Eeh, sorry, but what's up with Kazahstan? Never heard about any islamic extremism there... But concerning Russia, it's not only Moscow... It's a lot more! The whole Caucasia is in war, if to follow your little theory...:)
To a certain extent, you're correct- and Kazakstan's freedom is as much at stake as Chechnya's. I was just going on the events I could remember at the moment- and seeing if I could remember 30 of them. My real point is that this is a World War- whether you like it or not- and it's *already* moved beyond mere Islamic interests and wishes.
$10,935 for Premium with VS2005 Team Suite? Hope you have a really good angel investor for your startup! At least Premium with VS2005 Professional is still a mere $2499....
Would you like a corporate sponsor for you war? It would make the financing much easier and I know a few corporations willing to make sizeable donations...
It would be better than going to the communists (China) for financing- but the problem is corporations can't win wars. Winning wars is almost always unprofitable, requiring sacrifice, thus the base motivation of corporations prevents them from actually *winning* the war
Hahahaha Enabling a president who resembles an ape, to attack any country that he cannot force to bow to his demands by threat alone is hardly world war three.
Correct- but attacks in (last time I counted) 35 separate countries by 18 different sects of Islam in a theological war of reformation certainly counts. You really weren't stupid enough to think that our little adventures in Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, and North Korea were the *only* violence going on related to this, were you?
thats because as I said before, i don't give a shit. They are not my enemy. I don't care if they managed to destroy the Us with millions of suicide bombers, I don't care if the US turns the whole of arabia into one big sheet of glass with a nuke. I just couldn't give a fuck less.
Would you care if the religious police came to your house five times a day to collect you to go to the Mosque and pray while facing mecca? That's a far more likely ending to this than the other two- because the actual militants are a minority (only 10 million of them- 990 million of the other type of Islamics in this war of reformation) and because the United States is a cowardly nation that will never be able to bring itself to pull the nuclear trigger again.
actually my second point, that of drawing attention to the activities of the US government in those countries, (by attention i was referring to the attention of the non-comatose portion of the US population, sorry for not being more specific), indeed seems to be having some effect towards the first two of the four goals you claim the "terrorists" to have.
Yes, but in a half-assed way that has just made the United States appear weak and ineffectual and attracted *more* people to the theology of independant Jihad (which is the novel new theological theory that bin Laden created all by his lonesome- and which makes al Qaeda hard to track, but nearly impossible to actually control).
A lot of US citizens might indeed be wondering what business their military has there, and why they should be in the firing line for their governments insistence on protecting and arming israel
We aren't- we're an incidental side target in the larger war which has been going on for the last 75 years and has now escalated into a World War. Terrorism of New York City was just a single battle- the real battle is still going on in Paris, London, Madrid, Rome, Indonesia, Sudan, Chad, Nigeria, Egypt, Ethiopia, Pakistan, Chechnya, Kazakstan, Kashmir, Sydney, Nagasaki, Berlin, Moscow, Iran, Syria, South Africa, Serbia, Bosnia, Jerusalem, Jordan, and Bethleham; and now that they've proven that the United States is ineffectual and cowardly and won't use nukes, side distrubances are cropping up in Oxacca, Bolivia, Argentina, North Korea, Venezula, Taiwan, Nuevo Loredo, and Columbia (isn't it interesting how once what was a sect-based religious war escalates to include quite a bit of the world, other justice-based problems crop up). If you didn't notice, two of that later set are in our neighbor to the south, and fighting has grown quite fierce there.
Based on your lack of knowledge of current world politics and the true range of the fighting, I'd have to say that you're just another blind American.
And if you've been drinking diet coke and eating Mentos, they'll stomach pump you.
Given what the mythbusters found out about this combination alone, I think that part is chemically automatic- the TSA doesn't need to do that for you (ingredients in the diet coke, mixed with the mentos, will create an automatic and total release of CO2- think HUGE burp).
Terrorism is performing acts designed to instill fear in a population in order to get that population to bow to the demands of the "terrorists"
ie. It is better to do what they want than to live with such fear.
True. Of course, against a free people they most likely will fail- because it is easier to genocide the terrorists than to do what they want.
The september 11 hijackers don't really fit this mold. What exactly are their demands?
I disagree- but that's because I KNOW their 4 main demands: 1. That the United States military has no business on the Holy Peninsula. 2. That the United States should stop funding the Zionists. 3. That the world needs to establish Justice as deliniated in the Koran. 4. To provide one world government from Mecca as foretold in the Koran.
Is it for the US to stop interfering with their countries?
In the immediate future yes- oddly enough the specific country they wanted us out of (Saudi Arabia), the bases became obsolete upon the invasion of Iraq.
Are their aims simply to convert the world to islam by force?
Also in part- but this is a longer term goal.
I dont know, or really care what their aims are, but while the small amount of moderately powerful attacks have instilled fear in a small subset of the population of the US, britain and others, its far from the widespread fear a terrorist would hope to generate.
Actually, it's been wildly successfull, for it has triggered WWIII.
I think most of these attacks, (of course they aren't all directly controlled by one organization) are really done with the simple aim of two things.
Then you've never bothered to learn the theology- or even listen to your enemy.
1. Demonstrate that as powerful as these countries may be, they are not invulnerable.
Nope- has nothing to do with that.
2. Because of point one, draw the attention that has been lacking for many many years to the things these powerful governments have been doing to other countries, in the name of protecting the priveledges of their relatively wealthy population.
Strike two. Go and actually *read the Koran*. Learn some Arabic.
They have already succeeded in both these aims. but the message hasn't got through, and never will.
Well, considering that neither one of those was among the stated aims of the Jihad, and has never actually been voiced by any Islamic terrorist, I'd say you're way off.
Don't attack me personally as a sympathizer because I really couldn't give a shit either way
You aren't intelligent enough to be a sympathizer- you don't know the first thing about what semitic cultures value, the theology behind the reformation, or any of the motives of the terrorists.
Used to be you'd get copies of the Platform Builder for less than the $3000 with an MSDN Universal subscription- admitedly not much less, but less (last I looked, MSDN Universal was around $2500).
As for why they're opening it up, I think the answer would be obvious- they want it to be ported to more than ARM compatible platforms, and don't want to have to pay for the development to do so.
You can find the source for much of the CE operating system (although, up until now, non-kernal) in most MSDN Universal kits over the last 10 years. This is just an extension of a division that has a history of bucking Microsoft Standard Operating Procedures and programming.
Unfortuneately, it seems (according to the article) that the real explaination is much more mundane- touch screens need recalibrating from time to time, and somebody has been sloppy with the recalibration schedule.
That's just what I would expect from someone called "Marxist Hacker 42": "hey, they didn't hurt somebody, cut'em some slack, mmkay?". Dear Sir, whether you are a Marxist or not, bombing populated buildings is no joke, no fun and no small deal but terrorism, the real deal. It starts exactly there. The fact that these scumbags didn't have the resources to build up a bigger bang won't be honored by the police, I hope.
This is barely VANDALISM- nothing close to REAL terrorism. I had a similar incident, using what I would believe to be a similar device, knock a steel door off of it's hinges when I was a college student in the dorms. The perp paid for the damages and went into counseling for anger management, andthat was the end of it.
REAL terrorism, I guarantee you, will be accompanied by body bags, hopefully at random. The Chechnyans had an adequate method a few centuries ago that used a single man, with a knife, running through an enemy camp at night and slicing every 3rd throat- so that no matter who you were,if you were still alive, you woke up next to a corpse. Now THAT'S terrorism.
Sometimes I question the sanity of this world and mine, when dozens of people here on Slashdot consider a bomb to be a legitimate means of protest or even funny when exploded on disliked entities. Thank you all, but we civilized people don't kill, maim or bomb anyone who we don't like. If you try anyway, prepare for the worst.
And that's why civilization will lose the war on terrorism- and lets economic terrorists in the corporations walk all over them with no protest.
I once saw a bomb of the type I just mentioned (dry ice, diet coke, mentos) take a steel door right off it's hinges, placed right. It still ain't terrorism- it's little more than vandalism.
I for one am probably speaking for 99.9999% of the population when I say are you freaking nuts? No one deserves to have their lives even remotely threatened by some random idiott.
It's that kind of attitude that has allowed the random idiots to hurt millions of people through "It's just business" deals.
Ok, that's overkill. I'd suspect strongly this was a basic dry ice, mentos, and diet coke bomb.....that's certainly enough to take out a window (and not much else).
I wonder if the fMRI can also be beat by telling exactly the truth *as you know it* regardless of what really happened (in other words, by believing your own lies with all of your heart).
At home I average 30-40 days between restarts, but only keep 3-4 windows open at a time.
At work I average 1 day between restarts (it is after all a policy to log out at the end of the day, perfect time for a restart) and keep 7-10 windows +7 browser tabs open during the workday. 8 if I'm also reading technocrat- for some reason our firewall isn't compatible with firefox for reading technocrat, so I need to use IE for that.
If you had to worship a dwarf with a bad hairdo who uses human beings as pixels in his giant-screen TV set as a required state religion, you might be wishing for the ICBMs to deliver you from this hellhole too.
Either that, or we all became truck drivers and discovered that the money was lower, but came in far more steadily (for me, substitute government bureaucrat for truck driver).
So yeah, paper tiger in every respect, except strategic arsenal. Might not be able to (effectively) invade another country but they can sure bomb the shit out of them.
And since we seem to be utterly unwilling to do that in any convincing way- we're very much a paper tiger.
People always have their own version of ethics and right and wrong. Focus on business ethics. Plenty of cases of businesses getting caught in either grey or outright black areas of software license infringement. Explain that suing individuals for "scare factor" and deterence is only part of what is being discussed. Explain the liability of the average small company and how software piracy can be a detriment to their profitability and the bottom line.
Are you a BSA drone or something? Copyright law only makes sense as it pertains to individuals- the entire purpose of copyright is to encourage the *individual* to work. Corporations owning copyrights and/or infringing on copyrights is a side effect of the highly contraversial Supreme Court Case that turned corporations into people to begin with (one that, 130 years later, looks to have been a stupid decision that was the end of democracy itself).
Why not just use Paypal's Callback API, with the download being an automatic on the response page in a frame? No easy way to get at the URL (well, except for view source, and I'm sure THAT level of hacker you're not going to stop anyway, he'll just e-mail his friends the MP3) and it happens for the user as soon at they "submit" the paypal payment.
Because it's an article of faith, of course!:-). In reality though, faith always comes with doubt- and without testing that faith, you never quite know if it is even real to you. In addition to that, dogmatic absolutism is a trap that needs to be avoided. A good example is the common American Christian question "Are you saved?" as if salvation in Christianity was a one-time deal. Roman Catholicism, a much more rational version of the religion, knows that "being saved" is just arrogance, arrogance that can lead back to NOT being saved. We can have moral assurance of going to heaven- but we can never have absolute assurance, because that would presume something that we are not.
It seems to me that if you were already confident of the results, then there would be no reason to attempt experiments yourself. Rather, testing and questioning requires a lack of faith to be performed objectively. This still does not show a search for truth to be a religious endeavor in any means. A puppy can seek answers about the world around itself without any idea about religion.
Who said that animals don't have religion? In fact, a few messages back, I think I specifically said that religion wasn't limited to homo sapiens. However, true religion is all about DOUBT. You can't have good without evil, and you can't have faith without doubt. Anybody who is confident of the results is exhibiting a lack of faith- they have knowledge, but they have no faith.
I don't know what strange philosophical definition of the word fact you are operating under, but I'm using the scientific definition of an objective and verifyable observation.
And since we can never actually be sure that our instruments inside our own bodies are operating correctly, we can never actually achieve objective and verifyable observation. The best we can actually say is that "When I do x I consistently get result y", which may or may not be true for any other human being on the planet. IF we can find that it is true for a majority of the human beings on the planet, we call it verifyable and objective- but this is a mythological meaning of the terms, not an absolute meaning.
We know many facts. If something is not verifyable, then it is not repeatable, and thus we cannot ascertain whether or not it is true.
Even if something IS verifyable and repeatable, we cannot actually ascertain whether or not it is true for all species everywhere- only for our own species, and only for the small, sometimes even statistically insignificant, sample that have done the experiment.
Your opinion on whether or not something is true has no bearing on the actual truth of the matter, and your beliefs do not constitute evidence.
Funny for a man who believes that "facts" exist to say that- since basically what you're saying is that your beliefs are somehow superior because you are certain of them. In my expereience, the more certain you are of something, the greater the likelyhood is that you are wrong about it.
For example, we could both vote on the gender of a randomly selected rabbit placed before us. What we believe about the rabbit, and how we vote, has no bearing on the rabbit's gender - it is what it is regardless of our beliefs.
A penguin would be better- most human beings can't tell the sex of a penguin without an autopsy and a genetic test. I can be reasonably certain about a rabbit's gender- until you change the meaning of the word gender, but I can't be absolutely certain EVER.
I'm not certain what "mind expanding" you have undertaken, or how that process was carried out, but I think I'll pass.
Too bad- because until you see the world around you for what it really is, you're locked into your faith.
The peer review system is not the truth, nor is it a democracy. It is a means of verification through objective analysis and repeatable testing -
Slashdot Mirror
Eeh, sorry, but what's up with Kazahstan? Never heard about any islamic extremism there... But concerning Russia, it's not only Moscow... It's a lot more! The whole Caucasia is in war, if to follow your little theory... :)
To a certain extent, you're correct- and Kazakstan's freedom is as much at stake as Chechnya's. I was just going on the events I could remember at the moment- and seeing if I could remember 30 of them. My real point is that this is a World War- whether you like it or not- and it's *already* moved beyond mere Islamic interests and wishes.
$10,935 for Premium with VS2005 Team Suite? Hope you have a really good angel investor for your startup! At least Premium with VS2005 Professional is still a mere $2499....
Would you like a corporate sponsor for you war? It would make the financing much easier and I know a few corporations willing to make sizeable donations...
It would be better than going to the communists (China) for financing- but the problem is corporations can't win wars. Winning wars is almost always unprofitable, requiring sacrifice, thus the base motivation of corporations prevents them from actually *winning* the war
Hahahaha Enabling a president who resembles an ape, to attack any country that he cannot force to bow to his demands by threat alone is hardly world war three.
Correct- but attacks in (last time I counted) 35 separate countries by 18 different sects of Islam in a theological war of reformation certainly counts. You really weren't stupid enough to think that our little adventures in Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, and North Korea were the *only* violence going on related to this, were you?
thats because as I said before, i don't give a shit. They are not my enemy. I don't care if they managed to destroy the Us with millions of suicide bombers, I don't care if the US turns the whole of arabia into one big sheet of glass with a nuke. I just couldn't give a fuck less.
Would you care if the religious police came to your house five times a day to collect you to go to the Mosque and pray while facing mecca? That's a far more likely ending to this than the other two- because the actual militants are a minority (only 10 million of them- 990 million of the other type of Islamics in this war of reformation) and because the United States is a cowardly nation that will never be able to bring itself to pull the nuclear trigger again.
actually my second point, that of drawing attention to the activities of the US government in those countries, (by attention i was referring to the attention of the non-comatose portion of the US population, sorry for not being more specific), indeed seems to be having some effect towards the first two of the four goals you claim the "terrorists" to have.
Yes, but in a half-assed way that has just made the United States appear weak and ineffectual and attracted *more* people to the theology of independant Jihad (which is the novel new theological theory that bin Laden created all by his lonesome- and which makes al Qaeda hard to track, but nearly impossible to actually control).
A lot of US citizens might indeed be wondering what business their military has there, and why they should be in the firing line for their governments insistence on protecting and arming israel
We aren't- we're an incidental side target in the larger war which has been going on for the last 75 years and has now escalated into a World War. Terrorism of New York City was just a single battle- the real battle is still going on in Paris, London, Madrid, Rome, Indonesia, Sudan, Chad, Nigeria, Egypt, Ethiopia, Pakistan, Chechnya, Kazakstan, Kashmir, Sydney, Nagasaki, Berlin, Moscow, Iran, Syria, South Africa, Serbia, Bosnia, Jerusalem, Jordan, and Bethleham; and now that they've proven that the United States is ineffectual and cowardly and won't use nukes, side distrubances are cropping up in Oxacca, Bolivia, Argentina, North Korea, Venezula, Taiwan, Nuevo Loredo, and Columbia (isn't it interesting how once what was a sect-based religious war escalates to include quite a bit of the world, other justice-based problems crop up). If you didn't notice, two of that later set are in our neighbor to the south, and fighting has grown quite fierce there.
Based on your lack of knowledge of current world politics and the true range of the fighting, I'd have to say that you're just another blind American.
And if you've been drinking diet coke and eating Mentos, they'll stomach pump you.
Given what the mythbusters found out about this combination alone, I think that part is chemically automatic- the TSA doesn't need to do that for you (ingredients in the diet coke, mixed with the mentos, will create an automatic and total release of CO2- think HUGE burp).
Terrorism is performing acts designed to instill fear in a population in order to get that population to bow to the demands of the "terrorists" ie. It is better to do what they want than to live with such fear.
True. Of course, against a free people they most likely will fail- because it is easier to genocide the terrorists than to do what they want.
The september 11 hijackers don't really fit this mold. What exactly are their demands?
I disagree- but that's because I KNOW their 4 main demands: 1. That the United States military has no business on the Holy Peninsula. 2. That the United States should stop funding the Zionists. 3. That the world needs to establish Justice as deliniated in the Koran. 4. To provide one world government from Mecca as foretold in the Koran.
Is it for the US to stop interfering with their countries?
In the immediate future yes- oddly enough the specific country they wanted us out of (Saudi Arabia), the bases became obsolete upon the invasion of Iraq.
Are their aims simply to convert the world to islam by force?
Also in part- but this is a longer term goal.
I dont know, or really care what their aims are, but while the small amount of moderately powerful attacks have instilled fear in a small subset of the population of the US, britain and others, its far from the widespread fear a terrorist would hope to generate.
Actually, it's been wildly successfull, for it has triggered WWIII.
I think most of these attacks, (of course they aren't all directly controlled by one organization) are really done with the simple aim of two things.
Then you've never bothered to learn the theology- or even listen to your enemy.
1. Demonstrate that as powerful as these countries may be, they are not invulnerable.
Nope- has nothing to do with that.
2. Because of point one, draw the attention that has been lacking for many many years to the things these powerful governments have been doing to other countries, in the name of protecting the priveledges of their relatively wealthy population.
Strike two. Go and actually *read the Koran*. Learn some Arabic.
They have already succeeded in both these aims. but the message hasn't got through, and never will.
Well, considering that neither one of those was among the stated aims of the Jihad, and has never actually been voiced by any Islamic terrorist, I'd say you're way off.
Don't attack me personally as a sympathizer because I really couldn't give a shit either way
You aren't intelligent enough to be a sympathizer- you don't know the first thing about what semitic cultures value, the theology behind the reformation, or any of the motives of the terrorists.
Used to be you'd get copies of the Platform Builder for less than the $3000 with an MSDN Universal subscription- admitedly not much less, but less (last I looked, MSDN Universal was around $2500).
As for why they're opening it up, I think the answer would be obvious- they want it to be ported to more than ARM compatible platforms, and don't want to have to pay for the development to do so.
You can find the source for much of the CE operating system (although, up until now, non-kernal) in most MSDN Universal kits over the last 10 years. This is just an extension of a division that has a history of bucking Microsoft Standard Operating Procedures and programming.
Unfortuneately, it seems (according to the article) that the real explaination is much more mundane- touch screens need recalibrating from time to time, and somebody has been sloppy with the recalibration schedule.
That's just what I would expect from someone called "Marxist Hacker 42": "hey, they didn't hurt somebody, cut'em some slack, mmkay?". Dear Sir, whether you are a Marxist or not, bombing populated buildings is no joke, no fun and no small deal but terrorism, the real deal. It starts exactly there. The fact that these scumbags didn't have the resources to build up a bigger bang won't be honored by the police, I hope.
This is barely VANDALISM- nothing close to REAL terrorism. I had a similar incident, using what I would believe to be a similar device, knock a steel door off of it's hinges when I was a college student in the dorms. The perp paid for the damages and went into counseling for anger management, andthat was the end of it.
REAL terrorism, I guarantee you, will be accompanied by body bags, hopefully at random. The Chechnyans had an adequate method a few centuries ago that used a single man, with a knife, running through an enemy camp at night and slicing every 3rd throat- so that no matter who you were,if you were still alive, you woke up next to a corpse. Now THAT'S terrorism.
Sometimes I question the sanity of this world and mine, when dozens of people here on Slashdot consider a bomb to be a legitimate means of protest or even funny when exploded on disliked entities. Thank you all, but we civilized people don't kill, maim or bomb anyone who we don't like. If you try anyway, prepare for the worst.
And that's why civilization will lose the war on terrorism- and lets economic terrorists in the corporations walk all over them with no protest.
I once saw a bomb of the type I just mentioned (dry ice, diet coke, mentos) take a steel door right off it's hinges, placed right. It still ain't terrorism- it's little more than vandalism.
I for one am probably speaking for 99.9999% of the population when I say are you freaking nuts? No one deserves to have their lives even remotely threatened by some random idiott.
It's that kind of attitude that has allowed the random idiots to hurt millions of people through "It's just business" deals.
Ok, that's overkill. I'd suspect strongly this was a basic dry ice, mentos, and diet coke bomb.....that's certainly enough to take out a window (and not much else).
I wonder if the fMRI can also be beat by telling exactly the truth *as you know it* regardless of what really happened (in other words, by believing your own lies with all of your heart).
At home I average 30-40 days between restarts, but only keep 3-4 windows open at a time.
At work I average 1 day between restarts (it is after all a policy to log out at the end of the day, perfect time for a restart) and keep 7-10 windows +7 browser tabs open during the workday. 8 if I'm also reading technocrat- for some reason our firewall isn't compatible with firefox for reading technocrat, so I need to use IE for that.
If you had to worship a dwarf with a bad hairdo who uses human beings as pixels in his giant-screen TV set as a required state religion, you might be wishing for the ICBMs to deliver you from this hellhole too.
Either that, or we all became truck drivers and discovered that the money was lower, but came in far more steadily (for me, substitute government bureaucrat for truck driver).
So yeah, paper tiger in every respect, except strategic arsenal. Might not be able to (effectively) invade another country but they can sure bomb the shit out of them.
And since we seem to be utterly unwilling to do that in any convincing way- we're very much a paper tiger.
To Open Office- which I will do at home.
People always have their own version of ethics and right and wrong. Focus on business ethics. Plenty of cases of businesses getting caught in either grey or outright black areas of software license infringement. Explain that suing individuals for "scare factor" and deterence is only part of what is being discussed. Explain the liability of the average small company and how software piracy can be a detriment to their profitability and the bottom line.
Are you a BSA drone or something? Copyright law only makes sense as it pertains to individuals- the entire purpose of copyright is to encourage the *individual* to work. Corporations owning copyrights and/or infringing on copyrights is a side effect of the highly contraversial Supreme Court Case that turned corporations into people to begin with (one that, 130 years later, looks to have been a stupid decision that was the end of democracy itself).
Why not just use Paypal's Callback API, with the download being an automatic on the response page in a frame? No easy way to get at the URL (well, except for view source, and I'm sure THAT level of hacker you're not going to stop anyway, he'll just e-mail his friends the MP3) and it happens for the user as soon at they "submit" the paypal payment.
as an advertising gimic- it was actually listed on the box as six bladed (one blade on the back for triming).
After a week of using it, I've got a major problem- it gave me a closer shave, but it made my beard grow faster, so now I have to use it twice a day.
Security through obscurity never works for long.
What? It's worked for the Apple Macintosh for nearly 20 years now! When was the last time you saw a virus targed for the Macintosh?
Just role play a common shareware marketing mistake.
If you had faith why would you test and question?
:-). In reality though, faith always comes with doubt- and without testing that faith, you never quite know if it is even real to you. In addition to that, dogmatic absolutism is a trap that needs to be avoided. A good example is the common American Christian question "Are you saved?" as if salvation in Christianity was a one-time deal. Roman Catholicism, a much more rational version of the religion, knows that "being saved" is just arrogance, arrogance that can lead back to NOT being saved. We can have moral assurance of going to heaven- but we can never have absolute assurance, because that would presume something that we are not.
Because it's an article of faith, of course!
It seems to me that if you were already confident of the results, then there would be no reason to attempt experiments yourself. Rather, testing and questioning requires a lack of faith to be performed objectively. This still does not show a search for truth to be a religious endeavor in any means. A puppy can seek answers about the world around itself without any idea about religion.
Who said that animals don't have religion? In fact, a few messages back, I think I specifically said that religion wasn't limited to homo sapiens. However, true religion is all about DOUBT. You can't have good without evil, and you can't have faith without doubt. Anybody who is confident of the results is exhibiting a lack of faith- they have knowledge, but they have no faith.
I don't know what strange philosophical definition of the word fact you are operating under, but I'm using the scientific definition of an objective and verifyable observation.
And since we can never actually be sure that our instruments inside our own bodies are operating correctly, we can never actually achieve objective and verifyable observation. The best we can actually say is that "When I do x I consistently get result y", which may or may not be true for any other human being on the planet. IF we can find that it is true for a majority of the human beings on the planet, we call it verifyable and objective- but this is a mythological meaning of the terms, not an absolute meaning.
We know many facts. If something is not verifyable, then it is not repeatable, and thus we cannot ascertain whether or not it is true.
Even if something IS verifyable and repeatable, we cannot actually ascertain whether or not it is true for all species everywhere- only for our own species, and only for the small, sometimes even statistically insignificant, sample that have done the experiment.
Your opinion on whether or not something is true has no bearing on the actual truth of the matter, and your beliefs do not constitute evidence.
Funny for a man who believes that "facts" exist to say that- since basically what you're saying is that your beliefs are somehow superior because you are certain of them. In my expereience, the more certain you are of something, the greater the likelyhood is that you are wrong about it.
For example, we could both vote on the gender of a randomly selected rabbit placed before us. What we believe about the rabbit, and how we vote, has no bearing on the rabbit's gender - it is what it is regardless of our beliefs.
A penguin would be better- most human beings can't tell the sex of a penguin without an autopsy and a genetic test. I can be reasonably certain about a rabbit's gender- until you change the meaning of the word gender, but I can't be absolutely certain EVER.
I'm not certain what "mind expanding" you have undertaken, or how that process was carried out, but I think I'll pass.
Too bad- because until you see the world around you for what it really is, you're locked into your faith.
The peer review system is not the truth, nor is it a democracy. It is a means of verification through objective analysis and repeatable testing -