The Internet is smarter than us all...

It's just the nature of things. If the internet were a person it would be smarter than anybody.

I reply to some jackasses.

It's seems a sign of boredom a little bit like throwing my holy relics to the dogs. As I doubt anybody more than a couple people will see my reply to some aforementioned jackass buried deep on the interwebs I'll repost it here, upping that count by about 4.

I admonish you to start living a principled life. Stop using a Christian date to cash your checks and take a stand young man!

You are a parasite to living order. As the Soviet Union and China have shown us, when a parasite gets control of government, bad things happen. Only when a society is full of living philosophy can an Atheist flourish. The proof is in how the greatest Atheist thinkers have come from nations that have majority Christian populations and deep and rich histories of Christianity. There are no great Atheist thinkers coming from any other culture, even Atheist cultures!

... *grumble*

I've lived a very principled life for many many years. It's rather silly to admonish me to do such things. What do you think I do? I'll stop using BCE/CE dating systems when you stop using the names of pagan gods for the days of the week. This being Wotan's Day and really close to Thor's Day, that might be hard.

Atheist thinkers known to people in the west come from, typically, the west. As such the claim that only Christian cultures produce "thinkers" is rather silly because most cultures are going to be tainted with a good deal of Christian history. That said there are Salman Rushdie was born in a primarily Hindu culture Ayaan Hirsi Ali comes from a Muslim culture, Epicurus and some of the atheistic ancient Greeks came out of Pagan culture. On top of that, most of the major atheist thinkers throughout history and the history of opposition to religion finds its roots firmly in Enlightenment thinking.

There was once a time when everybody believed in God and the Church ran everything, it was called the Dark Ages. If democracy and secularism and Enlightenment freedoms were the result of Christian thought, why didn't they arise during the dark ages? Today in Europe there are a number of quite secular countries that are majority atheist and have the highest standards of living in Europe. Denmark, Sweden, etc score the lowest rates of violent crime, the lowest rates of infant mortality, the highest rankings as far as happiness, and some of the lowest numbers in religiosity. Likewise the United States has some of the highest infant mortality, the highest violent crime rate, the lowest levels of education, some terrible societal happiness scores and the highest religiosity. And even between individual states we find that the states with the highest religiosity have the highest infant mortality, the lowest education, and the highest crime rates. Much of history and social science seems to tell us that religion doesn't go hand in hand with happier people or healthier people. In fact, it seems rather clearly as if the more atheistic peoples of the world might have better idea of how best to live as a functional society.

There do seem to be some ways to live that are notably better and more conducive to good people than others. It may be true that putting women in burkas and preventing them from leaving the house without a male escort might lead to a more peaceful society, but I don't think it will, and I think that such things could be measured and quantified and some people may not have good things to say about the topic. We don't listen to the Taliban on subjects like genetic engineering or quantum physics because generally we don't think they have any good ideas on the subject. Likewise they may well not have good ideas when it comes to suggestions on how best to live as a happy healthy people, and furthermore it seems that the suggestions of religion might well be equally problematic and not conducive to living a good life, after all people who live according to the Bible seem to do notably worse than those who try to live a good life and do right by their fellow man.

To wit, it might be a bit of a better world if you weren't a jackass. And somehow I tend to think that you feel it's your prerogative to be a jackass because of religion, because certainly living a good life and doing right by your fellow man would notably exclude being a jackass.

I wish there was some easy job that involved detailed replies requiring a lot of information about a lot of different things to give snarky replies to jackasses on the internet. Somehow I think I'd be better off building super-intelligent robots to do my bidding. That's just my fall back plan for now.

Felicia Day: Light Saber Fight

Jace Hall Show: Felicia Day Light Saber Fight

Rofflecopter.

Internet Amazement.

Sometimes things really take you by surprise. I would like to show you an amazing thing that just dropped my jaw. I give you an example, found in the wild, the word 'something' spelled with not one but *two* Qs.

if Somethinqq As Incredible as God wasnt Involved??

This makes me want to hunt the Loch Ness Monster.

Can't stop laughing.

http://badquestionsforyahooanswers.blogspot.com/

Yahoo answers, where dumb meets dumber. I've been rolling for a solid hour off this site. (More)

So many people are less than three.

Seriously, there's no end in sight:

Misa Camo <3
Firefly <3
Blahgirl <3

Seriously, why are so many otherwise nice people less than 3?

Done moving...

At least done enough to consider myself moved. Also tired. I lost three digits of my zipcode and my back hurts. Internet on. Power on. Done.

Dug into the internet.

So my internet is down again. I'm slick enough to scratch some up by burrowing in through a PCIMCA card in the other room having turned off my DHCP server on my router rather than opting for the better choice involving forcing a VPN connection and opening wide the entire network. Still, it's been a bit better. Less jonesing this time. I might be able to survive in some kind of freak time warp... so long as diseases don't kill me.

Wind blew down my internet for a day.

I nearly went insane.

I think there is some issue with internet addiction, if being unconnected causes such utter turmoil. For example, a good solid 40% of my thoughts ended with "but I can't do that because I don't have internet." -- I don't think this is healthy. I pride myself on being ready if I ever fall into some kind of timewarp and being ready for transport into the past. I even kind-of-sort-of want a smallpox vaccine just so that I'd be safe from the disease without needing to find a dairy maid with cow pox. However, if transported into the past, I'd go crazy without internet then I certainly don't want to fall into a scientifically impossible reordering of the universe.

I am unprepared for this course of (impossible) events.

I probably couldn't even manage to live through 1998 internet. What good are secret keywords (they've been the same for a decade or so now/no I'll never tell you them), that only I know so that I can identify time-travelers from the future, (including myself) if timetraveling leads to saninternetsanity?

Sure, I never bother to prepare for depression era financial collapse or post-peak breakdown of a world unable to dig energy out of the ground, or even a global warming run away world where climate change kicks off a chain reaction of accelerated heating and leads to a post apocalyptic world of subterranean existence as actual and real possibilities... but time travel? I thought I was prepared for and it seems that I would be utterly time-shocked.

The internet has ads?

For the last several years I've used firefox and ad block constantly. Due to an issue that cropped up with Firefox 3 refusing to play embedded youtube videos I decided to just export my bookmark, backup my profile, and start a fresh install with Firefox 3.0. This lead to the temporary effect of having ad block not installed...

Holy crap. The internet is full of ads. There's one of semistreaming video of a guy grabbing letters. They are to the sides of my favorite site. They are at the top as well! Remember folks, you heard it on this blog first... there are ads on the internet!

Blast From the Past.

You forget how far we've come until you look at some old text media pages from a decade ago. Oh, those simple simple people.

You Know You Are Too Serious About Computers If...

* If no one can reach you by phone since your computer is always online.
-- Nope.

* If you can type your top 10 favorite web sites....by heart.
-- Who can't?

* If you can locate a particular home page without using a search engine.
-- Does that include the hundred bookmarks?

* If you can write your own html page.
-- DUH!

* If you download more than 20Mb from a binary newsgroup...in one session.
-- WOW. You need to spend 2 minutes on those bin sites to qualify for geekdom. What Like I'm going to download 25 seconds spread out over multiple sessions?

* When you find it easier to dial-up the National Weather Service: Weather/your_town/now.html than to simply look out the window.
-- That's certainly not easier. Though clicking the one link on my firefox bar linking to Google which gets an RSS feed of the local weather is actually easier.

* When you order most of what you buy.....online.
-- Um, was this ever a sign of geekdom? Because ouch. I'm writing this on a computer I bought from newegg, next to a nice pile of books I got from Amazon. I'm drinking from a Pokerstars cup I ordered up with some player points online.


* When you log-off from a session in your favorite newsgroup, and your log reads: Online time: 56 hours 24 minutes.
-- Log Off? My current uptime is 5 days and that's pathetic. I've done months on end before.

* If your net provider suggests you try a competitor, because you're exceeding 300 hours a month, connect time.
-- I have a connect time of (24 * 31) = 744 a month.

* When that 112 GB hard drive is full.
-- I had a 120 gig drive that I gave to my roommate. I just handed it to him. Not because it sucked, but because I only have the two systems and the other one has 720 gigs and this one has 1.7 tb and I didn't have the drive slots for tiny drives.

* If 300 Mhz is simply too slow.
-- You're kidding right? The other day my mother picked up an old 700 Mhz system, I chuckled and recommended she throw it out.

* When your desk collapses under the weight of your computer peripherals.
-- Is that a weak desk or does this electronic stuff weigh more than one or two pounds?

* If you can actually talk to the computers in your new car, and understand what they say.
-- There's actually a device for that. It's USB compatible and helps diagnose your car.

* When you modify the programming of your car's computers and actually get better mileage.
-- That's actually a real thing too.

* When you can access the Net, via your portable and cellular phone.
-- Who would, the rates are crazy high. Though, It is only a button.

* When you put a CD-ROM in your car's player.
-- What? Like a burnt CD full of mp3s? Or am I being asked to dig up an old CD-ROM and put it somewhere. Or is a CD simply considered a ROM?

* If every sentence you utter begins with, "On the Net..."
-- Nope. That's assumed. No need to start sentences like that.

* If you put your e-mail address in the upper left-hand corner of envelopes.
-- Hm. That's actually a good idea.

* If you have your e-mail address printed on your stationery.
-- That's actually nearly universal.

* When you insist on seeing the movie "The Net" for the 63rd time.
-- That's actually nearly unheard of. Most people can't stomach once.

* If you maintain more than 6 e-mail addresses.
-- Yahoo, Yahoo, Google, Hotmail, Website bouncer. - Nope.

* If you use more than 20 passwords.
-- Duh.

* If you set up your own Web page.
-- Duh. Though I let it expire. I do have a couple cheap replacements:
http://tatarize.nfshost.com/
http://www.geocities.com/tatarize/index.html
These do different things and are both used in different ways. I highly recommend Nearly Free Speech even if you do few things which might require hosting. A purely solid site, pay for what you use. Used them for various things spent 12 cents. Does this blog count?

* If you set up a Web page for each of your kids...and your pets.
-- True by default. I have no children or pets.

* If, instead of a phone number, you ask someone for their e-mail address.
-- And?

* If you don't know anyone who DOESN'T have an e-mail address.
-- What do you mean doesn't?

* If you convince your mom that she HAS to get online because e-mail is so much cheaper than long distance phone charges.
-- We have Vonage. Our long distance calls run through the cable, as such they are free and unlimited. I could call someplace and just leave the phone off the hook. Don't know why though.

* If you can write a list like this.
-- Hardly, I don't even remember how sucky it was back when my torrent client didn't have its own RSS feed, I certainly couldn't remember how bad it sucked a decade ago.

* If you can relate to a list like this.
-- I certainly cannot.

Internet Regained!

After a month and a half, I have proper internet access again. Hell yes. Things are good, birds are chirping, frogs are croaking, the Japanese are producing the stem cell breakthroughs we should have produced, the sky is blue!

Life is good!

... life was good before, but now life is good AND I have internet.

Without internet: Day Eight

Supplies are running low. Moral is still high as nobody has resorted to cannibalism. Though, some people appear to be rather cagey at this time *eyes dart back and forth*. The cable company was suppose to come out and reestablish the internet but didn't come out at any time between 8 am and 5 pm. I'm down to watching the short ABC miniseries Fallen about angels and crap, all the good rations were consumed early, and supplies are desperately needed.

Internet down.

So it turns out if you have cable internet and your aunt runs the wire down with an RV you no longer have cable internet. I suppose that according to information theory I just have a very low signal to noise ratio and rather than ones and zeros I have a Z. But, still where are the flying cars... or at least free wireless internet.

Hopefully it will be restored Friday, assuming the Cable company is plenty happy with the whole, sorry for ripping the wire down on account of having an aunt who apparently can't tell when a wire is stuck to an RV and is dragging down the cable and a good chunk of the roof (mostly awning).