It wasn't that somebody just decided "You know, we should just not have fun!", but there are reasons why these things are considered bad. The first hint is your conscience, but the reason behind it is that they are simply, as the Bible explains, inconvenient.

Sex, for instance, is perfectly fine within the lifelong bond of marriage. However, when we use it as a source of pleasure, we find ourselves in all sorts of painful and distracting situations. As for intoxication, there are several problems. Other than the fact that you are out of control (depending on the intoxicant), you also have the tendency to get wrapped up in it and become less productive.

One may argue that there are drugs that are not adictive and cause no lasting damage. That may be the case, so they may not be so bad. The real problem is trying to define your life by pleasure, which is fleeting. It is one of the things, such as money, fame, etc. that people set their sites on that have no lasting benefit. In that sense, it is inconvenient at best.

Sadly, I have known many people who have had their life ruined by drug addiction. It is their experience that has told me the harm that those things can cause. Am I therefore advocating laws against drugs? Not necessarily. I'm just saying that they are a potential snare, and I thank God that He loves and forgives even the worst and will remove them from the things they can't leave on their own.

I don't understand why people are still using IE. Is there a test that it can pass? I would just put in some conditional comments (which should just be ignored), and give them an "upgrade" link to get a real browser.

That's exactly why I'm glad Christmas isn't about family or even friends, even though that's what all those Christmas shows try to tell people. There are people who don't have families, and sadly, there are some who don't have any friends either. I'm sure that we've all been at a place in our life where we have at least felt like that. Also, I'm glad it isn't about gifts which we may or may not get. So, a holiday celebrating those things would be a sad day for many.

Thankfully, we have something much greater to celebrate on Christamas. That is the gift of God's own Son, who is the promise that the very God of all creation wants very much to be your friend, in fact, a friend who will never leave you or forsake you. With that gift also comes adoption into an eternal family. Much like our biological families, some of the Christian family can be awkward and hurtful at times. Yet, if you find a good church, you'll have a large family that will love you and want to help you no matter what you do or say.

The best part is that you can celebrate these things any and every day of the year, regardless of your circumstances. Even though it is a free and universal gift, it is such a personal one. For a computer guy such as myself, it is nice to have somebody who really understands me, and loves me anyway. So, forget the decorations this year. Remember the free gift. If by chance you haven't accepted it yet, then check the tag, it is for you. Have a merry Christmas.

A computer programs simply models what we have already conceived, and so they aren't useful for solving philosophic debates. However, learning computer science can be helpful in learning logical steps that solve many practical problems. Though it doesn't really help you think outside of the box, I find that it is far more useful than philosophy.

In my own definition, phylosophy is nothing more than the systematic removal of common sense and then trying to argue about who is the most wrong. Most of the questions are completely foolish. There are some, however, that are interesting even while they are useless. This is the reason why a computer model would not be useful. Computers are practical, and most philosophical models would be optamised out by the compiler.

There are some philosophical conclusions that happen to be correct. So what of them? Sadly, there are others that contradict those, so a person would be lost as to which to believe and apply. Fortunately, for all useful and correct wisdom, the Bible has provided the answers. I might be wrong in this, but I suppose that if you were to pick any philosophical question and searched dilligently through nothing more than the book of Proverbs, you would find the solution.

While I imagine that a super railgun isn't the best thing to spend money on, I can think of much worse things. Some of the things that would be worse are the things that we have already been spending our non-existant money on like stimulus packages, company bailouts, and more entitlement spending. These things are certain to crash our economy and we're seeing the effects.

Right now, I'm not a big fan of spending anything that we don't have to. With those other things, the only thing that we get from the spending is negative incentives. At least with military spending, we gain a little more firepower. While we are not doing well in the Middle East, the reason is politics and not weaponry. Right now, Russia and China are getting awful friendly and pushing a few buttons to see how strong our resolve is. More firepower is always better. Also, our military spending is a tiny drop in our deficit spending. If we manage to keep the manufacture in the U.S., then we'll have the benefit of boosting the economy a little. Sure, it wouldn't be enough to pay for the expense, but it would be more practicle than spending on "green" jobs.

Overall, I guess that I agree, it isn't a great expenditure. I just think that there are worse things. Really, we aren't too interested in defense right now anyway. Obama is making deals with Russia to make us get rid of our defenses. I'm just praying that we'll make it through the year without too much damage.

You see this as a bad thing, and personally, I agree. However, it's probably time to face reality. In this long September, the internet has taken a new shape: a hive mentality. Gone are the days where we just grab whatever information we come across because it is unique and exciting.

The net has simply become too large for that. These days, people seek features to cut down the signal to noise ratio. This in itself isn't a bad thing, but it's based on taste, and the taste is that of the majority who only care about the latest cute hampster video or what happened on American Idol. It's only natural that some of that "noise" will be useful information. I was on a torrent site the other day looking for programming texts. I was lucky if I could find more than a handful of seeders.

The key is to encourage people in our own niche group to participate in sharing information. Let the masses have Facebook and Twitter, but we must take part in distributed file sharing while there is time.

I know that it's asking to get modded down to imply that what wikileaks is doing is a bad thing, but right now I really dislike wikileaks. Most particularly the part about leaking governments' private documents. Before, I kinda liked them and even considered helping them out. Back then, all I knew about were things like revealing Scientology reports so that people could know more about what they really teach. I also didn't mind letting out information about harful businesses practicies. However, releasing private reports of how one country has estimated another and such is just a little too dirty for me.p>

I think of it like a game of cards. Everybody is sitting around playing a nice game, some win, some loose, but they all are in agreement of what the rules are. Nobody looks at each other's hands, and so they can play at leasure. Now, if somebody had a card or two hidden away, then nobody would mind if somebody were to tell on them. However, if you had some guy walking behind the players telling each other what cards they held, then it would only be right to put the cards down for a minute and get rid of that problem first because it's impracticle to conduct business, even good business, with him there.

Personally, I resent people calling people like this hackers. There is a big difference from being curious to learn something new and being an idiot. This guy is being a jerk. Hackers learn an innovate. How much brain power does it take to post on Twitter? However, there is a part of me that wants to say that people should really check their sources and not believe something they read on a social networking site.

It's about midnight here. I was stuffed earlier today with everybody else. However, as I work 3rd shift, in a short while I plan to get stuffed again. Truthfully, I probably shouldn't eat so much, but it's the one day of the year that seems acceptable. Which is kind of ironic considering how Thanksgiving was originally a day of fasting.

I miss the day when computers were for people who could think. I fondly remember that very brief period where businesses hadn't learned how to exploit the web. For the most part, it was a novelty to them and the left it to the nerds. Sure, at that point the web was a lot of top 10 lists and novelty polls, and most pages had a guest book to sign and a view counter, but that's how we liked it. I'm sure it's all through rose colored glasses, but at least I don't believe we had lawsuits like this.

Reporting vulnerabilities is a lot different than making software to exploit them. Certainly, finding vulnerabilities is whitehat work, but there is a process to go through to make a reasonable attempt to make product vendors aware of flaws before releasing tools to exploit them. My point, however, is that rather than just presenting him as an ordinary guy, they chose to portray him as a "Whitehat Hacker". With all the misinformation on what a Hacker is, I think we should use a little more discretion. I propose that it may be his travel that sparks interest, and not just his vocation.

It seems to me that the "whitehat" lable is simply to make people feel sorry for him. This might work a little for a slashdot article, but if writing software to crack SSL was "whitehat" then that just helps to prove the case against most "hackers" (so-called by the media). Furthermore, he was being searched by customs after returning from a know drug smuggling point. This kind of thing is just muddying the waters when it comes to a much needed honest debate about security vs. privacy. It only makes my side (the pro privacy side) look week.

Nevertheless, I am still opposed to all of the misguided screenings from the government. I can see why customs might want to physically look through his laptop, but I strongly oppose them attempting to look at the data. I'm not sure what contraband they think could be in the data comming into the states. As for the TSA screenings being talked about lately, my concern is that when they do catch a terrorist, they let them go. IIRC, the underware bomber didn't even have his own passport and was allowed to board. Recently, we see a known war criminal tried and almost aquitted in a civil court. The way I see it, the governemnt doesn't care if we are safe, they just want more power to control.

I've never used Gentoo personally, but I feel that I don't have much of a reason. For learning and tinkering there is LFS, which to a greater extent is impractical for real work. That's where Arch comes in. It's customisable enough to do anything that I want while still having a great package manager. For a more typical instalation I use Fedora.

Basically, Gentoo seems to occupy that end of the spectrum between LFS and Arch that I don't seem to need or want. However, I'm still tempted to try it at least once.

What do you mean? Gentoo is so much faster than Linux From Scratch, or so I've been told. I still don't have the CD burner working in LFS yet.

I'll admit that I was tired when I posted, but the points still stand. First, as for homosexuality, it is wrong, the same as stealing or any other sin, in the new testament as well as the old (Romans, etc). A homosexual man has every right to marry a woman the same as any other man does. Marriage is not about fulfilling sexual lusts. The question is why would somebody who doesn't care about the Bible want to get married. Why not just have a civil union rather than redefine marriage?

Your point does stand, though, that there's plenty of things that people do wrong that are just as damning since breaking one law breaks them all. The point of the law as a school master is to show people what righteousness is and that none of us are good and in need of salvation. Although we should strive to follow it, we are all worthy of death. The gospel is that even people who have done wrong can be forgiven, but that doesn't make the wrong right. Loving a sinner doesn't mean accepting their sin. How much love is it to lie to somebody?

If you will read that passage in Deut 22, you will find that the rape (lay hold on) is not excused, but that the remedy is that the man be forced to marry her. In fact, a few verses earlier in a case where a man raped (force) an engaged woman, the man would be put to death. Yes, I think that we would be better as a nation under the OT law, but since we aren't I don't think that we should legislate morality. I wouldn't support a law prohibiting homosexuals from sin, only I don't want to be legally required to recognise it.

The "bride of Christ" is the church (all born again believers) whether or not thy are married. Marriage is a picture of that divine union which is why it is so important to defend its sanctity.

I'm not aware of any scripture declaring that life begins with a breath. If you know of such, please share it as that would be important. I do know that there are penalties for harming a pregnant woman if harm come to the child.