.josh

It wouldn't. And lots of people disagree with that, as well. But the majority think it's okay, so it continues.

I think you missed the part where married couples get certain benefits and lots of other things that cost me money from my tax dollars. And it is your opinion, not objectivity. Saying what someone is or isn't doing is objectivity. Interpreting it as something right or wrong no longer makes it objective.

Okay well thing is, most people look at the Bible as one whole book. Stoning women who had sex before getting married, along with a whole bunch of other things, was in old testament books that were more or list historical documents. It would be the equivalent of picking up an American history book 1000 years from now, and judging the whole of American history based on it's early years when slavery was okay, women had no rights, etc... Yes, things like that were part of the Bible, and it's not that God decided those things were wrong, it's that we couldn't save ourselves according to His laws. That's like, the whole point of Jesus coming down and dying for us. The point of Jesus coming down and dying for us is that we were incapable of living through the law, so Jesus did it for us. That's why we live through faith now, not the law (I'm not trying to preach here, I'm just explaining the belief). Does that mean doing wrong things is okay? No. It just means that we don't need to go around stoning each other for things any more. But that doesn't mean sin isn't sin. The old testament covers a lot of "what" is wrong. The new testament is more about starting with the assumption that you "are" a sinner, and where to go from there. It doesn't really go into specifics like the old testament. So I think it's worth noting that "being gay" is one of the few things that is specifically mentioned in both the old and new testament. Unforgivable and damning? No more than any other sin. IMO perhaps it was some kind of "fuzzy" thing that people didn't seem to be clear on, so it was an effort to be clear about it. I don't know. I do think it's interesting, nonetheless. Anyways... the point of all this is that this country was founded by a bunch of very religious people. In fact, that's one of the main reasons the founders moved here in the first place: so that they could be free to practice what they believed. Their beliefs happened to include what's in the Bible. So it really doesn't come as a surprise that the constitution acknowledged God and laws/ideals originally revolved around the Bible. As we can plainly see, that's changing over the course of time. In practice, God is not acknowledged at all. The only reason we see religious influence in laws is because the proverbial "majority" happen to follow it, not because the law itself is biased. Indeed, and that's, in my opinion, a fault in the declaration of independence and American mentality. No, you cannot have complete freedom. There are too many people who would abuse that freedom. Seeing as it's impossible to tell who would abuse it it's necessary to put restrictions on everybody whether they like it or not. There is, however, a significant difference in being happy about engaging in a gay marriage and being happy about being a serial killer. The former does not inflict harm on other people whereas the latter does. There is a significant difference between those things, in your opinion. Serial killers and pedophiles and other people who do things that you feel are "bad" do not do those things because they feel it's wrong. Think about it. Nobody really does the "wrong" thing on purpose. Everybody justifies in their own head the actions they do and thoughts they have. You are right, there must be some kind of order. We cannot feasibly allow everybody to run around willy nilly doing whatever they feel is right in their own eyes. But I just want to make it clear here that the only "significant difference" is a matter of finding out majority opinion for practicality purposes, not what is more right or wrong than something else. To tell even one person what they are doing is wrong, even if everybody else agrees with you, goes against the whole freedom of belief that America is based on. You can restrict/restrain as a matter of practicality for the majority, but not as a matter of morality. Otherwise, you would be guilty of using the law to force your personal beliefs onto someone else.

Gay marriage was banned in California? That is weird... I thought California was one of those states that embrace everything under the sun. Bible says being gay is a sin. It's pretty clear on that count. Well the whole conflict of interest comes in with that whole acknowledging of a creator part. And anyways, if you really want to argue that, we could use that logic to say you're not a real American if you try to keep me from being a serial killer or a pedophile or <insert anything else here that makes me happy>. Now you can argue that two people getting married does not harm me, but if it upsets me that it's allowed and recognized and something that now gets benefits that I have to pay for through my taxes, then yes, it does affect me.

I know some moves in judo, jujutsu and karate (no, not just the stuff I've seen in the movies, though I do watch a lot of kung-fu flicks ), but I'd like to take the time to really master a martial art or two. Maybe a jujutsu/kenjutsu combo. Jujutsu isn't so much about fighting but more about disarming/disabling people by using their movements against them. Kenjutsu basically involves becoming a badass with a sword.

Haha yeah that's kind of what I do. I have things copied, downloaded, unzipped, etc.. all to my desktop and things eventually get thrown into a "stuff" folder. I don't really have multiple "stuff" folders, just the one.

No worries on that count, Jesus took care of that for us:

oh and btw, even when you get all of that stuff sorted out, that's an incredibly weak captcha. It can and will be cracked in like 2s without even requiring optical devices or image recognition algorithms.

First off, I'm surprised you aren't getting a parse error from $a3 = $a1+$a2 seeing as how you forgot the semicolon. Second, the reason why it's not matching is because when you initially go to the page, you go through the motions of picking out 2 random numbers and adding them together and assigning that to $a3. Well when you submit the form it turns around and regenerates a new number, because you don't have that number generation part wrapped in some kind of condition...like..only generating a number if there is no form info posted. 3rd, even if you manage to sort all that out, you aren't carrying over the answer. You need to pass the info through as a hidden variable (not really secure) or as a session variable or something, so that it will persist.

Ah okay, I didn't know there were hardware issues, as well. But I recently read an article (will post it if I can find it) that talked about a lot of games having bugs, as well...basically releasing beta versions as final releases, to push them out sooner. Basically the author of the article said "Wtf, if I wanted to pay a company for the privilege of being a beta tester, I would buy an MMO on my PC. And I can understand PC games having bugs, because they have to cater to so many systems, hardwares, setups, etc.. but when you're a company that's working with one system with one set of hardware...you know wtf you're dealing with." All in all it was a pretty entertaining article

A slight alternative to this is to use the modulus operator: example.php [code=php:0] <?php   $cols = 0;   echo "<table><tr>";   while ($cols < 20) {       echo ($cols % 3 == 0)? "</tr><tr>" : "";       echo "<td>$cols</td>";       $cols++;   }   echo "</tr></table>"; ?> [/code]

Okay I am assuming that you already have for instance VDE004 in a variable (let's say $id for example), since you're wanting to go from there, matching stuff up, right? $sql = "update tablename set stock_level = stock_level - 1 where product like '$id%'";

Again, it would help if you posted some code.

I could be wrong, but I thought the problems with Xbox360 was software related, not hardware. That is, the software companies rushed to get the games out on time so they didn't really test their stuff. I don't think that's microsoft's fault... Anyways, I'll accept it's possible a good chunk of MS "falling behind" is due to being "smug" up there "on top." But I think another thing to look at is that they are simply spreading themselves too thin, as a company. Yes, they have a lot of money to throw at things, but look at how many things they have their fingers in. I bet even Mr. Gates himself doesn't know what all his company does, lol.

Oh and another thing I don't like about beta testing it is that it's not like a regular program that you can just exit out of into a stable environment, like a game or browser or program or something. It needs some kind of turn off or exit button or something. I finally gave up and uninstalled it. It's pretty easy to install (only like 17mb, fully automated, no restart required, etc...) so I'll probably re-install it on a weekly basis or whenever they report major bug fixes/features or whatever. oh and p.s.- meant to say in prev post (mostly to Dan) that it does not currently run on linux/mac.

Eh... even overlooking the many bugs I'm facing (got to love closed beta ), it's kind of...blah. It doesn't really offer any more functionality than having icons set to freely drag and drop on a normal desktop. "Piles" are pretty much the same thing as folders, which makes no sense because you can turn around and "folderize" a pile, which makes it pretty much the same thing as a pile. I guess it's like...making a folder inside a folder for like, the hell of it. You can spread out piles like a deck of cards, or make it like a book that you can use the mouse wheel to flip pages. You can make sticky notes. Overall, it was fun to throw stuff around for about 5m but as far as functionality goes...it doesn't really bring anything new to the table, except being able to make your icons larger or smaller. I'm pretty disappointed :/

And come on, QBasic is legendary.

hmm it says I can use my code for up to 3 computers but I'm not allowed to share with friends.

haha not sure haven't looked into the fine print yet. will look lol

I imagine a 42 bit system would cause some troubles....

Sorry to resurrect this thread, but would have posted a new thread about the same thing anyways...just got a closed beta invite for it, checking it out now.

Would have been funnier if he said "Joe the Plumber"

Nah, I wouldn't say I'm an anarchist. I'm not really sure what I am. I think democracy and capitalism/free enterprise are decent concepts by themselves, but putting them together seems to be a bad idea, as they seem to corrupt each other. We "have" separation of church and state because of various concerns that would lead to having them mix. Why not try some kind of separation of business and state? I'm sure the logistics of implementing it would be a nightmare, not to mention a lot of people would fight against it, but then, we had to go through all that when separating church and state, right? I don't know if it's a better solution or even a solution at all, but I think it's worth exploring, or at least, debating.

Well that's not what you said in the OP...

Okay your edited version makes more sense now. I saw the b tags in there and was like ...?