New efforts!

[Arcana]

Quibble: There are older patents  (one by Tesla) which describe frequency hopping. Lamarr and her partner's patent is for use of it to control torpedoes.

Tesla's patent doesn't describe frequency hopping, although for reasons I cannot discern it is often held up as such.  Tesla's patent, as I read it, describes something somewhat different: it describes a communications system more analogous to multimode: using multiple frequencies simultaneously to reduce the chance for noise interfering with just one transmission frequency.

Frequency hopping itself was mentioned in a patent related to telegraph messages in 1929: US1869659.  However, Hedy Lamarr is still considered the direct antecedent for spread spectrum technology because her innovation was the so-called player-piano modification.  Instead of simply proscribing a set of frequencies to use in alternating fashion, Lamarr described essentially the extra step of creating pseudo-random synchronized hopping algorithms that could not be trivially predicted, and consequently also not likely duplicated in multiple senders.  It is the synchronization engine that makes spread spectrum technology viable, not just the concept of frequency hopping itself.

So in summary, Hedy Lamarr did not invent frequency hopping as you mention, although some incorrectly make that claim.  She *is* the direct grandmother of spread spectrum technology nevertheless, because she did invent the specific concept of pseudo-randomly synchronized sender-recipient frequency hopping.

[Arcana]

So one could say that experiments are being done.  But huge scale power transmission, I dunno I'm being the realist on that.

I'm confused.  Are you arguing that this is possible or is not possible.  Because it seems to me you're alternating between those two positions.

This *isn't* practical.  I was only mentioned what would happen if it was tried, impractical or not, as it pertained to the question of digital wireless communications which aren't preempted by this technology.  Human beings actually staying alive in those circumstances do get preempted in a wide range of alarming ways, but their cell phones will not be the first thing to go.

[LaughingAlex]

the laser system I saw used in seattle was a link between buildings at least 15 stories high. it would be kind of obvious for hackers to fly a helicopter around in that area, I am pretty sure someone would notice

I'm talking about if it was something everyone had to use.  Your talking about cases that are few and far between.

Heres an analogy, the M16 vs previous firearms.

It worked amazing......

.....in a controlled test environment in which everything was clean.  In the actual field it had plenty of issues even contributing to higher casualties of US soldiers.

The same can be said about lasers as a medium outside of fiber optics.  15 story high buildings are rare, sure they CAN be used that way and are, thats nothing new and even wifi is used that way.  But when your looking at more common and lower elevation uses for networking, you find people can get far closer.  About 90% of the buildings in new mexico and also nebraska are less then 3-4 stories tall.  What about them?  Send a laser signal DOWN to them?  Now people can personally and physically come within reach with far easier discretion.  Pretend to be a person who has to access the location, and boom.  Or just ask someone for help reaching it....

The OTHER issue is people, to.  Lets say someone were to tap into the high buildings or had to, it would not be hard to find some bloke sooner or later who's not up to date of security protocals, let some guy back track in and suddenly he has access to one of the two points directly.  No need for a helicoptor in such an incident.  In fact 90% of hacks are done by exploiting people mistakes.  Of course, it'd likely be the person would approach that without even bothering with the towers themelves, and just create a backdoor in whatever of the buildings he found to be insecure.

See what people do for transmission over long distances(state to state, cross country, international), they use copper wire and fiber optical backbones for a reason, it's cheaper and far easier, likewise.  To securely make wireless laser based signal transmission a secure backbone every single tower would have to be especially high and monitored endlessly for anyone moving on them.  This creates severe vulnerabilities.  You COULD use a satellite relay, and would likely have to.  But then your running into backbone issues with that, how fast can you make the satellite transmit data?  There is a reason satellite internet never caught on, it was speed.  Cable and fiber optics could achieve higher speeds with far less cost.

And even in the case of fiber optics you have the speeds of the machines transmitting data.  In the case of a single satellite, you can only put so much hardware before you run into processing issues.  The reason for the internet being as fast as it is is because it's very distributed, the exact opposite of transmiting data via satellite, in which the data transmission would be centralized.  Not to mention if you try to use larger numbers of the things, the sky-rocketing costs.

When you look at wide spread use and cross-world networking, laser based transmission loses much of it's appeal without using wires.  Because of costs and difficulty in doing so securely far outweigh the benefits.

So your laser transmission tech, the example you gave is likely going to be one of a very few cases, but it's not a practical tech for wide spread use.

[LaughingAlex]

I'm confused.  Are you arguing that this is possible or is not possible.  Because it seems to me you're alternating between those two positions.

This *isn't* practical.  I was only mentioned what would happen if it was tried, impractical or not, as it pertained to the question of digital wireless communications which aren't preempted by this technology.  Human beings actually staying alive in those circumstances do get preempted in a wide range of alarming ways, but their cell phones will not be the first thing to go.

People are going for small because it's doable, but the scale tesla envisioned wouldn't be practical.  When I was talking about how technology would have been fundamentally different I was talking about if it WAS practical for such a world to use power transmission as tesla envisioned.  Thats why I am saying that we seem to be thinking of very different scales here.

[Arcana]

I'm curious Arcana, what do you think would be the negative results if there were large scale high powered wireless transmitters with the energy capable of powering homes?
Just in a brief glance I ran across this: http://www.chronicexposure.org/transmitters.html

The sources seem decent enough.
Part of me wonders how much the cancer rates would go down if we tried to minimize our exposure to contaminants we see daily, such as exhaust from vehicles, processed foods, etc.

Well, I think the science on radio frequency exposure is shaky at best, and statistical phantoms at worst.  The absolute best studies I've seen have an alarming likelihood of statistical cherry picking.  Having said that, even if there is some causal link between disease and wifi exposure it is almost certainly dwarfed by our exposure to lots of other environmental toxins and carcinogenic compounds.  Global warming is going to statistically kill more people in the next hundred years than all the wifi hotspots in the world combined could possibly injure or kill in the next million years.  Heart disease is going to kill more people in the US in one year than wifi could possibly get credit for injuring in its entire existence.  Your children almost certainly are exposed to more deleterious environmental compounds in the drive to school every day than they could possibly absorb from wifi radiation.  In fact, living in Denver, Colorado (due to the high altitude) exposes you to an extra amount of radiation comparable to a medical x-ray every month.  Knowing that, would you try to move from Denver to eliminate that carcinogenic source?

Its really about managing risk.  Its interesting to think about eliminating risk, but it isn't really possible to completely eliminate all environmental risks.  Human beings emit dangerous radiation, albeit at extremely tiny amounts.  If you average eight hours of sleep a night, then sleeping next to someone else will expose you to about one medical x-ray of radiation every decade above and beyond background.    Is it worth attempting to eliminate that particular environmental radiation risk?  Probably not.

Edit: to answer the first question, the deleterious effects of trying to beam power on a scale comparable to what the power company currently provides to individual homes with long wavelength radiation (i.e. microwaves through radio waves) would probably be bad, but not in a "give you cancer one day" way, but rather in a "did you get a new tattoo or are you spontaneously combusting" kind of way.

[Nyx Nought Nothing]

I have a funny feeling Kim Taek Jin is reading this thread and laughing.

I think he's been laughing about this place for a long time.

i have the rather strong feeling he neither knows nor cares in the slightest about anything currently happening here. In fact i think City of Heroes is most likely something he doesn't think about much more than any other NCsoft game that's been shut down, and i doubt he gives any of those frequent thought. City of Heroes was never anywhere near the biggest or most important NCsoft game and it's absurdly grandiose and paranoid to claim that he knows or cares about this site. It's possible, even likely, he might have seen a report about the negotiations to sell the CoH IP, but it's very unlikely he cares enough about that to take an active interest in it, much less some English language fansite about a long-shuttered game.


Kim Taek Jin probably spends far more time obsessing about Tabula Rasa and Richard Garriott but i sincerely doubt that gets much attention either. Do you two spend your nights tossing in bed and gritting your teeth about some slight to a distant ancestor by a 13th century French king? Because you're attributing a similar level of obsessing over irrelevant trivia to someone who has far more pressing concerns and problems.

[Arcana]

People are going for small because it's doable, but the scale tesla envisioned wouldn't be practical.  When I was talking about how technology would have been fundamentally different I was talking about if it WAS practical for such a world to use power transmission as tesla envisioned.  Thats why I am saying that we seem to be thinking of very different scales here.

First you said:

Arguably, a world powered by tesla would have been very, very different" and I responded on the assumption you meant that generally.  But when you said "Wireless electricity would mean shooting power through air waves.  Like raw lightning powering a home from huge over-sized coils was the vision the guy had for powering homes.  If such a world existed, you wouldn't be able to use any kind of technology enabling wifi or wireless communication of any kind, as the same air waves and same spaces in the air/vacuum would be used for electrical power.

You cannot send communication signals through a space in which there's dozens of forms of interference.  Physics doesn't work that way know?

I assumed you meant *if* it was practical, *then* that would be one of the consequences.  Except it isn't, so I responded on the basis of using Tesla-inspired power transmission on a broad scale: "Well, the problem with wireless electricity on the scale you're talking about is that there's no real way to do that efficiently, so even if Tesla was king of the planet that wouldn't have happened.  But let's say it did anyway."  I had to make that assumption to address your assertion that such technology would doom digital communications.  It wouldn't, because "the laws of physics don't work that way."

I think you are confused about how radio power transmission works:

Frequencies aside though you also have to consider though the likelyhood of electricity accidentally hitting people with wireless devices.  Something I was thinking of just now.  "Don't use wireless, the power conduits will fry you for using it".  When you have a huge device transmiting power to everything, anything that was storing power would have to be very heavily insulated, but even then you'd still have to have the antennae which could possibly attract an electrical blast from such a tower.

Radio power transmission, such as what Tesla was experimenting with and similar to modern versions of the technology today, don't just somehow make "electricity" shoot through the air.  It has nothing directly to do with electric current in that sense.  All electromagnetic radiation transmits power.  The idea is to send radio waves at a receiving station specifically tuned to receive them and convert the electromagnetic radiation energy into something more useful at the receiving end, like electrical power.  But there is literally nothing particularly different between a hypothetical power transmission tower and an AM radio station tower.  The only differences would be in transmission power, frequency transmitted, and the sophistication of the receiver.  Radio is radio however it is used.  Radio designed to transmit power doesn't have some electrical property while in transit that any other radio signal lacks, except intensity.

The problem with the power density is that to make this practical you'd have to transmit such a powerful radio signal that even the ordinarily tiny electromagnetic resonances that different metal objects generally pick up unnoticeably when exposed to radio transmissions become significant, and then dangerous.  You'd have to start worrying about all electromagnetic conductors starting to become problematic, not just radio receivers or any equipment designed to store power.  You'd have to start worrying about paper clips and ice skates.

[Felderburg]

Regarding Wired's anti-ad block: You can whitelist them, refresh the page, it'll load properly, and then you can set it to block again on that page. I re-enabled it right after the refresh button was pressed and still got a little "thank you!" pop up while it was enabled.

Even Albert Einstein made mistakes, such as the ever expanding universe and it's inevitable end.  In fact he even tried to change his own math to accommodate his believe the universe cannot end.

Tell us more.

[Arcana]

I'm going to quote the entire train of thought so as to not lose any important context:

Edit: Now, would wireless be 100% impossible?  I could see lasers being used for wifi, assuming nothing gets in between the nodes, totally.  But see the reason fiber optics are desirable is that it's far harder to actually "spy" on a laser transmitting data in a cable than it'd be to spy on a laser flying through the air, not to mention how water and precipitation could mess with an exposed laser flying through the air.

Responding specifically to the "its harder to spy on laser in cable than in the air" part, ivanhedgehog said:

laser wifi would not be easy to intercept, unless you had 2 fixed points to tamper with.
and it already exists
http://www.instructables.com/id/Laser-Transceiver/

to which the response was:

Laser Wifi your still putting the laser in the air and hackers would not have difficulty finding those points.  It's part of what they do.

To which ivanhedgehog correctly stated:

laser is a directional point to point link. you have to physically get in that path.. you have to find it first. hackers dont have some miracle scanning system. the systems I have seen were between the tops of high rise buildings. a helicopter hovering there just might be noticed. the military has been using tech like this for a long time(look at encrypted side band). I kind of trust darpa over your evaluation.

and then we get here:

Hackers spend hundreds of hours researching the exact nature of whatever network they are looking to attack ivanhedgehog.  Thats the problem your ignoring whenever you go with "Oh they'll never find it" and why they always say that security through obscurity is not security.  Because it's not a matter of if but when.  The other thing is that the use of tech your describing is exceedingly rare and in very select scenarios.  I'm talking about if it was insanely common.  Not everyone owns a 20 story high rise.  Even if they were in an apartment complex, odds are they wouldn't be in something huge unless they were rich executives sucking money from everyone.

It'd be far easier to get to a building thats only the size of a small ranch, or even a 2-3 story building.

Which is where I jump in.  Ivanhedgehog didn't just say it is difficult for hackers to find a laser transmission system like this.  He said it was hard to actually tamper with, because it requires physically going to the location.  That significantly reduces the pool of potential attackers, and it makes the attack far more difficult to happen surreptitiously.    But I want to go back to this statement: "the reason fiber optics are desirable is that it's far harder to actually "spy" on a laser transmitting data in a cable than it'd be to spy on a laser flying through the air."  That's actually false in two completely separate ways.  First, we use fiber optic cable not because it is harder to tap, but because it is less lossy than air.  It is much easier to beam laser communications signals in fiber optic cable, and to control their dispersion.  Open air is a much less stable medium for high speed laser communication.

But second, it is actually *easier* to tap fiber optic cable than open air laser communications.  You can actually buy fiber taps and I've seen test equipment that can tap fiber lines without splicing.  It is the cable itself that makes this easy, because it is an easy to manipulate medium.  You can actually hold it in your hands and work with it.  When it is a laser fired through the air, unless you can compromise the transmission stations themselves it is far harder to "intercept" the beam - it is invisibly shooting through thin air.  You can't just fly a helicopter to where it is, and even if you could, where do you place your tap equipment, in a balloon hovering there?  I've personally seen fiber taps.  I have never heard of anyone tapping free air laser communications.  It isn't even easy to do that with point-to-point microwave (also, I think only Motorola is left holding the bag on that technology, so its getting harder to even *find* anyone deploying that except in very niche or specialized circumstances).

Traffic intercept is an extremely rare "hack" and it is beyond rare for the attack to happen at the physical layer except for nation states.  Traffic intercept outside of national intelligence agencies happens at the routing and transport level.  BGP attacks and IGMP tunnels and that sort of thing.  Tapping physical links is something that only happens in the rare case when the implementer has done their work incredibly poorly and the attacker wins the circumstance lottery and finds themselves in a uniquely convenient position to compromise it.  Hackers in helicopters trying to intercept laser communications links is a plot point for Mission Impossible 6.  But to reach the risk level that encompasses that threat I'd have to write a security assessment report ten thousand pages long, and mid-air laser intercept would fall below "cloning the CTO to gain access to the data center" and "data leak due to assimilation by the Borg."

[Codewalker]

The other thing to keep in mind is that the original context that LaughingAlex brought it up in was as a replacement for wifi.

Now, that doesn't make a whole lot of sense -- laser is a point-to-point technology that has to be aimed directly at whoever you're communicating with, so there can be no such thing as a "laser AP". I mean, I guess you could 'broadcast' visible light or infrared, but aside from being very distracting for humans there are significant line of sight problems.

But putting that aside, if we're talking strictly about point-to-point links in a world where intense widespread EM interference makes the microwave band unusable, there's no reason to assume that such a system wouldn't use the exact same encryption that wifi does. So it's not possible for laser communication to be any less secure than wifi. If anything, it would be a bit more secure just due to the fact that you're not broadcasting the signal to everybody nearby.

[ivanhedgehog]

The other thing to keep in mind is that the original context that LaughingAlex brought it up in was as a replacement for wifi.

Now, that doesn't make a whole lot of sense -- laser is a point-to-point technology that has to be aimed directly at whoever you're communicating with, so there can be no such thing as a "laser AP". I mean, I guess you could 'broadcast' visible light or infrared, but aside from being very distracting for humans there are significant line of sight problems.

But putting that aside, if we're talking strictly about point-to-point links in a world where intense widespread EM interference makes the microwave band unusable, there's no reason to assume that such a system wouldn't use the exact same encryption that wifi does. So it's not possible for laser communication to be any less secure than wifi. If anything, it would be a bit more secure just due to the fact that you're not broadcasting the signal to everybody nearby.

the military has uses that need point to point internet communications, so they do have access points that are restricted to single nodes. not commercially available and most likely highly classified. since they are hitting a satellite, it is highly unlikely that you will be able to intercept it

[Arcana]

The other thing to keep in mind is that the original context that LaughingAlex brought it up in was as a replacement for wifi.

Now, that doesn't make a whole lot of sense -- laser is a point-to-point technology that has to be aimed directly at whoever you're communicating with, so there can be no such thing as a "laser AP". I mean, I guess you could 'broadcast' visible light or infrared, but aside from being very distracting for humans there are significant line of sight problems.

The maximum benefit of the doubt extension of the idea would be to use directional beam splitters to implement in effect the equivalent of radio beam forming for wifi.  You still have line of sight issues, but I suppose if you placed the transmitter in a high area and everyone wore photoelectric hats you could at least make that work outdoors.  Of course, it would help if those hats also included reflective targets to spot where to aim the beam.

At this point, however, we're now living in the weirdest steam-punk world imaginable, with electric voltages randomly knocking people off their feet, homes powered by talk radio, and pedestrians wearing tin foil tracking hats to improve their network bandwidth.

[Burnt Toast]

Except there has been actual information. Calling my short and to the point post condescending does not detract from it's accuracy... your statement was false.


The process is still ongoing. You can choose to believe me or anyone else regarding this or not, but just because you do not believe something...does not mean you are correct. It's ok for you to not believe it. Heck it is even ok for you to state that publicly. What I take offense at is that you are implying I am lying and demanding (more) proof. Since there is an active NDA in place no one can comment on any details or put forth  more "proof" that you seek. Instead maybe you should believe people who have released what little information can be released as truth. What profit would come from them lying about the acquisition? If anything a lie keeping people's hopes up would do nothing but damage what is left of the CoX community.


More information will be released when it can be released...and not because you demand it.


"Just because you don't believe in something; doesn't mean it isn't real."

Bollocks.

In the absence of actual information from people who are in a position to know, there is no reason to believe that anything has happened, is happening or is going to happen with City of Heroes.  It's a dead property and there is next to zero incentive for NCSoft to do anything with it at all except let it rot.

I love me some City of Heroes, but that's not going to make me pretend that the game's going to come back until some tangible evidence appears to suggest that.  There has been nothing like that in over a year.

So, if you have data - present it.  If not, please save your smug condescension for a context where it might be appropriate.

[ivanhedgehog]

Except there has been actual information. Calling my short and to the point post condescending does not detract from it's accuracy... your statement was false.


The process is still ongoing. You can choose to believe me or anyone else regarding this or not, but just because you do not believe something...does not mean you are correct. It's ok for you to not believe it. Heck it is even ok for you to state that publicly. What I take offense at is that you are implying I am lying and demanding (more) proof. Since there is an active NDA in place no one can comment on any details or put forth  more "proof" that you seek. Instead maybe you should believe people who have released what little information can be released as truth. What profit would come from them lying about the acquisition? If anything a lie keeping people's hopes up would do nothing but damage what is left of the CoX community.


More information will be released when it can be released...and not because you demand it.


"Just because you don't believe in something; doesn't mean it isn't real."

I will be honest, I am feeling despair at times. I am afraid the funding will walk, I am afraid that enough players have been out of the game for enough years that bringing it back wont work. I really miss the game. I want to lash out at someone just to make it happen.

On the other hand, seeing posts from nate and Irish Girl make me feel like something will happen. valiance online comes and goes with the updates and COT just had that awesome update. My pessimism fights with my optimisim in a big cage match. Nothing would make me happier than nate posting about success. I understand people getting frustrated at the pace of things(or lack of pace). I just hope something happens before coh coming back becomes a curiosity.

[JoshexProxy]

I will be honest, I am feeling despair at times. I am afraid the funding will walk, I am afraid that enough players have been out of the game for enough years that bringing it back wont work. I really miss the game. I want to lash out at someone just to make it happen.

On the other hand, seeing posts from nate and Irish Girl make me feel like something will happen. valiance online comes and goes with the updates and COT just had that awesome update. My pessimism fights with my optimisim in a big cage match. Nothing would make me happier than nate posting about success. I understand people getting frustrated at the pace of things(or lack of pace). I just hope something happens before coh coming back becomes a curiosity.

City /will/ come back even if we have to do it the pirates way. https://images.weserv.nl/?url=www.forkheads.net%2Fimages%2Fsmilies%2Ficon_leavefhtomesj2.gif

I can give some good news, but it's not about CoH and not many will care lol:

Good news is I finally got a job at least for the meantime, although I am worried because the videogame oriented job has not said yea or nay yet, they have closed applications and expressed that if I am not chosen I will receive a rejection email, this has not happened. I am to assume I have passed the initial screening stage so I didn't get auto-rejected, lets see how shortlisted I can get!.

In the meantime I'll be teaching English in China.. good gig, stable, decent salary, good food. Game company position = priceless. Seriously, it'd be worth dropping my current position and flying back to the states, even though I'm the kinda person that wishes I could multiply like triplicate girl of the legion of superheroes so I don't have to let anyone down. I've already had to let one school down.. have  the ability to stretch yourself into a few copies would be helpful, but having too many copies (like Aeon) would be a problem.

also, my gf lost her iphone 4.. and apple are being bad about it, she has the serial number and package but they wont help her track it just because she didn't install the 'track my iphone' app. It still has the GPS function and I'm sure if they looked up her serial number they could find a reference of the identity of the GPS device inside from the manufacturing plant, but no, they wont help. it was an expensive trip to hong kong including buying a new iphone6.. I would like to sue apple for withholding information from a customer vital to the customer finding a stolen product. just gotta find out what angle is best and exhaust the option of calling their support line before doing so, that and find a lawyer willing to go at it that isn't just after money but wants to help.

[LaughingAlex]

The other thing to keep in mind is that the original context that LaughingAlex brought it up in was as a replacement for wifi.

Now, that doesn't make a whole lot of sense -- laser is a point-to-point technology that has to be aimed directly at whoever you're communicating with, so there can be no such thing as a "laser AP". I mean, I guess you could 'broadcast' visible light or infrared, but aside from being very distracting for humans there are significant line of sight problems.

But putting that aside, if we're talking strictly about point-to-point links in a world where intense widespread EM interference makes the microwave band unusable, there's no reason to assume that such a system wouldn't use the exact same encryption that wifi does. So it's not possible for laser communication to be any less secure than wifi. If anything, it would be a bit more secure just due to the fact that you're not broadcasting the signal to everybody nearby.

The line of sight problems and the odds of accessing the points were originally the reasons I was thinking an open laser system would be less secure than fiber optics.  Fiber optical lines can be buried under ground when necessary, but open lasers couldn't.  But the line of sight issues I thought of, even storms would cause significant problems.  It's physics, light rays and whatnot passing through water droplets would be heavily disrupted, let alone when it's a foggy, dense location and the laser transmission points are also getting soaked.  This is beside the fact that placing huge towers everywhere just to achieve a proper line of sight would be difficult.  Heck now that I think of it, maybe even less doable in a world powered purely by tesla's vision.  The towers would need to be made of completely non conductive materials to avoid equipment damage from the tesla coils to ensure the power transmission favors the places it's actually meant to go.

Another issue with fiber tapping, there are give always for when it's done.  It's not like in the movies where a guy just puts a little device on the wire and it's instantly read.  The guy trying to tap a fiber optical line has to half tear the cable up, and run the fibers through the tap.  This isn't something thats practical outside of events where someone lets you do so, effectively.

And I don't recall saying fiber optics were impossible to tamper with :P.  I said they were harder to mess with than an open laser.  But I thought of open lasers because I was thinking of a world in which cables weren't used at all, period.

Now, traffic intercept isn't the most common form of hack, true.  I was just discussing the possibility in which such a world where people were using such a technology wide spread.

And yes, you'd see encryption being used.  One of the main reasons it exists, as an extra layer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiber_tapping

[LaughingAlex]

The maximum benefit of the doubt extension of the idea would be to use directional beam splitters to implement in effect the equivalent of radio beam forming for wifi.  You still have line of sight issues, but I suppose if you placed the transmitter in a high area and everyone wore photoelectric hats you could at least make that work outdoors.  Of course, it would help if those hats also included reflective targets to spot where to aim the beam.

At this point, however, we're now living in the weirdest steam-punk world imaginable, with electric voltages randomly knocking people off their feet, homes powered by talk radio, and pedestrians wearing tin foil tracking hats to improve their network bandwidth.

I think now your getting it :P.

[Sihada]

What I take offense at is that you are implying I am lying and demanding (more) proof.

I've "demanded" nothing, so your offense is contrived.  Similarly,  I never said anything about you or your honesty.  The degree to which you make this conversation about you is your responsibility.  I'll own the things I say; you can own your aggrieved interpretations.

What appears to offend you is the notion that someone might not subscribe to the groupthink that makes this place seem so cultish and creepy from time to time.  If you can't stomach someone else's perspective on a set of facts without getting offended, that's a problem.

Y'know what?  it's time to delete my account.  I really don't need another insular little clique in my life.

[darkgob]

I've "demanded" nothing, so your offense is contrived.  Similarly,  I never said anything about you or your honesty.  The degree to which you make this conversation about you is your responsibility.  I'll own the things I say; you can own your aggrieved interpretations.

What appears to offend you is the notion that someone might not subscribe to the groupthink that makes this place seem so cultish and creepy from time to time.  If you can't stomach someone else's perspective on a set of facts without getting offended, that's a problem.

Y'know what?  it's time to delete my account.  I really don't need another insular little clique in my life.

Bye! :)

[Reaper]

Y'know what?  it's time to delete my account.  I really don't need another insular little clique in my life.

What?!!  You mean you aren't going to come in here anymore and tell people they're wasting their time?  I'm not sure what was to be gained or what you expected everyone's reactions to be...

Oh well, guess this is directed at dead air since I'm SURE they deleted their account.