assemble

The pope is not our infallible leader. He's fallible just like everybody else. Popes are only infallible when they are speaking ex cathedra (from the chair). They don't do this very often. Most infallible doctrines have actually been put in place by the college of cardinals. I seriously doubt that Ratzinger was elected pope to avoid criminal charges.

I don't have the time to address these things properly, but here's the short form.

We are better now, at least in the US--and the other countries are starting to get it together as well. If I remember correctly, any case of abuse (not just child rape, I do mean abuse--rape is a terrible form of abuse, but there are other forms as well) is reported to authorities.

The one thing I will say about Africa is that the church teaches abstinence. If you're going to ignore the abstinence teaching, you might as well ignore the condom teaching as well. You can't just pick and choose which parts of Church teaching to follow (but everybody does, and that's why we have problems...)

Of the money I give my church, 10% goes to my diocese. I don't think my diocese has had the same problems that other diocese have--so no, I'm not supporting the practice. Some of the diocese's money then goes to the Vatican (and I think the USCCB, but I'm not sure), but I believe most if not all of that goes to charity work. You can't hold people responsible for actions that they did not know about. And I believe that these things are no longer going on.

If you want to continue this conversation, feel free to email me and I will try to explain more when I get enough time to properly research and answer things. I think that this is getting way OT for HN, so I do not intend to make any further response on here.

Have a good day!

What did I say:

    people automatically assume that 
    (1)you are fully versed in everything about the situation, 
    (2)you agree with how the Church handled it all, 
    (3)you must be contributing to it by staying in the
    Church, etc. We're all generally angry about this 
    problem. I don't know a single person who approves of 
    the practice of just moving people around, but there 
    are so many complexities to the issue.

The complexities of the issue isn't that they were moved around. And as I said, nobody I know agrees with that. Do I know the facts of the case? No.

Do I think that they should have been removed from public activity after the accusations? Yes. Should these things have been reported to police? Yes.

I'm tired of talking about this stuff. The problem is that there now seems to be a witch hunt against priests, and really all Catholics. Look around here, on reddit, etc: hardly anybody even gives us a chance. Our Church has made mistakes; it has admitted this, and has changed the policies:

- Every person who works with kids in a Catholic organization in the US has to go through a training class on spotting & preventing abuse.

- The Church now reports all of these instances to police.

There really is more to the issue than just moving priests around. You won't get much argument that simply moving them around was the wrong answer, but you won't get anymore out of me when you say that I monetarily and morally support child abuse.

- 20% of the hospitals in the US are Catholic hospitals, they accept anybody--and have longer than other hospitals have. (Remember segregation? Our hospitals in the South accepted blacks and whites.)

- We probably have the most private schools in the country. They don't get money from the government, so essentially public schools are getting more money per pupil than they should. They also tend to have higher test scores on average. (Oh, and Catholics teach evolution in science class...)

- We run numerous soup kitchens, food pantries and homeless shelters. For an amazing example of this kind of charity, read up about the St. Vincent de Paul Society. ( http://svdpusa.org/ ) It's fantastic.

Anyway, people are by their nature fallible. Our leaders have worked to fix the problems. The coverup is a horrible problem, but the numbers for abusive priests are actually lower than those for the general male population. ( http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/andrewbrown/2010/mar... http://www.usccb.org/nrb/johnjaystudy/ )

I've spent far too long on this, but this stuff bothers me. We don't know all the facts. We know something bad happened. We think we've fixed it. I'm not saying forgive and forget--on the contrary: don't ever forget it lest it happens again--but give us some of that 'tolerance' everybody keeps saying is so great...

edit: formatting

I can't blame them for side-stepping those issues--I would do the same thing. Anytime someone mentions that they're Catholic on reddit, people automatically assume that (1)you are fully versed in everything about the situation, (2)you agree with how the Church handled it all, (3)you must be contributing to it by staying in the Church, etc. We're all generally angry about this problem. I don't know a single person who approves of the practice of just moving people around, but there are so many complexities to the issue. I can't even begin to discuss the finer points without someone piping up with their random, pointless garbage that taints the conversation. The Catholic Church has done a lot to fix the problems with the child abuse stuff. We've stopped with the Crusades (and apologized for them!). And the Catholic Church's stance on homosexuality and things of that nature are much more nuanced than people realize. Honestly, most of us are just tired of talking about these things. (Except the crazies who get all the press. The news people don't like talking to sensible people--that doesn't make for good TV.)

Really, most of the stuff on reddit about Catholics is vitriol and hate, and there's really no point to answer obvious flame bait questions when there are other perfectly good questions to answer.

Trust me, most of us EEs know -plenty- about floating point problems. We also have to take entire classes about how our work could kill somebody.

Bugs are bugs, errors and oversights happen. You have to deal with it, document what happened, and be vigilant to make sure it never happens again.

I hope you're joking. Canada speaks English and French; Mexico speaks Spanish. Sure, they're different dialects than the European version, but they're all lumped together. It's kind of how people say think Chinese is one language, but in reality it's not just different dialects--it actually is multiple languages.

AllegiantAir does this. At 6'2" I actually had enough legroom too, because non-reclining seats are thinner than the reclining seats. Not only do non-reclining seats weigh about 10-20lbs less (if I remember correctly) they are indeed cheaper. For an airline--the weight alone is a big deal.

This is my system too--it's surprisingly efficient.

My high deductable plan doesn't cover anything until I spend $1.5k on health costs in a year. (Except preventive health stuff, that's all covered.) After you pay 1.5k they cover everything. My company and I pay a premium for this coverage (it's not nearly as high as the co-pay and HMO plans available).

Really, when I got to the doctor once or twice a year, for a whopping grand total of about $70/visit, then spend MAYBE $100 on prescriptions/other medications with my prescription discount card, it's really not worth that extra $30 every two weeks.

I don't want to pay for my hypochondriac neighbor's daily doctor visits, or for their kid's sniffles. The way I (and a lot of other Americans) see health insurance is that it should pay for things that would bankrupt you, I can handle the small stuff.

The best part about HSAs is that they are pre-tax accounts, so they help with your income tax costs. This also has the effect of making medical things cheaper because you didn't lose 30%+ on that money before having to spend it. I'm just hoping Congress doesn't cut the usefulness of HSAs with their new health care garbage...

You do know that Engineers and Software Developers help build buses and airplanes too, right? Those guys are responsible for every single flight on that aircraft. Not only for all the people that fly on them, but also the airline investment.

If you think software developers (or bus drivers, or airline pilots) can get paranoid, you should see what happens before test flights on airplanes.

It's called the "Inverted Pyramid" and anyone who has taken a journalism class worth anything learned it.

It's there so that editors can cut down the story easily if it doesn't fit on the page. Page design is really hard if you can't change the size of some of the stories.

I can get the circuit with 4 XORs and 1 NOT, or 3 XORs and 1 XNOR. I can't see a way to simplify to just ANDs, ORs and 2 NOTs. It's an interesting problem, were you able to find a AND, OR and 2 NOT solution? Or did you wind up using XORs?

Consumers of computers in the mid-80s didn't consist of nearly the range and variety of consumers as it does now. The people who had computers in the 80s were computer geeks and engineers.

What we have accomplished in the last 20 years is the mainstream acceptance of computers. We have managed to get users familiar enough with them that they are comfortable doing things.

My grandparents no longer feel that they have to call me when they go to the store and buy a computer. They can get their email working without having to call me. They can upload their pictures and edit the documents without many issues.

Yes, there are still files and folders--but honestly: what is wrong with that? It fits how most people think. I can't name a single person I know who has a problem understanding the concept of folders and files on their computer. People don't -need- their desktop machines to do much more than they did in the 80s. And what people actually do has been streamlined and made easier. (And one could argue significant progress has been made, for example: entire airplanes are designed on computer before ever being built now. That was impossible in the 80s.)

The other stuff such as suffixes, drive letters, etc: I agree.

Major software vendors would never have had a platform to standardize on, so they would have to try and pick a winner and loser. Consumers wouldn't know which platform to buy to run program X, and when that platform goes away, how will they keep mission critical program Y.

Two or three major OSes is more than enough of a headache for software companies and consumers alike. The world may be more interesting, but I have a feeling we would be at least 10-20 years behind where we are now with computing.

Some of us don't like getting information from videos, especially at work where bandwidth and internet usage is monitored....

I actually prefer Strip or Sirloin to Filet. Filet is tender all the time, but I think the others have more flavor :)

The laws vary from state to state. I'm not going to read them all. Here are the laws in my state: http://www.kansas.gov/ksbtp/statutes.html Specifically pertaining specifically to who does or doesn't need a license: http://www.kansas.gov/ksbtp/74-7035.pdf

I've always thought a phlebotomist is similar to a licensed electrician. (Assuming an MD is similar to a PE)

Generally, Electricians can do things similar to that if they follow the local electric code. I've watched them work--they don't consult the building drawings or whatever, and they can make some pretty extensive changes.

The PE license gets you the ability to sign off on drawings, so if there isn't a drawing change involved, there isn't any engineering to sign off on.

For a PE in KS, you complete an engineering curriculum. Take the FE test. Then you study under any PE for four years. (Not four different ones for one year, but I suppose that would work.) Finally, you have to pass another test. It's not really too much to ask for the guy signing the blueprint that says the power lines or building being put up won't kill anybody.

Where did you get a list of how the top 15 sites on the internet hash/bcrypt/whatever their passwords? That sounds like some interesting information.

For business to business sales (especially the more expensive stuff), that is almost always how it's done. Call the vendor for a quote, they'll either tell you or send out a sales/marketing rep, lots of hand wringing, then maybe a deal of some sort.

I started over 3 hours with filling the shopping cart... I'm about to just give up, $100 isn't worth this much PITA...

I appear to be stuck on the shipping address page--just refreshing when the connection craps doesn't seem to work. Anything in particular you tried?

You made it all the way to the final order page? After two hours I was able to get a few items in my cart and have -almost- managed to create an account.

I've been using this since it came out. It's fast, and seems to work very well. It doesn't get in the way and irritate me like AVG, Avast and the other free ones. I've been extremely pleased with it.

Somebody has to consume your product or there is no reason to build it. If OO wants to compete with a high-quality commercial product, they should act like it. I use Windows and Office because they are superior products, with enough of a quality increase that I'm willing to pay for it. I really doubt people would mind shelling out their hard earned cash for Desktop Linux or OO if they were viable alternatives, but as it stands: they aren't.

I'm fine with being a producer in a few of the fields I care about (I work on one of the few remaining Perl BBSes), when I'm not busy getting paid to write software. I don't want to have to help write my OS, my Office software, my text editor(s), my web browser, my music player, etc. I just want these things to work in (at least) a predictable fashion.

Anyway, I really do think that the open source community needs to lose the attitude if they ever want to gain traction in the wider non-programmer community.

Have you considered that maybe they aren't a programmer and don't have the technical knowledge to add a feature like that? This kind of attitude is one of the things that drives people away from Linux and the open-source movement in general.

Personally: every time I use OO, I'm reminded of how much better Word is--in interface (the ribbon is GREAT), features (everything you could ever need), compatibility (you can save in PDF), etc.

Dr. Pepper isn't a Coke brand, in many markets Pepsi has distribution rights for Dr. Pepper. So in those markets, they offer those products.

Pepsi wouldn't be caught dead selling Coke products in their machines. Some machines have both, but those are offered by third parties (Canteen/Vending companies) that buy in bulk from Pepsi & Coke and resell.

Nope. Most groups have their own coffee machines and stock their own coffee.

I work at an aircraft company. While I'm a salaried employee, the effects of the union being present at this site hit everyone. It's nice in some cases (benefits), but often it really screws us (hard to lose ineffective employees, no little 'fringe' benefits, etc). I'd be surprised if most companies w/ union involvement are much different.

When I worked at Pepsi, they paid 'rent' for keeping a vending machine somewhere. The rent was based on location, power usage, etc.

10k pays for half the janitor's salary.

We don't get free anything where I work, and I'm fine with that. My company's job is to make more money, not baby me with things that I'm perfectly capable of paying for on my salary.