Computer Network Piecing Together a Jigsaw of Ancient Jewish Lore 127
First time accepted submitter aravenwood writes "The New York Times and the Times of Israel report today that artificial intelligence and a network of 100 computers in a basement in Tel Aviv University are being used to match 320,000 fragments of documents dating as far back as the 9th century in an attempt to reassemble the original documents. Since the trove of documents from the Jewish community of Cairo was discovered in 1896 only about 4000 of them have been pieced together, and the hope is that the new technique, which involves taking photographs of the fragments and using image recognition and other algorithms to match the language, spacing, and handwriting style of the text along with the shape of the fragment to other fragments could revolutionize not only the study of this trove documents, which has been split up into 67 different collections around the world since its discovery, but also how humanities disciplines study documents like these. They expect to make 12 billion comparisons of different fragments before the project is completed — they have already performed 2.8 billion. Among the documents, some dating from 950, was the discovery of letters by Moses Maimonides and that Cairene Jews were involved in the import of flax, linen, and sheep cheese from Sicily."
Re: Dates? (Score:1)
Re:Dates? (Score:5, Informative)
According to Wikipedia, Maimonides lived Passover Eve, 1135 to December 12, 1204; how was he able to write a document in 950?
The summary states "Among the documents, some dating from 950 ...". It is pretty clear that the "950" refers to the earliest known date of any of the documents, not the date of all of them.
Re:Religion = Dumb shit for feces brains (Score:4)
yea but fortunately there are only a few thousand of those, vs hundreds of millions of the other
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The only reason you want his identity is so you can launch personal attacks
Perhaps it was the GP's reason, but some of us would like to label the ACs (at least the coherent ones) because it is hard to hold a meaningful conversation with a horde of Spartacuses.
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I think it's just a matter of trying to cram two ideas into one sentence:
1. Some documents were from as far back as 950
2. There were letters from Moses Maimonides found in the entire set of documents
Re: Dates? (Score:2)
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Using Slashdot?
I'm sure some AC complained about it being out of date then as well.
Re:discovery of God's true name.... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Meh, they once had it, and the universe still existed. Rediscovery of it is unlikely to result in its destruction.
YHWH: the name above all [other] names (Score:3)
Re:YHWH: the name above all [other] names (Score:4, Interesting)
Thanks for the information. My understanding is that devout Jews will not say the name YHWH as they see it as being sacred and it is profane to use it. Hence they use terms like "Ha Shem" == The Name, Adonai == Lord, Melek Ha Olam == King of the World etc. Sorry, my Hebrew is very poor. The take-away is that the ancient Hebrews would use substitutes instead of invoking the personal name of God. In contrast, Islam uses the word "Allah", which comes from "il illah", "The (One) God", which is a title and not a personal name.
Also note that despite the claims of the Muslims that Allah is the God of Abraham, this claim must be false when scriptures are compared. See the following for such a comparison, which concludes based on Islamic sources that Allah and YHWH cannot be be same (in fact, Allah has the *opposite* attributes of YHWH, read into that what you will): http://www.answering-islam.org/Shamoun/god.htm [answering-islam.org]
Similarly, when scripture is compared the Islamic "Mehdi" pretty much has the characteristics given of a Christian Anti-Christ (there is more than one, this one just happens to be the one most detailed in Revelations). I'm an atheist so "have no skin in the game", I'm just giving a comparison of mythologies since that comparison is not known even to most religious and educated people.
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"What Andy giveth, Bill taketh away..."
I see what you did there. Clever.
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Re:YHWH: the name above all [other] names (Score:5, Interesting)
Just a few points:
Except that they both use the same original scriptures. Islam just adds on the words of their prophet similar to what Christianity does.
Except that the concept of "anti-Christ" does not exist in the original scriptures. Only in the addendum of the Christians.
The problem is that none of the mythologies make any sense unless you are already a believer. So comparing three mythologies that do not make sense to each other will not result in any insights except that they are different.
From your link:
Are you obligated to consider MY fan-fiction to be canonical? Am I obligated to consider YOUR fan-fiction to be canonical? Particularly when the ORIGINAL material was a "shared-world" effort with lots of individual contributors who dealt with a lot of allegories and parables and such.
When you have a monotheistic religion where EVERYTHING was created by a single omnipotent, omniscient god then arguing about whether that god created "evil" or "sin" is kind of silly.
Whomever wrote the link that you linked to has a religious point-of-view.
Re:YHWH: the name above all [other] names (Score:5, Insightful)
There are *numerous* differences between Islam and the Torah & Christianity. The evil warlord Mohammed used Arian Christian heretics to base some of the superstiton in the Qur'an on
WOAH -- with that sort of rhetoric, it's pretty reasonable to assume you're a Christian or Jewish troll debunking Islam while pretending to be an atheist. (Or, if you're really not either, you need to reconsider the implicit respect you seem to give to the Torah & Christianity while throwing out such vitriol against other things.)
Here, please allow me to enlighten you with numerous additional sources that show that the Qur'an is not the direct and eternal word of God
And I can provide you with numerous apparent contradictions from the Torah and New Testament that seem just as bad. (Scholars of Christianity and Judaism of course don't think they're bad, just like Muslims don't notice their own apparent contradictions.)
(another bold yet provably false claim, even when you don't consider the Sa'ana Qur'an), because it is plagarised from material written 500 - 1000 years earlier, gets it wrong,
Lots of the New Testament gospels are reinterpretations of Hebrew scripture written hundreds of years before. Many Jewish scholars would say that the New Testament glosses on the Torah get a lot of things wrong.
and then throws in a bunch of anti-scientific stuff to boot (that is, modern science *proves* statements in the Qur'an to be *false* - its claim to be *perfect* is simply rubbish):
Because there isn't ANYTHING in the Torah or New Testament which seems to go against science... [/sarcasm]... Creation myths, worldwide floods, creating food from nothing, floating axheads, sun standing still, and... of course... multiple stories of resurrection from the dead are just a few things that come to mind.
Now, you can choose to believe in an anti-scientific falsehood if you like. I'd rather not. It is clear that Islam makes many claims. Upon close examination those claims are *simply not true*.
Again, I'm not getting what's different hear from those who would criticize Christianity or Judaism. (No offense to any believers at all intended, but these are criticisms that could be leveled at any of these religions by those outside of them.)
You can deny the sources I've given, but that is simply denial of reality because you would rather cling to the lie of the mythology you were born into.
Huh? By the way, some of your sources are pretty darn generic links to vast resources...
Making that choice is perfectly valid, (although stupid in the 21st Century, IMHO) - you just have to understand that you are choosing to deny all the evidence that shows the various claims of your superstition as false.
I don't see that in the GP's comment at all. He was pointing out that ALL of the religions you mention appear to have these flaws. ALL of them have apparent self-contradictions and superstitious elements. To claim this is only true of Islam and not Christianity or Judaism is just deluding yourself.
Fortunately, as the wikiislam site shows, many people are realising the falsehood of religions and choosing to live a Free People (not slaves under Islam) and having to be virtuous because they want to be - not because they fear the nightmares of Bronze Age desert barbarians.
I don't get it. Why, if you're such a "free thinker," do you believe that Islamic texts are somehow "worse" than Christian or Judaic texts? If you doubt all religions, surely you must recognize that the same criticisms are true of all these.
Your specific targeting of Islam suggests a larger agenda, and from your earlier link to a site that critiques Islam from a Christian perspective suggests that something else is going on in your posts here.
If you r
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I don't get it. Why, if you're such a "free thinker," do you believe that Islamic texts are somehow "worse" than Christian or Judaic texts? If you doubt all religions, surely you must recognize that the same criticisms are true of all these.
I know you don't get it. That's why you struggle to understand how Islam is different to the others. You see, the other mythologies *were* just as bad, but have reformed. They are no less bullshit today, but they agree with separation of Church and State. No-one in the mainstream of these religions contests this. Furthermore, both of these assert no authority over non-believers.
Islam is very very much different because while it is also superstitious nonsense it claims to be the divine and unalterable word
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"I know you don't get it. That's why you struggle to understand how Islam is different to the others. You see, the other mythologies *were* just as bad, but have reformed. They are no less bullshit today, but they agree with separation of Church and State. No-one in the mainstream of these religions contests this. Furthermore, both of these assert no authority over non-believers. "
There are actually around a dozen explicitly Christian nations, and quite a few more that despite separating church and state at
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Please provide a counter survey to the Pew survey that disproves my statement. You are going on "what you think you know" about Islam, not on the facts. You think I want Islam to be evil? no, I don't. I wish it was about rainbows and unicorns and sitting around a camp fire singing Kumbaya. But the *reality* is it is not. It is about jihad, and war against kufr unbelievers until they are all subjugated into the Islamic political system (a work in progress), and killing of homosexuals (still practiced), and
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Re: The problem is that none of the mythologies make any sense unless you are already a believer. So comparing three mythologies that do not make sense to each other will not result in any insights except that they are different.
So true! In fact, comparing fictional religious world-views is as fruitful as trying to compare them based on their relative phase shift of holy or sacred days:
Islam holds Friday to be the holy day / lord's day
Judaism holds Saturday to be the holy/lord's day
Christianity holds Sunda
Re:YHWH: the name above all [other] names (Score:4, Informative)
"The problem is that none of the mythologies make any sense unless you are already a believer." Kindly wish to back that up? Simply repeating ignorant arguments that you've heard like a parrot is meaningless.
Let's stick to the scriptures of these religions, for the sake of argument (since that's essentially how this thread got started, with someone posting a critique of Islamic scripture).
It's pretty clear that theologians in each of these religions have debated the internal consistency of their scriptures [wikipedia.org] for thousands of years. They've come up with various solutions, but the fact is that the most learned scholars of Christianity and Judaism clearly recognize that their own scriptures have apparent flaws when read at face value... and they've spent considerable time and effort to reconcile them.
So, aside from GP's use of the term "mythologies" (which can be offensive to believers), I don't get how he's wrong. Scholars of these religions themselves recognize that their own scriptures don't quite make sense until you figure out how to make them make sense... which usually means you're already a believer in that religion to go to that trouble.
Including your next bit of ignorance: "When you have a monotheistic religion where EVERYTHING was created by a single omnipotent, omniscient god then arguing about whether that god created "evil" or "sin" is kind of silly." Where does the Bible say that God created EVERYTHING including the acts of men who were given free will to make their own choices? I'm not here to argue for or against anything but allowing stupid people to get away with saying stupid things.
Umm, again, there are literally thousands of years of Jewish and Christian theologians who have debated the Problem of Evil [wikipedia.org].
If it was readily apparent that "evil" came from ?? (some other source outside of Creation, which is supposed to be all there is), while God made everything else, I doubt that the most learned folks in Christianity and Judaism would spend millennia trying to figure this problem out.
Of course you feel it doesn't make any sense. Regardless of its own merits you seem to lack the intelligence to even know what it says, much less make a judgment on its contents.
Given that the GP seems aware of conflicts in Christianity and Judaism that go back thousands of years, while you seem to be incredibly ignorant of the philosophical history of the religions you're trying to defend, I don't think you should be pontificating about the "lack of intelligence" in others.
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Thank you for spending all that time getting around the fact that scripture is what matters to people that believe and you couldn't come up with a single verse to back up God making Evil or the Bible saying God is responsible for everything. Good job.
Re:YHWH: the name above all [other] names (Score:4, Informative)
Thank you for spending all that time getting around the fact that scripture is what matters to people that believe
Given your use of terms, I'm going to assume you're arguing from a Christian (and not Judaic) position.
The sola scriptura [wikipedia.org] doctrine was not particularly strong until the Reformation, when Martin Luther championed it. For most of the history of the church, and still in the Catholic, Orthodox, and many Protestant Churches (Episicopal, Methodist, etc.), church tradition has also been an essential source for understanding Christianity. There has been a very strong tradition of the smartest Christian theologians debating the "Problem of Evil" for all of church history. (For the record, the rabbinical tradition in Judaism has done similar things.)
Whether YOU think it's a problem or not is irrelevant. Perhaps in whatever branch of Christianity you believe in, it isn't perceived to be a problem. Fine. But for the vast majority of Christian theologians throughout history, it was something that merited significant discussion.
and you couldn't come up with a single verse to back up God making Evil or the Bible saying God is responsible for everything. Good job.
It's not my job to educate you on the basics of your religion. Nor is it my job to READ for you -- did you even look at the links I gave in my post?
If you skimmed the "Problem of Evil" article, you'd discover that there are in fact parts of the Bible that many people have interpreted to imply that God is the ultimate source of Evil.
The most obvious example (discussed in the link) is the entire book of Job [wikipedia.org], where God is the one responsible for inflicting all manner of bad acts upon Job's family. When Job -- who according to scripture itself, did nothing wrong to deserve this -- dares to question God's plan, God just yells at him from a whirlwind for a while, saying essentially, "Were you there when I laid the foundations of the world??" Implication: You have no concept of how great my power is or why I need to wield it in certain ways. And if I decide to inflict evil into the world, or even on you and your family, that's my business... you can't hope to understand why.
Again, just going on sources mentioned in my link, another common passage discussed is Isaiah 45:7: "I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the Lord, do all these things." And there are plenty more verses that other theologians have discussed in this context.
And please note that I'm not the one interpreting these passages to imply that God created evil -- it's many Christian theologians who debate these points. I wouldn't presume to interpret the Bible for you, but you have to acknowledge that a lot of smart Christians -- who probably know a lot more about the Bible than you do -- have seen problems here.
By the way, you're the one skirting the logical problem here, which is perhaps what troubled Christian philosophers the most. Regardless of what scripture says, if a Christian believes in an all-powerful and all-knowing God, that God should have the power to create good things. For some reason, he chose to create humans that could also do evil. From scripture, it seems implied that he created the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the book of Genesis, so it appears he even made it possible for humans to acquire the knowledge to do evil. (Of course, in the story, Satan is involved in this acquisition, but most Christian theologians acknowledge that Satan too much have been created by the all-powerful God, so that tempting toward evil must also have ultimately been part of God's creation.) Why would an all-powerful, all-knowing, and presumably all-good God choose to create beings that MIGHT do evil?
"The Problem of Evil" is a major theological conundrum that philosophers have debated for centuries. The fact that you think you solved it in a couple sentences speaks of great ignorance and great arrogance.
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As a Christian, I applaud your calm & rational response.
You are completely correct that these issues are for us to wrestle with, not compel others to explain to us.
None the less, you've explained well & correctly the history of the church & the issues the deal with.
I wish my fellow Christian Americans would realize that the Christianity they practice in the USA can be quite different than the versions that are practiced around the world, and that this is OK.
Problem of evil is problem of free will (Score:2)
the entire book of Job, where God is the one responsible for inflicting all manner of bad acts upon Job's family.
God isn't responsible for inflicting ills. Satan is responsible for it; God allows it to happen. See chapter 11 of "What Does the Bible Really Teach?" [jw.org] for one denomination's view of the problem of evil.
Why would an all-powerful, all-knowing, and presumably all-good God choose to create beings that MIGHT do evil?
If God wanted robots, he would have made robots. Instead, he wanted creatures who sincerely love him back, so he made creatures capable of acting on free will.
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God isn't responsible for inflicting ills. Satan is responsible for it; God allows it to happen.
This is sophistry. Here's what happens: Satan approaches God. God says, "What do ya think of Job? Good guy, huh?" Satan says, "He only acts good because you're nice to him. Let me beat the crap out of him and kill his family. Then we'll see whether he's still a nice guy to you." God says, "Sure! Sounds like a great bet."
Not only does God allow the torture of one of his most devout followers (as well as the killing of all of his livestock and family), but he even has a kind of bet going on with Sat
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"The problem is that none of the mythologies make any sense unless you are already a believer." Kindly wish to back that up? Simply repeating ignorant arguments that you've heard like a parrot is meaningless. Including your next bit of ignorance:
It's a statement of fact and demonstrable. Virtually every religious text makes assertions of the supernatural, of things which are not supported by the available evidence, things which are almost by definition contradictory to other religious texts. Often these texts aren't even consistent with themselves and replete with contradictions and absurditites. Websites like the Skeptics Annotated Bible [skepticsan...dbible.com] (which has a section on the Quran) list thousands of them should you be in any doubt.
Simply put the Quran, To
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Of course Gandalf is The One True Lord. Worshipping of Harry Potter and Yoda is a serious, serious sin... repent!!
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Christians claim Jesus is also the God of Abraham, and that's obviously not true from scriptures, too.
Jes' sayin'.
Nontrinitarianism is another possibility (Score:4, Informative)
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Saying the names of god, all 9 \times 10^9 of them (Score:5, Informative)
Perhaps it's a fear of the end of the world that leads to such superstitions such as not saying god's name, or in Harry potter stories the continual references to "He who shall not be named" for [spoiler alert!!!] Voldemort (vol-de-mort? flight of death? orgasm? wtf???]
The summary from wikipedia:
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They rent a computer capable of printing all the possible permutations, and they hire two Westerners to install and program the machine. The computer operators are skeptical but play along. After three months, as the job nears completion, they fear that the monks will blame the computer, and by extension its operators, when nothing happens. The Westerners delay the operation of the computer so that it will complete its final print run just after their scheduled departure. After their successful departure on ponies, they pause on the mountain path on their way back to the airfield, where a plane is waiting to take them back to civilization. Under a clear night sky they estimate that it must be just about the time that the monks are pasting the final printed names into their holy books. Then they notice that ''overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out.''
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Also note that despite the claims of the Muslims that Allah is the God of Abraham, this claim must be false when scriptures are compared. See the following for such a comparison, which concludes based on Islamic sources that Allah and YHWH cannot be be same (in fact, Allah has the *opposite* attributes of YHWH, read into that what you will): http://www.answering-islam.org/Shamoun/god.htm [answering-islam.org] [answering-islam.org]
Well, you can analyze it in any way you want, but since Islamic scriptures came much later, and built in the early Hebrew texts (especially the first 5 books of the OT), its pretty clear they started out as being the same deity. They just diverged.
You can say the same about Judaism and Christianity. Judaism doesn't accept the NT, so their god remains the old style god of rages and genocide whereas the Christians have their lovey dovey god who loves us all and forgives us (but still better pray otherwise y
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Well, you can analyze it in any way you want, but since Islamic scriptures came much later, and built in the early Hebrew texts (especially the first 5 books of the OT), its pretty clear they started out as being the same deity. They just diverged.
Actually, you are merely repeating the false claim. Allah comes from Il illah, a moon god of the pagan Quresh who inhabited Mecca (this pagan origin is why the moon is the symbol of Islam; similarly Christ has a life story very similar to the Egyptian Horus - they are all bunk). Il Illah had three daughters. Mohammed made Il Illah his chief god and then *later* shoehorned that into the claim that this was the same as the God of Abraham. I've already given a site that compares the scriptures of Islam vs Juda
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Then why do they share the same prophets (up to a point) and have the same origin story?
There may be different deities which influenced the overall design of the relative gods, but there is just much in parallel between them to deny the connection. I mean, they are both the god of Abraham... was Abraham seeing other gods behind Yahweh's back? ,
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http://www.answering-islam.org/Shamoun/god.htm [answering-islam.org]
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Then the wikipedia article on Islam is wrong?
They do not consider Abraham as the first prophet? I suggest you go edit the wikipedia page and correct it then.
Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable and the purpose of existence is to love and serve God.[1] Muslims also believe that Islam is the complete and universal version of a primordial faith that was revealed at many times and places before, including through Abraham, Moses and Jesus, whom they consider prophets.[2]
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In contrast, Islam uses the word "Allah", which comes from "il illah", "The (One) God", which is a title and not a personal name. Also note that despite the claims of the Muslims that Allah is the God of Abraham, this claim must be false when scriptures are compared.
Christian Arabs used the name Allah to designate the christian God long before Islam even existed.
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Funny, when I google "Il Illah moon god" I get a wikipedia page which says that notion is being mainly promoted by a Christian evangelical, Robert Morey...he has a book "The moon-god Allah in the archeology of the Middle East".
So I think we can safely can your moon god theory as a Christian wet dream.
Just for the record, Islam is evil, but not because it has the wrong god or whatever. It is evil because of what it does to women, minorities, free thinkers, gays, etc.
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meaning roughly "he who causes being"
Hey, then the Higgs Boson really IS the God Particle . . . if you take "he who causes being" to mean, "he who causes mass".
. . . I wonder if those texts have any ancient doodles or jokes on the side margins . . . ?
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I came here to post that exact thing. Sad indeed.
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you must be new here
Re:discovery of God's true name.... (Score:5, Funny)
its howard you dipshit, says so in the loards prayer
Computers sleuth out history... (Score:1)
Finally a good use for tech!
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Maybe these guys could help.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Shredder_Challenge_2011
Re:Once upon a time (Score:4, Informative)
People made stuff up and years later, hundreds of millions of people thought it was real ...
Some of the documents are religious texts, but many others are bills, receipts, inventory lists, and even personal letters. These mundane documents often shed a lot of illumination on how ordinary people lived their lives. Archeologists often learn far more from looking at a civilization's garbage dumps, than from their treasures.
Re:Once upon a time (Score:5, Funny)
Are any shopping lists? Can of kraut? Tuna? Bring home for Emma?
I'm pretty sure there's supposed to be a bagel somewhere in there.
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Funny? Clearly the mods have never read A Canticle for Liebowitz.
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To answer half your question, because this works scales nicely in that the work is parallel. It can be broken down and run on multiple computers, cores, threads, VM, clould, whatever. So that explains the number. And a computer that is a 100 times faster then a normal computer tends to be over a 100 times more expensive.
As why not to the cloud? I am going to take a wild guess that it's the data – there is a lot of it so access could be a bottle neck. In this case you want your data and cpus to be phys
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sounds overcomplicated for something that has been sitting around doing nothing for 117 years
Re:why 100 computers? (Score:5, Funny)
They should have used 40 computers. Its a biblical number, which would make the resulting prophecies more believable.
Meanwhile, work is underway to recover old Slashdot posts on a 666 node cluster.
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Probably no 666. That's Christen New Testament stuff – a completely different standards fork then the stuff we are talking about here.
Garbled Database (Score:2)
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I've been using it to sort through your shredded mail for weeks.
I guess that's my bad, for keeping it all in a giant underground warehouse before destruction.
Now now (Score:1)
In Rainbows End, Vernor Vinge talks about a hypothetical technology to digitize books that involves sending them through a shredder which flings the confetti up in the air where high-speed, high-res cameras digitize it and the computers de-puzzle piece it.
Life imitating art (Score:2)
Didn't Stephen Dorff do this in Blade?
They will be disappointed (Score:2)
Re:How does this help? (Score:5, Insightful)
Humans, in our great numbers, are capable of multi-tasking. Is every penny not spent on helping the helpless a selfish waste?
An infinite amount of money cannot solve all of the world's problems in a day, and there are more problems everyday. More often it is not a question of money but of resources, money is only a means to trade for such finite resources. With finite resources like time, energy, innovation, and persuasion, every do-gooder has to pick their battles.
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And how will this help the 10,000 children who die of starvation everyday through no fault of their own?
Well, if it's religious texts, then it can save their souls so they go to heaven. Small comfort when your starving to death, i know, but think of the children (in heaven)!!!!!
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it is their fault, for some, the notion that childeren can not go out and do something productive until they hit the arbitrary made up age of adulthood is compete tripe
hey billy, you live in a hut made from garbage, your hungry, what are you going to do... sit on your ass begging for handouts like your parents? fine, why should I feel sorry for you?
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"That pork thing is just to make sure you don't get sick, cook it really well and you'll be fine. Bacon is actually delicious. Also, the little hats... those are to keep you baldies from getting a sunburn. That's it. Don't go overboard with this stuff, guys. Lates, G-D."
I always suspected the hats were to cover bald spots, is there a formal reason for them other than tradition?
Basically humility before G-d. Though I guess bald spots are kind of humiliating in and of themselves.
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I always suspected the hats were to cover bald spots, is there a formal reason for them other than tradition?
There's nothing in the Torah about head coverings, so it is a tradition and not really biblical Jewish law. One source is that Christians had the practice of always removing their hats when they went inside. Just to be different, the Jewish tradition of always keeping your head covered was started.
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Even overcooked it is hardly a great food. And cooking does nothing to mitigate the health threat of living pigs in the area. Pigs are noted for how similar their flesh is to that of humans - this is why [midwestresearchswine.com] they are so useful in medical research aimed at human ailments, and also why it is relatively easy for diseases to cross the species boundary - in either direction. A pig stye in the neighborhood is a considerably more serious threat to public health than, say, cattle, goat, or sheep husbandry would pose.
T