Thu 24 April 2008 11:22 PM
Adding to the Pile
By wasting my time listening to the earthlings?, I have added something new to the shit pile. There are links to music videos in the footers of the lyrics pages for Saving Up For My Spaceship Illuminate and Johnny B. Goode.
Thu 24 April 2008 10:32 PM
In My Dreams I Can Fly
...and cause objects to levitate. There was a time when I was powerless to escape the Dreamscape snake man or keep myself from being stabbed in the back by knife-wielding thieves and/or aliens, but as I've grown older I seem to be in more control in my dreams. Occasionally demons still harass me but I either use my burgeoning flying abilities or my "scream attack" (a load, obnoxious roar that, it turns out, as a disturbing snorting/snoring sound that actually awakens my wife) to dismiss them - probably some sort of precursor to sleep apnea.
The most enduringly dreadful dreams I have now don't have to do with monsters or demons threatening me, but rather my children. In a vivid sequence I saw my oldest son walking out of a house and just from the look on his face I knew he had been sexually molested. The pain was palpable and did not subside after I bolted awake - getting up to check that both children were safe in bed.
Just like so many things in modern life, control is an illusion. The illusion holds for myself and my daily situation for the most part, but it can't color the reality that those precious little non-clones of mine venture out of the house on a daily basis and there is nothing I can do to keep them secure during that time. They have to look out for one another.
The most enduringly dreadful dreams I have now don't have to do with monsters or demons threatening me, but rather my children. In a vivid sequence I saw my oldest son walking out of a house and just from the look on his face I knew he had been sexually molested. The pain was palpable and did not subside after I bolted awake - getting up to check that both children were safe in bed.
Just like so many things in modern life, control is an illusion. The illusion holds for myself and my daily situation for the most part, but it can't color the reality that those precious little non-clones of mine venture out of the house on a daily basis and there is nothing I can do to keep them secure during that time. They have to look out for one another.
Thu 24 April 2008 10:02 AM
CAPTCHA SPAM
Has anyone noticed an increase in the amount of messages in their gmail SPAM folder since the Windows Live Hotmail and Google CAPTCHAs have been cracked?
Sat 19 April 2008 12:13 AM
Rebuttal
>Certainly people are predisposed towards religious beliefs, seeking answers beyond them. The big >question is why. Ockham's razor insists that the simplest answer is usually the right one.
Occam's razor is a general principle or heuristic for choosing between two theories with equal explanatory power. Theism, as such, does not have any explanatory power because it wraps up our current ignorance in a box labeled "god". It is often misused by theists who seem to find "god did it" a simpler answer than a complex scientific answer or ignorance. In the matter of the Big Bang, the truth is we don't know why the singularity began to expand, however, there is no reason to postulate any gods to explain it. In fact, by postulating a god, the theist has pushed the question back one step further because now we are left having to answer the question of where the god came from. The standard theist answer is some special pleading about how god wasn't created. Fortunately, since theism has zero explanatory power Occam's razor doesn't apply and we don't have to waste our time wading through the excuses.
>The simplest reason why we are hard wired to believe in God is because there is a God and He created >us.
Not really. The simplest explanation has to do with what we already know about human minds. The human mind is devastatingly good at finding patterns, so much so that we often see patterns that are not there (optical illusions, dreams, the man in the moon, dog-shaped clouds, etc). Second, the human mind is also good at attributing motive (a necessary skill for a social animal), so much so that we anthropomorphize things that aren't even conscious entities (fire, electricity, rivers, diseases, evolution). The interaction of these two features of our mind (and probably along with others) almost guarantees the propensity for a belief in gods as an unintended side effect of the way our minds work. No actual gods necessary.
>That is also the simplest answer to why the universe exists in the first place, because it is created. >Crystal and I had a conversation like this last week. The Big Bang theory is almost senseless without >some kind of intelligence setting it off. Why else would a sigularity explode, since singularities do not >make a habit of exploding in our physical universe?
I think we can stipulate that universes coming into being would be a rare event inside the confines of a universe whether there's a god or not, can't we?
>Religion provides the most sensible and rational answers to the biggest questions we have.
No it doesn't. Religions tend to get just about everything wrong that they try to explain. But ignoring that for the sake of argument, there is no consensus whatsoever among religions about what the right answers are to these big questions. How does one [get to heaven/enter Paradise/attain nirvana]*? Christians, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, and Hindus do not agree on the answer to this question. For Christ's sake, Christians don't agree with other Christians on the answer to this question (some say you have to be a member of the holy catholic church, others that you don't; some say you must be elected by god to be saved, others say salvation is an act of free will; some say all humanity will make it to heaven eventually, others say that some portion of humanity will be excluded from heaven; some say those excluded will be tortured forever and others say those excluded from heaven will be annihilated; some say those that are excluded from heaven will be tortured in a lake of fire and others say they will be tortured in "outer darkness" and they all have Scripture to back up their beliefs).
*Did you notice that we can't even get consensus on what the big question is?
>The overwhelming majority of humanity believes in some kind of religion.
It is fallacious to suggest something is true just because lots of people believe it. I can insert any number of absurd ideas that had numerical support (heliocentric universe, flat earth, inferiority of the non-white races, etc.). The masses are rarely on the side of truth.
>Most people agree on the basic ideas and disagree on the details.
The things that humans agree (and it is fairly well documented that there are some number of universal moral dictums) are easily explained as being those traits which benefit us in a close-knit social environment such as the one where our hominid ancestors evolved. They include things like: don't murder people in your tribe, don't fuck your sister, don't eat shit, be sure to murder people in tribes other than your own.
>Even the cargo cult's strange manifestations are only details in comparison to the fact that they place >their faith in God.
Cargo cults, Scientology, and Mormonism by virtue of their recent genesis highlight the absurdity at the root of religion, but it is a truism that the same sort of absurdity lies at the heart of all religions. It is worth noting that the cargo cultists do not have faith in god, either. They have faith in American servicemen (such as the legendary John Frum) and their planes which deliver cargo. To suggest an affinity between their beliefs and Christianity is to massively misunderstand both cargo cults and Christianity.
>Religion is God's message adapted to the human experience, for better or worse. The Christian faith >has it right because it is one of the few that understands that God's message is pure, but the religion >itself, the human manifestation, can be corrupted, abused, or misunderstood. Dante imagined some >wonderful penalties for souls that misused the Christian faith. That is the whole point when the Bible >discusses St. Peter at the same time being the human leader of the faith, yet denying Christ three >times to save his own skin. Even good people can screw up and anyone who screws up can be >redeemed if they want.
Christianity is not alone in making this claim. Don't you recall the American Muslims that fell all over themselves to say that Osama bin Laden was not a true follower of Islam because he interpreted the Koran differently than they did? In fact, there isn't a single trait that marks any of the hundreds of variants of Christianity as being special when compared to any other religion.
>I question people. I don't question God. God's message is objectively unquestionable. The people who >preach that message to us are subject to scrutiny.
I would suggest that you've never heard from god. It is well documented that the bible: a) is not infallible and b) was authored hundreds of years after the fact by people that were not eyewitnesses to the events recounted and c) was redacted over time to edit or remove parts that were deemed unorthodox.
Occam's razor is a general principle or heuristic for choosing between two theories with equal explanatory power. Theism, as such, does not have any explanatory power because it wraps up our current ignorance in a box labeled "god". It is often misused by theists who seem to find "god did it" a simpler answer than a complex scientific answer or ignorance. In the matter of the Big Bang, the truth is we don't know why the singularity began to expand, however, there is no reason to postulate any gods to explain it. In fact, by postulating a god, the theist has pushed the question back one step further because now we are left having to answer the question of where the god came from. The standard theist answer is some special pleading about how god wasn't created. Fortunately, since theism has zero explanatory power Occam's razor doesn't apply and we don't have to waste our time wading through the excuses.
>The simplest reason why we are hard wired to believe in God is because there is a God and He created >us.
Not really. The simplest explanation has to do with what we already know about human minds. The human mind is devastatingly good at finding patterns, so much so that we often see patterns that are not there (optical illusions, dreams, the man in the moon, dog-shaped clouds, etc). Second, the human mind is also good at attributing motive (a necessary skill for a social animal), so much so that we anthropomorphize things that aren't even conscious entities (fire, electricity, rivers, diseases, evolution). The interaction of these two features of our mind (and probably along with others) almost guarantees the propensity for a belief in gods as an unintended side effect of the way our minds work. No actual gods necessary.
>That is also the simplest answer to why the universe exists in the first place, because it is created. >Crystal and I had a conversation like this last week. The Big Bang theory is almost senseless without >some kind of intelligence setting it off. Why else would a sigularity explode, since singularities do not >make a habit of exploding in our physical universe?
I think we can stipulate that universes coming into being would be a rare event inside the confines of a universe whether there's a god or not, can't we?
>Religion provides the most sensible and rational answers to the biggest questions we have.
No it doesn't. Religions tend to get just about everything wrong that they try to explain. But ignoring that for the sake of argument, there is no consensus whatsoever among religions about what the right answers are to these big questions. How does one [get to heaven/enter Paradise/attain nirvana]*? Christians, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, and Hindus do not agree on the answer to this question. For Christ's sake, Christians don't agree with other Christians on the answer to this question (some say you have to be a member of the holy catholic church, others that you don't; some say you must be elected by god to be saved, others say salvation is an act of free will; some say all humanity will make it to heaven eventually, others say that some portion of humanity will be excluded from heaven; some say those excluded will be tortured forever and others say those excluded from heaven will be annihilated; some say those that are excluded from heaven will be tortured in a lake of fire and others say they will be tortured in "outer darkness" and they all have Scripture to back up their beliefs).
*Did you notice that we can't even get consensus on what the big question is?
>The overwhelming majority of humanity believes in some kind of religion.
It is fallacious to suggest something is true just because lots of people believe it. I can insert any number of absurd ideas that had numerical support (heliocentric universe, flat earth, inferiority of the non-white races, etc.). The masses are rarely on the side of truth.
>Most people agree on the basic ideas and disagree on the details.
The things that humans agree (and it is fairly well documented that there are some number of universal moral dictums) are easily explained as being those traits which benefit us in a close-knit social environment such as the one where our hominid ancestors evolved. They include things like: don't murder people in your tribe, don't fuck your sister, don't eat shit, be sure to murder people in tribes other than your own.
>Even the cargo cult's strange manifestations are only details in comparison to the fact that they place >their faith in God.
Cargo cults, Scientology, and Mormonism by virtue of their recent genesis highlight the absurdity at the root of religion, but it is a truism that the same sort of absurdity lies at the heart of all religions. It is worth noting that the cargo cultists do not have faith in god, either. They have faith in American servicemen (such as the legendary John Frum) and their planes which deliver cargo. To suggest an affinity between their beliefs and Christianity is to massively misunderstand both cargo cults and Christianity.
>Religion is God's message adapted to the human experience, for better or worse. The Christian faith >has it right because it is one of the few that understands that God's message is pure, but the religion >itself, the human manifestation, can be corrupted, abused, or misunderstood. Dante imagined some >wonderful penalties for souls that misused the Christian faith. That is the whole point when the Bible >discusses St. Peter at the same time being the human leader of the faith, yet denying Christ three >times to save his own skin. Even good people can screw up and anyone who screws up can be >redeemed if they want.
Christianity is not alone in making this claim. Don't you recall the American Muslims that fell all over themselves to say that Osama bin Laden was not a true follower of Islam because he interpreted the Koran differently than they did? In fact, there isn't a single trait that marks any of the hundreds of variants of Christianity as being special when compared to any other religion.
>I question people. I don't question God. God's message is objectively unquestionable. The people who >preach that message to us are subject to scrutiny.
I would suggest that you've never heard from god. It is well documented that the bible: a) is not infallible and b) was authored hundreds of years after the fact by people that were not eyewitnesses to the events recounted and c) was redacted over time to edit or remove parts that were deemed unorthodox.
Thu 17 April 2008 1:02 PM
Liberal Media
"The pope is expected to deliver a message of peace and hope today. Most people here support the pope, but there are about half a dozen protestors outside [National's stadium] protesting the pope's visit. They say the Catholic Church has played a role in protecting pedophiles, which the pope addressed in a speech given yesterday."
-- paraphrasing WAMU reporter, Jessica Gallaher, this morning on the local NPR station
I don't know what I find more offensive. The suggestion that those "six" people protesting are nutjobs to think the current pope actually authored a letter telling bishops to relocate pedophile priests until the statute of limitations ran out, the implication that there is no merit to the idea that the Catholic Church plays an active role in harboring criminals or that all the pope needs to do to make it ok is say some platitudes after he gets off the plane.
-- paraphrasing WAMU reporter, Jessica Gallaher, this morning on the local NPR station
I don't know what I find more offensive. The suggestion that those "six" people protesting are nutjobs to think the current pope actually authored a letter telling bishops to relocate pedophile priests until the statute of limitations ran out, the implication that there is no merit to the idea that the Catholic Church plays an active role in harboring criminals or that all the pope needs to do to make it ok is say some platitudes after he gets off the plane.
Tue 15 April 2008 11:11 PM
Krikey
Competing botnets trying to sell crap to one another sounds like a real-world precursor to SkyNet.
Tue 15 April 2008 10:45 PM
Imaginary Property
What do you hear from the bleeding heart opponents of file sharing? The argument is that by enjoying the content (music, video, text) without paying for it, I am depriving the artists of legitimate money they have earned through their hard work or even more absurdly that filesharing is stealing. In a word, the ??AA would have you believe that the only way to gain rightful access to the content is to give money to the artists' proxies (i.e., the ??AA).
Let's return to the real world from the happy fun spinland of the recording and movie industries. I am loathe to pay $20 for a piece of plastic with some music on it or $50 for a piece of plastic with a movie on it. If I really want a piece of plastic, I'm going to buy it used from one of the many used book/movie/CD stores or online at a fraction of the "rightful price". According to the ??AA's argument, this is equally stealing because none of the money I spend to get access to the content goes to the artist or their proxies. And what of those dens of iniquity, libraries?
I have to wonder why there isn't a concerted effort to shutdown used CD/DVD sales online, and I think it is because the lawyers are waiting to build up enough wins against the evil, filesharing pirates to legitimize the concept that we are supposed to give the corporations that act as the artists' proxies money before we can gain access to the content. Once that happens, they will move onto used CD/DVD sales by either attempting to stop the sales from occurring or by (more likely in my view) forcing the proprietors to send a cut of the action to the artists' proxies.
Let's return to the real world from the happy fun spinland of the recording and movie industries. I am loathe to pay $20 for a piece of plastic with some music on it or $50 for a piece of plastic with a movie on it. If I really want a piece of plastic, I'm going to buy it used from one of the many used book/movie/CD stores or online at a fraction of the "rightful price". According to the ??AA's argument, this is equally stealing because none of the money I spend to get access to the content goes to the artist or their proxies. And what of those dens of iniquity, libraries?
I have to wonder why there isn't a concerted effort to shutdown used CD/DVD sales online, and I think it is because the lawyers are waiting to build up enough wins against the evil, filesharing pirates to legitimize the concept that we are supposed to give the corporations that act as the artists' proxies money before we can gain access to the content. Once that happens, they will move onto used CD/DVD sales by either attempting to stop the sales from occurring or by (more likely in my view) forcing the proprietors to send a cut of the action to the artists' proxies.
Tue 15 April 2008 11:04 AM
Scatology
Seem freqs of scatological filenames in my Recycle Bin.
filename CountOfCrapID
crap.bmp 1
crap.mdb 3
crap.pdf 1
crap.txt 4
crap.xls 1
craptard.html 1
dogcrap.txt 1
eatcrap.txt 1
krapos.mdb 1
opn crap 1
poop.txt 1
filename CountOfCrapID
crap.bmp 1
crap.mdb 3
crap.pdf 1
crap.txt 4
crap.xls 1
craptard.html 1
dogcrap.txt 1
eatcrap.txt 1
krapos.mdb 1
opn crap 1
poop.txt 1
Thu 10 April 2008 5:19 PM
Getting Prompted
I noticed at work that I started getting prompted for a username/password when accessing web pages running on localhost through Firefox. If I didn't supply my Netware credentials I got a HTTP 401 - Unauthorized response. There were corresponding entries in the event log with Event ID 100 (see below).
The resolution for me was to open secpol.msc (Local Security Policy Editor) and make user IUSR_ had the following rights:
* Access this computer from the network
* Logon as a batch job
I had read somewhere that the account also needed "Logon locally", but I wasn't able to add anything to that item (presumably because of network security policy settings). "Logon locally" contained Administrator and User groups. So, I added IUSR_ to the Users group. I also had to remove it from the Guest group due to another policy that restricted what Guest accounts could do. At that point, I was able to access the pages without having to supply credentials again. I figured all this out from piecing together info from two key webpages, but I don't have the URLs handy at the moment. Maybe I'll post them later in a comment...
This was mainly a problem for me because it caused POSTs that I was doing through VB.NET using the HttpRequest object to fail with a StatusCode of 401.
Event Type: Warning
Event Source: W3SVC
Event Category: None
Event ID: 100
Date: 2008-04-10
Time: 17:08:09
User: N/A
Computer: marvin
Description:
The server was unable to logon the Windows NT account 'IUSR_marvin' due to the following error: Logon failure: the user has not been granted the requested logon type at this computer. The data is the error code.
The resolution for me was to open secpol.msc (Local Security Policy Editor) and make user IUSR_
* Access this computer from the network
* Logon as a batch job
I had read somewhere that the account also needed "Logon locally", but I wasn't able to add anything to that item (presumably because of network security policy settings). "Logon locally" contained Administrator and User groups. So, I added IUSR_
This was mainly a problem for me because it caused POSTs that I was doing through VB.NET using the HttpRequest object to fail with a StatusCode of 401.
Event Type: Warning
Event Source: W3SVC
Event Category: None
Event ID: 100
Date: 2008-04-10
Time: 17:08:09
User: N/A
Computer: marvin
Description:
The server was unable to logon the Windows NT account 'IUSR_marvin' due to the following error: Logon failure: the user has not been granted the requested logon type at this computer. The data is the error code.
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