brainless

buffalo: you've got a point there but...

...it looks like this works kind of like bugmenot(.com) - instead of trying to make sites stop requiring registration , give out working user name and pass to everyone (though, for example, the NYT runs a script to figure out which accounts are listed on bugmenot and therefore have to be deleted...) or, as in this case: AOL is trying to create a profile of me by collecting my web searches [plus other technical means which might or might not be implemented/used]? I'll make this as hard as possible by giving fake data which will result in a wrong profile of me...

I couldn't find anything about TrackMeNot talking back to its developers but I suppose this could be figured out by watching the connections Firefox opens (well, this bases on some assupmtions I made: a) Firefox does not open connections on its own you log all the connections you open, including IP addresses to be connected to --well, this is hard to do by hand; I suggest to use a script for that-- c) darn, I forgot :/). An easier way to figure this out would be to publish the source code...

Who is to say even this isn't some software that can benefit the provider of this program?

Enters: Paranoia. How do we know OpaQue doesn't run algorithms to search the Xisto board and sells the data he's collecting about us to the CIA?

Furthermore, chosing an option to clear cache and history when closing the web browser will help to protect info-hijackers.

Yes, this is one of the things you can do to keep your privacy on the safer side - but this is not the point where TMN steps in. I doubt that AOL accesses your browser's cache and history [we're talking about software. If there's data, there's a way to access it], they simply collect your web searches...

And it only works in FF

That's the way I would have taken as well since I'm using FF and it's not too hard to write extensions. Someone might find an interest in porting it to other browsers or write a stand-alone program. Consider its version: 0.4.2; this is usually way from the beta testing stage, not to mention the first tested/stable release (1.0)...

whatever you're going to do ... don't do anything as stupid as me in my first Linux environment... "rm -f /etc _cfg_*" (well, anyone who understands will have a good laugh now )

I've searched google News on this case and found, among other stuff, this:

[...]The Christians were executed around midnight by firing squad after being sentenced to death in Indonesia for leading unrest against Muslims that left 200 dead in May 2000 on the Sulawesi Island.
[...]

<http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/>

...and another source I read shortly after starting this topic said they had started a massacre in an elementary school.

well, I'm not going to speak in favor of a death sentence (there's _no_ way I can support organized, society-sponsored murder) but starting a massacre in a school is among the most horrible deeds I can imagine...

nope, I'm not offended, I'm pretty much able to understand how you feel (I think ). I ended up simply ignoring all these religious comments people throw at me...

hmm ... back then, I did not really understand about this hardware-stuff but I'll try to recall :)it was a computer without any hdd but with two 5.25"-floppy drives and a 14"-screen. that's about all I remember anyways, my dad taught me how to use it when I was about 3 years old......but he traded it in for a 386 with 33MHz and a hard drive pretty soon...

uhm ... there are some chemicals which kind of freeze when exposed to air ... but it would not be possible to breathe ice the way the fire-breathing dragons are imagined to breathe fire (like in a huge ball of flames/ice); this chemical would merely be dropped on $target and take a while to start the freezing effect...

 

...but I suppose I have found something which might be (one of the?) origin(s) of the myth of fire-breathing dragons: It's a reptile living on an island somewhere around Indonesia, it's called the "Komodo dragon" [it's mentioned in John Perkins' "Confessions of an Economic Hitman" somewhere in the first chapters when he describes how he prepared for a job in Indonesia] and I've read about it before under the german name "Komodo-Waran" [in Douglas Adams' "Die Letzten ihrer Art" ("The last of their kind"), a report on his journeys to some animals close to extinction in the 1980's]:

 

It is about 2 meters long and half a man high [that's a little less than a meter, I guess] and lived, originally, on indonesian islands but nowadays survives on only one island. Its mouth "smells like no other creature [Adams] know, you can smell it fifty meters against the wind" and its saliva contains bacteria as dangerous to anything alive as not many other things. A story quoted by Adams: Some french adventurer in the 18th century got bitten by one of these creatures and survived the journey back to Paris but died a couple of months later because the wound simply refused to heal...

 

...and now go and figure out what kind of stories earlier people would tell about something like this and consider these factors: a) people like to adjust facts to make their stories more interesting [well ... people who hear this story might adjust them as well] and most stories where told from generation to generation since there was about no written history. This has to lead to speculations about mythical creatures...

 

--note: I am aware of the fact that this attempt to explain some myths is not going to give a satisfying explanation when you ask about the origin of dragons in, for example, the german tales of heroes [i'm using these tales as a reference because I am not firm in the tales of other countries. The german tales of heroes are set somewhen between 600 and 1200AD...]

since the work time-problem is kind of solved, this leaves only the water-problem......I'll call the agency to find out what I can do against that one without getting into too much trouble. well, maybe I can trade that in for the one or other day off - I stay quiet, my boss gives me some days off? anyways, I'll go and get my doc to give me a paper saying that I'm -from a medical point of view- unable to work for the rest of the week, which would put a lot of pressure on the place where I serve: On Thursday, one of our volunteers is going to quit her service (she's going to get a job training beginning in Octobre ); I'm supposed to help her moving on Friday morning (well, since she's been quite nice to me, unlike some other people, I'll be glad to be able to help her) - but on Friday evening and Saturday afternoon, there are some special events on our timetable. Two people are scheduled to handle both of these events, one of them is me ... guess what will happen if I can't work then? I definitely don't like to play this card but...

well, I'm just going to quote an article I found in today's newspaper, the north-west german "NordWest-Zeitung":

 

(translation from german to english by me)

Outbreak of violence after executions

INDONESIA Three Catholics shot - Christians attack prison

 

JAKARTA/KNA - After the execution of three Catholics, there were protests and outbreaks of violence.

 

Enraged Christians attacked a prison in the home province of the executed Christians. During this attack, several fires have started and up to 190 prisoners escaped.

The public prosecutor's office in the city of Atambua has been assaulted and set afire. There have been violent attacks in other parts of the most crowded muslim country in the world as well.

The Holy See expressed its concern about the execution. Likewise, the Federal Government [of Germany] in Berlin, the European Union and the human rights organisation amnesty international criticized Indonesia's decision to ignore all appeals for grace.

The men have been sentenced to death for causing religions unrests with about 200 casualties in the city of Poso six years ago. They claimed innocence until the end.

 

--original article--

 

Gewaltausbruch nach Hinrichtungen

INDONESIEN Drei Katholiken erschossen - Christen greifen ein Gef?ngnis an

 

JAKARTA/KNA - Nach der Hinrichtung von drei Katholiken ist es in Indonesien zu Protesten und schweren Ausschreitungen gekommen.

Aufgebrachte Christen griffen in der Heimatprovinz der Hingerichteten ein Gef?ngnis an. Dabei seien mehrere Feuer ausgebrochen und bis zu 190 H?ftlinge entkommen.

Das B?ro der Staatsanwaltschaft in der Stadt Atambua sei gest?rmt und in Brand gesteckt worden. Auch in anderen Landesteilen des bev?lkerungsreichsten muslimischen Landes der Welt kam es zu Ausschreitungen.

Der Vatikan ?u?erte sich betroffen ?ber die Vollstreckung der Todesstrafe. Auch die Bundesregierung in Berlin, die EU und die Menschenrechtsorganisation amnesty international kritisierten die Entscheidung Indonesiens, alle Gnadenappelle zu ignorieren.

Die M?nner waren wegen Anstiftung zu religi?sen Unruhen vor sechs Jahren mit rund 200 Toten in der Stadt Poso zum Tode verurteilt worden. Sie beteuerten bis zuletzt ihre Unschuld.

<Nordwest-Zeitung, 23th Sept. 2006; page 2)

 

...without words...

I'm actually on the best way to make my dream meal a reality (yes, dream meal and not only dream food ), even though it's something I won't dare to enjoy more often than like ... once every other month...a) the course before the main course: well, I've got no idea on that yet... main course:* two fried bananas with chili, (black) pepper and salt (one is not enough and three are too many to enjoy)* self-made "french" fries (i.e. somewhat french fry-shaped potato slices) with salt and just a little sugar* one of my sister's salads (no, I haven't been able to replicate this. I've tried it with her standing next to me and giving me instructions but... I suspect she did it on purpose ) ... I know that it is with lots of vinegar......and the drink during all this will be a mix of Mango-, Banana- and Cherry-Juice...c) dessert: I've discovered a great (really, really, really great ... the best I've ever tasted) ice cream stall near the Hannover Main Train Station. I'd like a cup with...* chocolate-chili-ice (yes, they really have this. Their chocolate ice cream itself is a chocolate experience I've never tasted before and woah, combine that with a little chili...)* Strawberry ice (well, it's kind of boring but it actually tastes like strawberry and not like many other things...)* Bailey's ice (well, that one tastes just like the drink ... but it's nicer that way )-----well, this is quite an interesting experience, especially for those who've never tried that before. It's neither really spicy nor really sweet - when the stuff first hits your tongue, it's sweet ... a moment later, you notice that spicy taste ... and when you swallowed, there's a sweet/spicy taste left, you can also get something similar by dipping your tongue into a good mix of salt, sugar, chili and pepper - but that's not the real thing...

hmm ... I'm still thinking about coming "down" to South Africa next year ["down" 'cause I'm way up in the north ... Germany] to volunteer in an orphanage between Durban and what's-this-place's-name? anyways, in their hints-sheet they have the advice not to leave the train station or airport without those guys who're going to pick you up since "crime is a serious problem around there"...

--note-- There's an introduction to this post here --/note--

In the past four weeks, there have been some issues which could be acceptable if they came one after another - but it's horrible like this:

1) After I've been on vacation, my boss' substitute [he's been on vacation, too] told me that the system we use to verify the hours we've worked says that I'm 64 hours (that's worth two weeks of work, roughly) behind schedule; I told her that this was definitely not the case and that everybody would have noticed if I hadn't shown up for two weeks. She insisted that I have to work another 64 hours to make up for this, so I filed a complaint to the federal agency for community service. On Tuesday last week, my boss learned that I filed this complaint when some guy from the Agency showed up to inquire this. well, of the 64 hours, there are now only 4 left...

2) Two weeks ago, I received a letter from the Agency telling me that they were not going to grant some special vacation I've taken in the beginning of my time of service but since I've already had this special vacation, my personnel management person decided she'd throw in my last two days of regular vacation to make up for two of these three days; on the third of these days I should have worked 4 hours.

3) There is no warm water in the flat provided to me since about 2 1/2 weeks. The landlord knows about this since 2 1/2 weeks minus one day (I told him and wrote him a letter the following day); my boss knows about this since 1 1/2 weeks and promised to do something about it "immediately". well, I've still got to take cold showers in a flat without any heating systems except for a kitchen-use water boiler and my laptop's power supply...

4) I badly needed these two days of vacation to be able to see my girlfriend for the last time this year (19 hours to get there, 19 hours to get back - wrapped around a weekend, this would have given us two days together :/). I'm not poor anymore since I'm working for the state but what good is that if I can't think of any other way to spend that much money other than enabling me to meet my girlfriend? I'd rather spend three days tramping there and another three days to get back with as many days in between as I want to instead of having the money to get there within a day but being not allowed to do so....

....I've spent most of the time I'm back home listening to some music which usually calms me down within a minute or something but it's been hours now and I still feel like I'm gonna break some stuff tonight, maybe start a fire... at least that would get me kicked out of this community service-$h!7, sorry, stuff...

nice one, salamangkero

 

-----

 

I'd just like to throw in another ?0.02 on the issue of fact-based holy scriptures like the Quran and the Bible:

 

The Quran describes an incident concerning Noah who built a ship because someone gave him the advice that he should do so since the land was going to be drowned.

 

The bible describes an incident way to similar to be some other Noah building a ship on some other place because some other land is going to be drowned.

 

Archeology tells us that the Mediterranean Sea sprung into existence something like 10 000 years ago when the passage of Gibraltar became a passage, allowing the Atlantic Ocean to flood the land between Europe and Africa, thereby erasing it from the maps (well, if there were any maps back then).

Tell me, how would you explain it when an area the size of Germany or Turkey or Texas [i hope I got enough areas which people can compare it to ... I don't really mind if I'm right or wrong concerning the relation between said countries/state and the Mediterranean - it's an example, not a formula...] was wiped out of existence within a couple of weeks or, using high-speed data links, within a couple of days, maybe hours. I'm sure the first thing we'd see on anybody's face would look like he's about to ask "what ... what ... what ... what happened????(or even more question marks)". And then try to explain it without the help of so-called 'experts' because they've all been in Texas at that time

Without wanting to give any statement on which religion is superior, I'll give you a very short "history of religion(s)", in reversed order:

The newest kind of religion are monotheistic religions (i.e. religions which worship one God; plus we're discussing whether Atheism [i.e. no god(s)] should be considered a religion in the thread you're referring to) like the Islam, Christianity and Judaism.

(I'll leave out Hinduism and Buddhism since I know that my knowledge of them is ... well, "not much" would say that I know more about them than I actually do - if need be, this can probably be looked up...)

Just about all earlier religions were polytheistic (i.e. more than one; in most cases many gods) and each God had a clearly defined function like "the God of War", "the God of the seas", "the God of trees", "the God of hunting", "the God of spoons" etc etc. These differed from region to region but 'worked' on the same principle - if you wanted to influence something, you had *some kind of ritual* to make the specific God do your bidding...

-----

I think a friend of mine gave a pretty good answer to your question when he first saw the thread you're referring to - "God or Gods are a metaphor for everything we can not recognize, can not understand."

hadi: I'm sorry to hear that you lost that thing, I would have liked to have read what someone believing in the existence of a god wrote to prove its existence :/

 

DogEater008 wrote:

 

[...] Atheism isn't a religon. An atheist is one that does that believe in existance of any supernatural being(s). [...]

I assume you meant to write a "not" in the place of the second "that"?

 

...so 'they' believe in something - in exactly the opposite of theists believe: The not-existence of supernatural being(s)?

Believing in something is a main point of religions, as dictionary entries quoted by some people here point out...

 

[...] In Christanity, they claim that Jesus is son of god. Jesus, however, claimed himself as god also. But as we know, God is not materialize, meaning he/she (or whatever) cannot be touch, feel, or seen. [...]

well, on the first glance, this looks like a flaw in Christianity. They worship Jesus as "one with God" (_and_ as the son of God), they worship the Holy Spirit (as the thing which equals the biological father of Jesus; AFAIK Mary received her first son from the Holy Spirit) and they worship one single God. If my math is right, this sums up to three godlike entities, making Christianity not a monotheistic but a tritheistic religion.

But: This flaw has been solved by assuming that a) God equals the Holy Spirit and Jesus as the Holy Spirit's (= God's) son is at least half made of the Holy Spirit (= God), therefore is the Holy Spirit (= God) (and: Jesus is "one with God") - the Christian God therefore has appeared in at least three forms: "God", the "Holy Spirit" and "Jesus".

 

--note for further thinking--

Didn't I hear from someone telling me about the christian idea of "God" that there is no physical manifestation of "God"? This doesn't fit in with Jesus equalling God since Jesus is ...well... a physical manifestation. People were able to nail him to the cross, weren't they?

--/note for further thinking--

you've got just as much of a right to believe in the non-existence of any gods as anyone has the right ton believe in its/their existence......and there's just about as much in common between a jew and a muslim as there is between to atheists - two of these four people believe in the same god, two of them deny its existence. All four of them believe in some obscure theories on e.g. how this world has been created (when there are way more important questions to answer...)

yeah, I've got an opinion I'm sick of all those queer and bi and straight people giving me strange looks and sometimes kind of insulting remarks for throwing in the keyword "asexuality" when they're talking about sexual orientations. It's not like I'm encouraged to tell anyone that I'm asexual when I get remarks like that... (well, it's way easier to tell this stuff on the net - I can choose to ignore anyone attacking me for that...)well, I'd sign your opinion if you'd mentioned asexuals -edit- there was an error in one of my sentences, making it kind of hard to understand. *fixed*

[no offense meant] Could you explain to me why I should care about the death of some person famous for having done <whatever> if noone cares about the other 300 000 people dying every single day - when most of them could have been saved by basic medical support or food supplies like we get in Europe and North America?

During the last couple of weeks, I have noticed that there are some people in this community who reply to posts dealing with religions that they are "not religious because they are atheists and don't believe in God".In my opinion, this argument is inconsistent in two points:1) By using the term "God", these people miss the point that there are not only monotheistic religions [Jews/Christians/Muslims - based on one and the same God. Read their holy scriptures before denying this and open a new thread if you want to discuss this...] but also polytheistic religions like most nature-bound religions [there are countless of them all over the world, the most well-known are the ancient greek and roman religions and Hinduism. I'm not sure about the existence of actual "Gods" in Buddhism right now].2) Atheists, though not as well-organized as most religious people, do the same as religious people do - claim to have evidence about one or more god's existence (which is supposed to proof the non-existence of any gods). Due to this behavior very similar to that of religious people, I suggest atheism should be considered 'some form' [sorry, I haven't thought this through yet either] of religion.well, what shall we do with those who want to keep on claiming to be not religious?There's still a way left to be able to express an opinion on religious matters which does not make it necessary to take a clear position on the existence of god(s):"I am not able to prove God(s)'s existence but I am also unable to prove its non-existence [, but I have an opinion to the matter being discussed, regardless of god's influence or non-influence on this...]"

Anti-Virus: Avira AntiVir 7.?Firewall: Sygate Personal Firewall 5.0Antispy-/Adware programs: None since I've learned from mistakes on earlier machinesplus: GnuPG + several front-ends/plug-ins to other programs

I guess I don't need to introduce my rant for today with an introduction on how the USofNA (yeah, I admit, it's also UK and some other countries involved ... but none of them as much as the USofNA...) behave in Iraq. To make it short: President Hussein was as dangerous as a lamb when compared to President Bush jr. well, he might have killed 300,000 people during his time in power --note that it is virtually impossible to kill 300,000 people yourself if you're trying to run a state along the way-- but in the last 3.5 years, about the same number has been killed, mostly by US-delivered bombs... this makes Bush about 10times as dangerous to Iraqi people as Hussein...

Have a look at this [1] article in the Stars&Stripes:

US soldiers in the iraqi city ar-Ramadi began to destroy "abandoned" houses (as abandoned as Fallujah was last year when the US moved in and killed some tens of thousands people? ... ok, there have been some three hundred thousand three years ago) in an area of about one square kilometre (that's half a mile, squared...).

A Capt. Damon Knarr commented this with...

You know the opening scene of The Terminator, where all you can see is rubble? Thats what it looks like.

well, those of us who don't know what a square kilometre of houses looks like should be able to imagine how a square kilometre of destroyed buildings looks like now...


Cpl. Kevin Booth, one of those people who are actually doing the job, said...

This is what we live for,we learn to do demolitions in school and mine clearing. This is the enjoyable part of the job.

So it's enjoyable to take down eight blocks worth of houses which had to be abandoned by people due to you dropping bombs on the city?

...and now let's have a look at the last quote in this article...

1st Lt. Ben Klay --guess what he's doing for a living?-- has been quoted as follows:

Were used to taking down walls, doors and windows, but eight city blocks is something new to us. In our manuals there are hundreds of pages on taking down bridges, walls and pillars, but nothing on how to take down an entire building. Weve had a bit of a learning curve, but weve hit our stride now. This is something we look forward to sharing with the rest of the Marine Corps.

Looking forward to share this knowledge with other people who have access to guns and demolition charges? That's like passing the construction plans of nuclear bombs to someone with all the stuff you need to build and launch it (well, there's quite a difference between a nuclear bomb and some C4 charges but I hope you get the meaning...)

[1] http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

PS: I hope you can do the thinking on this article without me having to write it down. I know some people around here would be able to do so, at least if I had only posted a link to this article without giving it a rant...

you're getting mroe than you need :DMy first language is German, my second is english ... now go ahead and PM me if you still need someone to help you =)

I know what you're talking about ... but back in my school days, I've been able to teach some guy the trick :DI've ridden my bike along a road which is really, really busy during rush-hour in the morning and that guy often tried to get on this road when I came along his house. It's not a problem to slow down traffic when you're on a bike: You just find a reason to get somewhat closer to the middle of the road and people won't dare to overtake anymore since there are cars coming from the front as well.One day I was in a bad mood anyway and was just trying to annoy people - and what better thing could there have been than that guy used to be allowed to get on the road by me trying to get on the road again but never showing any sign of noticing what I'm doing for him?When I approached his house, he began to let his car roll on - but this time, I drove on, half a meter nearer and he would have pushed me off my bike......and guess who raised a hand to greet anyway?He's done that ever after...

I'm sorry to hear these stories about all the people converting to Christianity anyways, if you're happy with it... :DI've got two and a half incidents which shaped me a lot, I'm only going to share the first one right now (yep, I've got to catch a train...):The first thing which influenced me to change my way of living was about 7 years ago [remember this when you think about it: I've been 13 back then]. The local lifeguarding organization had kind of a summer camp [ok, a weekend...] for the young members but at the same time, "they" should have been lifeguarding at the local lake.I've been in this organization for 4 years at that time and when one of the older guys asked me if I would like to join them doing the actual lifeguarding, I was kind of proud - I knew that I am able to pull some person through water and I knew that I've been prepared for any possible emergency as good as is possible for a 13 year-old, so it probably wouldn't become too hard.When the three [the absolute minimum which we may be to get the green flag out; 5 is a good number] of us got to the lake at 10AM, there weren't too many swimmers out there - but later that day, lots of people came for swimming.At about a quarter to 6PM, we began to collect our stuff to get back to the camp [the papers say that we should not leave before 6PM and stay longer, if necessary, but we had to get back to the camp...]. We were just about ready to get going when a man around 30 approached us and asked whether we had noticed that "someone's looking for his son down there" with 'down there' being a very crowded place on the shore. Actually we did not, so one of us went down to check what was going on - when she came back, she told us to get ready for some swimming, that guy was really looking for his son and the last time he was to be seen it was without these swimming aids for children and in the water.Since I've been the youngest, I was told to stay back at our station and wait for anything to happen and about 3 minutes later, something actually began to happen: People began to build a huge mass --all the people about 25 meters down the shore in each direction gathered around one point-- and one guy came running my direction.I expected the worst to have happened, grabbed the phone and the first aid-bag and started moving towards the shore.You might guess it - they found that boy, he's been under water for about 30 minutes, the helicopter came and everything ... and in all this mess, some children came to the station and asked if I could give them a plaster - and I've actually been able to find one for them even though I've been in the station for the first time on that day :DIn these few minutes, I have learned that one of the most important things to do is to stay calm whatever happens (I did not back then. I nearly messed up the emergency call, I don't want to know what would have happened if that man didn't grab the phone out of my hand while I was trying o explain to that guy on the other side of the line what had happened...) and I'm not taking life for granted since ... well, it didn't happen exactly then but a few hours later when I've been sitting somewhere in the forest talking to a girl who was supposed to take care of her 7 siblings - and one of her sisters strangled one of her brothers when they were playing "zoo" while she was busy with the others on the other side of the house...

A few days ago, a new Java Runtime Environment version was released and Sun urged everyone to update. The reason? In earlier versions, applets could pass a parameter to make the "current" version behave like an earlier version, thereby re-opening fixed vulnerabilities......just about any software which has such a parameter might have the same problem...

jasper: talking about ignorance ... my brother was asked whether Hitler was still in charge in Germany when he went to the USofNA three years ago (and those guys meant it o_O)anyways, have a look at the history of the United States of North America:1) "discovered" by a non-english speaker about 600 years ago.2) first european settlements on the american continents - not english.3) native people - did not speak english, spanish, german, italian, portugese, dutch or french.4) the USofNA did not always cover all the area from the East Coast to the West Coast and from Mexico/Cuba to Canada - huge parts of what are now the southern states of the USofNA have been taken by Spaniards before the USofNA invaded them......so actually, a) "the Europeans" should have, following your way of thinking, learned the indigene languages and the official language of the USofNA should be spanish (since the people of the USofNA came to places where spanish was the official _and_ dominant language...)