Posts by GoodGuyGreg

70

Mac Book Pro with Retina or Dell XPS 15? (both with new Haswell processors)

by Simon in

jw
friends

i've been in need of a new laptop for a long time.

no, i mean it - a really long time.

the old dell that we have has a floppy lid and is woefully underpowered although it does build up my upper body strength every time i pick it up.. the last 6 months has been a bad time to buy something new though with the haswell processors on the horizon promising better battery life and also screen technology seems to have been leaping ahead recently to a new hi-dpi standard.. so apple finally released their mac book pro and at the same time dell has released an xps 15 ultrabook which looks like a pretty good alternative and probably better 'value'.. pro's and con's?

GoodGuyGreg

+1 on going Apple, especially since you know your way around computers. If you check out the prices of similarly specced machines from different companies, you'll see that the so-called apple tax doesn't really exist, in the beginning of a production cycle. Add to that the robustness of a Unix based operating system and the design choices aimed at minimizing bloat and providing a snappy user experience during year after year of ownership, and the choice really is a no-brainer.

My current mid-2010 MBP will be bought out and used at home when I get a new one at work (an upcoming project will require me to run several virtual Windows servers in tandem while on the move, which might be a tad too much for a dual core i5 with 8GB of RAM). It has been up and down my backpack for three and a half years and I really see no serious signs of aging on it, nor has it lost any of its initial speed (granted, the first thing I did was to install an SSD in place of the original 5400 rpm disk). The old T- and W-series Thinkpads I used to use would have if not broken then at least seriously loose lid hinges by that time, and I would usually reinstall them at least once every 9 to 12 months to regain some speed in Windows. On the Mac I just reboot every once in a while and run Onyx every couple of months to keep things shipshape.

1

Do you have fingerprint access to PC? How do you like it?

by Iamallcool in

jw
friends

GoodGuyGreg

I used to use Thinkpad T-series computers at work, and they've had finger print readers since more than a decade. They might be a cool feature to show off, but they've got a bloated implementation on top of the regular Windows login prompt, because really: is it that hard to just type your password a few times per day on a regular keyboard?

I haven't used them for a long while (since many years, I remove all bloat from a new PC), so I'm unsure if they just replace the regular login prompt or if you can use the fingerprint reader for UAC (when installing software or drivers) too.

25

Do you recall your first encounter with a atheist? What was your thought?

by jam in

jw
friends

growing up in the south everyone i knew believed in god, even the.

town drunk.

i remember watching some special tv program around xmas .

GoodGuyGreg

Having grown up in Scandinavia, meeting atheists wasn't really uncommon. I had some openly atheist teachers in school, mom used to try to start a study with a biologist, etc.

@OP: Since atheism usually is the result of getting more information rather than being some kind of moral statement, I'm less surprised if the town drunk wasn't one than that more prominent members of the community with a better education weren't.

59

Is Richard Dawkins giving atheists a bad name?

by slimboyfat in

he just can't seem to stop himself taunting "these muslims" or "some muslim or other".

among his favourite taunts are:.

"all the world's muslims have fewer nobel prizes than trinity college, cambridge.".

GoodGuyGreg

@Laika: How would you argue that people do good because of their religious beliefs? Are you saying that non-believers have no inclination to do good deeds? Or that if we took away religion, everybody would be evil? Of course people do good primarily because that's part of the human nature.

But the other side of the coin is that when people are part of a system where the system is considered more important than the individuals it consists of, horrible things will be done in the name of this system. If the system in addition has rules and regulations that add ingredients like enforced ignorance and xenophobia, then the system becomes truly dangerous. We here on this board were once part of such a system. Threads about the org's fear of higher education are regularly recurring, as are threads about people being told to not think critically (that is: analyze what they're being told) but instead have faith (a trust in their leaders which may but doesn't have to be founded in actual facts).

And this is what Dawkins doesn't like about Islam either: it's pretty telling that a religion that once was the driving force behind science while Europe was stuck in the dark ages, a religion consisting of about one quarter of our planet's human population, has produced two scientific Nobel laureates in the past 111 years. What happened to the need to understand the world? And how come such a system has turned from being a driving force behind science to becoming a force against science and the spreading of knowledge among the population in the countries where it's dominant? Something there is rotten, and it's not the human nature.

34

"Whether These Appear Sound From a Strategic or Human Standpoint or Not." - What do YOU think?

by jw07 in

http://www.jw.org/en/publications/magazines/w20131115/seven-shepherds-eight-dukes/.

paragraph 17.

"at that time, the life-saving direction that we receive from jehovahs organization may not appear practical from a human standpoint.

GoodGuyGreg

I frankly think it's mostly a sign that the guy who wrote the article wants to show his superiors he's good enough for a promotion, and the formulation sounded good enough in their ears that they kept it.

I often had it repeated to me by my die-hard jw grandfather, that we should trust the organization as we trust our parents: if they tell us to do something or to avoid something without an explanation, we should trust that it's for our good. The only problem, is that my parents showed me time after time that a lot of what they required from me was completely arbitrary and had nothing to do with my own good. After a while I began noticing the same pattern in the congregation, and it became very obvious when I went on one of the information meetings for Bethel volunteers on a DC.

TL;DR: They probably didn't mean anything ominous, they're just really bad at finding new ways of saying "we've got this, trust us".

59

Is Richard Dawkins giving atheists a bad name?

by slimboyfat in

he just can't seem to stop himself taunting "these muslims" or "some muslim or other".

among his favourite taunts are:.

"all the world's muslims have fewer nobel prizes than trinity college, cambridge.".

GoodGuyGreg

@slimboyfat: Dawkins takes atheism a bit further than I'd be prepared to. And some of his more vocal criticisms aren't very well formulated if you want to make people see the problems with their current standpoint.

But having less-than-moderate views in some areas does not invalidate the areas where the guy is right. Also, he actually is pretty much right even in the areas where he's not very nice about it. It's just that it doesn't help his cause.

Otherwise, I agree with @Phizzy, that he's not a spokesperson that can be said to represent atheists as a group, since there is no real group to talk about. He's simply a pretty smart guy with enough of a platform to make himself heard and the wish to do so for what he views as the good of mankind. You don't have to agree with him, but without other arguments than that you don't like his attitude you won't prove him wrong.

14

A Great rebuttal to the likes of Ray Comfort

by cantleave in

jw
friends

i was going to add this to the common ancestry thread but it covers much more.

i love this woman....... http://www.youtube.com/watch?list=uuravycv6c0copl2ukvzhznw&v=i0k9nyhh7tq.

GoodGuyGreg

Nice vid. Too bad it won't really help anyone not already on the fence.

@Slimboyfat: Pretty and smart is a pretty winning combination in my book.

83

There are more Jehovah's Witnesses in Portugal than there are Scientologists in the whole world

by cedars in

jw
friends

it would be nice if this little nougat of information could be more widely known - especially by journalists.. the quoted figures for scientology are taken from tony ortega's 2011 article in the village voice, which quotes former scientology pr executive jeff hawkins as saying.... "i know that event attendance internationally was somewhere in the region of 25,000 to 35,000. the international 'bodies in the shop' (people actually in the orgs that week for service) was 16,000 to 18,000. ias was struggling to get 40,000 members.

based on this and a lot of other information i was privy to, i estimate the actual number of scientologists at a maximum of 40,000. that's on the high side.".

portugal is one of 33 countries with more than 40,000 active jehovah's witnesses - demonstrating the gulf in size between the two faiths.. the following list shows all countries with more than 40,000 jws according to their reported peak publishers for 2013.. .

GoodGuyGreg

Cedars:

There's no way 4 out of 10 newly baptized ones were coming in from informal Witnessing when I was an active Jdub. It was more like 8 or 9 out of 10 were friends or (mostly) family, with an extra 1 or 2 out of 10 the product of "some form" of preaching activity.

This was exactly my point: If you talk to friends and relatives (not counting children), that usually falls in the informal service category (or at least I'd count it as such back when I was properly in, and I don't see why the org wouldn't). This plus the children who join, probably accounts for pretty much every new member in most of the world. The only question is whether friends and relatives are closer to 40% or closer to 60% of the people who join each year. I believe they might be right in it being closer to 40%.

83

There are more Jehovah's Witnesses in Portugal than there are Scientologists in the whole world

by cedars in

jw
friends

it would be nice if this little nougat of information could be more widely known - especially by journalists.. the quoted figures for scientology are taken from tony ortega's 2011 article in the village voice, which quotes former scientology pr executive jeff hawkins as saying.... "i know that event attendance internationally was somewhere in the region of 25,000 to 35,000. the international 'bodies in the shop' (people actually in the orgs that week for service) was 16,000 to 18,000. ias was struggling to get 40,000 members.

based on this and a lot of other information i was privy to, i estimate the actual number of scientologists at a maximum of 40,000. that's on the high side.".

portugal is one of 33 countries with more than 40,000 active jehovah's witnesses - demonstrating the gulf in size between the two faiths.. the following list shows all countries with more than 40,000 jws according to their reported peak publishers for 2013.. .

GoodGuyGreg

Cedars:

In this last DC (2013) it was said by a GB helper that 40% of all the new Jehovah's Witnesses nowadays came to the "truth" by means of informal witnessing.

How could they know this?

I heard the same on the DC that I (sort of) attended. If you think about it, it actually makes a lot of sense. I don't have the source material available right now, but a Swedish study claimed that it's rare to find convertees in other groups than a) children of members and b) friends or acquaintances of members. Even if they pulled the actual number 40% out of their asses, I definitely find it plausible that the ratio of convertees from informal witnessing to children of witnesses being in the vicinity of 60/40, with a (very) small share of new members being caught by their doors.

22

Personality types and religious adherence

by EdenOne in

jw
friends

i was going through the personality types of the briggs-myers test (take the free test here) and noticed how some types are naturally inclined to follow rules and expect order, while others are inclined towards feelings and emotional appeals, other are naturally inclined to help out others ... what do you think?

are there certain basic personality types that pre-dispose the individual to adhere to a certain type of religion ?.

eden.

GoodGuyGreg

I'm sure it might help, but I believe the correct way of looking at personality types isn't in terms of what you do but why you do it.

I know quite a few ISTPs (my type) who are - or seem to be - true believers. I can't shake the feeling that it's probably mostly due to information control, but the fact remains that even though they are introverted thinkers and "should" prefer a sensory or materialistic approach to their environment, they still believe to some degree in the supernatural. I think the key to understanding this, is, as I hinted earlier, motivation: an ISTP generally wants to be correct, and they want to be professional/competent in what they do. As a Jehovah's Witness who's still under the influence of information control, the need for being correct is satisfied by studying and, where applicable, by "winning" discussions with people who don't share their faith. The need for being professional is satisfied by taking on as much theocratic work as possible, and excelling at it.

Besides, even as a believer, I was pretty relaxed about things I found unimportant or ridiculous. Long before I got enough information to believe in evolution as the explanation for the diversity of life, I implemented explanations of the proof for the Big Bang theory (which is something completely different but still not completely accepted among witnesses) into answers at the book study and speeches in the congregation. And I never understood the concept of not watching good movies or avoiding listening to music that made me feel alive. It wasn't, technically, rule following or a love of order that kept me inside the congregation: I had the same rebel streaks I have today. But they were combined with a naive belief that legalism and bigotry and systemic faults were to be expected, but that we still had the most correct world view available, from a wide enough perspective. Evidently, my perspective wasn't wide enough.