated, even if we were often ostracized and laughed at for being smart (and often socialy awkward). Back in the analog days when there was no such thing as a "computer geek" and the terms were interchangeable (late 1960s), I'd hack ten dollar transistor radios into $200 guitar fuzzboxes using a dollar's worth of parts and a little solder. I assure you I was greatly appreciated. Likewise when I'd repair a friend's amplifier for them I was appreciated. These days we're appreciated for cleaning viruses out of clueless friends' computers and replacing malfunctioning hard drives.
A big problem I have with the popular press, particularly the non-nerd press, is their taking OUR language and perverting it. There is no such thing as a history geek. Such an individual is a wonk, not a geek. A geek is a computer guy, a guy who builds, programs, hacks computers.
A nerd is a science or engineering guy. One can be both a nerd and a geek at the same time.
I'm especially galled by calling people who break into computer systems "hackers". A hacker is someone who writes quick and dirty code to get a job done quickly, or someone who modifies hardware to make it do things it wasn't originally designed to do. Turning a transistor radio into a guitar fuzzbox is hacking. Making an X-Box run Linux is hacking. Writing security software is hacking. Using that software that someone else wrote to break into someone else's system isn't hacking, and the people who do it aren't hackers, they're "script kiddies".
For a beauty pageant winner to call herself a "geek" is an insult to us geeks, unless she's actually proficient with computers. Does she know what a logic gate does, or even is? Does she know a nand from a nor? Has she even heard of either term? If not, then she's no geek (and neither are the two digit IQ normtards at the geek squad).
A "dork" is a nerd without the IQ.
Someone in this thread (I saw it this morning before I came to work but can't find the comment now) said that you're born with beauty but intelligence is acquired; what a crock of shit! Like the old saying goes, you can fix ignorance but there's no cure for stupid. Nobody with a measured IQ of 110 is going to become a George Smoot (now there's a nerd)! Intelligence is the ability to learn, understand, and solve problems. Nerds and geeks have both intelligence and creativity; you need both to hack, or to come up with a new theory of particle physics.
Intelligence and beauty are both transitory. I'm getting older, and it takes more effort to both learn and solve problems than it did when I was young. And when you get older, you're far less attractive. And both intelligence and beauty can vanish in a flash -- if Doctor Smoot were to suffer brain damage in an auto accident, bye bye cosmologist. If that beauty queen got her face torn off by a pit bull, bye bye beauty queen.
I see at slashdot a lot of geek/nerd wannabes. It makes me proud to be a real one.
I haven't had my coffee yet and don't have a bible in front of me, but Christ is quoted in at least 3 of the 4 first books of the New Testament that breaking the first commandment was the only sin that you won't be forgiven for.
There are a lot of "sins" weren't called sins by God, but were edicts from the Jewish church elders.
And to my mind, Moses' ten commandments are the most important, and all of them are summed up by Jesus' two commandments "Love God above all else, and love your neighbor as you love yourself". That right there is Christianity in a nutshell.
I used to be a gamer, when I was I ran Linux dual-boot and only booted into Windows to play games. These days I don't have any MS software at all, although I'm forced to put up with it at work.
MS has a hilarious name; same initials as Multiple Sclerosis (which does pretty much to the human body what Windows does to a computer). I used to joke that MicroSoft is the only company named after its founder's penis.
From Wikipedia: Multiple sclerosis (abbreviated MS, also known as disseminated sclerosis or encephalomyelitis disseminata) is an inflammatory disease in which the fatty myelin sheaths around the axons of the brain and spinal cord are damaged, leading to demyelination and scarring as well as a broad spectrum of signs and symptoms
I hope you're logged in and just hit the "ac" button, because like another poster you made the mistaken assumption I'm an athiest. I'm not. I'm saying when I go to church, half the congregation (or more) love money more than they love God.
My own church is doing tremendous charity work, both here in Springfield and in Africa (link)
I'm priveledged to have Eddie Lowen as my pastor; he's the best preacher I've ever heard in my 59 years on earth (he gets the congregation laughing, he could have been a stand up comedian). I was baptised at WSCC.
Don't take my comment as bashing Christians, take it as a call to look closely at yourself.
Jesus, you're EXACTLY what I was talking about. Quick to anger, quick to judge. I'm not an athiest, you hypocrite, I was in church yesterday morning and Eddie (my preacher) made some of the same points as I just did in my post.
It's not about how much money you make, it's about WORSHIPING money. The bible doesn't say money is the root of all evil, it says the LOVE OF MONEY is the root of all evil. "Thou shalt have no other gods before me" and brother, if you worship money you're worse than an athiest; that little green god makes you a heathen whether you think you're Christian or not.
Now read your bible and stop jumping to conclusions.
You can try. Christians aren't perfect, just forgiven. But, you kow, you SHOULD feel bad about your shortcomings. The only people with clear consciences, Christian or not, are sociopaths who have no conscience.
God never said "thou shalt not imprison for life". The whole point of "love your enemies" is they are no worse than you or I am; none of us are perfect. My house was burglarized not long ago, and even though I forgive the burglar (I could have taken personal vengeance), I'm glad he went to jail. That's probably wrong of me, but I'm not perfect. I can only try my best.
I think probably the worst sin I ever committed was being part of the government war machine in the Air Force during Vietnam, even though I only hauled ground equipment to the B-52s and didn't personally kill anyone, I was an accomplice. I helped kill. That was wrong of me.
No, I'm not painting Christians with a broad brush -- I am one myself. I'm not perfect, far from it, but I don't scream "hang him" as so many do. The ones who bomb abortion clinics and call for the death penalty give the rest of us a bad name. So do the ones who go to church on Sunday and evict an out of work family on Monday. There are far too many of them, and not nearly enough of us.
The worst, I think, are the "gay bashers", especially the ones (some you alluded to in your comment) who later turn out to be adulterors -- adultery is one of the "big ten", far worse than homosexuality. Newt Gingrich is another, he's an especially bad hypocrite, chastising Clinton for adultery when he was doing the same thing under worse circumstances (his wife was dying of cancer) and saying he did it out of patriotism.
Some are indeed saints. I remember a news story a long time ago about a woman who visited the man who murdered her son to tell him that she forgave him for it. I remember thinking "now THERE'S a good Christian!" It changed the murderer's life, he's a preacher now. I can't hold a candle to that woman, she's a far better Christian than I am.
Most people don't use computers at work (What's up with google? I just searched "most populated vocation" and it gives me results on popular vacations, most populated dioces, vanada vacations, scotland vacations... gees, I never thought I'd say this but maybe I should google using bing? Google seems to be catering to illiterate morons). At any rate, construction workers, retail workers, warehouse workers, factory workers, pilots, drivers, etc do NOT have desktop computers at work, or even desks to put them on.
Most of us in the tech fields (no, I have no citation and could be wrong) don't use Windows at home. People who use Windows are people who use the OS that came with the computer and understand nothing to little about their computers, and hardcore gamers. I'm guessing you're a gamer, or a Microsoft employee.
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I have XP boxes in the field that are 9 years old without fail and the ONLY thing they've needed from me is the occasional hardware upgrade. I have Win2K boxes even older that are now being used in a kid's room or in a basement after being rotated out of the office. Again they work just fine, completely updated from RTM to final update rollout, no driver issues.
When my daughter innocently installed XCP on my computer from a music CD she'd bought at the record store she worked in, it hosed the machine completely. It destroyed all the P2P software (which I used to share/download indie music) and the CD burning software, and a lot of other perfectly legal software (like recording software; XCP wasn't about piracy, it was about ruining independant musicians' recording and burning abilities) I couldn't find the original driver disks for the video card or audio chip, so I went to the manufacturers' web sites to download drivers, and there weren't any for 98. So I had to buy XP just to get drivers for my hardware.
Installing XP was a pain in the ass. I had to babysit it, clicking choices once every three or four minutes and rebooting I don't know how many times. Never mind putting in that damned antipiracy code. I was used to this; I'd gone through the same hassle upgrading from 95 to 98.
After installing the drivers from the disks that came with the hardware, and reinstalling all my software (an afternoon's work) everything worked except the CD burning software. Windows gave me a message every single time I booted saying that the software was unstable (it was the software that came with the burner). It wouldn't let me uninstall the software. I went to the burner's web site, which wanted to sell me new burning software. Windows informed me it needed updates, so I let it update, shut it off ane went to bed, figuring I'd reinstall Windows yet again the next day after checking my email.
The next morning the cablemodem was on the floor and itwouldn't get on the internet. I figured that the cat had knocked it off and broken it, so I called Insight, my ISP at the time. They said they could see the modem so I must have a bad network card. I tried a few cables first, thinking maybe when the modem hit the floor one of the connectors had broken, but it was a no-go. I planned on buying a new network card (they're only about ten bucks) and reinstalled Windows to get rid of the annoying "we have disabled your CD burning software" message every damned time I booted, and lo and behold the internet worked again!
Windows had replaced a perfectly good network driver with one that didn't work at all!
So the next thing I did was dig out the old Mandriva disks and installed it dual boot. Half an hour, where Windows had taken all afternoon. And everything worked except the S-video output.
So you see, I had the same issues with Windows that you have with Linux; I completely understand your frustration.
How many forum hunts have you had to do to find driver fixes in the last couple of years?
Driver issues used to drive me crazy five years ago (Mandriva and Suse), especially with the video driver. My card has an S-video out that always worked in Windows with the PC plugged into the TV but it put garbage on the TV screen in Suse and Mandriva. But in the last few years I have yet to have updates break anything, and the TV is happily displaying the computer output.
I've been using kubuntu, and my main rig is cobbled together from junk parts (which may be why I have no driver issues with it, they've had time to get the drivers working on the older parts), but the (sadly stolen) new netbook that came with Win 7 ran fine under kubuntu. Actually it ran better with kubuntu than Windows. I had a hell of a time trying to find how to shut off the retarded "tap to click" so called "feature" in the netbook under Windows, but it was brain-dead simple in kubuntu.
I have to agree with you about Linus and the ABIs.
Before you trash the old PCs, see if kubuntu works on them; it's a shame to waste hardware. Only takes maybe a half hour to install, and unlike a Windows installation you just boot it from CD, make a few choices, and walk away from it while it installs and configures.
I suspect that the problem with drivers in Linux may be that the card manufacturers give Linux no respect, so somebody without the tech specs has to hack new drivers blind. I can see where it would tale a while.
Linux is the Rodney Dangerfield of operating systems!
Just clicked on your web site and saw the photo of your cat, Shadow. I have a cat (well, my oldest daughter has him now) named Shadow that looks EXACTLY like your Shadow. Well, my Shadow is older but he looked like yours a few years ago (Leila says he's gotten fat).
Also, my name's Steve, too! (Named after the saint that was stoned)
I'd have posted this comment on your site if you didn't require registration, so my apologies to slashdotters I may have annoyed with this offtopic comment. Checking the "no bonus" boxes, if anyone wants to mod this down please feel free, it should be -1 as it's aimed at only one slashdotter.
BTW, Steve, you may find some or even most of my journals offensive. especially the earlier ones tat deal with hookers. If you're ok with profanity here's some science fiction:
We still haven't found extraforgostnic life
Hadron Destroyers
Little Green Men
The Death of Two Protohumans
No one abuses fish? How about A Fish Called Wanda or Total Recall? Any animal can be abused. But you don't have to buy an animal to abuse it.
This legislation makes me think LSD is making a comeback. Sounds like the whole damned city is one big nuthouse. I sure wouldn't want to live in such a tightly regulated town.
I was in a hurricane in Delaware when I was starioned at Dover in the USAF (1971 or 2, don't remember). Journaled about it here. Also, even though I've never heard of a tsunami hitting the Atlantic, that's possible, too.
Levitican law told the Israelites to kill people for many sins
I think Jesus changed that one when they were going to stone the adultress, and he said "let he who is without sin cast the first stone."
Why is it that you feel this would be wrong?
I'm not really sure. It's hard to explain one's feelings, especially when you don't really understand those feelings yourself. Maybe I'm an Asimov robot :)
You can make that "You have met at least a single one who isn't appalled by the idea."
Thanks, I don't feel so alone now.
I would also suggest that Osama Bin Laden or similar individuals might make an even better example. If he had repented to God and stopped what he was doing and surrendered I would have expected him to still pay the civil penalty for his actions, but I believe that he would have gone to heaven if he had repented and at least think that I would have been able to even be friends with him given the opportunity if he was genuinely repentant. (After all Paul was effectively the Bin Laden of his day when he was Saul and he went on to be one of the pivotal leaders of the early church.)
Very true. Most folks either havent read the part whare Saul's job was killing people, but it's actually one of my favorite stories in the Bible. Job is another, it's gotten me through a lot of hard times.
It doesn't seem we disagree on any critical issues
We certainly agree about that. You're the first person I've ever heard of that thinks McVeigh is in heaven.
Except Enoch ;)
I take the "Enoch walked faithfully with God; then he was no more, because God took him away" to mean that Enoch died. But again, that's open to one's own interpretation.
Hmmm, in that situation I probably could kill... but I would hate to be in such a situation.
He'll have to build a time machine first, since they did away with welfare in the US back in 1996 when they enacted PWORA. Besides, welfare didn't pay shit.
Well, it won't help me any; I use kubuntu and have no MS programs at all (although ten years ago I was on Windows at home, and before about 1995 was on DOS). Too bad I have to use MS at work...
Perhaps, perhaps not. I don't know whether or not homosexuality is wrong, and really don't care. As to my take on Christianity, my grandmother gave me a "red letter edition" of the King James Bible where Jesus' words are printed in red ink. IMO this is the important part of the Bible, and I can find no fault in any of them. Whether or not you believe in God or Jesus, his teachings make sense. If everyone lived like that (and yes, it's nearly impossible, especially in this world) it would be a far better place to live.
Ghandi (a Hindu if I'm not mistaken) once famously said "I don't like Christians, but I like Christ". Those are also words of wisdom.
how can it be ok for God to instruct one people to go to war but then say it is outside the legitimate authority of nation states to decide to go to war without being morally wrong?
I see it like this: If I write a program I have the right to erase that program, as well as the right to write another program to erase or modify that program, and if the second program fails at its task I'll be annoyed. You and I are to God what a computer program we write is to us. If the first program is buggy I'm surely going to want to delete it using any tools I wish, including other tools I've written.
God never told Bush to invade Iraq (and I'm not sure that Bush isn't just pretending to be a Christian; I'm pretty sure Gingrich is just pretending to be a Christian, but it isn't up to me to judge; they'll stand before God some day). The passage you cite says taxation is moral (so why are these "Christian" tea partiers so against taxes?) but I don't see anywhere that anybody is given the right to kill.
I'm pretty sure I couldn't kill to save myself, but I'm not so sure I could refrain from killing to protect my children, even though it would be wrong. Plus, the sin of killing is, in fact, forgiven, just as any other sin is.
I have another objection to the death penalty that not only isn't based on morality, but may be immoral in itself. You don't know when you're going to die, or how you're going to die. You could suffer a stroke or a heart attack in the next five minutes. You could be killed in a car accident on your way to work tomorrow. And when you do die, it's most likely going to be horrrible; from a heart attack, or cancer, or Alzheimer's, or bleeding to death from a gunshot or accident, drowning, fire, etc. Few die painlesslessly in their sleep. It's not likely to be pleasant.
The condemned murderer knows the exact time he's going to die, and has a chance to repent the murder. You won't. And when he does die, he'll be humanely and painlesslesly put to death, like a beloved dog you have to euthanize. I say let him rot in prison until God takes him. Like I said, that's probably an immoral view.
When I tell Christians that Timothy McVeigh is probably in heaven, I have yet to meet a single one who isn't appalled at the idea. They're sure he went straight to hell, but McVeigh was a devout Catholic who had a chance to repent and confess his horrible deeds before he was executed. Hell, Christ prayed for God's forgiveness for the people who tortured him to death, as you surely know.
It is also worth noting that when Peter cut off the ear of the servant, the reason given was that it was time for Jesus to be taken, not that it was wrong to defend yourself.
I don't have a bible in front of me right now, but in one of the other four accounts that John omits, Jesus performed another miracle by putting the ear back on and healing it. "He who lives by the sword, dies by the sword". That is the passage (and I couldn't tell you what chapter and verse, again, I don't have my Bible with me) that says self-defense is wrong.
(For that matter, if Jesus believed that self defense was wrong, why did he even permit Peter to be carrying a sword in the first place?) [John 18:10-11]
I have no answer to that. I guess I have some Bible study to do tonight.
Even if the reasons for going in to the conflict were wrong, the Bible is fairly clear that it is the leaders that are held accountable for that since the individuals can not know what the reason the leader has are and it is within that leader's Biblically established authority to give the direction to go to war.
I'm no longer conflicted about my role; my guilty conscience and repentance (let alone God's grace and Jesus' sacrifice for me) pretty much says I'm not going to have to pay for it; nevertheless, it was wrong. I wasn't drafted, and in fact my lottery number pretty much guranteed I wouldn't have been. I really feel bad for the poor guys who had to suffer the actual horrors of killing someone dire
A virus can contain a rootkit, but a rootkit isn't a virus. And Windows is far easier to root than any other OS (even if MS is getting better at it). It isn't easy to root Linux remotely (although if you have physical access it's fairly easy to pwn).
Sure, I'll run it in a VM hosted on Linux, but no way would I rely on it for my every day computing needs on the bare metal. Fucking garbage without any kind of cogent security system is what Windows is.
MS is aptly named. From wikipedia:
Yep, sounds like MicroSoft to me!
No, if someone's the sort of person who gets a trojan an antivirus won't save them. A true virus (or a worm) needs no human intervention, only a poorly written OS or app. AV protects you from careless programmers (if the virus is in the AV's library), not your own cluelessness.
Have you seen the masthead of this site? "News for nerds". Nerd is no longer a pejoritive term. I, for one, am proud to be a nerd.
On the contrary, we've always been appreciated, even if we were often ostracized and laughed at for being smart (and often socialy awkward). Back in the analog days when there was no such thing as a "computer geek" and the terms were interchangeable (late 1960s), I'd hack ten dollar transistor radios into $200 guitar fuzzboxes using a dollar's worth of parts and a little solder. I assure you I was greatly appreciated. Likewise when I'd repair a friend's amplifier for them I was appreciated. These days we're appreciated for cleaning viruses out of clueless friends' computers and replacing malfunctioning hard drives.
A big problem I have with the popular press, particularly the non-nerd press, is their taking OUR language and perverting it. There is no such thing as a history geek. Such an individual is a wonk, not a geek. A geek is a computer guy, a guy who builds, programs, hacks computers.
A nerd is a science or engineering guy. One can be both a nerd and a geek at the same time.
I'm especially galled by calling people who break into computer systems "hackers". A hacker is someone who writes quick and dirty code to get a job done quickly, or someone who modifies hardware to make it do things it wasn't originally designed to do. Turning a transistor radio into a guitar fuzzbox is hacking. Making an X-Box run Linux is hacking. Writing security software is hacking. Using that software that someone else wrote to break into someone else's system isn't hacking, and the people who do it aren't hackers, they're "script kiddies".
For a beauty pageant winner to call herself a "geek" is an insult to us geeks, unless she's actually proficient with computers. Does she know what a logic gate does, or even is? Does she know a nand from a nor? Has she even heard of either term? If not, then she's no geek (and neither are the two digit IQ normtards at the geek squad).
A "dork" is a nerd without the IQ.
Someone in this thread (I saw it this morning before I came to work but can't find the comment now) said that you're born with beauty but intelligence is acquired; what a crock of shit! Like the old saying goes, you can fix ignorance but there's no cure for stupid. Nobody with a measured IQ of 110 is going to become a George Smoot (now there's a nerd)! Intelligence is the ability to learn, understand, and solve problems. Nerds and geeks have both intelligence and creativity; you need both to hack, or to come up with a new theory of particle physics.
Intelligence and beauty are both transitory. I'm getting older, and it takes more effort to both learn and solve problems than it did when I was young. And when you get older, you're far less attractive. And both intelligence and beauty can vanish in a flash -- if Doctor Smoot were to suffer brain damage in an auto accident, bye bye cosmologist. If that beauty queen got her face torn off by a pit bull, bye bye beauty queen.
I see at slashdot a lot of geek/nerd wannabes. It makes me proud to be a real one.
I haven't had my coffee yet and don't have a bible in front of me, but Christ is quoted in at least 3 of the 4 first books of the New Testament that breaking the first commandment was the only sin that you won't be forgiven for.
There are a lot of "sins" weren't called sins by God, but were edicts from the Jewish church elders.
And to my mind, Moses' ten commandments are the most important, and all of them are summed up by Jesus' two commandments "Love God above all else, and love your neighbor as you love yourself". That right there is Christianity in a nutshell.
I used to be a gamer, when I was I ran Linux dual-boot and only booted into Windows to play games. These days I don't have any MS software at all, although I'm forced to put up with it at work.
MS has a hilarious name; same initials as Multiple Sclerosis (which does pretty much to the human body what Windows does to a computer). I used to joke that MicroSoft is the only company named after its founder's penis.
From Wikipedia: Multiple sclerosis (abbreviated MS, also known as disseminated sclerosis or encephalomyelitis disseminata) is an inflammatory disease in which the fatty myelin sheaths around the axons of the brain and spinal cord are damaged, leading to demyelination and scarring as well as a broad spectrum of signs and symptoms
Sounds like Windows to me!
I hope you're logged in and just hit the "ac" button, because like another poster you made the mistaken assumption I'm an athiest. I'm not. I'm saying when I go to church, half the congregation (or more) love money more than they love God.
My own church is doing tremendous charity work, both here in Springfield and in Africa (link)
I'm priveledged to have Eddie Lowen as my pastor; he's the best preacher I've ever heard in my 59 years on earth (he gets the congregation laughing, he could have been a stand up comedian). I was baptised at WSCC.
Don't take my comment as bashing Christians, take it as a call to look closely at yourself.
Jesus, you're EXACTLY what I was talking about. Quick to anger, quick to judge. I'm not an athiest, you hypocrite, I was in church yesterday morning and Eddie (my preacher) made some of the same points as I just did in my post.
It's not about how much money you make, it's about WORSHIPING money. The bible doesn't say money is the root of all evil, it says the LOVE OF MONEY is the root of all evil. "Thou shalt have no other gods before me" and brother, if you worship money you're worse than an athiest; that little green god makes you a heathen whether you think you're Christian or not.
Now read your bible and stop jumping to conclusions.
You can try. Christians aren't perfect, just forgiven. But, you kow, you SHOULD feel bad about your shortcomings. The only people with clear consciences, Christian or not, are sociopaths who have no conscience.
God never said "thou shalt not imprison for life". The whole point of "love your enemies" is they are no worse than you or I am; none of us are perfect. My house was burglarized not long ago, and even though I forgive the burglar (I could have taken personal vengeance), I'm glad he went to jail. That's probably wrong of me, but I'm not perfect. I can only try my best.
I think probably the worst sin I ever committed was being part of the government war machine in the Air Force during Vietnam, even though I only hauled ground equipment to the B-52s and didn't personally kill anyone, I was an accomplice. I helped kill. That was wrong of me.
No, I'm not painting Christians with a broad brush -- I am one myself. I'm not perfect, far from it, but I don't scream "hang him" as so many do. The ones who bomb abortion clinics and call for the death penalty give the rest of us a bad name. So do the ones who go to church on Sunday and evict an out of work family on Monday. There are far too many of them, and not nearly enough of us.
The worst, I think, are the "gay bashers", especially the ones (some you alluded to in your comment) who later turn out to be adulterors -- adultery is one of the "big ten", far worse than homosexuality. Newt Gingrich is another, he's an especially bad hypocrite, chastising Clinton for adultery when he was doing the same thing under worse circumstances (his wife was dying of cancer) and saying he did it out of patriotism.
Some are indeed saints. I remember a news story a long time ago about a woman who visited the man who murdered her son to tell him that she forgave him for it. I remember thinking "now THERE'S a good Christian!" It changed the murderer's life, he's a preacher now. I can't hold a candle to that woman, she's a far better Christian than I am.
You're forgitting (at least) two things:
Most people don't use computers at work (What's up with google? I just searched "most populated vocation" and it gives me results on popular vacations, most populated dioces, vanada vacations, scotland vacations... gees, I never thought I'd say this but maybe I should google using bing? Google seems to be catering to illiterate morons). At any rate, construction workers, retail workers, warehouse workers, factory workers, pilots, drivers, etc do NOT have desktop computers at work, or even desks to put them on.
Most of us in the tech fields (no, I have no citation and could be wrong) don't use Windows at home. People who use Windows are people who use the OS that came with the computer and understand nothing to little about their computers, and hardcore gamers. I'm guessing you're a gamer, or a Microsoft employee.