flog

"A comprehensive overview of the structure of Civilization II savegames and scenarios._

Let me add this to the list of things I hate about Microsoft Office Access 2007.

Of course, the error message you get ("Microsoft jet database engine could not find object 'MonkeyFuck.dbf'") doesn't give you any good info about what Access's problem is, but instead complains about being unable to find the file that you just used the standard windows open file dialog to point it to.

Where do these Christians get their delusions from? Not only is there no evidence that backmasking is perceived by the brain (whether subliminally or otherwise), but most metal explicitly makes reference to Satan, sex, drugs, and violence in its Jesusly front-masked version. What is the point of backmasking except to irritate the squares?

Can someone who knows how to do math, explain this concept of hand shapes to me? Why are there only 16 hand shapes out of the 16,432 distinct hands (regardless of suit).

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The 270,725 starting hands can be reduced for purposes of determining the probability of starting hands for Omaha—since suits have no relative value in poker, many of these hands are identical in value before the flop. The only factors determining the strength of a starting hand are the ranks of the cards and whether cards in the hand share the same suit. Of the 270,725 combinations, there are 16,432 distinct starting hands grouped into 16 shapes. Throughout this article, hand shape is indicated with the ranks denoted using uppercase letters and suits denoted using lower case letters. For example, the hand shape XaXbYaYc is any hand containing two pair (XX and YY) that share one suit (a), but not the other suits (b and c). The 16 hand shapes can be organized into the following five hand types based on the ranks of the cards.

Rank type Shapes Distinct hands Combos Probability Odds
XXXX: Four of a kind 1 13 13 0.0000480 20,824 : 1
XXXY: Three of a kind 2 312 2,496 0.00922 107 : 1
XXYY: Two pair 3 234 2,808 0.0104 95.4 : 1
XXYZ: One pair 5 5,148 82,368 0.304 2.29 : 1
XYZR: No pair 5 10,725 183,040 0.676 0.479 : 1
TOTAL 16 16,432 270,725

This is an expansion to item #2 from my New Year's eve rant.

Many theists are fond of saying "yeah, but that's microevolution. that's just adaptation. there's no evidence for macroevolution - of one species turning into another."

Oh really? Well, in fact, there is. It's called the fossil record. Evolutionary sequences for hominids, whales, and horses are three that I, a lowly non-professional science fan, can think of off the top of my head. The fossil evidence clearly shows changes over time with one species transitioning into another. There is also the world famous Galapagos finches.

However, implicit in the statement that there's no macroevolution is the assumption that there is some sort of genetic wall between species which allows them to vary within certain defined boundaries but not to evolve and thereby cross those boundaries. Not only is there positive evidence of evolutionary sequences that show transitional species, but what we are now discovering as we sequence genomes and unravel the puzzles of molecular biology is a complete lack of evidence for this suggested inter-species wall.

1. Metabolism - there are 3 or 4 metabolic pathways which are shared by all of life (glycolysis, anaerobic respiration (fermentation), the Krebs cycle). Archaeans, bacteria, trees, mushrooms, and humans all break down glucose the same way. There's not even a wall separating the disparate domains of life, let alone species within those domains.

2. Cytochrome C - this protein is used widely by animals and plants and the amino acid sequences for widely disparate species are remarkably similar. Humans and chimps have the same amino acid sequence for cytochrome c and their sequence differs with that of rhesus monkeys by only one amino acid.

I can't figure out why theists weep when their loved ones die unless they: a) know subconsciously that all their religious nonsense is just that and the person is actually dead or b) actually hate the person they're weeping for because they are so selfish as to prefer to keep the person here in a miserable sin-filled world of suffering and pain instead of in a state of bliss with their Maker.

Well, my little brothers, I've let you down. No rants this holiday season about Chistian's forcing the public to pay for their nonsense with public nativity displays, or about how Jesus has very little to do with the season or about the non-existent war on XMas or about how I hate you all and pray nightly for nuclear holocaust. I managed to blissfully skate through most of the holiday season in a work-induced coma. I shall presently make up for my shortcomings with a rant of Biblical proportions. Indeed, I am a raving, rabid, atheistic, pinko son of a whore, but my rants, they are the PCP-laced joint of truth, so inhale deep.

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Against by better judgement, I have recently been conversating with a fundamentalist Christbot, a name of Judd Nelson. Judd's position is that he has arbitrarily chosen to believe whatever the Bible says and the reason he and I are unable to find any common ground on which we can have a meaningful debate is not because of the sheer stupidity of his decision about the Bible but some presuppositional nonsense about my metaphysics clogging up his ontology. Whatever the fuck, I say.

My position is that if Judd's god exists and it made this shit trap of a universe then god graciously handed us our common ground: reality. And any "special revelation" (i.e., retarded mystical god shit) that comes from this creator god cannot possibly contradict "natural revelation" (i.e., reality). So, I throw it back into his god-fucking face. If the Bible is god's word, how is it that it gets soooo many plain facts about the universe so horribly wrong? Not to be half-assed about my atheistry I decided to enumerate some of the plain facts the Bible actually does get wrong. This is off the top of my head, I'm sure there are more thorough details the Bible manages to fuck up, as well.

1. There is no evidence that the earth originally formed "covered in water". In fact, quite the opposite. During the Hadean period the surface of the earth was probably continuously in a semi-molten state.
2. There is no evidence that species are separate categories or that they are immutable. What the evidence provides us is a twin nested hierarchy - both morphological and genetic data show that all life is related and groups into a nested hierarchy with more similar species being more closely related, i.e., evolution.
3. Flood - no evidence of a global flood. By the way, we do know what it would look like if there were one because the Scablands in the Pacific Northwest are now accepted as being the result of a local flood of (almost) Biblical proportions which occurred about 15,000 years ago when the ice dam forming Lake Missoula burst (perhaps several times over a couple thousand years). Mean old levee.
4. Post-diluvial family - There's no evidence that all post-diluvial humans descend from Noah's three Semitic sons who lived in Turkey (Mt Ararat) about 6000 years ago. The evidence shows that all extant human beings have descended from an initial population of about 1000 people who lived in Africa 150-200,000 years ago.
5. Exodus - no evidence that 2 million people sat around in the desert for 40 years. It is absurd to postulate that archaeologists would be unable to find evidence for that.
6. Conquest of Judea and the united kingdom- there's no evidence for the conquest of Jericho or other towns recorded in Joshua and Judges. Some of the towns listed didn't even exist when the Bible says the conquest was going on. There's no evidence that the borders of Solomon's kingdom extended as far and as wide as recorded in the books of Kings and Chronicles. King David was a slightly noted local monarch and his son was not much better known.
7. Pi - it's not 3 (I Kings 7:23-26)
8. The doctrines of predestination and omniscience are incompatible with quantum indeterminacy.

http://www.enricozini.org/2009/debian/using-python-datetime/

"Python's datetime module is one of those bits of code that tends not to do what one would expect them to do."

Yeah.

"Long term leap year rules

The accumulated difference between the Gregorian calendar and the vernal equinoctial year amounts to 1 day in about 8,000 years. This suggests that the calendar needs to be improved by another refinement to the leap year rule: perhaps by avoiding leap days in years evenly divisible by 8,000."

No, what it suggests is that you all are trying to impose an order (i.e., a calendar) onto something that does not support your notions.

I, too, hate wrong erro messages. Full text of this very heplful blog is included below.

"I hate wrong error messages. I hate messages that lead me in wrong direction. Yesterday I've spend too much time on resolving problem with VSS. I had to add new user to VSS. Pretty simple task.
I've started and bang: "Invalid DOS PATH \\server\vss\project\users"
I've checked path - it's OK.
Double checked. Again the same error.
I've checked my privileges - Full access.
I've made local copy of VSS repository - still the same problem.

It's time to search for solution on Internet.
Few click, and I've got it: no template.ini file in \\server\vss\project\users catalog.
So, I've copied ss.ini of one user to template.ini, removed unneeded lines, and task completed.
Full description of solution

Whenever you are programming, please, make sure that error messages are meaningful to users. Try to give as many details as possible, it will help to solve problem. "