but back in the days of 95...... 95 didnt crash every day, it just got slower. also, it still ran on DOS......linux in that time might have run rock solid, but the X server crashed every day. so no, linux was not heaven.
the simple problem, why microsoft products fail, is, because the company itself tries to *own* the market, and always *increase* their position, instead of solidifying their position and products, even accepting to one day become something like IBM.
It is not the imperfect products, which in fact all Software is, because Software is *never* *finished*, it is their Image which in the long run is hurting them. They talk about being the best, while it should be being the most used and RESPECTED by everybody, including your competition.
Some human beings are incredibly rich because of that corporation. So it did not fail. But image is lost if customers start to ask: "why do we have to use this all now ourselves, and where is our money gone?".
Corporations will always fail or find their equilibrium, nothing is forever. It is impossible that everything just grows and never stops, thats called a tumor. If you want to have a succesful corp, create one which is remembered positively.
i think it is because humans still combine "gaming" with "kids" and dont take it seriously. which is simply not the truth about games.
you need games in your daily life, since this is the major way to learn and train intelligence (not knowledge). because of our society marking you as "adult" if you reach a certain age, part of this "maturity" is to stop gaming, or at least, hide your gaming habits or even repress them until they express themselves as perversions (like playing games with people).
microsoft is a business company. it evolved in the era of humankind, where serious business evolved into a fantastic myth of adults doing hard and serious stuff and only being a serious managing adult mature business man in a suit and a thousand certificates can be trusted upon, while a playful (childish) person might not be trustworthy. while daily life tells us, actually its the other way round most of the time.
it is this image, which not only haunts microsoft, but currently the whole western civilization. there are lots of other hints about this actually, if you study history, the "cultivation" of the "adult" myth even leads to great misconceptions about children per se, or how we perceive the past, and leads to major crisis in a lot of people's lives, who stay juvenile the rest of their lives (because the juvenile person is the one who tries to negate his childhood)
i could go on and on about this topic, since it even hits deep foundations of christian and jewish faith ("respect your elders" e.g. as a commandment was actually meant for adults, to respect old people because "if you want your days to grow long" means, you should treat an elder person, like you want to be treated if YOUR days get long),...
people are children. and people take the easy route. also, those who really taught the adults how to use computers, actually were their children most of the time.
to realize, your platform is actually successful because it is mostly used for gaming, well, that would conclude not only a lot of things about your customers, your product, but also about yourself.
Since the most powerful people on earth are usually not the most intelligent or reflected ones, even if they think they are, I dont think, this will ever be widely discovered, I rather think, somebody comes along and proves another wild theory which does not involve confessing that actually everybody is just a big child out there, cultivated thru a harsh millenia old society of distrust, and explain, that in reality, windows conquered the market because of stuff like "office", or because of piratery, which may be cofactors, but the reason why you pirated DOS or windoze back in the days, were still games, and they were better than the AMIGA or C64 stuff, so yeah, you started using IBM machines to play civ, bubble bobble or prince of persia.
the games on mac sucked, they had to turn their whole OS into a game to reconquer the market.
so. if you know, its gaming, which makes you use windows, at least you can conclude, being mature does not mean to stop being the child you once were inside, but rather taking responsibility for yourself.
I still wonder, what IQ has to do with great scientific contributions?
It might be right, that high intelligence - lets assume IQ correctly measures that - allows greater sums of knowledge to be processed faster achieving to grasp deeper insight, therefore allowing to reiterate your thoughts quicker and conclusively concluding faster and more precise, but it is still dependant on acquiring knowledge itself - which takes time and sources, as learning thinking patterns themselves - which requires teaching, humility and reflection. Any human being can be in the position even with lesser IQ to do this big task, with good education and a well protected life, and social stability, he even might do it quicker, than an overbright being, who burns his brainticks iterating over nonsense, or worse, fears.
relying on inspiration, which requires to turn off logic once in a while and just have a hunch, I might add, is another factor I believe is a needed part of the recipe, and dont forget blessing or otherwise called luck, but those are clearly disputable.
And to finally lift the curtain of inescapable human reductionism, it is never only one person, who does a breakthrough, its just one person who finishes one of many ongoing puzzles and others recognize it.
that is something many people do not understand. china may not be perfect, and not very pleasing to the individual in our standards, but in its deepest roots they are not warmongers or tyrants either, and they do not want to "attack the world". The chinese people themselves might not be so dazzled by western wisdom anyway at the moment i think, and we might have to listen up sometimes to them, too..
wake up. the western world is as free as china is. here you have to own money (best "partner" or "manager"), there you have to be a good chinese (best "partymember").
the world does not change for the individual over the centuries.
however, of course they mean with the freedom of expression their version of freedom of expression, which might not apply to every topic there is, but honestly, our freedom of expression is worth nothing if you only are allowed to have opinions, which nobody cares about anyway.
hell, if i had more researched using toolkits, than doing the base programming, I would have said that earlier, but without the wisdom I earned by having respect, even fear from 3d programming.
but after spending time in some toolkits, and breaking the 3d barrier relatively late in my studies of programming, I have to say, honestly, 3d is easier and way more boring to do than 2d. It just seems the other way around first. getting a good engine in 2d is way harder, while 3d is just a matter of toolkits you learn.
and on the ground base, its just reading stuff and making vectors.
Now a team of a creative type who has the ideas, and a mathematical type, who does vectors in his sleep, and some mad 3dmax guy, 3d is really fast.
Problem is always the polishing. 3d games are per se too complicated, and 90% of the time you start caring about how to make 3d look good on 2d again.
this might be true and wise. but generally gameplay ideas that are born of a 48 hour gamecamp are not very good ones either.
sometimes you need to first have all the bad ideas until you can reduce it to the simple thing that makes it fun. you dont develop a game to "have a simple game idea" in the first place. because all those, honestly speaking, suck even more.
You fear they do it to serve a closed version as a service. I don't see that scenario. Why? it is too expensive.
What you see there is LO binary running on a server transmitting its looks through an engine which uses GTK internal redraws to transmit the changes to a client with websockets, which in turn has a canvas capturing input and an engine which knows how to draw the deltas into place. Funny nobody yet thought of doing that with VNC.
Imagine a service where everybody can start any amount of instances of this software (for free) on your servers as a successful business solution.
There is none. Because with all respect, You will need to have to run the whole thing on your server still. So, while using the software to power some lucrative services for the company, releasing the source is even better on the long run.
This is a very nice hack, however, and would be a nice add-on, but it is no mass solution for the "office online public $$$" service. and i think suse/novell knows that very well. Also, the techniques they are using are afaik open, too.
capitals just dont drop from the air. first you have to get "some" veldspar and stuff.
so basicly even if the player pays in eve to be a rich kid, he still needs to wait for skills, and somebody else needs to mine and build his ships. money is gone fast in eve if you got no clue what you do.
I dont think Java will play a big role anytime soon in most of the web. Especially this demo shows, that js itself has become so powerful, that powerful conversion a compilation apis will evolve, completely removing java from interest in the web. and I fear the people who might consider your path of using integration to a VM in the background will use adobe products more for these tasks, where interaction is already given - even if the flash vm sucks.
Your point is however interesting, because it shows what you think of, something which crosses barriers of mobile (no adobe!) and desktop browsers - there the only problem is, the number of applications for this model being used both in browsers and mobile devices are too few; the development cost of apps building either on complete web based logic or application based logic for mophos are smaller; and at last: while java is a common thing between android and the desktop, there is already the separation between oracle and dalvik and the separation between ios, symbian, winmob, and others, not all supporting java or flash as common backbone, again throwing up the question if targeted dedicated apps using common apis are not cheaper.
So my answer is: does not matter what oracle does there. It's a market which already falls from its zenith.
Java plays a role in conversion languages however at google. I still prefer pyjamas.
as far as i heard, it's a game simulating workflows.
now programming might include workflows, but it also includes objectifying or structuring, working with data and such.
and there is the zen of creativity vs. beauty of code.
that said, not all programmers do the same stuff; and not all programmers like the same aspects of the field they are working in. therefore, for somebody spacechem might even represent the most boring part of programming and he might see this more as of an electronics game, than a programming game.
Personally
* gaming and programming for me always had a dance in my life. I started programming because of computer games, and I started playing games regularly because of programming
* all games are interesting in their game mechanics, because I am an engineer and want to understand how it works.
* games where you can train real life principles make me smile, but they will not keep me playing it for long.
* I am more hardcore, than casual, so puzzles start to get boring fast.
* the term casual does not mean, you dont play the same amount of time as hardcore players btw.
* the fun in programming is not solving obvious puzzles. It's solving the one's which are created by our errors.
* games need to challenge. at the same time games need to reward.
* If the game is too easy for me or simply "needs too much attention to give a reward" I will not enjoy it. That said, if you code all day in lowlevel, a factory game with buildnig circuits might be faster entertaining, or it might be faster boring.
* FPS, RTS and co are great because they are a real time interaction with the gaming environment
* computer games are most fun in interaction with other humans.
* you can always play tetris.
> Economies are created by private individuals who work to live better, that's all there is to it.
By using any means neccessary. Not controling the market too much actually made all the mess. You see, it's some of those private individuals who used government to make themselves richer. You have connections, you create lobbies, and it's mostly not even malevolent initially. Even with Terry Pratchett's insights about gold and money, you still have to remember, the most fraudulent thing about it is, that it happens in babysteps. As it happened the last 100 years.
Government spendings on unneeded things is one problem. The evolution of money is also one problem. The brainwash of a broken concept, that every human can become rich if he just works right and the market makes us all happy, because human demand for more will make them work, is another.
If you build a market system based on greed, it will be greed which leads the market. And only the greedy will write positive numbers.
What government needs is a clean separation from external moneyfloods, realizing, that we formed governments only, so that we can govern ourselves instead of giving it to some people who just give the power to their children. We formed democracy to prevent human greed from abusing the majority.
We need to control markets and stop people using their wealth to influence politics for them to get wealthier. Because thats why we created governments.
> How do you figure people have control of their emotions? We don’t. Not really.
the heart is NOT the emotional center according to the old world up until the middle ages. That would be the kidneys. So you misunderstood that concept already, therefore you have to reevaluate the whole text. The heart is your center actually, including your mind and thoughts. The romantic view of heart is way later, its a modern thing. And btw. yes we do control emotions. We control them every day (to a certain extent of course!). Even if we mostly "let them explode into other peoples faces", if they are bad, but keep them down if they are good. We can even create emotional reactions through external factors (mirroring). We even use this fact for all kinds of therapy, by learning and understanding separating own emotions and the emotions which we mirror.
> “word” is a pretty clear concept in most languages I know couple languages. Now I would disagree. I think this time it was my german, and comes from "wörtlich", which I just looked up, and it means literal. Clear? God actually is called "word" too, by John.
> don’t care whether JHWH waved his hand and did a Jedi mind-trick on the pharaoh or simply exploited his human weaknesses But what he did was rather obvious: he sent plagues!? God told, he will harden his heart, because he knew, the pharaoh would not give up even after the plagues. It was still the pharaoh letting this happen - you just read the text in retrospect, without any cultural or lingual knowledge, you completely miss the point about what is said about god throughout the 66 books there, and you think that god influences the world like a magician and influences people like a puppeteer, even if your life, and even the bible would tell another story. There is no god influencing people by switching them. It is your view about god, while you dont even listen to your basic "demands" about the world...: As you say it: > No gods seem to take any active part in the functioning of the world. Which I agree upon. Never heard of it either, just read it right there. In that story he might seem to take part - by sending plagues. The pharaoh however still thinks, he can win. He thinks its magic, he faces. Maybe the pharaoh explains also, why any supernatural act by god - to show us his will - would only scare us away from him, instead of him reaching us. Since you were angry to god from the start, you did not read the stupidity out of the pharaoh. Every human being would say: dude, he friggin makes snakes out of wood, let them go! You take an explanation of the pharaohs reaction as a magic trick!
So, why the hell did he send plagues!? Was there no other solution? Thats the right question.
> The question that I find really interesting is: whether or not gods exist, why would I bother, period? Actually, I agree with you again. I would not bother, if its a puppeteer god. I would not bother if god is a force in space and time, therefore I would not care about "gods" either, since separate gods need separate space (even in a gnostic concept, where just space has to be redefined). I would not bother if god is either both, good and evil, or just evil. I would not bother if god is impersonal, inaccessible, or demanding. And I would not bother, if he truly does not answer to human prayers in any way. This leaves me with two decisions: a loving good god, or no god at all. Now, I never said, my decision at that moment is the right one, but I was not a very happy atheist, so I took a second decision, maybe I needed to try the other possibility and fell into delusions. It's not about my faith. It's about you reading the story wrong.
> Or you are just wrong. Take your false dichotomies elsewhere. As you wish.
Yes. I support it. First I misunderstood and even wanted to claim the same thing.
There is no scientific data which supports a being called god IN our universe. There cant be any reliable data on a transcendent god outside our universe, and nothing - except the existence of religion in human cultures, which could be simply imagination - supports that. I even add philosophically, that caring about a god being part of our universe is a waste of time, which also rules out the existence of "two or more separate gods", since then again there is space and time. As is to care about a god who is bipolar. Or to care about a god, that is either non-transcendent or impersonal. Or to care about a god who is evil.
Rationally, this leaves me two choices, a transcendent personal (therefore intelligent) god who is pure love and righteousness, or no god at all. I do not even care if it is different.
Since a transcendent personal god is only witnessable in a relationship, I left the task up to him, to start it. The rest is personal and no evidence anyway. This is as far rational debate about God can go.
> When was the last time you sat down, weighed the factual evidence (not scripture), critically evaluated your beliefs and adjusted them to reflect your perceived probability of your prior beliefs being correct?
Quite often I think. You will find, that dealing with scripture in the way religious people do, is not always real. Dealing with scripture generally is not something, my kind is very good at. I am a skeptic. But knowledge about that too slowly accumulates, along with myriads of sideknowledge. So while I consider myself quite good in scripture, I like to build my own opinion about things. I would rather give up any of that and be a happy religious nut sometimes.
> I doubt most people who consider themselves religious would even know how to do that.
Religious? No. But that depends on the definition of the word. Being Religious is caring more about the outward of belief, than the inward. I would not condemn that as idiocy. It allows you to find belief in another way, without the same intellectual struggle. But every believer who takes his belief seriously, is struggling with it. Because every human struggles. Stopping to ask certain questions out of fear or the feeling of being right and stopping to ask them because of being content are two different things. But you will find, that religious people do not differ very much from nonreligiouspeople in that particular context.
I believe, the difference is only made by the truth behind the belief. If it keeps being negated, and you force yourself to believe it, you might be wrong, after all.
> And those that are rational in other areas of their life are obviously not applying rationality to their religious beliefs. So yes, I think labelling religious people as irrational is perfectly right.
I am not sure if I can follow what it means to be rational in other areas of life but irrational in religious beliefs, but that also depends on the culture you come from and which kind of denomination rules your christian influence. Every denomination has its strengths, but also its weaknesses. Since they sometimes shift into some direction - because they are humans too - finding balanced churches where mixed individuals are, and there is room for debate, art, family, work with the needy, etc. is not always easy. And only there christianity is coming alive in its fullest, because people learn from others and learn to accept and love and care, hear personal reports from missionaries or meet people of different skillsets - even with the mind.
you mostly find people from not so useful classes of the actual cultural surroundings (shifted over time, who those people were - at the moment a lot of immigrants here). churches are often in the middle of struggle.
If being christian is irrational, depends on the existence of god. Not on the christians around, that are irrational.
heh. you get there kiddo. but its not just about speed.
firefox is regarded higher in development circles, because its scriptable in a very deep layer - the tools of firefox can do things, chrome cant do yet that well.
After a while, you get used to that stuff. You stop trying to use all the new fancy stuff.
But if you do not develop, firefox is really not the most userfriendly browser out there. Slowly some people admit that, and so haters keep trolling.
If you like the fox, stick with it. Complicated software is good for complicated people. Back then, there was the time of opera, or mozilla itself rising from the ashes of Netscape... the browser wars wasted thousands of Trolls in countless battles.
If you wanna be a good help for friends, try to find out whom you show firefox to install, and whom you install chrome. Just drive them bravely away from IE.
Slashdot Mirror
son, reality is a bitch.
but back in the days of 95... ... 95 didnt crash every day, it just got slower. also, it still ran on DOS. .....linux in that time might have run rock solid, but the X server crashed every day. so no, linux was not heaven.
the simple problem, why microsoft products fail, is, because the company itself tries to *own* the market, and always *increase* their position, instead of solidifying their position and products, even accepting to one day become something like IBM.
It is not the imperfect products, which in fact all Software is, because Software is *never* *finished*, it is their Image which in the long run is hurting them. They talk about being the best, while it should be being the most used and RESPECTED by everybody, including your competition.
Some human beings are incredibly rich because of that corporation. So it did not fail. But image is lost if customers start to ask: "why do we have to use this all now ourselves, and where is our money gone?".
Corporations will always fail or find their equilibrium, nothing is forever.
It is impossible that everything just grows and never stops, thats called a tumor.
If you want to have a succesful corp, create one which is remembered positively.
i think it is because humans still combine "gaming" with "kids" and dont take it seriously. which is simply not the truth about games.
you need games in your daily life, since this is the major way to learn and train intelligence (not knowledge). because of our society marking you as "adult" if you reach a certain age, part of this "maturity" is to stop gaming, or at least, hide your gaming habits or even repress them until they express themselves as perversions (like playing games with people).
microsoft is a business company. it evolved in the era of humankind, where serious business evolved into a fantastic myth of adults doing hard and serious stuff and only being a serious managing adult mature business man in a suit and a thousand certificates can be trusted upon, while a playful (childish) person might not be trustworthy. while daily life tells us, actually its the other way round most of the time.
it is this image, which not only haunts microsoft, but currently the whole western civilization. there are lots of other hints about this actually, if you study history, the "cultivation" of the "adult" myth even leads to great misconceptions about children per se, or how we perceive the past, and leads to major crisis in a lot of people's lives, who stay juvenile the rest of their lives (because the juvenile person is the one who tries to negate his childhood)
i could go on and on about this topic, since it even hits deep foundations of christian and jewish faith ("respect your elders" e.g. as a commandment was actually meant for adults, to respect old people because "if you want your days to grow long" means, you should treat an elder person, like you want to be treated if YOUR days get long),...
people are children. and people take the easy route. also, those who really taught the adults how to use computers, actually were their children most of the time.
to realize, your platform is actually successful because it is mostly used for gaming, well, that would conclude not only a lot of things about your customers, your product, but also about yourself.
Since the most powerful people on earth are usually not the most intelligent or reflected ones, even if they think they are, I dont think, this will ever be widely discovered, I rather think, somebody comes along and proves another wild theory which does not involve confessing that actually everybody is just a big child out there, cultivated thru a harsh millenia old society of distrust, and explain, that in reality, windows conquered the market because of stuff like "office", or because of piratery, which may be cofactors, but the reason why you pirated DOS or windoze back in the days, were still games, and they were better than the AMIGA or C64 stuff, so yeah, you started using IBM machines to play civ, bubble bobble or prince of persia.
the games on mac sucked, they had to turn their whole OS into a game to reconquer the market.
so. if you know, its gaming, which makes you use windows, at least you can conclude, being mature does not mean to stop being the child you once were inside, but rather taking responsibility for yourself.
I still wonder, what IQ has to do with great scientific contributions?
It might be right, that high intelligence - lets assume IQ correctly measures that - allows greater sums of knowledge to be processed faster achieving to grasp deeper insight, therefore allowing to reiterate your thoughts quicker and conclusively concluding faster and more precise, but it is still dependant on acquiring knowledge itself - which takes time and sources, as learning thinking patterns themselves - which requires teaching, humility and reflection. Any human being can be in the position even with lesser IQ to do this big task, with good education and a well protected life, and social stability, he even might do it quicker, than an overbright being, who burns his brainticks iterating over nonsense, or worse, fears.
relying on inspiration, which requires to turn off logic once in a while and just have a hunch, I might add, is another factor I believe is a needed part of the recipe, and dont forget blessing or otherwise called luck, but those are clearly disputable.
And to finally lift the curtain of inescapable human reductionism, it is never only one person, who does a breakthrough, its just one person who finishes one of many ongoing puzzles and others recognize it.
makes angry, does it not.
hard to swallow that all are talking about it, but hardly any actions are taken.
michelangelo clearly should have patented smiling people watching in the camera on rectangular surfaces.
which one?
that is something many people do not understand. china may not be perfect, and not very pleasing to the individual in our standards, but in its deepest roots they are not warmongers or tyrants either, and they do not want to "attack the world". The chinese people themselves might not be so dazzled by western wisdom anyway at the moment i think, and we might have to listen up sometimes to them, too..
wake up. the western world is as free as china is. here you have to own money (best "partner" or "manager"), there you have to be a good chinese (best "partymember").
the world does not change for the individual over the centuries.
however, of course they mean with the freedom of expression their version of freedom of expression, which might not apply to every topic there is, but honestly, our freedom of expression is worth nothing if you only are allowed to have opinions, which nobody cares about anyway.
hell, if i had more researched using toolkits, than doing the base programming, I would have said that earlier, but without the wisdom I earned by having respect, even fear from 3d programming.
but after spending time in some toolkits, and breaking the 3d barrier relatively late in my studies of programming, I have to say, honestly, 3d is easier and way more boring to do than 2d. It just seems the other way around first. getting a good engine in 2d is way harder, while 3d is just a matter of toolkits you learn.
and on the ground base, its just reading stuff and making vectors.
Now a team of a creative type who has the ideas, and a mathematical type, who does vectors in his sleep, and some mad 3dmax guy, 3d is really fast.
Problem is always the polishing. 3d games are per se too complicated, and 90% of the time you start caring about how to make 3d look good on 2d again.
this might be true and wise. but generally gameplay ideas that are born of a 48 hour gamecamp are not very good ones either.
sometimes you need to first have all the bad ideas until you can reduce it to the simple thing that makes it fun. you dont develop a game to "have a simple game idea" in the first place. because all those, honestly speaking, suck even more.
I think you all are missing the point here.
You fear they do it to serve a closed version as a service. I don't see that scenario. Why? it is too expensive.
What you see there is LO binary running on a server transmitting its looks through an engine which uses GTK internal redraws to transmit the changes to a client with websockets, which in turn has a canvas capturing input and an engine which knows how to draw the deltas into place. Funny nobody yet thought of doing that with VNC.
Imagine a service where everybody can start any amount of instances of this software (for free) on your servers as a successful business solution.
There is none. Because with all respect, You will need to have to run the whole thing on your server still.
So, while using the software to power some lucrative services for the company, releasing the source is even better on the long run.
This is a very nice hack, however, and would be a nice add-on, but it is no mass solution for the "office online public $$$" service. and i think suse/novell knows that very well. Also, the techniques they are using are afaik open, too.
I guess you meant this posting.
gosh, you had me going, almost started a christian flamewar against a religious nut. but its just an antireligious nut with humor.
wtf is with bacteria
additionally, you still need to build that stuff.
capitals just dont drop from the air. first you have to get "some" veldspar and stuff.
so basicly even if the player pays in eve to be a rich kid, he still needs to wait for skills, and somebody else needs to mine and build his ships.
money is gone fast in eve if you got no clue what you do.
Now I understand. There is however in this scenario also the possibility that Google will Go another way.
ah yeah, and there is the werewolf in the vampire: .net with silverlight and browsers would compete here too on windows devices.
but vampires get fewer after generations of desperate although somehow successful geeky witchhunts.
I dont think Java will play a big role anytime soon in most of the web. Especially this demo shows, that js itself has become so powerful, that powerful conversion a compilation apis will evolve, completely removing java from interest in the web. and I fear the people who might consider your path of using integration to a VM in the background will use adobe products more for these tasks, where interaction is already given - even if the flash vm sucks.
Your point is however interesting, because it shows what you think of, something which crosses barriers of mobile (no adobe!) and desktop browsers - there the only problem is, the number of applications for this model being used both in browsers and mobile devices are too few; the development cost of apps building either on complete web based logic or application based logic for mophos are smaller; and at last: while java is a common thing between android and the desktop, there is already the separation between oracle and dalvik and the separation between ios, symbian, winmob, and others, not all supporting java or flash as common backbone, again throwing up the question if targeted dedicated apps using common apis are not cheaper.
So my answer is: does not matter what oracle does there. It's a market which already falls from its zenith.
Java plays a role in conversion languages however at google. I still prefer pyjamas.
as far as i heard, it's a game simulating workflows.
now programming might include workflows, but it also includes objectifying or structuring, working with data and such.
and there is the zen of creativity vs. beauty of code.
that said, not all programmers do the same stuff; and not all programmers like the same aspects of the field they are working in. therefore, for somebody spacechem might even represent the most boring part of programming and he might see this more as of an electronics game, than a programming game.
> PHP libraries are written for higher level tasks than C++
and then copypasted into twenty files.
Agreed.
Personally
* gaming and programming for me always had a dance in my life. I started programming because of computer games, and I started playing games regularly because of programming
* all games are interesting in their game mechanics, because I am an engineer and want to understand how it works.
* games where you can train real life principles make me smile, but they will not keep me playing it for long.
* I am more hardcore, than casual, so puzzles start to get boring fast.
* the term casual does not mean, you dont play the same amount of time as hardcore players btw.
* the fun in programming is not solving obvious puzzles. It's solving the one's which are created by our errors.
* games need to challenge. at the same time games need to reward.
* If the game is too easy for me or simply "needs too much attention to give a reward" I will not enjoy it. That said, if you code all day in lowlevel, a factory game with buildnig circuits might be faster entertaining, or it might be faster boring.
* FPS, RTS and co are great because they are a real time interaction with the gaming environment
* computer games are most fun in interaction with other humans.
* you can always play tetris.
> Economies are created by private individuals who work to live better, that's all there is to it.
By using any means neccessary. Not controling the market too much actually made all the mess. You see, it's some of those private individuals who used government to make themselves richer. You have connections, you create lobbies, and it's mostly not even malevolent initially. Even with Terry Pratchett's insights about gold and money, you still have to remember, the most fraudulent thing about it is, that it happens in babysteps. As it happened the last 100 years.
Government spendings on unneeded things is one problem.
The evolution of money is also one problem.
The brainwash of a broken concept, that every human can become rich if he just works right and the market makes us all happy, because human demand for more will make them work, is another.
If you build a market system based on greed, it will be greed which leads the market. And only the greedy will write positive numbers.
What government needs is a clean separation from external moneyfloods, realizing, that we formed governments only, so that we can govern ourselves instead of giving it to some people who just give the power to their children. We formed democracy to prevent human greed from abusing the majority.
We need to control markets and stop people using their wealth to influence politics for them to get wealthier. Because thats why we created governments.
> How do you figure people have control of their emotions? We don’t. Not really.
the heart is NOT the emotional center according to the old world up until the middle ages. That would be the kidneys. So you misunderstood that concept already, therefore you have to reevaluate the whole text. The heart is your center actually, including your mind and thoughts. The romantic view of heart is way later, its a modern thing.
And btw. yes we do control emotions. We control them every day (to a certain extent of course!). Even if we mostly "let them explode into other peoples faces", if they are bad, but keep them down if they are good. We can even create emotional reactions through external factors (mirroring). We even use this fact for all kinds of therapy, by learning and understanding separating own emotions and the emotions which we mirror.
> “word” is a pretty clear concept in most languages
I know couple languages. Now I would disagree. I think this time it was my german, and comes from "wörtlich", which I just looked up, and it means literal.
Clear?
God actually is called "word" too, by John.
> don’t care whether JHWH waved his hand and did a Jedi mind-trick on the pharaoh or simply exploited his human weaknesses
But what he did was rather obvious: he sent plagues!? God told, he will harden his heart, because he knew, the pharaoh would not give up even after the plagues. It was still the pharaoh letting this happen - you just read the text in retrospect, without any cultural or lingual knowledge, you completely miss the point about what is said about god throughout the 66 books there, and you think that god influences the world like a magician and influences people like a puppeteer, even if your life, and even the bible would tell another story. There is no god influencing people by switching them. It is your view about god, while you dont even listen to your basic "demands" about the world...:
As you say it:
> No gods seem to take any active part in the functioning of the world.
Which I agree upon. Never heard of it either, just read it right there.
In that story he might seem to take part - by sending plagues. The pharaoh however still thinks, he can win. He thinks its magic, he faces. Maybe the pharaoh explains also, why any supernatural act by god - to show us his will - would only scare us away from him, instead of him reaching us.
Since you were angry to god from the start, you did not read the stupidity out of the pharaoh. Every human being would say: dude, he friggin makes snakes out of wood, let them go!
You take an explanation of the pharaohs reaction as a magic trick!
So, why the hell did he send plagues!? Was there no other solution? Thats the right question.
> The question that I find really interesting is: whether or not gods exist, why would I bother, period?
Actually, I agree with you again.
I would not bother, if its a puppeteer god. I would not bother if god is a force in space and time, therefore I would not care about "gods" either, since separate gods need separate space (even in a gnostic concept, where just space has to be redefined). I would not bother if god is either both, good and evil, or just evil. I would not bother if god is impersonal, inaccessible, or demanding. And I would not bother, if he truly does not answer to human prayers in any way.
This leaves me with two decisions: a loving good god, or no god at all.
Now, I never said, my decision at that moment is the right one, but I was not a very happy atheist, so I took a second decision, maybe I needed to try the other possibility and fell into delusions. It's not about my faith. It's about you reading the story wrong.
> Or you are just wrong. Take your false dichotomies elsewhere.
As you wish.
I thought long about that sentence.
Yes. I support it. First I misunderstood and even wanted to claim the same thing.
There is no scientific data which supports a being called god IN our universe. There cant be any reliable data on a transcendent god outside our universe, and nothing - except the existence of religion in human cultures, which could be simply imagination - supports that.
I even add philosophically, that caring about a god being part of our universe is a waste of time, which also rules out the existence of "two or more separate gods", since then again there is space and time. As is to care about a god who is bipolar. Or to care about a god, that is either non-transcendent or impersonal. Or to care about a god who is evil.
Rationally, this leaves me two choices, a transcendent personal (therefore intelligent) god who is pure love and righteousness, or no god at all.
I do not even care if it is different.
Since a transcendent personal god is only witnessable in a relationship, I left the task up to him, to start it.
The rest is personal and no evidence anyway.
This is as far rational debate about God can go.
> When was the last time you sat down, weighed the factual evidence (not scripture), critically evaluated your beliefs and adjusted them to reflect your perceived probability of your prior beliefs being correct?
Quite often I think.
You will find, that dealing with scripture in the way religious people do, is not always real. Dealing with scripture generally is not something, my kind is very good at. I am a skeptic. But knowledge about that too slowly accumulates, along with myriads of sideknowledge.
So while I consider myself quite good in scripture, I like to build my own opinion about things.
I would rather give up any of that and be a happy religious nut sometimes.
> I doubt most people who consider themselves religious would even know how to do that.
Religious? No. But that depends on the definition of the word. Being Religious is caring more about the outward of belief, than the inward. I would not condemn that as idiocy. It allows you to find belief in another way, without the same intellectual struggle. But every believer who takes his belief seriously, is struggling with it.
Because every human struggles.
Stopping to ask certain questions out of fear or the feeling of being right and stopping to ask them because of being content are two different things.
But you will find, that religious people do not differ very much from nonreligiouspeople in that particular context.
I believe, the difference is only made by the truth behind the belief. If it keeps being negated, and you force yourself to believe it, you might be wrong, after all.
> And those that are rational in other areas of their life are obviously not applying rationality to their religious beliefs. So yes, I think labelling religious people as irrational is perfectly right.
I am not sure if I can follow what it means to be rational in other areas of life but irrational in religious beliefs, but that also depends on the culture you come from and which kind of denomination rules your christian influence. Every denomination has its strengths, but also its weaknesses. Since they sometimes shift into some direction - because they are humans too - finding balanced churches where mixed individuals are, and there is room for debate, art, family, work with the needy, etc. is not always easy. And only there christianity is coming alive in its fullest, because people learn from others and learn to accept and love and care, hear personal reports from missionaries or meet people of different skillsets - even with the mind.
you mostly find people from not so useful classes of the actual cultural surroundings (shifted over time, who those people were - at the moment a lot of immigrants here). churches are often in the middle of struggle.
If being christian is irrational, depends on the existence of god.
Not on the christians around, that are irrational.
I am scared by people who think people who do believe in god are irrational
And I am honestly scared of being governed by anybody who is familiar with it and still does not get it enough to care.
heh. you get there kiddo. but its not just about speed.
firefox is regarded higher in development circles, because its scriptable in a very deep layer - the tools of firefox can do things, chrome cant do yet that well.
After a while, you get used to that stuff. You stop trying to use all the new fancy stuff.
But if you do not develop, firefox is really not the most userfriendly browser out there. Slowly some people admit that, and so haters keep trolling.
If you like the fox, stick with it. Complicated software is good for complicated people. Back then, there was the time of opera, or mozilla itself rising from the ashes of Netscape... the browser wars wasted thousands of Trolls in countless battles.
If you wanna be a good help for friends, try to find out whom you show firefox to install, and whom you install chrome. Just drive them bravely away from IE.
Thats something we all agree on here.