Posts made by eobox91103

@chanelkokoro I believe it was Winston Churchill who said, "Americans will always do the right thing--after they've tried everything else." It looks like they thought, in 2016, "let's try this new guy," and that didn't work. Then last year, they thought, "let's try this old guy," and the jury is still mostly out on that one. (Note, though, that more people voted for Mrs Clinton than for Mr Trump in 2016.)

That whole Arizona thing is so bizarre. I saw an interview the other day where one of the "vote counters" who said they thought 40,000 ballots (presumably marked for Mr Biden) were air-dropped in from "the southeast part of the world" (whatever that means), and that they had special technology to look for bamboo fibres in these illicit ballots. I'm sure they will convince themselves that they have found them.

One also notes that those who speak of "election fraud" only mention the presidential election, not any of the other contests, from senator on down to dog-catcher. It seems that all of those must have been in order.

@chanelkokoro Yes, it's the "family values" party that worships a Dear Leader who pays hush money to prostitutes and brags about grabbing women by the pussy.

It's also the "pro-life" party that favours capital punishment.

I, too, find all of this rather odd.

@raphjd I am not quitting the forums, I'm only quitting making responses to you. This post is an exception. I enjoy thoughtful engagement with forum participants.

It is ironic (and that's a polite word) that you are a "forum administrator," when you frequently engage in venomous and childish name-calling. That would not be permitted in most forums, and even goes against the rules of this site. It's amusing (again, another polite word) that you violate the very rules that you have posted.

You're not fooling anybody. People who read your postings have this all figured out. If grownups are having a discussion on here that you don't understand, perhaps you should stand down.

@calatar You're quite right, although I enjoyed the exchange with Bi4Smooth--that's the kind of discussion that shows the potential benefit of a forum like this. It's unfortunate that good discussions get poisoned by a childish brat.

@cash0uttt said in Which external hard drive to get?:

@raphjd damn I’m a light weight... I got a 2 TB the

Well, 2 TB will hold about 400 regular DVD's, or about 60 Blu-Ray discs, so it's not like you're short on storage. Disk technology keeps making things bigger, and since the average consumer thinks that bigger is better, that's what goes on the market. <Insert gratuitous "size" joke of your choice here.>

Another phenomenon, though, is that when large storage sized become commonly available, people producing content get less motivated to use the good compression and efficiency options that exist, and file sizes can bloat unnecessarily. A 1080p video will usually be twice the size of a 720p video of the same content, and one would hard-pressed to see the difference if both videos were made with the same care. 2 TB should be just fine for you...and if at some point you need more space, a larger drive won't be expensive.

And whatever the size, make sure you back things up. As has been noted above, all hard drives die at some point.

@raphjd said in Are you close to your nieces and nephews?:

@semurg30

Most of my family lives in the US and I live in the UK, so I don't get the chance to physically see them.

We do chat online though.
I'm also geographically separated from my brother, who has two boys and a girl. I have the resources to travel, but I'm not as welcome to visit as I'd like to be, as my brother is rather homophobic. His (current) wife, though, is very welcoming.

My niece is now at university, and like many young people she is quite accepting of LGBT people. In fact, the last time I visited her, she make a point of introducing me to an "eligible" gay man. Needless to say, she's a favourite of mine.

@bi4smooth said in Which external hard drive to get?:

What percentage of automobile tires fail?

• 100% (which is why you seek to replace them BEFORE they fail!)

What percentage of hard drives fail?

• 100% (which is why you backup your data - before they fail!)

At least tires sometimes give warnings that they're going to fail, such as a slow leak or tread wearing down. Hard drives might give a warning of impending death by making odd noises, but usually just die.

@bi4smooth said in Which external hard drive to get?:

@zellwes2

Rule 1: All hard drives fail. ALL OF THEM!
Rule 2: 100% of hard drives fail. ALL OF THEM!
Rule 3: ALL hard drives fail. ALL OF THEM!

The only way to protect your data locally is by using something called RAID (it's a computer acronym for Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks). While there are DAS (Direct-Attached-Storage) RAID devices, unless it's USB 3, I would go with a NAS (Network-Attached-Storage) device. The issue is SPEED. (You can also backup your data [porn collection?] in the cloud, but that's a monthly cost...)

These three rules are all true. If there's a file that you want to keep, it can't be on just one drive.

There are, though, some less expensive ways to protect your data than the very thorough approach using RAID. For each category of files I want to keep (porn, photos, my work, old archives) I have two external hard drives, which are dirt cheap these days (2TB from WD is about $60). I then manually back up to them and synch them. This is clumsier than using RAID, but I'm not adding more than a dozen files in a given week of any kind (unless I've just returned from holiday and have several hundred photos...but that's a block "select and move" that goes quickly). So I have a large stack of these small WD drives, all fed from an externally powered USB 3 hub. Bear in mind that that hub attaches to a single USB 3 port on my computer, so read/write operations involving multiple external drives simultaneously will be slower than what might be expected, but these are backup, not prime sources.

This is more labour-intensive than the RAID approach, but cheaper, and I don't mind it. If I'm writing a research paper for work, I'll manually copy it to the backup drives every half-hour or so in case I have a system or disk crash on my computer. RAID could do that automatically, so like most things in life, there's a trade between convenience and cost. But do remember the three rules of hard drives:

1. All hard drives will, at some point, fail.
2. Every hard drive is going to fail.
3. When (not if) a hard drive fails, it's not always possible to get your data back even if you spend a fortune for data recovery.

@bi4smooth I very much like your chronological staging of these events. If one takes my view that one lies if and only if one "knows" that what is being said is false (which is not the only way of defining lying), then indeed it would seem that Mr Trump would not have been lying on November 3 or 10, as there was still some (shrinking) ambiguity about the actual election result. By late November, it would be difficult for a rational person to not believe that Mr Biden had won, so assertions by Mr Trump of victory at that point are close to being lies.

But applying the analysis here needs to assume that Mr Trump is being rational. It's possible that he actually believes, even today, that we won the election, even though state and federal government processes have declared and finalised otherwise. If he does actually believe the (irrational and untrue) proposition that he won the election, then by my narrow definition of lying, it wouldn't be a lie for him to say "I won the election." But if he were to say, "I know that I won the election," then that would be a lie, because to "know" that he won means he has justification for believing that--and clearly there is none. Perhaps I'm stretching the analytical framework beyond where it works. It's not easy to apply rational categories to someone as "unique" as Mr Trump.

@bi4smooth I like the Swanson's dinner vs. BBQ image--thanks for sharing it.

The issue of lying vs. truth-telling gets muddled in political circles: The classical definition of "knowing something" is that one "knows" a proposition for which one has (1) justified, (2) true (3) belief. ("Belief" here means intellectual assent; it has nothing to do with religion.) All three ingredients need to be present for one to know something in the strict classical sense. I could say, "It is sunny in Paris," which might be true, and I might believe it, but I haven't looked it up and thus I have no justification for believing it...thus I don't "know" that it's sunny in Paris. Conversely, your BBQ-smeller has justification for believing that "dinner smells wonderful," but it happens to be false, and thus strictly speaking he doesn't "know" the proposition that he has made...but as you note, he's not a liar.

The question arises whether someone (such as a politician) is lying if they make statements about which they have no justification. They might not know that they are false, but they have no justification to believe that they're true. Such a thing might not count as a lie, but it's still not responsible to make the assertion. Most sources assert that Mr Trump lied 30,000+ times whilst in office, but there's likely a chunk of those in which he wasn't willfully being deceptive--he just didn't know what he was talking about and said something that was politically expedient. I'm not apologising for him, just focusing the terminology. I think government officials--especially a head of state--have a responsibility to have justification for what they say. Speculating that coronavirus would simply "go away" or that it could be cured by injecting bleach is irresponsible because such statements had no justification--and also happened to be be demonstrably false.

People sometimes refer to Mr Trump's continued assertion that he actually won the 2020 election as "the Big Lie." I think that's only a lie if he knows that it's false, and it's hard to assess what's actually going on inside his dysfunctional toddler's brain. It's possible that he believes it, but since it's (a) not true and (b) he has no justification for it, he cannot be said to "know" that he won the election. But he is certainly well-versed in the Goebbel's Principle (named for Hitler's propaganda minister) that says, I think accurately, that if you tell people something enough times, be it true or false, many will believe it.

A quick search shows that "Joy Reid" is a talk/news host on the cable network MSNBC. I don't watch her programme as I don't have cable TV, and I don't know if that channel is even offered where I live. (I get television the old-fashioned way--with an antenna--and it's free!)

Perhaps I'll prepare some BBQ this evening...

@joego24 I'm not familiar with how OnlyFans sets things up. There might be an elegant software solution that records their material directly on your computer.

Some sites, like Facebook, take tremendous effort to make their content non-downloadable, and a brute force approach is needed. I'm helping a non-profit organization migrate their content from Facebook to YouTube, and seemingly the only way we can do that is to use a "video capture card.". I use one from AVerMedia that takes HDMI output from a computer and stores it as a .mp4 file on a removable flash memory card. I can then edit/manipulate that file as I choose. (The card I use is their "AVerMedia Live Gamer Portable 2 Plus" which is about $120US on Amazon.) This works for me given the general nastiness of Facebook, and fortunately I have a spare 2014-vintage Dell workstation laptop with a full-size HDMI output to feed the external capture box.

But perhaps another Gentle User has a simpler solution. There is a lot of OnlyFans content on this site, and I hope the folks who share it don't go through the machinations I've described above. Best wishes to you on your project!

@raphjd So do I presume that somebody with an "administrator" icon next to their name counts as staff? You no doubt inferred who I wanted to block.

Very well then, I'll just step away from the Forum (which is much less useful now given the redesign), It's clear that you want it to be your own litter-box designed to hold your own droppings.

Is there a way to selectively block a user, so I don't see either lots of spam topics generated by somebody, or his responses in a comment thread? I'm not proposing that the user be banned from the boards (although in some cases that might be a nice idea), but just that I don't have to see his stuff.

@raphjd Jeez, you really need to get a clue.

OK: Democrats controlled the house from 2007 to 2011, and again from 2019 to the present. But your beloved Republicans controlled the House and the Senate from 2011 to 2019.

And Epoch News (and I use that last word with irony) is not absolved from quoting incorrect numbers just because they got them from another crapsheet. The "debt" reported by their source includes an estimate for payments due for Social Security and Medicare for many years into the future. They are not current "debts" of the US government. Perhaps checking the source was too much effort for you.

I'm not going to read any of your crap any more...it's like smearing feces in my eyes. You're lucky, I suppose, that you're a forum moderator...because if anyone else had that job, you'd be permanently banned from the site.

@raphjd And you refuse to admit that MoscowMitch and his Senate approved everything.

Every few months I think I'll try engaging in a "Politics and Debate" topic, thinking perhaps that you've grown up. But no, instead of facts you resort to calling names, which is the last refuge of cowards. Even my 12-year-old knows better.

Go play in your sandbox and pretend that you're superior to everyone else...even though we all know better.

@hubrys All of us who are homeowners know the perils of "deferred maintenance." When bridges carrying national highways literally collapse and fall into a river ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-35W_Mississippi_River_bridge ), it suggests that there's a backlog of work that needs to be done. The last several US presidents have made note of this, but nothing's happened.

Playing "catch-up" is going to be expensive for Americans, but at least it's spread out over 15 years. This is a different approach from the stimulus program placed after the 2008 "Great Recession," which cost about $800bn but happened rather quickly. It did seem successful at providing employment and doing some infrastructure repair.

@raphjd said in National Debt Exceeds $123 Trillion, or Nearly $800,000 per Taxpayer:

@eobox91103

https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_morningbrief/true-national-debt-exceeds-123-trillion-or-nearly-800000-per-taxpayer_3782624.html?utm_source=morningbriefnoe&utm_medium=email2&utm_campaign=mb-2021-04-20&mktids=264a2775d74370d0e4428c91d45154f2&est=sH5xqaqyzXsP75fzFLdPiH3MiIiI7jJb2Rdt1dHV1ite9viv2kEBLYW5IC8i

That's where I got my figure.

Being such a liberal, you clearly are ignoring the Dem controlled House.

Your beloved Dems thwarted Trump at every turn.

Three comments:
First, the "Epoch Times" is not reliable news. The article you cite states that they have inflated the real number, which they correctly cite as $28 trillion.

Second, spending bills in the US have to pass both the House of Representatives and the Senate. The Republican-controlled Senate approved all of Mr Trump's extravagances.

Third, for the umpteenth time when you can't make a rational argument, you attack other posters. So I'll do the same: You are the problem. Your ignorance of facts is appalling. Your posts are worthless.

@vmalar I enjoyed the movie--and now that you've reminded me of it, I might watch it again. The YouTube versions are rather low resolution...there are some on this site which are a little better. It would be nice to have it in HD.

@raphjd Fact check: The US national debt is about $28 trillion. See https://www.usdebtclock.org/, or any other reliable source.

That's still a huge number. If only the Americans had elected Donald Trump as President in 2016: He promised to pay off the debt within eight years. (https://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/275003-trump-i-will-eliminate-us-debt-in-8-years )

Instead, the person who was in the White House from 2017 to 2021, with the consent of a Republican Senate, increased the national debt by 36%.

@vmalar The thumbnail maker will do those collages. There was another application (whose name I've forgotten) would also so collages and had tremendous flexibility, allowing one to select specific frames in the video to appear in the collage, the size of the thumbnails, etc....but it doesn't work under Windows 7 or later. (I don't know about the Mac environment.)

VLC Media Player also permits one to snap a specific frame out of a video at full size. If I'm posting a torrent, I like to use that to give an example of the quality of the video. Some older material isn't very crisp, and this way people can set their expectations accordingly.