No there aren't, there are a bunch of scientologists who think Mwa mwa, mwa, mwa mwa mwa mwa Thetans.
Seriously, while some people do just believe what they're told, the guy who made the e-meter obviously knew enough to do so and so must have understood just how ridiculous the concept is. (Not ridiculous that a galvanometer could detect unknown problems, but ridiculous if assumed to be true without testing...)
They don't have to know better, just enough to know that they shouldn't make crazy claims without proof, for it to be fraud.
It's not GNU/Linux when Linus writes it, it's GNU/Linux when Redhat packages it with the GNU tools. The same GNU tools you'd rush to install on a Sun, Windows, etc.
Simply saying "Linux" is simplistic, ignoring many possible configurations for Linus's software, from a standalone OS to an entire platform with windowing system, etc.
Besides, if you use GNU you're using a different flavor, the --options, etc. Partly it does give credit to RMS, but mainly it's just a proper identifier. So you can discuss your system and know what will be compatible.
If you like programming, or want to like programming, try Ruby. If you don't like coding but do it for work, Java (which will make you hate it all that much more) - that ecosystem will generate a lot of stable work. Boo is supposedly neat, and runs on.NET (as does IronRuby...) which might be worth looking into if you're already lost to the dark side.
It's amazing how little Ruby you have to write to equal C or Java. Not because it's cryptic either, but because it just does the right thing. It's hard to explain how a few good defaults make something so much easier.
The idea that Bush had "absolute power" is preposterous
Great. Then he'll be charged for overstepping his bounds. Right? Because there's no way he was legally entitled to allow torture, lie about Iraq evidence, etc.
But if he's not going to be charged with his crimes then what's the practical difference?
Sure, he couldn't eat a baby and get away with it, but he has gotten away with ordering illegal wiretapping, kidnapping, and more.
he was re-elected despite it.
He never admitted to lying, it became clear during his second term just how little evidence he had and the extent of the prisoner torture, the wiretapping, etc.
When you understand how both American and international law work
Oh, it's obvious how they (don't) work. The fact that Bush's crimes will never be addressed is a problem of money/power influencing the courts, not that he actually had the legal right to order the things he did. He's not entitled to single-handedly break treaties but the actions he ordered were intentional treaty violations.
He's absolved of specific murder guilt in ordering a war, but it's obvious that if he lied about the evidence to support the war that he's guilty, and that's pretty evident by now.
Even if American law absolved him, and there's no way it actually does, why shouldn't the Iraqis order his death/abduction-trial-execution, as he did for Saddam? Or the Canadians for his attack on their citizens (though woefully they'd merely imprison him if they did).
It needs specifying. If you had example configuration files and how they would be changed with various operations, examples of what the dialogs should be like, and other details planned out you could probably get someone to program it pretty easily. It doesn't sound like it'd be a lot of code for a CLI app that helped with some of the discovery/etc.
Ahhh yes, and now I clearly remember how we all made him above the law! Yes, you're right... it started as a mere presidential election and then we let him eat that kid's heart and say that thing about the devil, then the smoke, and the eight years of blackness! Yeah, how could I forget.
Sorry asshole. The president was (badly) elected but is still expected to follow the laws of the land. That he did not feel it necessary was proof that he was a dictator.
He also lied and got us into a useless war that has killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, thousands of Americans, and was designed JUST to get Saddam.
That whole war on false pretenses thing... Maybe you're too fucking retarded to follow along here, but that's murder. Conspiracy to commit perhaps, but still a ticket to the big house for anyone not above the law.
We must rid of presidents who see this as a kingdom.
By any standard of proof whereby ANYTHING can be proven (ie, not brain-in-jar thought experiments) you could prove that he was somewhere else when he claims to have witnesses the events. Or you could find video evidence of him and conspirators writing documents to leak, discussing the scam.
Of course, anything the NSA says is suspect and imho a sick dog would have more credibility. But I was pointing out that this isn't proving a negative, just proving the positive assertion that it was knowingly a lie, thus proving that it isn't an honest report of actual circumstances, even if it did happen to be right. (Not that I think it likely to be wrong, given the other wiretapping allegations and the gov's total disregard to the law.)
How do you define content? It had what I needed, and links to the rest.
People "choose" to visit the occasional linkfarm
More than once? Knowingly? By searching for it specifically?
Randomly making links out of words on a page doesn't make for relevance.
Those link things you think are random are really because people want the terms used to be defined.
Honestly, it's like you once read SEO tricks and got "link farm" stuck in your head. It's not the number of links, it's the overall relevance of the site.
Frankly, if you consider Wikipedia overrated complain to Google and use another search engine that meets your exacting standards.
No, he's a dictator. I'm not aware of anyone voting to detain Maher Arar.
Bush's big game was shipping people overseas where he could pretend the rules of the USA didn't apply. There he wholeheartedly supported torture.
He's easily guilty of kidnapping, torture, and a few cases of murder. That's if you don't get into the issue of guilt over ordering an invasion on false premises, etc.
What could it possibly matter though? It's not like WP is running out of article space. It's not like they don't already have disambiguation pages...
How notable is some guy from a small town? Maybe not very until his grandchild becomes famous or something, but if the only information about him is in some rare almanac we'd never know because it wouldn't be online and searchable. If he was on Wikipedia nobody would have been annoyed by his page (it's not as if you could read the whole site or anything) and yet it would be available to everyone instantly if they wanted.
Chances are you're just a raving asshole and the ability to delete something someone put some time into gets you off. People like that are the only ones who ever vote to delete something because it's not notable enough.
No, you're just simple. Link farms don't have content. Link farms deceive people into going there. People choose to go to Wikipedia. The number of links isn't relevant to anything.
Google chooses to keep rating them high because putting Wikipedia at the top pleases searchers.
It's up to Google to decide if they want to "honor" the nofollow tag on any domain. They could easily choose not to if they thought they knew better than Wikipedia.
Kidnapping US and Canadian citizens and shipping them off to foreign countries for torture. Just saying, you know, that if anyone tried to ship me off to Guantanamo, or worse, I'd consider it an act of war.
If Osama did any of what Bush did we'd agree he should taste MoaB.
Are you sure? Bush hung Saddam for his war crimes, wouldn't it be neutral to do the same? Not for spite, just because it's a good example. Dictators who order people to their death should be removed - permanently.
I'm not neutral. I'd have a party. But it doesn't seem like a Rep/Dem issue.
I like your idea about the magnetic business card, we'll trade.
I've considered fliers but thought more of a newsletter would be good - articles about the type of stuff we do, tips on the stuff I don't want to do for them, etc.
Are you a horrible salesperson, or have you never tried?
Try writing up a simple proposal letter (on a simple letterhead) - no sales talk, just "We provide tech services for these areas at a rate of $x/hour, etc. - Standard services are 'virus checkups $x/PC', 'wireless setup and optimization', etc". Send these by snail-mail - not just for the no-spam principle, but many of your potential clients won't be able to read email (perhaps that's why they'll need you.) Figure $1/mail, for stamps and supplies. Maybe 10 per week at first...?
When someone calls, tell them you're assigning yourself as the personal tech for their company - you'll handle all communication, by default it'll be you doing on-site work, and so on. This sort of explains the lack of a secretary.
Have business cards when you show up. Nothing fancy, just as long as it doesn't look like you printed them yourself. You won't show your personal resume so your business papers and clothes/self are all they have until they see your work. Business-like (conservative and washed) is far more important than style.
Once you've got money from one job see a (non H&R block) accountant to get help with taxes, payroll, incorporation, etc.
Notice that at no point here are you actually expected to sell anything. The letter does all that and they call you when they're interested. You answer the phone as a technician, no sales, so no stress there. You'd have to keep track of time, bill, etc, but that's pretty easy.
I think the fake ratings are more of a studio/marketing level thing, so the $5 per wouldn't be a deterrent.
Also, knowing what you say about Netflix's rating algorithm, these shills would highly simply highly rate everything in their likely target's likely faves list. If you're shilling for a new fantasy, rate it at 5 and LotR at 4.5, say "It even beats the Balrog scene - until now my favorite ever!" for a little bit more realism. They aren't trying to fake their way into the hall-of-fame (which requires beating the competition), just tricking some people.
I'm in the middle of writing something somewhere between Tweak and DF Manager, in Ruby. I liked Armadillo Run, GTA (not for the missions), Morrowind (much more than Oblivion). And Quake1 multiplayer. Halo's original demo videos looked awesome...
Somewhat, but it doesn't mean we should prevent reviews/analyses being up at Wikipedia, just that maybe Netflix would realize that 99.5% of THEIR site's reviews that are out before the movie are going to be lies and astroturfing.
Preventing likely fake reviews would make them more useful for customers.
Hey, YOU jumped in here to give Steam a blowjob. You simply can't handle the fact that Steam really does suck for a couple of big reasons, and like an Apple fanboy you get thoroughly pissed off when your favorite isn't everyone's.
Only a shill would bother hyping someone nobody else disagreed with (the handiness of not walking to a store) instead of the issue everyone minded (not actually owning the things you bought).
When they finally stop providing the games hopefully you can still download them from your less-trusting peers who bought physical media, or made sure they had cracks available.
Who, other than an Adobe or MS Exec wants it to embedded and obfuscated like that? YouTube is popular because of the content, the free hosting, and (pray for their souls) the forums, not their stunning UI.
DIVX was amazing too - rent a movie and never have to return it.
It just sucks because as soon as the company goes out of business all the promises they made go away. "Purchased" discs stopped working.
How far will you get (do you even do backups of the Steam games?) installing the games when Valve decides it's not worth providing access anymore?
But nobody is saying it rocks to go out into the snow to buy a game, so your comment that Steam rocks because it's easy isn't really a win. Yes, everyone agrees that Steam is more convenient. It's just that we don't agree Valve or anyone else is trustworthy enough (given all the evidence otherwise, specific and general) to bother paying for something so easily taken away.
Some of us just don't like product with kill switches.
But unless you're paid you're not an astroturfer... just a fanboy shill I guess.
Slashdot Mirror
No there aren't, there are a bunch of scientologists who think Mwa mwa, mwa, mwa mwa mwa mwa Thetans.
Seriously, while some people do just believe what they're told, the guy who made the e-meter obviously knew enough to do so and so must have understood just how ridiculous the concept is. (Not ridiculous that a galvanometer could detect unknown problems, but ridiculous if assumed to be true without testing...)
They don't have to know better, just enough to know that they shouldn't make crazy claims without proof, for it to be fraud.
It's not GNU/Linux when Linus writes it, it's GNU/Linux when Redhat packages it with the GNU tools. The same GNU tools you'd rush to install on a Sun, Windows, etc.
Simply saying "Linux" is simplistic, ignoring many possible configurations for Linus's software, from a standalone OS to an entire platform with windowing system, etc.
Besides, if you use GNU you're using a different flavor, the --options, etc. Partly it does give credit to RMS, but mainly it's just a proper identifier. So you can discuss your system and know what will be compatible.
If you like programming, or want to like programming, try Ruby. If you don't like coding but do it for work, Java (which will make you hate it all that much more) - that ecosystem will generate a lot of stable work. Boo is supposedly neat, and runs on .NET (as does IronRuby...) which might be worth looking into if you're already lost to the dark side.
It's amazing how little Ruby you have to write to equal C or Java. Not because it's cryptic either, but because it just does the right thing. It's hard to explain how a few good defaults make something so much easier.
And having printed an unenforceable rule makes it valid? Why is this?
The idea that Bush had "absolute power" is preposterous
Great. Then he'll be charged for overstepping his bounds. Right? Because there's no way he was legally entitled to allow torture, lie about Iraq evidence, etc.
But if he's not going to be charged with his crimes then what's the practical difference?
Sure, he couldn't eat a baby and get away with it, but he has gotten away with ordering illegal wiretapping, kidnapping, and more.
he was re-elected despite it.
He never admitted to lying, it became clear during his second term just how little evidence he had and the extent of the prisoner torture, the wiretapping, etc.
When you understand how both American and international law work
Oh, it's obvious how they (don't) work. The fact that Bush's crimes will never be addressed is a problem of money/power influencing the courts, not that he actually had the legal right to order the things he did. He's not entitled to single-handedly break treaties but the actions he ordered were intentional treaty violations.
He's absolved of specific murder guilt in ordering a war, but it's obvious that if he lied about the evidence to support the war that he's guilty, and that's pretty evident by now.
Even if American law absolved him, and there's no way it actually does, why shouldn't the Iraqis order his death/abduction-trial-execution, as he did for Saddam? Or the Canadians for his attack on their citizens (though woefully they'd merely imprison him if they did).
It needs specifying. If you had example configuration files and how they would be changed with various operations, examples of what the dialogs should be like, and other details planned out you could probably get someone to program it pretty easily. It doesn't sound like it'd be a lot of code for a CLI app that helped with some of the discovery/etc.
Ahhh yes, and now I clearly remember how we all made him above the law! Yes, you're right... it started as a mere presidential election and then we let him eat that kid's heart and say that thing about the devil, then the smoke, and the eight years of blackness! Yeah, how could I forget.
Sorry asshole. The president was (badly) elected but is still expected to follow the laws of the land. That he did not feel it necessary was proof that he was a dictator.
He also lied and got us into a useless war that has killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, thousands of Americans, and was designed JUST to get Saddam.
That whole war on false pretenses thing... Maybe you're too fucking retarded to follow along here, but that's murder. Conspiracy to commit perhaps, but still a ticket to the big house for anyone not above the law.
We must rid of presidents who see this as a kingdom.
It's up to Google
They will do it until it no longer suits them to do so. Especially in cases where it only affects page-rank, not privacy or usability.
There are virus creation kits - you press a button and they infect an executable.
Even if you were going to write your own spyware you wouldn't write it into an office suite, you'd just bundle it along with.
Actually writing a working malicious app and integrating it into something like OO would be a ton of work, far more than the alternatives.
By any standard of proof whereby ANYTHING can be proven (ie, not brain-in-jar thought experiments) you could prove that he was somewhere else when he claims to have witnesses the events. Or you could find video evidence of him and conspirators writing documents to leak, discussing the scam.
Of course, anything the NSA says is suspect and imho a sick dog would have more credibility. But I was pointing out that this isn't proving a negative, just proving the positive assertion that it was knowingly a lie, thus proving that it isn't an honest report of actual circumstances, even if it did happen to be right. (Not that I think it likely to be wrong, given the other wiretapping allegations and the gov's total disregard to the law.)
very charitable about defining "content".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maher_Arar
How do you define content? It had what I needed, and links to the rest.
People "choose" to visit the occasional linkfarm
More than once? Knowingly? By searching for it specifically?
Randomly making links out of words on a page doesn't make for relevance.
Those link things you think are random are really because people want the terms used to be defined.
Honestly, it's like you once read SEO tricks and got "link farm" stuck in your head. It's not the number of links, it's the overall relevance of the site.
Frankly, if you consider Wikipedia overrated complain to Google and use another search engine that meets your exacting standards.
No, he's a dictator. I'm not aware of anyone voting to detain Maher Arar.
Bush's big game was shipping people overseas where he could pretend the rules of the USA didn't apply. There he wholeheartedly supported torture.
He's easily guilty of kidnapping, torture, and a few cases of murder. That's if you don't get into the issue of guilt over ordering an invasion on false premises, etc.
What could it possibly matter though? It's not like WP is running out of article space. It's not like they don't already have disambiguation pages...
How notable is some guy from a small town? Maybe not very until his grandchild becomes famous or something, but if the only information about him is in some rare almanac we'd never know because it wouldn't be online and searchable. If he was on Wikipedia nobody would have been annoyed by his page (it's not as if you could read the whole site or anything) and yet it would be available to everyone instantly if they wanted.
Chances are you're just a raving asshole and the ability to delete something someone put some time into gets you off. People like that are the only ones who ever vote to delete something because it's not notable enough.
No, you're just simple. Link farms don't have content. Link farms deceive people into going there. People choose to go to Wikipedia. The number of links isn't relevant to anything.
Google chooses to keep rating them high because putting Wikipedia at the top pleases searchers.
It's up to Google to decide if they want to "honor" the nofollow tag on any domain. They could easily choose not to if they thought they knew better than Wikipedia.
Easy(ish) to prove the allegations themselves false.
Can't imagine anyone would disbelieve the claims though, given what we already know has been going on.
Kidnapping US and Canadian citizens and shipping them off to foreign countries for torture. Just saying, you know, that if anyone tried to ship me off to Guantanamo, or worse, I'd consider it an act of war.
If Osama did any of what Bush did we'd agree he should taste MoaB.
Are you sure? Bush hung Saddam for his war crimes, wouldn't it be neutral to do the same? Not for spite, just because it's a good example. Dictators who order people to their death should be removed - permanently.
I'm not neutral. I'd have a party. But it doesn't seem like a Rep/Dem issue.
I like your idea about the magnetic business card, we'll trade.
I've considered fliers but thought more of a newsletter would be good - articles about the type of stuff we do, tips on the stuff I don't want to do for them, etc.
Are you a horrible salesperson, or have you never tried?
Try writing up a simple proposal letter (on a simple letterhead) - no sales talk, just "We provide tech services for these areas at a rate of $x/hour, etc. - Standard services are 'virus checkups $x/PC', 'wireless setup and optimization', etc". Send these by snail-mail - not just for the no-spam principle, but many of your potential clients won't be able to read email (perhaps that's why they'll need you.) Figure $1/mail, for stamps and supplies. Maybe 10 per week at first...?
When someone calls, tell them you're assigning yourself as the personal tech for their company - you'll handle all communication, by default it'll be you doing on-site work, and so on. This sort of explains the lack of a secretary.
Have business cards when you show up. Nothing fancy, just as long as it doesn't look like you printed them yourself. You won't show your personal resume so your business papers and clothes/self are all they have until they see your work. Business-like (conservative and washed) is far more important than style.
Once you've got money from one job see a (non H&R block) accountant to get help with taxes, payroll, incorporation, etc.
Notice that at no point here are you actually expected to sell anything. The letter does all that and they call you when they're interested. You answer the phone as a technician, no sales, so no stress there. You'd have to keep track of time, bill, etc, but that's pretty easy.
I think the fake ratings are more of a studio/marketing level thing, so the $5 per wouldn't be a deterrent.
Also, knowing what you say about Netflix's rating algorithm, these shills would highly simply highly rate everything in their likely target's likely faves list. If you're shilling for a new fantasy, rate it at 5 and LotR at 4.5, say "It even beats the Balrog scene - until now my favorite ever!" for a little bit more realism. They aren't trying to fake their way into the hall-of-fame (which requires beating the competition), just tricking some people.
I'm in the middle of writing something somewhere between Tweak and DF Manager, in Ruby. I liked Armadillo Run, GTA (not for the missions), Morrowind (much more than Oblivion). And Quake1 multiplayer. Halo's original demo videos looked awesome...
Somewhat, but it doesn't mean we should prevent reviews/analyses being up at Wikipedia, just that maybe Netflix would realize that 99.5% of THEIR site's reviews that are out before the movie are going to be lies and astroturfing.
Preventing likely fake reviews would make them more useful for customers.
Hey, YOU jumped in here to give Steam a blowjob. You simply can't handle the fact that Steam really does suck for a couple of big reasons, and like an Apple fanboy you get thoroughly pissed off when your favorite isn't everyone's.
Only a shill would bother hyping someone nobody else disagreed with (the handiness of not walking to a store) instead of the issue everyone minded (not actually owning the things you bought).
When they finally stop providing the games hopefully you can still download them from your less-trusting peers who bought physical media, or made sure they had cracks available.
Who, other than an Adobe or MS Exec wants it to embedded and obfuscated like that? YouTube is popular because of the content, the free hosting, and (pray for their souls) the forums, not their stunning UI.
Silverlight - The YouTube creation kit
Not perhaps the catchiest motto...
DIVX was amazing too - rent a movie and never have to return it.
It just sucks because as soon as the company goes out of business all the promises they made go away. "Purchased" discs stopped working.
How far will you get (do you even do backups of the Steam games?) installing the games when Valve decides it's not worth providing access anymore?
But nobody is saying it rocks to go out into the snow to buy a game, so your comment that Steam rocks because it's easy isn't really a win. Yes, everyone agrees that Steam is more convenient. It's just that we don't agree Valve or anyone else is trustworthy enough (given all the evidence otherwise, specific and general) to bother paying for something so easily taken away.
Some of us just don't like product with kill switches.
But unless you're paid you're not an astroturfer... just a fanboy shill I guess.