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Comment Re:I Am Not Surprised (Score 1) 542

Those who roll over others like giant amoebae, with no regard for individual rights, often have no conscience at all. They are textbook psychopaths. They consider humans to be game pieces and derive great satisfaction from getting the pieces to harm each other. The one most consistently observed marker of sociopathy in such people is the elicitation of pity from those who do have a conscience, so you should note unseemly bids for pity. If you know how to recognize sociopaths in your environment, you can avoid them and you can attenuate the injurious behaviors of the "game pieces" that sociopathic leaders have brought under their control. Those tendencies include the willingness to violate your privacy.

Comment Re:I Am Not Surprised (Score 2) 542

@improfane: There is a theory stating that submissive behaviors, beginning with the reptiles, were inculcated into populations to decrease unnecessary aggression, thereby increasing the chances of survival of those populations. Social animals try to compete with others, form alliances, attach to objects such as mother and offspring, and attract mates. Submissive behaviors play a part in competition, attachment, and mating. Social hierarchies are arranged, and subordinate types arrest the expression of aggression, but the motive force favoring attack remains. This allows subordinates to continue to look for opportunities to attack even while aggression is suppressed, and a display of defeat can actually be beneficial to the subordinate animal in the long run. If an animal learns helplessness through trauma, more severe motor deficits and other signs of defeat may actually be collected into a "role" of the defeated. The survival value in this is that the "depressed" animal cannot possibly be seen as attacker and so he is at least allowed to survive. Maybe depressed people could incorporate activities into their lives that program them to expect victory and then the subjective symptoms of sadness, immobility, and anhedonia would lessen or disappear on their own. Perhaps melancholy types would benefit from hiking the Appalachian Trail, committing to a year in a martial arts class, playing guitar in public, or working on Habitat for Humanity projects.

Comment Re:Phenylalanine (Score 1) 542

I hadn't logged on when first I posted the below, so I have re-posted logged on as myself. There would be no reason to include phenylalanine, as a primary ingredient, in diet drinks. Aspartame is used as a sweetener in such products, and the metabolites of Aspartame are methanol and the amino acids phenylalanine and aspartic acid. Norepinephrine is one of our catecholamine neurotransmitters. People with ADHD are often given Ritalin or Adderall to increase norepinephrine levels in the brain. Synthesis of norepinephrine occurs in this order: tyrosine > levodopa (L-Dopa) > dopamine > norepinephrine. The human body synthesizes tyrosine, which is the stock for the two catecholamines dopamine and norepinephrine, from phenylalanine! So far from causing ADD or ADHD, phenyalanine is actually a precursor to the very neurotransmitter that allows us to focus!

Comment Trend, ClamAV, SEP, etc. (Score 1) 258

Open Source is a risk to Trend because ClamAV is open source. They have tried to sue ClamAV out of existence before. Funny story: Trend gives the sysadmin no way to uninstall their products when migrating. I had to replace Trend with SEP. A kludgy script to stop services, delete files and registry keys, and get their shim out of the TCP/IP stack was the only way to do it. Their support sucks, as I can personally attest. On several occasions, I have fixed my problems with IMSS on Solaris while on a support call with their call center in Philippines. On one occasion, latency in pattern update installs caused a large newspaper for which I worked to contract a virus that put all the Windows servers in a reboot cycle. I had to get a list of IPs of infected servers from a Solaris box so the Windows admin could manually disinfect with NTFSDOS Pro.

Comment Re:Or they flew over a CAFO (Score 1) 577

Ok, either you are a very successful troll, or a very stupid person. I really can't tell ... and I'm good at this.

Anyway, if you are a troll, congratulations, you've done an amazing job today. puddi, puddi, puddi.

Now, if you aren't ... What the hell are you talking about? Giving cows a chance? Are you fucking stupid?

Look, there is NO GOD, there is just nature. And by the mere fact that we are here, I can tell you for sure 2 things: There's been some fucking and some eating going on here for a LONG TIME. That's something that I never understood. That's an animals life: You are born, you grow and survive as long as you can, try to reproduce, and then die. Most of the time, you get eaten. It's very rare to see in nature animals that die of old age. It just doesn't happen that much outside of humans and human's pets. Long before any animal can die of old age, it becomes older and slower, and gets eaten. Why is it wrong or unnatural for us to just do the same? Do you have any idea of how many animals have lived and died since life evolved on earth?

But nobody said it better than old good George. I was going to redact this piece a little, but I can't do that to this awesome piece, so here it is, in whole:

"'My God has a bigger dick than your God!' That's how it is, isn't it? Thousands of years, and all the best wars too, the bloodiest, most brutal wars fought all based on religious hatred, which is fine with me. Anytime a bunch of holy people want to kill each other, I'm a happy guy. But don't be giving me all this shit about the sanctity of life. I mean, even if there were such a thing, I don't think it's something you can blame on God. No, you know where the sanctity of life came from? We made it up! You know why? Cause we're alive! Self-interest. Living people have a strong interest in promoting the idea that somehow life is sacred. You don't see Abbott and Costello running around, talking about this shit, do you? We're not hearing a whole lot from Mussolini on the subject. What's the latest from JFK? Not a god damned thing, cause JFK, Mussolini, and Abbott and Costello are fucking dead. They're fucking dead, and dead people give less than a shit about the sanctity of life. Only living people care about it, so the whole thing grows out of a completely biased point of view. It's a self-serving, man-made bullshit story. It's one of these things we tell ourselves so we'll feel noble. Life is sacred, makes you feel noble.

Well let me ask you this, if everything that ever lived is dead, and everything alive is going to die, where does the sacred part come in? I'm having trouble with that. Because even with the stuff we preach about the sanctity of life, we don't practice it. Look at what we kill. Mosquitos and flies, because they're pests! Lions and tigers, because it's fun! Chickens and pigs, because we're hungry. Pheasants and quail, because it's fun, and we're hungry. And people! We kill people, because they're pests... and it's fun!

And you might have noticed something else, the sanctity of life doesn't seem to apply to cancer cells, does it? You never see a bumpersticker that says 'save the tumors' or 'I brake for advanced melanoma.' No, viruses, mold, mildew, maggots, fungus, weeds, e. coli bacteria, the crabs, nothing sacred about those things. So at best, the sanctity of life is kind of a selective thing. We get to choose which forms of life we feel are sacred, and we get to kill the rest. Pretty neat deal, huh? You know how we got it? We made the whole fucking thing up! Made it up, the same way we made up the death penalty. We made them both up, the sanctity of life and the death penalty. Aren't we versatile?".

Learn something from that magnificent old fuck. Eat a stake tonight, stop trying so hard to be holier than thou.

Why call living things "sacred"? How about because it took 4 billion years to develop, and is probably very rare in the universe?

Comment Re:Slippery Slope continues. (Score 1) 305

I don't think we would know what to do with leaders who "...actually believe in and protect the freedoms of the individuals". It's an odd crank indeed who does nothing but to try to serve others. There is a "selfishness filter" that fairly effectively keeps all but narcissists, manipulators, and others who DON'T care about your freedom out of the "helping professions". Politicians, psychologists, preachers, and policemen are selected for duty because of their inordinately strong desire to control others. That's why so many Americans end up in prison, are committed to insane asylums or are subjected to ECT, get their pockets picked and their brains washed by guys with bad hair in polyester Sans-A-Belt slacks, and get beaten with clubs.
I don't "preach passive acceptance", but I am fresh out of ideas. What are yours?

Comment Re:Their customers are the ones at fault here. (Score 1) 410

People in Oklahoma, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee and Missouri marry their first cousins as a matter of course, but what excuse have Londoners? Perhaps the latter are delirious because their rent is so high.

As has been suggested above, a change in consumer reaction to advertising could dry up spurious markets. Spammers rely mostly on impulse buying, don't they? What about reducing consumption of ANY and ALL products or services that rely on advertising for their advancement? Resist trading with those whose symbols are displayed on television, in newspapers, or on highway billboards, and never buy from concerns that send electronic adverts.

Businesses cannot observe such a policy; they receive lots of "B to B" ads from commercial partners. Individual consumers, however, can make conscious decisions to buy only from vendors having a propitious "annoyance quotient". Whether it's autos, porno, or turnip twaddlers, simply cease to reward the pathological propensity to promote.

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