Phi for All

Are you talking about empty space, or empty Space? I've seen an experiment done to show that the inside of a van isn't empty. Hang a plumb bob from the ceiling of the van, and tape the string of a helium balloon to the floor of the van (they should both hang in the middle, but not obstruct each other's forward/backward movement). If the van was truly empty, when you accelerate you should see both the balloon and the plumb bob move backwards. Instead, you see the bob move backwards, but the balloon's helium is displaced forward as the air in the van moves back like the plumb bob. Looks empty, really full of air.

Like all numerology, gematria is based on coincidental patterns that emerge when you test a bunch of names (or whatever), assign them numbers and see what pops up. The Greeks had a similar system as well, for codes and entertainment. Iirc, 616 is the total if you add the letter values in Caesar. It works with Nero, too, and Caligula. It works with some biblical names as well, but I forget which. Not a fan of numerology at all. Not all patterns have significance.

I snipped your quote here because this is all that's needed. The rest is just your own cognitive bias on the subject. The reason I'm opposed to religion is precisely why you think it should be the norm. I see nothing but age to distinguish any religion from another, or from one I might "construct" (VERY interesting choice of words, btw) myself. It's all guesses and fabrication and allowing people with poor critical thinking skills to determine the ethics of how you should live your life, based on the ancient guesses and fabrications of iron age mystics (or something fabricated I've told myself to make me feel better). I'm capable of being a moral and just person, a benefit to my society and a capable husband and father without religion. In fact, I would posit that I might be a bit more trustworthy in that regard, because I know why I am this way, and it's NOT because I fear the retributions of a god. It has nothing to do with political correctness. It's about the precision of definition of the words we use to communicate with. If I say "religion" (a group organized to worship a god or practice spiritual beliefs), but you hear "religion" (any activity people place a supreme amount of importance on), how effective is our discussion going to be? We should always be wary of changing a definition to suit our purpose.

Metaphor madness. If you keep using them often enough, you start taking them literally.

Are you thumbing your nose at Dell by using an Apple mouse?

Your doctor is the best person to answer questions like these, but unfortunately, he's not a member. I'm reluctant to second-guess him, especially because I hope you'll ask him to join and tell us his answer. I don't want your doctor mad at me for giving uneducated medical advice to his patients.

The oldest known papyrus copy of Revelation 13, currently at Oxford in the Ashmolean Museum, shows that this number is 616. There are also several other documents that confirm this as a significant number.

Of course it's a red herring. And you're using it as a strawman, since you're arguing against it when no one else brought it up. So doubly fallacious reasoning. Look, atheism isn't the opposite of theism. It represents NOT being a part of any religion or god. You can't tell me my hobby is not-collecting stamps just because you claim everyone has hobbies.

I moved the thread from Computer Science (which this really isn't) to Computer Help. The Lounge would have been another choice of sub-forums. No big deal. We're still on topic, pros and cons about desktops vs laptops.

Planned obsolescence is when you plan for a product to need replacement after a certain period. This is accomplished naturally in the market based on the materials you use. PO is part of virtually every manufacturer's business plan. Not everyone can afford products built to last for decades. Built-in obsolescence is different. It's internally dishonest, because it's usually done purposely to cause problems and hopefully get your customer to re-purchase more often. I bought a pasta-making machine that had a metal auger for mixing, it's why I trusted that model. But the bushing the auger socked into was made of plastic, and it was the first thing to break due to heavy torque. Three times. Three replacements. Built to fail, imo. Solid-state electronics have a low failure rate, but they do fail, and it's not cost-effective to test every PCB in every unit for glitches. It's unfortunate, but this is why manufacturers seem to use us to test their products for free. As long as someone responsible is willing to replace electronics failures, there isn't usually a big problem. But it does mean a lot more customer service calls, and I agree wholeheartedly that these companies need to do more in the way of great customer service. That's one part of the marketplace today I really miss, the relationship between a trusted vendor and a good customer. All you can do is tell these companies they need to step up service a few notches, and let you know when they think they have it right, because you won't be doing business with them until then.

Planned obsolescence is different than built-in obsolescence. In this case, it's the technology that is doing the "planning". It tends to make huge leaps about every three years or so. I'm not sure how you'd reorganize for the better and still maintain market share. Built-in obsolescence is what you really want to watch out for. Products that are mostly metal, except for the part that moves most, which is made of plastic, are good examples of this. I don't see this much with computers, unless it's with connections. Sensei mentioned how fragile some of the port and power connectors can be. Computers and the technology that drives them are balancing on a fine edge here. Manufacturers have a small window in which to introduce new products before they are "old" products, with an even newer technology to replace them. All the costs for research, development, and implementation have to be balanced with the fact that as soon as you go to market, 10 other companies will copy your designs and change them just enough so you can't sue them. I would recommend that you find a young geek near you who makes desktop computers to sell. Explain what you do with a computer, and let the geek make you a desktop that has just what you need. He/she will be able to upgrade the machine for you every few years with the latest and greatest if it makes sense for you to have it, and ignore upgrades that don't have a lot of benefit for the way you compute.

I think it's ignorance. We have questions without answers, and religion often provides a very short, non-intellectually challenging explanation that satisfies us until we observe differently. When we know why something works the way it does, when we remove our ignorance, religious explanations are no longer needed. But if nobody ever teaches you how to think critically, the short answers like, "God works in mysterious ways" can provide a big old blanket of comfort you can hide from your fears under.

I suspect as much, too. We've also had people claim that anything one believes in or spends an inordinate amount of time on can be called a "religion". Through such a tortured definition, hobbies, careers, and watching sports become equivalent to Catholicism, Hinduism and Zoroastrianism.

I'd like to know how long they've had it, and if it's edging out competition from the big boys. I'm normally free market supportive, but some things have become so basic to city life that it makes sense to fund them publicly.

The old operating systems have no functionality with a lot of newer software and hardware. I loved Windows XP when compared to the alternatives at the time, but Windows 7 is even better, imo. Windows 8 seems to support more touchscreen features that I'm not using atm. If we kept the old and just kept adding to it to make it work with the new, we'd end up with some pretty unmanageable systems. If you had told me when I was running Windows 95 that soon I'd be able to have my phone and my laptop working together in a cloud environment, I'm not sure I could have waited. Remember, back in the old Win95 days, your hard drive had 4 gigabytes of space if you were lucky. Now we have that much available in RAM!

Desktops have a much more open architecture for hardware. Once you get the panel off, most of the parts are pop-out/plug-in. If one piece needs to be replaced, you don't have to remove four other parts just to get to it. Of course, desktops are usually cheaper, so you run into the same problem of repair vs upgrade. If I had a two-year-old desktop and a repair was going to cost me 20% of what a new one might cost, I'd have to consider getting an upgrade. It is hard to find support for anything more than a few years old. But I think this is more a question of the technology leaping ahead every couple of years and leaving the old stuff in the dirt, rather than it being strictly a laptop size issue. I could be wrong, though, especially with high-end graphics cards and major components like the cpu.

Inescapable individual religions that atheism does not deny? Citation, please. I can't imagine a religion that would be necessary once you've removed its god. Or are you torturing the definition of "religion" to make it fit your purpose?

Software rarely cares if it's on a PC or a laptop. Mobile applications for your phone are usually different, but an operating system like Windows and programs for email will function equally well on desktop or laptop.

! Moderator Note Moved from The Lounge to Mathematics. Can you describe what you've been working on? Theories rely on mathematical models, but usually start out as hypotheses until a lot of review, tests, modeling, more review, and more tests result in NOT refuting the hypothesis. Then we start calling it a theory, when it's as strong and foundationally sound as we can make it.

I've heard it's 1000 Mps fiber optic service, for about the same or less than other providers with less speed. I hope this trend catches on. I'd like to see some of the corporations like Comcast and Time-Warner get challenged by The People.

For the record, I don't think repair problems with laptops are due to lack of spare hardware, at least not in my experience. What usually makes laptops harder to fix is that it costs more in labor because you have to pull so much out to get to anything. If you bought your laptop for under $500, you may be reluctant to spend more than $100 to fix it, especially if it's a year or two old already.

Not enough support for an assertion like, "Preety much the entirity of christianity and older religions and muslims" find biochips religiously unacceptable, at least in my opinion.

! Moderator Note HoneyRazwell/MikeSanchez, sockpuppets are against the rules here. MikeSanchez has been banned as well. Please "educate yourself" on the topic of intellectual dishonesty.

Citation needed.

! Moderator Note When someone starts a conversation with you about their idea on an online forum, it's considered VERY rude to interrupt with your own idea, rather than commenting on theirs. Especially when it's just as easy for YOU to start a conversation about YOUR idea in another thread, rather than trying to hijack this one. You've been warned about this a few times before. Please take the time to read through some other threads for guidance if this concept continues to prove difficult.