A Great Story

I got the following in an email today:

Subject: a great story


True or not, I liked this. You just gotta' smile.

A United States Marine was attending some college courses between assignments. He had completed missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. One of the courses had a professor who was a vowed atheist and a member of the ACLU. One day the professor shocked the class when he came in. He looked to the ceiling and flatly stated, "God, if you are real, then I want you to knock me off this platform. I'll give you exactly 15 minutes."

The lecture room fell silent. You could hear a pin drop. Ten minutes went by and the professor proclaimed, "Here I am God, I'm still waiting."

It got down to the last couple of minutes when the Marine got out of his chair, went up to the professor, and cold-cocked him; knocking him off the platform. The professor was out cold. The Marine went back to his seat and sat there, silently. The other students were shocked and stunned and sat there looking on in silence.

The professor eventually came to, noticeably shaken, looked at the Marine and asked, "What is the matter with you? Why did you do that?"

The Marine calmly replied, "God was too busy today protecting America's soldiers who are protecting your right to say stupid stuff and act like an idiot, so He sent me."

No, I don't need to smile at a bigoted, moronic story like that. In fact a story like that just goes to show how small minded, self righteous and out right stupidly smug some religious people can be.

Really, what's great about that story? Is it great that it advocates violence? Is it great that it reinforces a stereotype that those who serve in the military are all believers? A stereotype that is not true, by the way.

So, god's busy protecting America's soldiers in Iraq? Well, I guess god's a bit of a slacker because 3,800 U.S. soldiers have completely escaped his protection and have died in Iraq and another 19,469 have only been partially protected by god as they have been wounded. And, I guess the 73,000 to 650,000 Iraqi civilians who have died as a result of this war (depending on whose accounting you believe) were also not worthy of god's protection.

Also, then there's the question of whether the soldiers in Iraq are fighting to protect the rights of U.S. citizens? Many smart people from both Republicans to Democrats, conservatives to liberals, believers to non-believers have questioned the motives for invading Iraq. When conservative, Republican, recently resigned Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan is willing to go on record saying that we invaded Iraq in order to have a controlling interest their oil, I think it's there's a very real possibility that we may not be fighting there to 'protect your right to say stupid stuff and act like an idiot.' I'm only saddened that Mr. Greenspan didn't have the moral conviction to voice this opinion while he still served in public office.

One final note. In theory, religions are supposed to teach their followers to be humble, kind, charitable, long suffering, forgiving, etc. A story like the one below is just one more piece of evidence that reinforces what a lot of us non-believers have been saying for years- that religion actually has the opposite of its intended effects. Namely, it generally serves to make people more self righteous, intolerant, violent, and (unfortunately) stupid. It's a 'by their fruits you will know them' kind of a thing.

Discovered the "Daily Atheist"

I was using the Blogger "Next Blog" button (you can see some fascinating stuff doing that) when I discovered the "Daily Atheist". The blog itself wasn't so much what got me as this graphic that is linked to a Cafe Press site where you can buy merchandise:


I really dig it. I love the 1940's/50's detergent add look it's got. We'll see if I love it enough to purchase a t-shirt or a mug. I've never bought any Cafe Press merchandise (that I know of) and I've heard various things about their quality. Maybe it's time to give 'em a try and decide for myself.

Rob May Strikes Again

Rob May at Businesspundit.com now has piece on his blog with the Lucas worth title of "Viral Venom: What My Mac Post Can Teach You About the Negative Side of Passionate Customers"

In it, he makes the following claim:

I know a lot of people that have Macs, so I finally decided to give it a try. After a few weeks, I decided it wasn't for me, and I wrote about some of the things I didn't like.

He then goes on to decry the unwarranted reaction of some Mac users to his simple observations about what he didn't like. You see, in his universe, Rob is reasonable and Mac users are a bunch of venomous snakes ready to strike when someone simply points out what they didn't like about their platform of choice.

The problem here is that Rob is not reasonable. He didn't just simply point out things he didn't like about the Mac. He used half true, tired, worn out cliches to tear down a computing platform that some people dearly love. Of course, he knew what he was doing. He was looking for a reaction and he got it. But, he's not intellectually honest enough (or as I have posited, bright enough) to admit to his ruse.

I was going to point out some of the insanely idiotic things he put in his blog entry, but soon realized that I'd already covered that ground and that it's packed so densely with them I'd just end up reposting his entry here.

Since I'm sure he's gonna censor me again in the comments section of his blog, I'll post my reply here as well:

Sorry Rob, but you didn't just 'write about some of the things you didn't like.' You flame baited with idiotic and untrue cliches. Things like saying that the one button trackpad is 'the worst design decision ever made', or that 'Apple goes out of the way to avoid text', and 'Macs offer no advantages', etc. You knew what you were doing- making false statements about a product to a group of people that have been sick of hearing this kind of stuff for nearly 2o years. You knew you'd get a reaction and that it would temporarily spike interest in your blog. It worked and now you have the audacity to act like some Mac users are just venomous snakes while failing to acknowledge your part in the whole charade. You act as if the moronic nonsense you posted were just reasonable observations. Unfortunately, that's simply not true. You can censor me, but it won't matter. Smart people can tell the difference.

Switching To Mac is a Waste of Time: My Response Part 2

So, Rob May at businesspunit.com won't allow my comments to his blog entry titled "Switching to Mac is a Waste of Time" to appear on that page. And, he's, oh so cleverly, reposted the exact same article under the changed the title of "Switcing to Mac is Great". So, he hasn't actually changed the titled, he's just duplicated his blog entry and now has it posted on two separate pages under two different titles.

Despite not allowing me to have my rebuttal to his dimwitted observations appear on his blog, he took the time to email me the following:

Russell, Thanks for the kind words. The Mac community is so friendly, and Macusers are all so incredibly smart, I can't wait to join you.

I didn't lie about my Windows machine being virus free. I'm just anextremely advanced technical user and I have all the properprecautions.

Rob

Since he took the time to email me and reassure me that he's an honest fella. I felt it only appropriate to email him back:

Hey, you wrote a really, really dumb blog post. That's not my fault. If you're gonna write such stupid stuff and publish it then you should be prepared for some less than friendly rebuttals. I like how your only defense is to point out how rude my comments were- duh, I think I was being over the top with the rudeness on purpose- for, uh, comic effect. Oh, and to say you weren't lying. Gee. Do you promise. Cross your heart and hope to die?

A couple of things:

A) There's no such thing as 'the mac community'

B) Just because I showed you how stupid your writing was doesn't mean that I'm saying all Mac users are 'so incredibly smart'

C) Let's assume you're not lying. Does it then follow that you didn't have a virus? No. You could very well have had a virus and not known it. All you can truthfully claim is that as far as you know, trusting your antivirus software, you didn't have a virus. Because viruses for Windows exist and because not all viruses are detectable by all antivirus software, you can't conclusively prove or know that you didn't have one.

Now, none of that really matters that much. What does matter, and maybe what I should have addressed in my comments is the logical fallacy that you're promoting. You're implying that because you think you didn't have a virus that you didn't gain any additional security in buying and using a Mac. Basically, it's like you walked through a mine field, managed to not step on a mine (or at least, if you did you somehow weren't aware of it) and now you think that walking through a mine field is just as safe as walking through a field with no mines planted in it. The problem here, is that you were just lucky. You could have very well stepped on a mine (i.e. gotten a Windows virus). Plenty of people do, all the time. Even 'extremely advanced technical users'. However, in the last 5 years, no user of OS X has gotten a virus in the wild. None. Not a single one. Because they were walking through the field with no mines planted in it. So, you did actually gain something when you were using OS X. You gained the peace of mind that comes with not having to worry about stepping on a mine because it was no longer possible at that point.

Now, there's one other problem with your claim. And, that is that even though you may not have, to your knowledge, gotten a 'virus' per se. There's no way that in the last 5 years you didn't get some form of malware (to use a more generalized) term. It's just not possible that you didn't get some form of virus, worm, trojan, tracking cookie, etc. They were/are too ubiquitous now and during the period of time that you are referring to and the detection and removal tools to rid a Windows machine of these pests were a reaction to them not a pre-emptive measure put in place to prevent them from getting there in the first place. I've run Spybot and AdAware on machines where each program found several hundred instances of such malware, and then continued to find new instances as their definitions files were updated.

So, while it is possible that your narrowly defined claim might be true, the larger insinuation that you're making is patently false. For, what your narrowly defined claim aims to do is give people the impression that with the right regimen of security software they too can keep a Windows machine free of malware and therefore there is nothing to be gained security wise by switching to a Mac. You have to know that you're being deceptive on this point. If you don't, then my rude, yet deserved and amusing claims that you are an idiot are true.

Switching To Mac is a Waste of Time: My Response

I was originally gonna post this on the following page:

http://www.businesspundit.com/50226711/switching_to_mac_is_a_waste_of_time.php

But, the page isn't taking submissions any more, so I'm gonna waste some bandwidth, pixels, and Blogger disk space and post it here

My Response to "Switching To Mac is a Waste of Time"

I can't believe I'm gonna take the time to do this. It's too bad that the "Mac Nazis" as you call them have apparently been a bit too rabid in calling you out, but let's be honest here- your blog post is dumb.

First you state about Macs that "they don't offer any advantages over a PC." Then you later point out that "There are some benefits, like iMovie and a few other programs not available for PC." Well which is it Einstein? Do they offer no advantages or do they have some benefits? It's one or the other, you can't have both conditions. That dorky logical contradiction should be enough to show what a clueless writer you are and just how badly composed and even more poorly thought out your blog post is. I should stop right here, but just for the sake of amusement, let's examine a few more of your moronic ramblings.

Let's look at this nice claim, "they aren't intuitive at all." Hmmm. Nothing about the Mac is intuitive? Didn't anyone ever tell you about exercising caution with absolute statements? I'm guessing you've never heard the amusing old maxim, 'never say never?'

See, there's plenty of intuitive things about a Mac, as there are plenty of intuitive things about other OSes. And, some things that seem intuitive when you're used to one OS can seem counterintuitive when you're using a less familiar OS. But, stupid as you obviously are, making a point like this was apparently beyond you. All you could come up with was, "they aren't intuitive at all." Again, this should be enough to just stop but, unfortunately, you've managed to pack quite a lot of idiocy into one short little blog post. So, I feel inclined to just keep flogging this dead dog.

Let's see... you then go on and make this really brilliant observation, "Everything is graphics driven and Apple seems to want to avoid using text whenever possible." I'm tempted to remind you again about absolute statements, but I feel like I'd be wasting even more time and effort than I already am.

There're two problems with your statement. The first is that everything on a mac is not graphics driven and Apple doesn't go to great lengths to avoid text. Did you fire up the Terminal? If you had, you might have noticed that it's completely text driven. Did you try the Activity Monitor? It's also very textual. Did you open any Help screens? Yes, most of them contain screen shots but they also all contain textual descriptions of those screen shots along with written descriptions of how to accomplish certain tasks. Drop down menus? Text. In fact, Apple has bucked the trend of some other OSes by not littering their drop down menus with distracting, irritating, tiny little 8x8 pixel icons.

So, not only do we see that your claim is false, now we can examine the stupidity of it. Ever wonder why international signs contain a prominent picture and may or may not include text in several different languages displayed underneath in a less prominent fashion? The reason they are that way is because most of the time if you can communicate something graphically, without text, it's usually more effective. So, where ever Apple might have gone out of their way to avoid text, there's probably a good reason for it. Keep in mind, and this will be hard for you, I'm not saying that they have actually done this, what I am saying is that if they have, there's probably a damn good reason for it.

Had enough? Well, unfortunately, there's still more dunce material in your post that needs addressed.

I really like this, "People also talk about all the cool widgets for Macs, but I've used those through Konfabulator on Windows since before Yahoo bought the company, so I don't really see them as all that impressive." Your logic here is kinda like sayin, 'I've already seen the Grand Canyon, so for the rest of you, just let me tell you that it's really not impressive or even worth the trip.' Sorry, but that's beyond dumbass thinking.

Also, there's the problem that there are over 3,000 Dashboard Widgets. Are we to believe that you used them all and that we can take your word for it that among those 3,000 widgets there aren't any worth getting excited about or that are cool or impressive? Keep in mind that this isn't even a Konfabulator versus Dashboard issue, this is you dismissing the wealth of cool little Dashboard widgets based on doofus logic. Quite frankly, I can name some really kick ass Dashboard widgets, (and for some of them there are probably Konfabulator widgets that do the same thing and that's cool for Windows users). There are some for OS X that take advantage of Apple's strict standardization of their hardware & software and those are even cooler. Now, I don't know if the same kind exist for Konfabulator, but I'm not dissing Konfabulator here- just defending Dashboard. You're just wrong about Dashboard- it's cool and the fact that it is integrated with the OS is a definite advantage of Mac OS X. You being jaded by having used a similar tool on Windows is irrelevant.

Oh my god. I can't believe I've wasted this many words showing you just how stupid your blog entry is! However, I think you've earned it. Sadly, there are at least 2 other things that need addressed.

One is this, "I haven't had a Windows virus in 5 years." I would say, this- You're either lying, running a really crappy virus scanner, not keeping the virus definitions up to date, or you kept your notebook off of the internet.

Why would I make this claim? Because 2002 & 2003 were in the last 5 years and they were particularly bad years for Windows viruses. I know because I was administrating several hundred PCs spread over 6 locations at that time and even though we were running an enterprise virus scanner on all of our workstations, with almost daily definitions updates being pushed out, we still got hit hard with things like variants of blaster and sobig. Back then, the antivirus companies were always one step behind the virus makers and Microsoft had failed to adequately patch Windows against some gaping security holes. So, you're probably either lying, weren't actively using the internet, or you had a virus and didn't know it. Based on how stupid your blog entry is, I'm guessing odds are 50/50 between the 'lying' choice and the 'had a virus and didn't know it' scenario.

The second (and last) thing I'm gonna waste my time addressing is this, "Macs aren't bad, they just aren't any better than PCs."

Oh, I see, "Macs aren't bad." They're just:

• "all bells and whistles"
• "aren't intuitive at all"
• and contain the "the single worst design decision anyone has ever made"
• additionally, Windows, Unix, & Linux are all easier to use
• oh, and you "didn't gain anything by going to a Mac" (except iMovie and a few programs you found that weren't available for Windows)
  

What. You're making my head hurt. You're a f#$%ing idiot. (Sorry didn't want to be one of the Mac Nazis who failed to f-bomb you). Seriously, look in the mirror and repeat these words, "I - am - an - idiot."

Now, before you start feeling too bad about it, try and remember I'm not saying that you're an incurable idiot, but you are an idiot. I would say go back and try again, but not until you've take an intro to logic course and passed with at least a 'C' grade. Stick with Windows; OS X is obviously far too logical for you. It's a 'pearls before swine' kinda thing.