Yeah, anyone who says that they have proof of no god is just as bad as someone who says they do have proof. I don't see any difference.

Sean.

Granted that dictionaries follow word usage in general, it is still argument ad populum to assert that because many believe atheism to be a religion that it is, in fact, a religion.

There is also the difference between believing something "religiously", and that same thing being a religion. (People may brush their teeth religiously after every meal, but that doesn't make it a religion.)

What makes Shinto a religion, rather than a philosophy? Do the followers call it a religion? One article I read asserts that many/most Japanese who practice it do not themselves call it a religion.

I would say that before we can call anything a religion, we have to have a complete definition we agree upon. Given that Shinto doesn't itself believe it is a religion, then I would not call it one.

There is a line that's difficult to find when making assertions about what is and is not a religion. Maybe I should just declare myself an athiest, set up the church of atheism, and get a bunch of tax breaks like real religions do. :-)

Sean.

You obviously did not read my reply well.

I did not say you were a believer. Read it again.

Nor did I assert that God doesn't exist. Read my reply again. (In fact, I didn't even say that I don't believe in a god.)

What I said is that there is no proof that God exists. (And no where did I say that lack of proof is proof of non-existence.)

I also did not assert that history does not need faith, rather I said it wasn't a religious belief because scientific authorities give what is said some credence. Tenuous, perhaps, but is belief that the lights I see shining at night are balls of burning gas religious as well?

(And, by the way, what I said wasn't an appeal to authority. I did not claim that anything in particular was true, I said that scientific authorities give convincing reasons for me to believe particular things.)

My real argument with you was stated at the beginning of my first message. If you choose to create your own definition of words, then words can mean whatever you want them to mean. Without a mutual understanding of the meanings of words, then we can't communicate, and communication is at least one of the foundations of any society and perhaps even the most important foundation of society.

From Alice Through the Looking Glass:

`And only one for birthday presents, you know. There's glory for you!'

`I don't know what you mean by "glory",' Alice said.

Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. `Of course you don't -- till I tell you. I meant "there's a nice knock-down argument for you!"'

Sean.

If you create your own definitions, then, sure, you can define anything as anything.

By your definition, everything I have been taught about ancient history that I believe is a religious belief. I have to take everything I've been told about Egypt in blind faith because I have no proof of what happened. On the other hand, I have a lot of scientific experts telling me that I should believe, and they give very convincing scientific reasons for me to do so.

Having a lack of belief in something that can't be proven seems entirely reasonable to me, and to call it a "religion" seems to me to be an attempt on the part of those who do believe to move me into a place they can accept -- it's much easier to accept that someone believes in a different god than to accept that same person rejects your god on lack of proof.

Sean.

My eyes are closed. I don't see any LEDs. Or much of anything.

Yeah, but isn't it Jobs who chooses the direction that their gadgets finally take? Just because he's not the one to engineer them, doesn't mean he doesn't have a gigantic impact on how they operate.

I remember reading about the guys who developed the PalmPilot. One of the people carried around a block of wood the targeted size of the unit, pulling it out and pretending to write on it, "using" it whenever he would use the real device. He wasn't the engineer, he just had the vision. It takes both -- the guy with the vision and the engineer to realize the product.

I have no real idea about how much influence Jobs has had over the ipod or iphone. My reading has implied he had a lot to do with it, but I can't be sure. But my point is the best engineers and designers in the world can make a really horrible product. It takes the vision and willingness to see beyond what is now and what we think is possible to make a great product.

Preserve as much as you can, but just as important is that the kids spend time with their mother, doing things they both enjoy. Not big things, but Mom reading to the girls. Cooking if she enjoys it. The normal day to day things around the house that they can do together. Those are things they will treasure and remember.

On the other side, I'd make time to actually interview your wife. Take the time, when she's able and willing, to ask her about her life and get it recorded. It may never mean anything much to your children, or it may be one of the most important things they have when they get older. But give them a chance to have those memories about their mother.

Contrary to what some others have said, I don't believe that recording her memories is selfish. Well, maybe it is, but not in a bad way. You're the one who is going to have to answer your daughters' questions about her as the years come and they grow older, and spending time now recording her memories will let you do that.

Remembering someone intensely isn't the same as dying with them, isn't the same as giving up on life because they aren't there any longer.

"by the time he'd paid £50 for the recovery disc, paid for a new hard drive and paid for the labour of installing the device, it made more sense to buy a new machine."

I think the key words there are "it made more sense to buy a new machine". Doesn't surprise me. And isn't that what the manufacturers want? Buy that new machine, spend just a little more money, and feel like you've gotten something better when in all likelyhood, you really haven't.

They don't burn a different image for each machine shipped. Not even each model shipped. I recently had to restore two Dell machines. Each came with a base Windows disk with a bunch of different base drivers for a bunch of different machines. Then came the drivers disk, which supported a bunch of different models as well. Each of those two disks probably supported hundreds of different models.

Hmm. Well, if I go see The Transiberian Orchestra, I better see them performing the music, or yeah, I'm going to feel cheated. If I were to go see Miley Cyrus (though why I would, I can't imagine), I'm going to see Miley Cyrus, not her backup band. The people I personally make an effort to see make their livings being real musicians, and I'm going to see them play their own music. I go because I want to see them perform live, perhaps even meet them. (I don't go see the really big artists. Not interested 99% of the time.)

Regardless of what I go see, there are still a lot of muscians out there who play real music. If people want to see them perform their music live and go for that experience, it doesn't make them "suckers".

Because some of us can tell it's not a real person playing a real violin, or cello, or trombone, or whatever. And no, playing musical scores is not something done better by a machine, especially when that machine needs to act and react to what is going on onstage with a real person. The sounds aren't the same and the playing isn't the same.

Why not recordings? I've seen it done -- not on Broadway, but for amateur productions. Again, it isn't the same. The people on stage are forced into a certain tempo and style, and that's not the best thing for a live show.

In a live show the musical director should be able to vary the orchestra according to the mood of the current evening. Sometimes a bit slower, sometimes faster. Sometimes pausing because the audience found one particular line particularly amusing that evening.

In theatre, in stage productions, things change from night to night, and the actors, actresses, and musicians should be able to change as well. Anything else and you don't get the best performance possible.

Insightful? Not really.

Once you've learned a non-OO language like C, any competent programmer should be able to learn any other non-OO language in a short time. Same for OO -- learn one, and a competent programmer can learn the next very quickly.

Programming languages aren't like spoken languages. They have a regular syntax and a very small vocabulary. And no conjugations. Sure, you've got to learn what string functions are available, and what libraries do what, but you aren't really learning anything new. So, you have to keep a cheat sheet (the web, for example) that tells you strlen() is now length(). So what? After you do it a couple of times, you've learned it and you move on.

Point is that learning syntax should be easy for a programmer, and since syntax is what a programming language is, a decent programmer will pick up and use any language that he or she needs. Different languages are just tools in a developer's kit.

But then, when you actually drove the two cars, then nice shiny one despite being well cared for and looking sporty, had a top speed of 80 MPH and about as much acceleration as a snail, while the dull and faded one had a top speed of 180 MPH and a 0-60 time of 4 seconds.

Now which one do you buy?

Graphics help. But gameplay is everything. (And what kind of gameplay I like is probably entirely different than what kind of gameplay you like.) Some people will look at the nice shiny car and ask why anyone would ever want to go over 80 MPH and buy that one. Some people will look at the not so shiny car and say "That one will be more fun to drive, so I'll take that one."

Which one is better is an entirely personal opinion.

Sean.

No, a month to get the order approved, sent out, machine delivered, racked, OS installed, SAN attachment approved, cables run for eth and SAN, SAN configured, SAN attached, and at least one user on the system for the project.

That's not at all an unreasonable timeline in a medium to large company.

Of course, where I worked, none of that would even start until the project was approved. Then we could start the process of getting hardware.

S.