And those opinions are 100% irrelevant. The opinions that matter include those of the likes of Vladimir Putin, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Nickolas Sarkozy, Kim Jong-Il, Gordon Brown, Hu Jintao and Benjamin Netanyahu. And in that poll, his approval ratings are in the toilet. Every one of these leaders has either insulted Obama or stated that he insulted them, and none of them have shown much respect to the President, primarily because such respect was not earned.
Being loved and weak will get you killed, being strong and respected, or even feared, is a whole lot better. Obama is loved and weak. He has weakened this country financially, politically, and militarily. And I believe that's what he wants, because there's no way he's stupid enough to not be doing those things on purpose.
You do realize you quoted me referring to him as "President Obama", don't you? Given your reading comprehension skills it's no wonder you think he's a good President.
To reiterate what you described: it's not my fault if your business model is flawed. If my favorite site requires a subscription in the future because of ad blocking, I'll either pay it or not when the time comes. I can live with that.
Proving that Americans are not as batshit crazy and ignorant as the rest of the world believes is the international relations equivalent of proving the Riemann Hypothesis.
Funny, I see it as exactly the opposite and given how his utter lack of experience is causing foreign leaders to dis and or ignore him, I would seem to be right. He is getting eaten alive on the global stage and is not doing this country any good.
It is given specifically for improving relations between nations, reducing standing armies, and promoting peace congresses.
That sounds really nice, but doesn't explain Al Gore receiving it. Even if you totally buy into global warming hysteria it still doesn't work. It also doesn't, if you are going to be honest, explain President Obama, who despite all the hype, has never accomplished anything of substance, leave alone improving international relations or anything promoting peace.
The truth is that Nobel Peace Prize is given by 5 guys in Norway to whomever the hell they want for whatever damn reason they want. Lately, that reason has amounted to little more than "Not being George W. Bush". Now, to a lot of people, "Not being George W. Bush" is a laudable accomplishment, but the Nobel Committee cannot pretend they are anything other than another bully pulpit for promoting their preferred flavor of politics.
The standard of living can't be compared, but there are clearly people today whose grasp of reality is tenuous at best.
Of course it doesn't help that tons of movies deliberately obscure the difference between fantasy and reality. Dan Brown for instance claims his works are entirely fictitious, but you know, and he has to know, that lots of people think they are based on historical fact. Oliver Stone makes movies about real events that vary anywhere from an appoximate and fictionalized account of historical events to downright fantasy. And the less said about Al Gore, the better.
The gullibility of our poorly-educated but heavily indoctrinated populace is bad enough, but the fact that plenty of people in power, whether in the "entertainment" business, the "news" business or politicians are more than willing to exploit, and worsen this confusion makes things all the worse.
Orwell expressed a lot of these ideas, but he was a piker compared to some of these folks.
Apparently there was a movie from the 50's, and I apologize for not knowing more info, where the dog was killed, and there was a huge outrage, so Hollywood took the hint.
Of course, people's sensibilities were less benumbed in those days, so maybe it wouldn't be such a big deal now. But given the general philosophical bent in Tinseltown it doesn't surprise me that animals are considered more important than humans. Of course, movies generally avoid doing horrible things to babies or children, too, for much the same reason, but I noticed that the post above seemed indifferent to the concept of someone killing their children compared to their pets.
You know plenty of people laugh at the superstitions of people in the Dark Ages, but science as we know it, didn't exist then. I mean Aristotle had some great ideas, but there was little or nothing to take the place of raw superstition until about the 13th or 14th century (at least in the West).
But what is peoples' excuse today? How is it that people who presumably graduated from the American educational system are no better off than some dirt-farming peasant from barbarian times? Things weren't always this bad. If I had the choice of hiring someone with a high school education from 1909 or someone with a high school education from 2009, I'd choose the 1909 person, and 90% of the time I'd be better off.
But of course or education system is fine, it just needs more money thrown at it.
By the time I hit the streets, the 80386 was the hotness and the 486 was just around the corner. I love hearing tales of the trenches from the Good Old Days. As exciting as technology remains to me, working in the field and using it constantly, I still miss the simpler times. Maybe it's because what I know now would have made me a Technology God 20 years ago, or maybe it's just because there was something different about a time where things were changing rapidly but the field was still on a scale where someone could comprehend a significant chunk of everything that was going on. Or maybe it's just that Old Geezer syndrome.
Anyhow, thanks for the story and might I add, "Bork Bork Bork!"
Yes, I definitely thought of how this might be done using POV-Ray. IANAM, I doubt you could make an isosurface version of the Mandelbulb, but POV-Ray is a full-blown programming language, so I'm sure something can be done.
It might look like a sea slug, but would it act like one?
Stick it in a room with a couple hundred others. See if it tries to pass a health care reform bill so complicated no one could ever understand it. If it does: close enough.
Unless you fear retribution for exposing lawbreaking or something similar that actively serves the good of society, there's no good reason for anonymity, and definitely no right to it regardless.
When you publish something in a public space (on someone else's computer, literally their property), I don't see where you have any right to privacy. It might be useful to maintain the privacy of whistleblowers for their own safety, but that's a very, very small subset of anonymous speech.
Frankly, I would never say anything on-line that I wouldn't want associated with my name (even "ConceptJunkie" which isn't very hard to trace to my real identity). But then again, I'm not an idiot who harasses other people's children (I have my own children to harass, thank you very much).
I disagree. Anonymous speech is fine to a point and something we should protect but only if it's convenient. When you start attacking someone's child, I think it falls into a different realm. Frankly, I think anonymous speech is in most cases cowardly, and is seldom necessary. In the case of whistleblowing, it can be valuable and necessary, but for the most part it serves no purpose and is definitely not covered by the first amendment. The "speech" part, yes. The anonymous part, no. And the commenter is still subject to libel/slander law, or the prohibitions of threats or inciting of violence, etc.
I don't know what "deeply disturbing" amounts to, but it's likely it can associated with fear for the safety of the minor in question. If it amounts to some kind of threat or accusation of illegal activity, identifying the commenter might be called for. But not knowing the actual content, I cannot judge whether it's appropriate in this context.
This is certainly not a cut-and-dried free speech issue.
These days, I make up words. They are probably not subject to dictionary attacks, but are easy enough to remember. For instance, something like "smordlic", combined with a number, or perhaps two silly, but memorable non-words separated by a number. Nonobvious capitalization and/or punctuation make a good garnish.
It's funny, I always want to choose a prime number because it "feels" more random. I know that's silly, but I do it anyway.
Now, I've just given a lot of hints as to what my passwords might be, and it hugely helps me keep them in memory, but I honestly don't see where I've divulged enough information or compromised the domain space of my possible passwords enough to increase my risks unacceptably. Maybe that's naive of me.
I've also started moving my stuff out of passwords.txt and into Keepass from passwords.txt that I've kept for some 15 years or more, but I'm fighting a lot of personal inertia to complete the move.
I also tend to reuse a couple of passwords for thing that are "less important" such online forums, compared to commerce-related passwords and especially work-related passwords. Later, I know if something isn't in the list then it's definitely a "default". Frankly, when every web site and its sister wants a password, it seems pointless to use something generated from quantum noise (or whatever) for things where there really isn't much of a security issue.
Invite your blind friend over and read the book to him. I wonder what the publisher would say about that! If he's consistent, he will still claim you are violating his rights.
I agree with your assessment of the sanity of these people.
I found a small site that did something similar and successfully put something in the shopping cart with a modified price as a proof of concept. I e-mailed the vendor and explained that this was a very easy vulnerability to exploit and they responded that it wasn't a problem since all orders were reviewed by a human as part of processing. Now possibly their volume or product selection was so small that it didn't matter, but it sounds insanely stupid to me. I also e-mailed the company that supposedly provided the software that ran the store but never heard back. This was quite a few years ago, but I don't doubt some people are still doing it.
In fact, I just pinged the idiots that they farmed out some software development to at my job that passing plaintext passwords in the URL probably wasn't a good idea. While this was part of an internal test, I wouldn't have put it past them to end up exposing this functionality to the public in some way. I don't know squat about web security, but I'd already found another serious security flaw.
Although I'd expect better from Microsoft, the fact that it happened doesn't surprise me.
I don't consider that very wise at all, conflating religion with creationism. "Creationism" is the product of relatively recent offshoots of Christianity that attempt to deny, among other things, the role of reason. Despite its popularity in the United States, this kind of thinking is a small aberration in the history of Christian thinking, and from what I've seen, doesn't fit in well with most other major world religions as well.
The reason Christianity and the cultures that adopted it thrived so well throughout the last 2000 years was precisely because it embraced reason, understanding that if man was given a will and intellect by God, it's stupid to think he shouldn't use it. Unfortunately, some people preferred the mindless, rote-learning style of religion, which among other things, dispensed with the burden of actually have to think about the world and deal with reality except in the most brute-force ways, and some of the offshoots of Christianity reflect that, as does Islam.
It may not be easy, but it's always possible. It's sad that everyone suffers because too many people think security through obscurity trumps functionality and flexibility. The incompetent ruin it for everyone in order to punish the lazy and stupid. Sounds like Congress.
While your point is valid, military spending is a small fraction of the reason for this. Entitlement spending far, far outweighs it, and since so much of that is wasted, if not outright stolen, we often aren't even getting anything in exchange for an adequate infrastructure.
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And those opinions are 100% irrelevant. The opinions that matter include those of the likes of Vladimir Putin, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Nickolas Sarkozy, Kim Jong-Il, Gordon Brown, Hu Jintao and Benjamin Netanyahu. And in that poll, his approval ratings are in the toilet. Every one of these leaders has either insulted Obama or stated that he insulted them, and none of them have shown much respect to the President, primarily because such respect was not earned.
Being loved and weak will get you killed, being strong and respected, or even feared, is a whole lot better. Obama is loved and weak. He has weakened this country financially, politically, and militarily. And I believe that's what he wants, because there's no way he's stupid enough to not be doing those things on purpose.
You do realize you quoted me referring to him as "President Obama", don't you? Given your reading comprehension skills it's no wonder you think he's a good President.
To reiterate what you described: it's not my fault if your business model is flawed. If my favorite site requires a subscription in the future because of ad blocking, I'll either pay it or not when the time comes. I can live with that.
And the piece that moves the air around? Probably a mechanical part.
Besides, any movement, mechanical or not, causes stress in the materials and they will wear out in ways that do not happen to non-moving parts.
Maybe they've perfected a very precise use of the transporter.
Proving that Americans are not as batshit crazy and ignorant as the rest of the world believes is the international relations equivalent of proving the Riemann Hypothesis.
Funny, I see it as exactly the opposite and given how his utter lack of experience is causing foreign leaders to dis and or ignore him, I would seem to be right. He is getting eaten alive on the global stage and is not doing this country any good.
It is given specifically for improving relations between nations, reducing standing armies, and promoting peace congresses.
That sounds really nice, but doesn't explain Al Gore receiving it. Even if you totally buy into global warming hysteria it still doesn't work. It also doesn't, if you are going to be honest, explain President Obama, who despite all the hype, has never accomplished anything of substance, leave alone improving international relations or anything promoting peace.
The truth is that Nobel Peace Prize is given by 5 guys in Norway to whomever the hell they want for whatever damn reason they want. Lately, that reason has amounted to little more than "Not being George W. Bush". Now, to a lot of people, "Not being George W. Bush" is a laudable accomplishment, but the Nobel Committee cannot pretend they are anything other than another bully pulpit for promoting their preferred flavor of politics.
The standard of living can't be compared, but there are clearly people today whose grasp of reality is tenuous at best.
Of course it doesn't help that tons of movies deliberately obscure the difference between fantasy and reality. Dan Brown for instance claims his works are entirely fictitious, but you know, and he has to know, that lots of people think they are based on historical fact. Oliver Stone makes movies about real events that vary anywhere from an appoximate and fictionalized account of historical events to downright fantasy. And the less said about Al Gore, the better.
The gullibility of our poorly-educated but heavily indoctrinated populace is bad enough, but the fact that plenty of people in power, whether in the "entertainment" business, the "news" business or politicians are more than willing to exploit, and worsen this confusion makes things all the worse.
Orwell expressed a lot of these ideas, but he was a piker compared to some of these folks.
Yeah, but it would only be irresponsible if a significant proportion of the population were dumb as a box of hammers... oh, I get your point.
Apparently there was a movie from the 50's, and I apologize for not knowing more info, where the dog was killed, and there was a huge outrage, so Hollywood took the hint.
Of course, people's sensibilities were less benumbed in those days, so maybe it wouldn't be such a big deal now. But given the general philosophical bent in Tinseltown it doesn't surprise me that animals are considered more important than humans. Of course, movies generally avoid doing horrible things to babies or children, too, for much the same reason, but I noticed that the post above seemed indifferent to the concept of someone killing their children compared to their pets.
You know plenty of people laugh at the superstitions of people in the Dark Ages, but science as we know it, didn't exist then. I mean Aristotle had some great ideas, but there was little or nothing to take the place of raw superstition until about the 13th or 14th century (at least in the West).
But what is peoples' excuse today? How is it that people who presumably graduated from the American educational system are no better off than some dirt-farming peasant from barbarian times? Things weren't always this bad. If I had the choice of hiring someone with a high school education from 1909 or someone with a high school education from 2009, I'd choose the 1909 person, and 90% of the time I'd be better off.
But of course or education system is fine, it just needs more money thrown at it.
By the time I hit the streets, the 80386 was the hotness and the 486 was just around the corner. I love hearing tales of the trenches from the Good Old Days. As exciting as technology remains to me, working in the field and using it constantly, I still miss the simpler times. Maybe it's because what I know now would have made me a Technology God 20 years ago, or maybe it's just because there was something different about a time where things were changing rapidly but the field was still on a scale where someone could comprehend a significant chunk of everything that was going on. Or maybe it's just that Old Geezer syndrome.
Anyhow, thanks for the story and might I add, "Bork Bork Bork!"
Yes, I definitely thought of how this might be done using POV-Ray. IANAM, I doubt you could make an isosurface version of the Mandelbulb, but POV-Ray is a full-blown programming language, so I'm sure something can be done.
It might look like a sea slug, but would it act like one?
Stick it in a room with a couple hundred others. See if it tries to pass a health care reform bill so complicated no one could ever understand it. If it does: close enough.
I heard of a program called DeCSS. Maybe that's what it does!
I think he also discovered evolution by tying a string to a Galapagos turtle.
Unless you fear retribution for exposing lawbreaking or something similar that actively serves the good of society, there's no good reason for anonymity, and definitely no right to it regardless.
When you publish something in a public space (on someone else's computer, literally their property), I don't see where you have any right to privacy. It might be useful to maintain the privacy of whistleblowers for their own safety, but that's a very, very small subset of anonymous speech.
Frankly, I would never say anything on-line that I wouldn't want associated with my name (even "ConceptJunkie" which isn't very hard to trace to my real identity). But then again, I'm not an idiot who harasses other people's children (I have my own children to harass, thank you very much).
I disagree. Anonymous speech is fine to a point and something we should protect but only if it's convenient. When you start attacking someone's child, I think it falls into a different realm. Frankly, I think anonymous speech is in most cases cowardly, and is seldom necessary. In the case of whistleblowing, it can be valuable and necessary, but for the most part it serves no purpose and is definitely not covered by the first amendment. The "speech" part, yes. The anonymous part, no. And the commenter is still subject to libel/slander law, or the prohibitions of threats or inciting of violence, etc.
I don't know what "deeply disturbing" amounts to, but it's likely it can associated with fear for the safety of the minor in question. If it amounts to some kind of threat or accusation of illegal activity, identifying the commenter might be called for. But not knowing the actual content, I cannot judge whether it's appropriate in this context.
This is certainly not a cut-and-dried free speech issue.
These days, I make up words. They are probably not subject to dictionary attacks, but are easy enough to remember. For instance, something like "smordlic", combined with a number, or perhaps two silly, but memorable non-words separated by a number. Nonobvious capitalization and/or punctuation make a good garnish.
It's funny, I always want to choose a prime number because it "feels" more random. I know that's silly, but I do it anyway.
Now, I've just given a lot of hints as to what my passwords might be, and it hugely helps me keep them in memory, but I honestly don't see where I've divulged enough information or compromised the domain space of my possible passwords enough to increase my risks unacceptably. Maybe that's naive of me.
I've also started moving my stuff out of passwords.txt and into Keepass from passwords.txt that I've kept for some 15 years or more, but I'm fighting a lot of personal inertia to complete the move.
I also tend to reuse a couple of passwords for thing that are "less important" such online forums, compared to commerce-related passwords and especially work-related passwords. Later, I know if something isn't in the list then it's definitely a "default". Frankly, when every web site and its sister wants a password, it seems pointless to use something generated from quantum noise (or whatever) for things where there really isn't much of a security issue.
Invite your blind friend over and read the book to him. I wonder what the publisher would say about that! If he's consistent, he will still claim you are violating his rights.
I agree with your assessment of the sanity of these people.
I found a small site that did something similar and successfully put something in the shopping cart with a modified price as a proof of concept. I e-mailed the vendor and explained that this was a very easy vulnerability to exploit and they responded that it wasn't a problem since all orders were reviewed by a human as part of processing. Now possibly their volume or product selection was so small that it didn't matter, but it sounds insanely stupid to me. I also e-mailed the company that supposedly provided the software that ran the store but never heard back. This was quite a few years ago, but I don't doubt some people are still doing it.
In fact, I just pinged the idiots that they farmed out some software development to at my job that passing plaintext passwords in the URL probably wasn't a good idea. While this was part of an internal test, I wouldn't have put it past them to end up exposing this functionality to the public in some way. I don't know squat about web security, but I'd already found another serious security flaw.
Although I'd expect better from Microsoft, the fact that it happened doesn't surprise me.
I don't consider that very wise at all, conflating religion with creationism. "Creationism" is the product of relatively recent offshoots of Christianity that attempt to deny, among other things, the role of reason. Despite its popularity in the United States, this kind of thinking is a small aberration in the history of Christian thinking, and from what I've seen, doesn't fit in well with most other major world religions as well.
The reason Christianity and the cultures that adopted it thrived so well throughout the last 2000 years was precisely because it embraced reason, understanding that if man was given a will and intellect by God, it's stupid to think he shouldn't use it. Unfortunately, some people preferred the mindless, rote-learning style of religion, which among other things, dispensed with the burden of actually have to think about the world and deal with reality except in the most brute-force ways, and some of the offshoots of Christianity reflect that, as does Islam.
Look at all the manufacturer's cancelled checks and see if any state politicians are mentioned?
It may not be easy, but it's always possible. It's sad that everyone suffers because too many people think security through obscurity trumps functionality and flexibility. The incompetent ruin it for everyone in order to punish the lazy and stupid. Sounds like Congress.
While your point is valid, military spending is a small fraction of the reason for this. Entitlement spending far, far outweighs it, and since so much of that is wasted, if not outright stolen, we often aren't even getting anything in exchange for an adequate infrastructure.