The GRE® General Test measures critical thinking, analytical writing, verbal reasoning, and quantitative reasoning skills that have been acquired over a long period of time and that are not related to any specific field of study. The GRE® Subject Tests gauge undergraduate achievement in eight specific fields of study.
Now, I'm not maintaining that you didn't have to take the GRE to get into graduate school, but to insinuate that the GRE is for enginerering students only is misleading, throwing further doubt on your apocryphal claims.
If you want us to know how smart you are, quit wasting time with unverifiable claims and, instead, convince us through the strength and cogency of your arguments.
And you're paranoid too. Are you actually suggesting that the gov't is orchestrating terrorist attacks to consolidate its power?
Take a good hard look at the A HREF="http://www.physics911.net/faketerror.htm">av ailable evidence.
And now, after you're done crowing about what a 'moonbat' site I've just linked to, take a deep breath, try to be objective, and actually look this time. All of your denunciations of 'ridiculous conspiracy theories' won't change the characteristics of ASTM E119 cettified steel, or alter the building specifications of the WTC towers, or somehow account for approximately 60 tons of missing aircraft debris at the Pentagon.
Here's what's so ironic about the whole issue. The Bush administration has successfully kept the US free of terrorist attacks since 9/11/01. But his very success had lead to a sense of complacency, particularly among ultra-myopic Bush-haters.
For the last three years, I've been snapping my fingers to keep the tigers away. I'm proud to announce that since enacting the practice, I've gone three solid years without a tiger attack.
In the book 1984, the government maintained a perpetual state of phoney war to distract the population. Today, the opposite is happening. We are in a real war with terrorist networks groups that swear they will kill us any way they can, yet the myopic deny reality and imagine that the war is phoney.
And that's exactly what the majority of the brainwashed populace in 1984 were led to believe. Well done.
I wonder if a nuclear attack will wake them out of their stupor? Alas, probably not. They'll just blame it on Bush.
Of course I'll blame it on Bush, since he'll be the one to instigate the attack. Question is, when that happens, will it be enough to wake you out of your stupor?
While that may be technically true, it still is a de facto requirement for many things. I myself have attempted to obtain bank accounts without a SSN, and was told by the bank manager on two seperate occasions, "No, we can't force you to give us your SSN...but we don't need to let you have an account here, either.".
The measure sponsored by Clay Shaw of Florida, which would make it illegal in certain cases for anyone to refuse to do business with people who decline to supply their SSNs, would go a long way towards preventing this sort of abuse, but again, it only puts a band-aid on the underlying problem.
The jury is still out on whether the end-to-end model will prevail in the long term. Many at Microsoft, and some outside analysts as well, believe the new devices will eventually succumb to the component model, and that Apple's success with the iPod will fade, just as its early dominance of the PC market did.
I'd have to disagree with the above, based on the following observation:
I believe we're seeing an evolution of PCs and electronic devices that closely parallels the evolution of the electric motor. When electric motors were first available to the public, it was in a general-purpose, component model. You could buy an electric motor, and it would normally come with different belts or chains allowing you to attach them to a wide variety of other devices. Nowadays, electric motors are much more within the end-to-end model, in which they are made for a specific task and embedded in the end product.
Computing devices seem to be following that same general curve...becoming more specialized, embedded, and specific-to-task (one example: console games vs. gaming PCs). Given this inexorable movement away from the general-purpose to the application-specific, I'd have to guess that the end-to-end model will be excercising progressively more dominance in the market as time passes.
All the proposals mentioned in the article are merely band-aids on a system that is fundamentally broken. Any competently designed identification system consists of two parts: the public identifier, and the private key. The problem with SSNs is that you have a system where one number is simultaneously the public and private parts of the system, which dooms it to failure every time.
Making new rules limiting the sale and purchase of SSNs, or restricting the display of SSNs on reports, is just closing the barn door after the hore has already left.
At this point, the current administration has basically said (without using so many words) that they are above the law.
I agree with your entire post except the part above within the parentheses. Since taking office in 2001, President Bush has issued signing statements on more than 750 new laws, declaring that he has the power to set aside the laws when they conflict with his legal interpretation of the Constitution.
This is by very definition holding yourself 'above the law'.
The poll questions say absolutely nothing about the current illegality of this sort of data-mining on U.S. citizens.
The second to last question from the poll:
46. If you found out that the NSA had a record of phone numbers that you yourself have called, would that bother you, or not? IF YES: Would it bother you a lot, or just somewhat?
-----------Yes------------ NET A lot Somewhat No No opin. 34 24 10 66 *
The last question from the poll (emphasis mine):
47. Do you think it is right or wrong for the news media to have disclosed this secret government program?
Don't look now, but such a repeal has already been proposed.
Now, this seems to be a fairly standard thing, actually. Someone seems to propose the elimination of term limits everyadministration or so, but these are truly unusual times...I wouldn't be at all surprised to see this proposed again and ratified in the hysteria following another 'terrorist attack'.
The day this passes is the day I either join the Michigan Militia or move to Canada.
Why does Diebold design these machines in such a way that they *CAN* be hacked?
Simple. Because that is their intention.
Acccuse me of left-wing moonbattery all you like, but the fact remains that Diebold has shown themselves to be capable of making reasonably secure ATM machines. There's no defense by incompetence available to them. These ridiculous security holes can only be intentional.
Making these devices large, restricted to the government, bulky & containing GPS units in the case of them being stolen.
Not to sound pessimistic, but the government is precisely the people we need to protect this machine from. I would think that the only way to address this would be to:
Hold of on installing the final software load approved by both parties (and perhaps a third, 'impartial' entity) until the device is installed on-site (and bolted down)
Install the final software load while overseers from both parties (and the third, 'impartial' entity) verify the installation and the veracity of the software load via checksum.
Secure the access door permanently (rivets, welding, whatever), and have all overseers affix tamper-evident seals.
Overseers remain present throughout voting, and periodically inspect tamper-evident seals.
If an irregularity occurs, the entire process must be repeated and the citizens must be allowed to vote again. This will eliminate the posibility of people just tampering for the purpose of getting the precinct thrown out of the count.
You can produce bio-diesel from a vast diversity of lifeforms as long as they contain lipids.
"Soylent diesel is made from PEOPLE! It's PEOPLE!!!!!!"
Re:GuloGulo's back to his old tricks. Big surprise
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I had no idea you were psychic.
Not psychic...just capable of extracting information from the printed word.
Let's look at that quote again, shall we?
Now I'm a tad surprised that you're not jumping all over me for straw-manning the crap out of the benefits.
Again, the sentence is expressing surprise that you're not accusing him of employing the Straw Man fallacy in regards to the benefits. That's all.
This dispute is easily enough resolved...if he was referencing an actual instance where he used the Straw man argument during his debate with you, then we should be able to locate it somewhere in the thread. In fact, in my previous post, I challenged you to do just that: quote the relevant statement or admit your distortion. Here's how you rose to that challenge:
As I've said before, you'll twist anything I say into something else, presumably because you have such excessive free time that you have nothing better to do than follow me around and attack me personally.
I genuinely think you're mentally ill. I feel very sorry for you, and I hope you seek treatment for it. Seriously, no flaming, but you need to see a professional. Your behavior is, frankly, irrational and inexplicable.
No mention of the Straw Man argument you're accusing your original opponent of making...only lies and pointless ad homenims.
My challenge still stands, GuloGulo. Find the Straw Man argument that AndersOSU allegedly perpetrated against you or admit it's not there.
If an employee asks you what you're doing, respond 'I'm waiting for my girlfriend/boyfriend who is shopping elsewhere in the store.'
Another [employee] came up to me and said, "Let me guess, you're waiting on your friend? Good answer." I guess at that point he had heard that answer more than a few times.
Employees began asking our agents to leave the store if they weren't shopping. Most stuck to their "I'm waiting for my girlfriend" story and refused to leave.
Al first approached me within 30 seconds and asked if I needed any help. I asked him where the bathrooms were (I was actually needing to go), but he told me they were out of order. I said, "Alright, I'll just wait for my girlfriend then. She's looking for the bathroom. I guess I might be here awhile."
When an employee approached and asked (of course) if I needed any help. I said no, I was just waiting for my friend.
A dude walked up to me and said: "Are you guys demonstrating or protesting or something?" I said: "Oh, I'm just waiting for my girlfriend, she's somewhere around here."
Manager: "What are you doing can I help you?" [very sassy tone] Me: I'm just waiting for a friend.
One manager came up to me and said, "I don't know what you and all your friends are doing here, but you need to leave." I said, "What? I'm just waiting for someone, I don't know..." and the guy goes, "Yeah, yeah, all of you are just 'waiting for someone.'"
I said, "I'm sorry, but I don't understand what you mean. If you mean, am I bored, it's true I'm kind of bored because I'm waiting for someone."
"I'm waiting for my friend, just watching TV while I wait."
"Nothing of the kind", indeed.
Next time you might want to RTFA before you accuse someone else of lying about the article's contents...
GuloGulo's back to his old tricks. Big surprise..
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Nice try, GuloGulo, but no. He didn't admit to the Straw Man fallacy, he expresed his surprise that you didn't groundlessly accuse him of engaging in it. Apparently, I'm not the only one who's familiar with your tactics.
If you can find where he actually engaged in the Straw Man fallacy, please quote the relevant passage, rather a passage about his surprise that you didn't accuse him of the Straw Man fallacy that you took out of context. Otherwise, man up and admit your distortion.
If you had read on you would have seen that he in fact acknowledges the value of the benefits, but then raises a valid objection:
That we have coal here is the single biggest benefit, but at the same time the single biggest benefit of hydrogen is that it is a "clean fuel." If we're making it from coal that ceases to be the case.
Funny how you left that part out.
Actually, no, it's not funny. It's par for the course.
"I won't waste my time being trolled by you again."
What a joke. I'm being told by the guy who had to make a new account because his original is languishing in Karma Hell that he "won't waste his time being trolled by me".
Translation: "He keeps pointing out the flaws in my arguments, no matter how much I insult him and try to twist his words, so I'm just gonna pretend he's not there."
You'll notice at no time in this thread has any trolling been done by anyone but you.
Memorable quotes by GuloGulo from this thread:
"Admit it, you didn't know it was possible, and now you're grasping at straws in order to salvage your point."
"I have no desire whatsoever to correct you and your ignorance."
"...debating this with you would be a frustrating waste of time."
"I don't know why you'd be surprised that someone chooses not to descend into the muck with you."
I though that, in the interests of fairness, I'd also include trollish statements that AndersOSU made towards you, but...you know what? There aren't any.
So save your self righteous observations for the mods.
Ah yes, those 'mods' that you hold in such high esteem. No wonder you're going by GuloGulo2.
I stopped listening to anything you said a long time ago.
Your response to me would seem to belie that assertion, but inconsistency is nothing new for you, is it?
He openly admitted to arguing using logical fallacies.
A blatant lie, and not at all surprising. One of your favored tactics seems to be to accuse your opponent of a nonexistent 'logical fallacy' in an attempt to derail the argument.
I love how you left that out, in your very sad attempt to troll me.
I left it out because it didn't happen. Your assertion that it did shows that you're out of actual arguments
Who's the one trolling again?
I'm not trolling....I'm genuinely curious. Which is it?
It's funny, but I'm not seeing the word 'happy' in that quote. Actually, I'm not seeing any synonyms for the word 'happy', either. In fact, I'm not seeing anything whatsoever that pertains to my state of mind regarding this situation.
At this point, I'd normally say 'nice try', but this was pretty pathetic.
It's interesting, isn't it, GuloGulo? Any conversation you involve yourself in rapidly deteriorates into a pointless flamefest.
So, is it every other Slashdot user who is to blame, or does the blame rest with you?
Occam's Razor, buddy.
AndersOSU's previous post was entirely accurate, and raised valid counterarguments to your Fischer-Tropsch process argument. Faced with an opponent who was actually prepared to discuss the issue, you resorted to your usual trollery to escape.
It's clear that you are a reasonably intelligent and knowledgeable individual, so to explain your bizzare behavior one must either assume you are a precocious eight-year old, or an adult who never had the chance to develop the normal coping mechanisms associated with emotional maturity. Which is it?
Slashdot Mirror
It gives me an excuse to brag about the fact that I scored in the top 1% on the GRE exam.
Translation: "It gives me an excuse to make a totally apocryphal claim about my intelligence in an effort to intimidate my oppponents into silence."
The GRE (Graduate Records Exam) is the standard test taken by engineering graduates to get into graduate school
Actually, that's not what the official site by Educational Testing Services (ETS) says about the GRE. From the site (emphasis mine): Now, I'm not maintaining that you didn't have to take the GRE to get into graduate school, but to insinuate that the GRE is for enginerering students only is misleading, throwing further doubt on your apocryphal claims.
If you want us to know how smart you are, quit wasting time with unverifiable claims and, instead, convince us through the strength and cogency of your arguments.
How does this document fit in with your philosophy, then?
And what about this document?
Yes, there is a big difference, isn't there?
You must have missed the slashdot article a few days ago about the polling results that show 63% of Americans support the NSA operations.
Oh, I didn't miss it...in fact, I posted in it. Here are a few more posts which do an excellent job of pointing up just why that 'poll' was bogus:
And you're paranoid too. Are you actually suggesting that the gov't is orchestrating terrorist attacks to consolidate its power?
Take a good hard look at the A HREF="http://www.physics911.net/faketerror.htm">a
And now, after you're done crowing about what a 'moonbat' site I've just linked to, take a deep breath, try to be objective, and actually look this time. All of your denunciations of 'ridiculous conspiracy theories' won't change the characteristics of ASTM E119 cettified steel, or alter the building specifications of the WTC towers, or somehow account for approximately 60 tons of missing aircraft debris at the Pentagon.
Here's what's so ironic about the whole issue. The Bush administration has successfully kept the US free of terrorist attacks since 9/11/01. But his very success had lead to a sense of complacency, particularly among ultra-myopic Bush-haters.
For the last three years, I've been snapping my fingers to keep the tigers away. I'm proud to announce that since enacting the practice, I've gone three solid years without a tiger attack.
In the book 1984, the government maintained a perpetual state of phoney war to distract the population. Today, the opposite is happening. We are in a real war with terrorist networks groups that swear they will kill us any way they can, yet the myopic deny reality and imagine that the war is phoney.
And that's exactly what the majority of the brainwashed populace in 1984 were led to believe. Well done.
I wonder if a nuclear attack will wake them out of their stupor? Alas, probably not. They'll just blame it on Bush.
Of course I'll blame it on Bush, since he'll be the one to instigate the attack. Question is, when that happens, will it be enough to wake you out of your stupor?
I watch Brit Hume on Fox News
Odds are it won't.
The unrest against the goverment's tyranny is reaching a critical point.
Expect another 'terrorist act' real soon to distract us from the issue of our eroding civil rights.
While that may be technically true, it still is a de facto requirement for many things. I myself have attempted to obtain bank accounts without a SSN, and was told by the bank manager on two seperate occasions, "No, we can't force you to give us your SSN...but we don't need to let you have an account here, either.".
The measure sponsored by Clay Shaw of Florida, which would make it illegal in certain cases for anyone to refuse to do business with people who decline to supply their SSNs, would go a long way towards preventing this sort of abuse, but again, it only puts a band-aid on the underlying problem.
From TFA: I'd have to disagree with the above, based on the following observation:
I believe we're seeing an evolution of PCs and electronic devices that closely parallels the evolution of the electric motor. When electric motors were first available to the public, it was in a general-purpose, component model. You could buy an electric motor, and it would normally come with different belts or chains allowing you to attach them to a wide variety of other devices. Nowadays, electric motors are much more within the end-to-end model, in which they are made for a specific task and embedded in the end product.
Computing devices seem to be following that same general curve...becoming more specialized, embedded, and specific-to-task (one example: console games vs. gaming PCs). Given this inexorable movement away from the general-purpose to the application-specific, I'd have to guess that the end-to-end model will be excercising progressively more dominance in the market as time passes.
Bwah ha ha ha!
'hore' ought to be 'horse'.... ^_^
All the proposals mentioned in the article are merely band-aids on a system that is fundamentally broken. Any competently designed identification system consists of two parts: the public identifier, and the private key. The problem with SSNs is that you have a system where one number is simultaneously the public and private parts of the system, which dooms it to failure every time.
Making new rules limiting the sale and purchase of SSNs, or restricting the display of SSNs on reports, is just closing the barn door after the hore has already left.
Alan Greenspan is no longer the Federal Reserve Chairman...Ben Bernanke has held the office since Feb. 1 of this year.
At this point, the current administration has basically said (without using so many words) that they are above the law.
I agree with your entire post except the part above within the parentheses. Since taking office in 2001, President Bush has issued signing statements on more than 750 new laws, declaring that he has the power to set aside the laws when they conflict with his legal interpretation of the Constitution.
This is by very definition holding yourself 'above the law'.
Randomly snatching up people from the streets and interrogating them would give more security than this!
Don't encourage them. Under the Patriot Act II, they have the legal right to do just that.
Don't look now, but such a repeal has already been proposed.
Now, this seems to be a fairly standard thing, actually. Someone seems to propose the elimination of term limits every administration or so, but these are truly unusual times...I wouldn't be at all surprised to see this proposed again and ratified in the hysteria following another 'terrorist attack'.
The day this passes is the day I either join the Michigan Militia or move to Canada.
Medical experts contacted by The Age Newspaper said no definitive link had been proved between mobile phone tower radiation and cancer.
I'd call seven brain tumours in one building a heck of a link...
Why does Diebold design these machines in such a way that they *CAN* be hacked?
Simple. Because that is their intention.
Acccuse me of left-wing moonbattery all you like, but the fact remains that Diebold has shown themselves to be capable of making reasonably secure ATM machines. There's no defense by incompetence available to them. These ridiculous security holes can only be intentional.
Making these devices large, restricted to the government, bulky & containing GPS units in the case of them being stolen.
Not to sound pessimistic, but the government is precisely the people we need to protect this machine from. I would think that the only way to address this would be to:
If an irregularity occurs, the entire process must be repeated and the citizens must be allowed to vote again. This will eliminate the posibility of people just tampering for the purpose of getting the precinct thrown out of the count.
Considering that Walden O'Dell, chief executive of Diebold Inc., was quoted in August of 2003 as saying that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year", this shouldn't be too surprising.
You can produce bio-diesel from a vast diversity of lifeforms as long as they contain lipids.
"Soylent diesel is made from PEOPLE! It's PEOPLE!!!!!!"
I had no idea you were psychic.
Not psychic...just capable of extracting information from the printed word.
Let's look at that quote again, shall we?Again, the sentence is expressing surprise that you're not accusing him of employing the Straw Man fallacy in regards to the benefits. That's all.
This dispute is easily enough resolved...if he was referencing an actual instance where he used the Straw man argument during his debate with you, then we should be able to locate it somewhere in the thread. In fact, in my previous post, I challenged you to do just that: quote the relevant statement or admit your distortion. Here's how you rose to that challenge:No mention of the Straw Man argument you're accusing your original opponent of making...only lies and pointless ad homenims.
My challenge still stands, GuloGulo. Find the Straw Man argument that AndersOSU allegedly perpetrated against you or admit it's not there.
From TFA:
"Nothing of the kind", indeed.
Next time you might want to RTFA before you accuse someone else of lying about the article's contents...
Nice try, GuloGulo, but no. He didn't admit to the Straw Man fallacy, he expresed his surprise that you didn't groundlessly accuse him of engaging in it. Apparently, I'm not the only one who's familiar with your tactics.
If you can find where he actually engaged in the Straw Man fallacy, please quote the relevant passage, rather a passage about his surprise that you didn't accuse him of the Straw Man fallacy that you took out of context. Otherwise, man up and admit your distortion.
If you had read on you would have seen that he in fact acknowledges the value of the benefits, but then raises a valid objection: Funny how you left that part out.
Actually, no, it's not funny. It's par for the course.
"I won't waste my time being trolled by you again."
What a joke. I'm being told by the guy who had to make a new account because his original is languishing in Karma Hell that he "won't waste his time being trolled by me".
Translation: "He keeps pointing out the flaws in my arguments, no matter how much I insult him and try to twist his words, so I'm just gonna pretend he's not there."
You'll notice at no time in this thread has any trolling been done by anyone but you.
Memorable quotes by GuloGulo from this thread:I though that, in the interests of fairness, I'd also include trollish statements that AndersOSU made towards you, but...you know what? There aren't any.
So save your self righteous observations for the mods.
Ah yes, those 'mods' that you hold in such high esteem. No wonder you're going by GuloGulo2.
I stopped listening to anything you said a long time ago.
Your response to me would seem to belie that assertion, but inconsistency is nothing new for you, is it?
He openly admitted to arguing using logical fallacies.
A blatant lie, and not at all surprising. One of your favored tactics seems to be to accuse your opponent of a nonexistent 'logical fallacy' in an attempt to derail the argument.
I love how you left that out, in your very sad attempt to troll me.
I left it out because it didn't happen. Your assertion that it did shows that you're out of actual arguments
Who's the one trolling again?
I'm not trolling....I'm genuinely curious. Which is it?
It's funny, but I'm not seeing the word 'happy' in that quote. Actually, I'm not seeing any synonyms for the word 'happy', either. In fact, I'm not seeing anything whatsoever that pertains to my state of mind regarding this situation.
At this point, I'd normally say 'nice try', but this was pretty pathetic.
It's interesting, isn't it, GuloGulo? Any conversation you involve yourself in rapidly deteriorates into a pointless flamefest.
So, is it every other Slashdot user who is to blame, or does the blame rest with you?
Occam's Razor, buddy.
AndersOSU's previous post was entirely accurate, and raised valid counterarguments to your Fischer-Tropsch process argument. Faced with an opponent who was actually prepared to discuss the issue, you resorted to your usual trollery to escape.
It's clear that you are a reasonably intelligent and knowledgeable individual, so to explain your bizzare behavior one must either assume you are a precocious eight-year old, or an adult who never had the chance to develop the normal coping mechanisms associated with emotional maturity. Which is it?
I accept your concession.