MajesticTreeFrog

I can't really say why I believe that way, other than it just seems right and makes sense (sorry if that isn't a good enough reason). I would recommend his books to anyone. They have an intriguing view on Christianity and even human life and human nature in general and, I think, are not written purely for a Christen audience. Those those are my beliefs <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Indeed, Lewis's 'mere' christianity has a lot to be said for it. I have a compendium of his works on christianity, and I am slowly going through it. While I disagree with him on multiple points, I think he was a great mind and contributed a lot. Modern christians should read him more I think. I am glad to know that you do.

That certainly helps. The other thing to consider is that spyware is all aimed at IE, so any flaw in that engine will be used to jack your computer. Firefox I find to be as nice to use if not nicer than maxthon(yes I have used it) and a lot prettier for the gui(just my preference). Granted, as firefox becomes more common, Spyware people will be gunning for it too. However, as open source software these attacks will be easier to remove. If you like maxthon, great. But realize that you have technically left IE, even if you use the render engine. If ALL maxthon uses is the render engine, then it is a rather different program from IE, it might be safe, for many of the same reasons FF is safe. I am just pointing out that your choice to abandon normal IE is the same choice others make when they get FF. You are still abandoning the buggy MS software for a third party product. My dad likes maxthon and it is what he uses.

Nice hashbang. *NICE*. Now, go send that to all the linux mailing lists you can find.

Yes, it comes with a 10/100 nic. You can also get it with wireless (802.11g) and bluetooth if you want.

Indeed, this is why hashbang and I asked for this forum to be added. If everyone is willing to both listen honestly and openly, as well as speak clearly and un-emotionally(or at least relatively so) everyone benfits. I for one learned a lot form pbolduc in a thread that would have been in this forum had it existed at the time of that conversation.

Well, for me, I would go with AMD just for the AMD-64 stuff. That is really where things are going, and getting a P4 now will get you something that will go out of date rather soon. Even intel knows this, so they are adopting AMD's 64 bit extension to x86 code in their next chip.

Except they have even less reason to do so. Much of what is claimed to be psychic power can be made testable. Tests have been done. LOTS of them. And psychic stuff came out batting zero.

Actually, on 'good' CRTs, the contrast ration, crispness, and brightness are better than on LCDs, but thats on 'good' CRTs, which few people own.

You rock hashbang. Well, I think they are full of it. It strikes me as too easy to fake to generally be legit, and how would one read someone's past life anyway? Right, Psychic power. Psychic power doesn't have a good track record. There has been some real research on reincarnation, and its interesting stuff, but if anythiny it strikes me(from what I read) as making this even more doubtful(the research was actually trying to demonstrate evidence for past lives, and was doing as good a job as you can on stuff like that.) So, to summarize: I think it is BS for a buck.

May I first say that being willing to say this without aggression, as a simple explanation of your viewpoint, is very refreshing and noble. Second, I am glad you have found such conviction in your life, and I hope you are as good at not forcing that opinion on others in life offline as on. Third, when you mention the difficulty of explaining what happened to you, I totally understand, as I posted my own experience earlier. So, thank you. So, to the meat of it, I view things differently than you. This is fine and dandy, and If you want to talk about these things, I will explain how I see things, and explain reasons why your view does not work for me, and give you some ideas as food for thought that you may accept or reject as you will, though I hope you seriously consider them. I will save the discussion revolving around why leaders did not parade his body around the streets for another time, as I would need to refresh my memory on some things, and don't have the relevant books around. In any case, the short short short form is that your historical understanding is flawed. Jesus is important to christians, and therefore he and what happens to him are given great priority to them, but for the romans he was just a criminal and a nuisance, and was much like many other religious reformers/leaders/etc. To Rome, it was basically not worth caring about once the leader was dead. I realize that isn't helpful, but I don't have the ability nor inclination to mess with it right now on my computer. Why did Buddhism spread around the world, and become a major religion today? Does that make it true? No, popularity doesn't have much in the way of merit. Brittany Spears is popular, but her music sucks. Indeed, for a long long time, until very very recently, christianity was a small drop in the bucket on the world stage, comprising only Europe. It seems bigger because many come from a european background, and study that history in school, and therefore have europe's importance significantly overexagerated in our mindspace. Europeans did finally affect much of the globe, but through war and imperialism, not the love of Jesus. In the process, they converted people(often forcefully), and that is how things spread. So, it is not through the power or persuasiveness or even the quality of the message that caused christianity to spread, but instead the power of the sword and the musket. Now, don't interpret this to mean that I consider this manner of spreading to invalidate the religion(though It does call it into doubt in my mind), but I am simply trying to point out that the size, popularity, etc, of an idea/creed in no way shows its accuracy. The same Europeans who were Christians believed the earth was flat, and for good reason: looking into the distance, it looked flat, and they had little reason to believe otherwise(there were ways to have known, but much of that knowledge was lost in the dark ages, it wasn't till the renaissance that it began to be rediscovered). So, these things are not good indicators of accuracy. Furthermore, I completely understand your religious feelings, as I have had a religious experience, recounted elsewhere. However, it came from meeting a buddhist monk. What does this mean? Well, for one it means that we have to be careful about accepting even those experiences at face value. Most people are part of the religion of their parents, and MANY many people have had religious experiences, and they all feel that these experiences validate THEIR religion to the exclusion of others. People interpret these events based on how they were brought up to interpret them: as affirmations of what they were taught as childen as per their religion. But they cannot all be correct, except that perhaps there is more to it all than there seems(as a psychology person, I can say that even this is very subject to doubt, but that is neither here nor there). So, where does that leave the inquiring mind? Well, it seems to me that it leaves one having to use other tools to establish validity. Even St. Augustine was inclined to think so. He thought that religion(christianity) could be shown using reason. This begins by saying: Is this right? The first step towards true, honest faith, (in my mind), is doubt. Otherwise, one is just speaking what one has been fed. So, in order to not go on forever, that is where things stand for me. I believe what I believe because as far as I can tell my beliefs as per religion survive the test of doubt.

Well, for people who work at their computers for long amounts of time, the LCD is much easier on the eyes due to the way the sceen is refreshed. Also, if you are a college student moving every so often, an LCD is nice cause it doesn't weigh 50 pounds.

I have. It is very a very interesting book on many merits, literary and historical. You may base your beliefs on it if you wish, but I must inform you that it is rather easy to notice flaws, problems, holes, and outright innaccuracies if you bother to look. But this isn't the place for this, use the religion and philosophy section to post. If you do, please be willing to use logic and not emotional rants. They don't do your cause any justice.

I do not deny immediately. First I question, examine. I bring to bear the teeth of logic and the sword of doubt, as I refered to it earlier. When they are done, I see what is left. Most of the time, rather little. But you are wrong if you think I deny 'every religion', though I do not accept any in their entirety. All religions and their scriptures are composed of the writings of people, and as such are prone to the flaws that people carry. If you cannot respond to my last post, respond to this: Why accept? Not only your religion, but you interpretation of it? Unless you can bring in Jesus himself, alive and well, and have him vouch that YOU have got it correct, then you are guessing as much as anyone. But you cannot do this, so I will make it easier for you. Use *logic* to show why there is any good reason to think that you are correct. In this, you cannot use the bible without first establishing that both it and your interpretation of it are without flaws. I hope you understand the task in front of you, as no one has succeded yet.

Could you restate more clearly? I for one have no idea what you are trying to say.

Support is probably red hat. GUI similar to windows is KDE, any linux distro will run it. Ease of use is usually Mandrake, but there are other good ones, Ease of installation I have heard good things about SuSE. http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ thats a pretty good starting point.

Your words strike me as coming from a person having some real emotional stuff going on inside, as i noticed that you have posted this sort of forcefull and absolute opinion a couple of places on this board, and just after joining. Are you facing some sort of spiritual crisis?

Well, do YOU know of anyone brought back to life? No, you believe it because that is what you were told. Your belief is based entirely on your assumption that the bible as a true and accurate record of what happened. This is an issue, since if you have much knowledge of the history of the christian church, you would know that the bible was not put together by jesus or god, but by others, SINNERS as you call them. Certain accounts and interpretations were discarded for political reasons, and there were many disagreeing sects. Now, not all of them can be correct. Or take for example protestantism in all its forms and catholicism. There are large doctrinal disagreements here. Both cannot be correct. So, which to trust? And that is what it really comes down to, trust. You TRUST that your religion is the 'one true faith', while you ignore the fact that there are something like 40,000 variations on it, many claiming to be the 'one true faith'. And there are the other religions, which may claim that their founders did all sorts of things, and claim this as proof that theirs is the 'one true faith'. Yet their trust is the same as yours, and based on as little. Tell me, outside of your book, written by the very sinners it is meant to save(since neither jesus nor god wrote it), do you have any *good* reason to think that your view is strong? Right? Any more than what you have been taught by those that you trusted as you grew up? If not, perhaps YOUR faith(as opposed to your religion), is not actually the one true faith, but instead just mindless repetion, without depth or meaning.

You do realize mac is based on unix? Also, mac is more user friendly, having used both. The thing is, they should be able to do that without things being taken over, just for visiting a site. Running software that might have nasties is a different issue, but it simply shouldn't be so easy. Thats the main problem. Not that windows CAN be hacked(cause anything can be hacked...except maybe well configured openBSD, but thats about it), but that it is so easy and frequent, relative to other things.

If they are international calls/emails, then very much so. Domestic it is still possible, but it can happen. This is part of why smart people only use code words and such to talk about drugs and similar over the phone. Echelon and similar tap so much stuff that using people just isn't workable for anything other than the most important things, so they use keywords and such to flag messages. Carnivore just got shut down, but nobody should rejoice. The reason it got shut down is because other, non custom built stuff eventually reached the level they needed, so they scrapped their thing and used off the shelf things and techniques. So, the carnivore is dead, long live the carnivore.(damnit.)

Thanks for the link, I will see what I can do with that.

Well, its things like built in docks for the ipod in certain cars, things like the itrip and so on and so forth. I agree, in that I don't care too much, but don't forget the 'teen girl who wants to show how 'her' she is' market, which sadly drives WAY too much consumer stuff these days. If you are reading this and your daughter is like that, please help America and cut her allowance to a third and make her get a job. Back on track, the main things I care about with the ipod are 1. works on both my pc and mac. 2. sound quality. 3. Ease of use. 4. not hideous. There are lots of other things I would like, but those are the bare minimum. Ipod does this well.

Well, off the top of my head, I am inclined to say no. The most obvious example for dualism would be black/white. And here I talk about absolute black, or conceptual black (instead of some pigment), and the same for white. One absorbs all light, and the other reflects at all. So, from the standpoint of light reflectivity, they are indeed opposite. However, is this an absolute truth? Or is it an illusion of some sort? Well, if I take the standpoint, What color do I make my stealth bomber?(assuming you can use absolute colors in the way we use pigments), Black would be good, because it absorbs light, but white would be not terrible, since it would blend with clouds. Then all you would have to do is fly at cloud level. Not as good perhaps, but not opposite either. Not a great example, so let me try something else: To make a better example, let me expand the concept of black and white. Black is absence, and white is existence. This is how we normally deal with them right? These two things seem completely opposite right? Well, to make a practical matter of it all, is the glass half full or half empty? One answer is both. And that would be right. The other good answer is that the glass is twice as big as it needs to be. The thing here is that a 'lack' is an illusion. We concieve of 'nothing' and treat it as a thing which has existence, both verbally and mentally. In this way, despite our assigning it the value of 'nothing', it is really something itself. These two 'poles' are the same, the only way we see them as opposite is through deluding ourselves. Food for thought.

Well, that depends on how much in the way of viruses you think you open yourself up to. Viruses seem to have a harder time spreading than spyware, or at least are less plentiful. However, It might make sense to have all of them, but only leave the best one running for 'real time' scanning, due to system resource limits. *If* those limits didn't exist, then it would be a good idea. Anti-spyware programs(with the exception of microsofts) don't sit in your system tray. They only run when you tell them to. Still, running them all, at night, when you aren't doing anything works just fine. Hell, its what I do. Sadly, you cannot use MacOS from a x86 pc. Well...you can use pear PC, but that wouldn't give you a 'real' experience. What you can do is either A. go to an apple store and try one and ask for some demo's, or B. Find someone who ownes a mac and play around on it sometime, preferably with them around to help you get used to it(it is very different). Once you are used to it(like you are used to your PC) then you can decide which you like better(getting used to mac os x usually takes a few hours, but then you should be good to go). Finally, what Wan is saying is that MS engaged in monopolistic practices. It developed, distributed, and bundled a browser with their OS for free in order to run a potential competitor out of business. This is illegal, and they were found guilty(though our government did a *BLEEP* job in the sentencing). As for the advantages of IE over firefox, IE is compatible with a few more sites(because those sites are written for IE instead of using correct HTML), but firefox, with its add ons and tabbed browsing, is much nicer (in my opinion) for the 'browsing experience'. I don't find very many sites that require IE. When I do, I shun them for doing so, for philosophical reasons. True, and this is part of why I don't like both linux AND windows. Because for windows, there shouldn't be problems, and for Linux, fixing them shouldn't be some great net adventure through the complex shell command universe(provided you can get anywhere. Good luck if you have a network card problem). And that is why I like OSX. It doesn't break as a general rule, and fixing it (in the very unusual circumstance that I manage to mess things up) usually requires hitting a well documented button. So, that should clear things up.

The thing is, I don't hate them so much as I dislike their business practices. That said, i was talking about the OS itself more than the company. In the end, I want one of two results: 1. A couple of major OS's competing, resulting in higher quality for everyone(MS only improved windows due to linux as a threat) 2. A single OS that is open, free, and very easy to use, creating a common platform that can be used safely, where applications can compete. If OSX ever became open source, that would do it. My hope is that linux gets there somehow, or that Apple becomes magically nice.

Hmmm, maybe. I try and break em up for readability. Maybe this is why people think I am saying things I am not.