Mister P-Mosh

Zixar, Thanks for the advice. I've been considering buying an external HD enclosure with USB to put it in temporarily and take it to work and copy it over there, then buy a cheap HD like you mentioned to put in it permanently.

Zixar: No offense, but you're starting to fall into the same rut that Rocky did. If I were you, I'd take a break from this place for a week or however long it takes to get it out of your system, and then come back when you feel excited about coming here again. I also don't think that the JWs are trolls, but rather just curious. I am curious how Refiner came to find this place since it sounds like he is the initial one to come here. However, at this point I wouldn't suspect him of any malicious intent. That could be due to the fact that it sounds like he and I agree more on religion than a lot of other greasespotters would, but I don't think he's posted anything here deliberately to cause trouble.

The company I got it from was UBM. It's a noname case, with an AMD Athlon processor, a Shuttle motherboard, and a Western Digital hard drive. All fairly standard parts, and they were new out of the box. The only brand I haven't used before is Shuttle, which I haven't found a lot of bad reviews of online.

Thanks. I'll try all of the above options. I already got the form for the BBB, and I bought it with Amex and they seem to be pretty good about such things too. Before I try to return it I need to look into getting the HD backed up somehow. I didn't have a chance to burn DVD roms of it before the thing went bad since I was still in the process of installing the software. Unfortunately I had already copied over all my files from the hard drive on the old PC that was going bad, plus that drive is completely screwed so I couldn't keep a backup of that.

I've not had to purchase hardware for a while, so I went to a place near where I work that had what I thought was a good deal on a PC. They had brand names that I was familiar with, and although it was not the greatest PC, it was good enough to serve my purposes, I thought. I purchased it on Saturday, and by Sunday it had stopped working. Basically, it pretended to boot up, but the monitor didn't turn on, nor did the PC get on the network, so I took it back on Monday to try to get a refund, which the stupid @sshole running the place refused to do. He said that they only allow people to get work done on them and have them fixed by his people for one year as the warranty states, but that you can't return them without paying a 15% restocking fee on bad hardware. Anyway, I was ....ed off, but I went through with letting them give me a replacement and it worked so I brought it home and everything was fine... Until now. It's been about two weeks, and now the PC just randomly stopped working in much the same way as the previous one. The monitor doesn't pick up the signal, it doesn't get on the network, etc. I've been threatening to go down there and do some serious harm to the manager there who was rude with me, and I've got other ideas to ruin his business if I have to anyway. I'd really like to take a baseball bat to the guy's face, but I don't want legal trouble, as satisfying as crushing his skull would be. Do any of you know if there are any legal options? I plan to contact the Better Business Bureau, but this guy is from India and probably won't care what they have to say, and I doubt Texas has any lemon laws that cover computers. I've also considered calling my credit card company, but it's been a few weeks so I don't know what they would do or anything. I'd also like to make sure that these pricks can't come back and ruin my credit somehow if I do manage to void out the money I paid them. Any suggestions?

Rented it and liked it too. It was a little slow, but I agree with everyone else that it built up to the end, which wasn't all that exciting but still somehow made it a good story.

Also, it was Penn & Teller, whose quotes are often used on subjects like global warming and such. :D--> Personally, I wouldn't say that it's pure B.S., because there are clearly some historical records that have been captured there, as well as some morals that are good for people to follow. That doesn't mean that I think it's factual even 50% of the time, or that it came from holy ghosts or anything, but it's not all bad. I have a greater problem with people who try to use it to justify their own evil, which I'm sure everyone else here would agree.

Nice post pawtucket. My opinion is that I tend to participate more in some of the threads that Zixar is complaining about, and I get annoyed as well. However, there are other subjects being discussed that I may not take a lot of interest in, particularly in the "About The Way" forum. Mostly, I don't have much to say about TWI now. I feel that I've mostly moved on past them, although there are still personality flaws I have based on being in them most of my life. I still read those threads once in a while, but not as much as others like the political section.

Well, _yeah_ :o--> I disagree.

I believe that the verse which all of this stuff ended up being based on referenced babies specifically, at least those young enough to drink milk from their mothers. While as a Christian you believe that people are born in sin, do you feel that it would ever be justified to mass-murder babies? I don't think you do, and that's more of what I am focused on than the verse where it talked about killing kids for calling a priest "baldy."

That's not very nice. I'm avoiding calling you names. I disagree, but I don't like simplifying things to points where they are not accurate. That's why I don't like your examples, because they are oversimplified to the point of inaccuracy. I definitely have some things about me that make it difficult to have a debate with me such as the fact that I jump around in what I'm talking about, I sometimes make vague statements, I sometimes change my mind about my opinion on things when I am proven wrong, and I have little patience. However, I'm not the only flawed person here. Again, name calling doesn't make you right.

That's completely hypothetical though, as Oakspear demonstrated. Why do you have to shoot Hitler? I'm pretty sure that when he was in charge of Germany, I'd be able to kick his arse in hand to hand combat with ease. Just the threat of shooting him or beating him up would be enough to get him to surrender. Then after I call the cops he could be arrested and stand trial. A copperhead snake will most likely run away from you unless you have it cornered, so most likely it will leave you alone anyway. The pit bull is just a dog, so unless it's being aggressive there's no reason to shoot it just because of it's breed. All of those situations as you presented could be handled without the need for a single bullet to be fired. Violence is a last resort for when you can't think your way around a problem. The other problem is that you still haven't given any reason why the babies of the Akkadians or whoever it was deserved to die. Perhaps we have different morals, but the fact that a baby could potentially grow up and cause you harm in some way twenty years in the future is no reason to kill the baby. There are plenty of other alternatives that can be used to steer the child away from that course if you already know the end result.

The thing is, it isn't logical to believe that stuff, to many people. If I could understand what makes people tick in such a way that they believe in what amounts to fairy tales to me, I'd be happy. I think that this topic is valid and I know I've argued with people around here about the same topic in the past, but never getting a good answer. The only reason I can come up with that would make people psychologically depend on the belief in gods is that it is comforting towards the fears of death and personal responsibility. However, that observation also contradicts quite a few Christians that I've known, TWI not included. It seems very contradictory and illogical to be religious, yet people are, and some are not bad people.

My wife and I saw it last night as well, and we really liked it. I was sort of hoping that they were going to have him develop the devices for his arms when his web shooters started failing to be more in line with the comic books, but oh well. I also was amused by the style of the scenes that reminded me of the Evil Dead movies. I'm specifically referring to the scenes before Dr. Oc would be coming on screen where you hear the pounding of his claws on the buildings and see the camera zoom in. That's classic Raimi(sp?) if I ever saw it.

I think that Hitchen is wrong, and probably didn't actually watch the movie, or at least didn't pay attention to it. I'm aware that the guy is supposedly a liberal, but that article doesn't make sense at all. Perhaps I would think it was valid if I had not seen the movie, but I have and I think that he's way off base. Then again, Fox News gave it a very positive review, so perhaps Bizzaro World came to the movie reviewers.

Not to Peter Parker, he treated him well and even said that he considered him as a son. I don't think Peter would have been aware of the business dealings of Oscorp, so all he knew was the charitable side, I would think.

The problem is that it feels like Bush is doing things that are hurting me, personally or people I care about. If someone is a town commissioner and their job requires them to go kick your grandma out of her home for not paying her taxes, you'd be upset, but that's typical. Now imagine that someone was a police chief, and despite the fact that you called 911 when someone broke into your house, he told all the cops to go home while he went on vacation. To me it seems like Bush did that. I know you won't agree, but I think he should be held personally accountable for his inaction dealing with 9/11 and by blocking his employees from taking action (Cheney seemed to do it more than Bush, but he had to be aware) when they wanted to about terrorist threats, and even failing to continue the work left over during the previous administration that had been done. I think 9/11 changed a lot of that, because I wasn't opposed to Bush when he was running against Gore. I ended up thinking he became too conservative in office when he ran as more of a centrist, but turned further right. That wasn't that bad in my opinion at the time, but I didn't know then what I know now. I agree with you that it's bad, and I'd prefer not to do it, but as with a lot of people I do feel cornered sometimes in conversations and that people will not listen to me no matter what I say. Well, I apologize for using it. I wasn't in a good mood and thought that it would be good to "dish it back to the other side" but you were not the person that said it to me so you didn't deserve that. I still strongly disagree with much of what you said, but I should have addressed that rather than using a blanket statement.

Actually Spiderman can be viewed as a tragic character. He himself feels obligated to police the city out of the guilt over his uncle's death. In addition, he feels unsure about himself and his own sense of duty, and is a very conflicted individual which can be shown as his split personality as the wise-cracking carefree spiderman, and the quiet and unstable Peter Parker. In addition, his enemies are good people that have gone insane. Both cases are actually people who Peter Parker feels some attachment and sympathy to, but must defeat with impunity as Spiderman. This just backs up my assertion that such angsty themes as portrayed in the spiderman films, will make you gay.

I think I'll pull a Zixar now. I couldn't find a single sentence in that reply that wasn't sadly-deluded bull****.

I agree with most of the advice people have given here. The software I think everyone should use on Windows would be: Mozilla Firefox for the web Mozilla Thunderbird for email (not webmail, but if you have a pop3 mailbox) ZoneAlarm, Sygate, or Norton Personal Firewall. They all sort of suck when it comes to resources, but not as bad as spyware and adware would. They're all much better than the default XP firewall as well. AdAware or one of the other programs mentioned to search for these things. If you combine those with a NAT router/firewall thing like most people get from Linksys or Dlink, you will be safer than the vast majority of people out there. There are also very definite changes in you as a person that have to be made as well, such as Zixar mentioned, such as not opening files that you don't know what they are. It's also true that a lot of the free software out there that is "good" has adware and such in it, so you have to be careful. If you can stick to open source software you will be much safer. That's why I reccomended Mozilla products, for example. Unfortunately there's not a lot of easy to use software for novices that is open source at this time, but hopefully that list will grow. There are also alternatives to file sharing programs like KaZaA, such as KaZaA Lite. I use that, and it's basically a version of KaZaA with all the bad stuff removed. However, it's easy for that to change so you have to be very careful. I think there is software out there that can tell when stuff edits your registry, so that may be a good thing to have. If not, I'm considering writing a program to do that anyway. Another alternative that I'm looking into is Linux. I haven't had a chance to download a newer version (e.g. one newer than 4 years ago) but I plan to perhaps over the weekend. An even better alternative would be getting a Mac, but those are too expensive right now for me. Those operating systems are not fool proof, but they are less a target of spammers and others that want to infect your computer with their crap. Keep in mind that a lot of spam seems to be sent via computers infected with viruses/adware these days, and that the people who do this are bad, some even include members of the Russian mafia. Protecting your computer not only helps you, but it helps make life better for others that would end up getting the spam from your infected computer.

Oh no, he's already got to you!

Well, I can understand why you reject Spiderman, since Spiderman will make you gay.

nameless, another thing to keep in mind is that the person you are dating may be wanting to leave, or even their family. It's hard to break through to find out for the whole family, but you should be able to find out from your significant other what their plans are. If they don't want to leave, dump them.

Both arguments seem equally invalid from my perspective, so I'm glad you understood it for one at least. Babies are innocent. What can they do wrong other than crap themselves and cry at 2am? At worst they would have annoyed the Israelites. Being a carrier for genetic birth defects are no reason to murder babies though. There are countless ways to avoid that problem anyway. The problem is that at present, there is no justification for killing infants. One of the ten commandments say, "Thou shalt not kill", which most translate to murder, but how can it not be murder? Either it's a contradiction between words attributed to Jehovah, or the story is not true. The problem is that we humans have brains and would think of the "what ifs" especially when stuff like this would go against our morals, including the morals that the bible claims to have as well. If there are exceptions, then they should clearly be stated in the bible so we can understand them. Otherwise, it's just a contradiction. How it got in there or which side is right of the story who knows.

The arrogance is in your presumption that human lives have an absolute value that coincides precisely with your estimation of it. ... I wouldn't spare the baby copperheads, either, in the starry-eyed idealistic hope that they might all become vegetarians and never bite anyone. ... The copperheads hadn't actually bitten any of my grandchildren--yet. I don't want to do something that invokes Godwin here, but that doesn't sound like very good reasoning to me. By that logic, one could argue that Hitler got revelation from God to kill the Jewish kids, and that because Hitler didn't complete it, he lost his kingdom. I know you don't believe that Hitler was a good guy or doing the right thing, but what logic do you use to seperate the two instances? Innocent people are the same, so I don't see how it would matter. What if the Israelites had simply adopted the babies and raised them as Samaritans or something? Why wouldn't have God have caused a severe case of infertility in the Amalekites so that there would be no babies and thus no need for the moral dilemna at all?