I've never read or heard of the piece, and I'm not saying it's not a worthwhile and entertaining read; but as a general rule, I try to avoid applying fictional scenarios to real life situations (I'm not saying that you're explicitly a proponent of doing so either).
Fictional speculations are usually designed to be interesting, which normally requires the exaggeration of various plot elements to create conflict.
I guess the root of my objection is based upon all of the times that I've seen people refer to 1984 and other dystopic works as though we have to take immediate action to avoid them. In reality, people seem to continue being people - regardless of technological advancements.
If we think rascism is bad now, just wait until we can create even new ways of grouping people.
But then, once self-change is common enough, those groupings will become meaningless. As any car dealer will tell you in Silicon Valley, don't snub some guy just because he's wearing a ratty T-shirt and shorts, since he may be a billionaire.
How meaningful will groupings be if we have the ability to change our appearances and characteristics the way we change desktop colors on our computers?
All of a sudden we just want to be normal human beings, to be loved and to love..
Puhlease. Who wouldn't want to be healthier, stronger, faster, smarter, wiser? Who wouldn't want their children to have all of the benefits that they could muster?
Why would you think that people couldn't love or be loved because they have genetic advantages?
Extropians are an interesting bunch
on
The Next Generation
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
I spent some time lurking around the Extropian main mailing list. There are some brilliant people with some good ideas there, as well as some real whack jobs.
Max Moore is really one smart guy. I'd recommend reading his Extropian Principles statement.
Then, I guess when companies start seeing benefits from the commercialization from space, those of us who helped push the space program forward with targetted taxes get some kind of big refund?
The shortsightedness of the guy's whole plan is to think that space exploration and utilization projects are just some type of hobby that needs a luxury tax. In reality, one day our progress into space will look a lot like our progress onto the Internet -- it will get cheaper, and all the young people will be amazed at how even their grandparents (you reading this now) are getting out into space too.
Kind of like arresting someone because they might get in a car accident 10 years down the road.
Well, if they can mount a legal challenge, I'm sure they'd rather do so now before bnetd reaches a level of success that might fund more lawyers, servers, users, and bad press.
As long as the bnetd guys can show they did a clean-room reverse-engineering feat, I doubt Blizzard can say much about it.
Traditionally, I think that's been the common wisdom. I think, however, that the DMCA will be brought to bear in this situation to show that bnetd is decoding Blizzard's "copyrighted" data stream without permission.
Imagine if 20 years ago, Compaq had not been allowed to reverse-engineer the IBM PC BIOS.
Imagine if instead that other companies had been forced to develop their own solutions, like Apple did. One could easily argue that we would have a good number of companies that would have brought innovation to the industry, rather than being mired in the stagnation that is the PC. It's all just speculation either way.
Besides, comparing the duplication of a video game environment with the duplication of the PC is thin at best. One could make an argument for reverse engineering BIOS or the MS Word document format, because these are monopolies that can be shown to have detrimental effects on the industry. But bnetd? It's really just a way for people to play pirated videogame software.
but it'll be years before there's any thing even close to being have picking up enough threats and few enough false positives to be considered being in production
Hmm. Well, I can't say much for legal reasons, but the technology has come along a lot further than you realize.
Keep in mind that you're referring to an article that's almost 20 years old dealing with consumer-available technologies. The current commercial and government-grade stuff is way way way beyond that.
Why don't you do what I did, and take your life's savings to start a company. Pay people out of your own money while you don't make a salary for a year while you build your company up.
Then, let your employees spend 90% of their time playing games and screwing around. When you consciously realize where employment comes from and how it affects you personally, I think you'd change your shallow attitude.
Re:this is why the economy is so bad now
on
Games in the Workplace?
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
What's that you say? Apple is still in business, and is the only computer manufacturer that has so much demand they're having to increase prices!? Surely that's not possible..
Actually, Apple came fairly close to going out of business because of a severe lack of work ethic. I worked there in around 1992, and I found the place to be disgusting for anyone like myself who wanted to actually accomplish something. You could never find engineers at their desks, they worked 10, 4 & 2's (That's where you get to work at 10am, leave at 4am, and have a 2 hour lunch break in the middle).
That lack of work ethic showed itself to the public in a string of poorly conceived ideas that were poorly implemented -- almost destroying the trust in Apple's fanatic user base.
It wasn't until Jobs came back and started handing out pink slips left and right to all of the dead wood, that things started to change for the better.
As an Apple insider, I find your analogy to be without merit, and actually almost making the opposite point of the one you were attempting to make.
I ran a staff of about a half dozen ISP support engineers, and managed to find plenty for them to do while they weren't on a call. Having your support people just sit there and play games all day is a disservice to the company and to those people.
I found that most support employees responded positively when encouraged to improve themselves through taking on more and more difficult tasks, as well as self-education.
A good number of my employees may have started off as only being capable off answering the phone for simple support, but ended up getting much better paid engineering and IT jobs.
get ready to have your insurance company jack your rates for going over 65mph
The article didn't mention anything about information gathering for non-crash puposes, that I saw.
Anyhow, if insurance rates do go up for speeders, they should correspondingly go down for those who abide the speed limit. Wouldn't that be the kind of rewards system we'd want to build into the process?
Sounds like Master Card is hurting, and is trying to drum up some more business or something to cover the nut.
I'm sure that that's a factor in their decision, however, one in twenty victims of online fraud is a rather alarming and actionable statistic in its own right.
I really feel sorry for all of the shareware developers who depend upon Kagi.com to process their fees. This will really hurt the individual software developers who provide a valuable service.
I guess you're just quoting from some sources, I have to warn you they are not reliable. Anything claiming that "Po218, Po214, and Po210 are also negatively charged ions similar in size to fluoride and hydroxyl ions" is so far out of the ballpark it's amazing.
This may well be true. I don't claim to be an expert in the area and am relying on sources that seem to be taking a Scientific approach. That's really all I can do at this point, since I'm not going to take the time to study the subject until I'm on par with a professional in the field. Instead, what I must do in this type of situation is to read the summary texts and basic explanations, attempting to find little signs as to the scholarship and adherence to Scientific methods of the authors.
For example, when Gentry says in the mid 90's that no one has even attempted to address his discoveries, it's obvious to me that he's not a person you can trust. You still refuse to address this, despite my bringing it up previously.
Also remember the half-life of Po, we're talking 3.05 minutes for 218, and 150 microseconds for 214. So if Rn dropped out of solution, there would be enough time for the Po 218 to move for a while before all of it decayed, leading to a "tube" appearance.
Nonsense. That's pure speculation. From what I've read, the Rn can pool like bubbles quite rapidly. Since these are processes that no one is really able to reproduce in the lab, your guess is really as good as mine. The only alternative would be to devise some advanced computer models to simulate the situation. I doubt that anyone cares enough to do so in this case, since simple non-God explanations exist.
Likewise Pb-214 (first decay of Po-218), with a 26.8 minute, then Bi-214 with a 19.7 minute, then to Po-214. So there would be weeks between the precipation of Rn 222 (3.825 day half life) and the final decay of Po-214 to get 95% of the Rn222 decayed. In that time there would sure be a "blur". There are none that I'm aware of - do you have peer reviewed, published results to show those? If not, then your scenario does not hold water.
Well, this isn't a subject that has received tons of attention. It's a minor oddity that Gentry has locked onto because he thinks it proves something, but plenty of Scientists have offered rational explanations for why that oddity exists. Most geologists have better things to do with their time, I'd imagine. It's kind of like the egg mystery that was only recently resolved. The exact physics behind why a boiled egg could be spun like a top and a non-boiled egg couldn't be was a mystery. Because God did it? No, because it's a relatively insignificant oddity that no one cared about enough to look at it seriously until recently. This halo thing is the same. No one really cares, and the explanations of how they might have gotten there seem logical enough for most people to go on about their more important businesses.
I found a link that better explains all of the details of how those bubbles of Rn can form and how certain types of rock can reform their crystal structures without returning to the molten state, leading to the curious nature of the halos. Plus, the authors mention numerous reasons why Gentry is barking up the wrong tree. For example, all of the Po halo rocks are found right near uranium deposits, which give off a lot of Rn gas, which then explains the source of the gas for the Po halos. It seems like if Uranium/Radon weren't involved in the process that Po halo deposits would show no relation to Uranium deposits... but they do.
Besides, this whole argument is flawed from the beginning. If God created the universe in 6 days about 6,000 years ago, why did he make most other things appear as though they'd been in existence for billions of years? If God really wanted to leave "fingerprints", the night sky would be relatively dark because the light from most currently visible stars wouldn't have had time to reach us. We'd be all amazed to note how new stars would be appearing all the time, and their appearances would correspond to their distances from us. To the contrary, we can see stars that were formed billions of years ago.
Another example: In the arctic regions, there are layers of ice created by the yearly cycle of buildup and melting. Each year creates a quite visible line in the ice. Scientists have been studying core samples for years now. Typically, they can count about 100,000 lines in the ice before they pressure has blurred things too much to be able to distinguish more. 100,000 lines correspond to 100,000 years. Wouldn't it be interesting if there were on the order of 6,000 lines?
Jeez, and I haven't even brought Evolution into the mix. The weight of evidence in favor of billions of years of evolution is completely overwhelming. One little physical oddity is nothing against the mountain of evidence for evolution. Add in the fact that there are reasonable explanations for that oddity, and the game is over.
Well, I've spent enough time on this oddity myself.
But if you would have actually read Gentry's work, you might understand that he specifically dealt with that objection (cracks allowing flow of radon) in his 1971 and 1974 papers. He showed that the surroundings of the sites where the Po-218 was shown to be had no cracks, fissures, nor crystal imperfections. In short, no way for the Rn to get in there.
But it's a known fact that crystallization of those rocks can occur after the main deposit is formed, so determining whether or not any cracks existed at the time of the depositing of the Rn is impossible. From the article I quoted previously:
Seismic activity opens cracks causing a vacuum into which hydrous fluids carry Ra222. The Ra222 falls out of solution when it decays to Po218. The crystal lattice structure of biotite and flourite contain sites that can accommodate negatively charged fluoride and hydroxyl ions. Po218, Po214, and Po210 are also negatively charged ions similar in size to fluoride and hydroxyl ions. Consequently, polonium isotopes take up lattice positions and concentrate in the biotite and fluorite crystals. The continued replacement mineral intergrowth fills in some of the original cracks giving the appearance of undisturbed granite (Hunt 1992). Although most pictures show halos either along or near obvious cracks.
In other words, you're putting belief in something for which it is impossible to produce evidence. That's bad science.
Actually, the poor level of scholarship is shown more in the (so far) failed attempts to discredit Gentry. Ad hominem attacks on qualified scientists, attacks such as your post, don't help your cause much.
How do you address the fact that in 1994, Gentry produced a video in which he said that the Scientific community has been so stunned by his "discoveries" that they haven't even attempted to refute his claims, when numerous Scientists have more than just attempted to refute them -- they've trounced his claims?
This denial of reality is what I mean when I talk about poor levels of scholarship. Don't you have any interest in your own intellectual integrity? Or do you really think that you can get to Jesus through deceit?
I had my car stolen from me once. When you work your ass off to pay for and maintain a vehicle, you feel totally violated to have some piece of shit come along and take it from you. My car was everything I owned, everything I had worked toward... then some son of a bitch stole it.
*degreed* (as in: went to school for *seven* years for it) doctor of
"alternative medicine,"
Do you realize how long most theologians study the Christian Bilbe, think that it's flawless and 100% literally true, but still don't realize that because the Bible claims that the earth is flat and has four corners -- it's no longer 100% literally true?
Studying bullshit for a great length of time and still not realizing that it's bullshit just makes me pity your wife, not respect her opinion.
In both cases: that need obviated by the application of
certain alternative treatments. Needless to say, the "traditional
medicine" doctors were rather... taken aback. Both swore that what
they saw happen was unheard of in their experience.
Yes, this is why "anecdotal evidence" is considered to be "bad science" when it comes to proving theories. I'm pretty sure that successful homeopathy would be an acceptable means to win the JREF million dollar challenge.
Sounds like you and your wife have a cool million on the way. Congratulations!
Five minutes worth of Googling will show you that Polonium Halos have a simple physical explanation besides the one that Creation Scientists would like to promote.
The fact that Gentry (the guy researching Polonium Halos) has lied about simple things like whether or not anyone in the Scientific community has even attempted to dispute his findings should give you a clue about his level of scholarship.
Sadly, this level of scholarship is typical to Creation Scientists.
The short answer is: It's all cultish pseudo-scientific bullshit, and the Scientific community is still waiting for homeopathy's promoters to actually do some real Science to try to prove its validity. My guess is that we're as likely to see some real evidence from these guys as we are to have John Edward go for (and win) the JREF million dollar challenge.
For instance, they entirely reject the idea of homeopathic medicine. What they neglect to mention is the hundreds of studies proving the effectiveness of this treatment for everything from hangnails to brain tumors.
Because hundreds of kooks claiming shit in unscientific ways isn't the same as Scientific studies using rigorous methods to discover the nature of reality?
You can claim studies with proof as all you want, but until you really and truly embrace the Scientific method, and show results that a reproducible in double-blind studies that aren't equivalent to placebo control groups, you're going to continue to be laughed at. You remind me of the Christian Scientists who continue to claim to have scientific proof showing the flood and the Genesis creation story.
I encourage everyone to bookmark James Randi's web site as a great source of information for the scientifically mind skeptic.
So, what if I have a.com site as the gateway to a bunch of stuff on.prn. Is that legal?
If so, then most porn sites will keep their.com addresses as front pages that then take you to the mostly-hidden.prn domains.
But what if it's ruled that a site that's a gateway to a porn site also has to have a.prn address?
Then what if I put a link to porn in my Slashdot sig? Is Slashdot then required to become a.prn? Is Slashdot then required to police all of its content for abuses to the law? There's a great big can of worms.
Slashdot Mirror
I've never read or heard of the piece, and I'm not saying it's not a worthwhile and entertaining read; but as a general rule, I try to avoid applying fictional scenarios to real life situations (I'm not saying that you're explicitly a proponent of doing so either).
Fictional speculations are usually designed to be interesting, which normally requires the exaggeration of various plot elements to create conflict.
I guess the root of my objection is based upon all of the times that I've seen people refer to 1984 and other dystopic works as though we have to take immediate action to avoid them. In reality, people seem to continue being people - regardless of technological advancements.
If we think rascism is bad now, just wait until we can create even new ways of grouping people.
But then, once self-change is common enough, those groupings will become meaningless. As any car dealer will tell you in Silicon Valley, don't snub some guy just because he's wearing a ratty T-shirt and shorts, since he may be a billionaire.
How meaningful will groupings be if we have the ability to change our appearances and characteristics the way we change desktop colors on our computers?
All of a sudden we just want to be normal human beings, to be loved and to love..
Puhlease. Who wouldn't want to be healthier, stronger, faster, smarter, wiser? Who wouldn't want their children to have all of the benefits that they could muster?
Why would you think that people couldn't love or be loved because they have genetic advantages?
I spent some time lurking around the Extropian main mailing list. There are some brilliant people with some good ideas there, as well as some real whack jobs.
Max Moore is really one smart guy. I'd recommend reading his Extropian Principles statement.
Then, I guess when companies start seeing benefits from the commercialization from space, those of us who helped push the space program forward with targetted taxes get some kind of big refund?
The shortsightedness of the guy's whole plan is to think that space exploration and utilization projects are just some type of hobby that needs a luxury tax. In reality, one day our progress into space will look a lot like our progress onto the Internet -- it will get cheaper, and all the young people will be amazed at how even their grandparents (you reading this now) are getting out into space too.
Kind of like arresting someone because they might get in a car accident 10 years down the road.
Well, if they can mount a legal challenge, I'm sure they'd rather do so now before bnetd reaches a level of success that might fund more lawyers, servers, users, and bad press.
As long as the bnetd guys can show they did a clean-room reverse-engineering feat, I doubt Blizzard can say much about it.
Traditionally, I think that's been the common wisdom. I think, however, that the DMCA will be brought to bear in this situation to show that bnetd is decoding Blizzard's "copyrighted" data stream without permission.
Imagine if 20 years ago, Compaq had not been allowed to reverse-engineer the IBM PC BIOS.
Imagine if instead that other companies had been forced to develop their own solutions, like Apple did. One could easily argue that we would have a good number of companies that would have brought innovation to the industry, rather than being mired in the stagnation that is the PC. It's all just speculation either way.
Besides, comparing the duplication of a video game environment with the duplication of the PC is thin at best. One could make an argument for reverse engineering BIOS or the MS Word document format, because these are monopolies that can be shown to have detrimental effects on the industry. But bnetd? It's really just a way for people to play pirated videogame software.
Umm, oops. Should be "leave at 4pm".
but it'll be years before there's any thing even close to being have picking up enough threats and few enough false positives to be considered being in production
Hmm. Well, I can't say much for legal reasons, but the technology has come along a lot further than you realize.
Keep in mind that you're referring to an article that's almost 20 years old dealing with consumer-available technologies. The current commercial and government-grade stuff is way way way beyond that.
Why don't you do what I did, and take your life's savings to start a company. Pay people out of your own money while you don't make a salary for a year while you build your company up.
Then, let your employees spend 90% of their time playing games and screwing around. When you consciously realize where employment comes from and how it affects you personally, I think you'd change your shallow attitude.
What's that you say? Apple is still in business, and is the only computer manufacturer that has so much demand they're having to increase prices!? Surely that's not possible..
Actually, Apple came fairly close to going out of business because of a severe lack of work ethic. I worked there in around 1992, and I found the place to be disgusting for anyone like myself who wanted to actually accomplish something. You could never find engineers at their desks, they worked 10, 4 & 2's (That's where you get to work at 10am, leave at 4am, and have a 2 hour lunch break in the middle).
That lack of work ethic showed itself to the public in a string of poorly conceived ideas that were poorly implemented -- almost destroying the trust in Apple's fanatic user base.
It wasn't until Jobs came back and started handing out pink slips left and right to all of the dead wood, that things started to change for the better.
As an Apple insider, I find your analogy to be without merit, and actually almost making the opposite point of the one you were attempting to make.
What are they supposed to do?
I ran a staff of about a half dozen ISP support engineers, and managed to find plenty for them to do while they weren't on a call. Having your support people just sit there and play games all day is a disservice to the company and to those people.
I found that most support employees responded positively when encouraged to improve themselves through taking on more and more difficult tasks, as well as self-education.
A good number of my employees may have started off as only being capable off answering the phone for simple support, but ended up getting much better paid engineering and IT jobs.
Make sure to get your vote cast for Dataplay at fuckedcompany.com.
get ready to have your insurance company jack your rates for going over 65mph
The article didn't mention anything about information gathering for non-crash puposes, that I saw.
Anyhow, if insurance rates do go up for speeders, they should correspondingly go down for those who abide the speed limit. Wouldn't that be the kind of rewards system we'd want to build into the process?
Sounds like Master Card is hurting, and is trying to drum up some more business or something to cover the nut.
.
I'm sure that that's a factor in their decision, however, one in twenty victims of online fraud is a rather alarming and actionable statistic in its own right
I really feel sorry for all of the shareware developers who depend upon Kagi.com to process their fees. This will really hurt the individual software developers who provide a valuable service.
I guess you're just quoting from some sources, I have to warn you they are not reliable. Anything claiming that "Po218, Po214, and Po210 are also negatively charged ions similar in size to fluoride and hydroxyl ions" is so far out of the ballpark it's amazing.
This may well be true. I don't claim to be an expert in the area and am relying on sources that seem to be taking a Scientific approach. That's really all I can do at this point, since I'm not going to take the time to study the subject until I'm on par with a professional in the field. Instead, what I must do in this type of situation is to read the summary texts and basic explanations, attempting to find little signs as to the scholarship and adherence to Scientific methods of the authors.
For example, when Gentry says in the mid 90's that no one has even attempted to address his discoveries, it's obvious to me that he's not a person you can trust. You still refuse to address this, despite my bringing it up previously.
Also remember the half-life of Po, we're talking 3.05 minutes for 218, and 150 microseconds for 214. So if Rn dropped out of solution, there would be enough time for the Po 218 to move for a while before all of it decayed, leading to a "tube" appearance.
Nonsense. That's pure speculation. From what I've read, the Rn can pool like bubbles quite rapidly. Since these are processes that no one is really able to reproduce in the lab, your guess is really as good as mine. The only alternative would be to devise some advanced computer models to simulate the situation. I doubt that anyone cares enough to do so in this case, since simple non-God explanations exist.
Likewise Pb-214 (first decay of Po-218), with a 26.8 minute, then Bi-214 with a 19.7 minute, then to Po-214. So there would be weeks between the precipation of Rn 222 (3.825 day half life) and the final decay of Po-214 to get 95% of the Rn222 decayed. In that time there would sure be a "blur". There are none that I'm aware of - do you have peer reviewed, published results to show those? If not, then your scenario does not hold water.
Well, this isn't a subject that has received tons of attention. It's a minor oddity that Gentry has locked onto because he thinks it proves something, but plenty of Scientists have offered rational explanations for why that oddity exists. Most geologists have better things to do with their time, I'd imagine. It's kind of like the egg mystery that was only recently resolved. The exact physics behind why a boiled egg could be spun like a top and a non-boiled egg couldn't be was a mystery. Because God did it? No, because it's a relatively insignificant oddity that no one cared about enough to look at it seriously until recently. This halo thing is the same. No one really cares, and the explanations of how they might have gotten there seem logical enough for most people to go on about their more important businesses.
I found a link that better explains all of the details of how those bubbles of Rn can form and how certain types of rock can reform their crystal structures without returning to the molten state, leading to the curious nature of the halos. Plus, the authors mention numerous reasons why Gentry is barking up the wrong tree. For example, all of the Po halo rocks are found right near uranium deposits, which give off a lot of Rn gas, which then explains the source of the gas for the Po halos. It seems like if Uranium/Radon weren't involved in the process that Po halo deposits would show no relation to Uranium deposits... but they do.
Besides, this whole argument is flawed from the beginning. If God created the universe in 6 days about 6,000 years ago, why did he make most other things appear as though they'd been in existence for billions of years? If God really wanted to leave "fingerprints", the night sky would be relatively dark because the light from most currently visible stars wouldn't have had time to reach us. We'd be all amazed to note how new stars would be appearing all the time, and their appearances would correspond to their distances from us. To the contrary, we can see stars that were formed billions of years ago.
Another example: In the arctic regions, there are layers of ice created by the yearly cycle of buildup and melting. Each year creates a quite visible line in the ice. Scientists have been studying core samples for years now. Typically, they can count about 100,000 lines in the ice before they pressure has blurred things too much to be able to distinguish more. 100,000 lines correspond to 100,000 years. Wouldn't it be interesting if there were on the order of 6,000 lines?
Jeez, and I haven't even brought Evolution into the mix. The weight of evidence in favor of billions of years of evolution is completely overwhelming. One little physical oddity is nothing against the mountain of evidence for evolution. Add in the fact that there are reasonable explanations for that oddity, and the game is over.
Well, I've spent enough time on this oddity myself.
But if you would have actually read Gentry's work, you might understand that he specifically dealt with that objection (cracks allowing flow of radon) in his 1971 and 1974 papers. He showed that the surroundings of the sites where the Po-218 was shown to be had no cracks, fissures, nor crystal imperfections. In short, no way for the Rn to get in there.
But it's a known fact that crystallization of those rocks can occur after the main deposit is formed, so determining whether or not any cracks existed at the time of the depositing of the Rn is impossible. From the article I quoted previously:
Seismic activity opens cracks causing a vacuum into which hydrous fluids carry Ra222. The Ra222 falls out of solution when it decays to Po218. The crystal lattice structure of biotite and flourite contain sites that can accommodate negatively charged fluoride and hydroxyl ions. Po218, Po214, and Po210 are also negatively charged ions similar in size to fluoride and hydroxyl ions. Consequently, polonium isotopes take up lattice positions and concentrate in the biotite and fluorite crystals. The continued replacement mineral intergrowth fills in some of the original cracks giving the appearance of undisturbed granite (Hunt 1992). Although most pictures show halos either along or near obvious cracks.
In other words, you're putting belief in something for which it is impossible to produce evidence. That's bad science.
Actually, the poor level of scholarship is shown more in the (so far) failed attempts to discredit Gentry. Ad hominem attacks on qualified scientists, attacks such as your post, don't help your cause much.
How do you address the fact that in 1994, Gentry produced a video in which he said that the Scientific community has been so stunned by his "discoveries" that they haven't even attempted to refute his claims, when numerous Scientists have more than just attempted to refute them -- they've trounced his claims?
This denial of reality is what I mean when I talk about poor levels of scholarship. Don't you have any interest in your own intellectual integrity? Or do you really think that you can get to Jesus through deceit?
I had my car stolen from me once. When you work your ass off to pay for and maintain a vehicle, you feel totally violated to have some piece of shit come along and take it from you. My car was everything I owned, everything I had worked toward... then some son of a bitch stole it.
I have no mercy for those assholes.
*degreed* (as in: went to school for *seven* years for it) doctor of "alternative medicine,"
Do you realize how long most theologians study the Christian Bilbe, think that it's flawless and 100% literally true, but still don't realize that because the Bible claims that the earth is flat and has four corners -- it's no longer 100% literally true?
Studying bullshit for a great length of time and still not realizing that it's bullshit just makes me pity your wife, not respect her opinion.
In both cases: that need obviated by the application of certain alternative treatments. Needless to say, the "traditional medicine" doctors were rather... taken aback. Both swore that what they saw happen was unheard of in their experience.
Yes, this is why "anecdotal evidence" is considered to be "bad science" when it comes to proving theories. I'm pretty sure that successful homeopathy would be an acceptable means to win the JREF million dollar challenge.
Sounds like you and your wife have a cool million on the way. Congratulations!
Five minutes worth of Googling will show you that Polonium Halos have a simple physical explanation besides the one that Creation Scientists would like to promote.
The fact that Gentry (the guy researching Polonium Halos) has lied about simple things like whether or not anyone in the Scientific community has even attempted to dispute his findings should give you a clue about his level of scholarship.
Sadly, this level of scholarship is typical to Creation Scientists.
What is the idea of homeopathic medicine?
:)
"idea" gives it a bit too much credit.
James Randi had a good explanation of the idea behind homeopathy.
The short answer is: It's all cultish pseudo-scientific bullshit, and the Scientific community is still waiting for homeopathy's promoters to actually do some real Science to try to prove its validity. My guess is that we're as likely to see some real evidence from these guys as we are to have John Edward go for (and win) the JREF million dollar challenge.
For instance, they entirely reject the idea of homeopathic medicine. What they neglect to mention is the hundreds of studies proving the effectiveness of this treatment for everything from hangnails to brain tumors.
Because hundreds of kooks claiming shit in unscientific ways isn't the same as Scientific studies using rigorous methods to discover the nature of reality?
You can claim studies with proof as all you want, but until you really and truly embrace the Scientific method, and show results that a reproducible in double-blind studies that aren't equivalent to placebo control groups, you're going to continue to be laughed at. You remind me of the Christian Scientists who continue to claim to have scientific proof showing the flood and the Genesis creation story.
I encourage everyone to bookmark James Randi's web site as a great source of information for the scientifically mind skeptic.
The fact that these companies try to hide this stuff shows they know the systems are a bit shady.
Yeah! What's this world coming to when you can't trust an outfit who puts out software designed to pirate copyrighted content?
Next thing you know, you won't be able to trust the ingredient label on the back of a bag of pot!
So, it's Oracle's fault, not the company the consultant who actually sold those licenses to California.
Heaven forbid you blame the idiots in the CA government who are too stupid to figure out the $95 million dollar bill for themselves.
No, the *evil* corporation must always be at fault.
So, what if I have a .com site as the gateway to a bunch of stuff on .prn. Is that legal?
.com addresses as front pages that then take you to the mostly-hidden .prn domains.
.prn address?
.prn? Is Slashdot then required to police all of its content for abuses to the law? There's a great big can of worms.
If so, then most porn sites will keep their
But what if it's ruled that a site that's a gateway to a porn site also has to have a
Then what if I put a link to porn in my Slashdot sig? Is Slashdot then required to become a
Nasty nasty stuff.