On the contrary--even if the Mormon Church maintains some control over what is taught at BYU, this says nothing with regard to whether the Church controls what is taught to its members. This is true because members of the Church are not required only to learn from these potentially "restricted" BYU professors. Members of the Mormon Church can attend whatever college they feel like. And you'll find that many Mormons have graduated from Harvard, MIT, and other schools that have no relationship with the Mormon Church. Additionally, even BYU students, with these supposedly "restricted" professors have full access to outside sources of information. For example, any Mormon is free to read and have discussions on Slashdot, read anti-Mormon materials, attend a Baptist Church, or whatever else without repurcussions.
One additional note--whether or not BYU's religion department likes it, BYU's zoology and biology departments teach evolution. So it isn't like BYU's producing a bunch of Mike Huckabees.
That's an interesting definition for "cult." Do a Google definition search for cult("define:cult") to see how varied the supposed definitions for cult are. My favorite was "A religious group which denies the essential doctrines of Christianity." I enjoyed it because it presupposes that there are some doctrines that Christian religions across the board beleive are "the essential doctrines of Christianity." Note also that this definition makes Judaism a cult. Heck--even atheism falls within this definition.
The most accurate definition in that list, in my opinion, is: "The word cult is a derogatory term used to express disapproval or those who hold beliefs other than one's own."
This is certainly the manner in which "cult" is used in the parent post.
Some other notes about the parent post:
A cult "Keeps true beliefs secret from recruits . . . "
I don't know much about Moonies, Scientology, or the Salvation Army, but I do know quite a bit about Mormonism. Here are my thoughts applying this to Mormonism, though I think it could easily apply to any other religious sect.
(1) People say, "you are Mormon--that means you believe [for example] 'Satan is Jesus' brother.'" But how can you say that person beleives that. All that means is that you heard that some Mormon taught that once somewhere, it means nothing for that individual's personal beleifs. You can't keep a person's true beliefs secret from that person. You can keep a religious leader's beliefs secret from his followers, but that doesn't mean those secret beliefs are the beliefs of his followers (secretly, somehow, without them even knowing it).
(2) Where do antagonists to Mormonism find these "secret" Mormon beliefs anyway? Who lets the secret out? Is it still a secret afterward? With regard to Mormonism, I can tell you where--people like to take stuff out of context from the Journal of Discourses. Then people say "did you know that you believe [fill in the blank with something weird]?" Whether or not I believe that "doctrine," it's hard to call the Journal of Discourses secret. It's out of copyright and freely available in full online. And if you want to find the juicy parts, just ask any anti-Mormon where to find them.
So, I disagree with the parent. I do have my own little definition for what I think of as a "cult." I try to be open-minded about what people may believe, and I get on peoples' cases when they speak badly of Judaism in general or Islam or whatever. However, I have a difficult time keeping my mind open to religions that require its members to close their minds. For example, if a religion requires that its followers not view media (newspapers, internet, TV news, etc.), or if learning about another religion (from outside sources) is viewed with disfavor, or if they discourage learning through normal routes (school, college), then I tend to believe that religion is afraid it will lose members to teachings more in line with that individual's beliefs if that person were allowed to look around--or in other words, forcing closed-mindedness implies that the closed religion is lacking something important and doesn't want its members to find out.
Mormonism doesn't fall into this category, but I really can't speak for those other groups because I don't know much about them.
Yeah, perhaps these things have "failed to take-off in the US" because we don't know they exist. I think there are plenty of people out there without TiVos considering purchasing a DVR, who would consider buying a TV with an integrated DVR--but only if they know they exist. You can't blame the popularity of TiVo if there has been marketing of the alternative!
Yes--diamond can have a property called total internal relfection. This happens when light that enters the diamond is refracted to such a high degree that it just reflects back into itself. A diamond cut properly maximizes this ability. This makes the diamond appear very sparkly. The mathemetician may have failed to take this important property into account.
Diamond it not, however, the only substance that can do total internal reflection. So who knows.
The problem is that most of their stuff never sees the light of day. I entirely agree with this. The funny thing, though, is that the page you link to has written in large print on top: "turning ideas into reality."
You can add one more thing to make your system even better. Sign up for Google's (free) Grand Central service. Put your cell phone and your landline on the service. When someone calls your Grand Central phone number (you can choose a phone number in any area code), both your phones will ring. You can choose which phone you want to answer. And if you're mid-conversation and want to switch phones (say, you just walked in your house and want to switch to your home phone; or you are just leaving and want to switch to the cell), you just press * and the other phone will ring, you pick the other phone up and continue the conversation like nothing happened, and hang up the phone you were originally on.
Then you can switch to a cell plan with far fewer minutes and your total communications cost is lower (because you can take calls on and switch calls to your home phone. Switching a call to your home phone is an inbound call, so it should be free).
Truthfully, I really like the service, though I got it for a different reason--my wife and I have cell phones in different area codes, and we don't live in either of those area codes. So I got a local Grand Central number for our local friends to call. Also, it makes it so I can call my wife from work (where I have bad cell reception) without calling long distance.
Supposedly this is due to the way MS integrated major parts of Office into the operating system. Half of the necessary parts of Office are already running before you turn it on. It makes Windows take more memory in general, but it sure makes programs seem to open faster.
Compare Office 2007 to OOo, on the other hand. Office 2007 is pretty darn slow to open (actually about the same as OOo, which also takes a long time).
As for gedit compared to notepad, there's a lot more to gedit than there is to notepad. I actually kind of like the simplicity of notepad, though, since it is instantaneous, but gedit isn't slow enough to make me worry.
As for FF, it really isn't faster on Windows than on Linux in my experience.
It's their job to help people get connected to the internet from the dorms, to check and send email, log into some online systems, etc. They don't normally help people repair personal hosed machines. This may be true at most schools. At our school, however, the majority of students purchase their computers (we have a choice of three Dells) through the school with a three year service contract--with the first level of service provided by that IT office. After that office has determined they can't fix a problem (i.e., reinstalling Windows didn't work) then they send the computer to Dell and provide us with a loaner.
So, given the specific circumstances at my school, I think the IT personnel should be given a tutorial on the tools available in the recovery console. I think they should also be taught how to hook up the hard drive of the problematic computer to a functional computer as an external hard drive for data recovery prior to reformatting (the funny thing is, they have the tools, just not the know-how).
I agree. There are lots of IT people out there who are actually skilled, but there are tons who think the IT title imputes knowledge on them somehow.
I went to my school's IT department because I messed up my MBR installing Ubuntu and needed to borrow the Windows install CD so I could run fixmbr in the recovery console. He had no idea what this so-called "recovery console" on the install CD was and had never heard of this "fixmbr" program. So I sat in his office and fixed my computer, but I couldn't help wondering how he rose to IT support. That's when I realized why so many students were complaining about losing all their data after taking their computer to tech support--their solution to every problem is "reinstall Windows" because they don't know how to actually fix the problem!
Compare that to the 1-4GB sticks that most of us have on our keychains today. Perhaps that's true in this crowd I guess. (though I keep mine in my wallet, which is funny, instead of a round outline, you can see a little rectangle)
For those of you who don't already know, try searching in Google:
What is the answer to life, the universe, and everything? It will answer it just like it does math problems or conversions.:)
1) It seems to me that, given the fact that statutory damages in copyright infringement claims, are allowed in place of actual damages in instances in which actual damages cannot actually be calculated--the statutory damages are an attempt by Congress to estimate the likely actual damages caused to the plaintiff. In this case, that amount seems to be on the side of outragiously overestimating actual damages.
2) The DOJ argues that a damage of the high award is mitigated by the fact that no one knows how many other people accessed the songs made available by the defendant. This bothers me because it basically states that it is ok to collect damages that were not properly proven (which is obviously not ok).
the government cannot have rights that individuals do not According to your reasoning the goverment does not have the right to take property for public purposes, institute a tax, or do anything else that the government is allowed to do with proper due process. Individuals have no rights to perform the listed acts, but the government was clearly provided these rights by the founding fathers.
Given the terrible logic found in your reply, I am inclined to think you gave an improper assessment of John Paul's position of privacy and the Constitution. He likely takes a more logical position than the one you provided above. If this is not the case, then I really don't want to vote for him.
After reading your post I pulled up a searchable copy of the full text of the US Constitution and Bill of Rights. I did a search on "privacy" and all I got was the link to the privacy policy of the website--the word is apparently not found in the Constitution.
The only thing I could find in the document that seems to make any sense whatsoever of your statement is the 4th Amendment to the Constitution regarding unreasonable search and seizure. I suppose it may apply if a person's email etc sitting on someone else's servers could be interpreted as an extension of a person's "papers" and "effects." My understanding is that it currently takes a court order to get at these materials, just like it takes a court order to get at non-virtual "papers" and "effects."
So I guess I don't understand how a candidate's supposed "belief" in the Constitution would cause him to apply some heightened level of protection to virtual "papers" and "effects" housed on a server owned by some third party in California. That would be above the requirements of the Constitution--such laws would be constitutional, but I don't see where you get your interpretation that the Constitution requires such a level of privacy.
I think what you meant to say is that you think Ron Paul is the candidate who would support going above and beyond the call of the Constitution when it comes to Internet privacy, supporting the tradition of the Internet being a "place" in which users may remain anonymous.
I'm not entirely sure that Ron Paul would verbally support such a position if you ask him--the problem with it is that it would sound like he supports making the Internet a haven for criminals. That, of course, would find support only with the minority of the populous.
I'm not sure it would draw less power, but I was trying to think of every possible thing to save battery for the ride. My thinking was that RAM chips require power to retain memory, so remembering more stuff might require more power.
I also shut off every unused and unnecessary program and service, whether or not it appeared they were using any CPU. I also dimmed the screen all they way and had it turn itself off after three minutes of nonuse (not surprisingly, this seemed to do more to save power than anything else)--I don't have a computer that lets me play music with the lid closed.
I don't believe this is only IE--when I listen to music on my computer on an airplane, I minimize the music program because it uses less memory, and therefore less battery (from my tests, Winamp Lite minimized uses the least RAM when minimized of all the players I tested. It was better than Foobar and mplayer, etc).
In fact, I just tried the same thing with Opera--it dropped from 60,000 to 11,000.
I don't think it's an estimate--I think the program really uses less RAM when minimized.
I think the reason is pretty obvious. The state keeps half the money people spend on lottery tickets (more than half according to another comment above--I don't actually know the exact percentage), whereas the private poker house doesn't give anything to the state. So yeah, you're right it's the states' desire to keep their stanglehold on gambling. Note that in Nevada, where gambling is legal, the stanglehold is just as strong. You didn't think the casinos kept all that money did you? Funny thing, it just goes to show how dumb it is to gamble--casinos rip people off of enough money to pay a huge chumk of it to the state and still have plenty left over to build build frilly over-the-top gold palaces and pay their executives millions.
I don't think merely donating or heavily discounting Windows would do the job if the government was "sold" as the open and custonizability aspect of Mandriva. I think the cost to Nigeria for Windows would have to be negative to get them to pay for and ship Mandriva and then pay the cost of replacing Mandriva with Windows. By this I mean that it seems to me that the only way for this to make economic sense is for Microsoft to cover the cost of Mandriva, the cost of a replacement, and then add something for incentive to replace Mandriva at all. (that last part we call a bribe)
The bottom of the screenshot shows some type of application launcher or something. Does anyone know what that is exactly? I'm still looking for something stable to work as my "RKLauncher" for my Ubuntu setup.
There are Palm-syncing programs in Ubuntu. One I "gnow" of is gnome-pilot. I'm not sure whether it works in an enlightenment environment, but wouldn't be surprised if it does.
As for printing, I had to adjust no settings in Ubuntu 7.10 to print. It just worked.
I think it's funny I got modded down for this--the guy's statement was just silly!
He said he got the iphone the day it came out. That means he waited in line for the phone for hours/days(? depending on his location) and paid $600 for the phone that he may have even had to switch carriers just to use (unlocking software wasn't available yet)! And he said he did all this with the mindset that the phone would be "just a phone"! I guess I just don't have the same amount of time and money to throw around as this guy or the modders do. All I know is that looking at this guy's statement in the context of history (lines, expensive, he already had a phone) his statement is absurd.
Additionally, this system would be biased against the lower class and against the elderly--people without easy access to the internet or without sufficient knowledge of computers would not be well represented here. The system would also be biased against non-tech savvy people in general (beyond just the elderly) but that doesn't matter because there will be plenty of more tech savvy voters with similar views and demographics. What matters is the group that is largely computer illiterate that doesn't have a computer literate counterpart, and the group consisting of impovershed people who cannot afford computers. To make up for this you would need to elect a person that would represent those people who cannot represent themselves...wait, I've seen that system somewhere before.
Slashdot Mirror
On the contrary--even if the Mormon Church maintains some control over what is taught at BYU, this says nothing with regard to whether the Church controls what is taught to its members. This is true because members of the Church are not required only to learn from these potentially "restricted" BYU professors. Members of the Mormon Church can attend whatever college they feel like. And you'll find that many Mormons have graduated from Harvard, MIT, and other schools that have no relationship with the Mormon Church. Additionally, even BYU students, with these supposedly "restricted" professors have full access to outside sources of information. For example, any Mormon is free to read and have discussions on Slashdot, read anti-Mormon materials, attend a Baptist Church, or whatever else without repurcussions.
One additional note--whether or not BYU's religion department likes it, BYU's zoology and biology departments teach evolution. So it isn't like BYU's producing a bunch of Mike Huckabees.
That's an interesting definition for "cult." Do a Google definition search for cult("define:cult") to see how varied the supposed definitions for cult are. My favorite was "A religious group which denies the essential doctrines of Christianity." I enjoyed it because it presupposes that there are some doctrines that Christian religions across the board beleive are "the essential doctrines of Christianity." Note also that this definition makes Judaism a cult. Heck--even atheism falls within this definition.
The most accurate definition in that list, in my opinion, is: "The word cult is a derogatory term used to express disapproval or those who hold beliefs other than one's own."
This is certainly the manner in which "cult" is used in the parent post.
Some other notes about the parent post:
A cult "Keeps true beliefs secret from recruits . . . "
I don't know much about Moonies, Scientology, or the Salvation Army, but I do know quite a bit about Mormonism. Here are my thoughts applying this to Mormonism, though I think it could easily apply to any other religious sect.
(1) People say, "you are Mormon--that means you believe [for example] 'Satan is Jesus' brother.'" But how can you say that person beleives that. All that means is that you heard that some Mormon taught that once somewhere, it means nothing for that individual's personal beleifs. You can't keep a person's true beliefs secret from that person. You can keep a religious leader's beliefs secret from his followers, but that doesn't mean those secret beliefs are the beliefs of his followers (secretly, somehow, without them even knowing it).
(2) Where do antagonists to Mormonism find these "secret" Mormon beliefs anyway? Who lets the secret out? Is it still a secret afterward? With regard to Mormonism, I can tell you where--people like to take stuff out of context from the Journal of Discourses. Then people say "did you know that you believe [fill in the blank with something weird]?" Whether or not I believe that "doctrine," it's hard to call the Journal of Discourses secret. It's out of copyright and freely available in full online. And if you want to find the juicy parts, just ask any anti-Mormon where to find them.
So, I disagree with the parent. I do have my own little definition for what I think of as a "cult." I try to be open-minded about what people may believe, and I get on peoples' cases when they speak badly of Judaism in general or Islam or whatever. However, I have a difficult time keeping my mind open to religions that require its members to close their minds. For example, if a religion requires that its followers not view media (newspapers, internet, TV news, etc.), or if learning about another religion (from outside sources) is viewed with disfavor, or if they discourage learning through normal routes (school, college), then I tend to believe that religion is afraid it will lose members to teachings more in line with that individual's beliefs if that person were allowed to look around--or in other words, forcing closed-mindedness implies that the closed religion is lacking something important and doesn't want its members to find out.
Mormonism doesn't fall into this category, but I really can't speak for those other groups because I don't know much about them.
Yeah, perhaps these things have "failed to take-off in the US" because we don't know they exist. I think there are plenty of people out there without TiVos considering purchasing a DVR, who would consider buying a TV with an integrated DVR--but only if they know they exist. You can't blame the popularity of TiVo if there has been marketing of the alternative!
Yes--diamond can have a property called total internal relfection. This happens when light that enters the diamond is refracted to such a high degree that it just reflects back into itself. A diamond cut properly maximizes this ability. This makes the diamond appear very sparkly. The mathemetician may have failed to take this important property into account.
Diamond it not, however, the only substance that can do total internal reflection. So who knows.
[mod self up]
You can add one more thing to make your system even better. Sign up for Google's (free) Grand Central service. Put your cell phone and your landline on the service. When someone calls your Grand Central phone number (you can choose a phone number in any area code), both your phones will ring. You can choose which phone you want to answer. And if you're mid-conversation and want to switch phones (say, you just walked in your house and want to switch to your home phone; or you are just leaving and want to switch to the cell), you just press * and the other phone will ring, you pick the other phone up and continue the conversation like nothing happened, and hang up the phone you were originally on.
Then you can switch to a cell plan with far fewer minutes and your total communications cost is lower (because you can take calls on and switch calls to your home phone. Switching a call to your home phone is an inbound call, so it should be free).
Truthfully, I really like the service, though I got it for a different reason--my wife and I have cell phones in different area codes, and we don't live in either of those area codes. So I got a local Grand Central number for our local friends to call. Also, it makes it so I can call my wife from work (where I have bad cell reception) without calling long distance.
Supposedly this is due to the way MS integrated major parts of Office into the operating system. Half of the necessary parts of Office are already running before you turn it on. It makes Windows take more memory in general, but it sure makes programs seem to open faster.
Compare Office 2007 to OOo, on the other hand. Office 2007 is pretty darn slow to open (actually about the same as OOo, which also takes a long time).
As for gedit compared to notepad, there's a lot more to gedit than there is to notepad. I actually kind of like the simplicity of notepad, though, since it is instantaneous, but gedit isn't slow enough to make me worry.
As for FF, it really isn't faster on Windows than on Linux in my experience.
So, given the specific circumstances at my school, I think the IT personnel should be given a tutorial on the tools available in the recovery console. I think they should also be taught how to hook up the hard drive of the problematic computer to a functional computer as an external hard drive for data recovery prior to reformatting (the funny thing is, they have the tools, just not the know-how).
I agree. There are lots of IT people out there who are actually skilled, but there are tons who think the IT title imputes knowledge on them somehow.
I went to my school's IT department because I messed up my MBR installing Ubuntu and needed to borrow the Windows install CD so I could run fixmbr in the recovery console. He had no idea what this so-called "recovery console" on the install CD was and had never heard of this "fixmbr" program. So I sat in his office and fixed my computer, but I couldn't help wondering how he rose to IT support. That's when I realized why so many students were complaining about losing all their data after taking their computer to tech support--their solution to every problem is "reinstall Windows" because they don't know how to actually fix the problem!
That's exactly what I have! I'm sad to see that it's becoming hard to find. I hope mine lasts (I've had it for quite some time now)
Two things.
1) It seems to me that, given the fact that statutory damages in copyright infringement claims, are allowed in place of actual damages in instances in which actual damages cannot actually be calculated--the statutory damages are an attempt by Congress to estimate the likely actual damages caused to the plaintiff. In this case, that amount seems to be on the side of outragiously overestimating actual damages.
2) The DOJ argues that a damage of the high award is mitigated by the fact that no one knows how many other people accessed the songs made available by the defendant. This bothers me because it basically states that it is ok to collect damages that were not properly proven (which is obviously not ok).
Given the terrible logic found in your reply, I am inclined to think you gave an improper assessment of John Paul's position of privacy and the Constitution. He likely takes a more logical position than the one you provided above. If this is not the case, then I really don't want to vote for him.
After reading your post I pulled up a searchable copy of the full text of the US Constitution and Bill of Rights. I did a search on "privacy" and all I got was the link to the privacy policy of the website--the word is apparently not found in the Constitution.
The only thing I could find in the document that seems to make any sense whatsoever of your statement is the 4th Amendment to the Constitution regarding unreasonable search and seizure. I suppose it may apply if a person's email etc sitting on someone else's servers could be interpreted as an extension of a person's "papers" and "effects." My understanding is that it currently takes a court order to get at these materials, just like it takes a court order to get at non-virtual "papers" and "effects."
So I guess I don't understand how a candidate's supposed "belief" in the Constitution would cause him to apply some heightened level of protection to virtual "papers" and "effects" housed on a server owned by some third party in California. That would be above the requirements of the Constitution--such laws would be constitutional, but I don't see where you get your interpretation that the Constitution requires such a level of privacy.
I think what you meant to say is that you think Ron Paul is the candidate who would support going above and beyond the call of the Constitution when it comes to Internet privacy, supporting the tradition of the Internet being a "place" in which users may remain anonymous.
I'm not entirely sure that Ron Paul would verbally support such a position if you ask him--the problem with it is that it would sound like he supports making the Internet a haven for criminals. That, of course, would find support only with the minority of the populous.
I'm not sure it would draw less power, but I was trying to think of every possible thing to save battery for the ride. My thinking was that RAM chips require power to retain memory, so remembering more stuff might require more power.
I also shut off every unused and unnecessary program and service, whether or not it appeared they were using any CPU. I also dimmed the screen all they way and had it turn itself off after three minutes of nonuse (not surprisingly, this seemed to do more to save power than anything else)--I don't have a computer that lets me play music with the lid closed.
I don't believe this is only IE--when I listen to music on my computer on an airplane, I minimize the music program because it uses less memory, and therefore less battery (from my tests, Winamp Lite minimized uses the least RAM when minimized of all the players I tested. It was better than Foobar and mplayer, etc).
In fact, I just tried the same thing with Opera--it dropped from 60,000 to 11,000.
I don't think it's an estimate--I think the program really uses less RAM when minimized.
I think the reason is pretty obvious. The state keeps half the money people spend on lottery tickets (more than half according to another comment above--I don't actually know the exact percentage), whereas the private poker house doesn't give anything to the state. So yeah, you're right it's the states' desire to keep their stanglehold on gambling. Note that in Nevada, where gambling is legal, the stanglehold is just as strong. You didn't think the casinos kept all that money did you? Funny thing, it just goes to show how dumb it is to gamble--casinos rip people off of enough money to pay a huge chumk of it to the state and still have plenty left over to build build frilly over-the-top gold palaces and pay their executives millions.
I don't think merely donating or heavily discounting Windows would do the job if the government was "sold" as the open and custonizability aspect of Mandriva. I think the cost to Nigeria for Windows would have to be negative to get them to pay for and ship Mandriva and then pay the cost of replacing Mandriva with Windows. By this I mean that it seems to me that the only way for this to make economic sense is for Microsoft to cover the cost of Mandriva, the cost of a replacement, and then add something for incentive to replace Mandriva at all. (that last part we call a bribe)
The bottom of the screenshot shows some type of application launcher or something. Does anyone know what that is exactly? I'm still looking for something stable to work as my "RKLauncher" for my Ubuntu setup.
There are Palm-syncing programs in Ubuntu. One I "gnow" of is gnome-pilot. I'm not sure whether it works in an enlightenment environment, but wouldn't be surprised if it does.
As for printing, I had to adjust no settings in Ubuntu 7.10 to print. It just worked.
Interestingly, that might not even help:
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/05/1234217
I think it's funny I got modded down for this--the guy's statement was just silly!
He said he got the iphone the day it came out. That means he waited in line for the phone for hours/days(? depending on his location) and paid $600 for the phone that he may have even had to switch carriers just to use (unlocking software wasn't available yet)! And he said he did all this with the mindset that the phone would be "just a phone"! I guess I just don't have the same amount of time and money to throw around as this guy or the modders do. All I know is that looking at this guy's statement in the context of history (lines, expensive, he already had a phone) his statement is absurd.
Additionally, this system would be biased against the lower class and against the elderly--people without easy access to the internet or without sufficient knowledge of computers would not be well represented here. The system would also be biased against non-tech savvy people in general (beyond just the elderly) but that doesn't matter because there will be plenty of more tech savvy voters with similar views and demographics. What matters is the group that is largely computer illiterate that doesn't have a computer literate counterpart, and the group consisting of impovershed people who cannot afford computers. To make up for this you would need to elect a person that would represent those people who cannot represent themselves...wait, I've seen that system somewhere before.