Thank You SL

You really are a piece of work, Atticus. You make claims about the people who developed the Internet and when someone who actually knew them pops your bubble you turn around and make personal attacks.

I was at Berkeley in 1979, working with the people who developed the standard TCP/IP implementation that, by the time the Internet got its name, most systems on it were using. No, I didn't have sex with any of them, I don't swing that way and *I* was perhaps a bit of a wowser, but they did have great parties. I didn't do much to shape the Internet... maybe some twiddly bits of fretwork up under the eaves nobody ever looked at... but I know better than you what the people who DID were thinking of.

Well Argent, without wanting to "burst your bubble", I wasn't the one who started the personal attacks.

Further, it isn't my place, nor in fact possible for me to question your qualifications in this matter. As you haven't the means to question mine.

Regardless of the fact I've simply presented opinions, while you lay continuous claim to an authority which is difficult to justify.

As I'm sure you're aware, an Appeal to Authority in any discussion does nothing much but erode your position.

Finally, I might be more likely to respect your position if you didn't continuously refer to fiction writers and various esoteric concepts of the "singularity" in the same breath as making a point about the current real world state of the Web and likely extrapolations for the future.

It might even help if, when you did stray unconsciously into real world discussions, you actually sounded like you'd read something printed later than 1983.

Ah, but see, I'm not trying to prove the existence of something. Debra is. She is making the claim that the Navy allowed an entire warship to cripple itself and spread disease all over the world. I find the information given to be highly inconsistent with my own experiences and rather suspect given the highly anonymous sources of information, the "friend of a friend of a friend" aspect. Since she is the one stating this information as irrefutable fact, the onus is on her to back it up with credible citations. It is a fallacy to expect me to prove it did not happen since it is impossible to prove that something doesn't exist. It would be like me asking you to prove that God doesn't exist. You can't. But if I told you that God exists, you would rightly ask me to prove it.

But, since you ask, there are a number of reasons why I believe the claims she cited regarding the crew of the USS New Orleans are false:

- The H1N1 vaccine is functionally the same as any seasonal flu vaccine. They both contain deactivated flu viruses that trigger a response from the body's immune system. Naval personnel have been receiving mandatory flu vaccines every year for at least the last 22 years and have never once caused a shipboard epidemic. At worst, a few people come down with flu-like symptoms.

- If a vaccine contains a live virus, the virus lives in a weakened state and is quickly killed by the immune system. It is only in cases where the person's immune system is dysfunctional that the virus is able to replicate and become contagious. People like this should be pre-screened before receiving vaccinations. This is an area where public health programs probably need improvement.

- Per Naval instruction, if a servicemember has a probability of carrying an infectious or communicable disease, that person is not allowed off the ship in a foreign port except to be transported to a medical treatment facility.

- The H1N1 virus has had no problem whatsoever reaching pandemic proportion over the last six months without the aid of any vaccination whatsoever. The notion that H1N1 has been spread around the world via vaccinated people is just that - a notion.

Because the people who built the network, and who are building the web, tend to be people who are heavily influenced by this literature. Many of them write it, on the side. Or not so on the side. For one example, Vernor Vinge was a professor at the University of California when I was there.

Oh, you looked "True Names" up. Have you read it?

Very nice, not that you'll be bothered about my opinion...

Thanks for taking the time to type all that.

I'm a geek I know, and a deeply unpleasant person, but I just like to know things.

I'll go off now and read up some more.

Look Argent, I seriously don't have a gripe particularly.

It's all interesting, it's all an uncharted country and we all want to see it fulfill its promise.

I'm getting the very strong feeling that we have different ideas about what that promise should be, but that's fine.

I hope I'm not so entrenched in my views that a heated discussion with an informed and articulate "opponent" cant't make me look at things another way.

Maybe by virtue of being a programmer that painfully 'morphed into a suit, I am now the enemy. I'm not sure though, it feels to me as if I'm just trying to get things to work now, while also having an eye to my idea of the "promised land".

I'll admit that while I've heard of Vinge and know (a little) about him and his writings, the 1983 thing was a lucky shot.

What can I say, the early '80s was about the last time I got the chance to read something that wasn't all about the nuts and bolts of business and technology!

PS.. but now you've sparked my nosiness, I'm sticking True Names on my list for Santa.

Toss in Snow Crash, it'll help you understand what the people who developed SL were thinking of. Though what they created works more like the Other Plane than the Metaverse.

whine whine whine whine just verify what is the big deal?

Because verification is a gateway drug to vaccination, duh...

I think that would be me, when I called Debra a Teabagger.

The American political usage was new to me, though in British English there's the Cockney rhyming slang "tea leaf" (=thief). Does this make teabaggers like thieves, only less messy to dispose of?

hahahahaha..if i would have read that two seconds later than i did, i would have been heaving tea all over the carpet..
omg i can't see from the tears lol

They were each better in their own ways.

Janeway!

The more I think about it, the OP probably should not be on the internet at all. I'm sure whatever info she is reluctant for LL to have is already out there somewhere. I don't care how secure your particular data privacy laws are, it's not hard to get.

One has to wonder how they've got an internet connection without providing details to the forces of evil, an electricity supply too.

It really is true. Hell, even I verified recently..I expected a torrent of SL spam, but so far nothing.

http://preventdisease.com/news/09/100509_injectable_nano_microchips.shtml

I thought it was the other way around.... Verification activates the RFID chips injected into you during vaccination.

Edit: /me looks up.... Dammit, Little!

First entry, second definition; Third entry; Fourth entry, first definition.

and that's all I'm saying on the matter.

It is pretty doubtful we would have another pandemic like in 1918. That year was a perfect storm. We had just ended years of nasty warfare. Large populations were starving, thank you Mr. Churchill. We had large numbers of men who had spent months in wet trenches weakening their immune systems. Then we put all those men in crowded unsanitary camps for a few weeks before we shove them into ships for a week or two while they go home. Of course we are going to have a pandemic.

Add in our increased health, better diets, and simple procedures to prevent the spread and 1918 is just a scare tactic.

If the vaccine is safe, will Obama let it be given to his children by an independent agency on national TV? If not, why not?

Could it be that members of his family do not wish to receive medical treatment of any sort on national TV and he shares their view?

I liked the fifth entry, myself.

Oh god, Chris, you didn't just channel Ralph Nader...