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lightburst

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Everything posted by lightburst

  1. That can just as well be used to argue the opposite, and that OT, god himself and no other interpretation like jesus was god himself too, is the ultimate rule and law. Clearly choosing from between OT overrules NT and NT overrules OT has to come from somewhere. If you're arguing for the sort of 'applicability by historical context', then wouldn't that make NT obsolete now? I'm not trying to disprove the validity of the bible, but I'm just saying this doesn't really mean anything. Then again, I guess now isn't holy enough. What's the point of an invariant source if it can be freely interpreted any way you feel like it? If the problem is that people have nothing to blame atheists' misbehavior on, then the same is just as true for christians. The only difference is that christians having a common biblical interpretation have become common enough that when someone commits a sin, some person can say 'Why did you do that? Clearly, the bible says you shouldn't' and the sinner can simply acknowledge given that they have the same biblical interpretation, or at least grew up having common values. Islam, having the Quran, is having this problem where some can justify violence using their holy book while others believe in peace and good. I'd say Quran is an invariant source, but you can't really pin anything on someone if both of you read the same thing differently because it's effectively two persons reading two different books. The atheist tag is so broad and liberal. You can pin blame on a person/atheist if you ask him what he believes in(his morals, or whatever) and use those beliefs to criticize his actions rather than solely based on a general nametag in the same way it's meaningless to criticize the westboro baptist church for being a hate group and un-christ-like because you consult the same book even though read it differently. Christianity just so happen to carry with it the polarities 'Asshole-Bigot' and 'Saintly nice do-good'. Atheism has little to no content in terms of conduct so you're free to be a worldly satanist to a pacifist monk. Because of free interpretation, whats the difference? We better be reading the same words the same way for criticisms to be any way meaningful. I guess what I'm trying to say is that, because of free interpretation, are we really any different and are just both making our way as we go?
  2. I think we can all agree that christians don't really practice the horrible things written in the bible. I think the gist of the argument is that if christians don't follow everything written in the bible and use different passages/teachings to overrule these horrible things, then having an 'invariant source of morality' doesn't mean anything because the choice of choosing to overrule horrible practices has to come from somewhere to resolve the dilemma because the opposite, that is, to practice these wrong things over the good ones is just as open a choice. It's not a matter of whether christians really do or don't do these bad things, it's a matter of 'why did you choose to pick those particular practices from the mix that is the bible'. Since the choice to resolve the dilemma has to come from somewhere outside the bible, then really christians themselves have no invariant source of morality and just makes their way as they go. Although it might be true that once you have resolved the choice of doing the bad things vs the good things written in the bible then you can really have an invariant source of morality and be all saintly like jesus, but that's as silly as calling yourself a communist because you think the idea of the oppressed fighting The Power is cool or because you think the economic roles need to flip but you don't like violence or a centralized economy, in which case you are a socialist not a communist. At the very least, you can say that jesus is your invariant source of morality, but that has its own holes like OT being wrong(since you wouldn't follow it) and therefore god is wrong since OT is just as much god's will as NT.
  3. I'm sure they'd be making more videogames than they already do if it was so easy to make a videogame that will be readily consumed by the masses. This is why companies just milk already established titles dry because at least half the titles that come out every year fade out of existence really fast. For videogame graphics to be 'realistic' is just another milestone engineers and computer scientists strive for. Truly, this is perhaps the future of videogames, but this is not the whole picture. This is why nintendo games still remain popular, which I'm sure you can tell isn't anywhere near realistic. Indie games also thrive off original content and gameplay rather than real expensive graphics. Of course, technology is limiting the development of videogame graphics(or its delivery to the public), but this is also true for science, medicine, and even the arts. It's not so much as modern computers aren't made to handle videogames(GPU's ARE exactly for that purpose, at least in the mainstream) as processing graphics can really be resource heavy. To create those nice animated characters alone can necessitate the highest end of computer hardware, and all it does is turn a character 360 degrees and display nice fur. Imagine how resource heavy processing a whole terrain, including player actions, that aims as much realism as possible will be. Though I think that computer scientists need to meet the engineers half way as well. More efficient algorithms for use of the graphics engines would be really great. Then again, maybe we've already reached that point. So yea, it's not so much a limitation of the hardware as it is the nature of the business.
  4. Arguably, it is the programmer that matters rather than the programming language. Just do things that you like with what you already know. Learn new things if you can't do the things you like with the things you know. If you want to make some better use of your HTML and CSS, go try out PHP.
  5. You are assuming we know what this buffer overflow vulnerability is.
  6. Then the American Bill of Rights are invalid, having been written after the Constitution was written? It is, if we actually follow your, and I think every christian I know's, arbitrary reasoning on why the new testament trumps old testament teachings. Although your reasons might be different from every christian I know, to be fair. Let's hear it, I guess. Preferably verses from jesus specifically saying that the old testament is to be ignored in favor of new testament, jesus', teachings. I'd even dare say, given my brushing knowledge of the bible and a few years of church, that jesus thinks well of the old testament. People cannot make moral decisions without any source of morality (ie, principles), written or otherwise. Recording them tends to make them invariant; otherwise they lose their quality of being principles or standards. There are several sources of morality. I consider myself as a utilitarian socialist, yet relativist, for one, and so I apply myself according to those principles I believe to be the right way to live by. If a better idea comes up which I consider to be a better set of ethics and principles, then I would then live by that. That being said, I do not particularly read heavy about the ideas I claim to abide by and then follow them as they are written because I can think for myself. Writing them down doesn't *add* any value; it doesn't make you any more moral nor does it make your morality better. Of course everyone justifies moral decisions from somewhere/something, be it primal instinct, society they grew up on, the bible, or even from experience. Just because it's not written in a book(or somewhere) means it means less? You are more likely to go for another set of beliefs in your favor? Religious people do that all the time, those that abide by some book. Just look at the number of sub-religions on every religion like the catholic church, born-agains, mormons, orthodox, jewish, etc. Hell, some even bother setting up sex cults in the name of jesus. Who is this wife-beating polygamous father that people honor? If we actually did brainlessly follow your 'invariant source of morality'. The fact that you would not honor a wife beating polygamous father is proof that you do nitpick and disproves your point about consistent morality via an invariant source of morality. Unless we're not on the same page, I was talking about the 10 commandments. Or maybe it's just a coincidence that you do follow the other 9 commands, and not specifically. I don't know any Christians who do not question or think about their morality. Wow, it's what Christians do a lot; and by definition, it's what they must do. Then that totally defeats the purpose of having an invariant source of morality given that you can nitpick, or should I say *question*, what is told and expected of you.
  7. Well that's not fair. That's just as arbitrary as saying the old testament should be the 'correct' interpretation because of seniority. Not that it's actually older, but you know being called 'old'. haha I'm wondering why having an invariant code of morality is important? It leaves room to choose the most morally satisfactory choice and choose the most generally satisfactory moral code. I guess I'm a relativist that way. Imagine how it would be if we honored our wife beating polygamous father because a rock said so. By not following that particular rule, you are already diverging from this 'invariant source of morality' of yours and is applying whatever interpretation you have of what it means to be moral and what the righteous thing to do is. Your argument is invalid. Or are you going to say that you are actually sinning by not honoring your wife beating polygamous father? Following an invariant set of rules for morality without question or thinking is just as void of morality as is a person accidentally saving a million people from a biological attack because his car crashed and got the terrorists caught in traffic long enough to get caught. If you do do it with question and thinking, then what's the point? Your argument is invalid. 2cents
  8. Would speaking less often, even not speaking at all the whole day, affect my ability to speak? I'm 19 right now and this has been the case for about 2-3 years. It's not that I've been dodging social contact, but rather my circumstance is to blame. There will be days, in fact almost always, where I will not say a full sentence at all because I don't run into conversations. The only words I get so say are for when I pay for the bus fare and tell the guy where my stop is. The only full conversations I get is when I hangout with friends every few weeks. I'm worried this has any effect on my speech capabilities. I'm even worried this has somehow removed the emotions in my speech, even though I intend to speak with keen interest. I wonder if there is any documented cases for this.
  9. Evolution as it works on already fairly complex creatures is what I like to think I understand. Using Natural Selection, however, to arrive at these fairly complex creatures from simple ones such as from the very beginning when life was just spawning confused me on the validity of Evolution as a means to describe the origin of life. I tried Googling it but seems to only spawn creationist pages, from what I can tell. Although I don't mind a detailed explanation, something fit for a layperson in terms of biology is preferred.
  10. http://www.viddler.com/v/9cb51810 I think that answers the last part. I do still think that most people wouldn't need an actual workstation card unless you would consider your work to be so critical as to justify the price tag, as most of it is from making sure the card is stable and with 24/7 support.
  11. People wouldn't usually need an actual workstation GPU unless you work at some [insert cliche profession]. Though it seems you really would only use the GPU for legitimate stuff, not like the most of us would use it, so why not get the workstation GPU. Don't let the raw computation power fool you as mainstream cards' drivers were made to process different kind of data than their workstation counterparts. Of course, programming that would require something like CUDA would need as much raw power as it needs. Ultimately, you shouldn't opt to buy a new card unless there is a demand for it.
  12. When code is converted into something a computer can understand, language is already irrelevant. Because Linux is written mostly in C doesn't imply you can't run C++ in it. C++ is just a set of text which has a set of rules that tells which is 'valid' C++. When you compile it, the OS wouldn't care if it was written in any other language as long as the output is its own. Being written in some language doesn't mean it can't understand any other; computers only know to speak of machine instructions/binary. Language XYZ -> (compiled) -> machine language -> A-OKAY. How information goes around the Internet is more or less irrespective of what it is you are running on as long as it supports/complies with these protocols. You could be running on a Gameboy and still read on Science Forums assuming you could implement the necessary protocols and stuff, which is ridiculous but illustrates my point. `build-essential` is simply the set of barebone tools you would need to start your C/C++ development. I think this illustrates how programs really just work on top of and along with other programs. Code is just a set of text. You need these development suites to make that into a working program. GTK/Qt is the development libraries used by Ubuntu and Kubuntu for their GUI, respectively. That doesn't also mean that you can't use Qt on Ubuntu, since Qt is just a library that works with Linux in general, and also Windows.
  13. Perhaps it all started through the idea of sexual immaturity in terms of mate selection that then eventually led to this social stigma as humans became more civilized? Maybe people just couldn't accept the idea in terms of being an animal and instead rationalized and made it an ethical dilemma.
  14. is the structure members latitude and longtitude of type pointer? You need to feed scanf() with a variable of type pointer, e.i. using the address-of operator. Probably just a typo on your part though.
  15. There are a handful of mainstream languages right now that I know of and they generally differ at how easy it is to work with them and what they can do, trading off some to acquire some of the other. The newer kids on the block, I think, are C# and Java which are generally used on a more 'top' level, if that makes sense, because most of the work done is completely abstracted or hidden to the user. For one, you can't address memory locations in Java and is only a feature in C# which limits their capabilities. They also have an automated 'cleaning up' facility and is only interpreted. The code generated when you compile them isn't something meant for the CPU but is meant for the middleman. C and C++ offer almost boundless capabilities as far as manipulating the computer goes without fiddling with manually moving around memory to do a simple console printing, as is the case with Assembly. The code generated is something the CPU can understand and therefore the overhead of a middleman is gone. The speed is absolutely faster than that of C# and Java. Because of this, Operating Systems are generally written in C and C++, mostly C. They are that capable at low-levels that something as critical as an operating system can be trusted to them. Then there's Assembly. In C, you would simply need to include the libraries that contain the stuff you want then invoke these packaged instructions called functions(same idea as mathematical functions in that they simply do something, of course after the 'what to do' has been defined). In Assembly, you need to push this to that and allocate this to there all to print something on the screen. Programming Languages is a way to tell the computer to do something. You create an OS using C/C++/Assembly. The code is written on another computer which has a compiler/assembler written in some language also which is used to convert the human-readable code to something a computer can understand and is then ported to this otherwise empty piece of junk. You then create applications on this new system. I want video games: I'll write a graphics library whose functions I'll use to create video games. Next minute you think, hey I have a system working now and writing other applications in C would be overkill. And so you write this 'middleman' and also a compiler for this other language, maybe C#, which you use to write other applications only a lot simpler and quicker too in the long run. Newer hardware spawns, you thought of a new and awesome OS and you start writing again on this now-older system for a newer one. The Internet started off, quite literally, only containing the 'elites'. The real hackers. There weren't any grannies then browsing for cute kitties. It was all based on information sharing: If you had something, give it away as resource for another. Like in the real world, knowledge is built from another man's shoulders. We wouldn't be able to go to the moon if classical mechanics weren't even understood. That being said, the Internet contained people that likes what they do. Some people wouldn't bother learning how to install an OS let alone programming. And so there is this implicit community within that was built from this idea of sharing. Even the greatest started off as mere lurkers; they were nobodies. Denying information and saying 'you shouldn't know that' is like rejecting your roots. Of course there is always the government that thinks they're all that when they're not. But those are just kids who think they own the playground when the teachers clearly rule. The Internet is a community. I don't see why sharing would be wrong, regardless of the nature of the information.
  16. Ahh yes, the 'fun' part of computer technology. You really end up knowing those kind of stuff through work and snooping around under the hood of stuff. Those information are not entirely available in the crash course. For example, learning programming, even low level programming, doesn't give you as much insight as you want when it comes to breaking stuff(malware, security). On the other hand, skipping programming will make those stuff not make sense at all I think. At least, in my opinion. Tor is basically an Internet mask, just as the home page tells. You become anonymous on the web. How they do this is beyond me though. All communication requires some sort of protocol. HTTP, for example, is the protocol used to access web pages. Although much of the work done is kept from the user, a lot of stuff happens when you click something on the web/computer that dictate how things should go. The idea in security hacking is finding/exploiting loopholes or creating one. In theory(because I don't know how), you can find someone, anyone, on the Internet given any packet(which is an organized piece of network data) that came from this person you are trying to find since they contain that information. How else do they find their way back? Learning the TCP/IP protocol would be great help because this dictates how the data is transformed and represented on the network. A port can be though of a as a door. From MSDN: It is one way to know to which this piece of data belongs to. If all data came in from a single door, there would be a scramble as to whom that piece of data belongs to. When I make some network application, I use some unused port and so I am sure any data that came in from that port is mine. For example, you know which port Windows Update listens to and accept security data or some sort of important stuff on a different application, you can 'listen' to this port and acquire, or even intercept, the data or 'reroute' data while it is on the network cable that is destined to this port in question.
  17. One teacher told me to try and make your own implementation of some of the functions of an STL. You could do that for some of the generic algorithms I suppose. Of course this is assuming you're new to programming in general.
  18. I've read that cold baths after exercise is somehow a good thing, and pro athletes do it too. I don't particularly know what's really going on in there but wouldn't starving muscles of oxygen be harmful? After all, it's a survival function that blood go away from extremities when on low temperatures. Wouldn't a cold bath(or ice bath, even worse) 'kill' starving muscles? I personally wouldn't like to be suffocated.
  19. When you think about it, even being lucky is luck. It's luck all the way down! There's only so few people, I think, that are successful purely from luck. I could argue that even professional gamblers, although technically luck, play under some controlled environment. As for everything else, I think there is a threshold wherein luck can help. Ultimately, success is built upon effort. Luck is sort of just the topping.
  20. I think step one to programming would include making tags work? I kid. VB.NET Windows Application(and maybe Console too) is pretty much intuitive as it has the drag-and-drop thing along with Intellisense. You can literally sit down, create a project, and guess your way through the IDE without much issue. That is, of course, not considering outside functionality like SQL and whatnot. The Intellisense really does a lot when pared with VB's 'basic' syntax. Perspective, I think, is essential. Reading a manual is not so fun when you don't know what you're looking for. Maybe try out some programming exercises online, even if not intended for your language. Instead, of course, of just aiming for finishing the task, try to expound what you know on a measly problem. There isn't an overkill solution when you're trying to learn a language.
  21. Maybe a little closer to home like, say, classical mechanics. In case I don't know what I'm saying: Newton. Maybe also geometry or trigonometry. Also, what do you mean by "basic stuff"? It's not a particularly math-heavy curriculum, which is sort of sad.
  22. I'm a CS student and the only classes (or class) I had on Calculus was one that only involves getting derivatives and integration with very (very) trivial applications. I seriously doubt that Calculus is JUST that. Anything I should be learning about? Rather can someone point me to more materials?
  23. Discovery Channel's Mythbusters did a show about this one. The conclusion was that it DID happen. The lighting thing the photos had were explained. Though I really just stood there in agreement not understanding a thing. The waving flag was also credited to the fact that since they were in a vacuum, and therefore no air resistance, even the slightest of force on the pole (e.g. planting it on the ground) made it shake. You should see it. It was a very fun episode.
  24. Because there are spam bots around the internet, well, spamming. And nobody likes an advertisement about a certain little blue pill when people are discussing science!
  25. So I do okay in Math classes, but I can't process numbers.

    1. BeuysVonTelekraft
    2. emeraldgirl08

      emeraldgirl08

      Must be crossing all the t's and dotting all the i's??? :D

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