256

Food / Re: Chinese rice

« on: March 17, 2016, 02:00:52 AM »

Went to the store yesterday and have that picture of the rice I was going to post. I'll edit it to remove the EXIF data, size it, and post it later. I lost the post I started with in this thread, due to a worn out mouse and the springs now give forth double and triple clicks instead of a single one and wiped the comment I would have posted. I'll give those comments with the image.

257

Internet / Re: Interesting Parallels Between The Cannabis and File-Sharing Debates

« on: March 17, 2016, 01:57:26 AM »

I ran into an interesting article about SEO that sort of runs counter to those pushing the SEO activity. I saved the link and will post it sometime later, for the discussion value.

258

Social network | SEO - Social network / Re: Users active in past 1440 minutes

« on: March 17, 2016, 01:47:08 AM »

Again it seems to be that I need to apologize for misunderstanding.

In lots of places over the years, one way or another, there have been lots of attempts to errr... co-opt my participation into places. Some I did willingly, some I would not touch with a 10 foot pole. In the process I've gotten leery when folks want greater participation.

In some places it worked out well. I had one where the owner of a WordPress site just wanted me to come in and write up an article from time to time, dealing with security and computers. Any topic I chose was fine, full admin privileges granted for access. What impressed me about that one was the full admin privileges. That's a lot of faith put in someone you don't know all that well, not to ruin your site. His faith was well placed in this matter as I have never wanted to just tear up someone's work for the heck of it and would never have done so. But it was the trust that probably impressed me the most. I stayed at it till eventually life moved on and he closed the site due to personal obligations in his life.

There have been others, that I left. One such, you sort of had to earn your standing by posting quality posts. Never had a problem with that, easy to do. But later on it came out that the donations to the site became the owner's personal pocketbook. The treasurer of the site posted the receipts where the owner had taken the money and spend it on personal things not involving the site. I promptly left as you can't depend on the site remaining up under those conditions.

So it is with things like this where offers are made that I remain standoffish. This has nothing to do with well intentioned offers but rather with on line experiences over time I've run into. I find I am always looking under the covers so to say at what might be hidden out of sight.

Once in a great while you run into the honest, well intentioned, offer. It collides with the past experiences and it becomes hard to identify those well intentioned with those aiming for ulterior motives.

259

Other topics / Re: Those who have questions about the USA...

« on: March 17, 2016, 01:28:25 AM »

My spring is getting weak in my mouse and will have to buy a new one today. I've lost three posts because of it. Two the day before yesterday. I go to drag something from one point to another or click on something I get double and triple clicks. So I reference something off page and suddenly the page I am typing a response disappears never to be gotten back. Those posts lost were of considerable length and it sort of tees me off to say the least. I'm writing this one on notepad so I don't lose it yet again.

There's an old joke from the Texans.

How do feel about it now that Texas is no longer the biggest state in the Union?

It still is, wait till the ice melts.

And if you couldn't guess from all that where I live I'll give you this image.



As a boy, a new family moved into the neighborhood. I became friends with the son. He once showed me a gold nugget that came from a stream in Alaska, that being where his family moved from. This was a different set of folks than the lady who was not an Eskimo. I sort of got an informal education on Alaska at the time from him without really realizing how much I was picking up. Not that I remember all that today.

On a standard drink, common to all the US, I don't know if there is one. Here at home we drink iced tea. Made at home and refilled whenever it is needed. If we go somewhere on the road, then two bottles of tap water, cooled in the fridge go with us. I no longer drink soft drinks unless there is no choice. I will drink them before I drink plain tap water from other places strange to me. It's not that our water has various bugs in it that would make you sick, it's that water tastes different from place to place. Outside the borders of the US then it would be the bugs in the water. Known as Montezuma's Revenge (Traveler's Diarrhea) is the reason.

I guess my point on how far to take hygiene is that there reaches a point of diminishing returns. Not only that but in order to keep from having the same ones return in your life you have to at some point be exposed to them so as to build antibodies against them.

260

Internet / Re: Interesting Parallels Between The Cannabis and File-Sharing Debates

« on: March 17, 2016, 12:49:55 AM »

I had no idea about the coffee.

Maybe more than anything, this is what hit me. That final sign off with a fact about coffee I was totally unaware of.

On the activity comment, if you are active enough in the right ways, sooner or later you draw someone else into the conversation because they found topic showing up in a search and it is being discussed here, not somewhere else. It's a very slow slog at the beginning. Might take months to draw one comment. Sooner or later it starts. From there if you stay at it, it snowballs.

With MSL his post is larger and would take some text space to answer fully. There are pluses to copyright and it's limitations but there are far more limitations that have been stretched over time to favor more and more the IP holders. There's no one lobbying and willing to pay large amounts to have the other side of the conversation heard.

To hear big content's way of stating it, there would be no culture without someone paying the author to create and that creation would instantly stop were it not for copyright. That's not true and can be easily pointed to that long before copyright existed, groups of people were going from town to town as actors, as troubadours, as entertainers, making a living without the benefits of copyright.

Nor is that the only example. Patrons of the arts have long set the stage for famous artists, painters, sculptures, whose works survive even today and are often found in museums for all to see.

When you get into the cost of a ticket, you see where these restrictions hit you personally. You don't see the side deals that made it happen where countries, cities, and states made deals that cost them big money to have it happen in their local area. Called tax breaks, very often the place that hosts the filming gave away tax income to make it occur there and not somewhere else. The hope being that local labor and talent will be employed during the filming. That's not what actually happens.

The deal is made, local supplies are used for the set and for things like catering that can't be shipped in. The talent is flown in. Those places making the tax breaks actually get screwed. Due to laws made in their favor, flim studio's then get tax breaks to edit and produce the final film somewhere else in another country when the filming is done.

This follows with other dirty deals, such as the filming company, made strictly for that film is a legal setup. By that I mean it will host all the bills but not all the profits. It is purposely made to lose money. Then when an actor says, "Pay me a percentage of the film's take instead of full wages", they are ready to make the deal. Mainly because the studio knows at the start the dummy company will never make a profit (on purpose). The money will go elsewhere and be collected elsewhere and the magic of Hollywood accounting will make it all look proper.

261

Electronics / Re: Google's AlphaGo beats human Go champion

« on: March 15, 2016, 01:40:54 AM »

What I found interesting is that the first article that mentioned the play off between AI and human champion mentioned the available possibilities of moves were more than there were stars in the observable universe!

Tromp and Farnebäck showed that on a 19×19 board, about 1.2% of board positions are legal (no stones without liberties exist on the board), which makes for 3³⁶¹×0.01196... = 2.08168199382... ×10¹⁷⁰ legal positions "of which we can expect all digits to be correct" (i.e. because the convergence is so fast).^[2] It has been estimated that the observable universe contains around 10⁸⁰ atoms, far fewer than the number of possible legal positions

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_and_mathematics ^{https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_Creative_Commons_Attribution-ShareAlike_3.0_Unported_License}

After taking a look for a reference on that statement about stars, I found the above quote carrying the complication of possible moves even further.

262

Internet / Interesting Parallels Between The Cannabis and File-Sharing Debates

« on: March 15, 2016, 01:08:10 AM »

Interesting Parallels Between The Cannabis and File-Sharing Debates

The other topic brought a bit of response so lets float another and see how it goes. Every once in a while this author floats a new editorial, which I always love to read his comments/thoughts on. Every one of them floats out some new idea or discusses topics in a way you are not usually exposed to.

The author, Rick Falvinge, is the originator of the idea of the party party in politics. He hails from Sweden.

263

Food / Re: Chinese rice

« on: March 15, 2016, 12:52:14 AM »

Interesting, vacuum sealed. Next time we get a bag of rice, I'll try to remember to get a picture of it, as ours are different.

I have a problem with rice. It being one of the packager/processor's making. Around July I stop buying white rice. From there till September, there is liable to be bugs in them. A hard shelled insect, that hatches and then is all through the rice. During this time I'll buy parbroiled rice, which has been partially heated to kill the eggs.

264

Other topics / Re: Those who have questions about the USA...

« on: March 14, 2016, 12:50:14 PM »

I've never been intimately connected to native Americans. I've known a few as very causal and occasional acquaintances, as well as one Alaskan Indian lady who would always take offense if anyone called her an Eskimo. As much with folks that are of a different culture the common misconception with us was that Indians from Alaska were Eskimos. The lady would set you straight rather quickly that there were various tribes that had nothing to do with Eskimos.

Like you, I've heard that alcoholism is a bit of a problem on reservations. I don't have first hand knowledge of that, so it is all hear-say. So take that with a large grain of salt.

In the summer here, we just go barefoot inside. Other than stubbing your toe, there's not much in the line of danger to the feet. Other than a house cat that might think it a toy to be played with. One of the two scorpions we did find inside, the cat found first and got sick. We didn't really put it all together until the dead body of the scorpion showed up in the broom. Suddenly him not being as perky as usual made sense. That lasted about two days and he was back to his usual self.

As far as being susceptible to viruses and bacteria, you can't protect yourself, no mater what you do. For one there are just too many different types that have evolved with us and developed the abilities to be parasitic in some method and the other is even if you managed some how to eliminate all invasive cell types, it would not last. Take a look at the flu bug as a prime example. Every year it mutates, especially in the avian, swine, and others. Those flu vaccines are a guessing game and sometimes they get it wrong. They start preparing vaccines almost at the time the last one runs it's course to prepare for the next year, so that there are enough to inoculate the population that wants it. But once in a while they make a wrong guess and the vaccine is worthless.

265

Social network | SEO - Social network / Re: Users active in past 1440 minutes

« on: March 14, 2016, 12:29:07 PM »

Not sure exactly how to say this so I'll just up and out with it. I'm sort of happy the way things are now. No worries, no time having to spend straightening things out or going for some sort of goal. The couple of places I have now, are essentially worry free. No spammers, no having to ban anyone, as they are hmmm.... well mannered places. There's nothing to prove, no need to play anything other than janitor. That's about as laid back as you can get.

Taking on another site would at some point take probably more time than I would be willing to give when I start back into my graphics and sooner or later, I will be back into them making new.

If for any reason I've given a wrong impression of looking to take on another place then I am sorry for the misconception. It was not with that purpose in mind that I mentioned past history.

Call me content for the time being.

266

Other topics / Re: Art

« on: March 14, 2016, 04:25:25 AM »

Wasn't too happy with this one. Got lazy and didn't change the background to be something more interesting. This resulted in a sort of blah first impression.

267

Other topics / Re: Art

« on: March 14, 2016, 02:07:07 AM »

Then it can be named 'The Statue'.

Sounds good to me. Never was really good at naming things.

268

Social network | SEO - Social network / Re: What is 'agario'?

« on: March 14, 2016, 02:05:09 AM »

Not knowing what it was either, I took the time to search for it, as have the rest that answered.

One of the items I turned up in the search as echoed by your answers previously.

269

Social network | SEO - Social network / Re: Users active in past 1440 minutes

« on: March 14, 2016, 01:35:39 AM »

...we were surprised of the lack of good participants...

When I got away from BBS's and actually had internet come to town, forums were what I cut my internet teeth on. At that time there was no Facebook, no Twitter, or the rest of them. I'm an oddball in many ways. I don't do any of those popular sites you've mentioned with the exception of Reddit. There's just too much datamining for my tastes. To me the trade off of using the site is not worth the giving up of all your data.

Much of those today on line are of much younger generations who grew up with the internet always having been there. Instead of needing a set of encyclopedia's they had it all at the tips of their fingers.

I often wonder exactly what caused the change in this latest generation that is now pushing for political correct speech. Whether their mindset will change with the leaving of the educational system and having to join the working world. It seems to me the working world has always been the great leveler when it comes to changing attitudes and fashion.

I tend to think much of what you speak of is driven by all this. That's just pure speculation on my part, no more, no less. It seems to couple with the inability to actually say what is on your mind without needing a herd around for backup and reinforcement, no matter how strange the proposal or idea and that much of it is chained to being rude or just down right nasty; socially.

Maybe they grow out of it. Maybe they grow some spine to actually be individuals. Maybe there is no hope but I refuse to accept that answer.

Still you have a point, that's the future membership if there is to be a future. I can see where that would be a concern, easily. In many ways, the 'internet training' I got from use came over the years, like IRC in the late 90s. I met my lady just after that as she was my working pardner at a science forum, at the time the 300^th globally ranked forum. So much of what today's world is now using as the internet for a dating scene. Chuckles

My point in all this rambling and wandering of past personal history, is that long use and growing as the internet grew, gives one the ability to actually communicate thought, more so most often than emotion. Those types of users are few and far between. My history has given me plenty of time to hone my skills for forums into something that is as individual as I am. TBH I don't need to be told how unusual for a member I am, I know. Been to many, many, many, forums over the years. Long enough to hone those skills as far as how to communicate, how to lay out a post, how to say things (rules or no rules there are always ways to say what you mean without breaking the intent and still get across exactly what you mean).

I mean that only visitors are enough...

You and I will have to disagree on this one unless I misunderstand your meaning. The quality of the visitor is often not displayed; it is the participation, rather than the presence, that provides the content to get others involved. If you can just hit that one pet peeve, or stroke that one thing people stand for as individuals you change them from visitor to participating member. To do that takes a quality that is rare to find. Very difficult to inspire that sort of reaction through text, as usually you are getting to the individual through some of their strongest beliefs.

One of the greatest things about forums, is not agreement. Instead it is the opposite. You can't have a good discussion with out disagreement. There has to be two sides in order to create a great conversation.

270

Social network | SEO - Social network / Re: Users active in past 1440 minutes

« on: March 13, 2016, 12:10:23 PM »

It takes time and effort to build a following for a forum. It's not something that is accomplished overnight. You have to groom your pet and provide it with constant care before it rewards you with returned love.