Disqus - Latest Comments for tastyrerun

Re: 7 Reasons Why HD Vinyl Won’t Take Off

tastyrerun — Thu, 24 Mar 2016 12:53:13 -0000

"Once all these hipsters buying vinyl turn 33, they will digitize and get rid of their vinyl like the rest of us did"

This cracked me up. I'm Gen X. I grew up with vinyl, which I would then carefully record to a tape for portability in my Walkman. When CDs showed up, I moved to those and stopped buying vinyl. Then the iPods came and I digitized everything and now, with all the options on the table, I opt for "all of the above". I have started buying vinyl again, because sometimes I feel like spinning records and the used record bins often contain music that never even made the jump to CD, let alone MP3. I have iPods and iPhones and portable media devices all over the place with crap tons of music on them. I have boxes of cassette tapes and a big ol' 400-disc CD changer I got off Craigslist for $40 which is full. The point is, I like having options and no one solution is perfect and it's all just fun anyhow. No one format is always the best option (although, admittedly, cassettes are generally always the least best option...)

All of that said, the HD Vinyl thing... No chance. It's dead before it starts. I could imagine an open-source/maker approach to technically advancing vinyl, but the patent and push thing ain't going nowhere. No buyers, no sellers, no chance.

Re: Oracle: Java's worst enemy

tastyrerun — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 09:18:38 -0000

I would like to clarify that I do not mean Oracle has some sort of nefarious agenda. It's just that, as a company, they are run by marketers and managers and they have a corporate culture that actually hostile towards software development best practices and software developers period. This isn't because somebody at Oracle wants to be evil or bad at their jobs. "Don't attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence" is a saying I would use here.

To illustrate:

The company I worked at had a strong developer-centric culture. All software development was done with the XP development methodology. We worked in labs, on short iterations. We did pair-programming and TDD. People loved working there, did great work, learned from each other, and delivered high quality software on a consistent basis. Then Oracle bought the company. Oracle management could have allowed the company to keep the culture and methodology that had made them successful in the first place, but that is not the Oracle way. The labs were broken up, pair-programming and agile methods were banned. Waterfall processes were implemented by project managers who were shipped in. A 60+ step change management process governed by people in another state and requiring a printed out flowchart on our cubicle walls was put in place. The company went from being the ultimate developer-friendly place to work with all the sharpest, hardest working, and most creative minds in our metro area to being so frustrating, bureaucratic, ineffective, and painful that literally all of the best people left within a month or two. Many came back, hoping that things might have improved, but they left again. Oracle bought a company that had value because of it's developers, and then changed everything that made those developers work there in the first place. I'm sure the arguments for doing this made sense to managers and accountants, but the brain drain was not a foregone conclusion. The truth is (and Oracle's products bear this out) that the Oracle corporate culture is not based on developing great software. It is not geared towards developing software at all. It is a developer-hostile, top down, waterfall, accountant/management/lawyer driven approach. Software gets developed, but it's the kind of software that comes from unhappy, uninspired, middle-of-the-road developers working for MBAs who don't know the first thing about software. Painful user interfaces, unbelievably face-palming bugs, lack of interesting or innovative new features, obsession with branding and Powerpoint-centric "enterprise" feature lists, incoherent strategic product direction... any of this sound familiar to anybody who has ever worked with any Oracle product? It should. It's the kind of software that comes out of a company that has grown so huge through mergers and acquisitions that they have completely devolved into a merger and acquisition machine that just happens to involve software instead of a software development company. The leadership of Oracle is not interested in buying a company to gain it's strength, they want it's IP. They rebrand the software with their name, and it goes into a managed maintenance mode forever more. It's not intentional evil, but the results are predictable.

This is why Java cannot grow under Oracle. It's just the nature of Oracle. Without massive corporate cultural shift (or the decision to take a more hands-off approach to companies they buy) they cannot be fast, light or nimble. They cannot retain talented people. They cannot be innovative. To do any of these things would require a complete change in their entire corporate culture from manager-centric to developer-centric, and there is no reason to believe they will do that based on historical precedent.

Re: Oracle: Java's worst enemy

tastyrerun — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 16:53:40 -0000

I have worked at a company that was purchased by Oracle while I was working there. I have known developers who have worked at others. Oracle appears to have a standard operating procedure. First they drive out most of the talented, innovative, and dedicated people. Then they introduce as much bureaucracy as they can manage and any remaining innovative, talented, and dedicated people leave. Finally, they flog the dead husk of a company for as long as they can manage to milk the product line along with patches to bugs they have introduced and "features" designed to increase corporate reliance on Oracle. Java will not survive Oracle in the sense of thriving as a language. It's innovation days ended the moment Oracle got involved. But, as a perpetual series of bug-fixes, patches, and marketing driven "features" that provide the illusion of progress, Java will live forever.

Re: Jehovah’s Witnesses Literature Banned as “Extremist” in Russia

tastyrerun — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 13:51:03 -0000

I concur with everything James said, so I won't readress those same points, however, I would love to know what data supports the claim that the world is going from bad to worse and mankind cannot ever fix their own problems. I can think of many things that have improved dramatically since the Watchtower started publication (for example, life expectancy has more than doubled) and I can think of quite a few successful human endeavors that prove that a committed group of people working to make the world a better place can actually do it. So, where is the justification for the hopelessness and negativity that is espoused in that world view? Where is the justification for killing "wicked" children or adults for no crime beyond failing to believe in a God who refuses to provide evidence that he exists? I mean, basically, if the world keeps getting better as part of the overall trend, how can it be argued that it's right to kill everybody?

This, as an aside, brings up something that bothered me even as a Witness, which is that "true peace and security" scripture. It seems unfathomably cruel to destroy humanity at the exact moment that they finally accomplish the very goal that they supposedly couldn't accomplish. If humans actually accomplished true peace and security, shouldn't they be allowed to experience the rewards of their labor rather being slaughtered en masse because they did it on their own?

Re: Jehovah’s Witnesses Literature Banned as “Extremist” in Russia

tastyrerun — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 23:18:57 -0000

I think, Tom, that we both agree that the utopian ideas underlying the Witness spiritual paradise are good. I am all about no war, mutual respect, caring for the earth, all of it. That's what I want too. Also, the Witnesses espouse a commitment to truth, which I deeply embrace as well.

Unfortunately, when subjected to critical scrutiny the teachings of the Watchtower Society don't stand up to the demonstrable facts of history and science. If I'm going to put all my eggs in one basket, there needs to be solid evidence that it's more than wishful thinking. That is simply not the case. The only way to accept Biblical literalism and inerrancy is to cherry-pick the evidence. If it were true, that would not be necessary. Facts are conclusions that are consistent with all the available evidence, not conclusions consistent with a carefully chosen subset of the evidence. If you're going to dedicate your time and resources to helping make the world a better place, spreading a story about how it's all going to get better through supernatural intervention is a waste of time at best. When somebody dies because of the self-sacrifice they put into serving that story, it's far more than a waste of time, it's a tragedy.

I might also add that the solution the Witnesses espouse involves the mass murder of billions of men, women, and children, which is an unacceptably high price to pay to solve the problems of the world. If Jehovah really existed and wanted to create a paradise earth, he could just transform the earth into a paradise. I would think that would qualify as a sufficiently powerful proof both of his existence and his goodness that even the most hard-hearted atheist in the world would have to admit they were wrong because they accept the evidence that is presented. There is no reason for the mass murder. None. Give every living person a real revelation of The Truth, show them all that the Bible is true, and almost everybody on earth would immediately be a Witness of Jehovah. If a god can't do that, or won't do it, and instead feels the need to massacre our entire species for failing to accept Him without solid evidence, then you can't argue He is a just or loving or a good being. You don't solve pollution or war or crime or poverty by murdering everyone and call yourself good.

Re: Jehovah’s Witnesses Literature Banned as “Extremist” in Russia

tastyrerun — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 14:46:00 -0000

I would have to disagree with the assessment that if the whole world followed Witness values the world would automatically be a better place. In some ways it would. There would be no war, which would be fantastic, but there would also be no science or technology, which would be not so great. I mean, no higher education = no colleges = no research = no innovation, and Witnesses are anti-college. Also, nobody would much care about global warming or pollution so they wouldn't particularly attempt to address those problems, so those problems would get worse and the technological solutions that might address them would go undiscovered until it was too late.

So, while some things would be better (crime, war) other things would be worse (technology, the environment). There is no such thing as a free lunch.

I understand and respect that Witnesses have put all their eggs in the basket of The New Order where these things are concerned. I understand that since they've bet everything on this being True, the obvious correlation is that the best thing they can do for mankind is to preach about it. I understand this because I believed it for 30 years. But, the Witness solution to everything is entirely predicated on outside intervention by an invisible supernatural being, which, frankly, could quite easily turn out to be nothing more than a pipe dream and in the meantime, while they're waiting for Superman, they live here, in this world, with the rest of us, breathing the air we breath, sharing our streets, and being affected by the same problems that affect us. I've spoken to a lot of worldly people who really wish that instead of trying to preach at them, they're friendly neighborhood JW's would actually do something in the community that made a visible difference.

Re: Jehovah’s Witnesses Literature Banned as “Extremist” in Russia

tastyrerun — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 11:06:07 -0000

Hi Tom, nice to see you again.

If you read my post thoroughly, I hope you noticed that I agreed that banning the Witnesses was the wrong thing to do and that they were no harm to the State.

Also, you are no doubt correct about the recycling. If there is a law stating that a Witness needs to recycle, they will comply. However, as James points out, the fact that Witnesses see God's Kingdom as the solution to all of the problems in the world means that anything humans do to try to solve those problems is basically doomed to failure and therefore not worth the effort. The Watchtower and especially Awake! routinely highlight the problems in the world, including things like pollution, and they nearly always point out that mankinds efforts to fix the problem cannot possibly be sufficient but that we can have hope anyhow because of the New Order. This leads to the undeniable fact that Witnesses take almost no initiative towards making the world we live in a better place in any way. It is the rare Witness who is concerned about the ecological impact of their lifestyle.

Re: Jehovah’s Witnesses Literature Banned as “Extremist” in Russia

tastyrerun — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 16:41:29 -0000

Thanks James. That's interesting. The US numbers appear to be pretty close to the population growth rate in the US (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population_growth_rate) of 0.97%.

As for your other numbers, It does seem that the 1975-1995 numbers were far more impressive than the numbers since 1995. I wonder if the combination of the Internet and the change in the definition of "generation" in 1995 are contributing factors?

Re: Jehovah’s Witnesses Literature Banned as “Extremist” in Russia

tastyrerun — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 12:51:06 -0000

To be nit-picky, I actually said that their retention numbers were the worst and that their growth was slowing, not that they were shrinking (yet). I wish I could find some hard numbers, but signs seem to be pointing to hard times for the W's.

Re: Jehovah’s Witnesses Literature Banned as “Extremist” in Russia

tastyrerun — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 12:19:51 -0000

That may very well be the first time that's ever happened. :-)

Re: About This Blog and It’s Author

tastyrerun — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 13:52:00 -0000

Confession: When I wrote this I actually thought of the fact that it would have been more accurate to say "elected" but then realized that I would be able to coax a response out of either you or David by leaving it as is. And it worked! Woohoo!!!

Then I edited it and I could have changed it then, but where's the fun in that?

Re: About This Blog and It’s Author

tastyrerun — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 23:53:47 -0000

AFAIAC, he was elected in 1876 so he became president in 1876. I don't give a rats ass about the distinction between president-elect and getting sworn in. :-) Still, I've updated the post to serve your nit-picking needs.

Re: Why I Say I’m Pro-Jesus, Anti-Christ

tastyrerun — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 15:17:43 -0000

Glad you liked the write up and no, I never went to seminary. When I go back to college I'll be going for art, history, literature, all sorts of stuff, but probably not seminary. I'm not sure there is a lot to interest me there anymore.

Re: Bread Pudding

tastyrerun — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 11:42:03 -0000

That is so awesome. Thanks!

We had been discussing the need for a great caramel sauce in the hours preceding your posting of this recipe. You are da bomb. :-)

Re: Bread Pudding

tastyrerun — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 22:34:15 -0000

I am nothing if not wide ranging in my interests.

Re: I Don’t Believe in Theists

tastyrerun — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 16:52:29 -0000

You do make a valid point in that this is a definition of the "I don't believe in atheists" position that *could* be intended. However, when people make statements along the lines of "there are no atheists in foxholes", or admit that they have teammates who claim to be atheists but then indicate that those teammates just, for whatever reason, haven't decided to let God into their lives, I take the meaning to be that they concur with the scripture at in Romans 1 that says all men know the truth but suppress it in unrighteousness.

My source, BTW, for this information is:

http://www.bpsports.net/bps...

You can certainly read it for yourself and determine whether or not you think I misread the intent of his comments. If I did misinterpret Lyndon Rush, I can still fairly accurately state that I have read and even met multiple people who "don't believe in atheists" in the way I was responding to.

Re: New Video starring yours truly: Flattened

tastyrerun — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 16:20:22 -0000

Oh yeah, baby. There's no stopping us now. :-)

Re: Certified Apostate

tastyrerun — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 09:36:06 -0000

I'm not going to ask you to "believe everything it says" but at least you'll be getting some actual science.

And no, carbon dating is not "being disputed", except by creationists. There are no scientists anywhere who dispute carbon dating but you can find people who will dispute anything for religious reasons. For example, there are Muslims who dispute the claim that the earth is round, insisting that it's flat. Do you honestly consider the spherical nature of the earth to be "disputed" because an Imam with a holy book says it's flat? Everything, and I do mean everything, is disputed if you are only willing to look hard enough to find the crazy person who disputes it but there is no scientific debate over radiometric dating methods.

Re: Therapy and Meditation

tastyrerun — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 09:29:48 -0000

I reached a point where I could no longer effectively deal with my emotions in regards to being shunned by my family. I was finding myself having imaginary conversations with my father on a daily basis, I had trouble getting close to the people who were actually in my daily life, and basically I was angry and sad a lot. I found a very good therapist and he helped me work through those issues. He helped me understand some things about myself that I could not have understood on my own. Additionally, he helped me come to terms with my situation and find peace. He did it by careful listening and insightful analysis of the things I was saying, for the most part. There was no magic to it. But, a really good listener and sharp analyst will help you hear for yourself what you are really saying when you say thing, help you resolve inconsistencies in your own thought patterns, and give you a different perspective from which to see yourself. For me it was extremely helpful.

Re: Certified Apostate

tastyrerun — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 11:38:47 -0000

Tell ya what. Go read the book "Why Evolution is True" by Jerry Coyne and then come back to discuss it. As it stands, you seem to be remarkably misinformed on what evolution is, how it works, or what evidence supports it. I could try to explain it all to you, but why would I bother? Other people have already written these books.

To show how sincere I am, I will offer to buy you a copy of that book. Email me a mailing address. You can even stay anonymous. I will buy the book on Amazon and have it shipped to your house or office or any address you desire. If you wish to discuss evolution here on this site, I am afraid I must insist you find out what it is first because otherwise it's like having a discussion about music theory with somebody who has never played an instrument and just listens to the radio every now and then. Ain't gonna be much of a discussion.

Re: Is It Possible to Build Faith In a Creator? Um…

tastyrerun — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 10:48:22 -0000

It's hard to know how to respond to this...

You've apparently invented, completely from scratch, an entire new concept that doesn't exist in the Bible at all and then used it to give the Bible wiggle room to allow it to remain true in your head, while simultaneously missing my point entirely and providing no answer to what I asked.

I'll attempt to clarify by being more specific about why I say Adam and Eve never existed.

It's not a matter of years. It's a matter of genetics. Analysis of human DNA has shown conclusively that our species did not originate in the middle east, but in Africa. So, even if there were an ancestral home of mankind like Eden, the Bible would be wrong about it's location. Additionally, genetic evidence has clinched the case for share common descent with chimpanzees of a common ancestor. Have you ever heard of an endogenous retrovirus? Would you like to learn about why this is the absolute clinching piece of evidence against special creation of human beings?

You can invent all the methods of interpreting the Bible you want to try to give yourself all the years you need, you can't change the evidence that we didn't originate in the Middle East and we absolutely, conclusively, share a common ancestor with another species.

Re: The Long Dark Night of the Soul

tastyrerun — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 10:06:13 -0000

When I have Christmas with my family, it has nothing to do with venerating any Christian god-man or worshipping the sun. I couldn't care less what people in the past thought or did about it. For me, here, today, in my life, the middle of winter is a dark time. The days are short and the world outside seems dead. To have a reminder that spring will come, that green will return, that we will reach the shortest and darkest day and then the days will start to get longer and life will renew itself is a powerful experience. It has nothing to do with ancient pagans and everything to do with my family and their life here today. We take the time to remind each other that we live in a world with cycles of death and rebirth and growth, and in the middle of that we still have each other. What is wrong with using the natural cycles of the seasons to remind ourselves of the good things in life and to chase some of the gloom away? Why does it matter that long dead people who lived in entirely foreign circumstances used to kill their children in response to those same cycles? What kind of person can't separate their life today from the lives of long dead people in remote civilizations?

Should I not go to Wisconsin because Ed Gein and Jeffrey Dahmer lived there? Should I not own a box cutter because the WTC terrorists used them to hijack planes? At what point do we make everything about associations? What is wrong with deciding on our own meanings for ourselves and living our lives in the present? Who cares what ancient dead people did? This is about us, the living, today, now, and what we are living through, and if a family bonding ritual in the dead of winter makes that life better, then it's a good thing.

Re: The Long Dark Night of the Soul

tastyrerun — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 09:57:08 -0000

Have you ever attempted to root out all pagan influence from Christianity? You know what's weird? If you do that, you ultimately have no religion at all because the whole thing is pagan. Judaism is pagan, Christianity is pagan, the whole thing is. Jesus is a pagan mystery god, Judaism is pagan Canaanite religion, every Jew and Christian in the world believes in pagan teachings they are just too deluded and ignorant of the origins of their own religions to know it. You, Lucky, as a Bible believing Christian are a pagan venerating two pagan deities, but the sad part is that you just don't know it. You think you're different, but you're wrong. You're not. Christianity and Judaism grew from pagan roots.

Re: Is It Possible to Build Faith In a Creator? Um…

tastyrerun — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 12:38:05 -0000

That's cool, and they're right, if there was a flood at all, it wasn't global.

Of course, this is not why I'm not a Witness. The Flood was the first thing I found out they were wrong about, but certainly not enough to make me leave the Org. I just figured there would be New Light™ someday.

How about this instead? Adam and Eve didn't exist and there was no Garden of Eden or original sin. That's a much bigger deal. It means that the whole idea of redemption by sacrifice, the entire basic theory of Christianity, is meaningless. Can you come up with a way demonstrate that whole Garden of Eden thing?

Re: Is It Possible to Build Faith In a Creator? Um…

tastyrerun — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 15:33:27 -0000

"please stop rebuking those who love you because of their beliefs"

Sigh...

I am not rebuking anybody by saying their beliefs are incorrect. This isn't a criticism of a person, it's a criticism of an idea. If somebody criticizes something I believe, it is not a personal criticism of me, it's about the idea, not the person.

I do not, and have not, made this personal .

When the Watchtower Society makes the claim that there was a global flood in the year 2370 BCE that wiped out the entire human race, they are making a verifiable or falsifiable claim. If I examine that claim and find that the evidence indicates that, no, there was no global flood in that year (or any other), I am not rebuking a person who believes in the flood, I'm disputing the factual basis for a claim. The individual believer is not my target. I mean no personal disrespect. I am simply stating that, whether you like it or not, there is overwhelming evidence that this claim is false. In my case, I find the evidence from ice core samples and bristlecone pine trees to be indisputable and conclusive, although there is literally no evidence of a global flood and tons of other evidence that specifically refutes the claim.

There are people I know and love who believe things that I know to be false. I don't care. They can believe the moon is made of bleu cheese if they like. It doesn't matter to me. The problem is that they not only insist on believing these things, but they cut me out of their lives and punish me because I can't believe them. They further consider it an attack or a rebuke if I say why I don't believe what they believe, even though I'm not talking about them, I'm talking about an idea.

Is it because these ideas are so hard to believe in that believers get so upset when somebody fails to believe or considers it a personal attack when somebody explains why they don't believe?