I did just that. I switched to Avast. But it's really annoying. When I first installed it, it started going off for phishing e-mails in my inbox. I had been really happy with AVG but I think the quality of their products and attention to detail is now waning.
Most of those were accidents, not intentional creations.
As for Post-Its, the notion of needing to write notes and stick them somewhere isn't exactly a market someone needed to create.
In fact everything from fiberglass to Rogaine was an accident. The people or companies who "invented" these things actually never set out to create them... they happened by accident. Which illustrates my point exactly. If you go looking for an end before you have identified a means, you're wasting your time. These discoveries happened along the way when people were working on specific solutions to other specific problems.
I agree. I upgraded a Win98 system and planned to go to XP and I figured I'd update my motherboard to an Athlon while I was at it. XP64 pro was cheaper than regular XP Pro, so I opted for that. I didn't realize I'd get into a huge scavenger hunt to make sure all the drivers and software would work. And I did this late in the game. There does not appear to be that many vendors supporting XP64 as you'd think.
About two months ago I installed XP-64 on a new Athlon system I was upgrading. I didn't realize that I'd have to update all my drivers and some software might not work, but the biggest problem was the drivers, however, I custom-built this PC and used popular components so, with the exception of AVG Free (which doesn't have a 64-bit version), I was able to upgrade my entire system. If you're running more obscure peripherals, you should fully-research the availability of drivers before you upgrade.
Some of the greatest inventions have come from a solution seeking a problem - those are usually inventions known as "ahead of their time".
Really? Can you give me even one solid example of this?
I have no doubt there were many accidental discoveries, and every once in awhile, very rarely, you have someone who creates something and either by chance or very hard work manages to create a market for it, but this is the 0.0000001% of technological advancement. I challenge you to give me even a reasonable-sized list of advancements that took off before they addressed a particular need in the marketplace.
A good programmer will start with a "problem" and then design a solution.
It sounds to me like you are looking for a solution without identifying the problem. Because there are so many programmers like this, ones who feel compelled to create something for the sake of creating something, for their own ego or amusement, in lieu of any real world application, the industry is filled with crappy technology that doesn't serve any significant purpose. So let me be the first to discourage you path before you even start and add another dingleberry to the crop of mediocre technology that's out there that will fail.
No disrespect, but you're going about it wrong. If you want to program a console emulator, hook up with the teams online involved in that. Oh you want to create your own? This kind of thinking won't get you anywhere. The real cool technology is what you learn from other people through experience both in coding and (most importantly) through an *understanding of the application and the market you're addressing*. So what you need to do before anything else is not whine about how you haven't created the next Halo, and figure out what field, in addition to programming, in which you're an authority, and what void in that field can you develop something that addresses a real need or solves a problem, and then and only then, should you be asking people how to develop such technology.
The best software in the market will have always been created by people identifying a niche, a need, a problem, and then designing software to address it. Not the other way around.
With the eradication of the Fairness Doctrine, it has been a slow decline in the integrity of journalism. The idea that wire services are now asking people to provide content for them is testimony to the pathetic state of affairs in journalism.
I look forward to this going full circle, and wire services and news networks becoming completely obsolete in favor of citizens reporting the news to other citizens, devoid of heavy-handed corporate or political bias.
It's not so much a review as a rant. Hardly any info is given about how the thing works. The software didn't install? Big deal!
On the planet where I come from, this would be a big deal.
It's utterly amazing, amazing... how much Microsoft's shit has made people, often unknowingly, lower their standards.
And MS fanbois in this thread think it's unfair to beat up on Microsoft. What a bunch of bullshit. If the damn product won't install on your own computer, when the same manufacturer makes the opearting system on both machines, that's beyond bad.
It's a shame some of these youngsters weren't into computers back when they actually worked properly. When operating systems didn't need to be rebooted at random or every time you updated something, when products you bought actually lasted a little while or didn't cause you tremendous grief just to get them working. Thanks Microsoft!
It's amusing until you realize that some people really, honestly believe this bullshit.
Atheism is relevant because religion has historically been responsible for the retardation of mankind and science. NOT beliving in mythological, imaginary creatures that are hovering overhead dictating how we should live our lives in hope of better things to come when we die, atheism, is a healthy concept that unlike religion, embraces unconditional discovery.
One look at our society and the invasion of religion in government should make everyone who recognizes these fallacies to feel compelled to stand up and shatter the illusion of religion until it is dismissed into the back rooms for fear of embarassement among intelligent and sane society.
Plain and simple, and there's no way you can prove god exists. I don't need to prove your imaginary friend doesn't exist. You're the one making the claim. Common sense dictates that if you see a guy walking down the street claiming to be talking to Napoleon, he's more likely deluded than the possibility that Napoleon is really there. Christians seem to acknowledge this most basic scheme of logic when it comes to everyone else's delusions but their own. They're the worst kind of hypocrites, who can arrogantly claim Allah or Thor or Shiva are inventions in peoples' minds, but their Jeebus? Oh nooooos, not Jeebus.. he's REAL. Hypocrite.
Religion and science are at opposite ends of the spectrum. The definition of "faith" is to believe in something in the absense of any evidence. Faith is antithetical to the ideas upon which science is based. Anyone even trying to suggest anything otherwise, is undermining science, technology and common sense.
check out this page and view the fourth video, "Why atheists care about religion." The information is in there with references as well as a lot more details on the issue of how atheists are oppressed in today's society. Sam Harris writes a lot about this too in his book, "Losing Faith in Faith".
Isn't it conVEEEEENIENT that you have nicely interpreted the bible to ignore half of it...
You are wrong. God, the bible, Jesus and his diciples specifically state that OT laws still apply:
Exodus 12:14, 17, 24
And this day shall be unto you for a memorial; and ye shall keep it a feast to the LORD throughout your generations; ye shall keep it a feast by an ordinance for ever.... And ye shall observe the feast of unleavened bread; for in this selfsame day have I brought your armies out of the land of Egypt: therefore shall ye observe this day in your generations by an ordinance for ever.... And ye shall observe this thing for an ordinance to thee and to thy sons forever.
Leviticus 23:14,21,31
It shall be a statute for ever throughout your generations.
What part of FOREVER is unclear??? God didn't hand down 10 commandments, he handed down over 600, including women on their period need to be put in a separate building for a week.
If the laws don't apply, then god is a liar. Either case your imaginary friend is not worthy of serious consideration by anyone who isn't delusional.
Deuteronomy 7:9
Know therefore that the LORD thy God, he is God, the faithful God, which keepeth covenant and mercy with them that love him and keep his commandments to a thousand generations.
1 Chronicles 16:15
Be ye mindful always of his covenant; the word which he commanded to a thousand generations... an everlasting covenant.
Psalm 119:151-2
Thou art near, O LORD; and all thy commandments are truth. Concerning thy testimonies, I have known of old that thou hast founded them for ever.
Psalm 119:160
Thy word is true from the beginning: and every one of thy righteous judgments endureth for ever.
Malachi 4:4
Remember ye the law of Moses.
Matthew 5:18-19
Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or tittle shall nowise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven.
Luke 16:17
It is easier for heaven and earth to pass, than one tittle of the law to fail.
In any case, all of this is moot. This is kind of like arguing who's a better plumber: Mario or Luigi.
Likewise, your ability to cut-and-paste religious teaching to suit your agenda is evolving. At the rate and direction you're going, eventually people like you will come to the conclusion that religion is unnecessary except as a means to control weak-minded people and create an often counterproductive false sense of hope in a world where a more realist perspective is much more beneficial.
Man created god. This is the most likely premise, and the more we learn about history and science, the more obvious this becomes, and people like you, who aren't willing to let go of the delusion, slide a little further outside the bubble, but aren't yet ready to let go. That's fine and dandy but you really do a disservice because even moderate theists refuse to recognize the possibility that much of their beliefs still don't make sense, even when you shed the most outrageous aspects like creationism or Noah's ark. The gods of the bible are inconsistent and immoral, even in the new testament, if you really read the bible, you find a messiah whose life was riddled with hypocrisy and does not deserve respect, much less worship. Even merely using these figures as symbols of an abstract goodness, gives them more credit than they deserve and it enables the extremist fundamentalists to nurture their radical viewpoints to the point of endangering others.
Congratulations on recognizing that the world is not flat. However, you haven't yet admitted it's a sphere.. you're more in the phase of recognizing that there are no edges, but you're still holding on to the belief that it's only two-dimensional.
By the way, one thing theists like to talk about is how many atheists there appears to be online, an amount disproportionate to what they experience in real life. So superstitious people seem to think that the Internet is atypical, but that's not true. The reality is there are more atheists than there are theists in most modern societies, but atheists are the last, most-oppressed group on this planet... even in the United States, there are six states where atheists cannot hold public office or even testify in court. Homosexuals and ex-cons can probably more easily get a job than someone who was an admitted atheist. So with the exception of the internet and its ability to allow people to express themselves semi-anonymously, most people in society keep their atheist views to themselves for fear of prejudice perpetrated by narrow-minded theists who cannot allow their faith to be questioned, and refuse to confront the reality that people who don't believe in god can be moral, productive members of society.
The whole creationist notion is based on the premise of biblical inerrancy.
I submit to those that want to believe the earth is 6000 years old and man walked around with dinosaurs, fine, do that. But if you're going to take the bible literally, don't be a hypocrite, don't just believe the creation story in genesis, you have to believe in the rest of the old and new testament. This means:
* Working on the sabbath is punishable by death * Disobedient children are to be publicly executed by stoning * Owning slaves is perfectly acceptable * Eating pork, shrimp, crawfish, lobster is punishable by death * Poligamy is perfectly acceptable * Women are considered property, and need be submissive to all men; they are not allowed to speak in church, nor should they wear makeup or jewelry * To get to heaven you should become a Eunich, sell all your possessions, and hate everyone in your family... the list goes on and on.. it goes without saying god says believers have an obligation to murder non-believers, as well as innocent children, and take/rape the virgin women for their pleasure.
All the above ideas are very specifically outlined. They are not more taken out of context and improperly interpreted than the creation story. And Jesus himself in the new testament reaffirms that the old testament laws still apply.
The majority of Americans are not as shallow and ignorant as the mainstream media might lead others to believe. It's just that the American media is terminally sleazy and likes to display extremists as if they're more normal than they are - just for entertainment purposes.
Then there is a large faction of people who basically sit mesmerized at whatever appears on the television and are largely programmed to regurgitate the outlandish crap being suggested, which explains the epidemic of conservative republicans who don't really think for themselves and are convinced all the world's problems are the exclusive responsibility of the "other team."
If we could somehow get the Fairness Doctrine reinstated, the world would see that there are many intelligent Americans who at this time are not allowed to have appropriate public representation, mainly because their views do not align with the agenda of corporate America.
The bottom line is that people can believe what they want to believe. But when you start affecting public policy and public education, there needs to be an open dialogue on whether or not this is a good thing, and this involves examining religion's role in society and its validity as well. The problem is, as Sam Harris puts it, even the liberal and moderate theists are part of the extremist problem because they are part of the lobby which is against ANY discussion of the legitimacy and accuracy of religion. When the moderates won't even allow skepticism to be legitimized, they are almost as bad as the extremists.
This has nothing to do with science. Science by its nature requires that its theories always be open to scrutiny and change. Religion is the opposite of that. As long as religion is a personal thing, it need not be made into an issue, but when fundy extremists start spouting total bullshit, and start lobbying for their superstition to be promoted as legitimate knowledge, responsible, sane people have an obligation to expose this delusion.
I can't believe my post was modded as a troll. That's ridiculous.
You obviously don't know much about how spammers operate and how anti-spam systems work, or ipV6 for that matter.
The amount of spam on the Internet verses what ends up in peoples mailboxes is a lot different. Relay blacklisting is the most effective way of stopping spam, and because of this, most people don't even realize how much spam is blocked at the SMTP server before it even gets to your inbox. This is because RBLs use blacklists of known rogue IP space from which spammers operate. ipV6 will exponentially increase the IP space, effectively nullifying the value of RBLs for probably 10 or more years. Without RBL's, major ISPs across the planet could probably not adequately handle or process e-mail services for their customers.
This isn't the fault of ISPs. It is the fault of spammers, but the authorities aren't shutting the spammers down, and the best anti-spam technology we have right now involves IP blacklisting, which would be completely wiped out if IPv6 rolls out.
We cannot have IPv6 until the authorities and powers that be online, get a handle on the spam problem. The increased address space as a result of the introduction of ipV6 will make spamming and computer crimes exponentially worse.
I urge everyone to refuse to jump on the ipV6 bandwagon until other problems are solved first. We have the technology to work around any existing limitations in TCP/IP right now without introducing additional features that would open a Pandora's Box of spamming nightmares.
The guy's got a 501(c)3 corporation dedicated to bashing Wiki. My guess is it's funded by media and other encyclopedia makers. Follow the money and what you probably will find out about these people is much more disgusting than any transgression on the part of Wikipedia.
It seems to be th3 c00l3ss to bash Wiki lately, but the bottom line is there is no encyclopedic reference that comes close. The media and other pseudo-pundits who seem to resent any influential source of information that doesn't have obvious corporate influence (read: money-based control) as a major threat and they do whatever they can to discredit Wikipedia. Aside from a tiny subset of controversial articles that routinely get vandalized, and another tiny subset of plagiarism, this issue is likely to be blown way out of proportion by those who have a vested interest in destroying any information resource they cannot control.
Captchas do not work as well anymore. There are legions of Indians and other people who are now paid slave wages to cross-post crap all over the Internet.
I've been battling this for years now. Ironically, the best way to stop spambot attacks is to homebrew your own CGI stuff. If you can't do that, rename all the scripts to non-standard names so that the common URLs are not found.
I've been using keyword blacklists. They have proven to be very effective. If you don't allow people to input names of common drugs or strings like ".php?" or ".asp?" you can knock out a lot of the affiliate/redirect spam.
The biggest problems have been with the popular messageboard apps. We've simply stopped putting up messageboards, or set them to require registration and manual approval to post. It's really disgusting how if you leave a forum unlocked, it'll take about a week before it's full of ads for online drugs and sex sites.
Slashdot Mirror
I did just that. I switched to Avast. But it's really annoying. When I first installed it, it started going off for phishing e-mails in my inbox. I had been really happy with AVG but I think the quality of their products and attention to detail is now waning.
Post-Its. Teflon. Saccharin. Potato Chips. Frisbees. Penicillin.
Most of those were accidents, not intentional creations.
As for Post-Its, the notion of needing to write notes and stick them somewhere isn't exactly a market someone needed to create.
In fact everything from fiberglass to Rogaine was an accident. The people or companies who "invented" these things actually never set out to create them... they happened by accident. Which illustrates my point exactly. If you go looking for an end before you have identified a means, you're wasting your time. These discoveries happened along the way when people were working on specific solutions to other specific problems.
I agree. I upgraded a Win98 system and planned to go to XP and I figured I'd update my motherboard to an Athlon while I was at it. XP64 pro was cheaper than regular XP Pro, so I opted for that. I didn't realize I'd get into a huge scavenger hunt to make sure all the drivers and software would work. And I did this late in the game. There does not appear to be that many vendors supporting XP64 as you'd think.
About two months ago I installed XP-64 on a new Athlon system I was upgrading. I didn't realize that I'd have to update all my drivers and some software might not work, but the biggest problem was the drivers, however, I custom-built this PC and used popular components so, with the exception of AVG Free (which doesn't have a 64-bit version), I was able to upgrade my entire system. If you're running more obscure peripherals, you should fully-research the availability of drivers before you upgrade.
Some of the greatest inventions have come from a solution seeking a problem - those are usually inventions known as "ahead of their time".
Really? Can you give me even one solid example of this?
I have no doubt there were many accidental discoveries, and every once in awhile, very rarely, you have someone who creates something and either by chance or very hard work manages to create a market for it, but this is the 0.0000001% of technological advancement. I challenge you to give me even a reasonable-sized list of advancements that took off before they addressed a particular need in the marketplace.
A good programmer will start with a "problem" and then design a solution.
It sounds to me like you are looking for a solution without identifying the problem. Because there are so many programmers like this, ones who feel compelled to create something for the sake of creating something, for their own ego or amusement, in lieu of any real world application, the industry is filled with crappy technology that doesn't serve any significant purpose. So let me be the first to discourage you path before you even start and add another dingleberry to the crop of mediocre technology that's out there that will fail.
No disrespect, but you're going about it wrong. If you want to program a console emulator, hook up with the teams online involved in that. Oh you want to create your own? This kind of thinking won't get you anywhere. The real cool technology is what you learn from other people through experience both in coding and (most importantly) through an *understanding of the application and the market you're addressing*. So what you need to do before anything else is not whine about how you haven't created the next Halo, and figure out what field, in addition to programming, in which you're an authority, and what void in that field can you develop something that addresses a real need or solves a problem, and then and only then, should you be asking people how to develop such technology.
The best software in the market will have always been created by people identifying a niche, a need, a problem, and then designing software to address it. Not the other way around.
..because that's how long it takes to send your personal information and recent surfing history to the NSA.
With the eradication of the Fairness Doctrine, it has been a slow decline in the integrity of journalism. The idea that wire services are now asking people to provide content for them is testimony to the pathetic state of affairs in journalism.
I look forward to this going full circle, and wire services and news networks becoming completely obsolete in favor of citizens reporting the news to other citizens, devoid of heavy-handed corporate or political bias.
It's not so much a review as a rant. Hardly any info is given about how the thing works. The software didn't install? Big deal!
On the planet where I come from, this would be a big deal.
It's utterly amazing, amazing... how much Microsoft's shit has made people, often unknowingly, lower their standards.
And MS fanbois in this thread think it's unfair to beat up on Microsoft. What a bunch of bullshit. If the damn product won't install on your own computer, when the same manufacturer makes the opearting system on both machines, that's beyond bad.
It's a shame some of these youngsters weren't into computers back when they actually worked properly. When operating systems didn't need to be rebooted at random or every time you updated something, when products you bought actually lasted a little while or didn't cause you tremendous grief just to get them working. Thanks Microsoft!
It's amusing until you realize that some people really, honestly believe this bullshit.
Atheism is relevant because religion has historically been responsible for the retardation of mankind and science. NOT beliving in mythological, imaginary creatures that are hovering overhead dictating how we should live our lives in hope of better things to come when we die, atheism, is a healthy concept that unlike religion, embraces unconditional discovery.
One look at our society and the invasion of religion in government should make everyone who recognizes these fallacies to feel compelled to stand up and shatter the illusion of religion until it is dismissed into the back rooms for fear of embarassement among intelligent and sane society.
"Religion without science is superstition."
Let me correct that:
"Religion is superstition."
Plain and simple, and there's no way you can prove god exists. I don't need to prove your imaginary friend doesn't exist. You're the one making the claim. Common sense dictates that if you see a guy walking down the street claiming to be talking to Napoleon, he's more likely deluded than the possibility that Napoleon is really there. Christians seem to acknowledge this most basic scheme of logic when it comes to everyone else's delusions but their own. They're the worst kind of hypocrites, who can arrogantly claim Allah or Thor or Shiva are inventions in peoples' minds, but their Jeebus? Oh nooooos, not Jeebus.. he's REAL. Hypocrite.
Religion and science are at opposite ends of the spectrum. The definition of "faith" is to believe in something in the absense of any evidence. Faith is antithetical to the ideas upon which science is based. Anyone even trying to suggest anything otherwise, is undermining science, technology and common sense.
check out this page and view the fourth video, "Why atheists care about religion." The information is in there with references as well as a lot more details on the issue of how atheists are oppressed in today's society. Sam Harris writes a lot about this too in his book, "Losing Faith in Faith".
Isn't it conVEEEEENIENT that you have nicely interpreted the bible to ignore half of it...
... And ye shall observe the feast of unleavened bread; for in this selfsame day have I brought your armies out of the land of Egypt: therefore shall ye observe this day in your generations by an ordinance for ever. ... And ye shall observe this thing for an ordinance to thee and to thy sons forever.
... an everlasting covenant.
You are wrong. God, the bible, Jesus and his diciples specifically state that OT laws still apply:
Exodus 12:14, 17, 24
And this day shall be unto you for a memorial; and ye shall keep it a feast to the LORD throughout your generations; ye shall keep it a feast by an ordinance for ever.
Leviticus 23:14,21,31
It shall be a statute for ever throughout your generations.
What part of FOREVER is unclear??? God didn't hand down 10 commandments, he handed down over 600, including women on their period need to be put in a separate building for a week.
If the laws don't apply, then god is a liar. Either case your imaginary friend is not worthy of serious consideration by anyone who isn't delusional.
Deuteronomy 7:9
Know therefore that the LORD thy God, he is God, the faithful God, which keepeth covenant and mercy with them that love him and keep his commandments to a thousand generations.
1 Chronicles 16:15
Be ye mindful always of his covenant; the word which he commanded to a thousand generations
Psalm 119:151-2
Thou art near, O LORD; and all thy commandments are truth. Concerning thy testimonies, I have known of old that thou hast founded them for ever.
Psalm 119:160
Thy word is true from the beginning: and every one of thy righteous judgments endureth for ever.
Malachi 4:4
Remember ye the law of Moses.
Matthew 5:18-19
Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or tittle shall nowise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven.
Luke 16:17
It is easier for heaven and earth to pass, than one tittle of the law to fail.
In any case, all of this is moot. This is kind of like arguing who's a better plumber: Mario or Luigi.
Likewise, your ability to cut-and-paste religious teaching to suit your agenda is evolving. At the rate and direction you're going, eventually people like you will come to the conclusion that religion is unnecessary except as a means to control weak-minded people and create an often counterproductive false sense of hope in a world where a more realist perspective is much more beneficial.
Man created god. This is the most likely premise, and the more we learn about history and science, the more obvious this becomes, and people like you, who aren't willing to let go of the delusion, slide a little further outside the bubble, but aren't yet ready to let go. That's fine and dandy but you really do a disservice because even moderate theists refuse to recognize the possibility that much of their beliefs still don't make sense, even when you shed the most outrageous aspects like creationism or Noah's ark. The gods of the bible are inconsistent and immoral, even in the new testament, if you really read the bible, you find a messiah whose life was riddled with hypocrisy and does not deserve respect, much less worship. Even merely using these figures as symbols of an abstract goodness, gives them more credit than they deserve and it enables the extremist fundamentalists to nurture their radical viewpoints to the point of endangering others.
Congratulations on recognizing that the world is not flat. However, you haven't yet admitted it's a sphere.. you're more in the phase of recognizing that there are no edges, but you're still holding on to the belief that it's only two-dimensional.
By the way, one thing theists like to talk about is how many atheists there appears to be online, an amount disproportionate to what they experience in real life. So superstitious people seem to think that the Internet is atypical, but that's not true. The reality is there are more atheists than there are theists in most modern societies, but atheists are the last, most-oppressed group on this planet... even in the United States, there are six states where atheists cannot hold public office or even testify in court. Homosexuals and ex-cons can probably more easily get a job than someone who was an admitted atheist. So with the exception of the internet and its ability to allow people to express themselves semi-anonymously, most people in society keep their atheist views to themselves for fear of prejudice perpetrated by narrow-minded theists who cannot allow their faith to be questioned, and refuse to confront the reality that people who don't believe in god can be moral, productive members of society.
The whole creationist notion is based on the premise of biblical inerrancy.
... the list goes on and on.. it goes without saying god says believers have an obligation to murder non-believers, as well as innocent children, and take/rape the virgin women for their pleasure.
I submit to those that want to believe the earth is 6000 years old and man walked around with dinosaurs, fine, do that. But if you're going to take the bible literally, don't be a hypocrite, don't just believe the creation story in genesis, you have to believe in the rest of the old and new testament. This means:
* Working on the sabbath is punishable by death
* Disobedient children are to be publicly executed by stoning
* Owning slaves is perfectly acceptable
* Eating pork, shrimp, crawfish, lobster is punishable by death
* Poligamy is perfectly acceptable
* Women are considered property, and need be submissive to all men; they are not allowed to speak in church, nor should they wear makeup or jewelry
* To get to heaven you should become a Eunich, sell all your possessions, and hate everyone in your family
All the above ideas are very specifically outlined. They are not more taken out of context and improperly interpreted than the creation story. And Jesus himself in the new testament reaffirms that the old testament laws still apply.
In a word: media.
The majority of Americans are not as shallow and ignorant as the mainstream media might lead others to believe. It's just that the American media is terminally sleazy and likes to display extremists as if they're more normal than they are - just for entertainment purposes.
Then there is a large faction of people who basically sit mesmerized at whatever appears on the television and are largely programmed to regurgitate the outlandish crap being suggested, which explains the epidemic of conservative republicans who don't really think for themselves and are convinced all the world's problems are the exclusive responsibility of the "other team."
If we could somehow get the Fairness Doctrine reinstated, the world would see that there are many intelligent Americans who at this time are not allowed to have appropriate public representation, mainly because their views do not align with the agenda of corporate America.
This should be under politics, or perhaps a new category called "superstition".
For anyone interested, here is some good general information on religion and some specific info on religious skepticism including videos by Sam Harris, George Carlin and some informative stuff on Mormonism and a great video on why Atheists care about religion.
The bottom line is that people can believe what they want to believe. But when you start affecting public policy and public education, there needs to be an open dialogue on whether or not this is a good thing, and this involves examining religion's role in society and its validity as well. The problem is, as Sam Harris puts it, even the liberal and moderate theists are part of the extremist problem because they are part of the lobby which is against ANY discussion of the legitimacy and accuracy of religion. When the moderates won't even allow skepticism to be legitimized, they are almost as bad as the extremists.
This has nothing to do with science. Science by its nature requires that its theories always be open to scrutiny and change. Religion is the opposite of that. As long as religion is a personal thing, it need not be made into an issue, but when fundy extremists start spouting total bullshit, and start lobbying for their superstition to be promoted as legitimate knowledge, responsible, sane people have an obligation to expose this delusion.
I can't believe my post was modded as a troll. That's ridiculous.
You obviously don't know much about how spammers operate and how anti-spam systems work, or ipV6 for that matter.
The amount of spam on the Internet verses what ends up in peoples mailboxes is a lot different. Relay blacklisting is the most effective way of stopping spam, and because of this, most people don't even realize how much spam is blocked at the SMTP server before it even gets to your inbox. This is because RBLs use blacklists of known rogue IP space from which spammers operate. ipV6 will exponentially increase the IP space, effectively nullifying the value of RBLs for probably 10 or more years. Without RBL's, major ISPs across the planet could probably not adequately handle or process e-mail services for their customers.
This isn't the fault of ISPs. It is the fault of spammers, but the authorities aren't shutting the spammers down, and the best anti-spam technology we have right now involves IP blacklisting, which would be completely wiped out if IPv6 rolls out.
We cannot have IPv6 until the authorities and powers that be online, get a handle on the spam problem. The increased address space as a result of the introduction of ipV6 will make spamming and computer crimes exponentially worse.
I urge everyone to refuse to jump on the ipV6 bandwagon until other problems are solved first. We have the technology to work around any existing limitations in TCP/IP right now without introducing additional features that would open a Pandora's Box of spamming nightmares.
The guy's got a 501(c)3 corporation dedicated to bashing Wiki. My guess is it's funded by media and other encyclopedia makers. Follow the money and what you probably will find out about these people is much more disgusting than any transgression on the part of Wikipedia.
It seems to be th3 c00l3ss to bash Wiki lately, but the bottom line is there is no encyclopedic reference that comes close. The media and other pseudo-pundits who seem to resent any influential source of information that doesn't have obvious corporate influence (read: money-based control) as a major threat and they do whatever they can to discredit Wikipedia. Aside from a tiny subset of controversial articles that routinely get vandalized, and another tiny subset of plagiarism, this issue is likely to be blown way out of proportion by those who have a vested interest in destroying any information resource they cannot control.
Fortunately I do not run any forums dedicated to Humvee vehicles or the NRA, so it's not an issue.
Captchas do not work as well anymore. There are legions of Indians and other people who are now paid slave wages to cross-post crap all over the Internet.
I've been battling this for years now. Ironically, the best way to stop spambot attacks is to homebrew your own CGI stuff. If you can't do that, rename all the scripts to non-standard names so that the common URLs are not found.
I've been using keyword blacklists. They have proven to be very effective. If you don't allow people to input names of common drugs or strings like ".php?" or ".asp?" you can knock out a lot of the affiliate/redirect spam.
The biggest problems have been with the popular messageboard apps. We've simply stopped putting up messageboards, or set them to require registration and manual approval to post. It's really disgusting how if you leave a forum unlocked, it'll take about a week before it's full of ads for online drugs and sex sites.