Some of the best advice I received regarding understanding the Bible was to:
Consider the literal as figurative. Consider the figurative as literal. Accept specifics such as dates, names, and places as much as possible.
As an example,Genesis and Revelation offer many opportunities to apply the first two points.
For instance, in Genesis, God describes His creating all this in terms of days. And we are told later in scripture that a day is to The LORD as thousand years, and a thousand years are as a day. I can accept that 'day', despite the Hebrew word used, may in fact be figurative. And with my limited, very limited knowledge of biology and such, the order of Creation seems to be entirely consistent with our observations of our Universe. I see no unresolvable conflict unless you demand absolutes, in which case I'm still waiting for an absolute description of the Big Bang. But I will not suspend acceptance of scientific theories while they are either proven beyond ANY doubt, nor will I discard my faith simply because it does not fit our still imited understandign of Creation.
In Revelation, we are faced with massive amounts of imagery. Consider the number 666. While this is a literal number, figuratively, it is one less in each digit than 777, and 7 is the number of perfection. So 666 could be described well as a number reflecting the imperfection of Man. I am no longer scared of the number, nor fearful for people moving to Bowdoinham, Maine. For instance.
As with many texts, the Bible requires a great deal of concerted study. But, this is a three questions issue.
The solution is not to fake the data, nor is it to try and restrict visibility.
The solution is to redefine social networks, and admit that your address, personal info beyond 'I like chocolate etc lulz' is not useful in a social site, and go on.
But that guts the social networks. They derive their revenue from being able to sell YOU. And they can only sell YOU if they can sell Y O U .
That means selling your home address, the car you drive, your income and financial details, your friends, your employer, what you *actually* do, vs what you say you like to do, and whether or not you are able to be influenced by the advertisers buying you.
The first solution to this is to pay you for your data.
The second soluuion is to hold the purveyors of your data genuinely responsible for misdeeds. Not slap on the wrist fines, but punitive, stockholder-impacting penalties, and then both punitive reporting and montioring. If you don't vhange the rules, you won't change the brhavior.
And punish their clients as well.
And none of this will happen for the forseeable future. Just as Do Not Track cannot work, this personal data drives revenue, and makes the 'free' as in beer Internet work. Without it, you subscribe to Facebook, and I am not at all sure that FB is worth $0.19/mo to anyone. Much less the true cost of operation.
So we either live with this, or get off the networks.
Now, the real crimes are when your state sells your drivers license info. That is sinful and wrong.
Darn, now my insurance company will be asking if I have any laser cutters, 3D printers, etc. And it will probably cost me more than a pit bull, fireplace, or inground pool.
Thieves. Next thing you know, they will also tell me what I can or cannot make with it. Oh, wait...
I'm responding to the 'cure for old age' concept. If you're proposing that we reevaluate the sometimes huge expenses in 'end of life care', be prepared to place a money value in someone's life. Me, I'm pretty sure my wife values knee replacement research enough to support it, since because of knee implants she is able to go up stairs without assistance. And she's 59 years old. A car accident started her knee problems when she was in her 20s. Insurance is an imprecise financing method, so do name me a better one.
You seem to be advocating some dual tiered form of healthcare financing. I'm not very hopeful that will work out, but please explain in more detail.
It would not surprise me that current gasoline production uses more energy than it 'creates'. it's not about 'creating' energy. that's the whole cold fusion problem.
I don't really accpe the distinction of advertizers choosing to ignore Microsoft's DNT implementation, since it's also apparent that we will not know if they choose to ignore ALL DNT implementations. We won't know.
I was under the misunderstanding that DNT was intended to be honored, not evaluated, and ignored if it was dtetermined, by the advertisers, to be a reflection of the consumer's decision, not a corporations one.. I'm not under the naive impression that advertisers intend to accept DNT willingly at all. It does not offer them any value I can disern. We will need to compel them to honor it, and to verify, and to punish when they abuse their discretion.
And I'm not a Firefox fan, nor do I find disabling some useful features such as cookies, etc. I don't use 'like' buttons and such, and I have to fight off my FB friends' poor habits of including me in sweeps of contacts, app offers, etc. I try to educate them, but these are so well disguised that they are usually accusing me of an overactive imagination. Until they get spammed, and start getting the many complaints about spamming from their other friends, and of course the content. Ugh.
I don't think fo DNT as a social solution. It's as good as a plugin or addon.
ps - I don't recall the telemarketing industry supporting Do-Not-Call. They got some useful loopholes added in, such as prior or new business relationships circumventing the restrictions despite your terminating any relationship and reasertign your desire to not receive calls (this happens, law be damned), obvious political exemptions (rational), and time limits on subscribing to the list. But characterizing the telemarketign industry as accepting of DNC is wrong. The online or interactive media industry is similarly uninterested in DNT, and for the same reasons - money.
We're forgetting, of course, our cable providers use set top box data to snoop on our habits, which is one reason why they fight with major content providers regularly. And we get tiers and packages intended to maximize profit by giving us the impression of choice, when in reality they split up the most popular channels to keep you buying multiple packages. They are not incompetent.
It is also a constant effort to keep hosts file that redirects obvious ad servers. that takes either some skill, or trust in a utility to do it for you.
Ultimately, we will not be able to enforce DNT and enjoy a 'free' (as in beer) Internet. We will have to let them market to us, or get our wallets out to pay up front. and then, we wil feel used when we find that they are still sharing that data we paid them to collect.
Knowing too many NICU nurses, and too many others, I'll be expecting a specific example. No names or places, but what condition, age of child, and meds in question. I've heard these stories, but never from anyone involved. Was this your child ?
We're facing some of the core issues that were warned about so long ago.
Do Not Track is proving to be a key issue, with a stand off building between advertisers/marketers/corporations, and various 'providers', and users. DNT has the potential for wrecking the models of many content providers, crushing the online ad business, and doing so by ensuring users can be 'left alone' despite the powerful drive to reach them no matter their preference. This is not much different from the Do-Not-Call fights not long ago with the telemarketers. Will the FTC and other agencies get into this fight as they did with Do Not Call, on the side of consumers, or wil the cave to the Internet and try to avoid it? Watching Microsoft try to implement DNT and being told outright that some advertisers will just ignore it sounds like the boilerroom types threatening to ignore Do Not Call, and indeed some did. Only fines worked, and then not perfectly. Will we get DNT?
Google is of course doing whatever is legally permitted, and more where there isn't much legislation to call upon. We will have to decide how we want to be tracked online, and then petition our representatives to force that, and then deal with the global Internet and all the non-US entities that may have different ideas. I don't blame Google for this, but until we legislate it, they will do whatever makes money.
And if we succeed in limiting Google and others, we should expect that the days of 'free' on the Internet , as in 'free services', are numbered. GMail is only free to you because ad revenue supports it. When you start denying the ads, you will need to pay for what was supported by them. It's just that simple. Will we? And then, google gets out of the 'beta' model and gets into the paid-for model, where customer service is necessary, and people will complain when Gmail goes haywire.
There is an outfit that is doing the paid-for model already, and seems moderately adequate. Yahoo! mail is available with POP/IMAP access for a fee, and they seem to be doing it well enough for a small fraction to pay. If I were the Yahoo! CEO, I would be lobbying behind the scenes for DNT, as it would force others (Google mostly) to find some way to fund their operations without stealing the info users would rather they not, and might force them into a new revenue model. One Yahoo! could possibly compete with.
Between the Partiot Act, TSA, SOPA, DMCA, copyright law abuses, and domestic surveillance, our government is edging closer to a full-fledged confrontation with the electorate. We will have to fight for our freedoms again in my lifetime. Privacy will not be the issue. Due process will become the issue. Watching me, intercepting my communications, and compelling my cooperation without discernable benefit are the coming issues. Already here, just not yet painful enough for us to complain. TSA Kabuki Security Theatre is one of these, NSA snooping another, and government management of healthcare another. When the governemnt decides to offer you different healthcare options based on your apparent lifestyle, based on your online data, we'll realize that none of this was good for us. And government-provided anything will always suffer from financial constraints. That will lead to making decisions based on budgets. Don't think it won't. Already, with private health insurance, you make these decisions.
1. When I was buying my first flat-panel TV, I went into a 'high-end' retailer (no, not Best Buy) and wanted to see the picture on one of the midrange sets. After realizing there was no OTA cable atached, the salesperson admitted they couldn't show me a picture. I found a paper clip, stuck in the jack, and got 3 channels. OTA is not always to hard to get.
2. MY cable box now is an SA Explorer 3xxxHD something. It has, for a tuner, you guessed it. A CableCard. Next tiem I hear Cox jerming someone around for getting their CC working, I'll send them the spec. Cox knows CableCards, they USE it.
So I guess I am getting satellite after all. And OTA. Almost everything we want to record is OTA anyways.
"It appears that the one thing modern society can no longer tolerate is intolerance"
You clearly did not mean that. It seems western societies are leaning towards NOT tolerating tolerance, which would be free speech.
See, it is getting twisted, deliberately, to marginalize free speech and enable the State to manage their populations. And primarily because some groups USE VIOLENCE to suppress speech they do not like.
And that alone is reason enough to oppose such restraint.
If you print something identical to a patented or copyrighted item, you deserve the rights holder's notification and requirement to stop, destroy, and no longer do so. But if you 'own' your printer, and load a file, and it happens to be identical to a protected object, well, you get the same notice, just in advance.
It won't end there.
If you load a file that is 'substantially' identical, DRM will probably work as well as DMCA takedowns are working, which is 'very well for putative rights holders, not well at all for fair use, for example'.
I suspect it will evolve from checking for identical files, to checking for 'very similar', to 'like something else'. Eventually, if I get a sneaker sole file from someone, I'll be unable to print it if it loks 'like' a Nike sole, as in relatively flat, foot-shaped, repeititive design elements on the bottom of it, and intended to perform well on asphalt surfaces. Like all the rest.
Already they want to suppress our ability to print things like firearm lower receivers, under the premise that this is a regulated activity, and you need a license, which in the US is not correct - so long as you are not selling your part either by it self or as part of a working gun. Prior restraint.
This is going to be an important, hugely important fight. We will have to defend our right to create.
the US is *not* on the side of privacy on this one, just on the side of not having to defy the inevitable UN mandate to build the back doors into everything, or get labelled somehow.
As if we care much what the UN does anyways, they are ineffective and dominated by the worst influences on the planet.
Yes, there are worse gummints than the US. And they run teh UN. Lulz. Until we stop paying the rent for the place.
"'makes it very easy for nations to monitor traffic"
This is already easy in the U.S. Just ask the carrier(s) to give you some closet (literally) space, and you're in business.
Sadly, we now live in a technologically enabled world. where if it's possible, it is considered both acceptable and dutiful to do so. Kinda like the earlier days of the Internet when courts started posting documets online. These were always poubic records, but the hassle of going to the court office and the gatekeepers there kept much of this out of easy view. There are a few sites out there that make a living exposing this public but obscure data. And sometimes, someone gets all wee-wee'd up that this 'got posted'.
Then again, our police are engaged in a massive expansion of surrveilance, just because it got affordable and relatively innocuous.
We are going to have to limit that, somehow.
Most of the rest of the world has little if any options for addressing such grievances. I'm not inclined to give them the pwoer to make policy worldwide. Bad enough they do it to their people.
Sure thing. when I decide how *I* get the page hits, I'll be posting glorious hi def scans of the yellowed newsprint and Time magazine clips, and respond to the takedown notices in my spare time.
My brother did some work on 39 A and B, but in the Shuttle era. He's a master electrician, and did some PLC stuff, which I'm very proud of, cause when he asked me eons ago about those things, I told him to 'go for it'. He did.
Slashdot Mirror
Some of the best advice I received regarding understanding the Bible was to:
Consider the literal as figurative.
Consider the figurative as literal.
Accept specifics such as dates, names, and places as much as possible.
As an example ,Genesis and Revelation offer many opportunities to apply the first two points.
For instance, in Genesis, God describes His creating all this in terms of days. And we are told later in scripture that a day is to The LORD as thousand years, and a thousand years are as a day. I can accept that 'day', despite the Hebrew word used, may in fact be figurative. And with my limited, very limited knowledge of biology and such, the order of Creation seems to be entirely consistent with our observations of our Universe. I see no unresolvable conflict unless you demand absolutes, in which case I'm still waiting for an absolute description of the Big Bang. But I will not suspend acceptance of scientific theories while they are either proven beyond ANY doubt, nor will I discard my faith simply because it does not fit our still imited understandign of Creation.
In Revelation, we are faced with massive amounts of imagery. Consider the number 666. While this is a literal number, figuratively, it is one less in each digit than 777, and 7 is the number of perfection. So 666 could be described well as a number reflecting the imperfection of Man. I am no longer scared of the number, nor fearful for people moving to Bowdoinham, Maine. For instance.
As with many texts, the Bible requires a great deal of concerted study. But, this is a three questions issue.
The solution is not to fake the data, nor is it to try and restrict visibility.
The solution is to redefine social networks, and admit that your address, personal info beyond 'I like chocolate etc lulz' is not useful in a social site, and go on.
But that guts the social networks. They derive their revenue from being able to sell YOU. And they can only sell YOU if they can sell Y O U .
That means selling your home address, the car you drive, your income and financial details, your friends, your employer, what you *actually* do, vs what you say you like to do, and whether or not you are able to be influenced by the advertisers buying you.
The first solution to this is to pay you for your data.
The second soluuion is to hold the purveyors of your data genuinely responsible for misdeeds. Not slap on the wrist fines, but punitive, stockholder-impacting penalties, and then both punitive reporting and montioring. If you don't vhange the rules, you won't change the brhavior.
And punish their clients as well.
And none of this will happen for the forseeable future. Just as Do Not Track cannot work, this personal data drives revenue, and makes the 'free' as in beer Internet work. Without it, you subscribe to Facebook, and I am not at all sure that FB is worth $0.19/mo to anyone. Much less the true cost of operation.
So we either live with this, or get off the networks.
Now, the real crimes are when your state sells your drivers license info. That is sinful and wrong.
Hermegerd... ernermplered....
Darn, now my insurance company will be asking if I have any laser cutters, 3D printers, etc. And it will probably cost me more than a pit bull, fireplace, or inground pool.
Thieves. Next thing you know, they will also tell me what I can or cannot make with it. Oh, wait...
Well that's effed up
I'm responding to the 'cure for old age' concept. If you're proposing that we reevaluate the sometimes huge expenses in 'end of life care', be prepared to place a money value in someone's life. Me, I'm pretty sure my wife values knee replacement research enough to support it, since because of knee implants she is able to go up stairs without assistance. And she's 59 years old. A car accident started her knee problems when she was in her 20s. Insurance is an imprecise financing method, so do name me a better one.
You seem to be advocating some dual tiered form of healthcare financing. I'm not very hopeful that will work out, but please explain in more detail.
That's not lack of healthcare.
It would not surprise me that current gasoline production uses more energy than it 'creates'. it's not about 'creating' energy. that's the whole cold fusion problem.
Unlike the current grid, fed by dammed hydro, coal, gas, nuclear, and infinitesimal amounts of wind, solar, and gasification.
huh?
"capturing air and extracting CO2 from it based on well known principles"
"needs to take electricity from the national grid to work"
"We've taken carbon dioxide from air and hydrogen from water and turned these elements into petrol"
Esentially;
- Capture CO2 from the air.
- Add water vapor (from the air also) and electricity.
- Generate petrol.
- Profit!
Oh, and:
- Recycle CO2.
- Recycle H2O.
- Essentially, your petrol-dependent vehicle is now powered by electricity,
FTW!
We must never give up on the Internal Combustion Engine!
Putin doesn't matter. Our own govt. Is more dangerous to us.
I don't really accpe the distinction of advertizers choosing to ignore Microsoft's DNT implementation, since it's also apparent that we will not know if they choose to ignore ALL DNT implementations. We won't know.
I was under the misunderstanding that DNT was intended to be honored, not evaluated, and ignored if it was dtetermined, by the advertisers, to be a reflection of the consumer's decision, not a corporations one.. I'm not under the naive impression that advertisers intend to accept DNT willingly at all. It does not offer them any value I can disern. We will need to compel them to honor it, and to verify, and to punish when they abuse their discretion.
And I'm not a Firefox fan, nor do I find disabling some useful features such as cookies, etc. I don't use 'like' buttons and such, and I have to fight off my FB friends' poor habits of including me in sweeps of contacts, app offers, etc. I try to educate them, but these are so well disguised that they are usually accusing me of an overactive imagination. Until they get spammed, and start getting the many complaints about spamming from their other friends, and of course the content. Ugh.
I don't think fo DNT as a social solution. It's as good as a plugin or addon.
ps - I don't recall the telemarketing industry supporting Do-Not-Call. They got some useful loopholes added in, such as prior or new business relationships circumventing the restrictions despite your terminating any relationship and reasertign your desire to not receive calls (this happens, law be damned), obvious political exemptions (rational), and time limits on subscribing to the list. But characterizing the telemarketign industry as accepting of DNC is wrong. The online or interactive media industry is similarly uninterested in DNT, and for the same reasons - money.
We're forgetting, of course, our cable providers use set top box data to snoop on our habits, which is one reason why they fight with major content providers regularly. And we get tiers and packages intended to maximize profit by giving us the impression of choice, when in reality they split up the most popular channels to keep you buying multiple packages. They are not incompetent.
It is also a constant effort to keep hosts file that redirects obvious ad servers. that takes either some skill, or trust in a utility to do it for you.
Ultimately, we will not be able to enforce DNT and enjoy a 'free' (as in beer) Internet. We will have to let them market to us, or get our wallets out to pay up front. and then, we wil feel used when we find that they are still sharing that data we paid them to collect.
Knowing too many NICU nurses, and too many others, I'll be expecting a specific example. No names or places, but what condition, age of child, and meds in question. I've heard these stories, but never from anyone involved. Was this your child ?
We're facing some of the core issues that were warned about so long ago.
Do Not Track is proving to be a key issue, with a stand off building between advertisers/marketers/corporations, and various 'providers', and users. DNT has the potential for wrecking the models of many content providers, crushing the online ad business, and doing so by ensuring users can be 'left alone' despite the powerful drive to reach them no matter their preference. This is not much different from the Do-Not-Call fights not long ago with the telemarketers. Will the FTC and other agencies get into this fight as they did with Do Not Call, on the side of consumers, or wil the cave to the Internet and try to avoid it? Watching Microsoft try to implement DNT and being told outright that some advertisers will just ignore it sounds like the boilerroom types threatening to ignore Do Not Call, and indeed some did. Only fines worked, and then not perfectly. Will we get DNT?
Google is of course doing whatever is legally permitted, and more where there isn't much legislation to call upon. We will have to decide how we want to be tracked online, and then petition our representatives to force that, and then deal with the global Internet and all the non-US entities that may have different ideas. I don't blame Google for this, but until we legislate it, they will do whatever makes money.
And if we succeed in limiting Google and others, we should expect that the days of 'free' on the Internet , as in 'free services', are numbered. GMail is only free to you because ad revenue supports it. When you start denying the ads, you will need to pay for what was supported by them. It's just that simple. Will we? And then, google gets out of the 'beta' model and gets into the paid-for model, where customer service is necessary, and people will complain when Gmail goes haywire.
There is an outfit that is doing the paid-for model already, and seems moderately adequate. Yahoo! mail is available with POP/IMAP access for a fee, and they seem to be doing it well enough for a small fraction to pay. If I were the Yahoo! CEO, I would be lobbying behind the scenes for DNT, as it would force others (Google mostly) to find some way to fund their operations without stealing the info users would rather they not, and might force them into a new revenue model. One Yahoo! could possibly compete with.
Between the Partiot Act, TSA, SOPA, DMCA, copyright law abuses, and domestic surveillance, our government is edging closer to a full-fledged confrontation with the electorate. We will have to fight for our freedoms again in my lifetime. Privacy will not be the issue. Due process will become the issue. Watching me, intercepting my communications, and compelling my cooperation without discernable benefit are the coming issues. Already here, just not yet painful enough for us to complain. TSA Kabuki Security Theatre is one of these, NSA snooping another, and government management of healthcare another. When the governemnt decides to offer you different healthcare options based on your apparent lifestyle, based on your online data, we'll realize that none of this was good for us. And government-provided anything will always suffer from financial constraints. That will lead to making decisions based on budgets. Don't think it won't. Already, with private health insurance, you make these decisions.
We have a big fight ahead of us.
1. When I was buying my first flat-panel TV, I went into a 'high-end' retailer (no, not Best Buy) and wanted to see the picture on one of the midrange sets. After realizing there was no OTA cable atached, the salesperson admitted they couldn't show me a picture. I found a paper clip, stuck in the jack, and got 3 channels. OTA is not always to hard to get.
2. MY cable box now is an SA Explorer 3xxxHD something. It has, for a tuner, you guessed it. A CableCard. Next tiem I hear Cox jerming someone around for getting their CC working, I'll send them the spec. Cox knows CableCards, they USE it.
So I guess I am getting satellite after all. And OTA. Almost everything we want to record is OTA anyways.
"It appears that the one thing modern society can no longer tolerate is intolerance"
You clearly did not mean that. It seems western societies are leaning towards NOT tolerating tolerance, which would be free speech.
See, it is getting twisted, deliberately, to marginalize free speech and enable the State to manage their populations. And primarily because some groups USE VIOLENCE to suppress speech they do not like.
And that alone is reason enough to oppose such restraint.
"there is NOTHING you can do about it."
You're new to this, aren't you...
Eventually they will regulate either the nozzles or the positioners.
That will be stupid, but such things go without saying, usually.
It's about prior restraint.
If you print something identical to a patented or copyrighted item, you deserve the rights holder's notification and requirement to stop, destroy, and no longer do so. But if you 'own' your printer, and load a file, and it happens to be identical to a protected object, well, you get the same notice, just in advance.
It won't end there.
If you load a file that is 'substantially' identical, DRM will probably work as well as DMCA takedowns are working, which is 'very well for putative rights holders, not well at all for fair use, for example'.
I suspect it will evolve from checking for identical files, to checking for 'very similar', to 'like something else'. Eventually, if I get a sneaker sole file from someone, I'll be unable to print it if it loks 'like' a Nike sole, as in relatively flat, foot-shaped, repeititive design elements on the bottom of it, and intended to perform well on asphalt surfaces. Like all the rest.
Already they want to suppress our ability to print things like firearm lower receivers, under the premise that this is a regulated activity, and you need a license, which in the US is not correct - so long as you are not selling your part either by it self or as part of a working gun. Prior restraint.
This is going to be an important, hugely important fight. We will have to defend our right to create.
No one wants to tell you to take up JavaScript, or .NET, or drive through IOS, but the money is there.
SQL and VB will complement some of those skill sets.
I'd like to say you can't make this up, but, apparently, you can.
Precisely, because if you choose to define a "right" to include a good or service, then why not make it a "right" to pay for it?
And who says how much? I thought so...
Wow. Just wow.
the US is *not* on the side of privacy on this one, just on the side of not having to defy the inevitable UN mandate to build the back doors into everything, or get labelled somehow.
As if we care much what the UN does anyways, they are ineffective and dominated by the worst influences on the planet.
Yes, there are worse gummints than the US. And they run teh UN. Lulz. Until we stop paying the rent for the place.
"'makes it very easy for nations to monitor traffic"
This is already easy in the U.S. Just ask the carrier(s) to give you some closet (literally) space, and you're in business.
Sadly, we now live in a technologically enabled world. where if it's possible, it is considered both acceptable and dutiful to do so. Kinda like the earlier days of the Internet when courts started posting documets online. These were always poubic records, but the hassle of going to the court office and the gatekeepers there kept much of this out of easy view. There are a few sites out there that make a living exposing this public but obscure data. And sometimes, someone gets all wee-wee'd up that this 'got posted'.
Then again, our police are engaged in a massive expansion of surrveilance, just because it got affordable and relatively innocuous.
We are going to have to limit that, somehow.
Most of the rest of the world has little if any options for addressing such grievances. I'm not inclined to give them the pwoer to make policy worldwide. Bad enough they do it to their people.
Sure thing. when I decide how *I* get the page hits, I'll be posting glorious hi def scans of the yellowed newsprint and Time magazine clips, and respond to the takedown notices in my spare time.
Real soon now.
My brother did some work on 39 A and B, but in the Shuttle era. He's a master electrician, and did some PLC stuff, which I'm very proud of, cause when he asked me eons ago about those things, I told him to 'go for it'. He did.