Disqus - Latest Comments for jjray7

Re: Walmart systematic overcharge case--discussion board

jjray — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 22:47:11 -0000

Wal-Mart Stores hit by lawsuit that alleges it broke overtime laws with temp agency
http://www.washingtonpost.c...

Re: Charter high speed internet service--complaints

jjray — Fri, 12 Oct 2012 19:16:15 -0000

My take on the situation with Charter is that in some areas they have oversold the service and don't have enough bandwidth to service when a high percentage of customers are home and online. They try to deflect the blame by customer service suggesting there is a problem with your modem.

Re: Who were the Magi, comments

jjray — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 12:17:31 -0000

Ananias is used in Acts as the spelling for family name of the high priest Annas. See Acts 24:1. I highly suspect there is a connection. You will notice in Grandson of Herod that I have a Hasmonean line present in the family of the high priests Annas and Caiaphas. It may be that a branch of the Annas family tried to defect to the Nazarenes. Further, it might be that Peter determined two of the defectors to not be in good faith and that they were double agents, thus he killed them. I have to believe these references to "Ananias" with the Nazarenes and Queen Helen are references to Hasmoneans within the family of high priest Annas.

Re: Gospel of Jesus' Wife

jjray — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 10:36:18 -0000

It's a small fragment but I am fired up about it on two levels. The first is additional evidence for the argument that Jesus had a wife named Mariamne or Miriam, which is a Hasmonean name. The second is that the scholar who found it connects it to Egypt and believes the first line was substantially identical to a Jesus saying from the Gospel of Thomas. Also, the commandment to leave one's family behind and form a new family with those inside the community comes from the Therapeutae and is absent in the DSS (which preserve the concept of the traditional family). It's additional evidence for the view of Jesus I have been promoting. BTW, the connection to the Gospel According to Mary plays into a discussion we had of Peter yesterday. It says, "Peter you have always been hot tempered." G of Mary 9:6.
http://gnosis.org/library/m...

Re: Reader Comments UponJesus, the Samaritans, and 'the Egyptian'

jjray — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 15:06:12 -0000

Peter killing these two people for not turning all their money over to "the church" is a damn curious act. I took the quick burial to be a disposal of the bodies to hide evidence of the crime from the authorities. I don't quite know what to make of Peter post-crucifixion. He's all piss and vinegar then, later, backs down from Paul of Tarsus after he changes sides (at least that's how Paul tells it).

Re: Reader Comments UponJesus, the Samaritans, and 'the Egyptian'

jjray — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 13:00:10 -0000

Yes, I agree the NT has been edited by parties answering to Rome. That means playing down Jesus as a revolutionary. Still, our Jesus was captured and crucified. Did he surrender at Jerusalem or was there a battle that was completely written out of the narrative? My approach has been to try to accept as many of the pieces from the NT and Josephus as true with perhaps alterations to names and dates then try to put the pieces back together. However, I throw out the completely fantastic events such as the virgin birth as myth. It is much more difficult to get the pieces of the puzzle to fit together if Jesus actually engaged in war with the Romans / Herodians. There is no record of this but the record of his surrender is there. If Jesus ben Sapphias = Jesus the Nazarene, then either Jesus was fighting the Romans as a 70 year old in the Great Revolt or he killed thousands of people in Galilee before his own revolt in 36 CE. Either scenario doesn't fit well into what we know of Jesus the Nazarene.

I would rather look for a connection between ben Sapphias and Sapphira who was said to be an early Christian in Acts (wife of Ananias) who Peter put to death for lying. See Acts 5. I think the better argument is that this ben Sapphias was Hasmonean (Josephus couldn't control him so he possessed high status) but really can not offer more than that at present.

Re: Charter high speed internet service--complaints

jjray — Tue, 11 Sep 2012 10:41:58 -0000

I look forward to the day Google high speed internet becomes available in my area.

Re: Wrinkles around mouth after weight loss

jjray — Fri, 07 Sep 2012 17:02:43 -0000

More information on fat fillers.
http://www.yourplasticsurge...

Re: Steve Wozniak: Android will be the dominant smartphone platform

jjray — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 10:40:38 -0000

Gotta love Woz.

Re: Digg Faces Accusations Of Gaming Itself

jjray — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 09:21:42 -0000

"... in the Digg I knew and loved, before I moved to Reddit"

Q. What took you so long? I gave up on Digg several years ago and never grew to love it. Their system appeared gamed from early on. Perhaps if you were a power user but that was an aspect I disliked about digg anyway. Once finding reddit, why would anyone ever long for digg?

Re: Revealed: FBI investigated claim that group threatened de-icing equipment when probing crash that killed Senator Wellstone

jjray — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 19:46:55 -0000

Add Jerry Litton and Mel Carnahan, strong Democratic senatorial candidates from Missouri who both died in separate airplane crashes near election day. In the case of Mel Carnahan, the people of Missouri voted him into office even though he was already dead.

Re: Plagiarism suit against J.K. Rowling – is it serious? - CSMonitor.com

jjray — Sun, 17 Oct 2010 20:58:37 -0000

Copyright law does not protect concepts, it protects artistic expression. This same issue was at the heart of the suit against Dan Brown by the authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail, which lawsuit failed.

Re: Microsoft Gives its Blessing to OpenOffice.org

jjray — Sat, 16 Oct 2010 13:26:58 -0000

I'm still pissed at MS when rolled out .docx as the new format for Word but made it backward incompatible with older version of Word unless you jump through hoops and download a Microsoft Compatibility pack. Instead of making better products to encourage users to upgrade, they yank on chains in attempts to shake money out of the trees.

Re: When Google Wanted To Sell To Excite For Under $1 Million — And They Passed

jjray — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 17:37:23 -0000

Google point. Excite never had a clue how to monetize search. Only goto.com (later named overture) had the answer ... which Google essentially copied with a few tweaks and turned into a monster cash cow.

Re: Facebook Movie Gets Overwhelmingly Positive Reviews, But Will People Go See It?

jjray — Sat, 25 Sep 2010 11:27:12 -0000

I think the people at facebook spent too much energy fighting this movie under the premise that they need to protect the reputation of their founder. The movie Wall Street and Gordon Gecko's "greed is good" has changed all that. People accept greed in business titans, they expect it. Zuckerberg is only getting his profile enhanced by this movie IMHO.

Re: Report: ‘Chaotic’ firefighting response might have sunk BP oil rig

jjray — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 09:43:02 -0000

Yes, there are many areas of this disaster to investigate but the failure in fire fighting is important. Had the Deep Water Horizon not sunk and the riser stayed intact, containing the spill would have been far, far easier. It magnified the disaster many fold.

Re: Information Wants To Be Worth Paying For

jjray — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 23:19:23 -0000

I think paid web sites that merely contain static content are dead. The NYT and WSJ attempts to return to paid models are, IMHO, doomed to failure. People have been getting info on the web for free for too long to put the genie back into the bottle. Online multimedia and apps seem to have momentum though. CNN has a free website but they sell an iPhone app that let's you view clips not available on cnn.com. ESPN has an app that you can customize to deliver the latest scores and stories relative to the teams you follow.

Re: Use Pockets to leave a Private Voicemail to anyone on Twitter

jjray — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 12:07:59 -0000

Pocketsapp is an interesting concept but I don't get the utility unless it is to try and contact people you really don't know. Thus, it has a greater utility for spam than actually for people that know each other. For instance, let's say I know Sara Jones from high school but lost track of her. Now I see her on twitter (note: I regularly get messages on facebook from people I have not seen in decades). If Sara is a friend, I can first follow her on twitter and see if she follows me back. If she does, then we send private messages to one another and get the telephone number. Maybe Sara does not want to talk to me. This longer process makes it easier for Sara to keep me at a distance than being greeted with a voicemail.

Should this catch on, I personally am not looking forward to having a flood of voicemail messages from SEOs who want to optimize my commercial website. Here is another issue, if I give pocketapps access to my twitter acct once, does that mean they can send me a voicemail from anyone in the universe who sends one in the future? Don't like the sound of this service.

Re: Hoping To Bet Your Startup’s Future On Online Advertising? You May Want to Think Twice..

jjray — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 09:14:56 -0000

If the ad placement system and advertiser signup are automated, it shouldn't be a huge deal do let the small companies in. Yes, there will be user support to be handled with that large of advertiser volume but agree it is worth it.

Re: Press and Viral aren't the only two marketing and distribution strategies!

jjray — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 18:59:58 -0000

I think you left out affiliate marketing. See commission junction https://www.cj.

Re: Why Bush and Israel Won't Bomb Iran

jjray — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 10:28:52 -0000

The premise of this article presupposes the Bush administration and the Israelis care at all about the amount of pain their actions inflict on the world (including American citizens). The Bush administration appears to have little care for the suffering of American citizens, damage to the American economy, etc.

Re: Google News Undergoing Secret Experiments

jjray — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 14:42:16 -0000

That's an interesting strategy--instead of testing a site or feature in a controlled test environment, Google is running test with live users on its live site. If the sample is small, then the only harm I can think of is tipping your hand to competitors. If the tests are unsuccessful, one risk is pissing off your users with a feature they don't like or didn't work properly but with a small sample this is probably a minimal risk.

Re: Give Al Gore a Tardy

jjray — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 19:45:25 -0000

I think Al sees himself as something of a senior statesman above the nitty gitty of party politics. Too bad for I agree completely with your article that Al shoulda and coulda stepped in earlier to say to the country that Obama was the Democratic nominee and call for Hillary to back off. Al hasn't learned how to lead I'm afraid.

Re: A Discordant Note on Tim Russert

jjray — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 11:45:01 -0000

Thanks for this article. The canonization of Tim Russert has troubled me. Sure, he's a swell guy but his reporting in the run up to the 2002 Iraq War was attrotious. In the biggest story of his career, he fell down on the job.

Re: Borders Returns To Web Retailing

jjray — Tue, 27 May 2008 16:50:49 -0000

Borders is dead in the water unless they innovate. Here's an article with some thoughts on the subject:
http://howtowritebusinesspl...