It's like I'm really on 4chan /pol/.

>dissing honesty and self awareness

Good luck with that.

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BMO

All the advice I had been given was that women were turned off by the kind of geeky guy who spent that much time with his computer.

>in facebook
>online acquaintance who knows I'm a geek opens chat and is frustrated with her computer
>she trusts me enough to log in remotely through Teamviewer.

She proceeded to ask me questions, because all she really knew about me was my facebook page. No, I'm not gay, but I have a lot of gay friends thus the gay rights stuff on my page. I'm older than your sister and closer to your age. Yes, I'm single.

>get to seriously talking
>get to the point of trading THESE ARE THE THINGS WHY YOU SHOULD RUN THE HELL AWAY
>both reach the conclusion "that's not a big deal"
>my plans for a weekend fall through. "Hey, why don't you come down and we hang out in Boston?"
>meet
>hit it off immediately.
>skedaddle off to Concord NH.

and we both suffered some horrible emotional scarring in our prior lives apart, but that scarring is what allowed us to appreciate what we have together.

This is why the "you should run away" stuff didn't discourage either of us, and in practice, the baggage is recognized for what it is. "Like old boxers comparing scars."

it's better to be rejected by women for who you are than to be accepted by women for who you are not.

I consider it an idiot filter. It's useful. Plus "keeping up appearances" is far too much work anyway.

It's been over a year with no end in sight, really.

>finding love later in life
>hopelessly in love with each other

All the previous bullshit was worth it in the long run even if a lot of it was unnecessary and stupid.

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BMO

does it do a complete job? somehow, I have my doubts and that it leaves some stuff behind (like almost all windows 'uninstallers').

It doesn't

http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/Le...

Uninstalling Superfish Visual Discovery

Go to Control Panel > Uninstall a Program
Select Visual Discovery > Uninstall
Superfish will be removed from Program Files and Program Data directories, files in user directory will stay intact for the privacy reason. Registry entry and root certificate will remain as well. The Superfish service will stop working as soon as it is uninstalled via above process, and following reboot.

And then....

This article will be updated with additional instructions on clean up of deactivated files and removal of certificate shortly.

Uh huh. Sure.

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BMO

but the simple truth is that they are deliberately aiding and abetting criminal activity.

Copyright infringement is not a crime. It's a tort.

There is a gigantic difference between the two.

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BMO

So, end your days when you are still capable to decide. Opening the door to let someone decide for you because you have lost this capability and you believe today these individuals should be terminated is not the way to do it. You believe you have a right to decide. Yes, of course as long as you are capable to decide. Beside that, no one has the right to kill someone else, be he a doctor (m.d.).

Oh please.

Durable Powers of Attorney for healthcare have been around for ages now, and they are crucial if you don't want to suffer stuffed with medical equipment that will only ensure that your life is as painful as possible for your remaining days or hours.

My SO was the DPoA for her ex. She got a phone call last October and said that Eric was in ICU and told me she was his DPoA. His mental state had changed and he was no longer "there" to make decisions for himself. I could have been a dick and said "he's not your responsibility anymore" especially since there was an alternate. But no, I said "You do what you have to do. Do what's right by Eric."

He had gone in for chemotherapy. But then things started going badly very quickly and the healthcare professionals were putting out fires one after another. Eric had been intubated as an emergency measure because his body couldn't keep his airway open. He was also restrained to keep from semi-consciously reflexively trying to yank out the tubes. He was one of those people that stuff like that scared the shit out of him.

The intubation could have kept Eric alive indefinitely were it not for his entire body failing because of the cancer. Keeping him intubated was just delaying the inevitable.

So my SO helped him end his life by having him disconnected after his ex-wife (the alternate DPoA and still his best friend) flew in from upstate NY. Make no mistake, everyone knew that disconnecting him was killing him by many people's definitions and this required the approval of the nurse on duty, two doctors, and one of the DPoAs. He lived for hours after, so she stayed by his side, read poetry, and sang to him and said goodbye. Eric's greatest fear was that he would die in pain and alone tied to a machine (he didn't have any family here). Because he had someone to make the crucial decisions for him and be there for him, he didn't die that way.

I learned a few things over those days.

I learned that I needed my own DPoA, and I knew I found someone who would do the right thing if I needed it.

Assissted suicide would be similar. It wouldn't just be /one doctor/ alone making the decision for you if you were unable - it would be two doctors, and your DPoA at least. It would simply be an extension of existing DPoA laws.

And btw, your last thing: American insurance companies make the decisions to kill people every day by refusing to cover drugs or drag their feet covering valid treatments. So bringing up the "BIG SCARY CANADIAN GOVERNMENT IS GOING TO KILL YOU WHEN THEY HAVE A BUDGET SHORTFALL" is totally disingenuous, intellectually bankrupt, and stupid.

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BMO

>weird file dialog

It's not "weird." It's standard GTK+. It's the GTK+ file dialog. If I were to pick a single reason to never use GTK+ it would be the file dialog which represents /everything/ that is wrong with GTK+, especially since absolutely nobody in the GTK+ community wants to fix it. It's been that way for years and years, and people who point out that it sucks get told to fuck off.

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BMO

>use an extreme outlier scenario. Evidence being: "I have friends who..."

>represent this situation as "typical" and "this is why the test shouldn't be available.

1. Your friends are violent criminals/psychopaths. They will harm people regardless of this being available. Pick some better friends.

2. Fucking Really?

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BMO

The very next comment after mine starts with "Imagine if you can prick the finger of a hooker in a Pattaya bar while you're drinking". Tell me again that warning people not to share a device like that is unnecessary.

So rather than read, you decide to double-down on the stupid.

Let me explain this loudly and slower so you may understand.

T_H_E__L_A_N_C_E_T_S__A_R_E__D_I_S_P_O_S_E_D__A_F_T_E_R__U_S_E

Thrown away, into the trash. With the cap placed back on so nobody gets stuck. They come in boxes of 100 and they are fucking cheap. No sane person re-uses a lancet.

You're exhibiting some weapons-grade stupid there, guy.

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BMO

"Pricking yourself with something that an infected person used is a sure-fire way to get an infection.

It's as if you don't even know how diabetic test strips, and other test strips like this one, work, or even that lancets of all kinds are disposable.

If you RTFA and click through to the Science Daily article, you'd read this:

"During the field testing in Rwanda, health care workers were given 30 minutes of training, which included a user-friendly interface to aid the user through each test, step-by-step pictorial directions, built-in timers to alert the user to next steps, and records of test results for later review. The vast majority of patients (97%) said they would recommend the dongle because of its fast turn-around time, ability to offer results for multiple diseases, and simplicity of procedure."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/re...

That is fucking spectacular.

Shut the fuck up.

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BMO

Slippery slope fallacy.

You are here: Logical Fallacies > Fallacies of Presumption > Slippery Slope Fallacy
Slippery Slope Fallacy
Explanation
Slippery slope arguments falsely assume that one thing must lead to another. They begin by suggesting that if we do one thing then that will lead to another, and before we know it we'll be doing something that we don't want to do. They conclude that we therefore shouldn't do the first thing. The problem with these arguments is that it is possible to do the first thing that they mention without going on to do the other things; restraint is possible.
Example
(1) If you buy a Green Day album, then next you'll be buying Buzzcocks albums, and before you know it you'll be a punk with green hair and everything.
(2) You don't want to become a punk.
Therefore:
(3) You shouldn't buy a Green Day album.
This argument commits the slippery slope fallacy because it is perfectly possible to buy a Green Day album without going on to become a punk; we could buy the album and then stop there. The conclusion therefore hasn't been proven, because the argument's first premise is false.

------------
http://www.logicalfallacies.in...

In order for an argument to be valid, all the links in the chain of argument must work, otherwise it's a bogus argument. The moralist hand-wringing over genetic modification of embryos assumes that we will eventually be making monsters through our vanity. It assumes that there are parents that would willfully create damaged babies for whims. (yes, I know that there are people who go through with pregnancies where they know the baby will have chromosomal problems, but that's not the same as a /manufactured/ genetic problem).

It's difficult enough bringing up a "normal" child.

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BMO

"And the futile game of whack-a-mole continues."

To make the matter even more confusing, Pirate Bayâ(TM)s downtime spurred the development of various spin-offs, all of which have steady userbases of their own. Isohunt.toâ(TM)s OldPirateBay.org is currently the largest, with millions of visitors per day and the number one spot for the search term Pirate Bay in Google.

Something something "Tarkin." and "If you strike me down I will become more powerful..." Star Wars quotes here.

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BMO

I'm just a designer, and I've never done any C++ programming,

You don't particularly need to know C++

Qt has bindings for even Lua if you want.

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BMO

The portability of the Windows and OSX UI frameworks could properly be called "utter rubbish", because they're not intended to be portable at all.

He wasn't comparing GTK+ to single-platform frameworks. He was comparing GTK+ to Qt. He said that Qt is a far better framework if you want cross platform, and he's right. And Qt is hardly just a "windows or OSX" framework. Qt really wipes the floor with GTK+ for cross-platform /especially/ if you want an application to run on Windows, OSX, Linux, Sailfish, Embedded Windows, Windows RT, Android, and Blackberry, QNX, and VxWorks.

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BMO

" It's quite the opposite, we want to fix the problem with a smile on both ends and have a pleasant conversation then move on to the next nice person."

You haven't been the target of Comcast's "customer retention" have you?

I scheduled an install, and further discussion in the day with my SO made me cancel it. She had dealt with Comcast in the past and hates them with a passion. As a result, I had to cancel the installation. Rather than just cancel the installation, they fobbed me off on Customer Retention where the guy just wouldn't let up on making "special offers."

I'm a pretty intelligent guy, last I checked, and I don't like being rude too much, but this was starting to set me off. I told the guy "I know what your job is and it sucks. However, I'm not going to change my mind. Just put me down as "other" for the reason why I'm cancelling the order and move on." Whereupon he sighed and said "yeah, ok."

And you know what? He was just doing his job to script. It's just that the script is just /so/ bad and customer-hostile that it's offensive. I would have rated him a 10/10 for following the rules, but Comcast overall as a big fat 0 for customer service because of how they structured his job.

Lesser people would have lost their nut. My SO would have lost hers.

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BMO

This.

They are so far away from the professional world that anything they learn that is specific to any kind of software or technology will be completely obsolete once they've left school.

They should be doing something fun. The best thing that can be done is to point kids in directions that make them want to do it on their own - self-directed study and show them resources where they can find out how to do things. And let them form groups to create projects and don't limit them to just glowing phosphors on a screen. Lego Mindstorms (and its descendants) comes to mind.

They need to learn that computers are tools for creation and creativity.

Absolutely do /not/ take out all the fun by teaching only fundamentals or just teaching them how to use Word and Excel, aka "marketable skills."

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BMO