Flaser Posts

I've bought a Tenga today, and can confirm it's not a one-use device with proper care. After the first use you might want to remove a sponge ring from it that was used to store the lubricant and flush the whole tube with soap and hot water. Since it also retains moisture pretty well, I'm also adding some alcohol before storage.

How about Mplayer? It can be (or I should say is primarily) used from the console, however I don't know how much resources it takes. It's a videoplayer first and foremost, but there's no reason why you couldn't use it to listen to music.

Actually most tenga products *are* reusable, just use hot water and soap. They're made from silicone like a lot of sex toys, so there's no reason why you couldn't reuse one. Just add lube before use. (Or put on a condom, and avoid making a mess).

Nude, as in, your buttocks are showing since it's a thong?

Look's like I'll have to get out a mallet and keep hammering until you guys get this into your thick skulls:

-Just because people do bad things they're not terrorist
-Just because people kill other people they're still not terrorists
-Just because people kill innocent civilians they're still not terrorist

...and the final kicker:
-Even if an organization uses terrorist tactics, you still can't call each and every member a terrorist.

Terrorism is mainly about raising public awareness, spreading terror and trying to get your political agenda pushed through. Terrorism can also serve as the breeding ground of guerrilla warfare. As the awareness about an organization increases, it can gain more recruits and more support from the general population.

Some of you are bound to point out that's impossible since terrorist kill "innocent" people... well "says you". To most of the supporters they're just another bunch of:
-Goddamn Shia!
-Goddamn Sunni!
-Goddamn traitors (for not killing US troopers)!
-Goddamn traitors (for not aiding the insurgency)!
-Goddamn quisling (for co-operating with the coalition forces)!
-Godless hethens (for co-operating with the coalition forces)!

So what are they if not terrorists? Insurgents, who also employ terrorists to do some specific missions. Lately what they've been doing is largely anything but terrorism: they've started up their own courts, elected or appointed their own officials to preside over weddings, etc. They're trying to undercut the main government. They're also doing humanitarian acts like trying to rebuild homes and amenities.

None of this is new, this is pretty much 101 of how an insurgency operates. But this complex picture doesn't make good reporting for your "patriotic media". If reported it'd also make pretty clear that this whole Counter-Insurgency business will take years and years and there's no guarantee you'll ever win. Can't have that when anti-war sentiments are already rising and there's plenty more money to be had from this conflict.

No, I'm not a goddamn piece-nick. I'm just a realist who sees how this whole deal has gone sour and how money and lives are being wasted. Afghanistan was a bummer from the get-go. It was clear from the starting line that years and years of COIN operations would be necessary to ever stabilize the country.

In Iraq, here are the stupid, stupid and arrogant mistakes committed by the Bush administration:
-Ignoring all plans already drawn up by CIA and the larger intel community. (I'm talking baout thousands of pages of reports, plans, etc. Years of work).
-Instead they had Jay Garder start out from the zero... with little support, not enough staff, no communications and autority to act on the ground.
-He was remote-managed from Washington from guys who've never been to post war Iraq.
-Nothing was done to curtail or stop the looting and mass breakdown of public order after the invasion. You had troops on the streets with guns in their hands, looking on while looters carried of whatever they wished. They didn't speak Arab and had no idea what was going on either as they weren't given interpreters in time and the word to maintain order never came.
-There were not enough troops of the ground. The Bush administration publicly claimed that it doesn't make sense that more troops would be needed to maintain order than what was used to fight the war... when this has been the experience in each and every single peace keeping mission for a hundred years!
-General Shinsenki who lead US troops in Bosnia testified before the Congress to this effect. (His advice, as was the advice of Colin Powell who publicly supported the Bush war council but privately also had misgivings and over which he later resigned).
-Co-operating Iraqi bureaucrats, politicians and army staff were all ignored and left in the dark. Instead much weight was given to Achmed Chalabi and fraud and con-men. His intal was found to be pretty much made up.
-No forces were spared to protect the old ministries and their records. The entire Iraqi national archive went up in smoke. (So no records on which guys were responsible for pulling nails and electrocuting testicles, nor records to show who were merely traffic cops who could be relied or, or records on who were dissidents with bombs and radical ideas, or dissidents with "radical ideas of free speech")
-Finally they fired Garner for not "taking to the program" and put L. Paul Bremer in charge. He had no military experience (Garner was a general), didn't speak Arabic and had no experience with Middle East politics. What he was though, was a yes man for each and every inane idea to come from Wolfowitz, Cheney or Rumsfeld.

These included:
-De-Bathification (firing each and every competent bureocrat, because to get the job they had to be members of the Bath party).
-Firing every member of the Iraqi army... putting hundreds of thousand of soldiers onto the street. With no jobs, them and their families were literally starving... and ready to embrace the coming insurgency.

...and a final atrocity:
-Instead relying on local enterprises, the CPA (that replaced ORHA) relied heavily on American firms with imported workers for reconstruction and the construciton of forts and army facilities. These were (and are) hotbeds of corruption. They could take as much as 4 times the cost of what would have been needed if local firms were used.


So let me sum this up for you:
-After the invasion nothing is done to restore or maintain order
-Meanwhile everyone who wants to do something is ignored
-Afterwards a lot of people (all in all millions) are fired for no good reason
-...and the few jobs there are taken by US corporations
-...and finally the insurgents come and make life a living hell for the average Iraqi and the coalition forces do little to stop them, as they're still doing occupation jobs, instead COIN. (Yes! The surge worked, because it finally isntated a COIN doctrine!)

...and the Iraqi people have nothing to be pissed about?
Sure they used to live under a bloody dictator. Here's the kicker:
It was better under Saddam.

I think we shouldn't blend polyamory with polygamy. The first is conduct of sexuality, while the later is a legally binding arrangement. I find even the later OK, if it were only a form of marriage. I'm for all forms of marriage, or socially accepted contracts where the participants agree on common inheritance of their wealth and common social obligations toward their dependents. Yes, I'm for gay marriage too, for the same reasons I'm for open relationships.

Even if I wouldn't like to live in one, or would be only comfortable with some version, I still firmly support people's right to live their life as they wish.

However with poligamy, the picture is not this clear cut. In some countries or communities it is also an institution to make young girls the plaything of older men, which I despise. Not because a young woman couldn't live with an older man, but because great social pressure is put on these (typically teenagers!) to conform to expectations and to subject to the man's will.

Even if the age of consent or adulthood wasn't involved (which unfortunately it is) I'd still have reservations as the girls in question don't get to make a free choice as they're under constant pressure, and the only alternative to them is running away and abandoning all support form their folks.

Part of the reason why I'm a socialist, who thinks that society as a whole has to support a social net is so people can make their own choices without having to play dangerous gambles with their life.

Are you really this dense, are you so inured in propaganda that you couldn't even check on Wikipedia the history of Afghanistan?
The Taliban are not a terrorist organization and they've existed long before Al Qaeda.

In fact they've existed even before they were called Taliban. They're the natural power of Afghanistan - tribes, families, clans. Fragmented, often warring with each other. A dozen fiefdoms of little warlords and big bastards. Taliban itself is a tribal confederacy of Ghilzai and their allied tribes. If you try to portray the Taliban like another movement, where anyone can join up, or one that preaches a specific ideology first and foremost, you're entirely missing the point.

Taliban is just the name of that the coalition of conservative tribes took for their alliance, but they're still just a bunch of tribes who're bound together first and foremost by ties of blood and hundreds of years of warfare where traditional alliances have been formed.

Hank Moody: HelL-A Magazine blog number 1. Hank hates you all. A few things I've learned on my travels through this crazy little thing called life. One, a morning of awkwardness is far better than a night of loneliness. Two, I probably won't go down in history, but I will go down on your sister. And 3, while I'm down there it might be nice to see a hint of pubis. I'm not talking about a huge 70's Playboy bush or anything. Just something that reminds me that I'm performing cunnilingus on an adult. But I guess the larger question is why is the city of angels so hell bent on destroying its female population.

PS.: Trimmed or shaved, I'm fine with it (and fine the later endearing), just take care of your lawn.

How consenting adults chose to live their life is entierly up to them and we have no fucking right to demand they live according to our standards.

If their actions endangered you*, or restricted your own freedom** than society has a right to step in and make them stop as freedom can extend only as far as it's not threatening the freedom of others.

However what in the nine hells does fucking each other behind closed doors have anything to do with you? If some people get their knockers off by having a huge orgy or living in a ménage à trois is entirely up to them.

The most common counterargument - "But think of the children!" - doesn't hold any fucking merit. People have been raised in extended families, in societies where polygamy of one sort or another are practiced.

The children are not involved in the sex, they don't observe the sex, they don't participate in the sex.

So in the end all that matters is whether they have a protecting and nurturing environment around them. An absolutely separate issue from the love life of the parents or guardians.

What most also can't fathom is that in such relationships, sexuality is not the exclusive subject of marriage... and why the hell should it be? It's fun, it bring pleasure... but in the modern times it doesn't have to result in children and therefore it won't lead to inheritance problems.

Why do we still act like it's the middle ages?

Marriage is more or less a contract, so that I have exclusive use of your genes, and return you gain exclusive use of mine... but even that shouldn't be. If a pair asked for my genes, because one of them can't conceive, me and my partner could supply said opportunity without sex ever entering the picture. I believe it morally right that one can help another to have and raise children.

If not genetics, than what?
Possession, pure and simple. We still like to *own* things, and often I see people at parties showing off their partner like some trophy. When will we learn that people aren't something to own, but something to experience. You can't own the soul of somebody, but you can still "touch it" if you're lucky.

We also still believe that sex implies dominance. This is why men who are "players" are viewed as strong and admired for their "conquests". Since he was penetrating the woman, it was his will that was enforced... and hence why the woman is shunned, since she submitted. When woman are admired for their "conquest" (femme fatals, vamps, etc.) it's because they appear to be dominant and we assume they've carried this dominance with them even in bed.

IMHO all of that is rubbish. We've created a civil society where it's finally impossible to own or dominate someone against their will as we have laws against them. We also have technology that allows us to enjoy our sexuality without the repercussions of having to carry or care for the genes of our partner - of raising their children, being part of their tribe/clan/family, of having to make alliances due now shared blood . So why do we still pretend that it's not so?

* - Failing to get shots against disease, living like a pig and leaving rotting things in your vicinity, creating hazardous conditions by leaving construction rubble around etc., the list goes on.
** - Blocking the entrance to your house with their car, loud music that makes it impossible to focus on your work or relax, etc.

QWERTY, since it's so inured in me now, that I type blind. Even when typing Russian I rather use phonetic layouts so I can rely on muscle memory.

Obligatory chart:



What you call them is just a matter of propaganda (freedom fighter/insurgent). What they are though is a matter of what their targets are and what is the international support of their cause.

Starting moralistic arguments will only cloud the issue ever more. We've been at war in one form or another, on some spot of the planet for the whole of human history. Debating our reasons for doing so won't change the fact that we still do. The choices are simple: Fight or Flight... if you're lucky and you're the attacker. Otherwise it's Fight (and die like animals) or Surrender (...and die like animals).

What file system does the external drive use? If it has been formated to use FAT32 instead NTFS then it won't be able to store files larger than 4 GBytes.

EDIT: having re-read what you wrote it's possible some application used the file, putting an entry to that note into the MFT, than failed to free it up afterwards.

You could try running Check Disk and see if it helps.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Check_disk

(Another alternative is to just fast re-format the disk, you'll have to get your data off though as you'll loose what's currently on it).

-What is your OS?
-What kind of external hard drive do you use?
-Do you have any other programs running in the background that could access the drive?

To give you good advice, we need to know what you're actually dealing with.

Great stuff, although I'd be lying if I said I didn't have to take a break or two while reading, but at the end I couldn't help but have a huge smile plastered to my face.

Yeah, Chuck, you've done it again - you exposed us for the stupid, posturing animals we are. The greatest tragedy, the worst thing that can happen in life is nothing dramatic, but very banal, disgusting and shameful.

So far I've read Fight Club, Survivor and am reading Non-Fiction from him. Maybe I should give Choke a try.

Thanks for the tips, so I finally bought this (the first thing that came my way and was among the recommended brands):



...and lo and behold! My mouse wheel finally works! ...and the added precision is a bonus.

A time-machine was theorized some time ago, to send information back into the past. It can only send info back as far as the machine was operational. I don't know if this has been sunk yet as either:

a) Impossible due physics
b) Impossible to build

...but a professor was trying to build it AFAIK:


So far there's been plenty of objections, but there was no definitive disprove.

I'm afraid you're mistaken. Foreign Aid is not just "political gesturing" or being a goody-goody two-shoes.
It's a very effective form of foreign intervention to gather good will and support and can preempt the forming of failed states and help stabilize a region where resources of national importance may be exported to you.

...and it's also a lot cheaper than direct military intervention.
Granted the former may still be needed from time to time, but by combining it with massive aid, one can stabilize a region and therefore you wouldn't have to commit troops to the lot harder and man-force intensive peace keeping operations.

The same fucking mistake was made in Iraq when Rumsfeld and co. thought that they can just dismantle the Iraqi state and the people on their own will rebuild it for them, presto. Little to no aid was given (ORHA was a joke), and by disbanding the Iraqi army, marginalizing the Iraqi generals and politicians (de-Bathification) who *did* have the expertise to restore order and listening to a hack like Ahmed Chalabi (and making him governor!) they've insured the hate and distrust of the Iraqis and the thousands of jobless and angry soldiers were ready to sign up for the insurgency.

A little aid, a little humility to work with other people would have gone a long way to solve the situation, and the all troops could have been home 2 years ago, and for the last 5 years only a token force would have been needed.

Actually Internet Explorer should exist to browse the net.
For all its bashing as a sysop I have to admit there's a lot of good stuff in Microsoft's products. However when it came to IE their policies have synergestic effect to create a rather harmful software:
-Not fixing problems ASAP instead relying on fixed update schedules invites problems.
-Not warning the user that their browser is outdated - ditto.
-Not complying with the web standards makes like hell for web developers.
-The initial software was riddled with security holes as it wasn't developed with security in mind from the ground up... instead starting over, MS has been trying to plug these holes one-by-one over the years, version over version.

However here's the "fun" stuff: actually IE 8 is usable. I don't like it, but if users wanted to, I see no reason why they shouldn't. It finally has good enough security, decent features and more or less abides the W3C standards.

What often outrages me though, is the dity tactic of always citing that Firefox has the most bugs - yes, it has the most *reported* bugs, which are fixed a lot faster than on IE.

This tutorial is about extracting the information from the file names and storing them in a spreadsheet, so you can quickly search and browse your collection. Where you store them doesn't really matter, though if they're all over the place it could be a problem as you wouldn't know where to find stuff (for that purpose you should check out the program called "Where Is It?", as it was made for that purpose).

To use it, you also have to use a rigid naming scheme and take the time to actually look up the relevant data when you name the files.

Try this, or the link in my sig:
https://www.fakku.net/viewtopic.php?p=1675789