Something Random

theSwede

What is this storage?
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I believe MPAA is only suing to scare people and the site owners. Most of the torrents you can find using for example isohunt can also be found using google or msn search.
 

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
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As I understand things, it's not illegal to download (or, I guess, not illegal enough to bother with prosecution), but uploading is criminal behavior.

Bittorrent, by the way it works, implies reciprocal uploading. There are ways around it (hacked clients), but in general, once you're connected to a tracker 1. Your IP is visible and 2. You are at least willing to upload pieces you've downloaded.

It's a good idea, if you're a torrent user, to get Peerguardian or a peerguardian plugin for your torrent software.

AFAIK, no users were prosecuted in the light of the suprnova.org or lokitorrents.com takedowns, even though legal authorities confiscated server logs that should've indicated the identities of users of those systems.

Also, the out-and-out biggest torrent sites on the internet remain unaffected by any of this: Piratebay.org and mininova.org weren't named, and neither were the huge, member-only torrent sites.

Personally, I don't download music controlled by RIAA members and I don't download new Hollywood movies. I think those two things represent the high-risk behaviors of torrenting.
 

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
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Can't believe I'm typing this from work...

Not so much with the Vivid - they've gone too far toward what I think of as hateful, or at the very least disrepectful, plotless action. I liked Vivid well enough, because in the past they had both the very hottest stars and very high production values, but nowadays production has declined and so has the attitude of the male performers.

Wicked Pictures puts out a far better movie these days (sometimes even managing a plot!), but they are about 95% Male/Female pairings, which is just boring.

Digital Playground really seems to be pushing things in technical terms - they have HD releases NOW and they've got some excellent camera and lighting guys as well.

I like features from Simon Wolf productions, as they tend to have appropriately goofy storylines; it looks like the stars are actually having a good time.

As far as downloaded porn goes, mostly I look for things that aren't carried by my DVD subscription service (wantedlist.com) by directors Abbey Winters or Viv Thomas - both of whom do very hot, very realistic girl/girl work (as in, you can tell the scenes are run to <ahem> completion and that no one is faking). I'll also go in for content from Littlemutt.com, FTV, DDgirls, Met-Art, Hegre or Galitsin, and most especially from the non-professional company "Girlfriend Films".

The trend recently in adult movies is essentially to do the most degrading things possible to the female performer. There's an emphasis on quasi-scripted "gonzo" material and on getting performers to do things that people with healthy attitudes about sex probably wouldn't be willing to do. The stuff is getting more violent (girls working with certain directors and performers regularly end up crying, puking or bleeding<!> from their treatment on-camera) - some of it is to my mind uncomfortably closer to sexual assault than anything else.

FWIW, my tastes run to tasteful and "softer" porn. I also appreciate high production values a lot, so I like Playboy videos, or stuff by Andrew Blake or Michael Ninn for technical merit if not adult content.
 

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
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Dude, that's not even CLOSE to work-safe...

But, yeah, I do. She has a small frame and very large implants that're on top of her pectoral muscle. The surgeon did a great (fantastic, even) job, but if you look at her chest above the breast (it's hard, I know), you'll see that the skin over her chest is actually stressed to accomodate her implants - because of that, her solar plexus actually looks kinda bony. Look at image 21.jpg, for example.

Luba Hegre had a little work done, but the surgery was so good that the only reason I can tell is that there are some photo sets of her prior to the implants.

Aria Giovanni's are real. So are Kyla Cole's.

Man, I know way too much about porn.
 

Santilli

Hairy Aussie
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Mercutio:

I think the violence towards women stuff is a result of a couple things.
Fantasy, to be effective, has to be something close to your reality.

As has been clearly stated in other threads, the women Hollywood is using do not in anyway represent much the average man can think about, much less possibly relate to. The combination of very thin, VERY tall models, take most of Hollywood's female leads out of the concept of all but the tallest men.

The portraying of women as now more then men, and, as has been pointed out in other threads, as BETTER then men, at such things as physical activities, strength, etc. is slowly emasculating men's sef-conception.

Porn is the last bastion of male domination, at least from the production end, and, they can both write, and cast who they want.

Best example I can think of is we will now have a FEMALE James Bond.

As I've said before, I don't have any insecurities about amazon size and strength women, but, that's because of my unique background and experience. I don't think the same can be said for my generation, and the following...

GS
 

jtr1962

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Santilli said:
The portraying of women as now more then men, and, as has been pointed out in other threads, as BETTER then men, at such things as physical activities, strength, etc. is slowly emasculating men's sef-conception.
And I'll point out it's the last step of the whole women's emancipation movement. First women wanted equal rights. Once that once achieved the (unstated) goal became to make men subservient, and perhaps eventually to make them useless altogether. If you think about it, nowadays a women doesn't need a man to support them, or protect them, and doesn't even need one in their life long-term to have kids. In short, the modern male has been reduced to the role many male insects have where their sole purpose is to fertilize the female, after which they die and/or are eaten by the female. Add to all this years of workplace affirmative action favoring females/minorities, and nowadays it's actually politically incorrect to be a white male. As you said, porn may by a subtle way of rebelling against all this.

If there's any light at the end of the tunnel, I'd say it's a growing realization that both sexes compliment each other, and need each other. Hopefully the future will one closer to true equality than to any one sex/race dominating.
 

Santilli

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If there is one thing to be confirmed from affirmitive advantage, is once given those advantages, the people become entitlees, thinking that they 'deserve' their position, due to race, color, gender, whatever feature.

Of course, our general perception of that group is preverted by Hollyweird, and it's master race, it's sick writers, and absurd comments.

One sticks out. Out of nowhere, in Catwoman, one of the women says,

"I taught for 20 years, until I was denied tenure."

That, in itself, says volumes. It's a distortion of the tenure system, at least everyone I've been around, but, it may, at one point, in history, long ago, have been true. None the less, the fact that it's being dragged up,troted out by some old queen, or some ugly duckling female writer, who's 60, gay, or a malecounter part, the same, both have an agenda, started in the past, and continues to be part of the underlying garbage Hollyweird feeds us.

The great part is I don't think many of my kids care about tenure, nor understand the process, much less it's prevertions...

Hopefully the younger generations are not so effected by this crap, and, from my experience, they don't seem to be. Most high school women I've been around are both liberated, and delighted with the variety of choices they have, and the different things they can do. They have become
people that feel they do have an equal chance, and opps in life, and, God
Bless them, we just have to put up with the perverts and the extremeists from those movements, who veiled their agendas behind valid movements for human rights.

GS
 

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
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I'd like to share a pair of video files from a British television series examining the nature of religious faith from the perspective of a rational non-believer. The non-believer in question is Richard Dawkins, evolutionary theorist best known for his book The Selfish Gene. Dawkins meets with fanatics of all stripes, and at times his contempt for them - and theirs for him - is just barely concealed.

Just the same, I found the programs compelling.

The files are approximately 350MB apiece.
Part 1
Part 2
 

Handruin

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CougTek said:
Wow. What kind of bandwidth is this? Must cost you a fortune.

Probably some unlucky person who oversells their bandwidth didn't know what Mercutio was capable of consuming. ;)
 

Howell

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A Critique of Aspects of the Philosophy and Theology of Richard Dawkins, by Mike Poole
Introduction
Richard Dawkins is Reader in Zoology in the University of Oxford. He has a deservedly high reputation in his field of ethology, and his book The Extended Phenotype has been described by one reviewer as 'a contender for the title of the most important contribution to evolutionary biology in the 1980s'. However, since this book is possibly one of Dawkins' less contentious works so far as the subject of this paper is concerned, it does not feature prominently here.

Dawkins has also made numerous television appearances, major ones including The Blind Watchmaker, BBC 2 Horizon, 19 January 1987 and the 1991 Royal Institution Christmas Lectures, Growing Up in the Universe, broadcast on BBC 2 in December 1991 and repeated one year later.

In addition to his Zoological studies, Dawkins has made frequent excursions into philosophy and theology in his popular writings, on television, in debates and in letters to the press. He has contributed to the science/religion debate by pointing out, along with others, weaknesses in the arguments of those Creationists who claim that evolution cannot account for the development of complex features like the eye. But he has also relentlessly advocated the conflict thesis.

Reply to Michael Poole, by Professor Richard Dawkins
I am grateful to the Editor for inviting me to reply to Michael Poole's interesting article. Authors' replies to criticism predictably rely upon the 'I have been misquoted ... misunderstood ... misinterpreted - - .' formula. Poole's collation of my ideas is so thorough, and his representation of them so fair, that I have almost no complaints along these lines. On the contrary, when I see my own views so comprehensively expounded by so fairminded a critic, I find myself agreeing with them as strongly as ever!

Response to Richard Dawkins' Reply, by Mike Poole
I am pleased that Richard Dawkins judges my critique of his views as fair. I shall endeavour to keep these additional remarks the same. However, I now wish to press home my points a little harder, for I see no way that my paper can encourage Dawkins to hold his views 'as strongly as ever', if he has taken the full force of the criticisms on board. I shall respond to his main points.




A CLASH OF FUNDAMENTALISMS
Denis Alexander said:
A few years ago Channel 4 aired what is generally accepted to be a rather good three-part series on science and religion under the title Testing God. The series certainly wasn't perfect, but it was far, far superior in every respect to The Root of All Evil? A genuine attempt was made to grapple with opposing arguments, and a wide spectrum of views was represented. The relationship between science and religion was presented not within the simplistic conflict framework that Dawkins finds so endearing, but as a multi-textured relationship, full of subtleties and ambiguities. Since then, the science has been moving on rapidly. Who knows, maybe there is some ambitious producer out there who might yet generate an up-dated TV series that will tackle the fascinating contemporary interactions between science and faith not as a propaganda exercise, but with greater integrity as a rational and richly textured narrative that will both educate and entertain the viewer by the sheer intrinsic interest of its material.

No wonder atheists are angry: they seem ready to believe anything
Madeleine Bunting said:
Let's be clear: it's absolutely right that religion should be subjected to a vigorous critique, but let's have one that doesn't waste time knocking down straw men. It's also right for religion to concede ground to science to explain natural processes; but at the same time, science has to concede that despite its huge advances it still cannot answer questions about the nature of the universe - such as whether we are freak chances of evolution in an indifferent cosmos (Dawkins does finally acknowledge this point in the programmes).

Dawkins seems to want to magic religion away. It's a silly delusion comparable to one of another great atheist humanist thinker, JS Mill. He wanted to magic away another inescapable part of human experience - sex; using not dissimilar arguments to Dawkins's, he pointed out the violence and suffering caused by sexual desire, and dreamt of a day when all human beings would no longer be infantilised by the need for sexual gratification, and an alternative way would be found to reproduce the human species. As true of Mill as it is of Dawkins: dream on.

Faith, hype and a lack of clarity
Keith Ward said:
Perhaps what Dawkins is doing is warning us of the pathologies of religion. Such pathologies exist, and they are to be eschewed. But virtually all the Christians I know do seek the good for its own sake, since God is precisely the Supreme Good. They affirm life and hold it precious because God creates and values life. They see in God a limitless, precarious and vulnerable love, in which they seek to participate. Whatever this is, it is not sucking up to a cruel sky-god.

So why can Professor Dawkins only see the bad in religion? Why is he incapable of making an objective, “scientific”, study of it, in all its diversity? Why is he unable to make distinctions between the many different forms of religious belief? I do not know the answer to these questions, but I do know this apostle of reason, when confronted with the word “faith”, suddenly becomes irrational, careless of truth, incapable of scholarly analysis. I really think it must be some sort of virus, and I wish my colleague a speedy recovery.
 

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
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Will Rickards said:
Actually it is hosted on dreamhost.
And even their lowest plan starts at 1TB or transfer (monthly average) and grows by 8GB every month.

I pay $8.50 a month for 20GB of space on a server - it grows by 1GB a month, I think. 900something MB, anyway, and 120GB/mo transfer. In that space I have two complete DVD images, 1 CD image, and sometimes I use that space to download whatever other stuff I feel the need to download (wget). My updload speeds to dreamhost are kind of crummy (seem to top out at about 30k/sec), but other than that I have no complaints. I can host to my heart's content, or just use it as a backup to my techie kit, which is mostly what I do.
 

Will Rickards

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timwhit said:
Anyone know anything about Dave Shea (the speaker)? What kind of reputation?

He's the guy who started the CSS Zen Garden, which has been replicated in various forms but he's famous for being first. He's a first class CSS guy I suppose, even wrote a book which was mostly based on the CSS Zen garden experience. I'm not a big fan of his site's design but I do read his blog. I'm not sure what your knowledge is with CSS but I figure it can't hurt to spend a day learning about CSS. I've never seen him in person.
 

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
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It was the 80s.

The link goes to someone's project to build the (at the time non-existant) video game that was the basis for the plot of the movie. The Last Starfighter came out in, oh, 1984 and was one of the first movies to use any kind of CG effects. It was one of Robert "The Music Man" Preston's last films.
 

ddrueding

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And presenting:

Greg's new PC!

gregspc.jpg


Still got some wiring to do, but it is quick.

Unfortunatly, it has this:

login.jpg


But my security expert is working on it:

jackson.jpg


I'll let Greg know his PC is ready...
 

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
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I'm not sure which is more offensive: The lights in Greg's new PC or Buck's continued intimations that I approve of Western Digital products.

I was at a site for 14 hours yesterday because a Western Digital external drive failed and flushed data that I needed. I can't decide whether to bill a flat rate for data recovery or charge it hourly, but whichever it is, there's going to be a 20% "Western Digital-buying Idiot Surcharge" on the work.
 

LunarMist

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What is the problem with external WD drives? Are you referring to current models?
 
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