You hear this argument every friggin' time there's a "hottest since..." record set. The best variation is, "Records are always being set. One record doesn't mean a thing." My response? When was the last time you heard of a record being set, anywhere in the world, for the coldest year of average temperatures on record. Another way to say the same thing: record highs and record lows, sure, still occur all the time. But consider the first derivative -- how has the ratio between the two changed? There's your trend.
How unfortunate that this outfit has the same name as the Oppo that makes the BDP line of pioneering universal disc/media players. (That's the guys at oppodigital.com.) Lots of unnecessary confusion will ensue, fostered in part by the telecom Oppo's own inclusion of a BDP review in the Press tab at the site linked to here.
...is: "What are the kids being taught prior to taking the test?"
Are they being shown the analytical techniques needed to answer these questions, or otherwise being given a frame of reference within which the questions make sense? A colleague's 7-year-old, for example, recently asked him to help the kid with his math homework. When he couldn't make heads or tails of the questions (despite an EE degree), he Googled the context, figured out how the teaching model worked and within 15 minutes, knew how to explain the material.
Here, the author has an agenda and doesn't ask questions that don't support the agenda. It's possible that this article may itself make a good Common Core question, should Analytical Rhetoric be deemed part of the curriculum.
FWIW, having never had kids, I have no friggin' interest in the Common Core debate one way or the other. But looking through the sample test, I found it pretty interesting and definitely capable of being a valid teaching tool. But the bottom line, as usual, is context. The text can only be evaluated in light of the aspects of the instructional method that complement it. The fact that some jerkoff journalist and his wife can't answer a question in a topic in which they haven't received instruction is irrelevant, and the journalist's assumption that the problem lies with the test, and not with his and his wife's ignorance of the subject matter, may be an example of the arrogance of not knowing enough to know what one doesn't know.
By using a Firefox plug-in called NoScript (there are others). Pretty interesting being able to view and manually kick adware to the curb. By globally revoking permission to scripts from domains like atdt, it's possible to greatly clean up your browser experience. And you always have a half-decent idea what's going on. I think this is a great idea on Mozilla's part, although it would certainly be appropriate to make this an opt-in feature.
I'd normally assert that my time is too fkn valuable to waste on this silly, manufactured debate. But this time, the referenced article is so idiotic that I just had to post. Good frigggin' grief! If you RTFA, it reveals that this code is NOT part of the displayed terms of the site. It's from a block of text embedded as a comment into the site HTML, apparently inadvertently left in the code when an author cut-and-pasted code from another site.
.If anyone tries to tell you that this a legally relevant "hidden terms of service," just walk away.
From the article:
"It is unclear why these sentences appear in the code at all since they are not displayed, although the code may simply have been copied from another website that does use the full warning. In this case, the unwanted portion of the warning was rendered inert with HTML coding tags ("") usually used by programmers for inserting comments to explain the purpose of a section of code. However, the code can be rendered "live" again by simply removing those tags, in which case the full text would appear on the screen to users. However, it is unclear why the paragraph containing "no reasonable expectation of privacy" would ever have even been considered appropriate in this context."
It's articles like this one that give Obama-haters a bad name.
What am I missing? How is this different than what my 2010 Prius has been doing for me for the last three years. When I come up on a parking area, the Prius highlights candidate spaces on the touch screen and I select one. It then steers itself into the space. The driver keeps a foot on the brake in case of an event like a kid running behind the car, but otherwise, the Prius takes care of everything. Yes, this Ford system has a few greater degrees of automation, but I think those are just bells & whistles. I'm not so sure it's really a great idea that the driver doesn't have to be in the car, if only for the aforementioned safety reasons.
1. Applicant files overly broad patent application. Applicant is usually large tech outfit w/resources to gamble prosecuting an overly broad app that discloses subject matter that can be used to overcome expected rejection by narrowing claims during prosecution. This is a common (and common-sense -- you don't start a negotiation with your final offer) strategy for optimizing scope of an issued patent, but may appear to I-ANALs as a serious attempt to patent the overly broad claims.
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2. Application publishes and is spotted by I-ANAL geek Web site which, not understanding what it's reading, pumps out a hack piece citing the application as further proof that the patent system (or intellectual property in general) is "broke."
3. Equally ignorant and/or confused I-ANAL Slashdotter posts story on/. with ironic comment. In some cases, there's no link to the actual application, making it difficult even for an IAAL figure out what the applicant was actually trying to patent.
4. Equally ignorant I-ANAL Slashdotters post comments that comprise: i) a terse pun; ii) "See, I told you the patent system (or IP in general) is broke!"; iii) A detailed, carefully reasoned analysis of an irrelevant detail of the patent; iv) A strange, off-topic, or unintentionally funny authoritative statement. (My favorite: "A design patent is basically a trademark.")
5. In many cases, a few IP or patent attorneys attempt to correct another poster's sillier misconceptions. Generally, the attorney's remark ends the conversation or, worst case, provokes an "anybody who knows what they're talking about is not to be trusted" kick-to-the-curb.
Was this the result of how he used his brain, or was this structure the reason why his thought process worked the way it did. Not clear, and there's plenty of evidence to support either conclusion.
You're thinking of the Plasmatronics product line, which, I believe, debuted in the late 1970s. Heard a pair once in NYC way back when & the high-end was pretty remarkable. Suitable mainly for tweeters & supertweeters. They don't use an extraordinary amount of electricity and produce only a tiny amount of ozone. But they require a supply of halogen gas, which I recall makes an annoying hissing noise.
Given that most people in this country can't divide 100 by 8 in their heads, I mock the thought that anybody would take this story seriously.
At what age should kids be taught to read patent-claim language?
At what age should kids be taught to replace head gaskets?
At what age should kids be taught how to cull facts from political rhetoric, rather than just repeat what they hear on the radio?
I think it would be worth a cheer to see pre-teens get excited about writing little BASIC programs on their iPads, but in the real world, school teachers I know would be happy enough to be able to teach the majority of their grade-schoolers how to balance a checkbook, or how to understand a short piece of classical music.
>The First Amendment has no real part in this. The First Amendment is between you and the government, only. It does not come into play in contracts between you and a web site operator, unless the operator is a government entity itself. That might involve the First Amendment, but I doubt it will be a significant issue.
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FWIW, the 1st Am. can become relevant if the government forces an entity to restrict speech, regardless of whether that speech is a term of a K. If I contract w/Facebook to give Facebook the right to publish and republish any text that I post, the 1st is implicated if the Federal govt. attempts to bar Facebook from enforcing that term. The 14th Am. extends this issue to state govt.'s. And then, there's also the contract clause of the Constitution, although freedom of speech generally trumps financial protections.
>So my point stands: When it was that warm in Greenland, it was certainly warm in Canada and Alaska. So where did the polar bears live, if warmer water is lethal to them?
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.No, I don't have anything constructive to contribute here, but I just wanted to be sure that everybody saw this comment. It really brightened my day. Who needs SNL?
Easy answer -- you've got to compare apples to apples. (Sorry, couldn't avoid that one.) People here are discussing sales over an atypical time period -- the weekend after a major launch. Compare that number to a weekend after another, comparable, launch. Say, the iP 4, SIII, SIV, etc. An alternative is to, average out the brief post-announcement peak and compare sales over the first 60 days after each launch. If you want to mitigate the distorting effect of pre-announcement delayed sales, compare 60-day periods starting 30 days before each launch. Whatever. The point is that simply citing a single set of numbers, based on sales during a small, atypical period of time, without direct comparison to even nominally similar periods, as evidence of success or a failure of a product is not enough to support either proposition -- much less to support allegations of a longer-term trend.
>You make it sound like they hire a salesperson to go around and market their patent to potential customers. Or maybe you think the customers search for useful patents to license and then contact the inventor. Neither of these scenarios is common.
Not true. Variations of the first scenario are quite common. Your argument is circular. If you define "NPE" as an entity that engages exclusively in trolling abuses, then the only conclusion is that NPEs are abusers. It is certainly possible for a small inventor to create something new and valuable, but not have the resources to manufacture it. Here, the patent system allows the inventor to attempt to license the idea to a larger entity who is able to develop, market, manufacture, and distribute the resulting product. The fellow working in the office next to mine, e.g., is presently doing just that with a clever consumer product he recently patented. How is such a partnership an abuse of anything? And doesn't such a system promote innovation by encouraging an inventor to create a new technology despite the fact that she's just an average person with a dollar & a dream?
And how would humans survive there? No source of energy other than gravity. Solar is not an option. Also, what about the radiation? Remember that Jupiter is essentially an unlit star with both an enormous magnetic field and powerful radiation belts (a million times more powerful, in fact, than the Van Allen Belt) that extend beyond Europa's orbit. Humans couldn't get near Jupiter without extraordinary (and likely, at today's level of technology, impractical) shielding. See, e.g., http://www.astrobio.net/exclusive/3010/hiding-from-jupiters-radiation. Yes, I know I'm a buzzkill & that these types of things are fun to talk about while you sit around the bong with the dudes. Sorry.
Better stick to something you have a clue about. Maybe cigars? This issue has long been a real concern re:biometric identification on inherently insecure platforms. The point of vulnerability is actually the encoded data, not an image of a fingerprint, stored or not. This is one reason why you don't see biometrics used casually in consumer applications. When implemented, a real-world biometric scanner is usually part of a system that incorporates significant physical means of isolation. Using a biometric marker in a device as ubiquitous and insecure as a cell phone is idiotic. And it doesn't take a "privacy expert" (wtf that is) to understand that.
First Amendment case law dating back to the 18th Century has consistently defending the right to anonymous speech. The courts have long recognized that being forced to reveal one's identity in order to, say, criticize the government can have a chilling effect on free speech. The Bill of Rights doesn't generally apply to private citizens, of course, but the world doesn't seem to be going in that direction these days. Or even over the last hundred years -- see, e.g., J. Edgar. The problem now, I guess, is that we have the technology to easily make anonymous speech almost impossible -- so why not use it?? I think there's an Oscar Wilde quote about how the need to censor is one of the most powerful of human motivations -- next to it, the sex drive is nothing.
Sigh. Just more porn for the "the patent system is broke, man!" crowd. As an attorney myself (who makes most of my litigation fees defending clients against IP trolls), I assure you that the RICO Act can't be applied in this way. Whoever is taking DoubleClick's money to prosecute this case is the real criminal. I haven't researched the case law, but I'm nearly certain that this application of RICO has never resulted in a decision favoring a plaintiff. Sure, patent trolls are certainly abusers of the legal system (although, since the recent overhaul of the Patent Act, trolling has become a heckuva lot more difficult). But the aspects of the patent system that allow this type of abuse to occur are generally not specific to patent law. A patent troll, from a legal perspective, is no different than a person who makes a career of prosecuting slip-and-falls. If 10% of the problem is the concept of intellectual property as it exists today, 80% is rooted in fundamental characteristics of our legal system, which make it possible to extort money from victims by threatening them with frivolous lawsuits -- so long as the settlement is not significantly larger than the cost of a legal defense. Just ask the RIAA.
...are the real vectors. How else would you explain some of the most prominent mass delusions of the last few decades:
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- the President of the United States is not an American citizen
- the President of the United States is secretly a Muslim (and simultaneously a member of a Caucasian-hating "black Christian church" that is conspiring with Kenyan citizens to overthrow the United States)
- there has been a global conspiracy over the last 25 years among every government, national science foundation, peer-reviewed journal, and credible scientist in three broad fields of science to perpetrate a hoax that human-produced greenhouse-gas emissions are warming the planet
- second-hand cigarette smoke has no harmful effect on humans
- the Affordable Care Act will strip $700 million (or whatever the number is up to now) of benefits from Social Security recipients and will establish "death panels" who decide whether gravely ill citizens will be given life-saving treatment
- and the classic "seat belts kill more people than they save because they trap victims inside a car during a crash, rather than letting them be safely ejected."
If you have a free hour, check out the beautiful documentary "Chasing Ice," in which shows the results of photographer James Balog's technically challenging "Extreme Ice" project, which took multi-year time-lapse videos of receding glaciers in remote areas of Iceland, Greenland, Alaska, & Montana. The big finale, a five-minute real-time clip of a Lower-Manhattan-sized chunk of ice plunging into the sea, is something you'll never forget.
Biometric scans are usually hacked, not at the sensor, but at the data-encoding stage. I haven't read the article & don't know if it brings up this issue, but if your biometric data is stolen -- and it happens -- that's a far bigger problem than, say, a compromised password or SS #. Your fingerprint or retinal blood vessel pattern or whatever can't be reissued. You've lost that biological marker for the rest of your life.
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Consequently, using biometric security mechanisms on a mobile device is not something I personally think is a good idea.
...and this, class, is an example of argumentum ad hominem. In essence, it asserts that 25 years of research into climate-change -- research that is accepted by virtually every national government, every national science foundation, every peer-reviewed journal of even modest credibility in three broad fields of science, and the overwhelming majority of scientists worldwide in those fields -- is actually an enormous decades-long hoax. And the proof of this, um, extraordinary assertion, is the conclusory statement that there are "really rich people" who could reap financial benefits if the results of this research are true. Get it?
A more nuanced analysis would reveal that, if climate change is real, it will be a disaster for most of these national governments, many of whicfh are already a bit tentative in their finances. See, e.g., Australia. The cost to protect coastal urban areas will be astronomical, there will likely be large numbers of refugees (even in industrialized nations, but the problem will be far worse in the less-developed areas of Africa & South America), and the political issues alone will likely destabilize governments. Especially scary is that some of the countries likely to be hardest hit are nuclear powers, like Pakistan & India. So why in the world would nearly every national government -- including many that would resist agreeing with each other at gunpoint -- secretly conspire to perpetuate such a hoax.
Then again, some of the wackier denier types are the same people who believed with all their hearts that the President of the United States is not an American citizen. Or that he's both a secret Muslim and a believer in Reverend Wright's "radical black" sect of Christianity. Don't expect rational.
Slashdot Mirror
You hear this argument every friggin' time there's a "hottest since..." record set. The best variation is, "Records are always being set. One record doesn't mean a thing." My response? When was the last time you heard of a record being set, anywhere in the world, for the coldest year of average temperatures on record. Another way to say the same thing: record highs and record lows, sure, still occur all the time. But consider the first derivative -- how has the ratio between the two changed? There's your trend.
Just update Reader to the latest build & keep using XP, problem solved, according to the article.
How unfortunate that this outfit has the same name as the Oppo that makes the BDP line of pioneering universal disc/media players. (That's the guys at oppodigital.com.) Lots of unnecessary confusion will ensue, fostered in part by the telecom Oppo's own inclusion of a BDP review in the Press tab at the site linked to here.
Are they being shown the analytical techniques needed to answer these questions, or otherwise being given a frame of reference within which the questions make sense? A colleague's 7-year-old, for example, recently asked him to help the kid with his math homework. When he couldn't make heads or tails of the questions (despite an EE degree), he Googled the context, figured out how the teaching model worked and within 15 minutes, knew how to explain the material.
Here, the author has an agenda and doesn't ask questions that don't support the agenda. It's possible that this article may itself make a good Common Core question, should Analytical Rhetoric be deemed part of the curriculum.
FWIW, having never had kids, I have no friggin' interest in the Common Core debate one way or the other. But looking through the sample test, I found it pretty interesting and definitely capable of being a valid teaching tool. But the bottom line, as usual, is context. The text can only be evaluated in light of the aspects of the instructional method that complement it. The fact that some jerkoff journalist and his wife can't answer a question in a topic in which they haven't received instruction is irrelevant, and the journalist's assumption that the problem lies with the test, and not with his and his wife's ignorance of the subject matter, may be an example of the arrogance of not knowing enough to know what one doesn't know.
Even simpler: != software engineers
By using a Firefox plug-in called NoScript (there are others). Pretty interesting being able to view and manually kick adware to the curb. By globally revoking permission to scripts from domains like atdt, it's possible to greatly clean up your browser experience. And you always have a half-decent idea what's going on. I think this is a great idea on Mozilla's part, although it would certainly be appropriate to make this an opt-in feature.
And with some brands, even if the phone itself has free will, the people who buy it may not.
.If anyone tries to tell you that this a legally relevant "hidden terms of service," just walk away.
From the article:
"It is unclear why these sentences appear in the code at all since they are not displayed, although the code may simply have been copied from another website that does use the full warning. In this case, the unwanted portion of the warning was rendered inert with HTML coding tags ("") usually used by programmers for inserting comments to explain the purpose of a section of code. However, the code can be rendered "live" again by simply removing those tags, in which case the full text would appear on the screen to users. However, it is unclear why the paragraph containing "no reasonable expectation of privacy" would ever have even been considered appropriate in this context."
It's articles like this one that give Obama-haters a bad name.
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So I don't get it. Why is this news??
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2. Application publishes and is spotted by I-ANAL geek Web site which, not understanding what it's reading, pumps out a hack piece citing the application as further proof that the patent system (or intellectual property in general) is "broke."
3. Equally ignorant and/or confused I-ANAL Slashdotter posts story on /. with ironic comment. In some cases, there's no link to the actual application, making it difficult even for an IAAL figure out what the applicant was actually trying to patent.
4. Equally ignorant I-ANAL Slashdotters post comments that comprise: i) a terse pun; ii) "See, I told you the patent system (or IP in general) is broke!"; iii) A detailed, carefully reasoned analysis of an irrelevant detail of the patent; iv) A strange, off-topic, or unintentionally funny authoritative statement. (My favorite: "A design patent is basically a trademark.")
5. In many cases, a few IP or patent attorneys attempt to correct another poster's sillier misconceptions. Generally, the attorney's remark ends the conversation or, worst case, provokes an "anybody who knows what they're talking about is not to be trusted" kick-to-the-curb.
Just sayin'.
I've seen this episode before.
Was this the result of how he used his brain, or was this structure the reason why his thought process worked the way it did. Not clear, and there's plenty of evidence to support either conclusion.
You're thinking of the Plasmatronics product line, which, I believe, debuted in the late 1970s. Heard a pair once in NYC way back when & the high-end was pretty remarkable. Suitable mainly for tweeters & supertweeters. They don't use an extraordinary amount of electricity and produce only a tiny amount of ozone. But they require a supply of halogen gas, which I recall makes an annoying hissing noise.
.
Given that most people in this country can't divide 100 by 8 in their heads, I mock the thought that anybody would take this story seriously.
At what age should kids be taught to read patent-claim language?
At what age should kids be taught to replace head gaskets?
At what age should kids be taught how to cull facts from political rhetoric, rather than just repeat what they hear on the radio?
I think it would be worth a cheer to see pre-teens get excited about writing little BASIC programs on their iPads, but in the real world, school teachers I know would be happy enough to be able to teach the majority of their grade-schoolers how to balance a checkbook, or how to understand a short piece of classical music.
.
FWIW, the 1st Am. can become relevant if the government forces an entity to restrict speech, regardless of whether that speech is a term of a K. If I contract w/Facebook to give Facebook the right to publish and republish any text that I post, the 1st is implicated if the Federal govt. attempts to bar Facebook from enforcing that term. The 14th Am. extends this issue to state govt.'s. And then, there's also the contract clause of the Constitution, although freedom of speech generally trumps financial protections.
.
--
Who says enabling technology is a good thing?
Easy answer -- you've got to compare apples to apples. (Sorry, couldn't avoid that one.) People here are discussing sales over an atypical time period -- the weekend after a major launch. Compare that number to a weekend after another, comparable, launch. Say, the iP 4, SIII, SIV, etc. An alternative is to, average out the brief post-announcement peak and compare sales over the first 60 days after each launch. If you want to mitigate the distorting effect of pre-announcement delayed sales, compare 60-day periods starting 30 days before each launch. Whatever. The point is that simply citing a single set of numbers, based on sales during a small, atypical period of time, without direct comparison to even nominally similar periods, as evidence of success or a failure of a product is not enough to support either proposition -- much less to support allegations of a longer-term trend.
Not true. Variations of the first scenario are quite common. Your argument is circular. If you define "NPE" as an entity that engages exclusively in trolling abuses, then the only conclusion is that NPEs are abusers. It is certainly possible for a small inventor to create something new and valuable, but not have the resources to manufacture it. Here, the patent system allows the inventor to attempt to license the idea to a larger entity who is able to develop, market, manufacture, and distribute the resulting product. The fellow working in the office next to mine, e.g., is presently doing just that with a clever consumer product he recently patented. How is such a partnership an abuse of anything? And doesn't such a system promote innovation by encouraging an inventor to create a new technology despite the fact that she's just an average person with a dollar & a dream?
And how would humans survive there? No source of energy other than gravity. Solar is not an option. Also, what about the radiation? Remember that Jupiter is essentially an unlit star with both an enormous magnetic field and powerful radiation belts (a million times more powerful, in fact, than the Van Allen Belt) that extend beyond Europa's orbit. Humans couldn't get near Jupiter without extraordinary (and likely, at today's level of technology, impractical) shielding. See, e.g., http://www.astrobio.net/exclusive/3010/hiding-from-jupiters-radiation. Yes, I know I'm a buzzkill & that these types of things are fun to talk about while you sit around the bong with the dudes. Sorry.
Better stick to something you have a clue about. Maybe cigars? This issue has long been a real concern re:biometric identification on inherently insecure platforms. The point of vulnerability is actually the encoded data, not an image of a fingerprint, stored or not. This is one reason why you don't see biometrics used casually in consumer applications. When implemented, a real-world biometric scanner is usually part of a system that incorporates significant physical means of isolation. Using a biometric marker in a device as ubiquitous and insecure as a cell phone is idiotic. And it doesn't take a "privacy expert" (wtf that is) to understand that.
First Amendment case law dating back to the 18th Century has consistently defending the right to anonymous speech. The courts have long recognized that being forced to reveal one's identity in order to, say, criticize the government can have a chilling effect on free speech. The Bill of Rights doesn't generally apply to private citizens, of course, but the world doesn't seem to be going in that direction these days. Or even over the last hundred years -- see, e.g., J. Edgar. The problem now, I guess, is that we have the technology to easily make anonymous speech almost impossible -- so why not use it?? I think there's an Oscar Wilde quote about how the need to censor is one of the most powerful of human motivations -- next to it, the sex drive is nothing.
Sigh. Just more porn for the "the patent system is broke, man!" crowd. As an attorney myself (who makes most of my litigation fees defending clients against IP trolls), I assure you that the RICO Act can't be applied in this way. Whoever is taking DoubleClick's money to prosecute this case is the real criminal. I haven't researched the case law, but I'm nearly certain that this application of RICO has never resulted in a decision favoring a plaintiff. Sure, patent trolls are certainly abusers of the legal system (although, since the recent overhaul of the Patent Act, trolling has become a heckuva lot more difficult). But the aspects of the patent system that allow this type of abuse to occur are generally not specific to patent law. A patent troll, from a legal perspective, is no different than a person who makes a career of prosecuting slip-and-falls. If 10% of the problem is the concept of intellectual property as it exists today, 80% is rooted in fundamental characteristics of our legal system, which make it possible to extort money from victims by threatening them with frivolous lawsuits -- so long as the settlement is not significantly larger than the cost of a legal defense. Just ask the RIAA.
.
Everybody has the right to masturbate, but if you can't answer that question with some crediblility, this discussion is a waste of time.
- the President of the United States is not an American citizen
- the President of the United States is secretly a Muslim (and simultaneously a member of a Caucasian-hating "black Christian church" that is conspiring with Kenyan citizens to overthrow the United States)
- there has been a global conspiracy over the last 25 years among every government, national science foundation, peer-reviewed journal, and credible scientist in three broad fields of science to perpetrate a hoax that human-produced greenhouse-gas emissions are warming the planet
- second-hand cigarette smoke has no harmful effect on humans
- the Affordable Care Act will strip $700 million (or whatever the number is up to now) of benefits from Social Security recipients and will establish "death panels" who decide whether gravely ill citizens will be given life-saving treatment
- and the classic "seat belts kill more people than they save because they trap victims inside a car during a crash, rather than letting them be safely ejected."
If you have a free hour, check out the beautiful documentary "Chasing Ice," in which shows the results of photographer James Balog's technically challenging "Extreme Ice" project, which took multi-year time-lapse videos of receding glaciers in remote areas of Iceland, Greenland, Alaska, & Montana. The big finale, a five-minute real-time clip of a Lower-Manhattan-sized chunk of ice plunging into the sea, is something you'll never forget.
Consequently, using biometric security mechanisms on a mobile device is not something I personally think is a good idea.
A more nuanced analysis would reveal that, if climate change is real, it will be a disaster for most of these national governments, many of whicfh are already a bit tentative in their finances. See, e.g., Australia. The cost to protect coastal urban areas will be astronomical, there will likely be large numbers of refugees (even in industrialized nations, but the problem will be far worse in the less-developed areas of Africa & South America), and the political issues alone will likely destabilize governments. Especially scary is that some of the countries likely to be hardest hit are nuclear powers, like Pakistan & India. So why in the world would nearly every national government -- including many that would resist agreeing with each other at gunpoint -- secretly conspire to perpetuate such a hoax.
Then again, some of the wackier denier types are the same people who believed with all their hearts that the President of the United States is not an American citizen. Or that he's both a secret Muslim and a believer in Reverend Wright's "radical black" sect of Christianity. Don't expect rational.