A while ago, a friend of mine came up with his own currency called Aeoni. The original version was the best: One Aeon was equal to one hour of whatever kind of work you like to do. You could trade them with friends as a formalized barter system, on a one for one basis, which avoids the legality problems that supply and demand can create. Later on, he decided that people could charge however many Aeoni they wanted per hour, and that was when the system fell apart.
We said we wanted digital distribution. Granted, a lot of us said it by using illegal digital distribution, but now there are legal options to rent nearly any popular movie online and I think it's great. But I doubt that Bittorrent or services like it will ever go away unless obscure films become available for streaming as well. Netflix has some, but with older and weirder cinema there are a lot of holes.
And are you really going to act as if our society's disdain for incest, murder, theft and lying has nothing to do with the bible? Because if you do, you're living in a fantasy world.
The problem here is that you've in essence created a straw man argument. You're saying, "All Christians must believe X" and then asserting that Christianity is a problem because X is false. In reality, a great many liberal Christians do in fact believe in evolution and that's perfectly as it should be. You do not get to dictate what other people are allowed to believe.
That statistic is terrifying, but I would want to see their methodology before assuming it's correct.
Nice of you to tell me what I have to believe, but the concept of original sin is entirely absent from the Jewish reading of the garden of Eden story. It is a Christian concept developed later to convince people they "need" Jesus. More importantly, the bible isn't one book or even two... it's 66 booksfif you're looking at a Christian bible or 39 with a Jewish bible.
Most of the books have different authors and come from different time periods, so to speak of it as one book is ludicrous. Some of the authors were pro war and others were not; some were misogynistic and others were not. Some of the prophets openly disagree with each other, and there are plenty of other internal contradictions as well, especially if you're ignoring historical context. Yes, the book is violent and sanctions many things we think of as immoral today. However, it also forbids human sacrifice, which was a common practice in ancient times. That makes it revolutionary if you're reading it in context.
And it contains plenty of commandments that are just a good idea - treating others with kindness, not lying about people, not stealing or murdering. Our society gets its mores against these things from the Bible. So to say it's worthless is completely missing the point. It contains things that no longer apply to modern life, and also things that do.
I find it really interesting that your article doesn't mention interviewing any Jews. From my perspective, the way Christians (and atheists only familiar with Christian doctrine) look at the Bible makes no sense. For someone who sends to be an atheist, you show remarkably little inclination to apply critical thinking to religion. It seems you prefer to resort to generalizations about things you don't know very much about.
I'm sorry if you're prejudiced against all religious people because you don't like Christian doctrine, but let me set the record straight on something. You didn't have the right to tell anyone what they should believe it how they should read the bible. Neither does a rabbi. No more than I get to tell you what scientific theories you should prefer. There is more than just one way to interpret scripture, and ultimately as many different ones as there are people willing to engage the text and analyze it for historical, cultural, mystical, religious, psychological or act other level if meaning. It is by no means perfect, but neither is it worthlesss or evil like you so ignorantly suggest. It is a collection of many books, all written by fallible humans who were trying to express what they thought was right. It's also a work of literature that forms one of the most basic foundations of western culture. have you even read it all?
If we're going to go that far, we might as well forcibly sterilize the ones who don't believe what we do. We'd already be effectively ghettoizing them anyway.
Only if you believe the bible is literally true. Which most believers do not. The bible can still be a holy document with important lessons if it's "only" a myth and not literal history. Which anyone with the most basic critical thinking skills can see that it is, whether they're religious or not.
So glad you said so. I thought I was the only one here not automatically equating "faithful" with "fundamentalist". Which is pretty offensive to a religious person like myself who despises everything fundamentalists stand for.
That many Americans are dumb enough to support teaching it in science classes, instead of just having a comparative religions class separate from the science class. Which might even promote silly things like tolerance and understanding.
Faith is only fragile if your faith is founded on a five-year-old's understanding of what the bible says. In other words, if you're a literalist (i.e., a fundamentalist). Biblical literalism is a relatively new phenomenon, appearing mainly in America in the last 100 years. Because most Americans are bloody fools. (I'm an American myself, just always been partial to the Britishisms.)
The oldest Hebrew text we still have isn't perfect either. The rabbis mucked about with it in Roman times. Look up the Masoretic text on Wikipedia... you'll be astonished.
Doesn't this mean that getting Netflix to work on Linux might be as simple as spoofing the user agent from a Chromebook? Especially if you were using Chrome, Netflix probably wouldn't detect that you're not actually using a Chromebook. Has anyone tried this?
Since Office 2013 includes a cloud service anyway, why not let subscribers get their app for free? The subscription fees are where they're getting their money in that model, not the app sales, and the only way to keep Apple from getting your money is to charge nothing for the app itself. It works fine for Carbonite, CrashPlan, Dropbox, Google Drive...
Oh wait, I know why Microsoft won't do that. Because they've always been more motivated by profit than by making things convenient for their users. Say what you want about Apple, but they are extremely user-focused... except when they're convinced they know better than the user what the user *should* want. Sometimes that leads to great things, and other times it's bloody infuriating when they remove a feature people actually used.
If the system has an older version of Windows on it, this may be the most tactful way to broach the subject. My experience (15+ years) in freelance tech support tells me that when confronted with the knowledge that an operating system will no longer receive security updates soon (or worse, already doesn't), they are glad to upgrade in order to prevent security holes that might lead to someone stealing their data. This allows you to completely sidestep the issue of possible mismanagement of the old system and start fresh with (hopefully) input from all the board members on how things should go from there.
Come on. "It's" means "it is". The article should say "its" instead, since that is the possessive.
I realize I may be a bit of a stickler here, but Slashdot is a major news site (the only one I personally check with any regularity), and professionalism means not mangling the language. Especially not in ways that make already common mistakes look acceptable. Copy-editing is important.
I was actually hoping to find out that there had been a "manned" mission to mars using a dog, complete with cute puppy pictures.
God help me... social media has infected my brain.
Has anyone tried the link in the article above recently? Cause it's not working. I am so amused... either all of us visiting it has knocked it offline, or someone has successfully attacked the attackers.
Slashdot Mirror
This is pretty much the definition thereof.
Does anyone even still use that phrase? I always liked it.
A while ago, a friend of mine came up with his own currency called Aeoni. The original version was the best: One Aeon was equal to one hour of whatever kind of work you like to do. You could trade them with friends as a formalized barter system, on a one for one basis, which avoids the legality problems that supply and demand can create. Later on, he decided that people could charge however many Aeoni they wanted per hour, and that was when the system fell apart.
We said we wanted digital distribution. Granted, a lot of us said it by using illegal digital distribution, but now there are legal options to rent nearly any popular movie online and I think it's great. But I doubt that Bittorrent or services like it will ever go away unless obscure films become available for streaming as well. Netflix has some, but with older and weirder cinema there are a lot of holes.
And are you really going to act as if our society's disdain for incest, murder, theft and lying has nothing to do with the bible? Because if you do, you're living in a fantasy world.
The problem here is that you've in essence created a straw man argument. You're saying, "All Christians must believe X" and then asserting that Christianity is a problem because X is false. In reality, a great many liberal Christians do in fact believe in evolution and that's perfectly as it should be. You do not get to dictate what other people are allowed to believe.
That statistic is terrifying, but I would want to see their methodology before assuming it's correct. Nice of you to tell me what I have to believe, but the concept of original sin is entirely absent from the Jewish reading of the garden of Eden story. It is a Christian concept developed later to convince people they "need" Jesus. More importantly, the bible isn't one book or even two... it's 66 booksfif you're looking at a Christian bible or 39 with a Jewish bible. Most of the books have different authors and come from different time periods, so to speak of it as one book is ludicrous. Some of the authors were pro war and others were not; some were misogynistic and others were not. Some of the prophets openly disagree with each other, and there are plenty of other internal contradictions as well, especially if you're ignoring historical context. Yes, the book is violent and sanctions many things we think of as immoral today. However, it also forbids human sacrifice, which was a common practice in ancient times. That makes it revolutionary if you're reading it in context. And it contains plenty of commandments that are just a good idea - treating others with kindness, not lying about people, not stealing or murdering. Our society gets its mores against these things from the Bible. So to say it's worthless is completely missing the point. It contains things that no longer apply to modern life, and also things that do. I find it really interesting that your article doesn't mention interviewing any Jews. From my perspective, the way Christians (and atheists only familiar with Christian doctrine) look at the Bible makes no sense. For someone who sends to be an atheist, you show remarkably little inclination to apply critical thinking to religion. It seems you prefer to resort to generalizations about things you don't know very much about. I'm sorry if you're prejudiced against all religious people because you don't like Christian doctrine, but let me set the record straight on something. You didn't have the right to tell anyone what they should believe it how they should read the bible. Neither does a rabbi. No more than I get to tell you what scientific theories you should prefer. There is more than just one way to interpret scripture, and ultimately as many different ones as there are people willing to engage the text and analyze it for historical, cultural, mystical, religious, psychological or act other level if meaning. It is by no means perfect, but neither is it worthlesss or evil like you so ignorantly suggest. It is a collection of many books, all written by fallible humans who were trying to express what they thought was right. It's also a work of literature that forms one of the most basic foundations of western culture. have you even read it all?
Of course I'm not suggesting that. Fundamentalists believe they should ignore their reason, if they even have any to begin with.
If we're going to go that far, we might as well forcibly sterilize the ones who don't believe what we do. We'd already be effectively ghettoizing them anyway.
Only if you believe the bible is literally true. Which most believers do not. The bible can still be a holy document with important lessons if it's "only" a myth and not literal history. Which anyone with the most basic critical thinking skills can see that it is, whether they're religious or not.
So glad you said so. I thought I was the only one here not automatically equating "faithful" with "fundamentalist". Which is pretty offensive to a religious person like myself who despises everything fundamentalists stand for.
That many Americans are dumb enough to support teaching it in science classes, instead of just having a comparative religions class separate from the science class. Which might even promote silly things like tolerance and understanding.
This was my post. I posted it anonymously by accident. I'm replying to it so that I get any replies that may come later.
Faith is only fragile if your faith is founded on a five-year-old's understanding of what the bible says. In other words, if you're a literalist (i.e., a fundamentalist). Biblical literalism is a relatively new phenomenon, appearing mainly in America in the last 100 years. Because most Americans are bloody fools. (I'm an American myself, just always been partial to the Britishisms.)
The oldest Hebrew text we still have isn't perfect either. The rabbis mucked about with it in Roman times. Look up the Masoretic text on Wikipedia ... you'll be astonished.
Except not. What you're describing is a mindless fundamentalist. Most people of faith understand how critical thinking works and do it regularly.
Doesn't this mean that getting Netflix to work on Linux might be as simple as spoofing the user agent from a Chromebook? Especially if you were using Chrome, Netflix probably wouldn't detect that you're not actually using a Chromebook. Has anyone tried this?
Since Office 2013 includes a cloud service anyway, why not let subscribers get their app for free? The subscription fees are where they're getting their money in that model, not the app sales, and the only way to keep Apple from getting your money is to charge nothing for the app itself. It works fine for Carbonite, CrashPlan, Dropbox, Google Drive... Oh wait, I know why Microsoft won't do that. Because they've always been more motivated by profit than by making things convenient for their users. Say what you want about Apple, but they are extremely user-focused... except when they're convinced they know better than the user what the user *should* want. Sometimes that leads to great things, and other times it's bloody infuriating when they remove a feature people actually used.
If the system has an older version of Windows on it, this may be the most tactful way to broach the subject. My experience (15+ years) in freelance tech support tells me that when confronted with the knowledge that an operating system will no longer receive security updates soon (or worse, already doesn't), they are glad to upgrade in order to prevent security holes that might lead to someone stealing their data. This allows you to completely sidestep the issue of possible mismanagement of the old system and start fresh with (hopefully) input from all the board members on how things should go from there.
For reference, I mean when saying "it's demise" (sic), which should be "its demise". Saying "it's been", as in "it has been", is fine.
Come on. "It's" means "it is". The article should say "its" instead, since that is the possessive.
I realize I may be a bit of a stickler here, but Slashdot is a major news site (the only one I personally check with any regularity), and professionalism means not mangling the language. Especially not in ways that make already common mistakes look acceptable. Copy-editing is important.
The destiny of Earthseed is to take root among the stars. -Octavia E. Butler, 1993 The future is now, folks.
I was actually hoping to find out that there had been a "manned" mission to mars using a dog, complete with cute puppy pictures. God help me... social media has infected my brain.
Has anyone tried the link in the article above recently? Cause it's not working. I am so amused... either all of us visiting it has knocked it offline, or someone has successfully attacked the attackers.
Yes, in fact it does.