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Comment Re:This is how organized religion dies (Score 1) 623

The scripture from earlier confirms to those of us who trust in the promise of God's kingdom --and who see dozens of bible promises already fulfilled-

Pardon me, I might be one of those godless heathens but I suffered through quite a few years of Christian teachings - what exactly has the Bible promised us apart from forgiveness from our sins and heavenly bliss in the afterlife? The old testament was as I remember it mostly punishments. Punishment for eating the apple, building Babel's tower, Sodom and Gomorrah and of course the flood to wipe out everything. We're all sinners from the original sin and if we don't repent it's hell.

The new testament was pretty much all allegories on how we should live, there were a few "one-off" miracles while Jesus lived but all those who saw him raise the dead, turn water to wine or walk on water has been dead for 2000 years. So there's good and evil in the world, but that's pretty indistinguishable from good and bad people with free will without God or Satan pulling anyone's strings.

So I'm curious, what is it you feel God has promised? And what do see that makes you feel he's delivered? Because I can't find a lick of difference, the devout believers get injured, sick and die like the rest of us and terrible sins go by without being struck down from the heavens. It's of course possible that all of this gets tallied up and justice is served in the afterlife, but here and now in this life I can't find any sign of God. Maybe I should ask this in the opposite direction, if you were to envision a world without God what exactly would be different?

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Journal Journal: Why libressl is stupid 2

I really want to like libressl. But it pretends to be openssl badly. They refused a patch that would have mitigated this whole RAND_egd problem by simply returning that it doesn't work when someone tries to use it, which means that you commonly need a patch to use it at all. If it's not going to work like openssl, then it shouldn't occupy the same space in the filesystem.

Comment Re:No comparison (Score 2) 96

Look, I understand what you're trying to say. If they're trying to hide their atrocities we should expose them, if they're using them as propaganda and to terrorize we should suppress them. But as a guideline that would be very confusing and hard to live by since it assumes you know the details of every conflict and who wants what, assuming they're all in agreement which they're probably not. Not to mention the answer is probably (d) all of the above, some are inspired to fight against the atrocities, some are frightened by them and some are cheering them on.

Every year we send busloads of teens to visit Nazi concentration camps, not because we have some morbid fascination with death camps and genocide but because at some point you have to learn how cruel human beings can be to each other. But that is quickly fading out of living memory, it's 70 years since the war ended so those who really remember the war is in their 80s and 90s by now. Very soon it'll be "museum" knowledge that you read about in a book and look at an exhibit and it's going to be filed away as ancient history. But it's not, because there's still shit like that going on but we're not sure if we want to see it or not.

I'll admit that watching cruelty will make you die a little inside. You will want to punch something or maybe cry a bit, but at the end of the day I want the truth about the world not the PG-rated version. Which is of course not to say you should lose perspective, with 7 billion people it'll seem like anything you focus on happens a lot even if it deals with 0.01% of the population or less. And I'm here in the safety of my living room looking at a screen, I'm not the one in a war zone getting shot at. I'm not the one hoping nobody will bomb the market I go to. I'm not the soldier who needs to pull the trigger risking that innocents die if I do or die if I don't. I still got it easy.

Comment Re:This isn't a question (Score 2) 623

I recall reading about this experiment. Kids were left free to play with any toys they wanted... and, surprise, they still chose the traditional ones.

The majority of them do, yes. That's fine for them to do. Some of them don't. It's not fine for the majority to force them to do so. It's not fine for the parents to force them to do so. They may be ignorant and out of control tiny little humans, but many adult humans are also ignorant and out of control and we still let them dress how they want and in most states and countries, even fuck who they want given consensuality.

Comment Re:This isn't a question (Score 2) 623

OK nutter, but reduce the argument to a reasonable one — you should be able to designate someone to come see you in the hospital whether you're married or related or not — and we return to there being absolutely no valid reason to not permit you to define the small pool of people who are permitted to see you if you are in the hospital. Speaking for myself, I vehemently do not want my mother permitted into my hospital room for any reason.

Comment Re:Sigh (Score 1) 227

Not only various other variations of this (my first PC in particular only had 448kB of RAM, and only 64kB of that was on the mainboard) but my first computer that ran Linux was a 386DX25 with 8MB of RAM and a 120MB disk. And while I threw it away recently, I used to have an iOpener with some kind of rinkydink Linux with an ancient browser on it in just 32MB of disk. ISTR it having 16MB RAM. If anyone would like the wizztronics adapter, I have one here along with a low-profile cooler that fits inside the iOpener's case and is probably worth more than either the machine or the adapter board.

Comment Re:Yes to Brexit (Score 1) 396

What really ends up happening is the slower horses end up getting dragged along, and the faster horses end up having to work harder

Yeah, if you insist on just dragging the slower members of your team, you're going to have to work pretty hard. If you helped them become more like you, then they would do better at pulling their own weight. And it's clear that just dragging them isn't going to make that happen, at least not quickly. Sure, they may eventually become resentful, but who wants to wait? Maybe there's a better way.

Comment Re:*shrug* (Score 1) 387

I got four model 135s for free and gave them away to another Tivoli employee (at the time) for the same price. I wonder if they ever got used or if they hit the scrap heap. They were cool but they were too big. If they were PS/2 sized I might still have them

Comment Re:What? (Score 3, Insightful) 122

Not really. I believe there is a clean hands doctrine that says if your inaction has amplified the harm then you might not get relief for that. For example if you live in the downstairs apartment and notice water is leaking from the upstairs apartment but don't do anything to stop it or limit the damage because you'd rather get the insurance money you can get cut short. It's a lot trickier with an IP issue, is it a lump transfer or an ongoing violation but I think it has most the characteristics of the former where you take a half-finished product and hand it to someone else to finish. In that case there's no harm in delaying apart from the statute of limitations.

Let's say I'm in an accident with you, but it seems at first to not be a big deal and I don't sue for damages. However it turns out it won't heal properly and I lose a lot of money and decide to sue anyway. Am I too late? No, those costs aren't caused by the delay, they'd come no matter what and it won't count against me. Of course I'm not in the US, there you find the nearest ambulance chaser and sue for $millions, unless it was a hobo that hurt you.

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