MajesticTreeFrog

For my senior thesis in college as a Psych student, I did a study about arguments involving gun control and their effect on people's opinions. What I found was sad. The quality of the argument, either way, had basically no effect. There were some trends in the data that were even more alarming, but since I had a small data set, they were not statistically significant(or weren't there and were a hicup of the data). In any case, the one KNOWN thing was that people basically don't think anymore when it comes to guns. They pick a side and go with it for other reasons. Even creating the study was hard for those reasons. Its sad really. Gun control or not is not what we should be talking about. It should be about what are ALL the different things we can try and affect to lower crime. For instance, a waiting period keeps people who are angry and want to go buy a gun in a fit of anger to kill someone from doing so, while not being a huge inconvenience to gun owners.Everything is the middle ground. Frankly, I think guns are mainly irrelevant. The problem is that people have a need for them at all, for defence or for crime (I am not saying that you can magically end ALL crime, just that much crime is motivated by reasons that CAN be dealt with).For instance, violence rises in poor areas, even if gun ownership rates stay constant... Hmmm, lets see. There are cultural things going on in poor areas, economic things in poor areas, and educational things in poor areas that could all be the REAL causes of violent crime.THOSE are what we should be dealing with.

OS9 blew. I love macs now, but I wanted to burn them back in the days of OS 9. Comparing 9 to XP is unfair, since XP is recent and 9 came from ages ago. A better comparison would be OS9 to Win98.

Only you DON"T have to buy stuff directly from them, and it has a warranty. Don't forget the cost of software, because you have to buy a lot more on the PC.

Well, the issue is many a christian/preacher/etc will happily quote bible versus at us, and then demand that we accept the lord. So we follow in kind. Also, I used that example because both peices make comments about the nature of god. If the book says nobody has seen him, and then has someone say that they have, then that is an issue. But your comment is correct about context, and that was part of my point. If you include context, then you must interpret that context, and whether or not the book is true quickly becomes secondary to whether or not your INTERPRETATION of the book is true. If something is the 'absolute truth', or 'every word of it is true' then interpretation is a bit of a no no. Statements like these are what open up the religion to such attack. Indeed, I suggest you go check the context of the two passages I used. As far as I can tell(with a quick web search, I don't have a bible handy), their context doesn't make them incompatible like your example suggests.

Very True. We use an Xserve at my work( a news station) and we love it because it gives us no crap. But its all in what you want. That being said, I was refering to home users/desktop users.

That is....a very long and round about way of doing it. But very retro, which is cool.

Now that Macs are FINALLY affordable and nice, is there anyone here who is considering getting one? (especially since If it didn't work out a mac mini is a small easy server).And for those of you who aren't, is it because you don't need a new computer, don't care, or is it still too expensive(please consider the software bundle, and your pirated stuff doesn't count).Also, if you aren't switching, what would it take?

I can tell you why: We get a lot of christians who ask us 'why don't you believe?'. When, from our perspective, the questions 'why do you believe? Why is that better than any other set of beliefs? How well does that stand up against critique?' are where you should start. Ther other problem is the hordes of 'christians' who go on full assault when they find out you are not christian, and try and convert you. Then, when you ask them to explain their faith, it becomes apparent that they really have no clue what they believe, either, except that it is true. This gets very old, very quickly, and after the 50th or so 'faith attack', one feels rather beligerent towards the whole lot. Sadly, since all the crazies identify them selves as christians(loudly), those of us who deal with them begin to group everyone who identifies themselves as christian in with the crazies, and often react with irritiation that isn't deserved because the crazies have given you a *very* bad name. Now, do you believe every word of the bible is literally true? And I mean every word. Gen 32:30 says, "...for I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved." Then, John 1:18: "No man hath seen God at any time..." If such passages are held to be true, then there is a problem, because these two passages are contradictory and therefore cannot both be literally true. If these passages are not 'literal' then there is a problem, because then you must interpret the 'absolute truth', and you aren't really in a position to do that(because you aren't god, so you can't say(without supreme hubris) that you know what he wants). There are escapes from this trap, so I am pointing it out as a word of caution. The declaration 'it is true!!' is what gets the atheists and agnostics and such so irritated.

Why? If you have a monitor, you have a keyboard. Chances are you even like the keyboard. Part of what apple is doing is getting people to realize that it will use a 2 button mouse, and that it will use 'standard' PC stuff. (That is one real criticism, cmon apple, stop the stupid one button mouse thing).

Actually, depending on how hard core what you need to do is, you should get 3. 1 holds system/applcations, 2 and 3 should be fast(10k rpm) drives in a stripped raid config. (raid 0 I beleive). This setup allows you to edit very high resolution video without stuttering.

Well, I would say, on first glance, that you should go with max. This is because it is used so many places and by so many people that it will be easy to find tutorials. Also, if you ever want a job doing 3d in say the game industry, 3ds max is rather standard. That said, I think that you should also consider blender: https://www.blender.org/ Blender is perfectly functional, and its FREE(it was originally commercial, but then it was somehow purchased by the community and made free). It also has a huge community that has produced plenty of free tutorials and documentation.

You can get a blog, 1gb email and webspace for free at spymac.com. Another popular site for blogging is livejournal.

And you can put all that stuff in osx with fink, darwinports, or its already built in. AND its easy to use.

I saw a news story a while back saying that they were going to begin selling amd CPUs as well, but I guess they haven't started yet.

Right now China has tons of cheap labor due to low costs(and quality) of living. However, in terms of things like electroics and other advanced trades it only has a few major centers and then nothing. Same with education. In addition, China is polluting its environment at a furious pace, as it has been a dumping ground not only for itself, but western nations as well. This will bite them long term as they have a problem with resources and quite possibly a health care crisis. China's current economic boom is because they are going through something akin to the industrial revolution in the west, with their advances mainly coming from manufacturing. Manufacuring requires few trained/educated workers and large numbers of workers with easy to train skills, which perfectly fits china's current workforce. China will have problems breaking out of this mold, due to how their current economic and educational base is currently set up.

Make sure this guy is legit. It is easy to get ripped off by people. When I was in a gaming clan, our leader(in an attempt to get the members to stay of all things), contacted this graphics guy and had him do some design as a 'trial'. Then he took it and used it for our 'shiny new website'. Needless to say, this pissed off the graphics guy, and in turn things went downhill from there. So, people can be stupid, and they might try to rip you off.

Well, on other OS's the compilers and such you spent money on come with it for free. Linux comes with a ton of nice dev tools(it is a programmers' OS after all) and you can download the Xtools for OSX from apple for free as well.

Actually there is plenty of hard evidence. What people want is 'proof', not understanding that there is no 'proof' in science. I don't mean no proof for evolution in science I mean no proof for anything ever in any way shape or form. Proof is an imaginary concept, it doesn't exist. There is simply 'overwhelming evidence' and 'lack of countervailing evidence'.

Well,only 'rapidly' if by rapidly you mean 'in a few years' or 'rate of dropping the features they promised'. Then it is coming very rapidly indeed.

Ah, well ok. I am unhappy with windows and linux is indeed overrated (at least as a general user OS), but yeah, winXP will do if you don't need much except that it run(and you don't deal with hostile environments).

This deals with the way SP2 handles talking to other computers, not just running local stuff like what you are doing. For corporate networked drives and servers handling multiple XP installs, this is a big problem.

I disagree, but there was a time when I thought rap was good. So, maybe it is just current rap. In any case, I have a taste similar to yours(-rap).

Out of curiosty, have you used any non-windows OS's for any extended length of time?

Humans did NOT evolve from apes. Humans and apes evolved from a common ancestor. In other words, before there were humans or apes as we know them, there was something else(which doesn't exist anymore). That something else began to diversify, and those subsets shifted, and so on and so on. Till Finally we have the humans and apes of today. For breif overview, look at this website. I skimmed it and it seems to have its stuff in order. Most sites(for or against) do not. http://www.skeptictank.org/hs/factfaq.htm

Well, there are a few things to keep in mind about the shuffle: 1. It WILL play in normal order, not just shuffle mode. 2. For the price, it holds a lot of music 3. Sound quality, which for me means a lot. http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,1753012,00.asp That is a good review. As it points out, the shuffle has insane audio quality. 4. It also works as a usb thumb drive. I find these usefull, and so that feature ups the value(for me) relative to other flash based players. 5. For the 1gb version, if you are still in school or a teacher, apple will give you a discount if you go through their education store on their website, which makes it even more of a value(to those that apply). In any case its what you need/want out of your player. But despite the lack of screen, I think its a pretty good deal.