They don't ask because they don't want to get sued for copyright infringement.
Hence the bit about growing some fucking balls.:-)
Anyway, the Scientologists are bullies and much prefer picking on the weak. I very very much doubt they'd try using their lawyentologists on a person or media organisation who can actually afford to defend themselves. And their celeb-drones like Cruise/Travolta usually have their own PR teams who use a combination of threats and incentives to keep the media lapdogs on a tight leash.
One of the reasons Tommy is getting so much flak recently is because he's dumped his old PR team (one that was actually competent) for his sister (who is.... not).
Thank you for showing me there are other people out there who find that word mind-numbingly stupid.
It's almost as bad as "virii". What the hell is it with people that they just make up shit words - especially when there are nice usable words like "viruses" and "boxes" free for the taking? Argh.
And I'm willing to bet the reason War of the Worlds isn't doing worse than it is is because Dakota Fanning is more of an actress at 10 years old than ol' Tom will ever be.
Er, yes. Probably quite true.
But I agree with what you meant as well.;-)
I was watching part of an interview with Travolta a night or two ago, and was just thinking... damn it'd be nice if the media would occasionally grow some fucking balls when interviewing these Scientologist drones. "So John... you seriously believe that an evil alien warlord called Xenu dropped hydrogen bombs in volcanos 75 million years ago and oh god this is so stupid I can't even finish the question?"
If it can be demonstrated that whoever built the bombs used last week learned it from someone, then that someone could/should be held liable too.
Cool. So should a company that manufactures guns be held liable for someone who purchases such a weapon then uses it to kill someone?
Oooh, this is fun, let's see how deep into the stupid hole we can go before you say "no". How about someone who lets a friend borrow their car, should they be held liable when the friend runs someone over with that car? But no, that's not enough, let's go to the source - the woman that gave birth to the killer. Let's prosecute that bitch.
*climbs out of the stupid hole*
The same goes for knowingly hyperlinking to illegal material (lesser crime, not even a crime per se, but "having someone else do the dirty work for you" isn't any more legal).
There are debateable points on both sides in this case, that's one of the reasons it's interesting. Even though, morally speaking, I think it was fair to give the guy a bit of slap on the wrist, I really don't think there's any real public good served by setting this kind of a precedent. So great, they "sent a message" to all those evil people making hyperlinks (maybe next they'll start going after people who tell you where to find the "cheap DVD" street vendors).
This just gives the media lawyers more ammunition for their (Australian) intimidation campaigns. "Hey, we successfully sued this guy just for hyperlinking, you could be next!" Mmm, chilling effects.
Erm... first of all, you don't have my life to bet:).
Second, there is this thing known as the W3C validator... and last I checked, it seemed to think that my HTML was valid XHTML 1.0 Strict and my CSS was fine.
Third... well, it runs as it should on Gecko/Spidermonkey, which has a reputation as a fairly standards-compliant browser (albeit a bit permissive in some areas).
If it makes you happy, I'll acknowledge that it's a little difficult to be absolutely sure that the DOM interaction with Javascript is correct and standards-compliant. And I'll be a lot happier when I can get it to work on at least one other renderer+javascript implementation.
What was that? You don't have a working implementation that implements the standards completely and correctly?
Surprisingly enough, no, I don't have my own superstrict web browser to test on.
I considered doing that, but thought it might be just a bit too much work.:)
Thanks for the vote of confidence:). It's certainly nice to be able to say "we code to standards, if it doesn't work for you then it's your problem", but it wasn't me that made that call - it was my project lead. And, sadly, few developers are lucky enough to have a boss who'd make a decision like that.
But if he hadn't, then this app would probably never have existed at all - or at least not in its current form *shrug*. It's kind of funny to think of how much hung on those words a couple of years ago:
Me: I don't think we'll ever be able to get this to work in Internet Explorer.
Boss: *pause for thought* Fuck Internet Explorer.
*sigh* Look, I'm not going to make fun of you - it'd be too easy:). Just go have a quick game of Weboggle, hopefully that will clarify your understanding of the kind of applications (yes, real live applications) that can be built with Javascript and run inside a web browser.
Asynchronous XMLHttpRequest has really opened a lot of doors for this sort of stuff, and there's still a great deal of scope for new and interesting web applications.
Well, as I clarified in
my response to hacker, I am actually sticking to the standards:). It's just that so far the Gecko renderer and the Spidermonkey Javascript engine are the only ones that handle this app correctly. In its original form 18 months ago, Opera and Konqueror were both totally unable to handle it - massive rendering bugs (though both still did better than IE *grin*). Now they're both very close to correct in the rendering department, but now both seem to be having trouble with the Javascript.
Mind you, even if it only ever works on Gecko/Spidermonkey, that's a pretty solid cross-platform browser environment. Hell, I was originally considering making it an XUL application - if I'd done that then it'd only ever run on Mozilla and/or Firefox. Thankfully I realised that I didn't need to go that far, so now we have a good wholesome application for which the target platform is any reasonably standards-compliant web browser. As long as our clients are happy with that (and they are (so far)), that's Good Enough(tm).
Well, I am actually coding it to be standards-compliant. And it is. It just doesn't YET work correctly in KHTML/KJS or Opera (believe it or not, neither of those engines are perfect - of course, neither is Gecko/Spidermonkey, but G/S is less imperfect:-)). But they're getting closer - it seems that every time I test a new Konq or Opera release, more things work correctly.
This is not your usual web application. It's all a single page, and almost every user action is handled with asynchronous XMLHttpRequests. It's pushing the envelope a fair bit, yes - but my boss is happy and so I'm happy too:). It is pretty amazing what you can do with Ajax when you don't have to be held back by IE limitations.
What if your employer opens the site up to a new partner, which only uses MSIE? What now?
Well, it's pretty damn simple. If they want to use the app, they use a supported environment *shrug*. Just like any other software vendor. Except it's about a billion times easier to install and run an alternative browser than it is to install and use an alternative operating system on your computer (when my boss was demonstrating to a potential client, it took him all of two minutes to (a) download, install and run Firefox and (b) get our app running on the newly-installed Firefox).
In some ways it's easier if you think of it like the web application is a "real" application. It's just that you install Firefox (or Mozilla, or K-Meleon) on your desktop to "run" the application (instead of, eg. a Java or.NET runtime environment). And of course in the near future our app will work with every major browser except IE.
Internal web application development is a bit different. For example, I've been working on a web application which (at the moment) only works on browsers using the Gecko renderer and Spidermonkey javascript engine. It should work on Safari/Konq and Opera, but they're still coming up short in a few places.
But it flat out doesn't work at all in IE. Doesn't even come close. Does this matter? No, not at all. Because the people I'm developing this for don't care what browser they're using. As far as they're concerned, they double-click on the Firefox icon to run this application, and that's all that matters.
It's kind of weird when you start thinking of webapp development in these terms, but you quickly get used to it. Intranet webapps are different (often very different) to internet websites.
As opposed to not taking advantage of the networking (in the business connections sense) possibilities that a (duped) Microsoft appears to be offering them?
Hell, the thing I'd be most worried about is if his clients found out they were unnecessarily paying for a Microsoft SQL Server license. Microsoft themselves probably wouldn't give a damn, but I can easily see the AC's actual customers getting more than a little annoyed at that sort of deception.
But given the vagaries of business in general, I'd have to say that this is one of the least evil things I've heard of a company doing. In fact, in some cases (eg. if AC's company pays for the (unused) SQL Server licenses) it may not be evil at all - just playing Microsoft for a fool. And that's hardly evil, that's almost a public service.:)
My response to such a question would be "Sure, I'll answer that question - if you can look me in the eye and honestly say that you've ever needed to use such a technique in your programming career."
It's just such an old and such a shallow and (largely) such a useless trick. It demonstrates nothing of value that an interviewee could give the "right" answer to an old chestnut like that.
Christ driving around to see what doors stupid ppl have left open should not be a crime.
I absolutely agree!
But using "ppl" instead of "people"... twice in two sentences... that should be a crime. Preferably punished by being forced to talk only in abbreviations for, say, a month or two.
And slashdot editors posting incessant dupes should be punished by having their tinfoil hats taken away. Sigh. If only.
Someone should start up and maintain a slashdot-editor-dupe-posting hall of shame. Seriously. It got beyond a joke a looong time ago.
Good thing homosexual perversions aren't genetic (after all, they would have died out by now if they were).
It's a good thing that your grasp of genetics (ever heard of recessive traits, just for starters?) is as flawed as your grasp of logic. It increases the chance that your sacramental blessings (ie. kids) will one day come up to you and say "Dad, we still love you and all, but you really are a fucking nutjob."
The Truth is not a wacko cult, despite what nonsense lies you may believe.
*facepalm* *grin*
If it weren't for the fact that such a child would probably end up killing him/herself in such an intolerant family environment, I'd say that you really deserve at least one gay kid.
[.... ]
Unity without children does not need marriage/sex. I am defending reason, not discouraging it.
You just keep telling yourself that. After all, if you keep saying it, that makes it true, right? Right?
Ah well, inasmuch as there was ever an argument here, I think you've won it for me now. Thanks. Have a nice life.
Riiiight... Benedict's "neo" Catholicism cult not quite homophobic enough for you, was it?
Anyway, I'm now going to perform a standard routine that I'm sure you've encountered many times before - probably just about every time you're in a social situation, in fact.
"Right... uh-huh... very interesting..." *backing away, smiling, nodding* "...Excuse me, I... ah... have to go talk to... someone in... another place." *walks away very quickly*
Look, I understand if you're too much of a cowa*ahem*, I mean, too concerned about your personal privacy to tell us, but I am kind of interested re: which specific religious belief system you currently subscribe to (that includes these elements as part of their, um, party platform). I think most of the Christian variants have a position similar to that you're espousing, but the one most of my family subscribes to is generally fairly mellow on this point. They don't, for example, state that a marriage without kids is not a valid marriage (largely because they're not complete fucking lunatics).
And "sexual perversions are not sex", eh? Would you like to list for us (being absolutely specific) all the sexual "perversions" that you and/or your religion consider to be "not sex"?
I'm sure all of us (and probably former US president Clinton) would like to get this straightened out. By you, of course.:)
Given that we were actually talking about what could/should be legally acceptable as marriage, and not about what your wacko religious cult considers marriage (note: I consider every religion ever to be a wacko cult (including emacs:-))...
Thinking in a practical legal sense, it is (to put it mildly) rather impractical to think of the state intervening to verify a married couple is having regular sex, and cancelling their marriage license if they "fail". Or would you consider it okay if they only had sex once, would that be enough to mark that one off on the checklist?
And as for the "intention of having children if possible"... sheesh dude. Are you telling me that you seriously believe that a healthy male adult and female adult in a committed relationship should NOT be allowed to marry unless they promise that they intend to have children?
Seriously, you can (of course) believe what you like (no matter how stupid) about how people should behave, but trying to get your beliefs enshrined in law is a different kettle of donuts. That's where you (should) enter the realm of what's practical and reasonable.
You might have heard of "reason". It's one of the things that your religion tries to discourage.
[ snip re: Randi experiment with handing a bunch of students the same horoscope ]
In that case, it wasn't a full chart, done correctly.
And yet a significant proportion of the students said that the horoscope matched them. This is the entire point - that it wasn't a genuine horoscope, but people believed it fit them. It was written in horoscope style - full of vague waffle that could fit just about anyone. And of course people will generally remember the hits and ignore the misses. It's just human nature - and professional con-artists are very well aware of how to take advantage of human nature.
I have brought up the topic with several psychics (about Randi's reward), and most have the same attitude: He can believe what he wants, what he thinks is not their problem, and it's not worth THEIR effort to play his game. Most people I know in this field don't worry about pay, and the ones that do it full time are paying for their needs and not more. Maybe it's hard for some to understand, but many feel there is more to life than money or materialism.
Wow. Just.... wow.
And you seriously just accept that? The notion that, for a very small expenditure of time on their part, they could walk away with one million dollars.... one million dollars that they could donate to any charity in the world (if they weren't interested in the money themselves)... and yet they say they're not interested?
Bullshit. Sheer undiluted bullshit.
Oh, and by the way - I can turn invisible and fly through the air. I just don't feel like demonstrating it to anyone, not even for money. You see, money's not that important to me, so that's why I make my living working an eight-to-six office job. So... what do you mean, I'm talking crap?? Don't be so close-minded!
Just out of interest, why don't you ask your psychic pals exactly how much money would have to be offered to make it worth their while? Ten million? A hundred million? A billion? Ten billion? If they just keep saying that "it's not worth their effort"... at some point you just have to realise that it's bullshit.
If that sounds funny to you, then look at yourself. What are you doing? Could you apply effort elsewhere and be much more wealthy than you now? If so, why don't you? Why not be rich instead of doing what you do now?
If I could earn (cue Dr Evil voice) "one meeeellion dollars" simply by demonstrating an ability I possess, you can bloody well be certain that I'd do it.
The reason your "psychic" acquaintances don't take up the Randi challenge is because they know it's incredibly unlikely that they'd pass, and it'd be an embarrassing waste of time for them... though I suspect the embarrassment factor would be the biggest component.
Maybe it's too hard for you to detach from your preconceived notions and be objective.
Pot, meet kettle.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." -- Philip K. Dick.
If your psychic acquaintances had any genuine abilities, they shouldn't disappear just because they're faced with a sceptic. The reality is that very few "psychics" have enough faith in their own abilities to put them to a genuine test.
And are you sure none of those "faith healers" might have been MDs as well?:)
I've seen many posts on/. about how bad religion is, but I have yet to see one by someone who has actually taken time to understand religion or any spiritual beliefs.
Really? How do you know? Did every such slashdot post contain a disclaimer, eg. "Note: I have not actually taken time to understand religion or any spiritual beliefs." ?
The difference is I have always been open to different beliefs [...]
The difference is that your bullshit detector has been turned off for a long time and you just haven't realised it.
Once you get into the habit of thinking critically and actually asking the difficult questions, you may find your bullshit detector starting to come back to life. For example, a rather good question to ask those "psychics" you've met is "Why haven't you collected one million dollars from James Randi yet?"
Should they have fired her for making this mistake? Probably not if it was really as simple as making a typo.
It's against my usual instincts to say this, but seriously.... that's a pretty fucking damaging typo. Yes, a lot of other people should be getting fired too (and probably will, sooner or later (probably sooner) if the company really has lost hundreds of millions of dollars), especially the people in charge of the processes. And especially the people who are paid to take responsibility for this sort of shit - at some point in the organisation there should be at least one person (preferably the CEO) who's willing to acknowledge that the buck stops there. That's the person that should be eating a (metaphorical) bullet over this sort of fuck-up.
But still, regardless of the excuse, that's way too big a disaster to just forgive and forget the peon who made the typo. People get fired over mistakes that result in orders of magnitude less damage than this - it'd just be surreal if they didn't fire her. And as I suggested above, it'd be extraordinarily surreal if she was the only one fired... this is way too big a mistake for the bloodletting to be that tiny.
Finally, I said: "under the advice of my lawyer, I am informing you that this call is being recorded".
[... ]
"Remember how you and a couple of others would call me a gimp and drag your foot around when you thought I wasn't looking? I just wanted you to know that I forgive you for it, even if it did make me cry every morning."
Even if this story includes some degree of (unconscious?) enhancement, I still love it. I'm just giggling myself to death at the image of your old manager being publicly outed for what he was. Brilliant. Thank you for sharing.:)
Okay, first... quick check of Luke-Jr's posting history to find out if he's just a boring slashdot stdtroll.
*insert posting history analysis music*
Hmm, no, he doesn't seem to be a troll (seems moderately clueful even). Standard homophobic bigot? Uncertain, but probably not. Has no gay friends and generally no comprehension of gay relationships? *DING DING DING* I think we have a weiner!:-)
Luke-Jr: people do get married without any intent or expectation of having children. It may be a shock to you, but it's true. Really. And that's good wholesome hetero people too!
And this might come as a shock to you too, but the capability of sexual union is not in fact a necessary condition for marriage. It might be a generally expected thing, but it's not necessary.
Finally, even though it may be hard for you to comprehend, I'm reliably informed by persons of the homosexual persuasion that they are in fact capable of sexual union. If you'd like to verify that fact, I'm sure you can find an extensive array of video evidence sprawled around on the wonderful web *wry grin*.
Slashdot Mirror
Hence the bit about growing some fucking balls. :-)
Anyway, the Scientologists are bullies and much prefer picking on the weak. I very very much doubt they'd try using their lawyentologists on a person or media organisation who can actually afford to defend themselves. And their celeb-drones like Cruise/Travolta usually have their own PR teams who use a combination of threats and incentives to keep the media lapdogs on a tight leash.
One of the reasons Tommy is getting so much flak recently is because he's dumped his old PR team (one that was actually competent) for his sister (who is.... not).
It's almost as bad as "virii". What the hell is it with people that they just make up shit words - especially when there are nice usable words like "viruses" and "boxes" free for the taking? Argh.
Er, yes. Probably quite true.
But I agree with what you meant as well. ;-)
I was watching part of an interview with Travolta a night or two ago, and was just thinking... damn it'd be nice if the media would occasionally grow some fucking balls when interviewing these Scientologist drones. "So John... you seriously believe that an evil alien warlord called Xenu dropped hydrogen bombs in volcanos 75 million years ago and oh god this is so stupid I can't even finish the question?"
Cool. So should a company that manufactures guns be held liable for someone who purchases such a weapon then uses it to kill someone?
Oooh, this is fun, let's see how deep into the stupid hole we can go before you say "no". How about someone who lets a friend borrow their car, should they be held liable when the friend runs someone over with that car? But no, that's not enough, let's go to the source - the woman that gave birth to the killer. Let's prosecute that bitch.
*climbs out of the stupid hole*
There are debateable points on both sides in this case, that's one of the reasons it's interesting. Even though, morally speaking, I think it was fair to give the guy a bit of slap on the wrist, I really don't think there's any real public good served by setting this kind of a precedent. So great, they "sent a message" to all those evil people making hyperlinks (maybe next they'll start going after people who tell you where to find the "cheap DVD" street vendors).
This just gives the media lawyers more ammunition for their (Australian) intimidation campaigns. "Hey, we successfully sued this guy just for hyperlinking, you could be next!" Mmm, chilling effects.
Second, there is this thing known as the W3C validator... and last I checked, it seemed to think that my HTML was valid XHTML 1.0 Strict and my CSS was fine.
Third... well, it runs as it should on Gecko/Spidermonkey, which has a reputation as a fairly standards-compliant browser (albeit a bit permissive in some areas).
If it makes you happy, I'll acknowledge that it's a little difficult to be absolutely sure that the DOM interaction with Javascript is correct and standards-compliant. And I'll be a lot happier when I can get it to work on at least one other renderer+javascript implementation.
Surprisingly enough, no, I don't have my own superstrict web browser to test on. I considered doing that, but thought it might be just a bit too much work. :)
But if he hadn't, then this app would probably never have existed at all - or at least not in its current form *shrug*. It's kind of funny to think of how much hung on those words a couple of years ago:
Asynchronous XMLHttpRequest has really opened a lot of doors for this sort of stuff, and there's still a great deal of scope for new and interesting web applications.
Mind you, even if it only ever works on Gecko/Spidermonkey, that's a pretty solid cross-platform browser environment. Hell, I was originally considering making it an XUL application - if I'd done that then it'd only ever run on Mozilla and/or Firefox. Thankfully I realised that I didn't need to go that far, so now we have a good wholesome application for which the target platform is any reasonably standards-compliant web browser. As long as our clients are happy with that (and they are (so far)), that's Good Enough(tm).
This is not your usual web application. It's all a single page, and almost every user action is handled with asynchronous XMLHttpRequests. It's pushing the envelope a fair bit, yes - but my boss is happy and so I'm happy too :). It is pretty amazing what you can do with Ajax when you don't have to be held back by IE limitations.
Well, it's pretty damn simple. If they want to use the app, they use a supported environment *shrug*. Just like any other software vendor. Except it's about a billion times easier to install and run an alternative browser than it is to install and use an alternative operating system on your computer (when my boss was demonstrating to a potential client, it took him all of two minutes to (a) download, install and run Firefox and (b) get our app running on the newly-installed Firefox).
In some ways it's easier if you think of it like the web application is a "real" application. It's just that you install Firefox (or Mozilla, or K-Meleon) on your desktop to "run" the application (instead of, eg. a Java or .NET runtime environment). And of course in the near future our app will work with every major browser except IE.
But it flat out doesn't work at all in IE. Doesn't even come close. Does this matter? No, not at all. Because the people I'm developing this for don't care what browser they're using. As far as they're concerned, they double-click on the Firefox icon to run this application, and that's all that matters.
It's kind of weird when you start thinking of webapp development in these terms, but you quickly get used to it. Intranet webapps are different (often very different) to internet websites.
WTF? I see, JKR's publishers have decided they don't need the back-cover blurb to make sense? Or was that just an extremely weird typo? :-)
And "Leisure Supervisor"?? Ye gods. If that's a real title, then it's possibly the stupidest job title I've ever heard.
Hell, the thing I'd be most worried about is if his clients found out they were unnecessarily paying for a Microsoft SQL Server license. Microsoft themselves probably wouldn't give a damn, but I can easily see the AC's actual customers getting more than a little annoyed at that sort of deception.
But given the vagaries of business in general, I'd have to say that this is one of the least evil things I've heard of a company doing. In fact, in some cases (eg. if AC's company pays for the (unused) SQL Server licenses) it may not be evil at all - just playing Microsoft for a fool. And that's hardly evil, that's almost a public service. :)
It's just such an old and such a shallow and (largely) such a useless trick. It demonstrates nothing of value that an interviewee could give the "right" answer to an old chestnut like that.
I absolutely agree!
But using "ppl" instead of "people"... twice in two sentences... that should be a crime. Preferably punished by being forced to talk only in abbreviations for, say, a month or two.
And slashdot editors posting incessant dupes should be punished by having their tinfoil hats taken away. Sigh. If only.
Someone should start up and maintain a slashdot-editor-dupe-posting hall of shame. Seriously. It got beyond a joke a looong time ago.
It's a good thing that your grasp of genetics (ever heard of recessive traits, just for starters?) is as flawed as your grasp of logic. It increases the chance that your sacramental blessings (ie. kids) will one day come up to you and say "Dad, we still love you and all, but you really are a fucking nutjob."
*facepalm* *grin*
If it weren't for the fact that such a child would probably end up killing him/herself in such an intolerant family environment, I'd say that you really deserve at least one gay kid.
You just keep telling yourself that. After all, if you keep saying it, that makes it true, right? Right?
Ah well, inasmuch as there was ever an argument here, I think you've won it for me now. Thanks. Have a nice life.
Anyway, I'm now going to perform a standard routine that I'm sure you've encountered many times before - probably just about every time you're in a social situation, in fact.
"Right... uh-huh... very interesting..." *backing away, smiling, nodding* "...Excuse me, I... ah... have to go talk to... someone in... another place." *walks away very quickly*
Oh, and BTW: I think you meant "causal", not "casual". ;-)
Look, I understand if you're too much of a cowa*ahem*, I mean, too concerned about your personal privacy to tell us, but I am kind of interested re: which specific religious belief system you currently subscribe to (that includes these elements as part of their, um, party platform). I think most of the Christian variants have a position similar to that you're espousing, but the one most of my family subscribes to is generally fairly mellow on this point. They don't, for example, state that a marriage without kids is not a valid marriage (largely because they're not complete fucking lunatics).
And "sexual perversions are not sex", eh? Would you like to list for us (being absolutely specific) all the sexual "perversions" that you and/or your religion consider to be "not sex"? I'm sure all of us (and probably former US president Clinton) would like to get this straightened out. By you, of course. :)
Thinking in a practical legal sense, it is (to put it mildly) rather impractical to think of the state intervening to verify a married couple is having regular sex, and cancelling their marriage license if they "fail". Or would you consider it okay if they only had sex once, would that be enough to mark that one off on the checklist?
And as for the "intention of having children if possible"... sheesh dude. Are you telling me that you seriously believe that a healthy male adult and female adult in a committed relationship should NOT be allowed to marry unless they promise that they intend to have children?
Seriously, you can (of course) believe what you like (no matter how stupid) about how people should behave, but trying to get your beliefs enshrined in law is a different kettle of donuts. That's where you (should) enter the realm of what's practical and reasonable.
You might have heard of "reason". It's one of the things that your religion tries to discourage.
And yet a significant proportion of the students said that the horoscope matched them. This is the entire point - that it wasn't a genuine horoscope, but people believed it fit them. It was written in horoscope style - full of vague waffle that could fit just about anyone. And of course people will generally remember the hits and ignore the misses. It's just human nature - and professional con-artists are very well aware of how to take advantage of human nature.
Wow. Just.... wow.
And you seriously just accept that? The notion that, for a very small expenditure of time on their part, they could walk away with one million dollars.... one million dollars that they could donate to any charity in the world (if they weren't interested in the money themselves)... and yet they say they're not interested?
Bullshit. Sheer undiluted bullshit.
Oh, and by the way - I can turn invisible and fly through the air. I just don't feel like demonstrating it to anyone, not even for money. You see, money's not that important to me, so that's why I make my living working an eight-to-six office job. So... what do you mean, I'm talking crap?? Don't be so close-minded!
Just out of interest, why don't you ask your psychic pals exactly how much money would have to be offered to make it worth their while? Ten million? A hundred million? A billion? Ten billion? If they just keep saying that "it's not worth their effort"... at some point you just have to realise that it's bullshit.
If I could earn (cue Dr Evil voice) "one meeeellion dollars" simply by demonstrating an ability I possess, you can bloody well be certain that I'd do it.
The reason your "psychic" acquaintances don't take up the Randi challenge is because they know it's incredibly unlikely that they'd pass, and it'd be an embarrassing waste of time for them... though I suspect the embarrassment factor would be the biggest component.
Pot, meet kettle.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." -- Philip K. Dick.
If your psychic acquaintances had any genuine abilities, they shouldn't disappear just because they're faced with a sceptic. The reality is that very few "psychics" have enough faith in their own abilities to put them to a genuine test.
Believe me, MDs can look like idiots too.
And are you sure none of those "faith healers" might have been MDs as well? :)
Really? How do you know? Did every such slashdot post contain a disclaimer, eg. "Note: I have not actually taken time to understand religion or any spiritual beliefs." ?
The difference is that your bullshit detector has been turned off for a long time and you just haven't realised it.
Once you get into the habit of thinking critically and actually asking the difficult questions, you may find your bullshit detector starting to come back to life. For example, a rather good question to ask those "psychics" you've met is "Why haven't you collected one million dollars from James Randi yet?"
It's against my usual instincts to say this, but seriously.... that's a pretty fucking damaging typo. Yes, a lot of other people should be getting fired too (and probably will, sooner or later (probably sooner) if the company really has lost hundreds of millions of dollars), especially the people in charge of the processes. And especially the people who are paid to take responsibility for this sort of shit - at some point in the organisation there should be at least one person (preferably the CEO) who's willing to acknowledge that the buck stops there. That's the person that should be eating a (metaphorical) bullet over this sort of fuck-up.
But still, regardless of the excuse, that's way too big a disaster to just forgive and forget the peon who made the typo. People get fired over mistakes that result in orders of magnitude less damage than this - it'd just be surreal if they didn't fire her. And as I suggested above, it'd be extraordinarily surreal if she was the only one fired... this is way too big a mistake for the bloodletting to be that tiny.
Even if this story includes some degree of (unconscious?) enhancement, I still love it. I'm just giggling myself to death at the image of your old manager being publicly outed for what he was. Brilliant. Thank you for sharing. :)
Okay, first... quick check of Luke-Jr's posting history to find out if he's just a boring slashdot stdtroll.
*insert posting history analysis music*
Hmm, no, he doesn't seem to be a troll (seems moderately clueful even). Standard homophobic bigot? Uncertain, but probably not. Has no gay friends and generally no comprehension of gay relationships? *DING DING DING* I think we have a weiner! :-)
Luke-Jr: people do get married without any intent or expectation of having children. It may be a shock to you, but it's true. Really. And that's good wholesome hetero people too!
And this might come as a shock to you too, but the capability of sexual union is not in fact a necessary condition for marriage. It might be a generally expected thing, but it's not necessary.
Finally, even though it may be hard for you to comprehend, I'm reliably informed by persons of the homosexual persuasion that they are in fact capable of sexual union. If you'd like to verify that fact, I'm sure you can find an extensive array of video evidence sprawled around on the wonderful web *wry grin*.