Messages

526

Unwashed Village / Drivers license prank

« on: August 27, 2007, 06:26:16 PM »

This is pretty funny. A couple of guys dress up for their drivers license photo just to see what passes. This is especially funny to me, as here, you   won't get far trying this. Even if you're at a slight angle, they'll have you find a new photo.

http://www.break.com/index/dmv_drivers_license_photo_prank.html

http://www.break.com/index/dmv_drivers_license_photo_prank_part2.html

527

Unwashed Village / Re: The best political system

« on: August 27, 2007, 06:22:40 PM »

Truth be told, I think the best system is dictatorship, given that the dictator is wise and benevolent, and has an equally wise and benevolent team of advisers. But that is hardly likely to ever be the case.

I don't think it is a inevitability that democracy leads to corruption - certainly there must be ways to combat this. But short of constant surveillance of elected officials, I don't see how.

528

Unwashed Village / Re: Religion - Good or Bad?

« on: August 27, 2007, 06:17:48 PM »

First off, there's a difference between faith and religion. Faith being the belief in a God we can't see and religion being the man made traditions based on faith. I make that distinction because I think the world would indeed be better off without religion. However I would never say it would be better off without faith. Personally I think Jesus shakes his head sadly at many christian traditions. For instance, at one church I went to there were rules about employee dress that would have turned Jesus away at the door if He showed up wearing sandals.

A friend of mine made a bumper sticker that says, "Jesus hates religion". While that might be a little strong, I think it's more right than wrong.

Excellent point, and a very good description of what I feel is the problem with many modern religion. I am surprised that you have this opinion however. It seems to be in conflict with (as far as I understood, anyway) your literal reading of the Bible. I you think that the rules of some churches are a problem because they are made by humans, yet you consider the literal wording of the Bible to be true. In my eyes, the Bible is also a product of humans. Even if the original text was directly written from the word of God, it has been the subject to many reprints and edits during the ages.

529

Unwashed Village / The best political system

« on: August 27, 2007, 06:06:18 PM »

What spurs this system is some recent events in Denmark, that has caused a new party to form. There's nothing wrong with that, but I find it unethical for elected members to change party during the election period.

That led me to the thought of the various democratic systems that has existed around the World:

- The US (practically) two-party system
- The UK (slightly less practically) two-party system
- The Danish many-party, two sides system
Above all being examples or representative democracy.

- Direct Democracy
- Technocracy

Personally, I think what works on paper doesn't necessarily work well in reality.

Technocracy and representative democracy both have problems of decision makers taking bribes or having personal opinions that are different from what is "for the greater good".

Direct democracy looks good on paper, but I can see several problems:
- The media could gain a large influence but swaying people using the power of press.
- Those making the decisions don't actually know anything about what they're voting for or against.

I don't know what the best solution is, but I am certainly sick and tired of having people making decisions they have no domain knowledge about. I guess my best candidate is a representative democracy, where ministers (or equivalent depending on system) must have actual knowledge about the areas they are ministers for.

530

Unwashed Village / Religion - Good or Bad?

« on: August 27, 2007, 05:46:47 PM »

Take your pick in the poll, and state your opinions below:

I'll state my somewhat controversial viewpoint here:

I am, at best, an agnostic. I think all religious books are written by men, and as such, tell more about the society in which they were written than they do of the deity they portray, if such an entity exists.

I think religion is a major contributor to conflict around the World. - Protestant/Catholic in Northern Ireland, Muslim/Anything else in the Middle East, Christian/Anything else during the Crusades, Something/Something else a million times throughout history.

Now, I'm not saying that religion is responsible for all war, humans manage that on their own - but it is just another thing we can disagree on and fight wars over. I think the prime contributor is territorial disputes/power.

Aside wars, many other bad things has happened in the name of religion: The Inquisition and various other witch hunts, Tom Cruise becoming a complete idiot and various acts of terrorism.

Humans seem to have a almost tribal like trend to band together against "the enemy", but question is:

If we had no religion (or to some extent, everyone had the same), would there be less terrorism/war/Tom Cruises?

My view is Yes. Most recently, religion is being using as a distraction by dictators to turn the peoples anger towards external enemies rather than the problem that occur in their own country.

Please note that all religion should be counted the same. IMO the only difference between Christianity and Islam is 400 years of technological and sociological progress.

531

Unwashed Village / Re: Democrats rallying to bail out morons

« on: August 27, 2007, 05:30:35 PM »

Yeah, I understood that part - the part I don't understand is why they need to be bailed out?

If you can't pay, you lose the house, and the bank recovers their money. Then you should be debt-free. Why do the (former) homeowners have to go to jail then?

Unless the house is more expensive that it is worth.

532

Unwashed Village / Re: Al Gore's: The inconvenient truth

« on: August 27, 2007, 05:27:56 PM »

Like I said, it is indeed one-sided, but he makes a few good points.

Personally, I hope it scares enough people into at least thinking a bit more about energy consumption and recycling. I doubt anyone will argue that those two are not a good idea.

My official stance is that I just don't know (seeing as no scientist have proven or disproven the hypothesis) if the rise in global temperatures is caused by human intervention, or simply the natural fluctuations of the earth.

I would say that I'm an environmentalist, but nowhere near Greenpeace level (an organization with good intentions, but god awful execution IMO). What gets me going is people who completely disregard pollution (or any kind) as a problem - especially considering that we have the technology to almost remove it completely if enough money was invested.

What also gets me going is the oil industry, and their numerous attempts to stop hydrogen cars (and similar initiatives).

The demon on my other shoulder laughs at hydrogen cars, which some people seem to consider the solution to all pollution problems.

I'd prefer a vegetable oil fueled car over the hydrogen car any day.

"But the hydrogen car is zero-emission"

True, but the energy used to make the hydrogen must still come from conventional power plants - i.e. coal for the most part. That means that the hydrogen car itself it non-polluting, but in practice, it just pollutes somewhere else.

The vegetable oil-fueled car sends out as much CO2 as a normal diesel car (well.. close to anyway), but as the plants used to produce the oil absorbed the CO2 during growth, it remains CO2-neutral to the environment.

As such, I don't see a reason for hydrogen cars yet. When all our energy comes from clean sources such as windmills, hydro-power plants or some day hopefully nuclear fusion, we can take up the idea again.


All in all, I just think it is so easy for us to cut down on pollution, that I just don't see any reason not to.

533

Unwashed Village / Re: Known bugs

« on: August 27, 2007, 05:02:02 PM »

Trying holding CTRL as you refresh the page, it should clear your browsers cache for that page. Some browser allow you to turn caching off. It's strange though, the pages should already tell your browser to disable caching.. But as you say, it could just be that you're behind a proxy that caches the pages. In that case, try adding a bogus value to the end of the address: i.e. instead of http://www.unwashed.org/forum/index.php, use http://www.unwashed.org/forum/index.php?snuff=1

Or for threads, use http://www.unwashed.org/forum/index.php?action=post;topic=22.15;num_replies=23&something=goat

534

Unwashed Village / Re: What's this all about then?‫‬‭‮‪‫‬‭‮҉What's this all about then?

« on: August 27, 2007, 04:54:02 PM »

Stange indeed҉, but it doesn't seem to work for me..

535

Unwashed Village / Al Gore's: The inconvenient truth

« on: August 27, 2007, 04:48:04 PM »

I don't even know if this is debate worthy, but does anyone here doubt that global warming exists? Or that it is caused by humans?

While I think the movie/documentary only showed one side of the arguments, Gore is right on most points - and he has some pretty impressive numbers to prove it.

536

Unwashed Village / Re: Democrats rallying to bail out morons

« on: August 27, 2007, 04:44:09 PM »

Hmm.. I don't think a lot of people here actually go to jail for bad economy skills..

The bank won't lend you more money than you can afford (a lot less typically), and if you can't pay for the house, it is sold, and the bank keeps whatever money you owe them. Sure you lost your home, but it's not that hard (or expensive) to find a place to rent.

I don't entirely understand the problem... ?

537

Unwashed Village / Re: So apparently that whole no guns thing in England isn't turning out so well

« on: August 27, 2007, 02:01:45 PM »

I can't think of a single reason that civilians should be allowed to own a gun (other than hunting and sports) if the police do their jobs right. If you limit the number of firearms, you'll also limit the number of people with access to them. I don't believe the "criminals will get them anyway"  argument. Then you might as well allow drugs too - I mean.. criminals will get them too? Bad example, I know

That being said, I think people are a bit too black and white on this. I don't think "anyone" should be able to get a gun, but I don't think "no one" should either. If the Government were to set up some psychological tests and tests of marksmanship before allowing people to obtain a gun, I could live with more people owning a gun.

But I can't live with people owning guns to protect themselves. If that is necessary, the community has a problem. It seems like vigilantist justice to me.

538

Unwashed Village / Re: Normally I am against the death penalty

« on: August 27, 2007, 12:17:31 AM »

I could be persuaded to a quick and painless death - i.e. an overdose of heroin - in this case.

I'm not defending the guy, I'm just saying that he is a sick individual, who has probably been abused somehow as a child. No matter what, this is not a sane, normal person. As such, I feel more pity than anger.

The reason that I think an humane lethal injection is ok, is that I doubt he can never be cured.

539

Unwashed Village / Re: There is so much that is wrong with this article...

« on: August 24, 2007, 04:55:35 AM »

Hypothetical, but entirely likely scenario:

"Guy" rides on the bus. Guy turns on his laptop during the trip. During this trip, his PC connects to the nearest unsecured access point without any action on his part. Immoral? Not bloody likely.

"Man" drops thousands of small electronic devices that connect to the nearest unsecured access point and start a distributed denial of service attack on some server.

One is clearly immoral, one is clearly not.

There are shades to this, but generally, anyone with an unsecured network shouldn't complain. Neither should ISPs, as they've already been paid for the bandwidth.

It's kinda like not locking your doors, putting up a sign that says "valuables inside!" and then wondering why the insurance company doesn't pay. No, strike that. It's like taking a piece of tape, laying it upside down on the sidewalk, putting dollar bills on the sticky side. And when someone steps on it, you accuse them of thievery.

540

Unwashed Village / Re: I got Bioshock!

« on: August 24, 2007, 04:43:31 AM »

Oh, and DX10 came out with Vista.

Holy crap, I've been running Vista on my laptop for ages, and I didn't even realize. Last I heard, they were rumored to push it, just like they did WinFS. Maybe I should install Vista on my desktop, which actually has a DX10 capable graphics card.

Christ, as a geek, I should know this. *goes to hide in shame*