> > Then the Earth cooled enough that liquid water could remain on the surface, dividing the land from the sea. I think I understood that better than the earlier stuff. Then simple stuff like plants evolved. Then animals, including monkey things that looked sorta like us. Then us.
> > Only that isn't what Genesis says. The plants were around before the sun, moon, and stars. Even if every day is a million years, then I find it hard to understand how the plants evolved without a sun.
Huh?
1: In the beginning
2: There was nuttin' but formless goo, branes, quantum foam, whatever the cosmologists can find evidence for, but for lack of a better word we'll call it "waters".
3: EM force decouples from weak force
4: Mean free path of a photon becomes long enough for things to be light or dark
5: We need words for the "light" and "dark"
6-7: Some stuff is "down", some stuff is "up".
8: "Down" is earth, "up" is sky. Day and night now have meaning.
9-10: Water condenses out of the early earth atmosphere. Now meaningful to speak of "land" and "sea"
11-12: Plant life evolves
13: Time Passes
14-18: Holy crap, the big opaque methane atmosphere finally cleared up! Those damn plants must have dumped enough of that poisonous oxygen stuff into the atmosphere that you could see through it! (OK, I had to make that bit up on the fly, but I never said Creationism was science:)
19: Time passes.
20-22: Animal life crawles out of the sea. Age of dinosaurs and birds.
23: Time passes. Asteroid hits. (Oops, our writer must have come back late after the commercial break)
24-25: Age of mammals and early primates.
26-31: Homo sapiens evolves big brain, and starts to 0wn the place.
32+: God's done the hard work, takes the day off. Hilarity ensues.
> But notice this: whenever a modern-day
scientist (or/.'er) encounters the idea that evolution is not how _we_ came to be, he will AUTOMATICALLY think the idea deserves 5 cuckoos, without looking at the evidence.
Au contraire. My 5 cuckoo rating was because I've looked at the evidence for both theories, and come to two conclusions:
1) The proponents of intelligent design do not practice the scientific method, therefore the theory of intelligent design is not a scientific theory in the first place, and on that basis alone, it can be rejected.
2) The fact that ID is not a scientific theory doesn't say anything for or against evolution. It just so happens that the theory of evolution is pretty damn consistent with the data uncovered. (And the "theory" of intelligent design is not as consistent with the data as the theory of evolution.)
> An unhealthy attachment to the status quo will hinder scientific progress as much as following any crackpot idea that comes along...
Absolutely! Einstein was flat-out wrong about quantum mechanics, and Linus Pauling was flat-out wrong about Vitamin C megadosing. Boneheadedness is a human condition, and it's not restricted to creationists.
My point is that even if I did accept ID as a scientific theory, I'd still be forced on the overwhelming strength of the data to reject it in favor of the theory that best fits the data, and that theory is - until someone comes up with a hell of a lot of data saying otherwise - evolution.
And while I haven't personally done radioisotopic dating of rock samples, I know how a mass spectrometer works, and I've even used one. If I really did feel strongly about the issue, I know that I could drop a few hundreds of thosands of dollars over a few years, dig up my own damn rocks, and work it out from first principles. But I'd likely screw it up several times along the way, and that's why I'm willing to stand on the shoulders of others by the mechanism of peer review when it comes to calibrating my tools and understanding the underlying processes.
> >but that because he took the money and ran, and lived within his means, he's still hacking hardware
for the sheer fun of it. > > Its not that hard to live within your means with $20 million.
Tell that to every lottery jackpot winner, pro athlete, rock star, and dot-commer who "made it big", only to run out of cash within a few years
For that matter, (and this is the sad part of the article) tell that to Dennis Hayes.
> The story was meant to be a sad reflection on Hayes-the-man, ended up making me feel good
about being a geek.
Hear, hear.
Don't get me wrong, they're both hackers, and I'd be honored to buy either of 'em a beer. But the most inspirational thing of that article was seeing that Heatherington didn't just get out with the cash -- but that because he took the money and ran, and lived within his means, he's still hacking hardware for the sheer fun of it.
> With this in mind, there's another crazy idea I've been reading up on lately. Intelligent Design, a recent theory that has gained enough respect from the scientific community
Five cuckoos.
From the original Slashdot article:
I was worried about some of his evaluation criteria (see the introduction available on-line as a sample chapter), because he includes several points that strike me as fairly dicey: "Who proposed the idea?"; "How attached is the proposer to the idea?" and "Does the proposer have an agenda?" These all relate to judging the person rather than the idea itself.
Science is a human endeavor. It's conducted by humans. Science is a process, however, and that process is defined in such a way that it doesn't matter which humans conduct it.
Perhaps with homeopathy and other forms of medical quackery coming as a close second, "creation" "science" is the canonical example of why "Does the proposer have an agenda" and "How attached is the proposer to the idea" are important questions you have to ask yourself when evaluating a theory.
The scientific method is independent of humanity. Any sentient being is capable of doing science. But to the best of our knowledge, the only sentient beings that are performing science are humans. We know from observation that humans are fallible. Humans let their emotions get in the way of the facts. When a human is very attached to a theory, and even more so when a human has an agenda that can be advanced by promulgation of that theory, it's not guaranteed, but it's highly more probable, that the human will depart from the scientific method in an effort to cling to a theory that's been repudiated.
Creation "science" fails on:
1A: Manipulative buzzwords - "Intelligent"? "Design"?
1C: Audience the BS appeals to: Self-explanatory here:)
1E: Underdog appeal: "Just the little ol' Christians fighting the hordes of Godless Atheistic Communistic Scientists that Run the Schools"
1F: Requires A Negative View of Authority: As above. Evolution is part of the Grand Conspiracy to Keep The Christians Down.
2B-1: A small group of "experts" pretending to own the field
2B-2: Experts beyond their field of expertise.
2B-3: False claims of objectivity. It used to be called Creation Science, then it got renamed to Intelligent Design. Wonder what it'll be called next week when the scam is exposed?
2E: Blizzard of Numbers - the Creation "scientist" to whom I'm responding is the case in point: "26 variables? 66 variables? Does he really know enough about physics, cosmology, and biology to be sure it's not 27, or 65? Does anyone?!?!
Intelligent Design: Pegs the BS Detector. Five cuckoos.
ID is a nice belief system if you're already a creationist who accepts on faith that the Universe was created by the God of Genesis (optional: 6,000 years ago in a week), but it's not science.
For the record, I'm not bashing Christians here. Frankly, I see zero inconsistency between Genesis and our presently-understood notions of cosmology. Take a guy from 4000 BC and show him a PBS documentary on current theories of cosmology, and ask him to write what he saw. You're likely to get something like "Umm, I saw this vision with moving pictures about how the universe came to be. So, like, first there was nothin'. No time, no space, zilch. Then Something Happened, a couple of branes smacked into each other and nobody knows quite what that means yet. But that was the start of our universe. Then they said something about electromagnetic force breaking symmetry with the weak force, which I couldn't understand, and there was light, which I could understand. Then it cooled enough that the mean free path of a photon got pretty long, and I didn't know what that meant, but that was when it b
> Arguing about something that cannot be stopped is futile and even counterproductive. Its like arguing about how people should wipe their asses. Its impossible to force anyone to follow whatever conclusions are reached, so why argue about it?
Eh? We managed to enforce a redesign of the toilet to require two or three flushes per shit, and spread that pathetic redesign to the entire nation.
My proposal is that whether wipes be done front-to-back or back-to-front, a small webcam-style camera is installed on a pole mounted to every toilet. The camera is pointed down at the squatter/wiper, and some gesture recognition software embedded into the device.
The camera has an RF transponder with a range of 100m, so the toilet can report to the police whether or not the camera's been tampered with. The absence of a response from the transponder is a finable offence. This could be done for about $1500 per toilet, including R&D costs and lobbying costs, and an army of intellectual property lawyers to defend the patent for the next 13 years.
I suppose a dissident could hook up a mirror next to television screen displaying a loop of a videotype of a proper wipe to defeat the system, but the system in its default configuration should handle most of the population.
We've donated the requisite $50,000 to the required 300-odd Congressmen and 65 Senators. It's attached as a rider to a law sponsored by the environmental lobby - the transponders were originally supposed to ensure that people were using transponder-verified 3-flush water-saving models instead of single-flush bogs, and it was an easy sale to the HMO lobby to get the rider ensuring that a system be placed into effect to ensure that asswipes were done in the proper direction. (The Fecal Management Tax Credit of 200% for low- and middle-income families ensures widespread adoption of the new toilet technology - the bottom 50% of the income scale pays $1500 to install the new toilet, and gets $3000 back in government money, so it doesn't cut into our profits by one cent!)
Given the 100,000,000 toilets in America, and the $1500 per unit it'll take to refit, we project revenues of $150 billion over the lifecycle of the project, and earnings of $100B. We go IPO tomorrow (NASDAQ:POOP), and you can get in on the bandwagon any time between now and 2004!
Now - what was that you were saying about certain laws being unenforceable? If it weren't for my upcoming IPO, I was going to say something to the effect that any law, however insane, becomes enforceable when it becomes important enough to the government to see it enforced.
> The problem with the Human Pac-man is that the human body can only consume about 6lbs of food per sitting. If you would recall "The Great Outdoors" with John Candy. The ol' 96er + a few desserts is all he could handle.
Yeah, I just finished playing Human Pac-Man. Didn't need no VR either. Just run around a table with four turkeys, four bowls of garlic mashed potatoes, two bowls cranberries, and pack in 240 bread crumbs! w00t!
(I almost got the 1600-point turkey, but instead it defeated me. Now I know why Pac-Man shrivels up and withers away like that. Tryptophan coma, dude.)
> There's a reason I said estimate: it's more "hands on", and to ensure accuracy, I'd have to
repeat the process many times. > >Many, many times. All in the interest of science, of course. Hubba, hubba.
You're not a mathematician, you're a physicist. Not as bad as an engineer, mind you.
The picture of Elig proves that there exists at least one female mathematician for whom "I'd hit it". As a mathematician, that's good enough!
Re:Consumers
on
Who Is An ISP?
·
· Score: 2, Informative
> It means that unless you have "consumers" using your "Internet access service", you're
powerless against the spammers according to this law.
I have a NAT box and a router. My roommate/parents/grandmother pay me $1/year to administer it. I have a contract proving that.
> > Reading "goatse.cx" and "I'm Feeling Lucky" in one sentence sent shivers down my spine.
> > Not really. "I'm feeling lucky" that I, unlike the gentleman in the picture, do not have a 6" diameter asshole.
At least! I know what to give thanks for tomorrow at the family dinner! Dude, Thanks!
> > a.GIF of a psychotic nun in a bondage outfit clubbing a baby seal to death with an Al Gore doll. > > Please post a link to this pic, as I think you just made it up.
Dude, this is Slashdot, not Fark! (But now that you mention it, perhaps we should send a request to Fark and SomethingAwful.com, and let 'em have at it.)
> The best argument that I can see for requiring a PIN is the ability to assign a "duress PIN" to users. A duress pin enables the security token holder to signal their distress when they are being forced to use their PIN under duress. For example, if someone held up at gunpoint and forced to use an ATM, they can enter the duress PIN. Use of the duress pin would signal the bank to notify the authorities that a robbery is in progress at a particular location. In a computer security environment, a duress PIN could be used to provide access to a honeypot network instead of the production network.
Rant: Why the hell don't the damn banks do that now?
Probably because most lusers won't undersstand and will enter their duress PIN instead of their regular PIN from time to time.
Which really cheeses me off. Duress PINs and duress codes ("Hi Son, everything's fine, is your dog Rover OK?" - when Mom and I, but not Home Invader Tyrone, know that I've never owned a dog named Rover) are simple and undetectable-to-the-adversary methods anyone can use to increase their own level of personal security.
> I'm not laughing. The question is this: "Is anyone else listening?"
A lot of people (or their machines) are listening. Many of them work for General Ashcroft. Many of them do not. Only recently have the people running the machines been allowed to talk to each other. (It used to be that if the people running not-the-General's machines talked to the people running DoJ machines, both of them went to jail. That little bit of 60s-era enlightenment cost us 3,000 people, $100B of property damage, caused two wars so far, and delayed the present global economic recovery by a year.)
Let me put it this way: If we were really heading into a police state (as opposed to merely a secure state), you, along with everyone else who uses terms like "Herr Ashcroft" and "Fatherland Securite", have just committed suicide by posting pseudonymously to a message board on a monitored network.
So fess up. If you're one of those people, are you truly suicidal, or are you merely suffering from terminal Godwinian hyperbole? There are people who can help.
> Imagine how this could permanently squeeze out anyone who isn't associated with the RIAA (indie labels, or just people making music on their own). Since the RIAA would be the only source, and given their power they could push everyone else around semi-legally, everyone would be forced to buy into their world. I guess this would ultimately mean that I couldn't webcast my own music, I wouldn't be able to sell my songs from my website without paying them, etc.
> >
I have faith that SOMEONE in the government will see the absurdity of this request and will stop it before it gets too far.
Funny. I have faith that 500-odd people in the government will see the absurdity of this request, also see that has a cute acronym, and that it deals with (evil) pr0n in the (eviler!) Intarweb. And that it will path both houses with a huge majority.
We obviously mean different things when we say "faith". What do you mean by "faith", and what do you smoke to find it?
So a couple of noted cryptographers have come up with a secure, verifiable, electronic voting system and put the design out in the open for anyone to use. Like that was a challenge.
Like, hey, who the hell does this Rivest guy think he is, and what (apart from this stupid "Ph.D" stuff in "Computer Science" or "Mathematics" or "Cryptography", such a small title he has) makes him think he's any smarter than Penelope Bonsall, who's got a way cooler title "Director of the Office of Election Administration at the Federal Election Commission".
"The computer scientists are saying, 'The machinery you vote on is inaccurate and could be threatened; therefore, don't go. Your vote doesn't mean anything.'
Penelope Bonsall, Director of the Office of Election Administration at the Federal Election Commission, A Very Important Person Who's Smarter And Better Than Those Goofy Computer Scientists Because She Has A Bigger Title And Burns Through More Taxpayer Dollars In A Week Than That Rivest Dude Probably Generated In His Entire Working Career!
Rivest's system is clearly unworkable. Where's the wining and dining of sales reps? Where's the backroom deals involving hookers and cocaine? Where's the vendor-lock-in? Where are the service contracts and extra government departments required to oversee them? Oh, sure, Rivest can lay the smack down on "where's the beef" when it comes to building a secure and verifiable electronic voting system, but where's the pork?
An opportunity to quote one of my favorite bits of.sigfodder of all time:
Now, I knew this was coming, but that still didn't prepare me to actually
see it. I'm looking at this thinking "You know, that couldn't be ANY MORE
WRONG if it was in HTML with a.GIF of a psychotic nun in a bondage outfit
clubbing a baby seal to death with an Al Gore doll." I mean, _ew_. Is that
supposed to mean anything to ANYBODY? Can I put that address on an
envelope and have it get delivered somewhere other than "Ampersand
Incorporated"? WHAT IDIOT THINKS THAT THIS IS A GOOD IDEA?
Huey, on news.admin.net-abuse.email, commenting on the same issue, over two and a half years ago.
> In that same vein, it behooves each person to make an effort not to use those words. This includes not only words that have racist connotation (nigger, spic, wop, etc.), but also words that are simply recognized as vulgar (fuck, shit, cunt, etc.).
For a really good time, go to a campus after the next terrorist attack, and the next time you overhear a heated argument between a hyperliberal Jew-hater and a redneck Moslem-hater, wait for the hick to refer to Arabs as "sand niggers". Then turn around and say "Huh? Dude, what the hell kind insult is that? What do you have against black people?"
Then watch as the mindfuck hits both the hippie and the redneck simultaneously. Enjoy the *boggle* on their faces as their parsing centers slowly fry, but don't forget to use some of those precious seconds to locate the nearest exit when the first one to figure it out goes apeshit on you.:)
> Mothercare have, or were going to, release an updated version of Humpty Dumpty in which the
poor egg shaped fellow was put back together and lived happily ever after in order to protect
children from a perilous dilemma.
That's just fucking sad.
The whole point of Humpty Dumpty is to teach a kid that Some Mistakes Can't Be Undone with a kind word and a moronic lecture about diversity.
(And when the kid is a little older, it can be used to teach him about denatured protein and why you can't unscramble an egg.)
> > Fuck, it's been part of the English language for seven centuries. > > But what about those of us in the United States? Around here, "fuck" is considered to be a *dirty* word, and an insult to address a person or persons as "a fuck" or "fucks".
Whereas being called a "fucker" is value-neutral.
If I called you an insightful fuck, you'd kinda blink at me and wonder what I was talking about. Whereas if I called you an insensitive fuck, you'd know exactly what I was talking about.
But if I say "That sharkey, he's an insightful fucker", and you overheard it... or if I came up to you and said "Dude, you are one smart fuck", you'd also know exactly what I meant, and you'd know I was giving you a compliment.
(The English Language: "What the fuck? What the fucking fuck fuck?":)
> I thought the first amendment rights superceded such non-sense anyhow. I'll call it whatever the hell I want. Arbitrarily picking words to be offended with is a very silly practice. I'm offended by the word cheese, from now on, I want everyone to use fromage. Isn't that about the same caliber.
What? Caliber? I'm calling the Office of Diversity and Tolerance and having you fired! Guns are baaaaaad, mmmmmkay!
> > Now if only they'd come for the trite and the histrionic:-) > > Hopefully they'll come for the carelessly apathetic first.;-)
Slashdotron 2084:
"It's the 100th anniversary of Martin Niemoller's death, and almost 81 years since they came for the carelessly apathetic, and they're still working through the backlog! w00t!"
Slashdot 2184:
"...and when they finally finished with the carelessly apathetic, there was no one left to vote for me!"
Slashdot Mirror
>
> Only that isn't what Genesis says. The plants were around before the sun, moon, and stars. Even if every day is a million years, then I find it hard to understand how the plants evolved without a sun.
Huh?
1: In the beginning :)
2: There was nuttin' but formless goo, branes, quantum foam, whatever the cosmologists can find evidence for, but for lack of a better word we'll call it "waters".
3: EM force decouples from weak force
4: Mean free path of a photon becomes long enough for things to be light or dark
5: We need words for the "light" and "dark"
6-7: Some stuff is "down", some stuff is "up".
8: "Down" is earth, "up" is sky. Day and night now have meaning.
9-10: Water condenses out of the early earth atmosphere. Now meaningful to speak of "land" and "sea"
11-12: Plant life evolves
13: Time Passes
14-18: Holy crap, the big opaque methane atmosphere finally cleared up! Those damn plants must have dumped enough of that poisonous oxygen stuff into the atmosphere that you could see through it! (OK, I had to make that bit up on the fly, but I never said Creationism was science
19: Time passes.
20-22: Animal life crawles out of the sea. Age of dinosaurs and birds.
23: Time passes. Asteroid hits. (Oops, our writer must have come back late after the commercial break)
24-25: Age of mammals and early primates.
26-31: Homo sapiens evolves big brain, and starts to 0wn the place.
32+: God's done the hard work, takes the day off. Hilarity ensues.
Au contraire. My 5 cuckoo rating was because I've looked at the evidence for both theories, and come to two conclusions:
1) The proponents of intelligent design do not practice the scientific method, therefore the theory of intelligent design is not a scientific theory in the first place, and on that basis alone, it can be rejected. 2) The fact that ID is not a scientific theory doesn't say anything for or against evolution. It just so happens that the theory of evolution is pretty damn consistent with the data uncovered. (And the "theory" of intelligent design is not as consistent with the data as the theory of evolution.)
> An unhealthy attachment to the status quo will hinder scientific progress as much as following any crackpot idea that comes along...
Absolutely! Einstein was flat-out wrong about quantum mechanics, and Linus Pauling was flat-out wrong about Vitamin C megadosing. Boneheadedness is a human condition, and it's not restricted to creationists.
My point is that even if I did accept ID as a scientific theory, I'd still be forced on the overwhelming strength of the data to reject it in favor of the theory that best fits the data, and that theory is - until someone comes up with a hell of a lot of data saying otherwise - evolution.
And while I haven't personally done radioisotopic dating of rock samples, I know how a mass spectrometer works, and I've even used one. If I really did feel strongly about the issue, I know that I could drop a few hundreds of thosands of dollars over a few years, dig up my own damn rocks, and work it out from first principles. But I'd likely screw it up several times along the way, and that's why I'm willing to stand on the shoulders of others by the mechanism of peer review when it comes to calibrating my tools and understanding the underlying processes.
>
> Its not that hard to live within your means with $20 million.
Tell that to every lottery jackpot winner, pro athlete, rock star, and dot-commer who "made it big", only to run out of cash within a few years
For that matter, (and this is the sad part of the article) tell that to Dennis Hayes.
Hear, hear.
Don't get me wrong, they're both hackers, and I'd be honored to buy either of 'em a beer. But the most inspirational thing of that article was seeing that Heatherington didn't just get out with the cash -- but that because he took the money and ran, and lived within his means, he's still hacking hardware for the sheer fun of it.
Before I grow up, I wanna be like Heatherington.
Five cuckoos.
From the original Slashdot article:
Science is a human endeavor. It's conducted by humans. Science is a process, however, and that process is defined in such a way that it doesn't matter which humans conduct it.
Perhaps with homeopathy and other forms of medical quackery coming as a close second, "creation" "science" is the canonical example of why "Does the proposer have an agenda" and "How attached is the proposer to the idea" are important questions you have to ask yourself when evaluating a theory.
The scientific method is independent of humanity. Any sentient being is capable of doing science. But to the best of our knowledge, the only sentient beings that are performing science are humans. We know from observation that humans are fallible. Humans let their emotions get in the way of the facts. When a human is very attached to a theory, and even more so when a human has an agenda that can be advanced by promulgation of that theory, it's not guaranteed, but it's highly more probable, that the human will depart from the scientific method in an effort to cling to a theory that's been repudiated.
One of many links: A Bullshit Detection Guide
Creation "science" fails on: 1A: Manipulative buzzwords - "Intelligent"? "Design"? :)
1C: Audience the BS appeals to: Self-explanatory here
1E: Underdog appeal: "Just the little ol' Christians fighting the hordes of Godless Atheistic Communistic Scientists that Run the Schools"
1F: Requires A Negative View of Authority: As above. Evolution is part of the Grand Conspiracy to Keep The Christians Down.
2B-1: A small group of "experts" pretending to own the field
2B-2: Experts beyond their field of expertise.
2B-3: False claims of objectivity. It used to be called Creation Science, then it got renamed to Intelligent Design. Wonder what it'll be called next week when the scam is exposed?
2E: Blizzard of Numbers - the Creation "scientist" to whom I'm responding is the case in point: "26 variables? 66 variables? Does he really know enough about physics, cosmology, and biology to be sure it's not 27, or 65? Does anyone?!?!
Intelligent Design: Pegs the BS Detector. Five cuckoos.
ID is a nice belief system if you're already a creationist who accepts on faith that the Universe was created by the God of Genesis (optional: 6,000 years ago in a week), but it's not science.
For the record, I'm not bashing Christians here. Frankly, I see zero inconsistency between Genesis and our presently-understood notions of cosmology. Take a guy from 4000 BC and show him a PBS documentary on current theories of cosmology, and ask him to write what he saw. You're likely to get something like "Umm, I saw this vision with moving pictures about how the universe came to be. So, like, first there was nothin'. No time, no space, zilch. Then Something Happened, a couple of branes smacked into each other and nobody knows quite what that means yet. But that was the start of our universe. Then they said something about electromagnetic force breaking symmetry with the weak force, which I couldn't understand, and there was light, which I could understand. Then it cooled enough that the mean free path of a photon got pretty long, and I didn't know what that meant, but that was when it b
Eh? We managed to enforce a redesign of the toilet to require two or three flushes per shit, and spread that pathetic redesign to the entire nation.
My proposal is that whether wipes be done front-to-back or back-to-front, a small webcam-style camera is installed on a pole mounted to every toilet. The camera is pointed down at the squatter/wiper, and some gesture recognition software embedded into the device.
The camera has an RF transponder with a range of 100m, so the toilet can report to the police whether or not the camera's been tampered with. The absence of a response from the transponder is a finable offence. This could be done for about $1500 per toilet, including R&D costs and lobbying costs, and an army of intellectual property lawyers to defend the patent for the next 13 years.
I suppose a dissident could hook up a mirror next to television screen displaying a loop of a videotype of a proper wipe to defeat the system, but the system in its default configuration should handle most of the population.
We've donated the requisite $50,000 to the required 300-odd Congressmen and 65 Senators. It's attached as a rider to a law sponsored by the environmental lobby - the transponders were originally supposed to ensure that people were using transponder-verified 3-flush water-saving models instead of single-flush bogs, and it was an easy sale to the HMO lobby to get the rider ensuring that a system be placed into effect to ensure that asswipes were done in the proper direction. (The Fecal Management Tax Credit of 200% for low- and middle-income families ensures widespread adoption of the new toilet technology - the bottom 50% of the income scale pays $1500 to install the new toilet, and gets $3000 back in government money, so it doesn't cut into our profits by one cent!)
Given the 100,000,000 toilets in America, and the $1500 per unit it'll take to refit, we project revenues of $150 billion over the lifecycle of the project, and earnings of $100B. We go IPO tomorrow (NASDAQ:POOP), and you can get in on the bandwagon any time between now and 2004!
Now - what was that you were saying about certain laws being unenforceable? If it weren't for my upcoming IPO, I was going to say something to the effect that any law, however insane, becomes enforceable when it becomes important enough to the government to see it enforced.
Yeah, I just finished playing Human Pac-Man. Didn't need no VR either. Just run around a table with four turkeys, four bowls of garlic mashed potatoes, two bowls cranberries, and pack in 240 bread crumbs! w00t!
(I almost got the 1600-point turkey, but instead it defeated me. Now I know why Pac-Man shrivels up and withers away like that. Tryptophan coma, dude.)
It does not, however, prove that I'd get her name right. Sorry, Elin. But I'd still hit it. *G*
>
>Many, many times. All in the interest of science, of course. Hubba, hubba.
You're not a mathematician, you're a physicist. Not as bad as an engineer, mind you.
The picture of Elig proves that there exists at least one female mathematician for whom "I'd hit it". As a mathematician, that's good enough!
I have a NAT box and a router. My roommate/parents/grandmother pay me $1/year to administer it. I have a contract proving that.
>
> Not really. "I'm feeling lucky" that I, unlike the gentleman in the picture, do not have a 6" diameter asshole.
At least! I know what to give thanks for tomorrow at the family dinner! Dude, Thanks!
>
> Please post a link to this pic, as I think you just made it up.
Dude, this is Slashdot, not Fark! (But now that you mention it, perhaps we should send a request to Fark and SomethingAwful.com, and let 'em have at it.)
Rant: Why the hell don't the damn banks do that now?
Probably because most lusers won't undersstand and will enter their duress PIN instead of their regular PIN from time to time.
Which really cheeses me off. Duress PINs and duress codes ("Hi Son, everything's fine, is your dog Rover OK?" - when Mom and I, but not Home Invader Tyrone, know that I've never owned a dog named Rover) are simple and undetectable-to-the-adversary methods anyone can use to increase their own level of personal security.
A lot of people (or their machines) are listening. Many of them work for General Ashcroft. Many of them do not. Only recently have the people running the machines been allowed to talk to each other. (It used to be that if the people running not-the-General's machines talked to the people running DoJ machines, both of them went to jail. That little bit of 60s-era enlightenment cost us 3,000 people, $100B of property damage, caused two wars so far, and delayed the present global economic recovery by a year.)
Let me put it this way: If we were really heading into a police state (as opposed to merely a secure state), you, along with everyone else who uses terms like "Herr Ashcroft" and "Fatherland Securite", have just committed suicide by posting pseudonymously to a message board on a monitored network.
So fess up. If you're one of those people, are you truly suicidal, or are you merely suffering from terminal Godwinian hyperbole? There are people who can help.
>
> I have faith that SOMEONE in the government will see the absurdity of this request and will stop it before it gets too far.
Funny. I have faith that 500-odd people in the government will see the absurdity of this request, also see that has a cute acronym, and that it deals with (evil) pr0n in the (eviler!) Intarweb. And that it will path both houses with a huge majority.
We obviously mean different things when we say "faith". What do you mean by "faith", and what do you smoke to find it?
Like, hey, who the hell does this Rivest guy think he is, and what (apart from this stupid "Ph.D" stuff in "Computer Science" or "Mathematics" or "Cryptography", such a small title he has) makes him think he's any smarter than Penelope Bonsall, who's got a way cooler title "Director of the Office of Election Administration at the Federal Election Commission".
Rivest's system is clearly unworkable. Where's the wining and dining of sales reps? Where's the backroom deals involving hookers and cocaine? Where's the vendor-lock-in? Where are the service contracts and extra government departments required to oversee them? Oh, sure, Rivest can lay the smack down on "where's the beef" when it comes to building a secure and verifiable electronic voting system, but where's the pork?
Are you implying some sort of patriarchal gang bang thing going on with this "analog hole" stuff? Sexist pig. I'll bet you use ATA hard drives, too.
When your only tool is an axe, every problem starts to look like hours of fun.
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An opportunity to quote one of my favorite bits of .sigfodder of all time:
Huey, on news.admin.net-abuse.email, commenting on the same issue, over two and a half years ago.
For a really good time, go to a campus after the next terrorist attack, and the next time you overhear a heated argument between a hyperliberal Jew-hater and a redneck Moslem-hater, wait for the hick to refer to Arabs as "sand niggers". Then turn around and say "Huh? Dude, what the hell kind insult is that? What do you have against black people?"
Then watch as the mindfuck hits both the hippie and the redneck simultaneously. Enjoy the *boggle* on their faces as their parsing centers slowly fry, but don't forget to use some of those precious seconds to locate the nearest exit when the first one to figure it out goes apeshit on you. :)
That's just fucking sad.
The whole point of Humpty Dumpty is to teach a kid that Some Mistakes Can't Be Undone with a kind word and a moronic lecture about diversity.
(And when the kid is a little older, it can be used to teach him about denatured protein and why you can't unscramble an egg.)
>
> But what about those of us in the United States? Around here, "fuck" is considered to be a *dirty* word, and an insult to address a person or persons as "a fuck" or "fucks".
Whereas being called a "fucker" is value-neutral.
If I called you an insightful fuck, you'd kinda blink at me and wonder what I was talking about. Whereas if I called you an insensitive fuck, you'd know exactly what I was talking about.
But if I say "That sharkey, he's an insightful fucker", and you overheard it... or if I came up to you and said "Dude, you are one smart fuck", you'd also know exactly what I meant, and you'd know I was giving you a compliment.
(The English Language: "What the fuck? What the fucking fuck fuck?" :)
What? Caliber? I'm calling the Office of Diversity and Tolerance and having you fired! Guns are baaaaaad, mmmmmkay!
>
> Hopefully they'll come for the carelessly apathetic first.
Slashdotron 2084:
"It's the 100th anniversary of Martin Niemoller's death, and almost 81 years since they came for the carelessly apathetic, and they're still working through the backlog! w00t!"
Slashdot 2184:
"...and when they finally finished with the carelessly apathetic, there was no one left to vote for me!"