Piker - Informal Noun
1) a person who does anything in a contemptibly small or cheap way.

And how's that working out in the US? We arguably already vote for parties anyway, most people don't vote in primaries so it pretty much comes down to voting either R or D. But the countries with proportional representation shouldn't be smug, it isn't as if their governments aren't corrupt and incompetent as well. At least they have 6 corrupt or useless parties instead of only two.

Thanks for the clarification, genius.

Oh, and woosh.

FTFY, if you're going to drag that old chestnut out of its well earned retirement at least get it right!

Can't disagree with the fact that it may push some to continue drinking, however I think you'd find that a large proportion of those were somehow compelled to attend meetings/participate in AA. No matter how cultish it may appear, you'd be hard pressed to show that AA itself is aggressively trying to increase its membership by evangelism or other tactics, and is therefore directly causing harm to these people. Instead, the court systems, regardless of what caused them to believe so, have determined that 12-step group attendance should be required of individuals convicted of various alcohol/substance abuse related charges. So a third party is directing individuals to attend AA meetings against their will and the AA groups themselves can't stop these people from attending, even if some members would be happier if the "sheet signers" weren't there at all. Some times it works: I've heard numerous stories about people who were at one time forced to attend meetings, who resented it and usually continued drinking while they did it, who eventually embraced the AA way and quit drinking. Haven't heard the opposite, more than likely for the simple reason that those people quit going to meetings altogether and either slide into oblivion or quit some other way.

Sorry, kind of got to rambling there. My point is, that the fact that the AA message may cause some to continue, or even worsen, their using isn't the fault of the AA groups themselves. The book will even tell you, if you've got a prospective member and they're particularly opposed to the idea of AA, leave them alone and let them continue their destructive behaviour, but always be there to help them if they ever desire it. Not to force your message down anyone's throats. I don't even particularly care for the AA way of doing things, even if I'm stuck doing it right now. However a lot of people have some really strange ideas about what goes on there and by spreading that distorted message may be keeping some who may be helped by AA from getting it. It's not for everyone, and it's stupid that so many get forced to be there.

My take is that the 5% it does work for might not have been able to stay sober some other way. Statistics can be a little blurry that way, since there isn't necessarily an overlap between the various groupings. 5% of the population can quit with no help whatever, a different 5% with AA, and another by never stepping on sidewalk cracks. Regardless, that 5% of the population DID quit and there is no way to categorically state that those for whom it does work could have done it any other way.

Now the AA-evangelists are another story entirely, but you get the same kind of mindsets in any group. Some people are just wired to believe that their way is the only possible way and have all sorts of rationalizations about why it doesn't work for some, or why other ways work for other people.

Yeah, but they're wrong. Everyone knows it was the Reptoids, sheesh.

I think the primary difference is that 747's don't have secret back doors built in to allow the NSA free access to the entire IT infrastructure (or at least the entire Windows based side) of whatever company uses them.

Thing is, I'm positive there were multiple copycats, and with the content Kristopeit usually wrote it was trivial to duplicate. In a sense it made the whole Kristopeit troll even more epic because not only would he (or it?) be writing troll posts but copycats too and it just spiraled into madness.

With APK it's almost impossible for a normal, rational individual to accurately duplicate the unique style of a genuine APK rant. That long copy pasta that's been making the rounds is a pretty good approximation though.

Ugh. This, a thousand times this! Nothing worse than having multiple screens and the gall to want to look at two spreadsheets side by side. But no, Excel is a stupid MDI app -- which BTW ranks high in the stupidest ideas EVER -- so SUFFER!! Even worse, once you "hack" it, if you deign to have macros in your PERSONAL.XLS file, it'll bother you endlessly about overwriting it until you get fed up and make it read-only. Stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid

But those are dockapps, we're talking about tiles here man, TILES. Completely different. Besides, MS invented the modern operating system, the Apple lawsuits were plain FUD and we have St. Gates to thank for modernity. And tiles.

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It's probably less than that, at least once you remove all the deluded "I'm the bestest drivers evar!!11!" folks. A lot of the anti-ABS arguments seem to rely on "sufficiently skilled drivers" which is utterly ridiculous.

Wish I had a link to that study which showed how people tend to overestimate their skill at various tasks even to the point of denying their utter incompetence.

Not only that, but he's also assuming that even well trained drivers always have optimal response times, other variables aren't coming in to play, etc.

Which is exactly why ABS is useful, because only the most arrogant of "good drivers" really thinks they can do this correctly, all of the time.

This kind of stuff is why I chuckle at the "well I'm an good driver," partly because everyone seems to think that, and partly because their petty arrogance makes them eschew safety features just because "I'm so damn good." Added safety features (even if they have certain trade offs) are always a good thing, deluded jackasses not-withstanding.

While this may be true, it doesn't really discredit the GP's point. Just because I, as the worlds best and most safest driver, do my best to keep as many car lengths as possible between me and the car in front, it doesn't mean all the other jackasses who are trying to get to work 20 seconds sooner aren't going to start doing things that impact my safety which are beyond my control!

Just the act of driving means you're an accident waiting to happen. No matter how defensively you drive you cannot predict, nor stop, other drivers from doing unsafe things, and sooner or later someone else's unsafe behavior is going to impact you. That's not to say that there isn't any point in defensive driving habits, but trying to pretend that anyone who gets in an accident wasn't driving properly is foolish.

Hurray for Chic-let keyboards! Those things are truly awful.