Oh goody, let's talk us vs them, and you're going to play "them" -- I doubt you'll mind.
I have seen people steadfastly refuse to look at evidence, who have seen evidence which made them go awfully quiet and which they actually couldn't remember seeing the next day.
And of course you couldn't offer the evidence again. I freely do admit, we skeptics are as good at thinking on our feet the way mystics and con artists are. We're not bullshit artists, and we struggle with explanations when we don't have all the facts to refute claims that defy logic itself. We say 1 + 2 = 3, but when the response is "1 + 2 = harmonic emanations from the spirit world, and I *defy* you to prove otherwise", we just don't know what to say. You really do have us at a loss for how to proceed.
Fuckit, I don't really have time to deconstruct the rest of this diatribe. Nice bit of projection though about twisting logic and denial and so forth. That and/or it's masterful trolling -- it's about time people took back the term for its original meaning.
Please don't confuse anything coming out of the Global Consciousness Project with anything that resembles actual science. Their entire endeavor consists in mining random data for patterns, and manipulating it til it fits.
animals being forewarned of the coming earthquakes,
Just before the last earthquake in SF (like a 5.6 somewhere in the south bay), my cat went nuts, jumping all over the furniture, running back and forth, before hiding under the couch and not coming out. Impressive detection ability she has, because every day there's an earthquake somewhere in the world, and she's been detecting earthquakes like that every single day.
The cake was there. Though I'm not sure I'd want to eat it. Ever listen to the recipe?
1 18.25 ounce package chocolate cake mix. 1 can prepared coconut pecan frosting. 3/4 cup vegetable oil. 4 large eggs. 1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips. 3/4 cups butter or margarine. 1&2/3 cups granulated sugar. 2 cups all purpose flour. Don't forget garnishes such as: Fish shaped crackers. Fish shaped candies. Fish shaped solid waste, Fish shaped dirt. Fish shaped ethyl benzene. Pull and peel licorice.. Fish shaped volatile organic compounds and sediment shaped sediment. Candy coated peanut butter pieces, Shaped like fish. 1 cup lemon juice. Alpha resins. Unsaturated polyester resin. Fiberglass surface resins. And volatile malted milk impoundments. 9 large egg yolks. 12 medium geosynthetic membranes. 1 cup granulated sugar. An entry called 'how to kill someone with your bare hands'. 2 cups rhubarb, sliced. 2/3 cups granulated rhubarb. 1 tablespoon all-purpose rhubarb. 1 teaspoon grated orange rhubarb. 3 tablespoons rhubarb, on fire. 1 large rhubarb. 1 cross borehole electro-magnetic imaging rhubarb. 2 tablespoons rhubarb juice. Adjustable aluminum head positioner. Slaughter electric needle injector. Cordless electric needle injector. Injector needle driver. Injector needle gun. Cranial caps. And it contains proven preservatives, deep penetration agents, and gas and odor control chemicals. That will deodorize and preserve putrid tissue.
They don't want to be in court and they're being bled dry regardless of their guilt or innocence, so yes, I'd say "victim" is about right.
But hey, I guess good old fashioned gumption, bootstrap-pulling, and moral fiber are all people need. Maybe there's a culture of victimhood because people are constantly getting fucked over with nothing they're legally allowed to do about it except whine.
I suppose we all get the system we deserve. Unfortunately, I also get the system we deserve. Add me to the victims.
A troll is someone who tries to incite, he's fishing for bites. Good trolls sound serious, or geniune, and while they're really tiresome after a while, especially when it's cut and paste crap like the "*BSD is dying" troll, sometimes in the case of communities like alt.folklore.urban it's just good-natured pranking.
The "faggoty ass micro$oft" guy is not particularly a troll, merely an inarticulate asshole.
Erris is just one of twitter's sockpuppets. Twitter essentially does nothing but troll any and all Microsoft-related articles with the same language. Best to just shitcan him with a red dot next to his name and forget about him.
Sandboxed IE is pretty good. Yeah, there's other browsers, but realistically that's not the deal. I work for a GigantoCorp and we do officially support Firefox, but we do still have some IE-only apps, and most people still use the browser installed by default.
The indexing/search is much better than the one in XP.
It's got much better centrally adminable security policies that can apparently be on a per-network basis.
I'm not sure it's worth the cost in computing resources though (the cost of the OS is irrelevant, it's just a choice of which new one to install).
Basically, in short, the slashdot frontpage is Bennett Haselton's personal blog. Full of "what I did today" stories full of inflated self-importance about being the New Media.
Shit, I think even Jon Katz had more respect for his readers.
Randi has all the right ideas, but is seriously the wrong front man for his challenge. He's so easily baited into flaming and vitriolic diatribes that he completely loses the plot, making the challenge not about the claims, but about the players tossing an exchange of schoolyard taunts.
As for the prize, it's really too small these days: a million bucks is nothing to sneeze at, but it really is chump change for the high profile targets he supposedly (but it would seem not actually) is now exclusively pursuing. It's kept around as more or less cash, when it would seem that it wouldn't be too hard to get an even bigger prize insured. I guess all that's needed is enough incentive to get applicants to take the challenge in the first place, more won't make the testing any different. Regardless, the Sylvia Brownes of the world still aren't taking that challenge -- because they'd have everything to lose from their fraud being exposed, of course -- but they're also given a fairly easy out when they can simply portray themselves as rising above abusive and insunting invective.
As a skeptic, I really do applaud the work of the JREF. I just think the challenge isn't being administered very well, and it's really about time to take a serious look at dropping it altogether.
> I'm not exactly sure how you can judge the mentality of military members by the current regime.
I don't. I'm against the general principle of compulsory service in a military that is being used to implement the policies of groups like PNAC who'd like us to stand astride the world like a colossus (guess that game reference!), damn the morality or even the blowback.
There's a good argument to be made that if everyone served, maybe the military wouldn't be tossed around so lightly; there's also quite a likelihood that the military leadership would use it as an authoritarian indocrination political machine. You think the military is a political football now, just wait til politicians want to play with it like it was a public school.
Gosh, I think I've offended pretty much every political persuasion now.
Slashdot's new ajaxy comment system displays more comment headers below the current threshold, which encourages the trolls who can fit the troll into the subject line and first line of the post. You can filter out the noise with a simple drag, but the defaults show 'em still.
It's all just noise. They have no motivation, they're just socially retarded kids that stopped chewing their keyboards long enough to make funny screen noise.
If we're ever threatened with extinction by giant space bugs, I'll keep your idea in mind. Meantime, our military is more like a set of toy soldiers for neocons to play with, and I'd rather not integrate them any more into the political process.
Exactly. I'm in Texas. My vote is worthless. [...] I'd give up my vote for $1million in a heartbeat.
You're never going to move?
Incidentally, yeah I'd sell my right for a million, but that'd be if I could get about a thousand other people to do the same, then we spend our billion on making real change happen. Yeah, I know, hypotheticals aren't meant to be answered that way...
My though is this: If these people are known scumbags and there's already sufficient discussion of them and their tactics on internet forums, why haven't law enforcement done anything? I know in the USA there's such a thing as Wire Fraud.
Because there isn't a lobby to convince Congress that they're a menace to law, order, and our purity of essence. Quite the opposite in fact, the DMA convinces them that the very engines of society will grind to a halt should any regulation be enacted that requires marketers to shoulder the onerous burden of obeying the law.
Supply is not an issue -- breeder reactors make more fuel than they take in. The proliferation issue is certainly scary, though there are designs that can prevent the creation of weapons-grade fuel (more to the point, they "dope" it to where it's useless for weapons reprocessing). Of course someone has to enforce the use of such designs, and then you're talking about an authority like the IAEA stepping in to regulate, but hey isn't everything about the UN evil? Sorry, been listening to too many Ronbots lately...
As for boiling water, heat's the most abundant and available energy we get out of the reaction, so why not boil water? Yeah, it's not perfectly efficient, but it's not ridiculously inefficient, and it's a damn sight better than what we're burning NOW for heat energy.
As DX10 is implemented now, it can't work on XP, since relies on Vista usermode drivers. They can port it, feature for feature, of course (and some enterprising folks apparently already have to some degree).
Besides, we're all pretty used to companies changing their stories. We let 'em have their justifications as long as they deliver.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh goody, let's talk us vs them, and you're going to play "them" -- I doubt you'll mind.
I have seen people steadfastly refuse to look at evidence, who have seen evidence which made them go awfully quiet and which they actually couldn't remember seeing the next day.
And of course you couldn't offer the evidence again. I freely do admit, we skeptics are as good at thinking on our feet the way mystics and con artists are. We're not bullshit artists, and we struggle with explanations when we don't have all the facts to refute claims that defy logic itself. We say 1 + 2 = 3, but when the response is "1 + 2 = harmonic emanations from the spirit world, and I *defy* you to prove otherwise", we just don't know what to say. You really do have us at a loss for how to proceed.
Fuckit, I don't really have time to deconstruct the rest of this diatribe. Nice bit of projection though about twisting logic and denial and so forth. That and/or it's masterful trolling -- it's about time people took back the term for its original meaning.
Please don't confuse anything coming out of the Global Consciousness Project with anything that resembles actual science. Their entire endeavor consists in mining random data for patterns, and manipulating it til it fits.
animals being forewarned of the coming earthquakes,
Just before the last earthquake in SF (like a 5.6 somewhere in the south bay), my cat went nuts, jumping all over the furniture, running back and forth, before hiding under the couch and not coming out. Impressive detection ability she has, because every day there's an earthquake somewhere in the world, and she's been detecting earthquakes like that every single day.
> The presence of charlatans doesn't invalidate dowsing as a load of crap.
No, just every single instance in which it's ever been subjected to rigorous test. Which is good enough for me.
They don't want to be in court and they're being bled dry regardless of their guilt or innocence, so yes, I'd say "victim" is about right.
But hey, I guess good old fashioned gumption, bootstrap-pulling, and moral fiber are all people need. Maybe there's a culture of victimhood because people are constantly getting fucked over with nothing they're legally allowed to do about it except whine.
I suppose we all get the system we deserve. Unfortunately, I also get the system we deserve. Add me to the victims.
They don't regenerate any damage they take from fire or acid. So yeah, flame a troll enough and it goes away :)
But the net term comes from "trolling for fish", i.e. dragging your line back and forth in the hopes that one somewhere will bite.
A troll is someone who tries to incite, he's fishing for bites. Good trolls sound serious, or geniune, and while they're really tiresome after a while, especially when it's cut and paste crap like the "*BSD is dying" troll, sometimes in the case of communities like alt.folklore.urban it's just good-natured pranking.
The "faggoty ass micro$oft" guy is not particularly a troll, merely an inarticulate asshole.
touché
Erris is just one of twitter's sockpuppets. Twitter essentially does nothing but troll any and all Microsoft-related articles with the same language. Best to just shitcan him with a red dot next to his name and forget about him.
Sandboxed IE is pretty good. Yeah, there's other browsers, but realistically that's not the deal. I work for a GigantoCorp and we do officially support Firefox, but we do still have some IE-only apps, and most people still use the browser installed by default.
The indexing/search is much better than the one in XP.
It's got much better centrally adminable security policies that can apparently be on a per-network basis.
I'm not sure it's worth the cost in computing resources though (the cost of the OS is irrelevant, it's just a choice of which new one to install).
Basically, in short, the slashdot frontpage is Bennett Haselton's personal blog. Full of "what I did today" stories full of inflated self-importance about being the New Media.
Shit, I think even Jon Katz had more respect for his readers.
Randi has all the right ideas, but is seriously the wrong front man for his challenge. He's so easily baited into flaming and vitriolic diatribes that he completely loses the plot, making the challenge not about the claims, but about the players tossing an exchange of schoolyard taunts.
As for the prize, it's really too small these days: a million bucks is nothing to sneeze at, but it really is chump change for the high profile targets he supposedly (but it would seem not actually) is now exclusively pursuing. It's kept around as more or less cash, when it would seem that it wouldn't be too hard to get an even bigger prize insured. I guess all that's needed is enough incentive to get applicants to take the challenge in the first place, more won't make the testing any different. Regardless, the Sylvia Brownes of the world still aren't taking that challenge -- because they'd have everything to lose from their fraud being exposed, of course -- but they're also given a fairly easy out when they can simply portray themselves as rising above abusive and insunting invective.
As a skeptic, I really do applaud the work of the JREF. I just think the challenge isn't being administered very well, and it's really about time to take a serious look at dropping it altogether.
> I'm not exactly sure how you can judge the mentality of military members by the current regime.
I don't. I'm against the general principle of compulsory service in a military that is being used to implement the policies of groups like PNAC who'd like us to stand astride the world like a colossus (guess that game reference!), damn the morality or even the blowback.
There's a good argument to be made that if everyone served, maybe the military wouldn't be tossed around so lightly; there's also quite a likelihood that the military leadership would use it as an authoritarian indocrination political machine. You think the military is a political football now, just wait til politicians want to play with it like it was a public school.
Gosh, I think I've offended pretty much every political persuasion now.
Slashdot's new ajaxy comment system displays more comment headers below the current threshold, which encourages the trolls who can fit the troll into the subject line and first line of the post. You can filter out the noise with a simple drag, but the defaults show 'em still.
It's all just noise. They have no motivation, they're just socially retarded kids that stopped chewing their keyboards long enough to make funny screen noise.
That would've been far more credible than Einstein... whom, I believe was long dead by the time Norris was conceived.
Chuck's an old dude! IMDB says for Chuck Norris: Date of Birth: 10 March 1940, Ryan, Oklahoma, USA
Wikipedia says for Albert Einstein: March 14, 1879 - April 18, 1955
So we've got at latest a 76-year-old Albert Einstein kicking the ass of a 15-year old Chuck Norris. Aw yeah.
> Either way best not use Dual_EC_DRBG.
I'm pretty sure that if they backdoored one, they backdoored them all. Best to not use any of the new algorithms, period.
If we're ever threatened with extinction by giant space bugs, I'll keep your idea in mind. Meantime, our military is more like a set of toy soldiers for neocons to play with, and I'd rather not integrate them any more into the political process.
Exactly. I'm in Texas. My vote is worthless. [...] I'd give up my vote for $1million in a heartbeat.
You're never going to move?
Incidentally, yeah I'd sell my right for a million, but that'd be if I could get about a thousand other people to do the same, then we spend our billion on making real change happen. Yeah, I know, hypotheticals aren't meant to be answered that way...
> why not organize and complain to Blizzard?
Players: "Blizzard, your malware sucks, and you suck for using it!"
Blizzard: "What? Sorry, these piles of money you keep forking over to us every month kind of muffle the sound in here."
My though is this: If these people are known scumbags and there's already sufficient discussion of them and their tactics on internet forums, why haven't law enforcement done anything? I know in the USA there's such a thing as Wire Fraud.
Because there isn't a lobby to convince Congress that they're a menace to law, order, and our purity of essence. Quite the opposite in fact, the DMA convinces them that the very engines of society will grind to a halt should any regulation be enacted that requires marketers to shoulder the onerous burden of obeying the law.
Distrust FTW. One-click tracks-covering. You just have to remember to turn it on before surfing those dodgy sites.
Supply is not an issue -- breeder reactors make more fuel than they take in. The proliferation issue is certainly scary, though there are designs that can prevent the creation of weapons-grade fuel (more to the point, they "dope" it to where it's useless for weapons reprocessing). Of course someone has to enforce the use of such designs, and then you're talking about an authority like the IAEA stepping in to regulate, but hey isn't everything about the UN evil? Sorry, been listening to too many Ronbots lately...
As for boiling water, heat's the most abundant and available energy we get out of the reaction, so why not boil water? Yeah, it's not perfectly efficient, but it's not ridiculously inefficient, and it's a damn sight better than what we're burning NOW for heat energy.
As DX10 is implemented now, it can't work on XP, since relies on Vista usermode drivers. They can port it, feature for feature, of course (and some enterprising folks apparently already have to some degree).
Besides, we're all pretty used to companies changing their stories. We let 'em have their justifications as long as they deliver.
Or just use regmon while you change the settings. Just filter out reads (there's always oodles of those going on on windows) and show writes. Presto.