David Portela is the Assistant Minister at Dhaka International Christian Church. His current project involves reading the early works in philosophy.
Today I found myself humming a song that hearkened back to my high school days (actually the song is from 1987 and as such a bit older than my high school days, but that’s when I first heard it.). The group that sang it was an a cappella band (whose name I can’t remember), but after a couple of Google searches I was able to ascertain that the writer of the song was actually Rich Mullins. Read the rest of this entry »
Some iMovie ‘08 users have been reporting running into an issue where when they import new video, iMovie takes a long time (some users euphemistically say “forever” but then concede it was only several hours) in its “Generating Thumbnails” process. I too ran into this issue as I was editing two wedding videos this summer.
Family Fun at the Calgary Stampede!
(Link goes to Facebook video, no account required).
Some philosophers have been grouped together since their works and ideas are covered by a shared source.
Vedantic Scriptures (c.800-c.1500? BCE)
Thales (c.625-c.545 BCE)
Anaximander (c. 610-546 BCE)
Pythagoras (c.580-500 BCE)
Anaximenes (d. 528 BCE)
Parmenides (c.515- after 450 BCE)
Anaxagoras (500-428 BCE)
Zeno of Elea (c.490-430 BCE)
Protagoras (c.485-c.420 BCE)
Democritus (c.460-c.370 BCE)
Diogenes (c.404-323 BCE)
This is a work in progress, and I’ll be adding to it and making modifications as I progress in my own reading and as I gather input from friends and commenters. The list is not meant to be comprehensive. There’s simply no way I (or anyone) will be able to read all the works by all the authors listed below, let alone give them the time and attention they need to be understood and absorbed. I’ve tried to pick works that will be representative of an author’s philosophy, but sometimes books have been chosen more because of their availability to me than because of the way they summarize or reflect an author’s views.
Just a quick one because it’s amazing that this issue dragged on for this long without being resolved. I reported the problem described below as a bug as far back as Mac OS X 10.2. AppleInsider reports that the upcoming MOSX 10.5.1 update fixes several bugs in Leopard, but the one I’m referring to is this one:
Those people familiar with pre-release builds of Mac OS X 10.5.1 also added that the software update will deliver an enhancement to Leopard that will allow Apple’s Software Update and installer applications to make revisions to application files which may have been moved outside their designated “Applications” directory on Leopard volumes.
I love how it’s called an “enhancement”…it’s a bug fix! In Tiger and previous versions of MOSX, if you organize your applications into folders and moved iTunes into one of them (such as “Music”), Apple Software Update simply ignores the application even exists. Thankfully, ASU is getting smarter in 10.5.1, which means you’ll be able to organize my applications exactly the way you want to (and not have to scroll through 200 apps before finding the one you’re looking for).
For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been using Red Sweater’s excellent MarsEdit for writing blog posts, so I haven’t had to write or edit anything in the WordPress admin interface. A couple of days ago I went into the admin to make some changes to the theme templates and found that all kinds of weird things were happening when I saved my edits. This had never happened to me before, and I’ve been using WordPress for quite a while, so it certainly had me puzzled. Sometimes a “&” or a “&t” would get prepended to the contents of a template when saving an edit or just loading it through the links. Other times quotation marks would get changed to semicolons, or certain pieces of code would just disappear.
This is the last article in a 3-part-series discussing several iPhone strengths and weaknesses and how they relate to the features that have been available in the Treo 650 (and other Treo models) for several years now. The two previous installments are:
Much of the press about the iPhone has had to do with the way one feels when using it. Apple’s creativity really shines in the ingenious ways the multi-touch interface is used, and there’s a serious “cool” factor that pervades the way almost every function has been designed. It isn’t my purpose here to review each aspect of the iPhone’s UI, but there are a few interface aspects that are essential to the Treo’s productivity and which the iPhone will need to beat before it can take its (or any Treo’s) place.
Imagine the following fictional scenario: you install that fresh new (legitimate) copy of Adobe Creative Suite 3 Premium Super No-This-Is-Really-the-Bomb onto your laptop. You enter in the serial number printed on the box, and proceed with the activation. Everything works great, and continues to work great for a year or so. Then for some reason or other, you have to reinstall your operating system and your software. You once again go through the steps of installing CS3, type in your serial number, and try to activate it. To your surprise, it won’t activate! You call up Adobe and they tell you: “Oh, I’m sorry sir, you have one of last year’s serial numbers, and the activation code we use no longer accepts those.” You say that’s OK, and request that they provide you with a new serial number (after all, you’ve paid for the software!). They politely inform you that they can’t do that, and that you’ll have to mortgage your house (again) to buy yet another copy of CS3, with this year’s serial number.
Outrageous? Of course. But in essence, this is exactly what happened to Allan Wood with the games he had purchased from Major League Baseball Advanced Media.
Some of us have become jaded to amoral points of view on the part of large corporations. We have witnessed so many instances of corporate greed (Enron, Nike’s labor practices, etc.) that it’s become a common element in the cultural psyche, not acceptable, but still normal.
Because of this, it’s a breath of fresh air to hear House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Tom Lantos’ words to Yahoo executives Jerry Yang and Michael Callahan: “While technologically and financially you are giants, morally you are pygmies.” I wish this line was heard more often in courtrooms and boardrooms around the world, because it is one that desperately needs to be repeated.