I knew that 4chan had some interesting boards that weren't full of crap but wasn't aware of the Robotics area.
Well, if you want to call anime robots "robotics"... I mean, Japan has a lot of nice robotics stuff going on, but Evangelion and Gundam are still fiction.
The Goonies in Eve have certainly proven to be entertaining:-)
Coincidentally, the geeks of/v/ (the videogame board on 4chan) have a couple of corps up and running in Eve as well, but have so far failed to wreak any real havoc due to bad organization and a relatively short attention span. Also, due to the nature of 4chan the group has far less cohesion than the goons. I believe that the lack of pools that can be closed in Eve is probably a significant barrier of entry for most of 4chans denizens.
Most of Anonymous is just a bunch of teen-angst lemmings who will only join the DDoS effort if somebody puts up a Rapidshare link to the LOIC software.
I find it amazing that these kids would just blindly trust some "anonymous" person to upload a copy of LOIC to rapidshare without wondering if it includes some kind of spyware/backdoor/botnet. You'd think that the kids that I like to think of as the Internet generation would at least be wary of such issues, especially if they're going to partake in a DDoS voluntarily.
They have no clue that their IP address can and will identify them in most cases. If they use a proxy, they're just creating a bottleneck, slowing the DDoS effort and providing their target with a single IP to block for mitigation.
I came across one of their "call to arms" and the post specified not to use a proxy since it would DoS the proxy:-). It's not that most of them don't know about IP addresses, it's that a lot of them say "It's okay, I've got DHCP.".
they will obtain your subscriber details (more likely your parent's details) through the legal system in your country of origin
This! I'd really hate to be one of the parents that doesn't know about this and gets slapped with a serious fine. I think things like this are going to be a major problem in the near future. Kids are dumb and easily manipulated, and while any parent can try to do the right thing, it's not like you can watch a teenager 24/7.
It is indeed. The bittorrent DHT solution is based on Kademlia (or the BEP for Bittorrent specifically). If you google a bit you'll find a few papers and some interesting things, including attack vectors. I'm implementing a version of Kademlia at the moment to have nodes in a network find other nodes for accepting work in a distributed environment, and bootstrapping the thing is "the weakest link". You could set up multiple bootstrapping nodes, but suppose that a network failure takes out your access to the bootstrapping nodes you're basically humped when you want to join the network.
Sure, once a node is online and given enough other nodes stay online enough of the time, it would be possible to have a persistent network.
What you're referring to is known as "churn" and provided the network is large enough it becomes less of an issue. There's actually an interesting paper on churn in Kademlia, but I'm sorry to say I can't seem to find it anymore. As it turns out, Kademlia is quite resistant to churn provided there are enough nodes in the network. Not really surprising, but it's a nice read if you want to know how resilient the network is without having to test it yourself.
I suppose you could do something like search google for random torrents, join in, test the folks you connect to for being part of the decentralised network, grab network info from there etc. It still uses google as a central reference point but it would be more robust than having some sort of hard-coded 'peer tracker' server, or using any sort of brute-force port scan of the internet.
My current solution involves trying multicast and if that fails a broadcast to find other nodes if the bootstrap servers are down. This usually allows you to find other nodes on the LAN (depending on the network configuration) and once you have a single node in the network you can start doing lookups. Few admins like the idea of you "scanning" the network to find other nodes, understandably. Of course, this method of discovering nodes has disadvantages as well, for instance you could have a segment blissfully unaware of another segment in the network until the bootstrap servers come back online.
However for typical bittorrent use I doubt that this particular strategy will work. The work I'm doing has little to do with bittorrent, or how P2P is traditionally seen by the bulk of its users. I doubt that the implementation I'm working on is directly usable for another problem than the one I'm working on.
Now, I'll have to admit that I simply don't like the show. I really enjoyed Stargate SG-1 (until O'Neill left, after that the show kinda jumped the shark in my opinion), and to some extent enjoyed Atlantis, but SG:U really doesn't do it for me.
Look we don't really need the girl having an alien hiding inside.
SG:U's Big Bad is just terrible. Every episode involving the new Big Bad (or as I like to call them the "Angry Fishpeople") involves some contrived mechanism. First Rush gets captured so they take one of those "communication stones" from him. Then Chloe gets taken from the ship at some point, but lo and behold "communication stones" to the rescue. Then at some point lateron someone suffers from "aftereffects" of the "communication stones" and sabotages the engines, and now we have DNA alteration as a way for the Big Bad to infiltrate the ship. Really, this is just terrible storytelling. It's too sneaky for a Big Bad. They're just Angry Fishpeople right now. The first real attack from the Angry Fishpeople ended in "lol, we've got shields and lasers too", and that was that.
it's not reasonable for Rush to be able to keep the control room secret for this long
But they want this show to have that inner conflict. What else will fuel that conflict than Rush hiding that control room even if your sense of logic tells you "Hey, I can't hide this for long, especially if I start messing around with it". Rush is perhaps the flattest character in the entire show (which is quite the achievement in SG:U), despite that they played the whole dead-wife-card. He's only interested in the ship, and he'll sacrifice anything and anyone except himself to get it. He's got no motivation other than his obsession.
It's contrived and totally out of character for Young to not have Rush followed either physically or electronically at all times at this point.
I was thinking more in the lines of thrown out of an airlock and shot by the Destiny's laser array, but hey followed works too. I mean, Young tried to kill Rush, then left him for dead on a planet. When he returned they play a game of pretend "for the sake of the crew"? After a full scale mutiny, all that happens is "Well, okay, we had that then. Let's just be friends!" ? I mean, things like this have consequences, and the writers do a terrible job at making the audience see those consequences by wiping the slate clean after each story and forcing the status quo from the beginning of the show back in place.
It's about a show having too much dead time and too many contrived conflicts designed to fill same.
No, it's just bad writing in my opinion. There was plenty of conflict on BSG, often contrived but none of it was without consequence like on SG:U. I'll take the mutiny example again. BSG had a mutiny, but it resulted in people getting shot. Something actually happened as opposed to wiping the slate clean.
I've always enjoyed Stargate SG-1 since it was a sci-fi show that wasn't afraid of not taking itself too serious. It was damned formulaic, but it was a pretty good formula. SG:U on the other hand feels like it wants to be the next Battlestar: all grimdark and edgy, but it fails to deliver that because:
The Big Bad simply isn't scary enough. They fend off a full attack with the push of a button and some subterfuge. That kind of threat doesn't make the atmosphere they're trying to set.
The conflicts between the characters simply can't be taken seriously because they don't evolve. You simply can't have two people like Rush and Young go against eachother like they have and then press the reset button.
The story is predictable (eg. You KNOW the instant those people from the cliffhanger in season 1 set a foot aboard that ship that by the second episode some of those people are joining the crew)
realizing that one of the smartest and most productive people I knew was a recreational pot smoker certainly changed my viewpoint on the drug.
I have several similar stories: productive people casually smoking pot for recreational purposes and still being responsible people. I've got a few very dissimilar stories as well and it wasn't very pretty to see. I've seen a guy lose himself in drug use looking for the next high, waking up at 8 in the morning and lighting up a joint, and over the years working himself up to various other drugs that are not as harmless. A guy I used to work with lit up on the way to work every single day, so he wasn't a very dependable person. He would atypically also get fits of rage whenever he didn't get what he wanted. I think the coworker I mention here had some psychological problems, perhaps amplified by the drug use, perhaps not... I'm not an expert on the subject.
I don't buy that whole "gateway drug" thing. I know too many people who've smoked pot and never once tried something else. Like most things, I think it depends on the user on how they use the drug and how well balanced they are. From what I have observed alcohol has more devastating effects on people than pot, but that argument seems to open up a can of worms best left closed.
I live in a country next to The Netherlands and the "drug problem" has evolved to the point where the effects of usage are no longer the main problem, but the fact that foreigners are buying drugs and causing the locals grief with all the traffic has become the main issue on the agenda. This has led to various public figures from both governments clashing, and if I'm not mistaken there's a strong push in the Netherlands for a system where you have to prove your identity when purchasing pot. I would argue that if this is the most worrisome issue with people using pot the whole thing has pretty much become a farce, but leave it to politicians to make matters more complicated than they need be.
DS9 was Space Station, Wormhole, Cardassians, Gamma Quadrant, Dominion, Jem'Hadar, USS Defiant.
Wrong! Deep Space Nine was about a balding commander coming to terms with his lack of facial hair. By sheer willpower alone the hair on his head moved around his mouth and formed a formidable beard and mustache that would make the most hairy of Klingons envious. It was about the epic struggle of this commander against all those who defied his magnificent facial hair. The Bajoran religious caste feared that his manly beard would stand between them and their prophets. The Cardassians formed an alliance with the Jem'Hadar and the Dominion vouching they would bring order in the universe by building a giant space razor that would make faces as smooth as a babies bottom. There were even envious Ferengi running a bar to discover the secrets of the beard so they could sell them for a profit (Rule of Acquisition #485: Every beard has it's price). At some point in time even the Romulans got involved, with some ambassador yelling at him "It's a FAKE!". But then Garrack made sure his ship exploded and the Romulans finally understood the power of facial hair.
It was a magnificent 7 season tale of hairiness, manliness and the struggle of a man against the universe.
Well, it was nearly ten years ago since I saw the series, so the details are a bit vague. But man, BEST STAR TREK SHOW EVER!
Is it piracy if you then ravish their women? What if you don't exactly ravish them, but merely rip their bodices, accidentally exposing their heaving bosoms?
How fast must a bosom be moving in order to be considered "heaving?"
Fascinating. This requires some in depth research. You don't happen to own a boatn because I happen to have some grog and a few eyepatches?
I told to him that the simple way to fix the problem was to mount a bullseye somewhere else on his towers and give these lunatics something different to aim at.
I'd say attach a high resolution camera to the bullseye so that it starts taking snapshots once the bullseye is hit, but I'm afraid the camera would become an obvious target.
Seriously though, slashdot. Is this front-page worthy? What's next? A video of a dog that thinks its people? Do the people running this site even care anymore about the content, or has their inner geek died over the years?
"It's technology related because it's on the internets!" does not make news for nerds.
If you never get off the couch, why do you need a mobile app?
Even people who stay inside have to be trendy. Ride that wave of mobile goodness, buy that iPhone/Android and sit in the couch lovingly stoking that touchscreen all day long.
Now, without leaving the couch to fetch your laptop you can...
check up on what people you'll never meet are doing
check your e-mail to see if someone sent you a mail, over and over hoping that someone eventually will
cancel appointments that require you to leave the couch
order food online and mail them that the door is open
play videogames on your cellphone while watching tv
Oh, but it doesn't end there. You can now see if your tastes match up with some couch potato halfway across the continent, and you can then see the same movies they do based on their recommendations. Not only that, but you can get suggestions for snacks, like Cheetos. All from the comfort of your comfy couch.
Now all we need is a service that delivers groceries at home.
I'm sorry, we don't want any of that. Slap a warning label on that box and say some bad things about MMOs on the evening news please. Who needs responsibility when you can shift blame onto someone else?
Hey Craig Smallwood, take responsibility for your actions; you're not a victim. In actuality your lawsuit paints you as a blatant parasite.
Hey man, that's not cool. You haven't seen those NCSoft devs have you? These guys will come to your house and punch you if you dare to unsubscribe. They'll force you to play the game by promising you that the punching will stop if you buy the next expansion.
Oh, and their customer support is even worse. Billing complaints? The B-team takes care of those. B stands for baseball,bat. Posting a message on the forums indicating that you're quitting? The moderators will come to your house and threaten to cook your pet Fluffy.
NCSoft turns their players into victims the moment they hit that subscribe button.
Didn't a bunch of whackjobs a few years ago try and claim that Hurricane Katrina was the result of some Weather Control Device created by the Axis of Evil?
According to what I heard it was a punishment from God for openly discussing gay marriage. Some claim that it was Gaia taking revenge for not signing the Kyoto agreement. And my most favourite is still Chinese assassin butterflies trained to flap their wings in storm causing patterns as an experiment to sink the US. Billions of butterflies are currently being bred in underground labs to see if the project will scale. I'm personally exited to find out if it actually was butterflies.
If you want to be on the safe side, I suggest you buy a nice boat.
Slashdot Mirror
I knew that 4chan had some interesting boards that weren't full of crap but wasn't aware of the Robotics area.
Well, if you want to call anime robots "robotics"... I mean, Japan has a lot of nice robotics stuff going on, but Evangelion and Gundam are still fiction.
The Goonies in Eve have certainly proven to be entertaining :-)
Coincidentally, the geeks of /v/ (the videogame board on 4chan) have a couple of corps up and running in Eve as well, but have so far failed to wreak any real havoc due to bad organization and a relatively short attention span. Also, due to the nature of 4chan the group has far less cohesion than the goons. I believe that the lack of pools that can be closed in Eve is probably a significant barrier of entry for most of 4chans denizens.
Most of Anonymous is just a bunch of teen-angst lemmings who will only join the DDoS effort if somebody puts up a Rapidshare link to the LOIC software.
I find it amazing that these kids would just blindly trust some "anonymous" person to upload a copy of LOIC to rapidshare without wondering if it includes some kind of spyware/backdoor/botnet. You'd think that the kids that I like to think of as the Internet generation would at least be wary of such issues, especially if they're going to partake in a DDoS voluntarily.
They have no clue that their IP address can and will identify them in most cases. If they use a proxy, they're just creating a bottleneck, slowing the DDoS effort and providing their target with a single IP to block for mitigation.
I came across one of their "call to arms" and the post specified not to use a proxy since it would DoS the proxy :-). It's not that most of them don't know about IP addresses, it's that a lot of them say "It's okay, I've got DHCP.".
they will obtain your subscriber details (more likely your parent's details) through the legal system in your country of origin
This! I'd really hate to be one of the parents that doesn't know about this and gets slapped with a serious fine. I think things like this are going to be a major problem in the near future. Kids are dumb and easily manipulated, and while any parent can try to do the right thing, it's not like you can watch a teenager 24/7.
My IP is 127.0.0.1
This might actually work :-)
Bootstrap is the interesting issue.
It is indeed. The bittorrent DHT solution is based on Kademlia (or the BEP for Bittorrent specifically). If you google a bit you'll find a few papers and some interesting things, including attack vectors. I'm implementing a version of Kademlia at the moment to have nodes in a network find other nodes for accepting work in a distributed environment, and bootstrapping the thing is "the weakest link". You could set up multiple bootstrapping nodes, but suppose that a network failure takes out your access to the bootstrapping nodes you're basically humped when you want to join the network.
Sure, once a node is online and given enough other nodes stay online enough of the time, it would be possible to have a persistent network.
What you're referring to is known as "churn" and provided the network is large enough it becomes less of an issue. There's actually an interesting paper on churn in Kademlia, but I'm sorry to say I can't seem to find it anymore. As it turns out, Kademlia is quite resistant to churn provided there are enough nodes in the network. Not really surprising, but it's a nice read if you want to know how resilient the network is without having to test it yourself.
I suppose you could do something like search google for random torrents, join in, test the folks you connect to for being part of the decentralised network, grab network info from there etc. It still uses google as a central reference point but it would be more robust than having some sort of hard-coded 'peer tracker' server, or using any sort of brute-force port scan of the internet.
My current solution involves trying multicast and if that fails a broadcast to find other nodes if the bootstrap servers are down. This usually allows you to find other nodes on the LAN (depending on the network configuration) and once you have a single node in the network you can start doing lookups. Few admins like the idea of you "scanning" the network to find other nodes, understandably. Of course, this method of discovering nodes has disadvantages as well, for instance you could have a segment blissfully unaware of another segment in the network until the bootstrap servers come back online.
However for typical bittorrent use I doubt that this particular strategy will work. The work I'm doing has little to do with bittorrent, or how P2P is traditionally seen by the bulk of its users. I doubt that the implementation I'm working on is directly usable for another problem than the one I'm working on.
The entire game is a pointless waste of time...
All videogames are a pointless waste of time. That's why they're entertainment.
sex by surprise
Really? I thought "surprise sex" was just one of those internet memes... How exactly does "surprise sex" work?
"Oh whoops, sorry, I fell and my penis just happened to enter your vagina."
"I'm sorry, I didn't know this was your vagina. What a surprise."
"It was over so fast he caught me by surprise. Talk about a lack of stamina."
I mean, I don't want to make light of something as serious as rape, but "sex by surprise" sounds like a birthday party gone wild.
Wonder what the Chinese are making of all this. They seen the romans rice and fall
Oh wow, I don't know wether to laugh or cry at this.
What would happen if there was a suicide bomber that was caught with a child, and the child was the one with the bomb...
And I here I was thinking some people were really scared of babies with anchors. Exploding babies, what will those crazy terrorists think of next?
There are teams out there developing iPad software and checking in code inside arcane CVS repositories
But does it work for them? If so, great! Why switch to something else if you have no real need for all those features?
Stargate Universe
Now, I'll have to admit that I simply don't like the show. I really enjoyed Stargate SG-1 (until O'Neill left, after that the show kinda jumped the shark in my opinion), and to some extent enjoyed Atlantis, but SG:U really doesn't do it for me.
Look we don't really need the girl having an alien hiding inside.
SG:U's Big Bad is just terrible. Every episode involving the new Big Bad (or as I like to call them the "Angry Fishpeople") involves some contrived mechanism. First Rush gets captured so they take one of those "communication stones" from him. Then Chloe gets taken from the ship at some point, but lo and behold "communication stones" to the rescue. Then at some point lateron someone suffers from "aftereffects" of the "communication stones" and sabotages the engines, and now we have DNA alteration as a way for the Big Bad to infiltrate the ship. Really, this is just terrible storytelling. It's too sneaky for a Big Bad. They're just Angry Fishpeople right now. The first real attack from the Angry Fishpeople ended in "lol, we've got shields and lasers too", and that was that.
it's not reasonable for Rush to be able to keep the control room secret for this long
But they want this show to have that inner conflict. What else will fuel that conflict than Rush hiding that control room even if your sense of logic tells you "Hey, I can't hide this for long, especially if I start messing around with it". Rush is perhaps the flattest character in the entire show (which is quite the achievement in SG:U), despite that they played the whole dead-wife-card. He's only interested in the ship, and he'll sacrifice anything and anyone except himself to get it. He's got no motivation other than his obsession.
It's contrived and totally out of character for Young to not have Rush followed either physically or electronically at all times at this point.
I was thinking more in the lines of thrown out of an airlock and shot by the Destiny's laser array, but hey followed works too. I mean, Young tried to kill Rush, then left him for dead on a planet. When he returned they play a game of pretend "for the sake of the crew"? After a full scale mutiny, all that happens is "Well, okay, we had that then. Let's just be friends!" ? I mean, things like this have consequences, and the writers do a terrible job at making the audience see those consequences by wiping the slate clean after each story and forcing the status quo from the beginning of the show back in place.
It's about a show having too much dead time and too many contrived conflicts designed to fill same.
No, it's just bad writing in my opinion. There was plenty of conflict on BSG, often contrived but none of it was without consequence like on SG:U. I'll take the mutiny example again. BSG had a mutiny, but it resulted in people getting shot. Something actually happened as opposed to wiping the slate clean.
I've always enjoyed Stargate SG-1 since it was a sci-fi show that wasn't afraid of not taking itself too serious. It was damned formulaic, but it was a pretty good formula. SG:U on the other hand feels like it wants to be the next Battlestar: all grimdark and edgy, but it fails to deliver that because :
realizing that one of the smartest and most productive people I knew was a recreational pot smoker certainly changed my viewpoint on the drug.
I have several similar stories: productive people casually smoking pot for recreational purposes and still being responsible people. I've got a few very dissimilar stories as well and it wasn't very pretty to see. I've seen a guy lose himself in drug use looking for the next high, waking up at 8 in the morning and lighting up a joint, and over the years working himself up to various other drugs that are not as harmless. A guy I used to work with lit up on the way to work every single day, so he wasn't a very dependable person. He would atypically also get fits of rage whenever he didn't get what he wanted. I think the coworker I mention here had some psychological problems, perhaps amplified by the drug use, perhaps not... I'm not an expert on the subject.
I don't buy that whole "gateway drug" thing. I know too many people who've smoked pot and never once tried something else. Like most things, I think it depends on the user on how they use the drug and how well balanced they are. From what I have observed alcohol has more devastating effects on people than pot, but that argument seems to open up a can of worms best left closed.
I live in a country next to The Netherlands and the "drug problem" has evolved to the point where the effects of usage are no longer the main problem, but the fact that foreigners are buying drugs and causing the locals grief with all the traffic has become the main issue on the agenda. This has led to various public figures from both governments clashing, and if I'm not mistaken there's a strong push in the Netherlands for a system where you have to prove your identity when purchasing pot. I would argue that if this is the most worrisome issue with people using pot the whole thing has pretty much become a farce, but leave it to politicians to make matters more complicated than they need be.
And to conclude, something mildly entertaining: the effect of drugs on spiders.
Rotate 90 degrees.
Mod +1, Practical please. Nearly every monitor does this these days. I'm not a big fan of it but I see lots of people doing it.
What's happening to this website?!
It's grown into a monster that feeds on the tears of admins whose webservers die.
DS9 was Space Station, Wormhole, Cardassians, Gamma Quadrant, Dominion, Jem'Hadar, USS Defiant.
Wrong! Deep Space Nine was about a balding commander coming to terms with his lack of facial hair. By sheer willpower alone the hair on his head moved around his mouth and formed a formidable beard and mustache that would make the most hairy of Klingons envious. It was about the epic struggle of this commander against all those who defied his magnificent facial hair. The Bajoran religious caste feared that his manly beard would stand between them and their prophets. The Cardassians formed an alliance with the Jem'Hadar and the Dominion vouching they would bring order in the universe by building a giant space razor that would make faces as smooth as a babies bottom. There were even envious Ferengi running a bar to discover the secrets of the beard so they could sell them for a profit (Rule of Acquisition #485: Every beard has it's price). At some point in time even the Romulans got involved, with some ambassador yelling at him "It's a FAKE!". But then Garrack made sure his ship exploded and the Romulans finally understood the power of facial hair.
It was a magnificent 7 season tale of hairiness, manliness and the struggle of a man against the universe.
Well, it was nearly ten years ago since I saw the series, so the details are a bit vague. But man, BEST STAR TREK SHOW EVER!
I imagine he would have wanted better. Respect, for example.
Respect, yes... And a chimp
Achievement unlocked: Pervert
Is it piracy if you then ravish their women? What if you don't exactly ravish them, but merely rip their bodices, accidentally exposing their heaving bosoms? How fast must a bosom be moving in order to be considered "heaving?"
Fascinating. This requires some in depth research. You don't happen to own a boatn because I happen to have some grog and a few eyepatches?
I told to him that the simple way to fix the problem was to mount a bullseye somewhere else on his towers and give these lunatics something different to aim at.
I'd say attach a high resolution camera to the bullseye so that it starts taking snapshots once the bullseye is hit, but I'm afraid the camera would become an obvious target.
Just don't rely on google maps to get there. You might be in for a surprise when there's an island where you want to go fishing.
Caution: Any activity involving motion or height involves the possibility of accidental injury.
Caution: sign has sharp edges
"News" has nothing to do with it.
That's right, because this story isn't news ...
I see what you did there!
Seriously though, slashdot. Is this front-page worthy? What's next? A video of a dog that thinks its people? Do the people running this site even care anymore about the content, or has their inner geek died over the years?
"It's technology related because it's on the internets!" does not make news for nerds.
A wikipedia page, and a link to an old slashdot article. My, it's good to have standards in what goes on the front page.
If you never get off the couch, why do you need a mobile app?
Even people who stay inside have to be trendy. Ride that wave of mobile goodness, buy that iPhone/Android and sit in the couch lovingly stoking that touchscreen all day long.
Now, without leaving the couch to fetch your laptop you can ...
Oh, but it doesn't end there. You can now see if your tastes match up with some couch potato halfway across the continent, and you can then see the same movies they do based on their recommendations. Not only that, but you can get suggestions for snacks, like Cheetos. All from the comfort of your comfy couch.
Now all we need is a service that delivers groceries at home.
Stop using facts! It's time for nerdrage damnit!
responsibility
I'm sorry, we don't want any of that. Slap a warning label on that box and say some bad things about MMOs on the evening news please. Who needs responsibility when you can shift blame onto someone else?
Hey Craig Smallwood, take responsibility for your actions; you're not a victim. In actuality your lawsuit paints you as a blatant parasite.
Hey man, that's not cool. You haven't seen those NCSoft devs have you? These guys will come to your house and punch you if you dare to unsubscribe. They'll force you to play the game by promising you that the punching will stop if you buy the next expansion.
Oh, and their customer support is even worse. Billing complaints? The B-team takes care of those. B stands for baseball,bat. Posting a message on the forums indicating that you're quitting? The moderators will come to your house and threaten to cook your pet Fluffy.
NCSoft turns their players into victims the moment they hit that subscribe button.
Didn't a bunch of whackjobs a few years ago try and claim that Hurricane Katrina was the result of some Weather Control Device created by the Axis of Evil?
According to what I heard it was a punishment from God for openly discussing gay marriage. Some claim that it was Gaia taking revenge for not signing the Kyoto agreement. And my most favourite is still Chinese assassin butterflies trained to flap their wings in storm causing patterns as an experiment to sink the US. Billions of butterflies are currently being bred in underground labs to see if the project will scale. I'm personally exited to find out if it actually was butterflies.
If you want to be on the safe side, I suggest you buy a nice boat.