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Hardware can be critiqued wrt Politcal Correctness
http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/outrage/master.asp
why not programming languages?!?

SNOPES!

http://www.snopes.com/crime/mootloot/garbage.asp

Sounds like the offspring of an old urban legend involving images stolen from Daniel Rutter's review of an actual keyboard logger.

http://www.snopes.com/computer/internet/dellbug.asp
http://www.dansdata.com/keyghost.htm

I'm looking for a rockstar developer!!!

Great stuff, I have fantastic "rockstar" developer credentials:-

* Regular user of both cocaine and heroin
* Drink Jack Daniels pretty much 24/7 (got a drip hooked up for when I need to sleep), can't remember the last time I was sober
* Throw 60" monitors out of boardroom windows
* Once sexually pleasured a lower-ranking female colleague with a red snapper fish (probably Not Safe For Work unless you Work with Rockstars like me) .

Was that what you were looking for?

And you need to be very cheap.

Fuck you, I cancelled my last programming tour because I was offered less than $1m a night and no guarantee of red-haired groupies with a proclivity for red snappers...

Lemmings don't deliberately hurl themselves off cliffs, it's a popular myth perpetuated by a staged Disney nature film.

.... followed by the obligatory snopes:

http://www.snopes.com/politics/crime/congress.asp

The Arctic (and icebergs) are melting

Yeah, if you believe United Nations' reports on the matter. I don't — because United Nations has a conflict of interest — as do many of the politicians and the scientists funded by them. Sure, if you try hard enough — measuring what supports your agenda, while ignoring, what does not, you can "prove" a lot of things. Heck, those very icebergs were reportedly melting dangerously in 1922!

sea levels rise

Yeah, right. Wake me up, when Al Gore sells his — recently purchased — ocean front villa and moves to the hills.

Truth is, even where predictions are, sort of, materializing, it mostly happens at drastically lower rates than predicted.

Things like corn ethanol aren't about helping global warming

Bzzz! Wrong... Revising history again.

When members of our society think that their savings on lightbulbs are worth destroying the world over

Oh, another wonderful quote... The world-destroying lightbulbs — Edison (and Tesla) laughing sadly.

sometimes we have to coerce them to do the right thing.

Thanks for confirming the maxim: "Scratch a Global Warming alarmist, and you'll find a Che Guevara T-shirt underneath."

It's obvious you would never do anything to prevent global warming.

This is not about me — you'd do better next time, if you refrain from outright ad-hominems...

The great thing about science is that it corrects itself when it's wrong

Unless there are government grants to be had for not correcting oneself. Hence the infamous "hide the decline".

In any case, the sole measure of science quality is the reliability of its predictions, and in the case of Global Warming, err., pardon me, Climate Change the passionately-made predictions stubbornly fail to materialize: icebergs fail to melt, waters fail to rise, etc.

hence why the global cooling theories were overturned and replaced with the more accurate global warming

This one sentence (or part of it) is so hilarious, it made my day!

The labels may vary, but the proposed action is the same - citizens are urged to change to cleaner energy sources.

Urged? That would've been fine. How about coerced — and outright forced? No, you silly, you can't have a toilet, that flushes in one go — it uses too much water. You must buy one with a smaller tank — and be forced to flush twice. Sure, sure, unlike those evil KKKonservatives, we are going to keep the government out of bedrooms — as long as you are using an approved light-bulb in the room. And never you mind the mercury in it — if your child needs special education after exposure to the toxin, we'll take care of him.

The ones that get hurt are the poor little guy strip-mining a mountain or running a factory.

Neither of these two activities has anything to do with global warming directly. I think, you messed up your "climate change" talking points with the more general anti-Capitalism ones...

Then the big government has to come in and tell them that it's not OK to be killing everything

Yep, exactly, what I'm talking about — coercion and forcing. Meanwhile, that same government is causing exactly that — "killing everything" — to happen, while still pretending, it "knows better". Oh, those silly Libertarians!

Why on earth do you think that a hidden compartment in a car owned by a small business owner who has bank transaction records showing he deposits his business takings in cash to the bank each day/week would run afoul of a law that reads:

"No person shall knowingly operate, possess, or use a vehicle with a hidden compartment with knowledge that the hidden compartment is used or intended to be used to facilitate the unlawful concealment or transportation of a controlled substance."

"Controlled substance" means a drug, compound, mixture, preparation, or substance included in schedule I, II, III, IV, or V. "

He's transporting cash.
Practically all US currency contains traces of cocaine
Therefore, he is transporting cocaine, a schedule II substance.

Book 'im Danno.

= = = I am getting pretty tired of reading asserions like "we can't even launch a damn website". What they were trying to launch was not a Website but a very complex, probably too complex, brokerage-type system to mate people with myriad insurance options. -= = =

Megadittos, as a certain demographic likes to say. healthcare.gov was in essence one of the largest EDI projects of all time, with all the transactions going live on the same day rather than phased in. And we all know how much the current generation of Web n.x people loves to work on EDI code. They just run to sign on for EDI projects the way lemmings run to embrace Disney film crews.

Very, very complex project. Certainly some senior management failures all the way to the Oval Office, and probably (as is often the case) a portion of those failures due to arrogance and failure to listen. But at the same time, not working too badly given the size, scope, and hard deadlines, and apparently getting better day-by-day as anyone with megaproject experience would expect.

sPh

Nice try: http://www.snopes.com/business/misxlate/nova.asp

Lies!

Google search for "Coins are generally not considered 'legal tender'" yields:

Coins and banknotes are usually defined as legal tender.
no law specifies that pennies cease to be considered legal tender

Believe everything you read on the Internet, do you?

http://www.snopes.com/politics/satire/samsung.asp

"We got around to the subject of war again and I said that, contrary to his attitude, I did not think that the common people are very thankful for leaders who bring them war and destruction.

"Why, of course, the people don't want war," Goering shrugged. "Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship."

"There is one difference," I pointed out. "In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars."

"Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."

Herman Goering at the Nuremberg trials

http://www.snopes.com/crime/statistics/ausguns.asp

In the specific case offered here, context is the most important factor. The piece quoted above leads the reader to believe that much of the Australian citizenry owned handguns until their ownership was made illegal and all firearms owned by "law-abiding citizens" were collected by the government through a buy-back program in 1997. This is not so. Australian citizens do not (and never did) have a constitutional right to own firearms even before the 1997 buyback program, handgun ownership in Australia was restricted to certain groups, such as those needing weapons for occupational reasons, members of approved sporting clubs, hunters, and collectors. Moreover, the 1997 buyback program did not take away all the guns owned by these groups; only some types of firearms (primarily semi-automatic and pump-action weapons) were banned. And even with the ban in effect, those who can demonstrate a legitimate need to possess prohibited categories of firearms can petition for exemptions from the law.

Given this context, any claims based on statistics (even accurate ones) which posit a cause-and-effect relationship between the gun buyback program and increased crime rates because "criminals now are guaranteed that their prey is unarmed" are automatically suspect, since the average Australian citizen didn't own firearms even before the buyback. But beyond that, most of the statistics offered here are misleading and present only "first year results" where long-term trends need to be considered in order to draw valid cause-and-effect conclusions.

For example, the first entry states that "Homicides are up 3.2%." This statistic is misleading because it reflects only the absolute number of homicides rather than the homicide rate. (A country with a rapidly-growing population, for example, might experience a higher number of crimes even while its overall crime rate decreased.) An examination of statistics from the Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC) reveals that the overall homicide rate in Australia has changed little over the past decade and actually dipped slightly after the 1997 gun buy-back program. (The chart found at this link also demonstrates how easily statistics based on small sample sizes can mislead, as when the homicide rate in Tasmania increased nearly eight-fold in one year based on a single incident in which 35 people were killed.)

Then we have the claim that "In the state of Victoria alone, homicides with firearms are now up 300 percent." This is another example of how misleading statistics can be when the underlying numbers are not provided: Victoria, a state with a population of over four-and-a-half million people in 1997, experienced 7 firearm-related homicides in 1996 and 19 firearm-related homicides in 1997 (an increase of 171%, not 300%). An additional twelve homicides amongst a population of 4.5 million is not statistically significant, nor does this single-year statistic adequately reflect long-term trends. Moreover, the opening paragraph mixes two very different types of statistics number of homicides vs. percentage of homicides committed with firearms. In the latter case, it should be noted that the Australia-wide percentage of homicides committed with firearms is now lower than it was before the gun buy-back program, and lower than it has been at any point during the past ten years. (In the former case, the absolute number of firearm homicides in Australia in 1998-99 was the lowest in the past ten years.)

Other claims offered here, such as the statement that "While figures over the previous 25 years showed a steady decrease in armed robbery with firearms, this has changed drastically upward in the past 12 months" and "There has also been a dramatic increase in break-ins and assaults of the elderly" are even more difficult to evaluate, because they don't offer any figures or standards of measurement at all. Do they deal with absolute numbers, o

http://www.snopes.com/science/sodacan.asp

Bush expanded 'Lifeline' to cellphones, and it's only for really poor people. You really should do a little research at Snopes before echoing a stupid political meme...

One of the early projects that Schneier lead, precipitated by the Y2K date crisis, was a security evaluation of old COBOL system (code-named "ZEBRA") that was still being used by a certain un-named U.S. Government agency.

This mainframe software had not been maintained for some years, except by patching the binary image; no online version of the source code was available. It would be too hard to audit that way, so they decided to upload the original code (from paper), recompile, diff against the binaries, and eventually reconstruct accurate source code for the Y2K bugs and security issues.

Schneier's group decided to use OCR. The source code had been "line printed" on "greenbar" paper, where alternate lines have a light green background stripes for contrast. The problem was that OCR scanners of the day were designed only for black-and-white, and would get confused by the green stripes, and sometimes mis-scan some letters and numbers, making this source code unreliable. This required them to manually read and type in corrections, to about half the code!

Bruce Schneier is an outspoken critic of agencies like the DHS and the TSA, but he has been a consultant for the Government in the past. And as you can see from the above story, he was originally an early proponent of scanners, and only in more recent years has spoken out against them. So it is quite reasonable to ask if Bruce Schneier has ever changed his stripes.

So far, this post is the only source for this quote. here is a great place to start for when you want to use it again, correctly.

Your version loses the essential Jack, but of course the original is not available.

"If you suck on a tit, the movie gets an X rating," he once told an interviewer.

"If you hack the tit off with an axe it will be PG."

I prefer :

"Shoot, shoot, bang, bang, kill, kill, is fine. But show seven sets of genitals, everyone go crazy!" -Francesca Fiore

The thing is, the tea party stereotype is not so much built on "partisan caricature" but rather based on the people they elect. Michele Bachmann ? Need I say more ?

Both Republicans and Democrats have officeholders who conform to the caricatures of the other side. Both also have officeholders who don't fit the caricatures. It all depends on how even-handed you want to be. If you think "Michelle Bachman, Ha Ha Ha!" is a fair way of dismissing the concerns of the Tea Party and/or Republicans, you can't object when someone dismisses progressives and/or Democrats with "Hank Johnson, Ha Ha Ha!" (Johnson is the Congressman who asked, at a House hearing, if stationing more troops on Guam might cause the island to "tip over and capsize."

Maybe I can help.

Debunking the 9/11 Myths: Special Report - The Pentagon
Hunt the Boeing!
911 Debunked - Pentagon Flight 77 Photo Evidence
Pentagon & Boeing 757 Engine Investigation
Pentagon 9/11

Debunking the 9/11 Myths: Special Report - Flight 93
9/11 investigators tell of piecing together mystery of Penn. crash
Direct Evidence
9/11: The Day of the Attacks
Response and Recovery - Shanksville, Pennsylvania

As opposed to all of that nice, clean cash in your wallet, which very likely carries only trace amounts of cocaine?

You are aware that Obama voted against raising the debt ceiling when he was a senator in 2006. Was he just pandering to the extreme left when he did this? Is it possible that both him and the republicans had legitimate concerns about the budget without calling it "pandering"?

Interesting, that qaeda=database thing.

I thought Al Qaeda meant 'the base', no 'data' involved (Robin Cook having publicised the 'database' thing). So I looked it up. Turns out it means base, foundation, fundament etc. And is related to a verb qaad, to sit.

So there are accounts from different people about what they think this word is used to mean, with some saying that it describes a terrorist base (in the sense of seat of activity, place of training), others saying it describes a database (of participants, members). Then there are still others pointing out that it can have meant both of these at various times and contexts. But personally I prefer the definition provided by those that point out that al qa'ada is what is colloquially known as a pisspot.

I only wish President Obama still believed what he did as Senator.

Not me - I'm glad he came to his senses. There are two ways to deal with a high deficit. You can stop promising other people money, or you can start reneging on the promises you already made.

The debt ceiling vote is about keeping promises already made, and it's beyond stupid that a vote is even required. You made those promises. Keep them, or create a new government that will.

Let me remind you all of Senator Obama's words from 2006 regarding the raising of the debt ceiling. He voted against raising the debt ceiling at that time.

"The fact that we are here today to debate raising America's debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the US Government can not pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government's reckless fiscal policies. Increasing America's debt weakens us domestically and internationally."

Source

How true are those words? I only wish President Obama still believed what he did as Senator.

This will get you started.

Debunking the 9/11 Myths: Special Report - The Pentagon
Hunt the Boeing!
Pentagon 9/11
911 Debunked - Pentagon Flight 77 Photo Evidence
Pentagon & Boeing 757 Engine Investigation

If that doesn't do it for you, I would suggest you keep digging.

http://message.snopes.com/showthread.php?t=61328

"Horse endurance races" always have very strict rules about regular resting and feeding for the horses, as well as measuring the horses temperature and heartbeat.

In a military emergency (people chasing and trying to kill you, for example), health and safety would go out of the window, and a well-trained horse can go much further and faster - this risks causing permanent damage to the horses health, however.

Actually you will feel something. It'll be like boiling a frog.

No, it won't.

http://www.snopes.com/quotes/internet.asp. Yes, Republican took Gore's self-serving quote out of context and ran with it. But, to this day Gore's still a douche.

Snopes actually has a pretty good summary of the situation. The guy supports gay rights and gay marriage. He is, however, against adoption by gay parents (because it involves a person who has no choice in the matter). He wants advertisements for his pasta to focus on families, and since his beliefs (and biology) prohibit gay parents from having kids, they cannot appear in his ads.

The same scare circulated several years ago about automobile remote keyless entry systems. http://www.snopes.com/autos/techno/lockcode.asp

Which, as it turns out, is completely false.

I know it's false. That's why I called it a joke.

If that's the best argument you can come up with for not using technology to improve people's lives, it's not good enough.

I'm all for technology improving people's lives. But many times, technology is overkill and used only because of corporate interests. There are simpler solutions, but then someone would not be making a shitload of money from them, so they're not used.

Reminds me of that old joke about the US spending millions of dollars to develop a pen which can write in space, and the Soviet cosmonauts simply using a pencil.

Which, as it turns out, is completely false. Before the introduction of the space pen, both the US and the Soviets used pencils, but, in fact, pencils aren't good in zero-g; graphite bits break off and can contaminate electronics. What's more, the space pen was developed at zero cost (that's $0) to the government. A private individual created it at his own expense, and sold them to NASA at a modest cost, asking only that he be allowed to advertise its use by NASA when he also sold them to the general public. He made a mint. If that's the best argument you can come up with for not using technology to improve people's lives, it's not good enough.

So you're suggesting they're being pushed by Disney?

An interesting rebuttal to the microwave oven anecdote, specifically during the Serbian war:

http://msgboard.snopes.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=48;t=000208;p=0

These black boys weren't, because SYG did not apply. It didn't apply in Zimmerman's case, either, by the way - he was acquitted based solely on regular self-defense laws which permit a person to use deadly force to defend themselves when there's no ability to retreat during an attack; SYG, or lack thereof, only applies when there is an ability to retreat after the attack is imminent.

Anyway, you want a black Zimmerman? You have him. A black guy saw a bunch of white kids vandalizing cars, went out and confronted them, and shot one of them when he tried to attack him (it should be noted that the kid in question didn't even manage to lay a finger on him - he was shot as he was advancing).

And guess what? He was acquitted (by a jury of 11 whites and 1 black, by the way). Because it was self-defense.

http://www.snopes.com/business/misxlate/nova.asp

http://spanish.about.com/cs/culture/a/chevy_nova.htm

Apparently, quite a bit:

"As the temperature of the water is gradually increased, the frog will eventually become more and more active in attempts to escape the heated water. "

http://www.snopes.com/critters/wild/frogboil.asp

Nicely stated, but we can also refer to an acknowledged expert:

    "He is indeed due some thanks and consideration for his early contributions," said Vint Cerf.

'Nuff said, far as I'm concerned. Snopes has a nice writeup.

Sigh ... Here, let me Snopes that for you: http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/hoaxes/computer.asp

Now that we're a facist state, at least the trains run on time.

Neither necessary nor sufficient.

Yet, in Soviet Russia they didn't. They did use a ball point pen though. Graphite from pencils tends to flake off and short out contacts on switches in space and cause fires where you don't want them.

See also: http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/spacepen.asp

Actually he said:

"During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country's economic growth and environmental protection, improvements in our educational system."

from Snopes

OT: That list is incomplete and has a few things changed or that he never actually said. You want "25 things I have learned in 50 years" from his book Dave Barry Turns 50.

Snopes has the debunking, if you're curious.

"In the past, soda and its various strains have been related to depression, irritability, aggression, suicidal thoughts, and delusions of sweepstake-winning grandeur."
http://www.snopes.com/medical/toxins/aspartame.asp
I mean really people, Slashdot editor Soulskill you have reached a new low for Slashdot.

With bullshit like the boiled frog argument ...

"A gruesome tale
If a frog is placed in a pan of water, it often just sits there. If the pan is heated, ever so slowly, the frog may never notice that the water temperature is rising. He will âoeget used toâ the increasing heatâ"and may be unaware that anything is amiss. Even with no barrier to his escape, he is as likely as not to sit in the panâ"and boil to death. His sensory capabilities may fail to adequately warn him that action is required for his survival, and he may only survive if the heat is turned down."

http://www.snopes.com/critters/wild/frogboil.asp

Why should we believe anything else this quack says?

Further discussion:

http://msgboard.snopes.com/message/ultimatebb.php?/ubb/get_topic/f/36/t/000797.html

No they'll still give you a speeding ticket. They'll just also give you a ticket if you're not speeding. http://message.snopes.com/showthread.php?t=85108

Am I the only one who finds this truly frightning; that the photocopier has a bug in a sub system that is basically reading the content of the documents being photocopied?

Yes, you should find that frightening. That's not new, though, pretty much all photocopiers these days don't actually "photocopy" the document, they scan it to memory and then print the scan. Your documents are saved to memory on the photocopier. Yep, that's a security flaw.

http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/latest/digital-copier-security-461009
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18563_162-6412439.html
http://message.snopes.com/showthread.php?t=60313