Pearo

Michael Faraday, the "Father of Electricity" firmly believed that God created everything so I am not sure where you are coming from Pearo. See: About us | The Faraday Institute for Science and Religion

So, he was right about some things and wrong about others. No one is perfect. If he had used the same scientific process that he used to discover electricity and applied that to his God theory, he would have discovered that there was no testable or repeatable empirical evidence for a God.

If you were open minded enough to do the same, you would also come to the same conclusion.

"Observable" does not necessarily mean that something is directly observed by the human eye

Why is this so hard for people to understand? I perform an expermeint and observe a results. I do it another 20 times and I see the same result. Someone else does the same experiemnt, gets the same result..

Its like the old electricity argument. Cant see it, but I can assure you that my indirect observations of the buttons I press on my keyboard and the letters that appear on the screen that its a fairly repeatable indirect observations. Its the same indirect observations that allows me as an electrical engineer to design the stuff that the modern day creationists use to shun guys like me!

If anyone wants some mind-bending hard science reads I can highly recommend these - first one is "A Universe from Nothing" (non-fiction) by Lawrence Krauss, second one is "The Three Body Problem" (fiction novel) by Cixin Liu (translated from the original Chinese).

It's the first time I've read 2 books back to back which both talked about Cosmic Background Microwave Radiation, quantum entanglement, Planck's constant and general relativity...

I have seen (and met) Laurence Krauss a few times. He would have to been one of the best speakers I have seen in the scientific world. His stuff is beyond me, I dont get any of it, but the way he explains the more simple things is pretty impressive. What is more impressive, is that he is one of those people when he speaks, never prepares anything, he just gets up and starts talking. I would love to read his book, but I think it would be over my head.

God is all powerful Bruce, and yet people think they can fool him because he can't see them when they are sinning. Not a hair of your head etc but go to church on Sunday and it's OK to rob people blind Mon to Sat. Nev

Stop trying to be rational.

Dr Matthew Scott-Young at alamander private hospital (southport.) is well worth the time to go and see for any spine related problems. I had my L5,S1 disc replaced a few years ago and I went from being crippled with pain (I could hobble around for a couple of hours of a morning but as soon as I sat down I was cactus, I had to crawl through the house and into bed I wasn't real good at all.) to back mustering on the motorbike in two weeks! Don't ever let anyone fuse any part of your spine until you have chased up the option of replacing vertebrae or discs with him (he used to be the only one doing it but that was probably around eight years ago now).

Anyway I don't earn anything by recommending him and no doubt we all think we know the best docs, but I just know how much he helped me and recommend him whenever I can. All the other docs I saw told me I would be off work for months and had no guarantee of ridding me of the pain but he was very positive that I would be back working in two weeks with no restrictions after 6 weeks.

Noted. My issue is cervical spine, so that's the work of a neurosurgeon apparently. Definitely interested in others opinions on this subject though, as the thought of getting surgery on spine does not really appeal to me that much. Thankfully is covered by my insurance, so I can choose where I go.

All the best with your recovery and NY resolutions Pearo! And everyone else on here, God bless you all, even the God-haters.

Pearo you would most likely be inspired this talk by Brian Jones who has largely self-recovered from a massive injury where he wasn't supposed to be walking again. Even just watch the fist few minutes - and you'll want to see it all:

 

Thanks for wishes as a non believer, not a god hater ( you cant hate something that does not exist!)

I am sure Brian Jones is an inspiration to many, but my injuries were not that bad. For me its a matter of prioritising getting fixed by doctors and spending some time on the sidelines or going flying. I am enjoying flying to much at the moment, so the others stuff can wait for now. I can walk, not far, but I can make the pub (500m) and back so life is good!

My New Year Resolution is to get an instrument rating, and as much as it frightens me I want to get some basic aerobatic training. The latter more so doing spin recovery and some slightly more advanced unusual attitude recovery.

And whilst everyone is on the weight topic, I would love to do that too. I need an operation on my knee and spine due to a pretty bad trail bike accident a few years ago, but I know the recovery time is going to see me sidelined from flying for a while. Not keen for the couch so I will suck up the pain for now. The end result of that is exercise is virtually impossible (including walking). So in lieu of exercise, I guess I am going to have to cut back on the vino and food, so sad. Life was so much easier and pleasant when I was super active, I used to go do a 10km (running) race on a Sat morning, go sailing then retire to the pub for the evening.

Ultimate goal, do some time in gliders, but probably wont happen till I get those operations done... Maybe I should just bite the bullet and suck up that time on the couch...

A terrible generalisation; one that I'm sure Microsoft developers will love. Thank god I'm not a 'most home user', but more thankfully I am not an opinionated nerd.

I would not say a terrible generalisation, but more an honest observation.

I am a Microsoft developer, but I make a hell of a lot more money from the hardware I design and all my hardware runs Linux, so you think I would be religious about Linux. I also do a lot of cross platform dev with java that runs on Windows, Linux and Mac. I don't have a preference, I just use what works, and I earn an income for making stuff work for people. You want me to write software your favorite OS, then I will do that without conviction as long as you are paying me. If you are religious about a particular OS and you are paying me, I will tell you what you want to hear.

But, if you want my honest opinion on something so you can make an informed descision, then I will tell you they way it is. I use and make a living from Windows, Linux, OSX, IOS, Android and some other OS's that most here would never have heard of.

Opinionated nerd? Maybe, but at least I am educated and informed on the products I am discussing.

I hate the idea of all the operating systems relying on the cloud, first apple and now windows.

I hate computers all together now, from a past life working in avionics and writing advanced avionics software I have had enough. I still reckon windows xp was the best operating system followed by windows 7.

 

Apple is crap now as you cannot even restore your computer without a high speed internet connection as it downloads the entire 6 gig osx from the internet, pc you just hit F11 and restore.

 

I just do everything on the ipad now, turn it on and its ready to go, only use a laptop to copy dash cam, go pro and photos to an external hard drive.

 

I use Jump Desktop that connects to the server and once again the ipad saves the day. Sad thing is a lot of the latest laptops don't have drivers for linux.

I am forced to use computers as I still make a living from them! My preference is for Win 7 as most of my dev stuff is targeted at Windows OS. For linux I run Ubuntu in a VM. Mac stuff (limited) I use a macbook. Also have the obligatory iPad for ozrunways plus android phone.

For most home users, a PC has to do 2 things, browse the web, download email, and download from digital camera. The email part is mainly web based now, so that means all you need is a broswer and a way to download photos. For this, windows, mac, linux all do a perfectly good job.

21 years in the Military : Never volunteer to volunteer

followed by 20 years in I.T. : Never be an early adopter..

Let me guess, you spent 20 years working for the same company too?

Linux Mint has a rather Win98 style GUI

Worked painlessly on my laptop.

I use ubuntu. They have tried to lift the UI from Apple, and they have done a bad job at it. The Ubuntu UI sucks. I dont have much time for linux as a desktop OS. I use it extensively as an embedded OS, and its great for that. I just think the UI's on offer are to clunky and not really user friendly. Like most linux devs, I tend to opt for the console.

Were would be the point, there would be even less people to converse with than there is for me with my (now lost) year 7 French, complete waste of time.

Maybe to preserve a bit of our countries history?

An update from me, still using win 10 with no issues. Re. the updates, I am on a pro edition, so I just changed the update stuff in the group policies to prevent it from doing stuff on its own..

My business partners are complaining about some remote desktop stuff via web, as both chrome and edge have both dropped support for NPAPI plugin. Apparently firefox still works. Not sure if its possible to install windows explorer onto win 10, but that would also work. Not really a win 10 issue though, more a browser issue.

I wonder why this (presumably atheist) shooter targeted Christians last week?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/10/02/oregon-shooter-said-to-have-singled-out-christians-for-killing-in-horrific-act-of-cowardice/

Probably the same reason so many christian priests raped little boys.

The difference being that the shooter is immediately guilty , whilst the christian bodies will spend millions in court to deny, hide the facts and try place blame on the children that were violated.

Praise Be.

If you read back through the topic you will see that discussed earlier. It is not possible to stop this in windows 10.

Only way to block all updates is to block the microsoft update servers within the hosts file.

Funny you should say that, because that is exactly what I had in the back of my mind.

FWIW, I have the pro version of win 10. I was using a 3 modem the other day when the thought occured to me that windows has a nasty habbit of downloading updates and chewing up my data allowance. So I decided I better tell it not to download updates without my permission and... No can do. cant see an option to prevent automatic downloads, just an option to prevent automatic installation of the updates. Annoying. Have not tried to find a work around yet, but I am sure its possible somehow.

Yep and if you need to upgrade your pc you cannot get xp drivers, you can't even get windows 7 drivers for some of the new laptops!

Airlines still use xp, but as most of there systems are in lockdown and have general internet access blocked they don't have to worry about security pataches as they mainly run client software for there servers or even citrix.

 

Same with vicpol.

There really is no excuse for any company not to upgrade from XP. I can understand individuals, but not organisatins. It was known about for a long time, and the upgrade path was not that difficult. All the software I manage was upgraded to run on Windows 7 in the Vista days, and it mainly just required recompiling with the newer API's. If you let your software get that far out of date that it can't be recompiled, then you have already put your organisation at risk.

As for not worrying about security patches, if its on a network its vulnerable, period. Its also putting your whole network at risk.

I must be the only person who has not had an issue with Windows 10. I upgraded my laptop and its going great. Mind you, I am a little scared to upgrade my PC yet, mainly because I cant handle any downtime on it for now.

I was gobsmacked that after more than 2,500 posts, somebody would trot out the 10 Commandments . . . again!

What I did find funny is that there isn't even agreement amongst the various abrahamic sects as to what the words actually are.

 

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And then there is the interpretation: ISIS whose every waking hour is driven by the "10 commandments" seem to think that a temple in which nobody has worshipped in millennia should be destroyed because it comes under the heading of being in breach of Commandment No. 2 (depending on your preferred numbering system).

 

While people cling to the 10 commandments like a drowning man clinging to a straw they probably have no knowledge of how they came into being or even their source in your preferred version of the Bible.

If you look deeper, you will some references to a total of 14 commandments.

I am still happy with my XP.

The annoying thing about XP is that it serves most people fine but it then becomes a security risk for everyone on the internet, including yourself. XP is now 14 years old, the question is how long should companies like XP be forced to support a product? Imagine if you were unable to buy parts for your 14 year old car?

I haven't been able to load Itunes for a few months.

Is that a bad thing?? (Sorry, starting to sound like a linux user there!!))

IF you have grief with I tunes, mediamonkey used to be a good replacement. I dont use mediamonkey anymore because I have a paid spotify subscription, but it was a good product back when I did use it. Might be worth a try.

I have installed win 10. No problems so far

I'm finding the whole catholic thing quite amusing at the moment. By some fluke of voting (perhaps everyone picked him as being someone that no-one else would vote for) they've ended up with a pope who actually cares about real world issues like poverty, inequality, and the environment, instead of an ivory-tower bible scholar who wants everyone to stop masturbating or being gay. This of course is making traditional catholics very confused as it's a total departure from the norm. It's also p*ssing off the reactionary right who believe that big business has the god-given right to increase the wealth of the wealthy and that god gave us the environment to plunder. Go Franky boy!

The pope is just marketing, trying to suck people back in to the church. He is pretty good at it too.

If he was sincere, he would piss off all the Vatican wealth and actually use it to do good, Instead, they use it to pay lawyers to cover up pedophilia. Its disgusting and I cant believe people are actually falling for this rubbish.

EDIT. Just a thought. I now rank the pope as the worlds biggest hypocrite. Up there I had idiots like Bob Geldof, Mel Gibson and Russel Brand etc. People who should just learn to shut their gob.

Another shame is that s116 does not restrict the States the same as the Commonwealth. Morons with extreme religious views like Fred Nile consistently wield God like power from their lofty perch in Australia's oldest Parliamentary chamber, the Legislative Council.

Australia, like Iran, is a theocracy to the extent that the Head of State (Queen of Australia) is the head of the State religion. Unlike Iran, the Head of State is just a figurehead - ask any ALP voter and they may not agree - but the facts are we do have a Constitution that sits between Autocratic, theocratic power and we 'umble servants of the Crown.

A lot of people are fooled by s116. There is no separation of church and state in the Australian Constitution and the high court has confirmed that on more than one occasion IIRC.

I had a Samsung which had a nice screen size but wasn't really user intuitive.

 

My favourite phone was a HTC desire that I had some years ago now, very intuitive, everything was where you expected it and both the apple and Samsung fell way short of my expectations.

 

Apple would be ok if you lived somewhere where high speed Internet was a sure thing but not having a micro sd or other external USB slots ruins the iPhone and iPad for me, they could be so much better.

I have a samsung phone (I think a s4) and my wife has the HTC. The HTC seems to be a much more robust phone than the samsung offering.

Years ago I was working for a consulting arm of microsoft, and we used HTC smart phones with windows OS (well before apple and android existed) and they always seem solid to me. HTC has a longer history with smartphones than most of the players out there.