Oh, SURE there was an apology - it was on the "special anti-satan's propaganda filtered" version of the Dateline website...
(c'mon, you know the one - you've all seen through that special rose-colored filter at one time or another...)
Posts by Xander
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21What One Elder Is Saying About Dateline
by silentlambs ini recieved this email today i thought you might find it interesting.. dear bill: i have a question for you.
at book study last week, the conductor said that dateline's web site apologized for their show on jehovah's witnesses pedophiles because they had learned that the people interviewed on the show were "not who they claimed to be.
" i tried to find dateline's web site to see what they said but i was unable to do so.
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39
Why do you believe???
by truthseeker1 ini have a question for everybody.
it has probably been asked before, but i'll ask it again in case anyone changed their minds.... why do/don't you believe in god/god.
what give you faith in things not beheld/makes you not believe?.
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Xander
if evelution is still on why are there not people ending up in the monkey cages
Because as any properly education third grader could tell you, evolution doesn't work like that?
by chance
Creationists love to jump on that 'by chance' thing. No one said evolution was 'by chance'. Indeed, it is the exact opposite. "Natural Selection" (which happens, and you can actually SEE it happening) causes only fit organisms to thrive.
Who made you
An interesting argument could be made that we have the knowledge to take basic molecules and create 'living' things out of them (small viruses now, but nothing except time prevents us from creating entire human DNA strands).
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17
News Flash! JW's Aren't Christians At All!
by LizardSnot inwhat qualifies jehovah's witnesses to call themselves christians?.
unlike other "bible-based" religions who believe in the divine nature of jesus;.
the watchtower bible and tract society claims that jesus christ is the savior .
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Xander
Ah, Bona, so I'm assuming you have not been to 'quotes' site, then?
LOTS and LOTS of good stuff. Scary thing is that it is all taken directly out of the WTBTS publications - you can look everything up yourself in the mags or on the CDs.
Anyway, here is:
http://quotes.jehovahswitnesses.com/oral.htm
(For the section on oral sex - where I got the above from.)
Go to:
http://quotes.jehovahswitnesses.com/
For the complete listing of topics.
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18
The Fragility of Digital Data & The Impact ...
by SYN indidn't really know which section of the forums to post this in, so i stuck it in "friends"!.
the article linked at the bottom of this post makes some interesting points - according to a study, only .003% of our data isn't stored on some form of computer today.. needless to say, this is a somewhat disturbing statement.
having had loads of experience with computing hardware, one eventually realizes that most of the hardware out there is actually rather unreliable - hard drives, for instance.
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Xander
Gnutella isn't as 'free' as you think.
And, the gubment (at least, the US gubment) WILL place restrictions on things. You've heard of 'carnivore', no? And 'echelon'?
We preach 'freedom of speech' a lot over here. All that really means these days is that you are allowed to say anything you want as long as the government agencies at least have the ability to monitor it.
(Not that they'd act on it outside of legal channels, of course - heaven forbid, this IS a democracy after all...)
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17
News Flash! JW's Aren't Christians At All!
by LizardSnot inwhat qualifies jehovah's witnesses to call themselves christians?.
unlike other "bible-based" religions who believe in the divine nature of jesus;.
the watchtower bible and tract society claims that jesus christ is the savior .
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Xander
Funky:
Actually, that IS kinda what we were called in school - we were always the 'jehovahs'.
We used to make a joke about when someone would ask "Are you jehovahs" that we should respond: "Depends, is that plural or singular possessive?" (HAHA, everyone in the cargroup has a good laugh)
Uhhh...that was a defense mechanism, wasn't it?
husband (who is not a JW but has been studying for years and has all but been baptized into this religion)
Totally OT, but I always wondered...
On principle, I'm against using sex as a weapon (duh), but I had the impression it should be fairly easy for a non-JW woman to convince her man not to study with the JWs:
*** Watchtower 1976 February 15 pp.122-3 You Must Be Holy Because Jehovah Is Holy *** Later, another issue needed attention. Unnatural practices in connection with sex in marriage, such as oral and anal copulation, have caused some of God's people to become impure in his eyes. But The Watchtower kept above this morass of filth by alerting married couples to God's thinking on the matter.
I mean, "Sorry, honey, if you join them looks like no more BJs for you...." would be enough to convince any man *I* know not to join a cult...
(Personally, I liked the March 15, 83 Watchtower better:
"A person who brazenly advocates shocking and repulsive sexual activities would be guilty of loose conduct"
Here that? Shocking AND repulsive!!! *shudder* )
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18
The Fragility of Digital Data & The Impact ...
by SYN indidn't really know which section of the forums to post this in, so i stuck it in "friends"!.
the article linked at the bottom of this post makes some interesting points - according to a study, only .003% of our data isn't stored on some form of computer today.. needless to say, this is a somewhat disturbing statement.
having had loads of experience with computing hardware, one eventually realizes that most of the hardware out there is actually rather unreliable - hard drives, for instance.
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Xander
What?
That's what they're called!
From the 'Lycos Tech Glossay':
"A thin client is a network computer without a hard disk drive, whereas a fat client includes a disk drive."
like maybe 3 or 4 redundant copies would exist
What I was saying is that '3 or 4' times is NOT ENOUGH if I have no control over the computers in question. StorLoc 1 decides to turn his computer off for the night. StorLoc2 is a server that's being taken down for an upgrade. StorLoc3 is a laptop somewhere that just crashed. StorLoc4 is behind a downed T1 connection.
And tah-dah! Suddenly, my OS won't start (as an example).
Distributed data storage (and distributed or 'online' applications) are just terrible, terrible, BAD ideas.
And how long, really, do you think the RIAA would take to require the government to use its capabilities it will now have to simply delete all MP3 files from existence. Is it MP3? Oops, doesn't store right. Byebye. Plus, the government has all kinds of laws governing how much encryption is 'allowed' for data (basically, they must always be able to crack any encryption scheme that is exported) - nothing will change here.
Talk about 'Big Brother watching'!
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18
The Fragility of Digital Data & The Impact ...
by SYN indidn't really know which section of the forums to post this in, so i stuck it in "friends"!.
the article linked at the bottom of this post makes some interesting points - according to a study, only .003% of our data isn't stored on some form of computer today.. needless to say, this is a somewhat disturbing statement.
having had loads of experience with computing hardware, one eventually realizes that most of the hardware out there is actually rather unreliable - hard drives, for instance.
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Xander
And, anyway, why are you assuming our civilization will have 'remains'? Planning on our destruction any time soon?
Cause if not, the data isn't going anywhere. Yeah, disks fail. Big deal, the data is backed up. And everyone, everywhere, generally upgrades their disks LONG before the old ones fail. Where does the important information go?
It's still there, just moved to the NEW disks.
That'll keep happening forever. There is no practical limit on the amount of data humanity can store digitally - so we'll just keep accumulating all our knowledge into every increasing storage media (which will always be 'even increasing').
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18
The Fragility of Digital Data & The Impact ...
by SYN indidn't really know which section of the forums to post this in, so i stuck it in "friends"!.
the article linked at the bottom of this post makes some interesting points - according to a study, only .003% of our data isn't stored on some form of computer today.. needless to say, this is a somewhat disturbing statement.
having had loads of experience with computing hardware, one eventually realizes that most of the hardware out there is actually rather unreliable - hard drives, for instance.
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Xander
, leading to ultra-high redundancy data storage. Just like the Internet, if there are enough nodes, and a sufficiently high number of redundant copies of each file fragment are made, there will be virtually no way to destroy the data, unless you destroyed the entire network or a very large region of it
Riiiight...
Sorry, but I can't imagine a system large enough (with enough overhead) to make enough duplicates of EVERY BIT OF DATA on EVERY SINGLE COMPUTER to ensure that data corruption is not a problem.
I mean, really, how many computers out of your control would you want to put a bit of data on? 100? And, how much data on each? 100K, maybe? That means, to store a typical word document (1mb - 1000K) for me alone, I'd need (file to 10 fragments of 100K, each duplicated 100 times for data integrity = 10,000K each, or 100,000K total). So, what now takes up 1MB on my disk will take up 100MB distributed? YUCK!
And, what of larger, critical files? You NEED to have every single byte of every single file in your windows directory or your OS won't start. How much replication do you want on THAT data?
Sorry, I think this is just a bad idea. Kind of defeats the whole purpose of having PCs - you're basically reducing them to 'fat clients' at best.
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18
Life Created from Scratch
by bboyneko inresearchers in new york have created infectious polioviruses from ordinary, inert chemicals they obtained from a scientific mail-order house, marking the first time a functional virus has been made from scratch and raising a host of new scientific and ethical concerns.. "this shows it's now possible to go from data printed on a piece of paper or stored in a computer and, without the organism itself.
reconstruct a life form," said john la montagne, deputy director of the national institute of allergy and infectious diseases at the national institutes of health.. .
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/a58070-2002jul11.html
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Xander
Chemicals came from atoms. Atoms are made up of subatomic particles.
Where did the subatomic particles come from?
Well, we know that E=mc2, and we have verified that using this formula we can generate a LOT of energy by converting matter to energy.
Wouldn't be too hard for an enormous point of energy to form matter then, would it. Say, a Big Bang of energy?
Just a thought.
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18
Life Created from Scratch
by bboyneko inresearchers in new york have created infectious polioviruses from ordinary, inert chemicals they obtained from a scientific mail-order house, marking the first time a functional virus has been made from scratch and raising a host of new scientific and ethical concerns.. "this shows it's now possible to go from data printed on a piece of paper or stored in a computer and, without the organism itself.
reconstruct a life form," said john la montagne, deputy director of the national institute of allergy and infectious diseases at the national institutes of health.. .
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/a58070-2002jul11.html
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Xander
The reason it is interesting news is, although a virus can be argued to be 'living' or not - the same principles used to create a virus can be used to create an RNA, then DNA strand (errant RNA is pretty much all a virus is).
And we all know what you can do with DNA, right?
It IS big news, no doubt...
Although, of course, the 'ethical concerns' they mention (what a fascinating euphanism) could be horrific. You think biological warfare is bad NOW....