grandemtn - Slashdot User

Comment Re:Whoever is responsible for this article (Score 1) 1258

by grandemtn on Friday April 27, 2012 @02:13PM (#39824049) Attached to: Analytic Thinking Can Decrease Religious Belief

I'm assuming you want an honest answer here. You're question presumes that the buddhist is 'good' and the murderer is 'bad'. If you really read the Bible, compared to God's standard, we are all 'bad'. Read Romans 3... 'There is no one who seeks God. All have turned away.... there is no one who shows kindness, not even one.' It goes on. Now, are some people better than others? Sure, if you compare them to each other. But are any good compared to God? That's why we all need a Savior... none of us would make it on our own.

One analogy... if your meatloaf was 99% good food, but 1% poison... would it be good or bad?

Comment Thanks! (Score 1) 1521

by grandemtn on Thursday August 25, 2011 @10:08AM (#37205536) Attached to: Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda Resigns From Slashdot

I've never posted to Slashdot before, but I just wanted to say thanks! I've been reading for probably 10+ years... Slashdot has kept me in the loop for lots of technical developments in the industry that have helped me in my job, lots of great perspectives by comments about real-world events, and many stories that are just plain fun!

The biggest impact to my life though, was I found out about the Hacker's Diet because of Slashdot, and proceeded to lose 60 pounds in the last year.

I'm half the man I was because of Slashdot! (not really half, but you get the idea :) )

Thanks for all you've done Rob! And enjoy your family, your kids only grow up once, and they do it WAY too fast!

Comment Lord of the Rings Online (Score 1) 480

by grandemtn on Monday June 06, 2011 @08:32PM (#36357828) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Best Adventure Game To Start With?

My girls and I have been having fun playing this the last few months. For a long time, our favorite thing to do was just to go ride horses together around Bree! Of course, there's plenty of adventures/quests as well, but what I like best about it is it's something I can get into (way more than they do), but we can still go have fun together, either completing some 'adventure', or just goofing off playing house or something. Since it's free to play, we don't HAVE to spend real money on it. I have, of course, but not required.

Netflix Streaming Arrives For the Wii 171

Posted by Soulskill on Thursday March 25, 2010 @03:59PM from the hopping-on-the-bandwagon dept.

Grant,thompson writes "As announced in January and mentioned here on Slashdot, Netflix is sending out discs today to enable streaming on the Nintendo Wii. 'Netflix has sent out emails to customers who pre-ordered the Wii's instant streaming disc, indicating that the disc will arrive in mailboxes tomorrow, and that the service will likely start within the next day.'"

Is the Line-in Jack On the Verge of Extinction? 411

Posted by timothy on Monday March 22, 2010 @07:59PM from the erasing-the-analog-hole dept.

SlashD0tter writes "Many older sound cards were shipped with line-out, microphone-in, and a line-in jacks. For years I've used such a line-in jack on an old Windows 2000 dinosaur desktop that I bought in 2000 (600 Mhz PIII) to capture the stereo audio signal from an old Technics receiver. I've used this arrangement to recover the audio from a slew of old vinyl LPs and even a few cassettes using some simple audio manipulating software from a small shop in Australia. I've noticed only recently, unfortunately, that all of the four laptops I've bought since then have omitted a line-in jack, forcing me to continue keeping this old desktop on life support. I've looked around for USB sound cards that include a line-in jack, but I haven't been too impressed by the selection. Is the line-in jack doomed to extinction, possibly due to lobbying from vested interests, or are there better thinking-outside-the-box alternatives available?"

Man Fined $1.5 Million For Leaked Mario Game 287

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday February 09, 2010 @07:54AM from the sorry-about-your-luck dept.

An anonymous reader writes "A Queensland man will have to pay Nintendo $1.5 million in damages after illegally copying and uploading one of its recent games to the internet ahead of its release, the gaming giant says. Nintendo said the loss was caused when James Burt made New Super Mario Bros Wii available for illegal download a week ahead of its official Australian release in November of last year. Nintendo applied for and was granted a search order by the Federal Court, forcing Burt to disclose the whereabouts of all his computers, disks and electronic storage devices in November. He was also ordered to allow access, including passwords, to his social networking sites, email accounts and websites."

Nmap 5.20 Released 36

Posted by Soulskill on Saturday January 23, 2010 @11:32AM from the more-and-better dept.

ruphus13 writes "Nmap has a new release out, and it's a major one. It includes a GUI front-end called Zenmap, and, according to the post, 'Network admins will no doubt be excited to learn that Nmap is now ready to identify Snow Leopard systems, Android Linux smartphones, and Chumbies, among other OSes that Nmap can now identify. This release also brings an additional 31 Nmap Scripting Engine scripts, bringing the total collection up to 80 pre-written scripts for Nmap. The scripts include X11 access checks to see if X.org on a system allows remote access, a script to retrieve and print an SSL certificate, and a script designed to see whether a host is serving malware. Nmap also comes with netcat and Ndiff. Source code and binaries are available from the Nmap site, including RPMs for x86 and x86_64 systems, and binaries for Windows and Mac OS X. '"

EVE Online Battle Breaks Records (And Servers) 308

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday January 05, 2010 @02:09AM from the blame-it-on-the-torrents dept.

captainktainer writes "In one of the largest tests of EVE Online's new player sovereignty system in the Dominion expansion pack, a fleet of ships attempting to retake a lost star system was effectively annihilated amidst controversy. Defenders IT Alliance, a coalition succeeding the infamous Band of Brothers alliance (whose disbanding was covered in a previous story), effectively annihilated the enemy fleet, destroying thousands of dollars' worth of in-game assets. A representative of the alliance claimed to have destroyed a minimum of four, possibly five or more of the game's most expensive and powerful ship class, known as Titans. Both official and unofficial forums are filled with debate about whether the one-sided battle was due to difference in player skill or the well-known network failures after the release of the expansion. One of the attackers, a member of the GoonSwarm alliance, claims that because of bad coding, 'Only 5% of [the attackers] loaded,' meaning that lag prevented the attackers from using their ships, even as the defenders were able to destroy those ships unopposed. Even members of the victorious IT Alliance expressed disappointment at the outcome of the battle. CCP, EVE Online's publisher, has recently acknowledged poor network performance, especially in the advertised 'large fleet battles' that Dominion was supposed to encourage, and has asked players to help them stress test their code on Tuesday. Despite the admitted network failure, leaders of the attacking force do not expect CCP to replace lost ships, claiming that it was their own fault for not accounting for server failures. The incident raises questions about CCP's ability to cope with the increased network use associated with their rapid growth in subscriptions."

Yellowstone Supervolcano Larger Than First Thought 451

Posted by timothy on Tuesday December 15, 2009 @11:50AM from the even-superer dept.

drewtheman writes "New studies of the plumbing that feeds the Yellowstone supervolcano in Wyoming's Yellowstone National Park shows the plume and the magma chamber under the volcano are larger than first thought and contradicts claims that only shallow hot rock exists. University of Utah research professor of geophysics Robert Smith led four separate studies that verify a plume of hot and molten rock at least 410 miles deep that rises at an angle from the northwest."

Mozilla Thunderbird 3 Released 272

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday December 08, 2009 @06:48PM from the hot-bits dept.

supersloshy writes Today Mozilla released Thunderbird 3. Many new features are available, including Tabs and enhanced search features, a message archive for emails you don't want to delete but still want to keep, Firefox 3's improved Add-ons Manager, Personas support, and many other improvements. Download here."

Comment Evolution and Christianity... opposing worldviews (Score 1) 2345

by grandemtn on Monday November 07, 2005 @04:05PM (#13972522) Attached to: Vatican Rejects Intelligent Design?

The Pope and the Roman Catholic church are wrong on this one.

The reason many Christians get so up in arms about this is that Macro-evolution (one 'kind' of animal evolving into another 'kind') is not just a little bit off theologically, but it's contrary to the entire traditional Christian message.

The Christian message is that people were created perfect (Adam and Eve), chose to sin, and death entered the world. Humankind, and the world itself, needs a Savior, because without external intervention it will continue to get worse and worse. The only times the world has gotten better is when God intervines and gives us a 'boost' of grace. Major examples on a wide scale are the Israelite nation, Jesus's birth, ministry, death and resurrection, and the Protestant Reformation. Death is the final enemy that will be conquered when Christ returns.

The message of Evolution (Macro) is that all things continually improve without God. Death is not the result of sin, but a natural part of 'getting better' and is actually a good thing. The world, and all species will continue to improve over time, until... well who knows where it will all end? Star Trek? Q was worried humans would evolve into 'gods' one day themselves. Everyone wants to be God, right?

Adaptation or micro-evolution (all species of dogs came from a root ancestor dog) is directly observable and I think most people readily admit it. Macro-evolution, Astronomy, Geology (the parts about millions of years ago) are all based on a lot of very intelligent arguments, but are not directly observable. Was the Grand Canyon created by a little bit of water over a long period of time, or a whole lot of water over a little bit of time? Depends on your point of view. The facts can support either.

I don't know enough of the science to debate that any more than what I just pointed out... but I'm trying to shed some light on why this is such a big deal to people. This is a clash of worldviews. Without directly observable evidence (like large and small cannon balls fall at the same rate), everyone will interpret the evidence in light of their worldview.

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